Chapter 27: Decision and a Gamble
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 27: Decision and a Gamble
“I’ll stay here. Si-ho, you need to run right now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They don’t know if I’m a civilian or a returnee. Some returnees are good at hiding their power, making them seem like ordinary people. They’ll remember seeing me with Orjia, which makes it the perfect opportunity for a misunderstanding.”
I had confirmed last time that they weren’t stronger than Orjia.
Compared to Ahyu, who was completely unaffected by Orjia’s mental attack, those two had clearly been damaged by it.
In other words, if they had fought Orjia to the death, they wouldn’t have even made it here by now.
Conversely, that meant they had no choice but to be wary of me, since I was with Orjia and was now with Si-ho.
They would never expect a mere civilian to be standing next to a returnee and an S-rank hunter.
“So they’re definitely on guard. The proof is that they know your location but are waiting instead of revealing themselves.”
They could have just fired another lightning bolt, but they were only watching us, not continuing their attack.
They were wary that we might know their position and attack them.
“If you escape while I buy some time, they’ll prioritize you, not me.”
That must be why they avoided fighting Orjia.
They don’t want to clash with a returnee if they can help it.
Which meant they wouldn’t want to clash with me either, since I might be a returnee.
There was no sense in taking an unnecessary risk.
“So, use your spatial ability and escape right now. Once I start running across the island, their attention will be divided. I should be able to draw the eyes of at least one of them.”
There was no guarantee.
It was a pure gamble.
But to save Si-ho, this was the best way.
However, seeing him say this, Si-ho’s emotions were thrown into turmoil.
This was just a plausible excuse.
An excuse to make her trust him.
It was just like that time.
It was exactly the same as when her mother had told her to run.
He’ll die.
The moment she ran away, Ha-chan would surely die.
In that case, it would be better to…
“I’ll release my power!”
“Si-ho.”
Ha-chan gripped Si-ho’s shoulders tightly.
Si-ho’s eyes trembled violently, but Ha-chan shouted at her.
“As a last resort, if you think it’s truly dangerous, then I agree you should do it since you’re the priority, but…”
Si-ho had lost her mother to a dimensional entity.
And even now, years later, she still carried the guilt of believing it was her fault.
That kind of guilt doesn’t just disappear overnight.
It builds and builds, and it would be fine if she could one day overcome it on her own terms, but…
‘It can’t end like this.’
Just as a parent cannot abandon their child, a child cannot forsake their parent.
To her, the mother who had sacrificed herself and the mother waiting worriedly at home were both one and the same: her mother, Kim Ji-seon.
For her to release her power meant erasing her mother with her own hands.
Losing her mother to a dimensional entity was a horrible enough experience.
Even if it was just stubbornness, so be it.
Si-ho shouldn’t have to part with her mother this way.
Like any other child who grows up, becomes an adult, and gains independence from their parents, she deserved that kind of farewell.
‘And maybe I…’
…am seeing my past self in Si-ho.
Those lonely days when my father and mother died because of my sister’s return, and my sister disappeared as well.
This stubbornness might just be a desire not to look back at my past self.
‘But so what if it is?’
What did it matter if I was just acting out because my own trauma had been triggered?
‘This is what I want to do.’
I want to make sure Si-ho doesn’t give up on her mother.
Isn’t that reason enough to act?
“I made a promise to your mother that I would take good care of you.”
Because I’m her manager.
The manager who was personally asked by her mother, Kim Ji-seon.
An adult is an adult because they know how to take responsibility. The kind of person who can bear that responsibility until a child becomes an adult.
“So you can’t give up until the very end.”
Ha-chan gave Si-ho’s shoulders a firm push.
“Go.”
With those words, Ha-chan left Si-ho and started to run.
It seemed like Si-ho screamed as she watched his retreating back, but Ha-chan paid it no mind.
Watching Ha-chan leave, Si-ho’s heart pounded wildly in her chest.
His figure overlapped so much with her mother’s.
A cold sweat broke out. The fingertips of the hand she reached out toward Ha-chan trembled.
Si-ho felt her chest tighten painfully.
No.
I don’t want this.
I don’t want to lose anyone else like this.
Staring at Ha-chan’s back, Si-ho’s eyes hardened with resolve.
She wasn’t the Ha Si-ho of her fifteen-year-old self anymore.
She might still be young, but she was no longer the Ha Si-ho who would just run away helplessly.
Si-ho clenched her fists.
She would never again lose someone who gave her the same smile her mother had that day.
Fwaat!
Si-ho activated her spatial ability.
She appeared in front of the running Ha-chan with her arms spread wide, shouting at his stunned face.
“I won’t do it!”
As Ha-chan blinked, Si-ho bit her lip and glared at him.
“Si-ho… I’m not running away and leaving someone behind again. Why is everyone so selfish? You all just tell me to run, but why does no one ever ask what I want?”
Si-ho’s cry echoed.
“…Si-ho, you can’t…”
“I know. I know everything. I know it’s dangerous, and that I’m being selfish right now. And I know you’re trying to sacrifice yourself for me, Manager.”
Si-ho never wanted to see someone sacrifice themselves for her again.
“We just have to solve this without me releasing my power, right?”
As soon as she said that, Si-ho raised her arm into the air.
Her arm suddenly vanished into thin air. While a startled Ha-chan watched, Si-ho began to wave her hand around.
“If they can sense me, then I can sense them too.”
Then, as if she’d found something, she flinched and looked up at the sky.
“They’re up there?”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s the same two from before.”
Noticing her gaze, Ha-chan started to look up at the sky but stopped himself.
If they realized we’d pinpointed their location, they might make a move.
Ha-chan looked at Si-ho, lost in deep thought.
Si-ho’s eyes were unwavering. She truly had no intention of running away.
It would be better if she ran, but persuading her to break her stubbornness would take too much time.
The situation was too urgent to waste time on persuasion.
‘They must be wary of Si-ho’s spatial ability. They’ve surely prepared countermeasures for it.’
That’s why I tried to draw their attention.
If the unidentified person with her suddenly moved while they were focused solely on her spatial ability, their attention would inevitably be drawn away.
My plan was to have Si-ho escape in that opening, but that was also a gamble.
I didn’t know how far they had prepared, but if they had a way to block her spatial ability, it would have been over anyway.
Ha-chan didn’t hesitate for long. In a life-or-death situation, the longer you hesitate, the tighter the noose around your neck becomes.
‘In that case, it’s better to…’
If she had decided not to run, it might be better to propose another way to overcome this.
“…Si-ho, your spatial ability lets you move things you can see, right?”
“To be precise, it’s anything caught in my spatial sense. It’s similar to sight, though.”
You could think of it as a sixth sense.
“The man who uses the same spatial ability as you was blind, wasn’t he?”
Ha-chan immediately thought of the blind returnee.
“In that case, can we assume that instead of sight, he uses that spatial sense you mentioned to perceive the location of objects and living things?”
Si-ho nodded without hesitation. She was almost certain of it.
“Then, is it possible to use your spatial ability to scramble his spatial sense?”
Si-ho’s expression turned thoughtful. Then, she began to nod again.
“But if I do that, my own spatial sense will get messed up too. It’ll be hard to move using it.”
“But you can still move to a point you can see with your eyes, can’t you?”
Si-ho nodded once more.
He couldn’t see with his eyes, but Si-ho could.
It meant that even if her spatial sense was disrupted, Si-ho could still use her ability.
“That’s enough.”
Watching her, Ha-chan let out a small breath.
Is it possible?
I didn’t know. I couldn’t be sure without a proper grasp of the enemy’s strength.
‘Two of them, same as last time.’
Then we couldn’t let them separate us. The moment they chose to divide and conquer, it would be over for us.
‘And they’re not in a comfortable position either.’
Just as they had found us, the World Returnee Association was also moving to search for us.
‘They’re just as anxious.’
Anxiety and impatience create variables. That was something I had experienced often in games.
‘An unknown variable like me, the closing net of the Association’s search, and a fellow spatial ability user in Si-ho.’
They only had one variable on their side.
The lightning-using returnee.
Ha-chan lifted his head.
“Let’s do it.”
This was the second craziest gamble of his life, after investing in Bitcoin.
*
14
Catherine, formerly of the Russian military.
After leaving the military, she joined Girasung. She was a returnee from Star System 4, who had the heart of a mythical Thunder Dragon transplanted into her.
Thanks to that, she could wield the blue lightning of the Thunder Dragon.
She wasn’t particularly strong among returnees, but her lightning was a formidable power.
That was why she was able to operate within Girasung without any issues.
A certain crime had made it impossible for her to join the World Returnee Association or return to her country.
The kidnapping of the S-rank spatial ability user, Ha Si-ho. That was the mission given to her and her partner, Aoki Kaito.
S-rank hunters possessed abilities comparable to returnees. As such, this mission clearly required a great deal of caution.
And yet, Kaito, who had been deployed on the mission first, spoke as if it were easy.
“For some reason, that brat’s spatial ability is scrambled. She will be unable to use her full power.”
Watching him speak with a snicker, Catherine adjusted the receiver in her ear, which was equipped with an automatic voice translator.
She had no affinity for spatial abilities, so she didn’t know the details, but Kaito, a user of the same system, had said so. It must be true, then.
And just as he’d said, the target, Ha Si-ho, was nothing special.
Captured without even being able to react to the attack, it seemed they could take her to Girasung without any major issues.
But then, an interruption. A nun wielding a greatsword appeared.
The moment the nun’s whispered voice brushed past her ear, her consciousness vanished for an instant.
That alone was enough for Catherine to feel a significant threat.
This nun was strong. Dangerously so.
In that instant, one of her arms was severed.
If she hadn’t regained her senses quickly thanks to the Thunder Dragon’s heart, it would have been her neck, not her arm.
Just as she forcibly stopped the bleeding with the electric current flowing through her body, before she could even regain her posture, a mass of giant black tentacles poured down from the sky.
The tentacles, which corroded the forest and everything they touched, stirred an indescribable hostility within her.
“Catherine! No need to fight!”
She wasn’t the target.
The moment she heard that, Catherine unleashed the Thunder Dragon’s lightning at full power.
The surging lightning engulfed the area, and the nun retreated, seemingly with minor burns.
To only receive that much damage from her full-power attack… as expected, the woman was more dangerous than she’d thought.
“Let’s go!”
Just before the mass of black tentacles could snatch her, Kaito grabbed Catherine and teleported them away.
A cold sweat ran down her back at the thought that her entire body would have melted if she had stayed there.
“What now?”
The mission was a failure. She immediately threw the question at Kaito, who seemed to be observing something from behind his black glasses before whipping his head around.
“No need to worry, it seems. Things appear to have turned in our favor.”
Kaito explained that because he had scrambled Ha Si-ho’s spatial coordinates, she had teleported to the wrong location.
Thanks to that, he said he could easily pinpoint her location by tracking the traces of his power left on her spatial jump.
The place Ha Si-ho had jumped to was an uninhabited island, practically on the opposite side of the world from Korea.
“Hah, just how freely can she teleport to accidentally fly all the way out here?”
Even for a returnee like Kaito, a spatial jump of this magnitude was absurd, and he clicked his tongue.
To travel this far without even using her full power meant that if she ever did, no one would be able to catch her.
“We shall move as well. Is the new arm serviceable?”
“It’s alright.”
Having restored her arm with a single drop of elixir from an alchemist, she flexed the new limb.
It felt awkward being a new arm, but it would be fine soon enough.
“Then we will begin teleporting. The distance is great, so we must make several consecutive jumps. I ask for your understanding if you feel a bit nauseous.”
With that, Kaito began a series of consecutive spatial jumps with her.
The motion sickness was worse than a dimensional shift, and she nearly threw up, but she managed to hold it down.
And when the final spatial jump ended, what she saw was the blue sea.
High in the sky.
A small island began to appear below her feet.
She began to float skillfully, and Kaito followed suit, stopping mid-air.
“The target.”
“A short distance from here. Upon observation, it appears Ha Si-ho is not alone.”
“A hunter or a returnee?”
“Hmm, I do not know. I am not a sensory type. What is certain is that it is likely the person who was with that returnee from before.”
“A high probability of being another returnee, then. Trying to protect the target, I see.”
Hearing this, Catherine flexed her new arm.
“I have an idea, if you would hear it.”
“What is it?”
When she looked at him, Kaito gave a smirk, saying it was nothing difficult.
“There is a useful trap for dealing with spatial ability users. The kind that activates when they attempt a long-distance jump.”
“You’re going to set it and then provoke her into teleporting?”
“Indeed, Catherine is clever. That is precisely it.”
“Then that part’s my job, I take it.”
“A simple warning shot will suffice. No need to lose that arm you just got back, is there?”
Tossing out the unpleasant joke, Kaito immediately began to manipulate the space.
“When should I do it?”
“Hmm, one moment, please wait. Ah, it is done. You may begin now. It goes without saying, but do not kill Ha Si-ho.”
“I know that much. I’ll control the output.”
As soon as she said that, blue sparks began to crackle around Catherine.
As Kaito backed away to avoid getting caught in it, she gathered the Thunder Dragon’s power and formed a lightning bolt in her hand.
“Hmph!”
With a sharp intake of breath, Catherine hurled the blue lightning bolt toward the location Kaito had indicated.
CRRAAAAAASSSHHH!
The lightning crashed down like an explosion, surging through the area and devastating one side of the forest.
In the crackling, burning forest, there was no one.
“The trap?”
“It did not activate. It seems they were in a hurry and made a short-distance jump.”
“Was the firepower stronger than they expected?”
“A long-distance jump is a gamble for them in the first place. How about we observe the situation for a bit? It is obvious they are just as anxious as we are.”
Catherine decided to do so. She had no talent for thinking, so it was best to follow the smart one.
It was at that moment.
A man walked out onto the sandy beach where her lightning had struck.