Chapter 55
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 55
“……”
“Hmm? What is it?”
“…Hey, brother.”
“Yeah?”
“What is that?”
At Cha Ah-ra’s question, her older brother, Cha Eun-hyeok, tilted his head.
“…A gem?”
“No, I can tell it’s a gem. I’m asking how you got it.”
“Ah, that…”
“Brother.”
He looked like he was about to make an excuse, but Cha Ah-ra had no patience for long-winded explanations.
“Look at this.”
“…It’s a gem.”
“I got it as a gift from some humanoid monster.”
“……”
The eldest, Cha Eun-hyeok, silently pressed a hand to his forehead. The youngest, Cha Yi-sol, dropped his spoon.
Letting out a long, deep sigh, Cha Eun-hyeok spoke.
“…I’m sorry. I was about to lie. Let’s sit down and talk this through, step-by-step. No more bullshit.”
This happened two days before the youngest’s initiation ceremony.
* * *
“Ah, so…” Cha Eun-hyeok, the eldest of the Cha family, nodded slowly. “That’s where you got that ‘insurance money’ you brought home.”
“Yeah. The Collector Guild gave it to me as damage compensation.”
“Thanks to you, we could afford the youngest’s priest robes, but why are you only telling me this now?”
“Because I had no intention of telling you in the first place, dammit.”
“Do you really find us that untrustworthy?”
“Please. You guys are just ordinary citizens who’d bruise if I so much as breathed on you too hard.”
Cha Ah-ra grumbled sharply. It wasn’t that she was particularly angry or hurt; her default mode was that of a highly defensive wildcat, a fact she herself was oblivious to.
Since she was talking to her family, her expression softened slightly as she continued.
“I didn’t plan on saying anything. The youngest awakened a class, but who knows when he’ll actually get ‘chosen’? He’s a non-combatant… more like an office worker than someone in the field. And you’re a complete civilian.”
“That’s true.”
“The Collector Guild didn’t seem to want me talking about it, either. I’m only running my mouth now because I have to, but it felt like a top-secret matter.”
“For something like that, isn’t it weird they didn’t make you sign a non-disclosure agreement?”
“That part was strange. The vibe was more like, ‘We’d prefer you didn’t talk about it, but it’ll get out eventually anyway, so if you’re itching to blab, go ahead and try…’ It seems even giant corporations can be pretty sloppy.”
“What are you even talking about?” Cha Eun-hyeok pressed his throbbing temples.
“And in the middle of all that, you saw me with that… that gem, so you decided to spill?”
“They said there’s only one gem in the world with that crystal structure. So what else could it be? You’ve already met that monster, too. I figured there was no point in hiding it anymore, so I confessed.”
“The youngest is listening, you know.”
“What, you want to leave him out? Don’t you dare make him feel excluded.”
“No, that’s not what I meant…” Cha Eun-hyeok started to say, but then just nodded. “Yi-sol.”
“Yeah, Hyung?”
“You can’t go around talking about this to anyone, okay?”
“I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“I’m not sure if I should be worried that you’re already good at that, but… good job. If we slip up, your brother and sister might get dragged off to some massive guild in Seoul to live as test subjects.”
“Then I definitely won’t say a word!”
“Attaboy.”
Watching the youngest flash a cheerful thumbs-up as her older brother praised him, Cha Ah-ra briefly reflected on her life. What sins did we commit in our past lives to end up as a family of such idiots?
I have to protect them.
Unaware that every member of the family viewed the others as someone to be protected, Cha Ah-ra poked at her rice and mumbled, “Ah, food just doesn’t taste the same anymore…”
“You get dragged off by a monster, eat a seven-course royal spread, and come back with a ruined palate. Look at our youngest, eating so well without being picky. How precious.”
“That is so fucking unfair! When have I ever been a picky eater? And he’s my little brother, too! Why aren’t I precious? I was the one who rolled around in the dirt to bring home that insurance money!”
“It helped our finances, sure, but you should have realized it also crushed my self-esteem. I’d rather scrape by on water and grass than live off your insurance money.”
“You soft-hearted idiot! Are you going to let our youngest starve? Does money fall from the sky just because you’re a nice guy? Is our late grandfather going to pop down from the afterlife and give you the winning lottery numbers?”
“Like you’re one to talk. Cut the crap.”
The Cha family had been soft touches for generations. Neither of them was in a position to judge the other. Cha Eun-hyeok and Cha Ah-ra worried that the youngest, Cha Yi-sol, would get scammed somewhere, but considering Cha Ah-ra was only slightly less naive than him, and Cha Eun-hyeok was only a tiny bit shrewder than her, it was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
“And didn’t you give the scarf the youngest knitted for you to a complete stranger?”
“The guy looked like he was about to freeze to death, for fuck’s sake! Was I supposed to just watch?! What are you, a psychopath?!”
“Then you should have just huddled together like penguins to save money, Hunter Cha Ah-ra! That would have been much more economical!”
“Why the hell would I huddle up with a complete stranger? That’s disgusting! Stop talking out of your ass!”
“Oh, but you had no problem giving away the scarf your little brother knitted to a complete stranger, did you?!”
Watching his two older siblings bicker, the youngest, Cha Yi-sol, simply shoveled down his white rice, enjoying the taste for the first time in a long while.
“This is really delicious.”
“Your brother made that.”
“I brewed the vegetable broth.”
“Yeah, it’s delicious! It’s amazing!”
At the sight of their youngest innocently holding up two thumbs, the two breadwinners found their strength renewed and put an end to their pointless argument.
“Once our youngest enters the dormitory, we won’t be able to see his face often, will we?”
“Probably not.”
“Cha Yi-sol, aren’t you going to miss your sister already?”
“I’m looking at you right now, Noona.”
“Fuck, I can’t get through to him.”
Cha Eun-hyeok scolded his sister. “Don’t swear in front of the youngest.”
“Once the youngest goes to the dormitory, I’ll be the youngest.”
“Did meeting that monster put a hole in your brain? The second child is always the second child, and the youngest is always the youngest.”
“Let’s fight.”
Amidst the unfolding chaos, the youngest, Cha Yi-sol, just kept eating.
Hehe.
The white rice he hadn’t had in a while tasted wonderful. It seemed the monster his sister had met was a very kind one.
* * *
Stepping outside for a moment, Cha Eun-hyeok fell into deep thought.
…The person I saw that day was a monster?
It had been strange from the very beginning.
Well, when I first met him at dawn, I also thought he was… some kind of monster.
In the pitch-black, deserted morning, the man who had appeared wrapped entirely in a black cloak did not look human at all.
He carried an aura so similar to those phantom-like things only I can see. I assumed he was one of them.
But he was visible to others, not just Cha Eun-hyeok. Though he was excessively blunt, that could just be his personality. The sense of incongruity Eun-hyeok had felt was dismissed as merely the holy power of a devout believer.
“……”
But what if he really was just a humanoid monster?
“…Still, that doesn’t make sense, does it?”
Something was off.
I’ve seen monsters before, too.
In this world, there were monsters you encountered simply by existing, not just ones inside dungeons. Even if they were weak enough for ordinary citizens to handle, their ferocity was the same. Although Cha Eun-hyeok was a civilian and not a Hunter, he had hunted monsters before. He knew the energy radiating from them was entirely different from the energy of the Black Cloak.
That wasn’t the energy of a monster.
Sitting in the yard, Cha Eun-hyeok looked up at the darkening sky.
“……”
He could see it—a massive, pitch-black, snake-like creature slithering sluggishly through the dark clouds. It had human limbs, its movements slow and gigantic.
…He was definitely like one of those things.
He couldn’t figure out the Black Cloak’s true identity.
Objectively, it makes the most sense to view him as a humanoid monster. They said he even has his own personal dungeon. But his energy is bizarre… and to call him that kind of monster… he’s just too…
He acted too much like a human.
It’s like a hodgepodge of all sorts of things.
He seemed like a monster, yet also like the phantoms only visible to Eun-hyeok’s eyes, and a little bit like a human. Because so many different traits were present at once, it actually felt more natural, as if the Black Cloak himself was the origin of everything.
“…What nonsense.”
If he were the origin from which monsters, phantoms, and humans were derived, he would be no different from a god.
No, even a god would find that difficult. From what he had gathered about the youngest’s situation, the beings called gods weren’t nearly as omnipotent as one might think. In that sense, should the Black Cloak that Cha Ah-ra and I saw be considered an existence of a higher class than the gods the priests worship?
But…
“……”
Thinking about it that way…
“Mmm…”
…the holy power he had felt last time still bothered him.
No matter how much of an ordinary citizen he was, his varied experiences meant there was no way Cha Eun-hyeok couldn’t recognize a god’s holy power. That was definitely the energy of a god. It was distinct from the other energies he had felt from the Black Cloak.
…Considering how warm it was, it must have been related to the sun or fire.
Since there was a Temple of the Sun nearby, he had assumed the man was a believer of the Sun Cult. It was impossible for someone with the Tamer class to also have the Priest class, so he’d figured the man had obtained holy power through sheer devotion.
But if he was neither a believer nor a human, what on earth was that energy?
The energy of a god…
There was no way a mere monster could possess such a thing, right?
“……”
The more he thought about it, the more Cha Eun-hyeok felt this wasn’t a topic he was equipped to ponder.
“…At the very least, it’s certain he’s no simple monster. Even the Collector Guild only confirmed that he wasn’t human.”
A monster capable of wielding a god’s energy could no longer be called a monster.
If I had to choose the most plausible explanation, it would be those creatures I see. I might know a lot about monsters and humans within the bounds of common sense, but I know very little about those ‘creatures.’ Perhaps one of them is capable of using a god’s energy.
Though I’ve never seen one before.
A creature with such good manners, at that. Even if he was just a humanoid monster, he had personally picked up his lost little sister, fed her, and sent her home, making him an incredibly benevolent entity.
But if I think about it this way, he might be an existence even higher than the gods of Earth. The Black Cloak I saw that day harbored the energy of a god, but a god cannot harbor the energy of the Black Cloak…
He cut that train of thought short. It was a waste of energy.
“…There’s no point in pondering his identity any further. I won’t be able to figure it out anyway.”
Instead, Cha Eun-hyeok turned his thoughts to the future.
“Ah-ra said she even went to his dungeon.”
While Cha Ah-ra openly treated the man in the black cloak as a monster, for some reason, Cha Eun-hyeok found himself referring to him as a ‘person.’ It was a distinction he hadn’t even realized he was making.
“Does that mean we might cross paths again someday?”
For one, Cha Eun-hyeok had invited him to the initiation ceremony. Now that the date was set, the probability of meeting him again was high.
He seemed quite interested, so I don’t think he’ll skip it.
Although the misunderstanding of him being a believer of the Sun God was gone, he was still someone who wielded holy power akin to the sun. They would surely run into each other at the ceremony.
“…I just hope I didn’t invite an incredibly dangerous entity.”
After a night spent lost in such worries, the next morning arrived.
“……”
“……”
Cha Eun-hyeok felt momentarily dizzy.
“…Hello.”
“Yes, hello.”
The Cha family, who had traveled to Seoul together for the first time in their lives, had run into none other than Gio.
The bizarre man wrapped in a pitch-black cloak.
“It has been a while,” he said, his greeting calm and casual.
I knew there was a high chance of this, but I didn’t expect to meet him again this quickly.
The Black Cloak, whom he met again, still exuded that same bizarre atmosphere. It wasn’t for nothing that Cha Eun-hyeok’s first thought upon meeting him had been, This thing isn’t human.
Meanwhile, the white-haired man standing beside the Black Cloak also greeted them.
“Good to see you again. Did the whole family come up together?”
“What? You and Mr. Yoo Seong-un know each other, brother?”
“We ran into each other occasionally while I was selling bungeoppang.”
“Ah, bungeoppang…” Nodding, Cha Ah-ra soon turned her gaze to the Black Cloak. It was a subtle, calculating look.
“……”
“Is there a problem?”
“…I’ll buy you some bungeoppang later, too.”
Cha Eun-hyeok wondered if his sister had finally lost her mind. To openly offer to buy bungeoppang for such an intimidating opponent… Of course, the Black Cloak had bought bungeoppang from him before, but that must have just been part of some social experiment…
Yet, surprisingly, the Black Cloak accepted readily.
“I’m not sure why, but thank you.”
“Uh… yes.”
He likes bungeoppang? Is he… more down-to-earth than I thought?
But with that kind of aura?
He looks like he’s about to send a sinner to the gallows for judgment.
The Black Cloak was an existence surrounded by a conspicuous air. Perhaps because of the pitch-black cloak, he looked like an evil spirit or a grim reaper. He resembled a ghost more than a human—somewhat ominous, chilly, and empty. He was as beautiful as a finely crafted ornament, yet at the same time, he evoked a bizarre, grotesque sensation.
And Cha Eun-hyeok wasn’t the only one who felt this. Looking around, he saw the gazes of commuters occasionally locking onto the Black Cloak before quickly looking away.
“Don’t pay it too much mind,” Yoo Seong-un said quietly.
“…Ah, yes.”
“He’s always had that kind of vibe.”
“I see.”
At Yoo Seong-un’s words, Cha Eun-hyeok felt a strange anxiety bloom in his chest.
It’s the youngest’s initiation ceremony today.
Will this really end well…?