Gate Wrap-Up (1)
Lee Jun opened his eyes again the next morning.
It was just past sunrise. He'd fallen asleep exactly as he'd been the day before — slumped on the sofa.
"...Huh."
The clock read somewhere around 5:30. He'd apparently slept nearly twelve hours.
"Ugh..."
He hauled himself up to check how stiff his body was. Turns out, not very. His body felt surprisingly refreshed, and his mind was crystal clear.
"Well, no surprise there."
He had slept twelve hours, after all. Of course the fatigue was gone.
{How is it? Feels great, right?}
Yep. And now it feels disgusting again.
{That's just cruel. You slept well *because* of me, you know.}
Lee Jun brushed off Silhouette's remark without much thought. He honestly hadn't expected her to have such a function. Besides, whose fault was it that things got so unsettling yesterday?
{...}
She had nothing particular to say to that either, and fell silent as usual. A very convenient habit, he had to admit.
Just then, Seo Yoon came down the stairs from the second floor and met his eyes.
"Boss?"
"Ah, Seo Yoon."
"Don't tell me you slept on the sofa?"
She asked with a hint of surprise. To be fair, this was a first. There was rarely any reason for Lee Jun to sleep in the living room after coming home — his usual sleeping spots were his own bed, inside a gate, camping out in a dungeon, or a hospital bed. Comparatively speaking, the living room sofa was overwhelmingly the best of the lot. Gates, and gates, and gates...
Still, he could understand her concern. They'd been working together for months, and the way he'd been acting these past few days must have seemed strange enough. Normally he'd reassure her as her boss, but he still had things to finish by tomorrow — so he'd fudge it a little here.
"I guess I was a bit tired. But I feel a lot better after sleeping."
"Still..."
"Still, it'd be best to get more rest, right? We're heading to the Seoul Dungeon tomorrow."
"I think that would be wise, sir."
"Then I'll rest a bit longer and come down by lunch. Sorry, but you'll have to eat breakfast alone."
"Not a problem. Take your time and rest well."
With that, Lee Jun excused himself and went back upstairs. Right now there was something more important to him than breakfast — the things he had to finish before tomorrow's dungeon run.
{Have you finally realized you need to get stronger, thanks to me?}
What an insufferable thing to say.
{But it's true, isn't it?}
It was. His fight with Silhouette had been the first time since his regression that he'd come close to dying. He'd grown confident of victory partway through, sure — but when the stun rounds turned out far less effective than he'd expected, there'd been a moment where he genuinely wondered if a second death had come for him this quickly.
{Partway through? You were *sure*? Of victory?}
Obviously. After you read my memories, I could roughly tell you didn't much feel like killing me anymore.
{...Hmph.}
Of course, he'd read the situation intellectually, but that didn't mean he hadn't been scared. Lee Jun was human too. Getting hit hurts. Getting cut hurts. Getting sliced open anywhere hurts. And danger breeds fear. So yes, there had been anxiety about the unexpected — and things only went his way because it played out exactly as predicted until the very end. Otherwise, he might have actually died.
{And did that teach you something?}
You already know the answer. Why bother asking?
{I don't read your thoughts and emotions around the clock, you know. I only read them when I want to. It's not all automatic.}
How inconvenient for you.
{It truly is inconvenient. It's hard to tell whether I'm feeling something or you are. I still haven't fully digested your memories, and having to process all this on top of it is no joke.}
Well, if thoughts were shared nonstop with zero relief, that would basically be a curse — so he understood. In his case, Silhouette's emotions came through as faint impressions, while for her, everything seemed to come through far more intensely than expected. Not that it was his problem to worry about.
{Still so mean.}
Sorry, but I have to keep my guard up. Once you're embedded in my heart, I can't help worrying about things like who's holding the reins of my body.
{That will never, ever happen.}
Can't promise I know that. Honestly, neither do you — who knows what happens if the tension slips at the wrong moment?
{...}
At the end of the day, my own survival comes first. So don't take it too personally.
{...It's strange. When *you* say it, it's actually convincing.}
Of course it's convincing. I mean it.
He couldn't very well throw away a second chance he'd gone to such lengths to earn. And what he'd said to Silhouette wasn't just an excuse. He'd fought vastly stronger opponents dozens of times before — but never since the strange phenomenon of his regression. That fight had dragged his awareness back down to earth. Training the next generation mattered, yes, but he'd realized he needed to build his own strength too. That was the real reason he'd accepted Silhouette despite the enormous risk. And what he was about to do now was part of exactly that.
"What? Strengthening training?"
"Yep."
Lee Jun looked at the miniature Silhouette perched on his bed.
"Today we'll do two simple things."
"One's Styx. What's the other?"
As if she didn't know.
"You."
"Me?"
"Yep."
It wasn't the direction he'd planned on, but he had acquired Silhouette — a genuine hidden piece. Which meant, naturally, he had to put her to effective use.
"*Use* me. Rude much?"
"You've gotten so lax you've forgotten, apparently — we're in a master-servant relationship."
Lee Jun was master; Silhouette, servant. That was something she herself had sworn directly, through an oath upon mana.
"You decided that, so I have to abide by it, huh?"
"...Hmph."
Apparently displeased with the arrangement, she turned her head away in a sulk. Unfortunately, a head the size of a fist carried zero dramatic impact. If she'd been going for cuteness, she'd picked the wrong audience — and if she was aiming for any other emotion, well... what exactly was a fist-sized pout supposed to accomplish?
"You're genuinely just rude."
He ignored the complaint and thought through Silhouette's practical applications.
"Don't expect me to be what you saw inside that gate. You're far weaker now, right?"
"...Galling as it is, you're right. Fine, I'll admit what deserves admitting. The me of right now isn't even a tenth of what I was at my peak."
That was almost certainly true. Even Lee Jun, connected to her as he was, could feel it faintly. Not even a wisp of the power she'd flaunted inside the gate remained. "A tenth" was generous — it was honestly hard to imagine just how far she'd fallen.
"But even so, you're useful."
"Only because your body was already such a wreck to begin with."
"Exactly. Aside from being a little sturdier than average, my body is no different from an ordinary person's. So I need something — anything — to hold my own as a hunter."
...
Of the many abilities Silhouette had displayed, her illusions and disguises in particular were more than enough to create variables in a fight. On the utility side, too, if Lee Jun could wield those abilities at his own discretion, their value would be enormous. For a man lacking in raw combat power, it would be a tremendous boon.
Which was why Lee Jun needed her strength desperately. And she could not refuse him. She'd sworn it upon mana. The two of them were in the same boat now, like it or not.
"Ha... I've never been treated like this in my life, but fine. Have it your way."
She sighed and continued, planting both hands on her hips.
"First we're going to see how much of my power can actually reach you."
According to her, a contractor could theoretically use all of her abilities. Of course, that was under the assumption of a contract with an ordinary awakened person. For an irregular like Lee Jun...
"...How can you not manage a single ability...?"
...
Transformation. Bewitchment. Hallucination. Even something as basic as manipulating a shadow.
Lee Jun had failed at every last one of them.
"Is it because you have no mana? No, even so, this is just..."
Sensing something profoundly wrong, she'd given up the petite fairy form partway through and reverted to her ordinary human-sized silhouette. Now she crouched on the floor, muttering to herself.
"It's just... tragic, honestly?"
Her grim expression was a bonus.
...
"Sigh... Seriously. However I look at it, I picked the wrong master. With a body like this, I can't do anything at all."
Silhouette heaved yet another sigh.
Well, what could he say. That's what you get for being so hasty as to choose a man with no mana for a master.
"Forget these. Don't you have any other abilities?"
"Ha! Say it like that and it sounds like *I'm* the incompetent one!"
"A master's incompetence naturally becomes a servant's incompetence. Can't undo it now, so we just have to find whatever you *can* do."
"...How did I ever end up like this."
Silhouette lamented her fate, but the oath wasn't going to dissolve over a little grumbling. The best she could do was find what was possible in their current state. So Lee Jun changed his approach — rather than wielding her abilities directly himself, she would simply assist his combat to a reasonable degree.
"Could you manage that much?"
"Sure. That way I don't have to move mana around separately, so your wonderful constitution stops mattering."
"It does sound better, but... hm, actually, there is a decent method for that."
With that, she slowly changed form. The blackly shimmering shadow shrank and shrank until, before he knew it, a rough-hewn revolver lay before him.
"What's this. A revolver?"
{One of the weapons you used to carry. Given your current state, this is my limit.}
"...I can use any weapon, you know."
Saying that, Lee Jun picked up the gun anyway.
*Click.*
Grip: passable. It was remarkably close to the original it was modeled on. However—
*Sqeeze.*
{Hyahk—!}
"...?"
{C-could you handle me a little carefully?! Gently! Like you'd handle your actual weapons!}
"I *do* handle my weapons roughly. That's why I carry so many of them."
Some kind of sniffly, nasal squawk had come out of the gun. She still had sensation in this form?
*Squeeze. Click. Ziiiip.*
{Hey!}
"What?"
{D-don't do weird things with your hands!}
"Weird how? A Webley's a top-break revolver, so I was just miming a reload. Oh — does shell ejection work too?"
{...}
*Whoosh.*
In an instant, the shadow scattered and re-formed into her human silhouette. She glared at him, whites of her eyes showing, clearly miffed about something.
"...I'm not turning into a gun again."
"What? Why not?"
"Don't know. There's just... a thing about it."
She crossed her arms and glowered at him. He had no idea what her problem was this time, either.
"Well... now that I know you can turn into a weapon, that's definitely something. Let's check just how detailed you can get when we head out tomorrow."
All things considered, today's session had already yielded plenty. The Pocket was useful, but there was a vast difference between fishing a weapon out of storage and having one materialize in your hand the instant you needed it. And if a weapon produced this way could rival or exceed real equipment, Lee Jun's combat power was about to see a dramatic leap.
"Alright. That leaves one thing, then."
Saying so, Lee Jun drew a small gem from his Pocket.
Styx's Shard — the prize he'd won from his bet with the woman of the snowfield.
Now, he was going to absorb it.