Underground Passage Battle (1)
Tap, tap, tap!
"Run, Isabel! Hurry!"
"Y-yes... Hah, hahh..."
Yoon Selena clutched her hand and dragged her deeper and deeper into the basement—while two suspicious men chased at their heels. And with every step that carried her further into the dark, Kim Isabel found herself unable to shake the small question that kept creeping into her head.
...Honestly, I don't think there's any need to run at all.
She was in the Recovery Department, yes, but she was quite certain she could win. Her binding magic alone would be enough. After all, she'd already used it once against terrorists back at the amusement park.
She might have been a first-year Cadet, but in terms of raw ability she surpassed the average academy student, so it was only natural for that thought to cross her mind. In truth, she felt fully capable of handling the thugs right in front of her.
...Besides, she was worried about the 'patient'—the very reason she'd been called down here in the first place. Though by this point, she was starting to wonder, just a little, whether there was even a patient at all.
"Stop right there!"
"Where do you think you're going?! You can't escape this building!"
"Hahh, hahh, hahh... Hah, h-how long are you going to chase me, exactly...!"
"......"
Looking at Yoon Selena, still gripping her hand and running alongside her, Isabel didn't get the impression she was lying. Her expression genuinely read as if she herself hadn't expected any of this. Her ragged breathing, even her irritated voice—all of it felt far too real.
Maybe... Sister Selena was caught up in this too, without knowing anything.
She was still one step short of the whole truth, but Kim Isabel had made up her mind: she wasn't going to run anymore. She shook off Yoon Selena's grip and came to a stop.
"Isabel, first we need to get further down—"
Tap!
"...No. You can stop running now, Sister Selena."
"...Huh?"
With eyes that had suddenly gone cold, Isabel pulled her hand free and planted her feet. The reaction caught Yoon Selena completely off guard, and for one terrible instant she thought—could my perfect act have been exposed?
"Men like that... I can handle them perfectly well on my own."
"......"
Thankfully, the words that followed immediately put her mind at ease—she'd dodged the worst-case scenario.
"Light, bind them!"
Fwap! Fwafwap!
"Ngh?!"
"Wh-what the—!!"
The Saint Candidate wheeled around mid-flight and loosed her divine magic down the corridor she'd just been running through. Caught utterly off guard by the unexpected strike, the two organizations' men found themselves bound tight, collapsing onto the floor as they were.
"Wh-what...!! Th-this isn't how it was supposed to go—"
"Shut your mouth, idiot!"
"...What, exactly, was supposed to go differently?"
"......"
Both men stiffened at the sound of Kim Isabel calmly echoing the blunder that had slipped out of one of their mouths. That single short sentence was enough to throw their minds into chaos.
The organization's intelligence said she suffered from androphobia—that she wouldn't even be able to make eye contact with a man. Yet here she was, calmly closing the distance and exchanging words with them, cool as anything.
"I-Isabel, Sister...?"
"I asked what was supposed to go differently, you suspicious thugs."
"......"
"......"
Could it be... that the androphobia she'd shown this whole time was an act?
Because if it wasn't, there was no way she could have calmly chanted binding magic at men like them, or walked this close and held a conversation.
While the fallen organization members—and even Yoon Selena—floundered in the face of this new information, only Kim Isabel felt a sense of relief.
Mental anxiety suppressed. Confidence and clarity restored.
Thank goodness Seonho's buff is still active.
If not for this buff, terror would have frozen her solid—no room to think clearly, no thought of turning around to counterattack. The fact that they'd been separated in such a rush earlier that she'd never gotten around to dismissing it had, ironically, been exactly what saved her.
For now, the right move is to head back up.
She had no idea who the two men who'd ambushed her and Selena were, but she did need to go back and report the suspicious individuals. And she'd have to check once and for all whether there really was a Magic Department patient waiting somewhere.
So with plenty of questions still swirling in her head, Kim Isabel resolved to return the way she'd come.
"Sister Selena, let's head back for now!"
"...Ah, yes! Let's do that, Isabel!"
...And she never noticed Yoon Selena's hand slipping behind her back, quietly sending a signal to headquarters.
On the surface, it was a two-story fake building disguised perfectly as the Magic Department's Training Grounds. I'd taken a quick sweep of the second floor in case any of the executives happened to be around, but no luck. As expected, they were probably all holed up somewhere in the basement—or stationed to seal off the underground passage that Kim Isabel would be passing through.
Personally, I'd rather fight underground than above anyway, so it made no difference to me. A fight up top meant gunshots, shouting, and all sorts of ways to draw attention—not the least of which from the girl standing right beside me.
"What even is this underground passage, Lee Seonho?! There was a place like this under the Academy this whole time?!"
"I-I've never seen anything like it either... D-do you think this was made by the terrorists too...?"
"...Who knows. Can't say for sure yet, but we should stay careful either way. Stay close to me, Eunju."
"Y-yes! N-no matter what happens, I'll protect you, Seonho, s-so don't worry, you can stay right by me...!"
"...Right."
I'd told her to stick close because I would protect her—though come to think of it, to Cha Eunju it must have sounded like I was the one leaning on her. Thanks to her, I found myself chewing, once more, on a rather bitter truth as the three of us pressed forward, my smartphone's flashlight cutting through the dark of the underground passage.
It was a little while later that we spotted a light growing steadily brighter at the far end of the corridor, along with the shadows of two people.
Tap, tap, tap!
"...B-back there! ...nim!"
"...don't, stay still......"
"......"
I couldn't see their faces yet, but I could vaguely make out two women's voices. Hard to tell who was who, with the acoustics inside the passage. From what I remembered, Black Moon wasn't exactly short on female villains either.
Click.
"Just in case—battle ready."
"Got it!"
"Y-yes!"
I quietly gave the order while reloading the gun I'd taken off the doorman earlier, and Cha Eunju and Park Cheonho obediently gathered their mana and dropped into fighting stances. The unidentified light crept closer as I kept my sights trained on it, ready to snipe the moment they were confirmed hostile—
"S-Seonho?!"
"...Isabel?"
The moment I saw the familiar veil approaching from beyond the passage, I had no choice but to hurriedly lower my gun.
"Isabel! You okay?!"
"What happened, Isabel?! What about the suspicious bastards?!"
"Cha Eunju and Park Cheonho too...? How did you all get down here...?"
She seemed to accept my presence without much fuss, but the fact that Cha Eunju and Park Cheonho were here as well clearly took her by surprise. And apart from her, Yoon Selena stood beside her, failing entirely to hide her flustered expression.
So she's rattled because she never expected us to track her this far.
In the original story, Seo Woojin had also discovered this place by pure coincidence. The whole thing had started with him feeling a nagging sense of mystery after spotting a building identical to the Magic Department's Training Grounds on the Academy's outskirts while out on a date with Han Sora, then entering it on a whim.
And he'd probably worn that exact same flustered expression back then too. The cast had changed from the original, sure—but one thing was certain: the plan had been derailed.
I didn't expect to run into her this early, though.
By the original flow, she should have made it further through the passage before we crossed paths, somewhere deeper in the basement. Yet contrary to every expectation, instead of fleeing deeper inside, here she was coming back out toward us.
For a moment I wondered how on earth she'd doubled back when she must surely have been herded inward by the thugs and Yoon Selena—until I recalled the sight of her, just minutes ago, calmly trading words with me and Park Cheonho, and the question resolved itself.
Right—the Succubus Heart I cast on her during class is still active.
There'd been no spare moment to release it earlier, and since both of us were still inside the Academy, the reach of my Suggestion had remained connected the whole time. An Isabel without androphobia could handle two or three Black Moon grunts entirely on her own. Strip away the phobia, and her abilities were the Saintess herself.
Once I'd quickly pieced together roughly how the story had progressed in my head, a faintly trembling voice slipped out of Yoon Selena's mouth.
"H-how did you find this place...?"
"Word was that an accident happened at the Magic Department's Training Grounds, so I contacted a friend in the Magic Department right away. Except she told me no accident of any kind had actually occurred there."
"...I-is that so?"
"That made something feel off, so my friends and I started searching the Academy... and that's when we found this suspicious building and came inside."
"So that's... how it was."
"From the outside, it's built to be an exact replica of the real Training Grounds. Of course, being located way out on the Academy's edge didn't exactly make it hard to tell apart."
"......"
"Oh, and aren't you a year ahead of us? Back when you took Isabel, I'm pretty sure you said you were taking her to the Magic Department's Training Grounds. Surely you haven't forgotten where the Academy's buildings are after a full year of enrollment?"
"W-well, you see... that is..."
Unexpected situations kept piling up one after another, and unlike the flawless acting she'd shown so far, she fidgeted and stammered, unable to string a sentence together.
The moment Kim Isabel, too, tilted her head toward her with a flicker of doubt—a thick man's voice sounded at our backs.
"Hahh. I come down here because they said things weren't going smoothly, and what do I find? Three more odd little rats crawled their way in."
A single man walked steadily toward us from the direction of the underground passage we'd just come through.
It was a face I'd never seen before, but the vibe alone let me make a decent guess. That frame, that wall of muscle—no prizes for guessing it was Jeong Seok-hoon.
A stiff black suit completely at odds with his hulking build. The outfit looked like reinforced muscle forcibly stuffed into fabric that was about to split at the seams, which somehow made him look all the more like a proper villain executive. No nameless extra would ever show up strutting around in something that ostentatious.
"Hey, you. You're the one they call Lee Seonho, right?"
"......"
"Well, thanks to you crawling in here to die on your own, you've spared me some trouble."
WHOOOOSH!!
Even though I hadn't answered so much as a word, Jeong Seok-hoon came hurtling at me with a brief growl and zero hesitation. The instant I sensed that a single hit from that fist would punch a hole clean through my midsection, I threw myself toward the floor to roll clear—
"GUOOOOOOOH!!!"
BOOOOM!!
—and Park Cheonho, who had lunged out in front of me, slammed his fist directly into Jeong Seok-hoon's.
"You dare lay a hand on my friend!!! Stop right there, you suspicious bastard!!!"
"...And who the hell are you supposed to be?"
"I am Park Cheonho!! The man who will become the world's greatest martial artist hunter!!!"
"...What a joke."
He is pretty funny, yeah.
But honestly? If he's on my side, there's no one I'd rather have at my back.