The Big Hand (2)
“Mi… crazy…”
Ram’s pupils trembled violently.
This wasn’t some minor accident.
It was a full-blown catastrophe.
“K-Kang Hae-il… he just let that guy go?!”
“It looks more like the guy let Kang Hae-il go, though…”
Not only had their target been stolen, they had also released him.
Worse, they had been humiliated by him.
“He… he got slowed. At this rate, the Constellations are going to start seeing Julian as the stronger one…”
Sam trembled beside her.
They could always redo the debut stage, but this development was spilled water—impossible to scoop back up.
[Constellation 1 has left]
[Constellation 1 has left]
This was the exit bell the Constellations were ringing.
Constellations were leaving in droves.
The exit bell kept ringing.
This was the result of a single “Slow.”
Having been chewed out by Constellations countless times before, Moon Junil knew exactly what they hated most.
They had messed with the wrong person.
Ram muttered, her soul seemingly leaving her body.
“We’re… done for…”
The Constellations’ exit bells dealt a fatal blow to a Story Fairy’s very existence.
“This is the worst. I… I’m finished…”
Ram’s condition was deteriorating fast.
Her limbs shook. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the monitor.
Yet she did nothing.
She simply watched as countless Constellations hurled insults.
These texts weren’t mere words.
To a Story Fairy, they were physical attacks that denied their very existence in this world.
“Ugh… ughhh…”
Ram’s eyes were slowly turning black.
The light in her wings was fading. Dark energy swirled around her.
Sam flinched in alarm.
This was an emergency.
“Snap out of it, Lady Ram!”
Smack!
Sam slapped her across the cheek.
“Huh…? Huh…? Wh-what?”
Ram finally seemed to regain her senses and looked around.
“You can’t get too close to the Constellations. You were staring too long! If you keep that up, you’ll… you’ll turn black!”
Turning black.
It was a state Story Fairies feared almost as much as being forced to stop writing.
There were stories of fairies whose souls had been torn apart by repeated exit bells, turning black, only to drop a meteor on their own story after spending all their currency and receiving a permanent ban.
Terrifying tales.
“N… no!”
Whoosh whoosh!
Ram shook her head furiously, tearing her gaze from the monitor.
“Lady Ram, are you all right?”
“Y-yeah… haa… I didn’t realize… I was staring too long…”
This was why assistants existed.
The master of a story board had the weakest resistance to the Constellations’ power.
That was why it was better for the assistant to monitor their reactions instead.
Otherwise, they risked being swept up by the Constellations’ energy, just like moments ago.
“Lady Ram, it’s not over yet. The total number of Constellations in our story board is still rising!”
“…Right. That’s true.”
Ram’s voice lacked strength.
“And once Hae-il started rescuing people, the reactions improved again. Some Constellations were just uncomfortable, Lady Ram.”
In truth, quite a few Constellations had been uncomfortable.
Only some had pressed the exit bell so far.
Both Sam and Ram knew this, of course.
They simply had to move past it.
“R… right.”
“There’s a saying in this dimension: ‘All roads lead to Seoul.’”
“Really? So that’s why Julian was so desperate to buy an apartment in Seoul?”
“Seems like it.”
“But?”
“Ah, what that saying means is…”
Sam tapped a corner of the monitor screen.
On the rooftop, someone was filming the scene with a large camera.
“Look here. While Hae-il rescues people, he’ll end up getting even more attention. The savior of this incident won’t be Sagosul—it’ll be Kang Hae-il.”
“…N-no way. They even deployed a tow truck?!”
“I-it’s not a tow truck, it’s a reporter!”
“R… right?”
Ram flipped through a dictionary again.
“What’s the difference?”
“……”
Sam couldn’t explain.
“W-well, ‘reporter’ is a narrower term. ‘Tow truck’ has a broader meaning.”
“I see.”
Ram nodded in understanding and grabbed Sam’s cheeks, shaking them.
“Anyway, you deployed a reporter! As expected of a capable assistant! Sam-Sam!”
Stretch.
Her cheeks stretched out.
“Th… this will spread everywhere. It’ll make it clear who the real hero is.”
Poof!
Ram flew upward again, wings fluttering excitedly as she laughed.
“Kiriri! If only there were articles saying Sagosul killed people too!”
“Th-that’s…”
Even Sam couldn’t be sure about that.
Wouldn’t it be better if the Sagosul story never spread at all?
‘I just don’t want to get involved somehow.’
It would be nice if such articles came out, as Ram said, but Sam felt uneasy.
“Do it! Drown him completely! Isn’t that what tow trucks specialize in? This won’t even cost much coin!”
That was true.
Guiding the actions of extras the Constellations weren’t interested in didn’t consume much coin.
“Sh… should we?”
* * *
“Whoa… wh-what was that fight just now?”
Click!
The reporter captured the scene of raging flames and thick smoke rising.
She also caught the man landing again amid the smoke, right where the goblins were swarming.
Click! Click!
It was the very image of a hero from behind.
“But why did those two fight?”
The reporter could zoom in from afar, but she couldn’t hear anything.
She had no idea why the two Awakened on the rooftop had fought.
What mattered was that, to her eyes, the man wielding flames had the flashier skill.
“Discovering anyone A-rank or higher is guaranteed front-page news.”
The whole world was on edge about the Awakened.
Articles were already flooding out, tailored to Korean tastes—S-rank is Hermes, A-rank is Chanel, and so on.
But none of them had ever published a photo of a real A-rank or higher Awakened.
“Because it’s dangerous.”
Those Awakened were usually fighting hordes of goblins.
They were in dangerous places.
Reporters didn’t have the courage to go there themselves.
Considering how many people had died to goblins during the tutorial, it was only natural.
Just within the company, over a dozen colleagues had already held funerals.
But the reporter Do Juhye was different.
[Potential Grade: D]
[Class: Rogue]
She was a D-rank Awakened.
A rogue.
Her movements were far more agile than other classes, and she excelled at concealment and cover.
It was an instinct imprinted the moment she awakened her class.
Perhaps it was perfect for a reporter chasing scoops.
She shifted position on the rooftop, continuously zooming in on Kang Hae-il’s back.
He was sweeping goblins away with flames in an instant, opening paths for the residents.
Other Awakened were also advancing rapidly thanks to his support.
“Whoa…”
Boom!
Crash!
She kept capturing Kang Hae-il smashing through obstacles with his blazing fists.
Her shutter clicked nonstop.
‘But…’
Even amid the frenzy, something bothered her.
‘What the hell is that guy doing?’
He had seemed strong enough to fight the flame man on equal footing.
So why wasn’t he helping with the rescue at all?
* * *
Meanwhile, Moon Junil, who had gone up to the rooftop.
He was staring intently at something.
He squinted, tilted his head, trying to make it out.
Hidden Quest
📍 Objective: Rescue the VIP
🎁 Details: @($)@(*)!)!(#*##
🎁 Details: *@$아38@()
A quest window.
No matter how he angled it, he couldn’t see it clearly.
‘To level up, I need to do this quest…’
He had to reach level 10 just to survive.
So he was in a hurry.
Level 1 goblins were useless for that.
He needed to clear the quest.
‘Can’t see it properly.’
It was invisible.
‘Hmm…’
Nothing was visible.
Only the objective was clear.
Rescue the VIP.
‘Who the hell is the VIP?’
VIP.
Very Important Person.
‘Who exactly?’
There were no hints at all.
And he couldn’t ask the Constellations either.
Even they didn’t know about the hidden quest.
So Moon Junil probably looked strange and frustrating right now.
[Current Viewing Constellations: 198]
The number had dropped a bit.
But he couldn’t rush just because a few left.
‘An important person…’
Moon Junil slowly repeated the words.
‘The rest is mosaicked out, but only this part is visible… Maybe that means I can figure it out from just this?’
Whether by coincidence or not, only the objective was clearly visible.
Perhaps that alone was enough to complete the quest.
Of course, it could just be a broadcast error.
But Moon Junil couldn’t ignore this clearly marked hidden quest window.
‘Rescue… important…’
Rescue an important person.
That was the quest.
‘Huh?’
Suddenly, a memory from his first life flashed through his mind.
When he had gone to rescue people kidnapped into a goblin den.
「Let the children out first.」
Tou, the martial artist, had said that while striking a pose.
「They are the most important asset.」
Children were the most important.
“Huh…?”
Something clicked in his head.
‘Important…? Children?’
Black mage.
VIP.
Children.
Sacrifice.
Those keywords rearranged themselves in his mind in an instant.
‘This bastard…’
Moon Junil’s eyes turned to the corpse of the man with a gaping hole in his chest.
‘Did he kidnap kids?’
His gaze swept across the rooftop in an instant.
‘Not here.’
It wouldn’t be somewhere this obvious.
Probably a place he could control while being hard for others to access.
A place goblins had guarded so densely that no one dared approach.
‘The first floor of this building?’
No, it was the basement of this villa.
The goblins had gathered around this villa as their center.
They hadn’t just been pulling aggro—they had also been acting as guards protecting the sacrifice.
‘No way. Are they still alive?’
Bang!
Moon Junil raced down the stairs in an instant.
Ah, right.
The Constellations didn’t know what was happening.
“Doesn’t black magic… require sacrifices or something?”
He delivered the line as he ran down, pretending he still didn’t know.
Bang!
After reaching the bottom, he smashed through the door of a first-floor unit and entered.
“……”
No one was there.
Everyone had evacuated.
Units 1 and 2 were empty.
“Where the hell is it?”
One of the Constellations muttered.
‘So that’s it.’
It wasn’t the first floor.
‘There was a basement too.’
Moon Junil left the first-floor unit and headed underground.
Crash!
He smashed the door open and entered.
Far behind him, someone on the rooftop zoomed in with a camera.
Whirr.
* * *
‘That guy’s suspicious.’
Reporter Do Juhye.
She had gone up to the rooftop and was zooming in hard.
The camera screen showed Moon Junil’s back.
He was heading into the villa basement.
Smashing doors roughly as he entered.
‘What is he doing?’
It looked like some kind of search operation.
Yet his movements were so natural and skilled, as if he had been in a special forces unit.
Water flowing from one door to the next, checking each one.
‘The flame guy seemed like he couldn’t control his firepower well… but this guy’s completely different.’
Her reporter’s instincts told her.
The man who had gone into the basement knew exactly what he was doing.
He looked like someone who did this kind of thing almost every day.
‘A firefighter?’
She had that random thought because of the fight with the fireball earlier.
‘Huh?!’
Do Juhye’s eyes widened enormously.
“Waaah!”
“Ugh… sob…”
People coming out after the basement door opened.
Crying.
‘Kids?’
They were children.
The man who had just entered was leading them out.
The kids still had heavy chains dangling from their hands, as if they had been tied up somewhere.
Click!
She pressed the shutter quickly.
‘No way. This is…’
A masked man leading out countless children.
Click!
As they entered the camera frame.
‘This is a massive scoop.’
It was the very image of a hero.