Knowing Too Much is a Drag
Knowing too much was a drag. "Team leader."
"Hm?"
It was morning. The moment Lee Seoryul punched in for the day and checked the agent duty schedule, she blinked in surprise. Something about the roster felt off.
Unable to hold back her curiosity, she went to find the head of Special Task Force 1 and asked her question.
"Why has Gate Break response training suddenly been scheduled so heavily?"
The team leader, who had been downing a ginseng stick for breakfast, sucked up the last drop of red ginseng extract from the stick before replying to his junior.
"Oh, that? Lately, the Hunter Association's been getting a flood of complaints questioning whether we're properly prepared for breaks."
"Ah...?"
"The people paying our salaries are feeling uneasy—what can we do? It's just a concentrated training period to show them we're doing our jobs properly."
The pathos of being a civil servant. In other words, it was all for show.
Of course, that didn't mean she hated it. It just meant the complaints had been so overwhelming that they'd canceled other duties to slot in the training...
Solving one mystery only birthed another.
"Why the sudden complaints...? Did something happen?"
It wasn't like some massive overseas break had rattled people into worrying about Korea. What could have caused the complaints to explode like this?
Lee Seoryul had been distracted by other recent events, so she wondered if something had slipped past her notice.
"It's a pretty absurd reason... The power of cultural content is truly something. Apparently, some novel featured a Gate Break, and that's what set it off."
Thinking back to how sales of plums skyrocketed after they appeared as a miracle cure for a plague in some drama—something no one had cared about before— it wasn't all that strange for a novel to spark interest in Gate Breaks.
Still, the association found it a bit ridiculous. They preached endlessly about gate disaster risks, but people tuned it out like it was someone else's problem, numb to the peace. Now a single novel had them in an uproar.
It was good, sure, but it left a hollow feeling all the same.
"A novel...?"
"Yeah, Lebalheonda or something like that. I don't know much about that stuff and don't care."
Lee Seoryul's expression grew complicated upon hearing this.
She'd been hearing about "Lebal"—that novel—nonstop lately.
Especially what had happened with Seo Dami, and the fact that she had mentioned the novel. It was a massive shock to Lee Seoryul.
And for good reason...
Originally, Seo Dami wasn't due to reach S-rank for another year. The promotion happening early was surprising enough, but even more shocking was that the "power" she'd gained upon awakening to S-rank was different from what Lee Seoryul remembered.
Details were confidential hunter business, but even the broad reports showed the difference.
Seo Dami was supposed to become a flame mage of ultra-high heat, like the sun itself...
But this time, it was different.
This left her head already aching over how to handle the Frost Giant's invasion years from now—the brutal cold and flesh-rending blizzards.
And of all people, Seo Dami had brought up the novel.
From what she'd overheard through management channels, Seo Dami had initially credited a webnovel for her path to S-rank.
She'd later corrected it as a joke, saying it was thanks to her life-or-death battle with the Guardian... but Lee Seoryul couldn't just dismiss it as a joke.
Another novel—
Events that never existed in the history she remembered.
At the center was always a "novel."
It started with the Blood Demon's bloodless capture.
The decisive blow was Seo Dami's off-schedule awakening.
And now, the surge in public interest around Gate Breaks.
At this point, dismissing it as coincidence would be the weirder choice. Some causal link had to be at play.
Lebalheonda... Does that novel really have something to it?
Working as a Hunter Association agent was insanely busy. The pay sucked, but the workload was massive—enough to make her think choosing a guild over the association pre-regression had been the right call.
Unless you had a goal like Lee Seoryul, or some conviction, national hunter wasn't a great option.
I still need to fix this work environment somehow...
She didn't even have time to leisurely read webnovels. Any spare moments went to self-training against the coming calamities. She still hadn't cracked open the novel in question.
It had only been a few days since it started nagging at her so intensely.
She needed to read it properly—figure out what the hell it was that could cause such divergences from what she knew. Her brow furrowed deeply in thought.
Seeing her so absorbed, the team leader chuckled.
"I get how you feel. We do all the grunt work, but when it's time for cooperation or training, no one bats an eye. Now a novel has them flooding us with complaints and suddenly caring about breaks. Annoying, right? But hey... no matter the trigger, if it gets people paying attention to gate disasters and staying cautious, that's good."
"Ah, yes."
Lee Seoryul nodded reflexively at the team leader's words.
He'd clearly misunderstood why she was brooding.
"Anyway, let's power through the day."
With that, she accepted a ginseng stick as a "gift" from the team leader and returned to her desk.
Before fieldwork, she had paperwork to handle.
There were dedicated departments to manage documents so national hunters could focus on the field, but she still had to write reports on what happened, her thought process, and responses.
She quickly drafted the report on last night's duties and a justification for overusing her power.
Then, in the remaining time, she decided to devour the long-procrastinated Lebalheonda.
"Phew..."
15 minutes flat. As a regressor, she was top-tier at fieldwork and paperwork.
Drawing on her Crimson Guild admin experience from her first timeline, she whipped up a flawless report in record time, then got to slacking off.
Lee Seoryul's life had no ties to webnovels, so she didn't even know where to start. She searched the title, found the platform, and dove into chapter 1.
Not reading for fun, she speed-read, skimming for key points—like poring over a thick case file.
"This is..."
She muttered absently.
Reading the protagonist Kim Min's awakening episode reminded her of the recent Blood Demon incident.
When Cha Yaeun had said during the investigation that the novel's villain resembled him and seemed suspicious, Lee Seoryul had thought, Is this woman okay in the head?
But reading it now, she got it.
It's similar.
Squinty eyes. Friendly demeanor. And above all, that air of superiority while tormenting the weak...
It evokes Wang Weirin, the Blood Demon.
For Yoon Sungjin, it was just "squinty eyes = villain," so he'd shaped the character around that image.
If it were a comic with illustrations, it might differ, but the nature of text relied on the reader's imagination.
To anyone who knew Wang Weirin, the early villain in Lebalheonda looked just like him.
Up to here, it could be coincidence—or maybe referencing criminal records.
The problem came next.
Wait, that Guardian... was a hidden opportunity?
According to the novel, yes.
Normally, she'd scoff at such a storybook trope, but...
Something clicks—
To a regressor who knew too much, it hit differently.
After Dami unnie took out that Guardian to resolve the incident... her stalled growth accelerated.
At the time, she'd chalked it up to losing guildmates and taking a hit to the guild's rep—motivation to push harder.
But after reading the novel... Maybe...?
And Seo Dami had awakened right after dealing with the Guardian, one way or another.
Come to think of it, I felt some progress fighting that Guardian too... or maybe not—
The misunderstanding deepened.
Especially that woman, the F-rank porter Cha Yaeun. She was growing in real-time during the time-buying. Real-time combat growth? Seemed impossible, but if it was a hidden opportunity at work...?
The delusion intensified.
Lee Seoryul didn't know Cha Yaeun's skills—or even she herself might mistake her placebo-like Growth Acceleration for some opportunity.
What the hell is this novel?
The details differed.
But something kept nagging at her.
She could write it off as coincidence, but it stuck.
"You see as much as you know"—and it was working in a bizarre way here.
The trap of knowledge, one might call her reaction.
Is there really something to it?
If there was, what?
Unable to answer, a storm of complex emotions swirled inside her.
The author knows something and wrote it...? Nah, probably not.
Logically, no.
But when had this world ever followed logic?
Lee Seoryul had made plenty of mistakes clinging to common sense preconceptions.
A hard-to-articulate suspicion toward Lebalheonda and its author welled up and spread within her.
If only I could confirm whether that Guardian was truly a Hidden Piece contrary to everyone's thoughts...
The Guardian was already subjugated by Crimson Guild and Seo Dami, the gate cleared with the boss down and closed for safety.
The truth was buried in the flow of time, leaving only frustration.
"Phew..."
Right after regressing, she'd felt omnipotent. Now, just sighs.
At this rate, she had no face to show her future comrades who'd sacrificed everything trusting her—
Don't weaken.
She blew away the creeping doubt, steeling her resolve.
Unyielding, indomitable. She honed her dulling, weakening spirit with her own skill.
So what if her knowledge was uncertain and useless?
Even if you take the wrong road, as long as you reach Seoul.
What mattered was stopping the coming apocalypse.
If this novel truly holds something and acts as a turning point, I can reference it alongside my past life's experience and knowledge.
With that mindset, she scrolled rapidly to the next episode.
And gasped.
The in-story death of character Hayunha—
"...Dami unnie?"
It reminded her of Seo Dami's death pre-regression.