Investigation Request
I moved us somewhere private so I could talk with Joo Ha-yeon alone.
"Shin-hoo."
"I'm not changing my mind."
I got my word in first, keeping it light.
"...I thought you might say that. You've always been that way."
Apparently that wasn't why she'd called me over.
"Up until now... well. I suppose it couldn't be helped. But from now on, Shin-hoo, please don't do that. You need to look after what's yours, too."
"...Excuse me?"
"I know this might sound ridiculous, coming from someone who's been on the receiving end this whole time. But Shin-hoo—I think you're far too kind. A person has to claim their own share. We have no idea what's coming, and you need to prepare for that. You're not going to live just for today, are you?"
Who's saying this to whom, exactly? Is this actually happening?
"I'm not that good of a—"
"No, Shin-hoo. You are. No matter what you think of yourself, you are extraordinarily kind. To me, you look like an angel."
What the hell is she talking about.
"Abandoning people. Killing people. Lying. Every last one of those things was for our sake. From where I stand... Shin-hoo, you really are kind. You're everything a person should be. You draw a line with outsiders, but if you have the means, you still help them. You claw and fight for your own people. You're considerate, you're diligent, and..."
Who is she even describing right now?
I had never expected to hear anything like this. My mind went completely blank.
"...which is why I think it's time you started claiming what's yours."
I never thought I'd see the day I'd let praise go in one ear and out the other.
Once she seemed more or less finished, I asked,
"So the bottom line is: kindness is kindness, but this world isn't one where being kind is enough anymore, so if I can take my share I absolutely should. Something like that?"
"Yes. That's right."
"...I'll take my share on my own—"
"You won't!"
We were going in circles.
"Fine. After this, I'll take it. I promise. Can we drop it now?"
I put both hands up like a man surrendering.
"...I'll be watching."
"Yes. I understand. I get it."
Giving someone something was this much of a battle.
Only after weathering that lecture that wasn't quite a lecture was I finally able to leave. Then Na Seoyun came looking for me.
"Why didn't you get anything, oppa? You should at least inherit a Hero's weapon."
Nam Eun-ju, for her part, came wracked with worry over whether she could even handle that kind of power. I told Na Seoyun not to worry, that I'd claim my share properly next time. As for Nam Eun-ju, I assured her that the woman I'd seen was more than capable, and asked her to keep showing me that effort going forward. That was enough to send them both on their way.
After two days of watching the gnolls, I was able to predict they wouldn't be heading for the Holy Land anytime soon. Ha Yoo-jin slipped back inside, and at my request he identified the healthy ones once more.
Still just two. Judging that this was our window, I led the party back to the Holy Land.
"This is..."
"Is that the Gnoll Hero?"
Every last member of the party wore the same stunned expression. Even at a glance, the faintly luminous equipment looked anything but ordinary, and the fallen Gnoll Hero's corpse was a threatening thing just to look at—the kind of body that radiated power even in death.
I led them toward the staff I had claimed before. The ones receiving the inheritance this time were Nam Eun-ju and Joo Ha-yeon. Once the seal broke, I would destroy the Gnoll Hero's heart, and then Na Seoyun's inheritance would begin.
I took each of them by the hand.
"We do it together."
A nod.
"Hoo..."
Both of them let out a long breath, taut with nerves. Nam Eun-ju's face, in particular, was almost painful to look at. She'd heard the story of the one who had died here before. On top of that, there was everything Ha Yoo-jin had told us—how every single person had screamed in agony. She was clearly terrified she would end up the same way.
But that wasn't going to happen. Why else had I not just blown off that wretched Saintess? If she cooperated, even Nam Eun-ju—short on talent as she was—would be able to receive the inheritance. Skill inheritance itself wasn't a problem; as long as a slot existed, talent hardly mattered. And if she didn't have an empty slot, she could just overwrite an existing one.
"We're going."
I set the rest of the party on watch, then pressed both of their hands and my own against the staff.
The familiar shift in my vision. And there she was again—the 7th Saintess, her face still faintly out of focus.
"You've come quickly."
"Yes. Fortunately, we'd been hiding somewhere not far from here. Even so, we checked as far as the gnoll village on the way, just to be safe."
"A wise choice. These two..."
"It is an honor to meet you, 7th Saintess. I am Joo Ha-yeon, a Saintess candidate."
"...I am Nam Eun-ju, a Paladin candidate and Shin-hoo's junior. It is an honor to meet you, Saintess."
Just as I had drilled into them, the two of them played their parts—Saintess candidate, and my Paladin junior. Joo Ha-yeon knew enough doctrine through her skill that there was no real chance of a hole opening up in conversation. Nam Eun-ju, though, couldn't possibly have learned all of that in so little time, so we'd gone with the story that she was a recent convert and my direct junior.
The Saintess looked genuinely delighted, as if she had not expected to meet another Saintess candidate after so many centuries.
"I never thought I would see a successor again. I am so very glad."
"...I never thought I would meet a Saintess from so far back in the line, either. When I heard Shin-hoo's story, I was truly astonished."
The two of them laughed lightly and fell into easy conversation. I would have liked the inheritance rite to start that very second, but I didn't interrupt. That was the surest way to earn more active cooperation. Both of them needed it—Nam Eun-ju especially. For her, the Saintess's help was essential.
Joo Ha-yeon, despite the fiction that she was the junior here, handled the conversation beautifully. She claimed she'd been wandering for so long that she knew little of the current temple, then offered up a childhood story that was, as far as I could tell, a novel she'd invented on the spot. Most of the time she simply asked questions, drawing the Saintess into recounting the many stories of her own era—minimizing what she herself had to say, and putting the Saintess in an excellent mood. It was a refined technique.
They say listening is the heart of conversation. The way she got the other person talking, then made them feel she was hanging on every word—that listening skill of hers was no ordinary thing. If you rated it as a skill, it would have sailed right past Rare.
"...I see. That must have been an unbearably hard decision."
"You would have made the same choice, I am certain."
"...Would I have been able to?"
"The Ha-yeon I have seen? Without a doubt."
You've known her for how long, and it's already "the Ha-yeon I've seen"?
I honestly didn't know whether to laugh. Thirty minutes of conversation and they were already that close. Even I was impressed, just sitting there listening. Six hundred years of things left unsaid, and now a successor who would actually hear them—the Saintess looked genuinely moved.
"Once this is over and I become a Saintess, I will make certain the temple knows of your deeds. It was all so long ago that the story of the 7th Saintess has been wrapped in a veil... I never imagined you were someone this remarkable."
"...Thank you."
Impressive.
I swallowed my admiration and stepped forward. I hadn't expected Joo Ha-yeon to perform like this. Had we even needed the recent-convert story for Nam Eun-ju?
"Saintess. Forgive me, but..."
"...I know. I let myself get too carried away. It has been so long since I last spoke with anyone."
She gave a small nod.
"Then I shall begin the inheritance rite. Would the two of you come before me?"
Joo Ha-yeon and Nam Eun-ju moved to stand in front of the 7th Saintess. White light began to gather in her hands.
I knew it on instinct. That was the foundation holding this seal in place. That energy.
"It will hurt. It will be hard. Endure with everything you have. I will guide you."
Joo Ha-yeon and Nam Eun-ju nodded, their faces drawn tight.
A moment later, the Saintess's hands came to rest against each of their chests.
And then the light exploded.
A light so brilliant it nearly blinded poured into Nam Eun-ju and Joo Ha-yeon.
"Kyaaaaaah!"
"Hhhnngh—!"
Joo Ha-yeon, caught off guard by pain worse than she'd imagined, screamed almost at once. Nam Eun-ju was holding it in somehow. If you measured it by how much it hurt, Nam Eun-ju had it worse. But she endured. All those brutal months of training—this, it seemed, was what they had bought her.
Enduring pain was something Nam Eun-ju was more used to.
Watching them, I felt a raw, ugly fury rise in my chest. The party—no, every trainee—hungered for power. My companions still couldn't properly protect themselves. Things were better than they had been, but the truth was they remained precarious without me. There were people coming up behind us, and though I'd cleaned house once already, human nature could turn at any moment. After everything I'd seen of how ugly trainees could be, of course they would crave power.
But even so—did they hunger for it more than I did?
Not a chance. The motive, the humiliation I had suffered, the years, the experience, the despair... not one of them had ever been more desperate, or had it harder, than I had. No one could want power more fiercely, more viscerally, than I did.
My teeth ground together. Watching them, I could see the ugly, jealous thing I was.
That power had been mine. It should have been mine.
I'm next. Just endure this inheritance. I have to endure it.
I crushed the jealousy down by force. This was a necessary step. A feeling I had already thought I'd pinned down came clawing back up again. Of course it did. The power rolling off them was several times greater than anything I had anticipated.
If I had taken both of those powers for myself and fully digested them, I was confident I could have crushed the Ranker Realm later on. That was how immense the auras were—forces I had never even glimpsed in the first cycle.
Time passed while I sat on my patience.
About twenty minutes in, the light was still seeping, little by little, into both of their bodies. Joo Ha-yeon was the first to have it fade.
Her body shuddered as if in a convulsion as she took the power in. The light paid her condition no mind at all, sinking slowly but steadily into her chest, and after a while it dwindled and went quiet.
She crumpled.
And then—
"Hhik... hhhik..."
She began to cry, in small, swallowed sobs. The pain must have been worse than she'd imagined; she was fighting the tears down as hard as she could. I didn't think I had ever seen Joo Ha-yeon cry before.
With her finished, the Saintess pressed both hands to Nam Eun-ju and poured everything she had into concentrating. I couldn't make out her expression clearly, but I had the distinct sense she was breaking into a cold sweat.
"Hhk— nngh..."
Nam Eun-ju was holding the scream in somehow. Her body convulsed just the same, but compared to Joo Ha-yeon, who had broken down in tears, her endurance was in another league entirely.
I didn't know how bad that pain actually was. I could guess it was anything but ordinary.
Joo Ha-yeon had absorbed everything in under twenty minutes. Nam Eun-ju showed no sign of being done.
Thirty minutes. Forty. An hour.
Nearly two hours.
Only after that long did the light at last begin to recede. The reason it was taking so much longer was obvious. Class, talent, stats—Nam Eun-ju had nothing that matched a Paladin who had been the greatest of her age. Of course it would take time.
But the end was in sight.
Joo Ha-yeon, her tears already dried, was watching Nam Eun-ju with a look of genuine astonishment and awe. She had felt the same pain—perhaps worse—and yet Nam Eun-ju hadn't let out a single scream in two hours. Joo Ha-yeon was admiring her for it, and at the same time looking faintly ashamed, measuring herself against that endurance.
At last the light died completely, and Nam Eun-ju's body folded to the floor.
"Hhk! Hah— haah..."
Fortunately, she hadn't lost consciousness. She had held onto her mind all the way through the rite.
I went to her.
"...You did well. You held on."
"...Th-thank... thank you..."
The words came out of her with difficulty. I turned to the Saintess.
"Thank you. Truly. We will slay the Gnoll Hero and bring peace to the Empire. I swear it."
Honestly, getting rid of a few gnolls wasn't going to bring the Empire peace... but it was lip service.
"...Yes... Then... I leave the rest to you... More than I expected..."
She hadn't imagined it would cost her this much to pass the inheritance to Nam Eun-ju. Her form was slowly growing fainter. She had called herself a soul remnant from the beginning—worn down to almost nothing.
I had half expected this. Forcing those powers into Nam Eun-ju was never going to be easy.
She never finished the sentence. Her soul scattered at once.
A hollow farewell.
But I was thoroughly satisfied.
The world around us began to come apart. We would be back in reality any moment now. Then I would finish Na Seoyun's inheritance, destroy the Gnoll Hero's heart, and close out one of the Main Quests in a single stroke.
What's left is the mine, and...
Two major objectives, finished in one blow. It stung, a little. But if the final goal was saving Earth and seeing my family again, then making the party stronger was not optional. I forced my heart back into line and started running through the next schedule in my head.
Nam Eun-ju, who had been staring blankly into empty air, suddenly stood up.
Ah. The status window.
She must have been looking at her own. Then she came straight to me—and dropped to her knees.
"...Huh?"
The suddenness of it left me looking like an idiot. The world was still collapsing around us. In the middle of that, Nam Eun-ju spoke.
"Th-thank you... Thank you so, so much... Shin-hoo oppa—no, Party Leader. I-I'll spend the rest of my life repaying this debt. I will. Truly, truly..."
Still on her knees in front of me, she was crying the tears she hadn't shed through that entire agonizing inheritance.
And that wasn't the end of it.
Without warning, Joo Ha-yeon—who had been standing behind me—caught me by the shoulders and turned me around. I didn't resist. There was no reason for her to attack me at this point, and nothing in the way she moved felt like she meant me harm.
She pulled me into her arms.
She locked her arms around my back and burrowed into me with a desperate, almost frantic force. I was still in armor, and even so I could feel the pressure of how hard she was holding on.
"Why—why are you—"
Unlike Nam Eun-ju, Joo Ha-yeon didn't say a word. She only looked at me, her eyes shining and full.
The feeling had overflowed. It had gone past the limit and spilled over.
I left the two of them alone. Once we woke, all three of us would just be standing there in a daze anyway. They'd settle down soon enough.
The world finished coming apart, and the sanctuary began to resolve around us again.
The strange thing was that I could see the others—the ones who should have been behind us, standing watch. From the last time, the first thing I should have seen upon returning was the Gnoll Hero's corpse...
Then I saw their faces. Ha Yoo-jin looked bewildered. Na-yeon looked mildly startled. Na Seoyun looked completely, utterly horrified.
She even shouted it.
What on earth...
I sucked in a sharp breath. My eyes flew wide at the sudden ambush.
Joo Ha-yeon—the same Joo Ha-yeon who had been holding me in that world of light—threw her arms around me the instant we returned to reality, and kissed me.