Side Story ANOTHER — XX. JUDGEMENT
It was late at night.
Lee Jun awoke and looked at the moonlight spilling between the curtains.
One day since he'd regained consciousness. He wanted nothing more than to keep resting, but the time had come to get back up.
"Guess I should check out of the hospital tomorrow."
The hospital, of course, had told him to rest for at least a week and go through a full round of examinations… but in the end, no one knew his own body better than he did. This much rest was plenty.
"Hoo…."
He reached a hand into the moonlight streaming through the window.
His right hand.
The fact that it only remained up to the wrist was bothering him.
"If that shadow brat can't do anything about it… maybe I really will have to get a prosthetic."
There were other options, technically. He just couldn't bring himself to like any of them.
Eh. A prosthetic arm it is.
"……"
Moonlight. A wrist. Bandages.
"Feels like… old times, somehow."
Was it because he'd seen so many fragments of the past in that shadow's mind? Or was it because that guy had gone out of his way to poke at him? Or maybe it was just… the hour.
Whatever the reason, useless memories began to smolder up from somewhere deep.
A wrist.
And above it, nothing where something used to be.
"Goddamn it…."
He'd managed to wrap it in bandages, but the bleeding hadn't stopped. And of all things, it had to be his dominant hand.
"Haa… haa…."
He'd been fighting for hours now, and his stamina had bottomed out. His focus had blurred along with it — hence losing a hand.
"…So this is the end."
Yeah. Four months. For a human who'd received nothing from the system… he'd lasted a long time.
This trash-tier world. An Initial Awakener with nothing to his name — what kind of sick joke was that? All of the responsibility, none of the pleasure.
"Damn it…."
Too much blood. His vision was starting to haze at the edges.
Wonderful.
So this is how I die.
"Are you out of your mind?! Stay with me!"
A sharp voice cut into his ear. There stood a woman drenched head to toe in blood — none of it, presumably, her own.
"…Pablo."
Pablo Cervantes.
A Spanish woman he'd been working with for barely two weeks. Moderately pale skin, stark white hair, and striking black eyes that contrasted against both.
"…What the — where's your hand?"
"Inside that thing's stomach."
Where Lee Jun pointed lay a Crimson Hound. A mutant, three times the size of the ordinary kind.
She stared at it for a moment, then said, perfectly calm, "Hold on a sec."
"What? Hey, where are you going? Hey!"
"Where else? It hasn't finished digesting yet."
Two battered, worn-out tonfas. She gripped them tight and strode toward the hound.
"Back home, when a dog goes rabid, you beat the crap out of it. Always worked."
Thud— thud—
Every step she took was unhesitating. Before long, the hound — still toying with the other corpses, tearing at them — registered her presence.
"Grrr…?"
"Sí, bueno."
Pablo faced down a monster several times her size, and yet a hearty grin hung on her lips. She settled into her stance and crossed the two tonfas, thrusting them forward.
Force Graviton — Gravity Manipulation
She didn't even need to go as far as a skill.
Among the awakened who had received the system's blessing, she was one of those who'd been given a blessing of far finer quality.
A unique ability.
That incomprehensible power seized the Crimson Hound in an instant.
"Good boy, aren't you? Sit, puppy."
She spoke in a tone so gentle it was like coaxing a child.
And then —
The gathered tonfas… flew apart.
KWAAAAD—
crunch. crunch. crunch.
SHRKK—
"…Insane."
Lee Jun could only swear quietly.
Obviously. Anyone who watched a house-sized monster get torn apart like crepe paper would have the same reaction. And at the same time… he found himself wondering if that woman was even the same kind of awakened as he was.
No — wrong question. I should be doubting whether I count as an awakened one. Everyone but me can pull off that kind of thing.
Anyway.
Plop—
From the hound's belly — which Pablo had opened up like cracking a fortune cookie — a single hand dropped out.
"Hey. Isn't that your hand?"
Uh… yeah, I think it is.
But rather than reattach that, a prosthetic honestly looked like the better option.
Whether she read his mind or not, she flung the hound's carcass aside with a whoop and gleefully picked up the hand.
"No status window, but you're still an awakened one, huh? Pretty sturdy — it hasn't even been digested yet."
"Hah — honestly, I'd rather be a regular civilian. No abilities, calling myself an awakened one, wandering into a place like this…"
"Oh, come off it. You've got me, super strong, retrieving your hand for you."
"……"
Right… If I bring it to Borges, he can probably reattach it. Good outcome either way.
"KAHAHAHA! What do you think? Pretty impressive, no?"
"…Sure. You're amazing."
"Mm-hm! Good!"
Laughing heartily, she held up Lee Jun's severed hand and strode ahead of him. Apparently, she intended to escort him all the way back to the base camp.
That was much appreciated, of course… he just would have preferred she give the hand back.
Two kilometers to the base camp.
With monsters ambushing them the entire way, arriving before sundown looked like a lost cause.
"Looks like we'll have to camp around here."
"What? Tired already?"
"…Sorry, but I hit my limit ages ago."
"Hah, I'm joking. Why so deflated? Shoulders back!"
PAANG—
Pablo's palm slammed into Lee Jun's back.
He knew it was meant as encouragement… but honestly, that one blow nearly made him cough up blood. Why does this woman have such absurd stats?
"Oh, hey! What about under that building over there?"
"Sleeping under structures in a zone like this risks a collapse. Best to avoid it."
"So what if it collapses? I'm here, aren't I?"
"Hmm… with Gravity Manipulation, I suppose it wouldn't matter. But constantly staying on guard against that wears you down mentally. Better to find a spot with as few things to worry about as possible. Like… over there, say."
Lee Jun pointed at an abandoned building a little farther off.
A single-story structure with its ceiling completely caved in. There were no flight-capable monsters in the area, so it looked fine for a night's rest.
Once they were inside, they set about preparing camp. They blocked the entrance by rolling stones into place and swept the shards of broken glass into a corner. Then they pried up some of the wooden planks from the floor, stacked them on the bare concrete, and lit a fire.
"If we had something to roast, we could at least fill our stomachs."
"I'd rather wash off than eat."
"Bad news — there's no intact plumbing around here. You'll have to wait until the camp."
"Hnngh… this feels so gross."
Tell me about it. Why do we have to fight while drenched in every kind of blood?
"Ughhh, I wish I could use magic too. If I could just make water and fire, things would be so much easier, don't you think?"
"Couldn't agree more."
"Well, at least you're handy with this sort of thing. I've got basically zero survival knowledge."
"Learned it after things turned out this way. You've gotta do what you can."
The original Lee Jun had been nearly ignorant about all of this. It was only after this hellscape had opened that he'd gone looking for whatever he could actually do — and this was the result.
"Mm-hm, not bad. Once I make a name for myself as an awakened one, I'll keep you around as my right-hand man."
"Gee, thanks."
"¿Sí? ¿De verdad?"
"…What did you just say?"
"KAHAHA! So you can't understand anything unless it's in the common tongue?"
The "common tongue" here referred to the shared language of awakened ones, automatically learned the moment the system awakened within you.
Despite having no status window, no mana, nothing — this was Lee Jun's proof that he was an awakened one. That common tongue had settled into his mind. He couldn't speak it fluently yet, couldn't follow it well by ear, but he understood it as naturally as the mother tongue he'd spoken all his life.
And of course, he could still use his original language as well. For Lee Jun that was Korean; for Pablo, Spanish.
"Speaking of the common tongue — have you noticed people only slip into their mother tongue when it's inconvenient for them?"
"Mm-hm, yeah. Seems that way."
They talked with genuine ease.
Their partnership had been nothing but a chain of battles, so they'd barely known a thing about each other — but this chance had let them grow a real bond as comrades. The situation was even quite atmospheric, if you will.
That is, if you looked past the monster corpses strewn outside the building, the two of them soaked head to toe in blood, and Lee Jun's right wrist still missing entirely.
At some point, the moon had climbed to its zenith. The two of them gazed into the blazing fire and drifted into deeper conversation.
"When Kyle told me about you, I thought you were a man."
"Ha, and there are still idiots in this day and age judging people by their names?"
"Wait — didn't you make your name by mixing together famous historical figures?"
"…That I did. Surname and given name, all of it."
Lee Jun, for his part, didn't have much to say. Before all this, he'd just been an ordinary citizen. And ordinary, in twenty-first-century South Korea, was more ordinary than anywhere else on earth.
Which is a polite way of saying nothing dramatic ever happened to him.
So naturally, the conversation revolved around Pablo.
"My father was obsessed with art. But in the end, he never achieved his dream. So I think he wanted me to achieve it in his place."
"Then wouldn't Pablo Dalí or Pablo Salvador have been better than Cervantes?"
"He cut Salvador because the man's last years were a mess."
"Shame. But… do people normally name their kids like that?"
"No idea. Mine was already named that way by the time I knew it."
Picasso was a painter of genius anyone could name, and Don Quixote was a masterpiece that would live forever in literary history.
But one thing nagged at Lee Jun.
A name is what defines you. A name stitched together from borrowed bits and pieces like that was… how to put it.
"Doesn't it bother you?"
"……"
"Give yourself a new one sometime. The world's practically over anyway — surely you can change your name however you like?"
"A name…, huh."
He'd said it without thinking much of it. The mood had felt heavy, so he'd just been airing things out.
But she took his throwaway remark and mulled it over far more seriously than he'd ever intended.
And when who knows how much time had passed, she finally spoke.
"Judgement."
After all that agonizing, that's what she came up with?
Wow. That's really… hm.
…Isn't that peak chuunibyou?
"That one's a bit much."
"KAHAHAHA! Who cares? Like you said, a name is what shows who I am. And this is me, as defined by me!"
She laughed hard enough to topple backward, then flopped down flat entirely. Gazing up at the stars through the open sky, she said:
"…I'm going to hunt down every last monster, and then I'm going home."
"……"
"And when I do! I'll take you with me! What do you say? Nice, right?"
She was so pure in that moment that Lee Jun found himself smiling before he knew it.
"What, is that a yes or a no?"
"Pretty sure step one is exterminating all the monsters, no?"
"Hm, fair point."
With that, she fell silent, deep in thought about something. Then, her face brightening, she declared:
"You know what? Let me teach you a few things."
"Like what?"
"How to fight! You've got to be able to look after your own body, don't you? You can't go around losing hands like some clumsy fool!"
"Some things don't work just because you practice—"
"KAHAHA! You won't know till you try! Come on, follow me! We're starting right now!"
"Hey, do you have any idea what time it—hey!"
Pablo seized Lee Jun by the wrist and dragged him out of the building. The un-severed left wrist, naturally.
Having suffered all day, Lee Jun tried to refuse… but there was no resisting her by force.
And so the two of them spent the moonlit night sprinting through the ruins, hunting monsters.
He suspected that this day would go down, in Lee Jun's life, as the day he'd enjoyed killing monsters the most.
Pablo Cervantes.
Her symbol was Judgement, her number twenty.
The second badge obtained from the Ant Nest, glinting in the moonlight.
An angel, bound in chains.
True to her towering self-regard, the angel on the seal was holding a pair of tonfas.
And at the very bottom, the Roman numeral XX was engraved.
"…When she designed this thing, she was buzzing like a little kid."
"Someday, when I die — you take this."
Back then, she had looked… rarely, unmistakably serious.
"The badge… I buried it in her grave."
Just as she'd asked in life, the badge bearing her symbol had been passed to Lee Jun. He hadn't been able to bear keeping it, so he'd buried it with her.
Even now, looking at this seal… that moment came back to him.
And it was.
Almost unbearable.
"……"
Slipping the badge away, Lee Jun turned his attention to the hidden piece stored inside his Pocket.
The shadow, finally awakened.
It lay there quietly asleep, hardened into the form of a gemstone.
"This thing too, honestly… I've got to figure out what to do with it."
This was the hidden piece he'd originally planned to give to Seo Yoon — or had thought it was a skill meant for her. But it wasn't a skill at all, and he wasn't even sure it was truly a hidden piece anymore. Why had it been sealed inside a gate, and alongside a mural like that one, of all things?
Not that that's what matters.
He had no idea what it actually did. But one thing was certain.
Absolutely.
Absolutely, he had to make it cooperate with him.
And while he was at it, he'd need to ask what it had done to his right hand, too.
Though, of course, that can wait until after I'm discharged.
There was nothing he could do from here; he had no choice but to wait for dawn.
And once he was out of the hospital… he had a long lineup of very busy days ahead, beyond even this.
First, upon leaving the hospital, there would be the summit with Seolwon — the bet had to be settled, one way or another.
If he won, or at least drew, the various media outlets and magazines would no doubt come calling with interview offers. Lee Hyeon-ah had leaked word of the bet to every outlet like a rumor-mongering gremlin, and the mere notion that it had ended in a draw against the Great Yoon Seol's right hand would be a scoop of monstrous proportions.
After that, he'd have to tame Styx's Shard, the relic Seolwon had put up.
Of course, all of this was planned on the assumption that he won the bet against Seolwon. To that end, he'd first have to negotiate terms with them.
And that negotiation would be.
Very, very tiresome.
"…And that's not even all of it."
He needed to start preparing the treatment for Seo Yoon's mana overload before long. Once that was done, he'd have some breathing room to slowly begin scouting new hunters for the agency.
On top of that, the time was approaching when Liberation would grow truly active. He had no idea how their patterns would shift in this cycle, but at the very least, he intended to try to stop the events he knew about.
And most important of all.
The Magician.
The day she visited Korea was not far off.
…It's going to be a headache.
"Haa…."
Lee Jun let out a long breath and closed his eyes.
Yes.
All of these things would crash over him the way waves roll onto a shore. In other words — no time to dodge any of it.
The bet had already been struck. Win it, and the annoyance would pass, leaving only gain behind. Multiple interviews would naturally publicize the agency — a good thing. Styx's Shard was a legendary-grade artifact and would be enormously useful. Liberation obviously needed to be stopped. And Seo Yoon's mana overload was an illness that absolutely had to be cured.
And…
He had realized that the matter of his old comrades, too, was something he would one day have to face. That was the realization from the end of the last cycle — and so, in this one, he would not run.
"But for right now… let me get some rest, too."
He'd run himself ragged. Surely he'd earned this much.
Using his injuries as an excuse, Lee Jun talked himself into it and drifted off to sleep.
And for the first time in a very long while… he had a sweet dream.
Not that he remembered it, of course, once he woke.