Chapter 25: What Cannot Be Reclaimed
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 25: What Cannot Be Reclaimed
11
Afterward, the hunters arrived and swiftly dealt with the dimensional entities.
Compared to the massacre of civilians, the creatures were killed with an almost anticlimactic ease, and the dimensional gate was safely closed.
Total deaths: 108.
It was a catastrophe, the result of a delayed response due to the gate opening in an underground cave near the river.
The news reported on the incident daily, repeatedly emphasizing the need for greater caution regarding dimensional phenomena.
The nation’s leaders bowed their heads in a public apology, causing a stir.
But to the bereaved families who had lost their loved ones, it all meant nothing.
And among the names of the deceased was Kim Ji-seon.
“...It was me. It was my fault.”
At Kim Ji-seon’s funeral, Si-ho’s older brother, Ha Seo-ho, sat collapsed with a vacant expression.
Lost in despair, he kept muttering the same words, regretting the phone call he never answered.
If only he had picked up the phone then.
If only he had gone on the trip with them.
His mother would not have been lost.
What did it matter if he was a future S-rank or a promising prospect?
He was just a moron who couldn’t even protect his own family.
Seo-ho pounded his chest against the searing pain rising from within, but nothing was resolved.
It felt like his heart would burst.
It felt like he was losing his mind.
And then, his eyes fell upon his younger sister.
Dressed in mourning clothes, she stood motionless, staring at their mother’s funeral portrait.
Si-ho, who had been found in the mountains next to her mother’s body, clutching her mother’s phone and her own, hadn’t said a word since that day.
She didn’t react even when close friends came to visit, and she barely ate. Seeing her like this, Seo-ho forced himself to his feet.
She was his only sister.
The precious sister his mother had protected even as she died.
He couldn’t let her waste away from malnutrition.
“Si-ho, let’s get something to eat. You’re going to collapse at this rate.”
“Ha Seo-ho.”
At that moment, a voice flowed from Si-ho’s lips.
She was still looking at their mother’s portrait.
“I’ll bring her back.”
Speaking for the first time in a long while, she said something strange.
Seo-ho looked at her with an uncomprehending expression and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“Si-ho?”
“I’ll bring our mom back.”
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Seo-ho’s eyes wavered.
He felt as if his mother’s death had broken something inside Si-ho.
This couldn’t be happening.
He had lost his mother after losing his father, but he couldn’t lose his sister too.
“I can do it.”
“Si-ho! Get a grip. Mom is…”
“I said I can do it.”
It was only then that Seo-ho felt an extraordinary energy flowing from Si-ho.
He was an A-rank hunter, talented enough to be told he would one day reach S-rank.
But the aura now emanating from Si-ho was so suffocating that even he felt compelled to step back.
“Si-ho, what are you…”
“...I’ve awakened.”
The moment he heard those words, Seo-ho’s eyes shot wide open.
He understood.
He understood why Si-ho had been able to remain by their mother’s body that day.
And why there hadn’t been a single dimensional entity near her.
She had awakened as a hunter that day.
A glimpse of that day’s memories appeared through Si-ho’s eyes.
A forest in the mountains.
In the eerie atmosphere where sunlight barely penetrated, Si-ho was running.
The only thing filling her mind was her mother’s voice, telling her to run.
She was scared, so terribly scared.
But Si-ho kept running, following her mother’s words.
“Aah!”
But the human body has its limits.
Si-ho, who had a small frame and often skipped gym class, fell when her exhausted legs caught on a tree root.
Unfortunately, it was on a downward slope, and she tumbled over and over until her body slammed into a tree, finally stopping her.
“Ugh, hhhk.”
The impact of the fall made it hard to breathe for a moment.
Blood trickled down, staining her face.
A sharp, stinging pain flared from all over her body, tormenting her.
Her knee felt shattered; it hurt so much.
As she gathered herself from the pain and tried to stand, she let out a gasp and looked back at her leg.
The mountain path was rough, not meant for people, and her leg had already reached its limit long ago.
After a fall like that, it was no surprise that her leg was injured.
“No, this can’t be happening!”
In a panicked voice, she tried to force her leg to stand.
But her leg, completely drained of strength and injured, refused to obey.
Whoosh—
The sound of a desolate wind brushed past her ear.
Just as fear began to creep up on her again, a figure appeared on the path above where she had fallen.
It was a wolf-like dimensional entity covered in black fur, drooling saliva.
The same kind of small creature she had seen from the car earlier.
The moment she saw it, Si-ho froze in terror.
And a predator always knows to strike when its prey is at its weakest.
The dimensional entity lowered its stance, coiled its body with incredible elasticity, and then shot forward, its front paws outstretched.
To Si-ho, its charge felt as if it was shaking the very earth.
Her mind went blank.
Her leg wouldn’t move.
Her body ached.
Her breathing was still a mess from running.
A burning pain seared her throat.
As the cold sweat dripping down her face blurred her vision for a moment…
The creature’s gaping maw, its sharp teeth and blood-red tongue, came into clear view.
And lightning struck inside her head.
Her vision swam.
But through the things being forcibly injected into her body and mind, her fingertips moved.
CRUNCH!
The sound of something being crushed echoed through the forest.
Following the echo, Si-ho lifted her head to see a cubic chunk of flesh tumbling across the ground.
“Hah, hah.”
Panting for breath, Si-ho looked down at her fingertips.
What is this? What is this power?
That was undoubtedly her doing.
As if she had known how to use it from the very beginning, she looked at the power in her hands and staggered to her feet.
In that instant, her body moved as lightly as a feather.
Si-ho’s eyes widened in surprise at how light she felt, as if she hadn’t been exhausted just moments ago.
At the same time, she realized this was a hunter’s awakening.
The stories her brother Seo-ho always talked about from when he awakened.
An awakening comes suddenly.
And the power can be wielded at will, as if it were yours from the start.
Realizing the situation from that memory, Si-ho’s eyes grew wide.
With this…
With this, I can protect Mom!
Si-ho began to race through the mountain.
The mountain she had struggled to run through was now incredibly easy to traverse.
Her ability was, in a broad sense, spatial.
She considered teleporting directly to where she had been separated from her mother, but she chose to run, worried they might miss each other if her mother had moved.
Besides, with her short legs, she couldn’t have gotten very far anyway.
“Mom!”
Her cry to find her mother echoed into the depths of the forest.
And in that moment.
“Si…”
A woman’s voice echoed from somewhere.
As soon as the voice reached her hunter-sharpened ears, Si-ho began to run like mad in that direction.
After awakening as a hunter, her fear seemed to have been suppressed, or at least diminished.
Instead, she felt a sense of relief and elation.
“...ho.”
As the voice grew closer, a bright expression appeared on Si-ho’s face.
It’s Mom.
Mom is still safe!
“Mom, I—!”
Calling out to her, Si-ho burst past the trees and into the forest clearing.
And she saw it.
The torn body of a woman with no head, and a single dimensional entity standing over it.
Its mouth smeared with blood and flesh, the creature looked at Si-ho.
Its jet-black eyes shone with a cruel clarity.
Then.
The dimensional entity opened its mouth.
The voice of her mother that Si-ho had heard so clearly.
The owner of that voice had swallowed her mother’s head.
And it was merely repeating the last words she had uttered.
“Ah, ahhh.”
The words wouldn’t come out.
Faced with a reality she couldn’t comprehend, Si-ho’s thoughts threatened to shut down.
This horrific sight before her eyes.
Si-ho screamed inwardly for it not to be real.
But reality leaned in close.
Don’t look away, it seemed to say. This is the result.
It only whispered in her ear with a chilling tongue.
Thwump!
And the dimensional entity leaped.
Just as when she first awakened, its fangs flew toward her, seeking to devour its next prey.
Tears streamed down Si-ho’s face, scattering in the air.
Then, an indescribable fury erupted from her eyes.
The light in the area was sucked inward with a whoosh.
“Geuk, gek!?”
The dimensional entity, subjected to hundreds of spatial shifts in an instant, convulsed in front of Si-ho.
Ignoring it, Si-ho teleported all the nearby tree branches directly into its body.
“Gieeeek!”
The creature’s scream echoed as if to tear the forest apart.
Still, Si-ho did not stop.
It felt as if she had to vomit out all her directionless rage just to survive.
“Si, ho, ya.”
And as the dimensional entity called her name with that voice one last time…
Si-ho compressed its head with space, crushing it.
With that one move, the dimensional entity’s movements ceased completely.
Having extinguished its life, Si-ho stared blankly at the scene before turning her head to the corpse.
Staggering toward the horribly mangled body, Si-ho clumsily lifted the headless torso.
Then, clutching the body to her, she began to let fat tears fall.
“I’m sorry.”
Her heart, aching to the point of tearing apart, was in so much agony that she could say nothing else.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Mom. I’m sorry Si-ho ran away. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
That day, she let out the most desperate sobs of her entire life.
Seo-ho, who saw it all, looked at Si-ho with trembling eyes.
He couldn’t possibly know the depth of the excruciating emotions Si-ho must have experienced there.
That was why Si-ho had been acting the way she had.
She, who had seemed to have given up on everything, had finally reached a conclusion on the method she had formulated in her mind over and over, and decided to execute it.
She still hadn’t given up.
Drip, drip. A nosebleed began to run from Si-ho’s nose.
The drops of blood fell, staining the floor.
“Mom, Mom can’t go like this. She worked so hard to raise us.”
The area around her eyes, now red from crying so much, trembled.
Like a broken talking doll, Si-ho’s lips were moving on their own.
“Ha Si-ho, wait. You’re losing control! I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it’s dangerous!”
Seeing this, Seo-ho shouted, sensing the immense danger flowing from her.
“It’s okay.”
But his voice didn’t reach her at all.
The air in the area began to flow in reverse.
A violent gust of wind swirled around her, wrecking the inside of the funeral hall and sending Seo-ho tumbling outside.
Seeing the space distorting around her, Seo-ho couldn’t get any closer.
“Ha Si-ho! No!”
“It’s okay. I’ll put everything back.”
Just as Seo-ho desperately reached out his arm, a flash of light ignited.
When he thought the white light had swallowed everything, the funeral guests began to murmur, and chaos erupted.
Ignoring them, Seo-ho shot forward like an arrow the moment the light vanished.
Pushing his own abilities to their limit, he re-entered the room.
He realized that a staticky figure was materializing in front of Si-ho.
Seeing it, Seo-ho felt a profound chill.
Realizing something had gone terribly wrong, he drew his sword, which was crafted from ice.
His eyes slowly began to widen.
“Si-ho, Seo-ho? What is it? What’s going on?”
Standing in the spot where the static had disappeared, looking surprised, was none other than their mother, Kim Ji-seon.
Dressed in her usual clothes, she looked back and forth between the two of them. Seo-ho staggered and collapsed to his knees.
What… what was this situation?
Kim Ji-seon seemed to have no understanding of what was happening.
Her eyes were filled only with confusion, as if she had never experienced death.
“Mom!”
While he was staring at the unbelievable sight, Si-ho ran and threw herself into her mother’s arms.
Though surprised, Kim Ji-seon smiled and stroked Si-ho’s hair.
“My daughter, what’s gotten into you again?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry Si-ho was late.”
It was his mother.
That person was definitely his mother.
“...Si-ho, what did you do?”
But Seo-ho, unable to simply accept the situation, asked again. Si-ho didn’t answer.
She simply wept endlessly in the arms of the mother she had reclaimed.