Chapter 4
Something felt off. 'What... what the hell is going on?' Lee Seoryul, the investigator from the Hunter Association, couldn't hide her bewilderment. It wasn't because a lower-rank hunter had killed a higher-rank villain—no, they'd subdued and captured him alive. That kind of thing was rare in this line of work, but it happened often enough.
What truly shocked her was, 'The Blood Demon, who was supposed to unleash a bloodbath across Korea in the future, got nabbed on his very first day here?' The bewilderment and astonishment stemmed from this reality diverging so sharply from the 'future' she knew.
'Butterfly effect from my regression? But... already? It's only been a month since I returned to the past. Just choosing the Association over a guild instead of my previous path—could that alone create such a massive turning point in history this soon?'
Lee Seoryul, a national hunter affiliated with the Hunter Association. Her true identity was a regressor who had returned to the past to prevent the world's destruction. Using the failures of her previous timeline as fertilizer, she had thrown herself into the Association rather than a guild this time, aiming to make a big impact with the national system as her backbone.
She was still just a promising rookie national hunter, barely a month into her work as an Association agent. While she was busy adapting to this different choice from her 'previous' life—without having done anything major yet to avert the impending apocalypse—something impossible had happened.
The villain who would later bring a bloodbath to Korea had been captured pathetically.
If she could, she would have stopped it beforehand, but she didn't know where the villain called the Blood Demon was at this time. She had been keeping a close watch on the situation. The plan was to rush in the moment a report came in and judge him before he could grow stronger—
"This can't be..."
The result was that he had been captured alive without her even needing to step in. From the looks of it, today was the Blood Demon's debut day in Korea. And that debut had become his retirement stage.
Lee Seoryul was on the verge of dizziness at the fact that the party who pulled it off consisted of F-, E-, and D-rank hunters.
'What kind of butterfly effect could lead to something like this?'
She knew that as history changed with her actions, the knowledge from her past would become less reliable than a reference book. Still, she thought she could usefully leverage all sorts of info and knowledge from her past (the world's future) for the time being, at least by her standards.
Yet, just one month after regressing, this unforeseeable incident had occurred.
The super villain Blood Demon, who would dye Korea in blood and deal a severe blow to its hunter forces. Catching him before he could thirst for innocent blood was certainly cause for joy, but 'It feels hollow... and disconcerting.'
With the future twisting more than she had braced for, Lee Seoryul couldn't keep the stiffness from her expression.
The low-rank hunters who had pulled off the feat seemed to think she doubted them and hurriedly defended themselves.
"We used a bind item!"
"We subdued him the moment he flipped and showed his true colors!"
"He never saw the ambush coming, so we managed to take him down!"
Their statements flowed smoothly. It was obvious they weren't lying. There was no reason to fabricate something like this anyway.
Still, questions lingered. From what they described, they had somehow figured out his identity in advance and prepared an ambush...
"How did you know he was a villain beforehand?"
Blood Demon. Real name Wang Weirin. True to his name, he was Chinese, an internationally wanted man, but not widely known in Korea. Had someone recognized him?
Lee Seoryul's doubts wouldn't cease.
"W-Well..."
The hunters trailed off, unsure how to explain, then all turned toward one person at once.
Cha Yaeun.
Suddenly the center of attention, Cha Yaeun panicked.
"Uh, um... well, you see..."
Stammering under the spotlight, she calmed herself and decided to just tell the truth plainly.
"It was fr—from a novel..."
The problem was, even if it was the truth, it was embarrassing to say and sounded too bizarre.
"Pardon? What did you say?"
Lee Seoryul strained to catch Cha Yaeun's fading voice and asked her to repeat it clearly.
"He had that squinting smile, treated us weirdly nice and kind—it matched the villain from the novel exactly, so I got suspicious!"
Cha Yaeun squeezed her eyes shut and blurted it out to Lee Seoryul.
Right after...
"......Huh?"
In the heavy silence that followed, Cha Yaeun wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole.
Slurp.
Yoon Sungjin, savoring a mouthful of ramen noodles, impassively flipped the channel.
[Our son-in-law, Min-su! He's Cheol-min's boyfriend. Yes, our daughter Hye-ji was used in a fake gay marriage couple ruse!]
[What the—?!]
He had just wrapped up a stubborn episode and was enjoying his meal in a good mood—no desire to watch some shady social news. Instead, he got hooked on some random trashy drama, fixed the channel, and polished off the ramen with some cold rice on the side.
Now he had to write the next episode of Lebalheonda, so filling up properly was necessary.
The novel's popularity was way better than Yoon Sungjin had expected. As the saying goes, strike while the iron's hot. Especially in a world where hunters actually existed. His worries about hunter stories flopping were for naught—it was booming, so he planned to hammer out daily updates and push the progress hard.
As he thought about it, 'Yep, deciding not to be a hunter and just write hunter stories was the right call.'
That shady wanted criminal news he'd flipped away from while eating was a case in point—