A Stroll Across the Sky
"What on earth is that teacher's problem?!"
With all due respect, ma'am—why are you asking me that?
The Cult Leader meant it, more or less. When she had suddenly summoned him—invoking the organization's name, no less—he had been genuinely startled, but never in his wildest dreams had he imagined it was because she was short on someone to gossip with. At first he'd wondered whether some problem had come up; now, all he could do was sigh at what this was even supposed to be.
The Succubus Queen. For a being who reigned above all succubi and stood shoulder to shoulder with the four Great Archdemons, her conduct was shameless beyond belief.
"Take the Namhae affair alone, for instance. Don't tell me that man has developed a taste for getting in our way?"
Not that the Queen in question seemed to care in the slightest.
Truthfully, everything she'd said just now made that clear enough. The Namhae incident—a project over which that organization had spread its fingers for purposes of its own. Word was, the A-rank-and-above monsters latched onto it numbered beyond what one hand could count. And as it happened, the one who had wrecked the whole endeavor was none other than that teacher, Park Woochan.
No wonder she reacted the way she did, he supposed.
But the Cult Leader, who had once stood on the opposite side of the table from the Association, saw it differently. It's not as if hunters above A-rank grow on trees.
This was a mega-scale project that had spent the better part of half a year churning up the seas around Namhae. By sheer area alone, the odds were high that a sixth of South Korea's population had come into contact with it without ever knowing. Worse still, the monster overseeing the Namhae sector had gone and attacked an A-rank hunter who'd come poking around on official business. Even had he been the Association Chairman himself, he would have had no choice but to send an A+ rank hunter next.
...In a situation where a sixth of the nation's population already sat inside the project's range, once you sifted out the hunters who could still be pulled in on top of that—to hope Park Woochan's name wouldn't come up within a round or two was, no matter how you looked at it, nothing but spiteful wishful thinking.
And yet the Succubus Queen seemed to have no room in her head for arithmetic this simple.
Why?
Because she's a goddamn bonehead!
The Cult Leader genuinely believed it. Common sense alone told you how many hunters above A+ rank a country this small could possibly field. No—even if Park Woochan hadn't come down this time, the outcome would have been the same. Kill an A+ rank hunter, and an S-rank comes next. Crossing paths with Park Woochan sooner or later was simply inevitable.
Which meant the single most important thing in running the Namhae project was the patience of the monster in charge. Attacking the Namhae Branch or picking a hunter's liver clean "to fatten her brood while she was at it" was nothing more than an unforced error.
And.
The monster in charge of the Namhae Branch had attacked the Namhae Branch to fatten her brood, while she was at it. And while she was at it, she'd eaten a hunter's liver as a delicacy, no less.
Despite all of which, this creature called the Succubus Queen couldn't manage arithmetic this elementary!
Naturally, the Cult Leader could only arrive at one conclusion. Succubi are boneheads. He'd give the nine-tailed fox a pass, given all its folklore about cunning—but a succubus with nothing but sex on the brain? Heaven help you. Then again, most fox-spirit tales ended with the fox chased out for losing to her own instincts, so perhaps neither of them was any better than the other.
"I've decided. That man simply must die, after all."
Otherwise, how could anyone say such a thing? Coming from a woman who, mere minutes ago, had slunk in here sniffling after taking her beating without any means of resistance, the remark was so absurd he could barely contain his disbelief. Besides—how exactly did she intend to bring down a man who had butchered even an S-rank monster? Ambush. A lapse in vigilance. It wasn't that no methods existed, but if you asked whether an S-rank would really leave himself that open...
It'll be rough.
Skepticism was all he could muster. They had prepared in every way they could, but he doubted they could even narrow the gap between her and Yuseongsin, let alone Park Woochan. Not that he said any of this aloud—the Queen before him was quietly burning with rivalry toward that nine-tailed fox, Yuseongsin. In his eyes, of course, it was six of one, half a dozen of the other.
"Ah, right. Thank you for your cooperation this time."
"Think nothing of it."
"Fufu, what an adorable reaction. Well then? Any thought of being doted on by me personally?"
"Haha, my apologies. It's a matter of faith."
"Bland as ever."
At the deflating reply, the Succubus Queen let a wry laugh slip past her lips. The mood made it seem like a joke, but the Cult Leader knew better. He knew that if he had shown even a flicker of willingness, the Succubus Queen would not have let him off the hook here, either. Never in his life had he been more grateful for his title.
Objectively speaking, of course, the woman before him was rather out of his league. Formidable power. And beauty to match—and then some. She carried not one but several weapons fit to make any man burn with envy.
And yet.
Feels like I'd catch AIDS...
He had no choice but to decline. Besides, it was about time he took his leave. Lingering any longer risked catching stray sparks that were none of his making, after all.
In that sense, the Cult Leader's instinct for danger was the genuine article. Because—
Ten minutes after the Cult Leader took his leave, Park Woochan came calling at the Queen's chamber.
To tell the truth, there had been reasons enough for suspecting Jihee's mother from the very start.
Back when he had first met Ja Hayeon, Lee Joongoo—acting on Park Woochan's account—had once turned New City inside out in search of a monster colony. The reason that sweep had turned up nothing came down to a single fact: the monsters in question had been staying inside a gate. This business was much the same. Succubus or not, even mimicry has its limits. A good seventeen years. A succubus, of all creatures, going a full seventeen years without showing herself so much as once—was that even remotely plausible? Considering a succubus's biology, which withers and dies without consuming another's vital essence, it was all but impossible. All the more so given that the Second Cataclysm had broken out in the meantime.
And at that point, Park Woochan simply gave up on sweating the small stuff. What had genuinely worried him was the possibility that the succubus had come crawling back, this late in the game, to play mother to Jihee. If that had been the case, he, too, would have had to grit his teeth and watch the thing traipse around under his nose. But the succubus's purpose was, for all intents and purposes, confirmed. Turning humans into succubi. That was not a motive you could praise even as a joke. If so, there was no reason to hesitate a second longer. That woman's conduct had long since blown past anything a "parent" could talk her way out of.
The outskirts of the city. A lavish hotel. Its top floor, to all outward appearances a private villa for the upper crust—that was where the Succubus Queen had made her den. Whether by the hypnotic power native to monsters or the backing of that organization, either way, the vain succubus's choice of lodging couldn't slow Park Woochan's stride one bit. If anything, quite the opposite. She'd had the sheer gall to charter an entire building that cost a staggering sum for even a single night's stay?
Suits me fine.
Put another way, he had no need to spare a thought for the neighbors. And so Park Woochan dove straight for the hotel's top floor without a moment's hesitation.
There were obstacles, of course. As with all things this luxurious, the hotel was tangled in countless vested interests—otherwise it would never have been squatting so brazenly in the middle of the New City development zone. Meaning a simple fact-finding investigation would have a devil of a time getting anywhere. In short, a tailor-made den for a succubus. None of which applied to Park Woochan. He wasn't a professional profiler to begin with. Why the succubus of all things had nested in a spot like this, or how there wasn't a shred of presentable evidence to wave a warrant around with—those were worries for the leads of crime dramas. Park Woochan was no investigator. He was a hunter—a Hunter. The law? Vested interests pulling strings? Like he gave a damn. A rough estimate said there was a succubus here, so here he was. Park Woochan had no interest in the fine print.
As even greater luck would have it, Park Woochan had power of his own. Beyond his skill as a hunter—the most potent force in this capitalist society of theirs. Connections, in a word. Known otherwise as Choi Seungjun's money and Lee Joongoo's political clout.
And so—two seconds after Park Woochan set foot on the top floor.
Krrash!!
Glass shattered, and the succubus, flinging herself out the window, unfurled wings like living shadow. Screams rose from beneath the hotel. Shards were raining down without warning, and the people who tracked them upward caught sight of the succubus crouching at the far edge of the sky.
Their response was swift. Pedestrians who, moments before, had been strolling along in twos and threes put distance between themselves and the building in an instant; some could already be seen filming from a safe distance, securing video evidence. Truly the composure of citizens who had adapted to life in a hunter's society.
But as it happened, no one would be commending their fine handling this time. The thing flapping its wings above the hotel right now was no low-rank monster on the run from Association surveillance. And the hunter come to face it was no middling hunter, either. Three minutes for the guild hunters in charge to issue an evacuation order and reach the scene—five, if he was being generous.
I'll settle it before then.
That was the resolve Park Woochan had come here with.
The Queen's response, too, was genuinely astonishing. She hadn't had the luxury of hesitation—the seething killing intent had been stabbing at her skin from before the door even opened. Negotiation. Feigned weakness. The trade of offering up her own body. That none of them would land was self-evident.
And so she hurled herself out the window to secure distance, assuming a combat stance in the same breath. Unlike last time, this was power unleashed right up to its ceiling; the mana she had been holding in check, she now wielded without reserve. Billowing mist. Writhing shadow. Mana reshaping itself into the very form medieval Europe had deemed the emblem of the succubus—and a flood of it, enough to swallow a whole hotel and have some to spare, came crashing down on Park Woochan as he burst into the room a beat behind.
Naturally, none of it posed the slightest problem for him. His opponent was a succubus. Queen-class, admittedly—but put into numbers, A+ rank at best. This wasn't inside a gate, nor had she furnished herself a dungeon, and with not so much as a hostage on the board, there was no need to swing his signature right off the bat.
The next moment, a red banner unfurled.
"Ugh?!"
The succubus, frightened out of her wits, widened the gap even further. It was a near-instinctive reaction—and of course it had to be. Just look at that scrap of cloth fluttering beyond the window, radiating a holiness impossible to miss. A holy shroud, airlifted in from Western Europe. To be precise, a replica of one. Even Park Woochan couldn't have gotten his hands on the genuine article, but for right now, this much would more than do.
Impure mana dispersed and came to naught; the succubus's advancing mist died where it stood. A protection peculiar to the Christian faith. Hardly a power so overwhelming it blinds you, but to demons of the Christian line it was tantamount to a natural predator—and that effect was making itself vividly known.
Once. Like a Spanish matador, he gave the cloth a light flick. Simultaneously, the succubus's mana—dumped out with the intent of collapsing the building whole—drained of force in an instant. The Lord's Prayer, stitched in gold thread along the holy cloth's hem, seemed to shine all the brighter for it. Draping it about his shoulders like a cape, Park Woochan leapt straight for the open sky.
Shukuchi. A lightness art and footwork that, in ordinary times, existed to seize distance one-sidedly. But the monster before his eyes right now was A+ rank. On top of that, as the attack from moments ago made plain, her specialty lay in scattering mana through the surrounding space. And given a succubus's nature, even now her ploys to rub his temper the wrong way came thick and fast. His senses, naturally, were at an all-time high—nerves wound so tight that even an S-rank monster might not have matched them, singing bloodlust all on their own. Well, then. With the stage set this perfectly, there was no reason not to play along.
Thud.
Park Woochan's foot came down on empty air—and held. Unlike before, when he had made temporary footing of the mana seething around him, this was walking, complete and unassisted. It was a sight for which "stroll" fit better than "Shukuchi."
"Been a while since my last aerial fight, too."
As if it were somebody else's business, that was what Park Woochan said. And even as he murmured it, both of the man's feet stood firmly planted upon the sky.