The Spirit Returns
In the frozen air, an alien presence had appeared before them.
An androgynous beauty with long hair flowing down like water.
And yet, its form was unmistakably that of a spirit—something far removed from any human.
Oh Hyeon-seong stared up blankly at the semi-translucent figure drifting in the air before him.
"You... how are you..."
The water spirit, Alvern.
His old partner, who had fought through countless battlefields at his side and been with him for most of his active years as a hunter.
He was also a tragic existence—one who had taken irreversible damage in the final battle against the Queen and ultimately faded into complete annihilation.
I thought I'd never see you again...
He was a being of an entirely higher order, one his contracted low-tier spirits could not even begin to compare with.
The spirit smiled, a soft flash of a grin, and drifted closer.
Hyeon-seong numbly reached out his hand, and Alvern nuzzled his cheek against it, feeling the warmth of his touch.
A warmth he hadn't felt in far, far too long.
Pressing himself close against Hyeon-seong, the spirit whispered something in the spirit language against his ear—then vanished with a flicker, as if he had simply poured himself into Hyeon-seong's body, leaving behind only a faint white trace.
"..."
The air, frozen stiff, slowly returned to normal.
The spirit's overwhelming presence, which had filled the entire space, scattered just as quickly.
"Wh-what was that just now?"
Ju Ji-hye spoke up, belatedly jolted back to herself. She was so startled she'd forgotten her legs had gone weak, and her heart was still hammering.
It had been only a moment, but the presence she'd felt had been truly staggering. At first she'd wondered if a monster had appeared, but it was absolutely nothing of the sort.
It was a third something—something entirely other.
"A spirit I was contracted with."
"A sp-spirit?"
Ju Ji-hye made a face as if she must have misheard. But when Hyeon-seong silently nodded, she grew badly flustered.
"But... I've never even heard of an ability user who uses spirits..."
Her career wasn't particularly long, but she still knew everything there was to know about this industry—or at least everything she was supposed to. And yet until this very moment, she hadn't even known that spirits existed.
Hunters with summoning-type abilities cropped up now and then, sure, but this was a category of being she had never once heard of.
"Of course you haven't. I'm the only one."
Hyeon-seong answered simply. He didn't so much as glance at her as he spoke, and his expression was graver than anything she had ever seen from him.
The easygoing air that always lingered somewhere on his face was gone entirely, replaced by something honed to a razor's edge. It was as if she were looking at a completely different person.
Intimidated without quite knowing why, she found herself unable to string a single word together and fell silent.
...
A spirit that had been completely annihilated could not be brought back.
Ordinary levels of damage, sure—those spirits would recover in due time after being re-summoned and return as good as new. But under certain extreme circumstances, or in certain special cases, spirits could suffer permanent damage.
Hyeon-seong had made countless attempts to overturn that unchanging truth.
It was the reason he had clung obsessively to rehabilitation after losing every one of his spirits in the war against the Queen. Even if he was retiring from being a hunter for good, he hadn't wanted to end things having lost his partners.
Naturally, the results had been predictable, and in the end he had resigned himself to it.
But now—he could feel it. His soul and his spirit, woven tightly back together.
Which means they didn't die.
Oh Hyeon-seong turned Alvern's parting words over and over in his mind.
From his tightly clenched fist, beads of dark blood dripped steadily to the ground.
"Is Jeong-il in Korea right now?"
"Huh...? Oh—yes! As far as I know, he has no overseas schedule for the time being."
"Then we're heading up to Seoul. I need to see his face right away."
"Uh... CEO Choi? Right this second?"
Ju Ji-hye was caught completely off guard. Her original plan had been to stay another day or two, taking it easy, before heading back.
But Hyeon-seong needed to speak with Choi Jeong-il as soon as humanly possible.
Eeeeeeng!
Just then, a clamorous siren suddenly split the air.
Hyeon-seong and Ju Ji-hye flinched and turned at the same time.
It wasn't just here—the disaster alarm was ringing out across the entire village.
Ring-ring!
Their phones went off in unison with an emergency alert, and an announcement began to play, mixing with the wail of the sirens. A pre-recorded, mechanical voice—but repeating, over and over, that this was no drill.
An emergency evacuation order, issued because of a Gate outbreak.
"What now, all of a sudden?"
"It's a Bureau-level emergency evacuation order, so a Gate must have opened somewhere right near the village."
"But this isn't the usual kind of alert for that, though."
Ju Ji-hye said it quietly, a slight frown creasing her brow.
Even in an era when the Gate response system had become far more organized, they never made this much of a fuss. Only a handful of Gates appeared in a given year—if they raised this kind of alarm every single time, the economy would have ground to a halt long ago.
An alert this sweeping meant either a Gate with anomalous properties, or a serious S-Rank or higher Gate outbreak.
But the odds of a Gate like that opening near a tiny village like this—nowhere near a city—were vanishingly small.
"Surely they haven't issued a false alarm?"
"That, we can't know."
"Just in case, I'll grab my weapon."
Ju Ji-hye slipped into the guest room in the annex.
Neither of them showed the slightest sign of hurrying or panic. Hyeon-seong went without saying, and she, too, was a first-rate hunter who had made this line of work her livelihood.
For civilians, though, a situation like this could only feel alien and terrifying.
The Yoo siblings, who came sprinting to his front door the moment the broadcast ended, were pale as death.
"Hye-Hyeon! You're okay!"
"The alarms just started blaring out of nowhere—is there a Gate in the village right now?"
"Calm down. The fact that the alarm went off means the Bureau already knows about it. So don't panic—we're heading down there first."
Hyeon-seong settled the siblings down before anything else.
Soon Ju Ji-hye emerged, buried under sunglasses, a mask, and a pulled-low hat, and without even a moment to exchange greetings, they set off for the village.
"Good heavens, what on earth is going on?"
"I didn't see any Gate on the way here."
"Have the Hwangs still not shown up?"
The villagers had gathered in front of the village community hall. The evacuation shelter was located near the hall, and people drifted toward it as if bound by an unspoken promise—yet not one of them had actually gone inside, too busy fluttering about in confusion, none of them understanding what was happening.
For them, a situation with alarms blaring was something they had never once experienced, and the anxiety had already pushed some to tears.
Just then, a line of vehicles rolled into the village.
Bureau personnel stepped out of the parked cars and, with practiced ease, began sorting through the chaos and moving the residents along. Hyeon-seong's group, coming down into the village shortly after, crossed paths with them and was directed to the shelter as well.
Only, Ju Ji-hye, who had come in with them, asked in clear puzzlement:
"Why did we come in here, exactly?"
"Wait here a moment. I'm going to ask about the situation."
Hyeon-seong left the shelter alone.
Near the entrance stood an investigator dressed in a black coat, and the moment Hyeon-seong registered that the man was a hunter, he approached.
"A evacuation order came down so suddenly. Might I ask what's going on?"
"A Gate was detected around the village. It's standard procedure—stay inside and wait."
"But normally they wouldn't take the alarms this far, would they?"
"That can vary depending on the situation. We'll handle it, so get inside."
"I'll go right back in—just tell me what's happened. Everyone here is on edge. And if this were a routine situation, you'd have sent only a strike team, not investigation personnel like yourself, wouldn't you?"
"Hey, you! What exactly do you think you know, going on like this? Are you a hunter or what?"
The man's face twisted into a scowl. Things were chaotic enough as it was—why was this country bumpkin in the middle of nowhere needling him like he knew something?
But Hyeon-seong showed no intention of backing off, and as the voices rose, a hunter standing nearby came over.
"What's the problem here?"
"No idea. I told him to get inside and he keeps pestering me."
"I'm simply asking for a minimal explanation of the situation."
"Ugh, seriously—"
"Huh...?"
The hunter who had cut in blinked at Oh Hyeon-seong.
Then, a moment later, his face went white with shock, and he hurriedly whispered something to his colleague.
His colleague's eyes went wide. For a few seconds he plainly didn't believe it, but soon his face turned uneasy, and he spoke up.
"Ah... we—we apologize."
With a deep bow, the man hastily withdrew.
Hyeon-seong wondered what had gotten into him, and then the hunter who had cut in came up to him.
"You—you're Hunter Oh Hyeon-seong, aren't you?"
"...How do you know who I am?"
"My name is Seo Jae-ho. Of course you wouldn't know who I am, but before I transferred, I was a hunter from a private guild."
The man introduced himself. Back in those days, hunters in the private sector were indeed affiliated with what were called guilds—quasi-mercenary outfits, not management agencies.
"And during the Northern Defense War, my guild took part as well."
"So you went through the worst of it."
"Haha, we did. But thanks to you holding the front line back then, I made it out alive through the secured retreat route. Even now, the memory is vivid. Thank you—truly."
Seo Jae-ho bowed his head deeply, offering his heartfelt gratitude.
To think that after retirement, he'd hear words like this—from a stranger, no less, not even an old comrade.
Then again, no matter how thoroughly his face and affiliation had been scrubbed from the record, there were always those who remembered those days.
Either way, this unexpected encounter made everything simpler. From Seo Jae-ho, Hyeon-seong got a full account of the events surrounding this alert—including the fact that an S-Rank Gate-scale disturbance had suddenly appeared, and then vanished just as suddenly.
"It's highly likely to be a simple malfunction, but since it involved a possible S-Rank Gate—a serious matter—we've begun a search as a precaution."
"And so far nothing's been found?"
"Correct. Nothing has been visually confirmed."
Generally speaking, the higher a Gate's grade, the greater its mass. If a true S-Rank Gate had really opened nearby, it would have been impossible to miss.
Yet no matter how thoroughly they combed the area around the village, no Gate had been found.
Don't tell me... Alvern showed up on the detection network?
Circumstances back then would never have allowed such a thing, but in theory, it was entirely possible. A being of Alvern's caliber suddenly reappearing—surely the sensors could have registered a surge mistaken for an S-Rank Gate.
Above all, the timing matched perfectly: the disturbance appearing and then vanishing, right when he did.
"Well then, I should head out to search the perimeter myself. Excuse me."
"Thank you for your answers."
The conversation with Seo Jae-ho ended there.
Before long, Han Su-yeon called him first.
"Sunbae, our observation systems picked up an anomaly. And of all places, it was right over your village—is everything okay over there?"
"Something did happen."
"...Which is what, exactly?"
"Alvern came back."
"Alvern...? The Alvern I know?"
"Yes. I think the disturbance was him, too. I'll explain the details later, so for now, take care of it. Don't let your people wear themselves out for nothing."
"Got it. Give me a minute."
After hanging up with Han Su-yeon, sure enough, the withdrawal of the Bureau hunters began shortly thereafter.
The search had turned up no Gate, and orders had come down from headquarters classifying it as a malfunction of the observation equipment.
But for some reason, even after the withdrawal order was issued, one search team failed to return.
"Wh-what... what is this?"
The Bureau search team had come to a halt in the mountains near the village.
Between the dense underbrush, they had discovered an enormous footprint.
At a glance it looked like the track of some beast—but no beast that size could possibly exist, and a sinister black aura was rippling across its surface.
It was corruption so potent that even the hunters felt themselves instinctively backing away.
"Don't tell me... is this connected to the S-Rank Gate that was just detected?"
"No—it has nothing to do with the disturbance. Corruption on this scale... it seems to have been settled here for far longer than that."
Cold sweat slid down Seo Jae-ho's forehead.
"The calamity they call humanity's natural predator."