The Guild Members Are Obsessed with the Intern
I instinctively knew the moment I heard that voice.
“Soso isn’t you.”
Just hearing that voice was enough to drag me in, its sticky, honeyed tone wrapping around my senses like warm syrup. The dangerous energy radiating from the body pressed against mine was impossible to ignore.
It had to be her. Two years ago. The Blood Demon who had stepped between me and death during the Tragedy of Eins, shielding me from the collapsing mana heart that had shattered my life.
“Why is the Blood Demon back?”
My heart gave a violent thud, as if someone had slammed a fist into my ribs. Honestly, my trauma wasn’t really about Soso herself. It had always been this cursed presence inside her—the entity born from the Heavenly Killing Star that had taken root in her soul the moment it awakened.
The Blood Demon was Soso’s inner alter-ego, her hidden other self, the living embodiment of the cursed fate that haunted the Heavenly Demon bloodline. And in the original novel? It had never existed. Only because I returned did it finally awaken, and only because of me.
Instinctively, memories of that day slammed into me and my whole body jerked.
At that, Soso—or rather the Blood Demon—leaned in close to my ear, her voice dripping with sultry, possessive hunger.
“Hehe… Long time no see, and you’re already reacting like this? You… you didn’t miss this lady?”
She sounded almost disappointed. The words left her lips like a sigh, and as if the air inside the supply warehouse had suddenly grown stifling, she tore off the flight jacket she was wearing and hurled it aside. The tank top and leggings she had underneath left nothing to the imagination, her body laid bare in the dim light.
The Blood Demon had already claimed my body. Her wrists pinned mine with strength that felt inhuman; her entire frame pressed down on mine, trapping me beneath her. The sticky heat of her breath and the suffocating demonic aura she exuded were enough to make my head spin for a single, dizzying second. Soso had always been beautiful, after all.
Any ordinary man would have surrendered completely at that moment, becoming her slave in body and mind.
“At least I still have that one mercy—I remember what that Blood Demon did to me back then. Otherwise I’d be in far worse shape.”
I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood. With every ounce of willpower I had, I fought down the instinctive revulsion and raw terror that rose in my chest and forced out the words.
“What’s going on? I clearly sealed you. Why are you suddenly… using Soso…”
“Everything is because of you, Lee Minsu. This worthless girl still hasn’t been able to give up on her lingering feelings for you.”
The Blood Demon answered in a cold, icy tone. Those words struck my heart like a dagger. The breath I had been holding caught in my throat.
“Soso… she’s still…”
A guilt as heavy as a collapsing ceiling pressed down on me once more. But there was no time to wallow in it. I had chosen Flame from the very beginning knowing that no matter what happened, I would face whatever came head-on.
“Huh…? Now that I think about it, your condition is rather strange, Lee Minsu. A man who once burned so fiercely he could fell this lady after she released every ounce of her power… yet now you’re as weak as a chicken’s neck.”
The Blood Demon loosened her hold just a fraction. Her hand slid down to my chest.
“Oh? All your inner energy has vanished. No, not vanished—sealed away. Your lower abdomen has collapsed. The divine power you planted inside your body is now taking the place of your dantian.”
She read my status with terrifying accuracy. While she was distracted, I frantically searched for a way to push the Blood Demon back into its cage inside Soso.
“Only one way left, then.”
Originally I had burned the Blood Demon to ash. Even if it had resurrected inside Soso, its grip on her would still be incomplete compared to the day of graduation. It still felt dangerous, but the demonic aura was far weaker than the first time.
I steadied myself.
“Hehe… what does it matter? If you can’t resist at all, this lady will enjoy you all the more. And in the end…”
“Yes. Soso. Do whatever you want. Actually, I’ve missed you too much during this time.”
When I spoke Soso’s name, the Blood Demon’s pupils trembled—just as I had expected.
“Push it now.”
The Blood Demon answered.
“W-what nonsense are you spouting?! I’m not the slightest bit pleased with this sugary nonsense!”
But she still lowered her head in confusion. At the same time, the demonic aura she was emitting began to fade. I kept going.
“I never forgot you for even a single day. That day in Eins with Soso… the day we were all together…”
“H-how shameless… to say such things, this man…”
She was wavering. Proof that Soso’s will still outweighed the Blood Demon’s.
“Haa… if that is truly your sincerity…”
Before she could finish, the Blood Demon tried to pull away from me. I caught her face with both hands and pressed my lips to hers in a sudden, fierce kiss.
“Uwoo… huup…”
Even as the Blood Demon had crushed me with violence moments ago, the evil energy that had flared up inside her began to subside under that stolen kiss.
The Blood Demon was disappearing.
After a moment, Soso slumped unconscious into my arms. I caught her carefully, afraid she might hurt herself.
Heart's Resolve — Suppression of Trauma
“Haa… haa…”
I leaned back against the cabinet in the supply warehouse. To quiet the panic that refused to leave me, I opened the medicine vial and swallowed two pills in one gulp. A few minutes later the relief finally began to spread.
I picked up the flight jacket the Blood Demon had discarded and draped it gently over Soso, who was still sleeping against the same cabinet.
Her soft, steady breathing and the innocent curve of her sleeping face were nothing like the terrifying creature that had just tried to devour me. It was the same pure, kind expression I remembered from Eins—the face of the friend who had been the closest to me in that academy.
“Friend…”
The word pressed heavier on my chest than the panic had. The Blood Demon’s earlier words echoed again.
- Soso. This worthless girl still hasn’t been able to give up on her lingering feelings for you.
The Blood Demon was a different personality, but it shared Soso’s unconscious memories. What it said could not be lies.
“The reason Soso’s Limit Line dropped so low… was it because of me?”
Memories of Soso flooded back unbidden.
Soso was the friend I met first after my reincarnation into the novel. In her second year she had deliberately ruined her appearance—shaggy hair covering her eyes, oversized academy uniform, a gloomy and timid personality—so that no one would suspect the plain girl hiding a powerful destiny.
She had even failed her entrance exams, landing in the bottom half of the class, same as me.
Of course, while I was an extra with no background, Soso came from the Heavenly Demon Cult—the largest martial sect in the Muguk nation. She was the successor of its bloodline, the young leader who was supposed to awaken the Heavenly Demon at the start of her third year.
But Soso awakened early. In the second semester of her second year. And the reason was me.
“I needed her help.”
There had been a special pre-training session scheduled during the winter break of her second year. It was essentially a real battlefield exercise, gathering the academy’s top students.
I already knew the training conditions from the original novel and had deliberately eaten a high-grade mana fruit to boost my student rank. But because of my terrible first-year grades, I sat in the bottom half and didn’t meet the cut-off for the special training.
I was desperate. The rewards were enormous—something that could have given me the strength to survive the Tragedy of Eins.
“I was simply terrified of falling behind Yuri.”
The excuse of “growth” was half-true, but my real motivation had been keeping up with Yuri. If I had made it through that training, I would have become stronger and made more memories with her.
I didn’t know then what Soso had felt when she chose to participate with me.
She had already known about my feelings for Yuri even during the regular pair-training sessions.
“Yet Soso still awakened the Heavenly Demon for me.”
After that, until graduation, I only learned the terrible truth: how much pain the Heavenly Killing Star curse had caused her, how she had suffered in silence just to awaken the Blood Demon.
Only now did I understand the depth of her guilt.
If I hadn’t triggered the awakening, the Blood Demon wouldn’t have existed. I wouldn’t have wasted so much mana fighting it. Si-woo and Min-ah wouldn’t have died. None of the students who perished in Eins would have fallen.
While I drowned in those dark thoughts, Soso’s sleepy mutter drifted over again.
“…sorry… Minsu… I’m sorry… I… I made the Blood Demon… because…”
Tears gathered at the corners of her closed eyes, as if she were trapped in the same nightmare. The drops fell like heavy rain, each one landing on my thumb as I wiped them away.
“I will never let the Blood Demon act on its own again.”
Knowing it was already inside her, I had no intention of letting it hurt her again. Thankfully, the nightmare faded quickly and Soso smiled.
That smile made me realize the weight of my sin even more clearly.
Five years left. A terminal lifespan made shorter by mana consumption. But I didn’t think I deserved forgiveness.
“The judgment of my crime will only begin after I have executed every last Red Lake villain.”
I stayed beside Soso until she woke up, guarding her in silence.
***
A few days later, my first week at Flame passed quietly.
I only learned about the company and the people who worked at the guild.
“According to the Hunter Association’s intern program guidelines, we’re not supposed to assign any tasks to interns right away. So, no special work for you this week,” Team Leader Seo said.
The interns had gathered in the field team’s office. The raid and intelligence teams were separated by partitions, but because we all belonged to the same field unit, we could move freely between them.
Each of us had been given our own desk.
“We use the standard Hunter Association computer system, so it’ll feel a bit off at first. Every official system in the country is garbage. When we were still in chronic, this place would have felt like heaven.”
Of course, my standards and those of the analysts were completely different. Especially Veteran Dong-hyuk—he was stunned by the enhanced access rights.
“Private guilds never gave us free dungeon data. We had to pay out of pocket and it was expensive as hell.”
According to Dong-hyuk, Flame’s system was top-tier. Worldwide gate and dungeon information, villain profiles—everything was available at a glance.
Then Team Leader Seo leaned over and whispered to me.
“But the Association system has its limits. That’s why we have our own intelligence team.”
He was right. With only the public access, there was no usable information on Red Lake.
“Get used to Flame quickly. Red Lake information is classified even inside the guild. Normally we wouldn’t tell interns anything, but Guild Master Tarkovskaya has high expectations for you.”
It felt like special treatment, but it wasn’t bad at all. I sat at my monitor, scrolling through the hunter-only website, when a message popped up.
Surprisingly, it was Yuri.
I glanced at the other interns’ screens. The message had come only to me. And the notification in the corner caught Arin’s eye.
“Oh? The Guild Master is contacting the senior about something?”