Ju Donghyeon
Ju Donghyeon.
He remembered clearing dungeons with the man back in the game War of the Gods. The name had stayed with him for a simple reason: Ju Donghyeon had used his real name for his character.
Is that the same Ju Donghyeon? It can't be.
His ranking among the players had been high. Then, for reasons no one ever learned, he quit. He vanished without a word, and that was the end of it.
Yujun hoped it wasn't merely someone who shared the name. If it was the same man, then at least a thread of a clue would come with him.
"You know him?"
"I'm not certain. It might only be the same name."
"Ju Donghyeon doesn't sound all that common."
"Yeah."
"Then can you tell where he is?"
"I'm no fortune-teller. Knowing a man doesn't mean I can produce him on the spot. All we can do is call his name and search."
"Ah…"
In truth, the Talkative Know-It-All's parchment would have settled it. His stock of the things was thin, though, and he had to spend them sparingly.
"Everyone rested? Let's move."
They had used potions without stinting, so no one looked worn.
"Before that."
Klinsmann spoke up.
"Shouldn't we deal with the gate first?"
Right. The players who had come as reinforcements had smashed the city gate to pieces. Yujun took care of it.
"I'll shrink the barrier. Just enough to plug the gate. It'll last longer that way, too."
"Sounds good."
The party made for the kingdom's grand plaza, where the dwarf zombies lay thickest. The Kingdom of Sitahel was little more than a single great city ringed by a circular wall. If this place fell, the kingdom fell with it.
Cutting down the zombies that cropped up along the way, Yujun moved in and out of the buildings. Plenty of dwarves were still holed up inside, untouched by the plague.
There's still some hope, at least.
He described Ju Donghyeon to them and pressed for whatever they knew. Having watched the party put the zombies down with ease, the dwarves talked freely.
"Ju Donghyeon's pretty famous," Hong Yeji said, coming out through a mansion's front gate. "Ought to make him easy to find."
"He wasn't underground. I think we head for the place a lot of the dwarves evacuated to."
Ju Donghyeon had carved out a solid standing in the Kingdom of Sitahel. After the plague broke, he had gone further still, protecting dwarves and guiding them to a shelter. Of his own accord…
What was he after?
Every dwarf said the same thing. The man was as close to a saint as anyone living.
"The way they tell it, he's an angel."
"That's fairly likely."
"Huh?"
"The Ju Donghyeon I know is decent to the point of being a fool."
"Oh? Then there's a good chance he's the one you know."
"Yeah."
Yujun nodded. They had only met in a game, but he knew the man's character well.
"Shelter first."
"That big building over there, right?"
"Yeah."
"He'd better be in it."
The original plan had been simpler: hunt dwarf zombies, pick up some levels, and travel with Hong Yeji while he was at it. As it turned out, someone he knew was tangled up in the mess.
"Oh, and I'm picking up a lot of monster presence. They'll keep popping up on the way to the shelter."
"Kyaaaak! Kyak!"
"Kyaaak!"
Shhk. Shhk.
"I'll take point."
Yujun cut the reeking things down in a breath and moved ahead.
The shelter looked like a church, or a cathedral — a building that had likely served much the same purpose. After killing hundreds of dwarf zombies, he reached the front of it and called on his skill.
Keen Senses (A)
The building was packed so tightly with dwarves that the press of them felt solid.
Doesn't look like the plague has them.
Gathering that many bodies in one place was lethal where a plague was concerned. If even a single dwarf zombie got inside… Well, they were fine so far. Maybe Ju Donghyeon's choice had been the wise one.
The cathedral doors were, of course, locked fast. Yujun called from outside.
"Mr. Ju Donghyeon! Are you in there?"
At his shout, more eyes gathered behind the clouded windows. Survivors.
"Mr. Ju Donghyeon!"
He had just called again, louder, when a low voice answered from beyond the door.
"…Who is it?"
Yujun chose his words with care.
"We've come to deal with the plague."
"…Deal with the plague? You believe that's possible?"
"If we try, why wouldn't it be?"
"An optimistic one. Did you clear out the mutant monsters on your way here?"
"That's why I'm still standing in one piece."
"One moment."
They waited a long while. Then the door opened.
"Very well. Come in."
When the party stepped into the cathedral, every dwarf's gaze turned on them at once. Ju Donghyeon broke the silence.
"Where have you come from?"
"I came on a commission," Hong Yeji said.
"A commission?"
"Your father asked for it. He wants us to bring you back."
"…"
She had hesitated before saying it. At the words, Ju Donghyeon pressed his mouth shut.
"I'm not going."
"What?"
"Not until this is resolved, at least. I have no intention of leaving."
"…Ah."
Frustration tightened Hong Yeji's face.
"You staying here isn't going to make the plague fix itself."
"Did you come to lecture me? I already told you. I'm staying."
His face was set.
"No, I mean — it doesn't make sense. You don't even have a treatment skill, or Healing, or anything like that, right?"
"So my father went that far. Yes. I have no way to treat the dwarves who've caught the plague."
"Then stop being stubborn and come with us."
"I made a promise. That I would take responsibility and protect this kingdom."
"…To who?"
"To my lover."
"Your… lover? Where are they?"
"It's an emergency. They caught the plague."
Catching the plague was no different from being dead.
"…I'm sorry."
Hong Yeji bowed her head.
Ju Donghyeon looked as if none of it touched him.
"No. There's nothing to be sorry for. I'm going to turn my lover back to the way they were."
"…What?"
He looked toward a single coffin in the corner. Stoutly built, it shuddered without pause.
"They're… in there?"
"Yes."
Yujun, silent until then, spoke.
"Have you made any progress?"
"Yes."
Ju Donghyeon nodded, and Klinsmann started.
"You mean you can cure the plague?"
"Not that. There is a way to settle all of this at once, though. Not a certainty. More of a guess…"
"And that way is?"
"Kill the one who spread it."
Hong Yeji's eyes went wide. She asked at once.
"Someone spread the plague on purpose? That's what you're saying?"
"Yes. That's right."
"How do you know?"
"I have a skill called Clairvoyance."
This time it was Yujun who startled.
"Clairvoyance? You said Clairvoyance?"
"Yes."
"The rank on that — is it…"
"I can't tell you that. But you seem to know already."
Yujun swallowed the sound in his throat. Clairvoyance was a skill fixed at SSS-rank. It wasn't the rank alone that shook him. It was the skill's rarity, and what it did. As the name promised, Clairvoyance let you see a great distance — though the reach depended on mana, and the higher that mana climbed, the more explosively the distance grew.
"In any case, even before this began I kept watch on the land around the Kingdom of Sitahel with Clairvoyance. That was the duty I'd taken here. Then, one day, I spotted someone suspicious."
"Suspicious how?"
"A cloaked figure, prowling in and out of the kingdom."
"And that alone makes you think he spread the plague?"
"Of course not. At the time I took him for an unusual player and let it go. About two days passed. Then word came that the plague had started in the outlying villages inside the walls."
The corner of Ju Donghyeon's eye twitched, barely.
"I had a feeling. From then on I used Clairvoyance without rest, and I found that same figure again. Not far from two places — this shelter, and the royal palace — he abducted a dwarf. Afterward he wounded the one he'd taken and used a magic, or a skill, that shed a black light."
"So the plague that turns them into those monsters comes from a skill?"
"The possibility is strong."
"…"
"…"
A skill like that existed? It was the first Yujun had heard of it.
"But I must have found him too late. He never showed himself after that. I told the dwarf king we needed troops and preparations, but by then the plague had already spread as far as it was going to."
"Hm."
If Ju Donghyeon was right, the solution was simpler than expected. Kill the one who had spread it, just as he said.
Easier to think of it as a curse.
Curses had more than one remedy, but a high-rank curse was notoriously hard to lift. In those cases you killed the one who had cast it. Even that was no simple matter.
"So I mean to find the player who spread the plague."
"And kill him when you do?"
"Yes."
"How do you find him?"
"With Clairvoyance. It won't be easy… but I intend to move from place to place until I find the host."
Hollow-faced, Ju Donghyeon finished. Clairvoyance was powerful, and the price it took was nothing small.
"We'll go with that," Yujun said. "It's the only answer we've got."
He had decided to hunt the plague-spreader with Ju Donghyeon. The achievement reward would be a bonus. Leave the plague as it was, and a deeply troublesome future might be waiting.
If every player catches it, there'll be no one left to stop the Demon God's Invasion.
And then extinction would be unavoidable.
The mood inside the cathedral had sunk low. Finding the player who had loosed the plague would be hard, honestly. He would have left the area long ago.
"But can Clairvoyance alone find him?" Shin Jiwon asked, going straight to the heart of it.
Ju Donghyeon shook his head.
"Not by itself. I can't pin down where he is, and I can't scour the whole Continent."
"Then what do we do?"
"Predict where he's going, and chase him."
"So it's basically impossible."
Worn thin, Ju Donghyeon smiled.
"Not quite. In exactly thirteen hours, I believe I'll know where the one who spread the plague is."
"…What? How?"
At Hong Yeji's question, he gestured — a motion that said they should move to a corner, where the other dwarves couldn't hear. The party drew in close.
"I'll tell this only to those who will see it through with me."
"All right."
Every eye fixed on his mouth.