Chapter 315
Chapter 315
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 316
Chapter Title: Unexpected Encounter with Kim Deok-hyun
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I stood still, frozen in place, staring at him.
Kim Deok-hyun gazed back and forth between Han Se-yeon and me with a meaningful look in his eyes, waiting for my response.
……How the hell was I supposed to answer this?
There was no way I could just say honestly, ‘I got caught with a magical artifact in my possession.’
Hmm……
“That’s because I was just passing by……”
“Hello, Mage Kim Deok-hyun.”
At that moment, Han Se-yeon cut me off and greeted Kim Deok-hyun.
He nodded slightly upon seeing her.
“……It’s been a while, Director Han Se-yeon. Thanks to you, I’m enjoying the banquet. But what business do you have with my subordinate?”
“There was a personal matter I wanted to discuss, so I asked his permission to move somewhere else. Is there a problem?”
Han Se-yeon flashed a smile that feigned composure. Kim Deok-hyun glanced at me.
“……No, not at all. What kind of discussion?”
“Kim Sun-woo here is a sponsored student of Hanseong Pharmaceuticals. I wanted to talk about that. Right?”
She turned her gaze to me and smiled with her eyes.
I had no idea why she was covering for me with a lie, but since she’d kept the magical artifact under wraps, I decided to play along.
“Well, yeah.”
“……A discussion, huh.”
Kim Deok-hyun stroked his chin suspiciously as he looked between Han Se-yeon and me.
“……There’s no other reason, is there?”
“Other reason? Is there something like that?”
“That’s……”
Kim Deok-hyun trailed off and let out a smirk.
“Now that I think about it, you’re right. I didn’t think there was any particular closeness between the two of you.”
He spoke in a tone laden with implication.
“By the way, has your close friend not come here?”
Han Se-yeon’s eyes filled with puzzlement at his question.
“My close friend?”
“You know, the one who was on the news recently. Kim—”
That was when it happened.
Fwaaaang—
An unidentified energy swept over my body from somewhere.
It wasn’t artificial mana created by humans—it was natural energy formed by nature itself.
But I could sense artificial mana mixed in with it.
A familiar waveform.
And I wasn’t the only one who felt it. The noisy banquet hall fell silent in an instant.
“……Did I just imagine that?”
“I felt it too. What was it?”
A brief silence. Then the banquet hall buzzed back to life.
Kim Deok-hyun’s face grew serious as he stared in the direction the energy had come from, then turned to me.
“Kim Sun-woo.”
I met his gaze and nodded.
“It’s the wave from a barrier being dispelled.”
“……Barrier dispelling wave?”
It’s the brief fluctuation that occurs the moment a barrier is released.
For small or medium barriers, it’s not easy to detect unless you’re an auxiliary mage, so it might feel unfamiliar.
In my case, thanks to my outsider perks, I’d dispelled countless barriers, so I recognized it immediately.
And for the wave to be big enough for everyone in the banquet hall to notice……
It meant a massive grand barrier had probably been dispelled.
So this was……
I headed down the stairs.
“W-Wait a second!”
Han Se-yeon followed after me.
I rushed out of the banquet hall toward Central Island.
Some people were already staring blankly at Central Island, where the full moon barrier shimmered.
Han Se-yeon and Kim Deok-hyun, who came out late, looked at Central Island and showed clear shock.
“……The barrier?”
Central Island’s barrier was shaking unstably, kicking up a massive wave.
At the same time, a storm-like wind blew, sending hidden birds fleeing.
I looked up at the sky.
Pitch-black darkness with nothing visible.
The ‘observation suppression’ over the floating islands still hid the moon.
“What’s going on?”
A flustered Lee Seo-jun approached me.
Jeong Hyun-su, Baek Ye-jin…… other special agents appeared as well.
The people who followed looked at Central Island’s scenery in a daze, their faces full of confusion, as if by prior agreement.
Han Se-jin was among them, clearly caught off guard by the situation.
Of course, nothing like this happened in the original story.
“What the……”
A moment later, Ellen and Hyeon-gyo appeared—people who hadn’t been seen in the banquet hall until now.
Ellen frowned at the barrier, then approached Han Se-jin and whispered.
“……This isn’t part of your plan, is it?”
“No.”
As he answered, Han Se-jin muttered softly.
“They detected a minor shockwave from the barrier this morning…… Is this related?”
The minor shockwave from that morning.
Come to think of it, that’s why my breakfast plans with Han Se-yeon fell through.
I had a vague idea why this was happening.
A situation absent from the original.
And someone capable of causing a change on this scale……
Only one person came to mind in this world besides me.
Kim Chang-hyun.
Right then.
Crack!
The empty space around the barrier split open, cracks forming.
The cracks soon turned into fissures, splitting and expanding in grotesque shapes.
I muttered as I watched.
“……Dimensional rift.”
A magical phenomenon occasionally reported at certain ruins.
And as it would later be revealed, one that occurred on Central Island too.
Wuuuuuum!
Another massive vibration rang in our ears. Terrifying energy began gathering in the rift.
A chill ran down my spine.
And then.
The split grew wider, and a circular wave burst forth.
Fwaaaaang!
The wave shot straight toward us.
Instinctively, I grabbed Han Se-yeon’s wrist, shielded my body with protective aura, and pulled her into my embrace by the shoulder.
In that split second, a powerful impact exploded against my back.
Feeling a familiar yet sweet scent somewhere, Han Se-yeon came to her senses.
“……Jin-woo?”
In her daze, she called out Kim Jin-woo’s name.
The scent she felt now was strikingly similar to Kim Jin-woo’s.
It was a unique fragrance no one else had, one she remembered clearly.
Han Se-yeon winced at the intense headache, then slowly looked up at the ceiling.
An unfamiliar ceiling she’d never seen before.
A pitch-dark cave with almost no light.
Why was she in a place like this? Puzzled, she tried to sit up.
But for some reason, her body felt heavy, as if pinned under something.
She quickly realized why.
A man was holding her tightly, as if to protect her.
He wasn’t moving at all, perhaps unconscious. She panicked for a moment, checking his breathing.
Snore, snore.
Fortunately, he was breathing steadily. Calm and even, not shallow or labored.
“……Phew.”
Han Se-yeon let out a sigh of relief.
She lay still, feeling his build and scent.
No matter how she thought about it, this man resembled Kim Jin-woo. But she knew from her last memory.
This man wasn’t Kim Jin-woo—he was Kim Sun-woo……
“……Student Sun-woo.”
She softly called his name.
But Kim Sun-woo showed no reaction, as if truly out cold.
With no choice, Han Se-yeon mustered all her strength to lift Kim Sun-woo and sit up.
She carefully laid him on the ground so he wouldn’t get hurt.
First, she checked if he had any injuries.
Fortunately, his front had only minor bruises—no serious wounds.
But the problem was elsewhere.
She remembered him taking the mana wave aimed at her on his back.
Han Se-yeon turned him sideways to check his back.
At the same time, she bit her lip and let out a short groan.
“……Ah.”
His back was covered in grotesque purple wounds.
The shirt he wore had a huge tear, exposing his back starkly. Strangely, his clothes writhed like living creatures, regenerating.
It seemed to envelop and heal the wounded area.
She’d seen at the banquet that this outfit was a special magical artifact, so she wasn’t surprised.
Still, seeing his injured back filled Han Se-yeon with deep guilt.
The sudden rift.
And he’d ended up like this protecting her from the shooting energy.
She laid him back comfortably.
Gazing at his sleeping face, Kim Jin-woo naturally came to mind.
She reached out, covered his mouth with her hand, and touched his hair a bit.
Surprisingly, Kim Sun-woo’s face transformed to look exactly like Kim Jin-woo’s.
This time, she brought her face closer, using her own hair to mimic a beard.
Now he looked even more like Kim Jin-woo.
A situation that might seem comical at a glance.
But Han Se-yeon was serious.
“……Hmm.”
Then Kim Sun-woo let out a short groan.
Startled, Han Se-yeon jerked back.
“Ar-Are you awake?”
“……Ugh. Yeah.”
Kim Sun-woo clutched his head and sat up.
He bit his lip in apparent pain.
He looked around and said,
“Where……”
“When I came to, we were here. I don’t know exactly where either.”
Kim Sun-woo nodded briefly.
“Lie down. You must be hurting.”
“I’m fine. I’m pretty numb to pain.”
Kim Sun-woo stood up.
Whether he was truly insensitive to pain or just pretending for her sake, he didn’t even flinch.
He checked his condition, then calmly walked to the wall, stroking it with his hand.
“Hmm. Looks like we got swept up in a dimensional rift.”
“……Dimensional rift?”
“It’s one of the phenomena that appear at certain ruins. Uh…… You’ve heard of stage-type dungeons, right? Think of it like that—a kind of ruin. You explore through dimensions until you reach the last one. Of course, mess up and you could become a ‘dimensional lost child.’”
Her easy-to-understand explanation clicked immediately.
“……But dimensional rifts have never happened at Central Island’s ruins before. Is that possible?”
“Central Island’s ruins haven’t been fully cleared. This is just something undiscovered until now.”
“But why now……”
As Han Se-yeon muttered, Kim Sun-woo smiled faintly.
“We’ll figure that out starting now.”
At his words, she felt an inexplicable relief, her anxiety about the situation easing a bit.
Kim Sun-woo conjured mana orbs, illuminating the cave brightly.
Hidden runes appeared on the walls.
He stared blankly at them, then murmured quietly.
“……No wonder there were so many dimension-related rune artifacts.”
He turned to Han Se-yeon.
“Alright, let’s get moving.”
“Huh?”
“We need to escape from here.”
At the same time, in another dimensional rift.
“Ow, my back……”
Ellen groaned in pain as she sat up.
Her body was covered in bruises from the sudden mana wave that swept her up.
The excruciating pain was bearable for her, who used ‘tattoo rune magic’ that felt like her body was burning.
“……Whew. Without gear, I’d really be dead.”
Ellen muttered, looking at the S-rank magical artifacts covering her body. Then she glanced beside her.
A relatively unharmed man stood there.
“Wow, look at you, totally fine. Your regen is seriously enviable.”
Ignoring her, Hyeon-gyo cracked his joints.
“……Dimensional rift?”
“Seems like it. Cause unknown.”
As an auxiliary mage specializing in mysteries and runes, she grasped the situation instantly.
“Han Se-jin said this wasn’t his plan, right?”
“Yeah.”
“……This is a hassle. Our goal today was assassinating Kim Jin-woo.”
Hyeon-gyo muttered.
Ellen nodded slightly.
“……True. If Kim Jin-woo got swept into a dimension, we could just hunt him down there. But he wasn’t there earlier. Sigh. Mission failed.”
Ellen sighed deeply.
After weeks of preparation, a mix of relief and disappointment.
Then Hyeon-gyo spoke up as if something occurred to him.
“……Han Se-yeon.”
“……Huh?”
Ellen turned at his out-of-left-field comment.
“The reason we’re targeting Kim Jin-woo is for Han Se-jin to take over as Hanseong family chairman. So doesn’t that mean we just need to get rid of Han Se-yeon?”
“……What are you saying?”
As Ellen glared at him, Hyeon-gyo smirked darkly.
“There’s a chance Han Se-yeon got swept into the dimensional rift. Perfect for disguising as an accident. Isn’t this an opportunity?”