Purple Eyes in Fukuoka
On the rooftop of the Republic of Korea Hunter Management Bureau. (It was the smoking area.)
Kang Ye-bin, with deep dark circles under her eyes, exhaled a cloud of mixberry e-liquid vapor instead of a sigh.
She had swiped the secondhand electronic cigarette that Kim Chun-gyu had bought from a gangster high-ranker for 70,000 won. It produced a massive amount of vapor.
"Hooowoo."
As the trusted subordinate of Kim Chun-gyu in Team 1 and the person in charge of trade, she had been pulling all-nighters for months now.
Delivering byproducts worth hundreds of millions from the harpy and chimera gates to unregistered hunters?
Or entrusting them to blacksmiths to review additional processing?
Necrophilia? Cartibes? The Hell Gate plan?
Of course, all those were reasons too,
but for Kang Ye-bin, it was this.
Japan was lobbying the International Hunter Federation to strengthen mana stone quality certification standards.
One couldn't deny that Japan possessed more advanced technology compared to Korea. Mana stones were no exception.
From purification, infusion, dynamization, extraction, to recycling.
This was another area where a hunter powerhouse demonstrated its competitiveness—no matter how skilled the high-rankers were, there were limits to boosting national power.
The problem was that if these standards were strengthened right away, Korea's trade lines would take a direct hit.
Japan had secured countries supporting the new certification standards, providing economic and technical support while relatively weakening Korea's position.
There might be no immediate visible damage, but if Korea's fundamental technological power wasn't bolstered, the future of mana stone imports and exports would strangle them like the birth rate. It would be too late for regrets later.
Moreover, at this point, high-level research integrating mana stones into various cutting-edge industries worldwide meant that failing to compete here could plant the seeds for Korea's fatal obsolescence.
"What should we do."
No answers after months of racking her brain.
Song Chi-woong from Team 2 approached the pondering Kang Ye-bin.
Her entry-year colleague at the bureau. Not an awakener, but a buzz-cut young man brimming with massive pride from recently achieving a 500kg three-lift total at the gym.
Song Chi-woong gazed at Kang Ye-bin's vape smoke and spoke in a voice dripping with melancholy.
"It's too... "
"?"
"Too easy..."
Team 2 was living the good life right now. With gate incidents pushing the world to extremes and exhaustion cases surging inside the bureau,
Korea was bizarrely peaceful. Work for regular hunters had drastically decreased.
Even Team 1 was seeing high-rankers dispatched overseas, lightening the workload a bit.
Of course, low- to mid-level gates kept popping up constantly, so it wasn't zero work, but mid-high to high-level ones had their burden cut to less than half since the unregistered got involved.
"The Unregistered is me. I am the Unregistered."
"Can't you just shut up?"
"Join us, Kang Ye-bin. You're a lost soul who has witnessed the divine and still wanders."
"......"
Just like public opinion at home, the Unregistered's standing inside the bureau was rising steadily. Thanks to the top-tier lake defense worldwide since his involvement.
"My mom was under the Yecheon harpy gate. Gotta bring her to Seoul soon. This calls for it."
Saying that, Song Chi-woong liked a BEST post on the fan cafe.
......It wasn't incomprehensible. However,
from Kang Ye-bin's perspective, it didn't sit right.
'The Unregistered is a hunter who could turn on us anytime.'
Why else would Director Baek Moon-seong and Team 1 Leader Kim Chun-gyu be running themselves ragged, sweating bullets to solidify cooperation with the Unregistered?
'When the cooperation ends and he turns away, can we respond?'
Kang Ye-bin, practically stationed in the situation room, remembered the chilling, otherworldly aura from the Unregistered's agent girl.
The darkness filling her robe seemed to warn that if their intentions didn't align, that blade tip could point at us anytime. Was that girl even human?
Anyway, he was an otherworldly being she'd racked her brain over to no avail. Better to handle the urgent documents piling up right in front of her.
"Hoo... fuck... may the Earth just end..."
Exhaling thick clouds of vape smoke, Kang Ye-bin ignored Song Chi-woong and headed back to the situation room.
The scenery inside the Hell Gate was nothing a child should see.
Some were grotesque lumps formed by haphazardly stitching together body parts from regular monsters.
Thud-thud—they were moving, so those seemed like unknown monsters too.
- Shiver. Shiver-shiver. Shiver.
She was trembling. Not me, of course—Jenny.
"Nothing much. Jenny, no need to be scared."
[Health Management] [Heart Rate Increase Alert]
[Health Management] [Heart Rate Increase Alert]
Nothing to freak out about. Just snipe them all dead, right?
"I'm not scared! I-I can do it!"
I had no idea what she meant to do, but I could tell she was scared.
"No airflow detected, yo...!"
Ollie was trying to pinpoint that spot using the ops room systems to the max, but it wasn't going well.
"This situation's more serious than I thought."
I wasn't certain, but I probably wasn't the first to see inside a Hell Gate.
Realizing the scale of Necrophilia's second plan killed any urge to laugh.
Reviewing the classified docs from the bureau.
It said, "Estimated to be five holy relics in existence."
One was the Jackal Mask. The one in Japan was the Reverse Cross.
For Cartibes, apostles offered blood, bone, flesh, soul, and shadow as sacrifices.
From that angle, the bureau's analysis was that the relics had conditions to fulfill to open the Hell Gate.
"Makes sense."
Then the relic analysis in Japan might be related. Since there was no Jackal Mask in Korea right now, the risk was lower.
Then Ollie brought good news.
"The Gimhae gate's airflow is weakening, yo!"
"Oh?"
Checking the analysis data on the big screen, the high-level Gimhae gate was dropping to mid-level values.
The relic transfer to Japan was having such a visible effect. And the projected emergence date was pushing further out.
"At this rate, it might not open at all, yo! Slim chance, but..." Anyway, per Ollie's analysis, Korea's gate crisis was vastly improving.
After declaring I'd handle national defense, I'd been worried about excessive combat risking my safety.
'Still, no room for complacency.'
Gates could pop anywhere, anytime. Even without Necrophilia, signs of doom were always lurking.
I tasked Ollie with ongoing ♠ monitoring and possible additional church investigations, then headed to the training ground with Jenny.
'Can't slack just because there's breathing room.'
Sleep induction, guidance, HUD. I needed to drill skills and gear not yet fully ingrained in my body.
With the training time, I bought one more thing.
Gold was overflowing, so no burden at all.
"With HUD too, let's try real long-range sniping from now on, Jenny."
"Yes! Captain! I'll train hard too!"
For a sniper, range was directly tied to life. The farther, the less chance of detection by enemies.
Thus, I decided to ramp up from 16x to 32x in the training ground.
.
.
.
Three days later,
Drenched in sweat from the training ground, I sat on the bed feeling utter exhaustion.
"......It's a whole other world."
"N-No, sir! You can definitely master it, Captain!"
Jenny bounced around cheering me on, and Ollie did his best to assist, but it wasn't easy.
Even with bipod and HUD help, 32x was a new realm. Excluding guidance skill shots, hit rate wasn't budging past 20%.
Up to 20-25x was manageable, but beyond that needed way more effort.
"Precise control is key, yo! The farther the distance, the tiniest breath difference shifts impact massively!"
"Yeah. True, but."
The gap between theory and body was the real issue. After days immersed in training except essentials like eating and sleeping, just seeing the scope and sights made me nauseous.
While I trained, the shelter advanced under Ollie and Jenny's bickering but diligent efforts.
First, research on my 'body barrier' was underway. Using gold efficiently, building a basic model—Jenny's idea included.
- Space magic could be cool if used right! Like... around the body... if something comes, space magic twists it this way or that...? Ah! Sorry! How dare I!
- Space distortion? Sounds tasty.
Thus, model-1 proceeded with distorting approaches from everything except me and allies.
- Not impossible, yo! Viewing space distortion as magic theory, it's beating gravity, and gravity itself is the only thing that can traverse space-time...
I didn't fully get it, but anyway.
As a basic model-1, it might not succeed. Still, their head-together, non-fighting research was adorable.
Such attempts would pay off unexpectedly later.
'Good.'
Not just that. Jenny had been knitting or something in her 'Jenny quarters,' making an Unregistered doll.
"I'll make it to hang on the sniper rifle like a keychain!!!" Apparently. Looked like just the head so far. No eyes, nose, mouth. Still cute.
Thus, I dragged my training-weary body off the bed.
"Gates should be popping soonish."
I even wanted real combat sniping for a mood refresh. 100% safe, of course.
Per Ollie's analysis, recent low- to mid-gates still gave no EXP.
Even after relic transfer, the effect lingered.
"How's the church going?"
"Uh... well..."
Ollie had been down lately. ♠ vanished days ago, church probes stalled.
Faint villain energy in a couple spots—scattered bases, but no peculiarities on-site.
'So that was the real church after all.'
Necrophilia evacuated without a trace—our conclusion. Tied to relic movement.
Next, relics.
Bureau intel: Jackal Mask in Fukuoka, Japan. Ollie was updating radar range,
covering Kyushu but low accuracy at distance—he'd been agonizing over fixes.
"Captain! Detailed analysis to Kyushu now possible, yo!"
Success at last.
"Let's see."
How the relic progress was going.
Then,
"Huh?" "Eh?" "What?"
All three of us felt bafflement.
Fukuoka, where relics were—like Jeju, ▲ lit up max-level. Probably the Reverse Cross there too. But the issue was,
♠ was in Fukuoka.
Japan - Fukuoka
"You've arrived!"
The Prime Minister reached the secret lab.
Tanaka Mitsuo, the Defense Minister already positioned with full protocol, reported on-site that the 'Korea Salvation Plan' was progressing smoothly.
Shamanism
Oni Eye / Oni Suppression / Spirit Guidance
Suzuki Hiroshi, the S-rank onmyoji, was blatantly deploying top-tier shamanism to analyze the Jackal Mask.
High-risk spells layered multiple times. B-rank holy hunters encircled, forming a ward to prevent spirit power leakage for any contingencies.
"So, you're saying relics are ultimately 'soul vessels'?"
"Yes. The bureau's current approach is fully understanding the soul absorption process in relics to reverse-apply it to the Reverse Cross and neutralize it."
Suzuki Hiroshi's devised method.
Relics absorbed ambient human souls to gather spirit power to a threshold. This much Suzuki achieved without Korea's Jackal Mask.
"Once the vessel fills with enough souls, the relic's power manifests, opening the Hell Gate. Think of it as offering sacrifices."
Now, pinpoint the exact soul absorption mechanism. 1-2 weeks needed.
Full grasp would neutralize the Reverse Cross completely. Suzuki's ingenuity.
If it lost essence, becoming an empty shell no longer a relic—that was 'destruction,' right?
And not just that?
Beyond destruction, relic-grade data would open new horizons for elevating Japan's artifacts, defense towers, and tech overall.
"......"
The Prime Minister, after inspecting to this point, closed his eyes briefly,
"......Heh heh."
Letting out his signature hollow chuckle. Tanaka knew it meant 'Perfect!'—the Prime Minister's most satisfied laugh.
"Our proud Self-Defense Forces, the Joint Chiefs will be pleased."
"...Thank you."
Tanaka hid his joy to avoid irking him. He followed the Prime Minister out, as if there was nothing more to see.
Mountains beyond the lab offered a spectacular view of Fukuoka.
"History repeats itself, Defense Minister."
The Prime Minister, hands behind back, lit a cigarette. As his chief secretary lit it, he spoke with a softened face.
"Kyushu. Especially folks in Fukuoka here—they treat those words as lifelong dreams."
"Yes."
Not hard to guess his intent. Fukuoka teemed with right-wing groups championing Japan's imperial and militaristic history.
The secret lab here, and onmyoji Suzuki Hiroshi being one of them, no doubt.
"Defense Minister. Can you 'save' Joseon?"
"......"
Tanaka unconsciously clenched his fists. Ecstasy surged. The Prime Minister's 'final approval' had dropped.
"I will destroy the relic and save crisis-stricken Joseon. Trust only me, Prime Minister."
Saying so, Tanaka personally lit the Prime Minister's second cigarette.
At that moment,
- Whiiiirrr...
A faint purple glow swirled in one eye of the Jackal Mask.