Misunderstanding
The next day.
Woojin met Sangjin in the lobby and immediately furrowed his brow. "……You alive over there?"
On the sofa, Sangjin was slumped like a corpse with its soul ripped clean out. He looked gaunt and utterly spent, yet for some reason there was a lazy, blissed-out smile lingering at the corners of his mouth, the kind worn only by someone who had clearly touched paradise and come back for more.
By contrast, the two maids standing on either side of him, Eroa and Lumi, looked even more polished and radiant than they had yesterday. Their skin practically gleamed, and they seemed to be brimming with vitality.
What the hell did these guys do all night?
"Fufufu, good morning, Woojin-sama."
Eroa greeted him with a sultry smile.
Lumi, her pale skin almost shining, bowed brightly as well. "Good morning, Master Brother!"
Are these undead? Or succubi?
Woojin clicked his tongue as he looked Sangjin up and down, then his gaze stopped on the unfamiliar girl standing beside him.
"……So you actually summoned her after all?"
At that, Sangjin's eyes snapped open.
He staggered upright, then answered in a voice swollen with pride. "Y-yeah, hyung…… I thought I was gonna die all night. I only pulled it off because Eroa and Lumi kept helping me. Hyung, I really owe you a bow."
No sooner had he said it than Sangjin dropped to the floor and slammed his forehead down in a deep prostration.
"What are you doing?" Woojin asked.
"Showing respect."
The moment Sangjin began to bow again, Woojin's foot shot out and planted itself squarely on his rear.
WHACK—!
"What the hell are you trying to bow twice for, you little asshole?"
"Ow! It's a Ming-dynasty style bow! Emperors get five bows!"
"I'm Korean, you piece of crap."
Having turned into a necromancer and climbed past level 40, Sangjin didn't even flinch at Woojin's spicy kick.
He simply brushed off his butt and grinned like an idiot, which somehow made it worse.
"Either way, to me, hyung is greater than any emperor! Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years! Ten thousand times ten thousand years! O great Kim Woojin the Enhancer!!"
"You're hopeless…… Anyway, who the hell is she?"
Woojin jerked his chin toward the girl standing behind Sangjin.
Silver hair. Red eyes.
She had skin so pale it was almost translucent, and she was staring at Woojin with a sulky expression. Like Eroa and Lumi, she was dressed in a revealing maid outfit, but there was a strange pressure to her, a cool indifference that somehow made her seem even more formidable.
She stepped in front of Woojin and said flatly, "No matter how much you are the Master's older brother, I think kicking the Master's butt like that was too much. Yurine objects on behalf of the Master's honor."
Woojin's head started to ache. Just where in the world had Sangjin dug up another headache like this?
"Sangjin. Introduce her."
Sangjin wrapped an arm proudly around Yurine's shoulders and shoved her toward Woojin as if unveiling a prize. "This, ladies and gentlemen, is the embodiment of tsundere itself, the silver-haired, red-eyed Yurine! As you can see, her personality is all prickles! She never says what she means, and her tone is always stiff and blunt! But her loyalty and affection toward me are no less than the other two's……!!"
"Okay, that's enough. I don't need to hear the rest."
Woojin cut him off without mercy.
Then, studying Yurine's youthful face, he asked cautiously, "But Sangjin. Let me ask one thing. This girl…… she's not a minor, right? Don't make me have to report my own family."
As if deeply wronged, Sangjin shouted, "Hyung! I may be a pervert, but I still obey the law! Yurine, tell my brother how old you are, right now!"
Yurine tilted her head and looked at Woojin. "Yurine is 548 years old this year. I do not believe that violates the Constitution of the Republic of Korea."
Woojin was left speechless.
Sangjin, meanwhile, let out a triumphant cry and started dancing in place. "Kwahahahaha!! See? She may look like this, but she's a legal lo—"
Woojin calmly clapped a hand over Sangjin's mouth.
If he let that sentence continue, he had a feeling someone was going to die, and family ties would be the least of it.
"Just shut up…… Fine, Yurine. Nice to meet you. Take good care of my little brother."
Yurine averted her eyes from Woojin's gaze and gave a small nod. "Understood…… I will protect him with my life, since it is the Master's brother's command. However, please refrain from hitting the Master."
"…Sure. I'll try. Sangjin, you get ready to move too. The terrain in Myanmar is rough, so don't let your guard down. Got it?"
"Yeah, hyung too. Gabi's there, so I'm not worried. Gabi! Take care of Dad for me!"
Gabi beamed brightly. "Don't worry! Uncle! If Gabi's here, nobody can touch Appa!"
"Hahaha! That's our girl! So dependable!?"
The two brothers extended their fists and bumped them once, a simple gesture of trust that needed no more words.
As Woojin's footsteps faded away, only Sangjin and the three maids remained in the lobby.
The foolish, slack-jawed smile Sangjin had been wearing in front of Woojin vanished in an instant. A cold necromancer's glint settled in his eyes.
Slowly, Sangjin turned to look at Yurine.
Yurine flinched at the sudden change in her master's aura and lowered her head.
"Yurine."
Sangjin's voice was low, very low.
"If you interrupt me and my brother talking like that one more time…… I'll unsummon you on the spot."
Yurine's eyes went wide.
Eroa and Lumi, standing nearby, even held their breath.
Normally he was the kind of master who got dragged around by his maids, a little soft around the edges—but when it came to anything involving his brother, Sangjin was more ruthless than anyone else.
"Be more respectful to my brother than you are to me. Understand? That goes for all of you. I may be your master, but the one who made me is my brother. In other words, your very origin traces back to him."
Sangjin's overwhelming pressure bore down on the entire lobby.
The lethal authority of the one commanding six hundred thousand undead spilled out of him.
"Understand? Eroa, Lumi, Yurine."
Eroa dropped to one knee first. "……Understood, Sangjin-sama. I will keep that in mind."
"Ah, okayyyyy, Master. Lumi will listen properly too……"
Lumi trembled as she lowered her head.
Yurine bit her lip, tears welling in her eyes.
Tsundere or not, the Sangjin standing before her now looked as though he might genuinely erase her from existence.
"S-sorry…… Won't happen again. I will be as respectful as possible toward Kim Woojin……"
Only then did Sangjin's expression soften back into its usual languid state.
He stretched with visible satisfaction.
"Good. Then let's get going too. I hear there are corpses scattered all over the Myanmar jungle? I'll make them all mine."
Laughing boisterously, Sangjin strode out of the hotel.
Woojin heard every last bit of that laughter clearly.
A faint smile touched his mouth.
This punk…… that actually kind of moved me. He really has grown up, hasn't he?
At the same time, on the border between Cambodia and Laos, a massive modern fortress stood deep within the dense jungle. It was the headquarters of the Awakened criminal organization Prasup.
Inside the lavish office at the center of the fortress, a man sat with his legs crossed, staring at a tablet with arrogant ease.
His name was Wichit. A Thai Awakener, and once one of the legendary survivors who had endured all the way to year nine in Unliworld, he had clawed his way back into reality after dying there by a hair's breadth. But the murder techniques and survival instincts he had sharpened in that hellscape were just as sharp here.
He had killed Prasup's original leader with a single stroke, severing his head clean off, and then seized control of the organization through sheer, overwhelming force.
"Heh-heh-heh, looks like a windfall just dropped into my lap."
Wichit smiled a slimy smile as he tapped Woojin's face on the satellite feed with one finger.
"What are you talking about, boss? Isn't that the guy who's been blowing up lately? The so-called Goblin Dad?"
One of his underlings, busy rolling drugs beside him, asked in confusion.
Wichit took a drag from his pipe and blew out a long stream of smoke.
"You idiot. Goblin Dad? A summoner? Heh-heh. That guy isn't one of those."
"Then what is he?"
"An Enhancer. A bastard with a very damn useful ability to raise the value of objects. In Unliworld, maybe that wouldn't have meant much. But in the real world? That's an incredible power. A guy like that walks into my territory on his own two feet, and you think I'm just going to let him leave?"
The underling's face went pale.
"B-but boss. You saw the news, didn't you? Those goblins of his are no joke…… They turned a tank into a goblin and crushed the Thai army!"
Wichit barked out a laugh and smacked the back of the man's head.
"You brainless bastard…… That's why you're still nowhere near my level. You think you could use summoning powers like that without any limits?"
Greed gleamed in Wichit's eyes.
"Besides, have you ever seen that guy fight personally?"
"Uh, no."
"Exactly. I don't know how he got his summoning ability, but a summoner's biggest weakness is that the body itself is as fragile as paper."
Wichit jabbed a finger at the map and issued the order. "We're going to wait until the bastard crosses into Cambodia. The moment his summons are busy wrestling monsters, we'll move in and kidnap the body ourselves. Don't kill him. That guy's going to become our organization's eternal goose that lays golden eggs. We'll keep him alive, force him to spend his whole life enhancing our weapons, and let him die of old age. Kwahahahahaha!!"
Wichit's arrogant laughter thundered through the office.
Woojin stepped out of the hotel lobby with Gabi's hand in his and found Catherine already waiting beside the armored vehicle with the door open.
"Woojin-nim, are we departing?"
"Yeah, let's go. Destination's the Cambodian border."
After all, the goblins were handling the monster extermination on their own.
All Woojin had to do was ride along with Catherine and Gabi.
"Right, wait a second. Didn't you hit level 40 too, noona?"
Because Woojin and Sangjin had butchered the enemy forces with overwhelming numbers, Catherine and Kim Chulsoo, together with the goblins and undead, had been able to loot the gate boss almost uncontested and rake in absurd amounts of experience.
Even though she had hunted comparatively few monsters, she had still reached level 40.
"Yes. The second awakening quest appeared."
"Oh? What is it?"
Catherine answered with her usual calm. "It says I have to land a hundred sniper headshots from one kilometer away."
"Huh? That's not as hard as I expected."
With Catherine's skill, a kilometer-long sniper shot would be difficult, sure, but not impossible.
Then Catherine gave a small snort and added one more line.
"With a pistol."
Woojin stared at her. "Ah…… what the hell……"
"Heh. Well, I suppose I'll have to manage somehow."
"I'll help as much as I can."
"That's reassuring, Woojin-nim."
And so the vehicle carrying Woojin, Catherine, and Gabi rolled out of Bangkok and onto the road.