God Exists, and He Lives in Changyeong-ri
Creeeak.
The closet door swung open without resistance.
Lee Gil-sang revealed himself, half-collapsed in an awkward, hunched crouch, with four people staring straight at him.
"Ah... good evening."
He dipped his head in a small bow.
Of course, the only answer was a suffocating silence.
Cold sweat trickling down his face, he slunk out of the closet and shuffled sideways toward the window, inching along like a crab.
"I believe I may have, ah, mistaken this house for my own, heh heh... My deepest apologies for the intrusion. I know you're all busy, so please do finish what you were doing, and I'll just be on my w—"
THUNK!
A sword buried itself in the wall.
Faster than the eye could follow.
Lee Gil-sang was so terrified that even a scream couldn't make it past his throat; his mouth simply flapped open and shut in mute horror.
"You know him?"
"I'd assume so."
Oh Hyeon-seong gave an awkward laugh, and Han Su-yeon turned to the man.
"He doesn't look like a thief who came here to steal, so what exactly are you?"
"Well... I... that is..."
Darkness closed in on the edges of Lee Gil-sang's vision.
She was asking where he'd come from and what his purpose was, but not a single word of answer left his mouth.
More precisely, he couldn't have answered even if he'd wanted to.
As Han Su-yeon's expression grew darker and darker, he finally spiraled into complete panic and shrieked.
"WAAAAH! Get away from me, you monsters!"
CRASH!
Lee Gil-sang smashed through the window and hurled himself outside.
He rolled once across the ground, scrambled up, and bolted like his tail was on fire.
"Ha...?"
The four of them could only stare after him in bewilderment, but he had no time even to glance back—he just ran, flat-out, mind emptied of everything else.
He climbed the hill and tore through the woods.
Absolute Stealth or not, these were not people it would work on.
Convinced that if he headed toward the village or the road he'd be caught and killed without fail, he crashed wildly through trees and underbrush.
And so he barreled straight through the forest, past the thickly plastered no-entry tape, until—
"At... at last!"
Meanwhile, at the reservoir, a man's triumphant cry burst into the air.
It was Choi Jeong-il, who had been holding his fishing line out for hours on end.
"A crucian carp... a 6-jja crucian carp!"
Choi Jeong-il hoisted the enormous fish above his head.
It was a sight straight out of The Lion King.
What an epic struggle it had been—days and nights of it. But he had finally done it, and at the appearance of the giant crucian carp, the first of his fishing life, he was swept up in sheer ecstasy.
Which was exactly why he failed to notice the disaster barreling toward him from behind.
Lee Gil-sang, still in a state of utter panic, was every bit as careless about what lay ahead of him as he burst out of the brush, practically diving headlong.
The two hunters' paths crossed.
WHAM!
They collided with a heavy, sickening thud.
Then came a clear, crystalline sound.
SPLOOSH!
The crucian carp, launched magnificently into the sky, vanished beneath the surface of the lake.
The two tangled men picked themselves up off the ground, and a terrifying silence poured from Choi Jeong-il where he stood frozen. Lee Gil-sang, sensing something instinctively, went rigid on the spot.
In the stillness that followed, all that could be heard, from far away, was the sound of an otter laughing at them.
THUD!
Choi Jeong-il kept shoveling in the backyard.
His face was frighteningly blank as he demonstrated a long-honed skill from his past: digging a pit perfectly suited to burying a person.
"Mmmph! Mmmph!"
Lee Gil-sang thrashed about, his mouth wound shut with tape.
But with all four limbs bound, his struggling was pointless.
Oh Hyeon-seong watched the spectacle with a troubled look and shook his head.
I can't believe he got here early and was pulling that stunt at the reservoir again. The man's a fishing demon.
Hyeon-seong shifted his gaze to Lee Gil-sang.
Still, hiding here undetected with this crowd gathered... that's a genuinely useful ability.
Until the man moved first, even Hyeon-seong hadn't noticed there was someone in the closet.
A rare power indeed.
It was the first time he had ever laid eyes on a hunter born with the special constitution of Absolute Stealth. Even for him, he'd only ever heard rumors of a tiny handful of cases abroad.
At Grade 8, his skill is nothing special—but the fact that he managed to fool this crowd anyway is what's impressive.
By the world's ordinary standards, Grade 8 placed a hunter comfortably in the upper ranks, but the standard here was different.
Not counting the people gathered here, even the attendants waiting outside included not a single hunter below Grade 8.
In truth, even within his own organization, Lee Gil-sang ranked on the lower side of the executives by raw grade alone. It was only by leveraging his unusual special constitution to rack up one achievement after another that he had climbed to a senior position.
Just then, Baek Ji-soo, who had been off making a call, approached Hyeon-seong.
"We ran his identity. He's an executive of Samjeonghoe. Nobody comes rummaging around a place like this without a reason—Sunbae, do you have some history with them?"
"Ah, probably over those original seeds I mentioned a while back. I robbed their truck to get them."
"So he came to take back what was stolen from them?"
"That'd be my guess."
Hyeon-seong nodded. He had expected them to come after him in one way or another—he just hadn't imagined they'd track him down this fast.
"Then shall I have a word with him? Left alone, he's bound to be a nuisance again."
"MMMPH! MMMPH!"
At her words, Lee Gil-sang went into spasms.
No telling what he was trying to say, but he looked utterly terrified.
"Allow me to take his head."
Shing!
Choi Jeong-il drew his sword.
Seeking to avenge the resentment of the crucian carp that had left his grasp, he looked ready to lop the man's neck clean off.
Naturally, Baek Ji-soo stopped him, snapping that he shouldn't show off.
"Even if you kill him, keep his mouth open first. If you cut him down out of nowhere without sorting out the whole situation, his organization could stay tangled up with Sunbae forever."
Choi Jeong-il gave up at last and trudged away.
"Don't take it too hard. If you want, I'll go up to Seoul and buy you a fish stew."
"Sunbae... you don't understand what a 6-jja crucian carp means to an angler..."
"Mm. And I'd rather not."
Han Su-yeon was doing her best to console Choi Jeong-il—though it didn't seem likely to do much good.
The man had finally hooked the fish of legend, only to be robbed of the joy of landing it the very moment he should have felt it.
If he'd at least gotten a proper certification photo, he could have counted it as catch-and-release, but before he could so much as snap a picture—before he could even record the thing's measurements—it was gone.
If he went around bragging he'd caught a 6-jja crucian carp, nobody would believe him; they'd just call it a hybrid.
"Everyone, get inside. It's cold out. I'll handle the interrogation."
"I could take care of it."
"No—trouble started at my house, so I'll deal with it. It won't take long, so hurry inside, all of you."
He couldn't very well dirty his guests' hands over something that happened on his own property.
At his words, Baek Ji-soo nodded and agreed, and the others filed back into the house.
That left only Hyeon-seong and Lee Gil-sang.
"Ohhh..."
Lee Gil-sang let out a sigh of relief at the sight.
Simply having that terrifying Baek Ji-soo of the National Security Bureau out of sight made him feel vastly safer.
He didn't know much, but being interrogated by her was one situation he wanted no part of.
Scrape.
But then Hyeon-seong dragged a chair over and sat down in front of him.
And in that instant, a single question formed in his head.
If Baek Ji-soo was such a terrifying figure, then what exactly was this man—the one she called "Sunbae" and obeyed so meekly?
And was it really wise to feel relieved at being left alone with a man like that?
Rip!
The tape came off Lee Gil-sang's mouth.
Cold but fresh air flooded into his stuffy mouth.
"Now then. Let's have a little chat."
"A-a chat? Aren't you planning to kill me?"
"Relax. Cooperate, and I'll let you live."
"You might pump me for information and then bury me anyway—how am I supposed to believe—"
"Whether you cooperate or not, prying your mouth open is something Baek Ji-soo could handle in her sleep. But she didn't, did she? The reason I stayed behind is that I'd rather not have blood spilled in my own yard."
Lee Gil-sang's mouth clamped shut with a click.
Could he really hold out to the end under Baek Ji-soo's interrogation? Not a chance.
After a moment's hesitation, he spoke carefully.
"Was it... you, sir, who took our seeds?"
"It was. I had a use for them."
"B-but that's put me in a terrible position."
"You stole or seized them from somewhere yourselves in the first place. What exactly are you acting aggrieved about? You're upset that you got robbed?"
"Not at all, sir! We acquired them legitimately!"
"'Legitimately,' hm. I don't buy it—but as it happens, you've said something useful. Where did you get those original seeds?"
Hyeon-seong asked, fixing him with a look.
It had come to light that the seeds were brought in from overseas, but even after the Security Bureau tried to trace the exact route, the source remained murky.
Even for Samjeonghoe, famous for its secrets, hiding a paper trail that thoroughly was no easy feat.
"That... I cannot say."
"Aha. The strong, silent type, are you?"
"N-no, sir! It's physically impossible! My neck! Please look at my neck!"
Lee Gil-sang blurted out in a panic.
Wondering what he meant, Hyeon-seong looked at his neck—and there were enormous tattoos covering it.
They looked like ordinary tattoos at a glance, but he knew instantly that they were nothing of the kind.
"Is this... a curse?"
"It is, sir. All of our senior executives carry curses like this. Spill even a word of secrets outside, and you die."
"What kind of outfit goes this far?"
Hyeon-seong clicked his tongue in disbelief.
Among Korea's notorious criminal organizations, Samjeonghoe was indeed unusually security-conscious, but this seemed excessive even so.
What struck him as stranger still was that it wasn't the rank-and-file being bound this way, but the senior executives.
"That said, this curse is pretty potent."
The quality was remarkably high-class.
Even to his eye, it was astonishing.
"As far as I know, Samjeonghoe doesn't have the capacity to construct a curse of this caliber."
"Breaking this curse is absolutely impossible. Even if our entire organization threw itself at it. Even if anyone came, sir."
Lee Gil-sang declared with total conviction.
But Hyeon-seong did not see it that way.
No curse, however ingeniously woven, was unbreakable.
A curse was like an intricate puzzle built out of mana—finding the answer might be hard, but the answer always existed. A curse that couldn't be undone was, by definition, a flawed design—and flawed designs didn't even function in the first place.
"Cute thing to say."
Hyeon-seong pressed two fingers to the man's neck and let his mana flow in.
His mana, gliding smoothly in, tangled with the intricately interwoven curse coiled around the man's throat.
"Wh... huh?"
Startled by the strange sensation, Lee Gil-sang flinched.
He'd been alarmed at first by the attempt, but since there was no way the curse could come undone anyway, he'd simply stayed still.
But this feeling coursing through him now—
He wondered if it was his imagination. It wasn't.
The curse... is gone?
In mere seconds, Hyeon-seong had neutralized the curse with absurd ease, and Lee Gil-sang's mouth hung agape in disbelief.
But before he could manage a single word—
His face drained white.
"GGAAAAAHHK!"
Lee Gil-sang began convulsing wildly.
The base of his neck was already stained pitch black.
A dual curse? But... a dual curse of this caliber? That's absurd.
Hyeon-seong was rattled.
The activated curse was devouring Lee Gil-sang at terrifying speed.
Only a handful of ability users in the entire world could lay down a curse of this magnitude.
"S-s-save me...!"
"Yes, you should live. It would be a problem if you died here."
A corpse sprawled across his backyard was absolutely not on the agenda.
Hyeon-seong grabbed the thrashing man and began pumping mana into him.
The curse's structure was far more complex than the first one; done by the book, it would take days at minimum to untangle—and the man would be a cold corpse long before that.
But Hyeon-seong had no need to walk the straight and narrow path.
His mana drew its origin from the power of the soul, an entirely different nature from ordinary mana. Because of that, unlike any other mana, it had no need to painstakingly trace the structure step by step through a formal solving process.
Like cheating at a puzzle, he could skip several layers of the intricate interlock at once—and unravel the whole curse in short order.
PAK!
"Haaah...!"
The writhing curse collapsed in an instant.
Dragged back from death's threshold, Lee Gil-sang looked up at Hyeon-seong standing right in front of him.
Impossible. He actually unraveled it...
He had never once seen anyone break this curse.
And of those who had tried—none had survived.
This curse had been carved into him by the True Ruler of the Underworld.
Not one of the four crime syndicates on public display, but the true master who gripped the entire underworld from within the shadows.
And this man had undone that being's curse this easily—which could only mean he stood above it, a level beyond.
Ah... so that's it... that's what this is.
Shuddering, Lee Gil-sang looked up at Hyeon-seong.
Only now did everything click into place.
The true master who held both the government's and the private sector's colossal powers in his grasp, reigning above them all.
Not some mere king of the underworld, but the absolute being of the hunter world itself.
Face to face with such a figure, he felt reverence—and fear—welling up from somewhere deep inside.
"O Absolute One..."
Thump.
Lee Gil-sang fainted on the spot.
Hyeon-seong, watching him go down, could only wear a baffled expression.
"...What did he just say?"