The Raid
Saturday afternoon. Chulhyul Hospital.
"Thank you for your hard work, Saint."
"Thank you. I'll be heading out first."
Having finished everything she needed to do, Baek A-young rose from her seat.
"Yes! Thank you for everything!"
"Thank you for your hard work!"
"Thank you."
Whenever Baek A-young left for the day, everyone in the hospital came out to see her off. Even the patients. After exchanging a greeting with each person in turn, meeting every pair of eyes, she stepped outside.
Click, click.
With today's work behind her, she planned to go home and rest.
Two days left.
Once she returned to the Academy, she would be back to her duties as the school nurse. The position had been hastily created just to bring her on board, so it was hardly a demanding post.
Being around patients again after so long isn't so bad.
That fierce, fulfilling feeling she had known every day when she worked at the Association. Helping people. Being thanked. For Baek A-young, that was healing.
"A-young~ All done?"
The moment she stepped out of the building, a high-pitched voice struck her ears.
"…Yeji?"
"I missed you, so I came by~."
Min Yeji, a cat-eyed beauty. An acquaintance of Baek A-young's. She was a team leader in the Iron Blood Guild, and it was thanks to her that Baek A-young had been able to walk straight into Chulhyul Hospital the moment Lee Ho-yeon was admitted.
"I thought you said you were swamped with work. What brings you here?"
"I happened to have business in the area. Something I need to look into."
"Look into?"
"Yeah. Word is some famous guild brat turned into a Demon."
"Ah."
A hunter becoming a Demon. Rare, but not unheard of. Neither Min Yeji nor Baek A-young treated it as anything particularly remarkable.
"And I figured I'd check whether our A-young was actually working hard while she was here. Can't have the person I recommended slacking off~."
"Hehe. Thank you. I'm just glad you pulled some strings for me."
"Don't mention it. Having the Saint at Chulhyul Hospital, even for a little while, is a huge help. Come to think of it, did you have a nice hospital stay with Cadet Ho-yeon?"
"…Yeah."
Those days she had spent hospitalized with Lee Ho-yeon. It had only been about a week, but it had been a happy time. They had confirmed each other's feelings. Built something real. Especially when they had confessed to each other… that had been wonderful.
Baek A-young's face flushed faintly at the memory of that night, and Min Yeji, watching her, hooked an arm through hers.
"Wow, it really was that good, huh? Look at our A-young's face. And she used to be such an innocent girl."
"…People change. So what."
Baek A-young pushed Min Yeji away, wrestling her expression back under control. Her lips had been trying to curl up of their own accord.
"Alright. Once I'm done with the hospital business, let's get together again. How about drinks, the three of us? We'll drag Sol along."
"I can't hold my liquor well, but… sure. Come to think of it, is Sol still buried in her research?"
"Yep. She says she's almost finished, though. Next week there's some magic expo or whatever."
"A magic expo?"
"That's what I heard. Don't ask me what it actually is."
Min Yeji lifted her arms in a shrug of ignorance, but Baek A-young remembered hearing about it from Lim Sol.
She definitely said she was going with Ho-yeon.
Lim Sol and Lee Ho-yeon. Master and disciple — but she could not afford to let her guard down.
"Isn't that the one she's doing with Ho-yeon?"
"Ah… was it? Now that you mention it, maybe."
"…"
"Hey, don't worry about it. Sol doesn't give guys the time of day. When I tease her, it's just teasing."
"…Yeah. I know."
But Baek A-young still remembered the feeling she had gotten before. When Lim Sol talked about Lee Ho-yeon. It did not seem like a deep attraction yet… but the attraction was there.
She could become a rival at any time.
Even if she was ahead for now, she could never let her guard down. Lee Ho-yeon was that kind of man.
Baek A-young clenched her fist, steeling her resolve.
"You sure about this? It's going to be hard to follow."
Inside the training ground of Rebecca's hideout, she and I stood facing each other. She was holding a staff topped with a purple crystal orb, though I could not tell where she had gotten it, and it did not look like a particularly useful artifact.
"Is that staff just for show?"
"Ah, yeah. You noticed? It makes me look a little scarier."
She really did look like a proper witch with that thing.
"Look, maybe you should just drop this…"
"Why?"
Rebecca had been repeating that same line since we started. Was asking her to teach me the Rune Barrier really that difficult? Given that she wanted to revive the Rune Clan, it was not as though she did not want to pass it on.
"…The Rune Barrier isn't something simple."
"We'll just try it and see."
Coming to a training ground for the first time in a while felt strange. I had not been to the one at the Academy in a long time either.
"This isn't a domain that talent can cover. The Rune Clan has an education that's been passed down…"
Why was she so worried? We could just try it.
"I understand, Rebecca. It's fine. Just let me try."
I put a little more firmness into my voice.
"…Hmph. Fine. Listen carefully. And don't get hurt when it doesn't work."
Ah. So that was it. She was worried I would take it personally. There was no need for that.
A moment later, Rebecca's mana began to unfurl through the training ground. A familiar Rune Barrier. I studied the slowly expanding sphere of mana, but I could not find anything different from my own magic circles.
"The Rune Clan has to completely dominate the Rune Barrier."
Rebecca murmured the words quietly. The atmosphere she had been carrying until now was gone, replaced by something entirely different.
Thump.
At the same time, the air around me grew heavy. An enormous pressure crushed down on my shoulders.
Combat Sense
"Try deploying a Rune Barrier."
"…"
I furrowed my brow, enduring the pressure as I formed a Rune Barrier, wrapping it around my body to fend off the force bearing down on me.
A sharp crackle — and the moment my barrier took shape, it shattered. It could not withstand the pressure radiating from Rebecca's Rune Barrier.
"That's not what a Rune Barrier is."
Rebecca approached me with a faint smile and collapsed her own Rune Barrier. The construct, slowly losing its form, suddenly froze.
"Whoa…"
The magic was active and, at the same time, not active at all.
"How is that even possible?"
I had never seen or even heard of a phenomenon like that. If I showed this to Lim Sol, she would fall over backward.
"The Rune Clan spends their entire lives learning only a single magic. That's why the space inside the barrier becomes theirs."
Rebecca extended one hand, and I could see the mana flowing from her palm connected to the barrier itself.
"This isn't something you're continuously maintaining. It's more like… it's been connected from the very beginning."
"That's right. My mana already has the same structure as the Rune Barrier. …But I haven't visualized it yet. How did you see that?"
"You're saying that's possible?"
Rebecca looked puzzled, but my eyes had gone wide with astonishment. How could a human being and a spell share the same mana structure?
"That's what it means to be of the Rune Clan. See, this is why I didn't want to show you. I figured it'd just kill your motivation."
It had not killed my motivation. If anything, it had gone up. There was a concept of magic here that I had never even known existed.
"B-but it's fine."
Rebecca must have misread the look in my eyes, because she started saying something in a hurry. I let her words slide past one ear and kept studying the Rune Barrier she had constructed.
The fusion of magic and human.
Could I do that too?
No. Absolutely not. That was a phenomenon that required years of work during the period when the body was still developing. I was already too late. And even if it were possible, I needed other magics besides the Rune Barrier.
Which meant I had to find another way…
"Your talent is more than enough, so… if you just have a gifted child, I can raise it from infancy and…"
"Ah."
Rebecca was saying something, but I did not hear it. Something had begun to happen inside my head.
The moment I — even with Mana Sensitivity — encountered a concept I had never known and understood it in an instant, my talent forcibly evolved my body. This was an awakening.
Like the first time I felt mana. Like the first time I used Combat Sense. Like when I created a new skill. Like when I awakened in the middle of sex with Liliana. Perhaps something even greater than any of those was unfolding now.
I could not change my body's mana circuits the way Rebecca had. Her body existed for the Rune Barrier alone. The very nature of her mana had been rewritten to match it, which was why every time she deployed a Rune Barrier, it connected to her body. Unlike simply controlling it, she became one with the barrier itself — and that made it far stronger.
It was a phenomenon unlike ordinary magic. Something that could not be copied. Something that should not be copied.
But this body could do it.
If I can't be connected to it, I'll just hold on.
If it would not work, I would force it. And I would add my own method on top.
"…Rune Barrier."
⟨ Rune Barrier ⟩
I deployed the Rune Barrier once more. Threads of mana poured from my body, inscribing a magic circle in an instant, and fused together at the core formula that formed last.
I could not hold the entire thing, so I would just grab the core formula. And in that state, I would change it. To the same mana properties as my own body.
Then it would go like this…
A deep crack sounded as a spherical Rune Barrier formed with my body at its center, and the pressure vanished at the same instant. I had carved out my own domain inside Rebecca's barrier.
"Hah… I think I got it. How's that, Rebecca?"
I looked at her with a satisfied smile. That sensation of my magic growing sharper. It felt good no matter how many times I experienced it.
Rebecca stared at me with her mouth hanging open, then spoke quietly.
"…Our baby's daddy really does have some good genes."
The article about Shin Dong-min, eldest son of the Shinyoung Guild, having made contact with Demons. The public that had flared up like wildfire at first drifted off one by one in search of something else to chew on. Even the article about Shin Dong-min's disappearance only held their attention at the start, then grew quieter and quieter.
Public interest in the Shinyoung Guild had faded little by little, and the timing had come when he could have slipped home quietly — but Shin Dong-min did not return to the family estate.
The treatment waiting for him if he went back was obvious. He would be locked away in some mansion and monitored for the rest of his life, never to set foot outside again. Because he was a Demon.
He won't kill me. He'll keep me under his own management.
Even if his son had become a Demon, he would not abandon him. That was the kind of man his father was. He might even have hired hunters to track him down by now.
If that was how he was going to live… he would rather pay back what had been done to him.
The reason he had ended up like this. Lee Ho-yeon and Mun Su-rin.
A pulse ran through him. Veins stood out across his entire body. A vicious face whose original features had grown faint, and a pair of horns. Shin Dong-min, who had become a Demon in full, had fled his home and made contact with Pandemic. He had taken a considerable amount of slush funds with him when he left, enough to hire Pandemic's Demons.
"…What's the status of the operation?"
"Yes. They've already departed for Lee Ho-yeon and Mun Su-rin's dormitory."
On the monitor in front of Shin Dong-min, two men in familiar skull masks were heading somewhere.
"…You found the right ones, I assume?"
"Yes. S-class Demons who signed on directly."
"I heard a lot of S-class Demons are mentally unhinged. I paid a fortune for these bastards, so they'd better get the job done."
"That's true, but… there shouldn't be any problem with the work itself."
"…Fine."
This was the last of it. Hiring two S-class Demons had burned through every last bit of the money he had brought, and he had nowhere left to go.
"…"
Shin Dong-min watched the Demons vanish from the monitor, then rose from his seat.