Where Evil Vanished (4)
So much had happened.
I’d opened my eyes to find myself twenty-three again.
On my way to work, I’d ended up killing Big Lava by sheer accident.
In the process, I’d also beaten Seo Gwang-pal into the ground.
That had been my real debut as a hero.
Looking back, there had been no such thing as coincidence. The people who had scattered across the board like separate dots had all connected into one long line.
Was that what life’s journey was supposed to be?
Let’s see.
In the factory office, after everyone else had gone home, I sat alone at my desk and scratched out notes under the yellow light.
What other dots would I end up connecting to next?
Where was I standing right now?
For now, I’d wrapped up the matters that needed urgent attention, more or less.
1. Buy the factory.
2. Deal with Grandmother’s cancer.
3. Keep Sungmin from going down the wrong path.
…
But there was one item on that list I still hadn’t handled.
4. The military.
I let out a low groan.
Enlisting didn’t scare me. What bothered me was leaving my family behind and going off alone.
Maybe it was a bad omen.
In the past, the moment I enlisted, bad things had come crashing down on me one after another, like dominoes.
In this life, I wanted to avoid anything bad involving my family, no matter what.
As I typed on the keyboard, the monitor changed.
Hunter Special Act Passes!
As the monster appearance rate rises every year, the National Assembly has unusually fast-tracked a special bill. Starting this year, the law will be put into effect...
In simple terms, it was a bill that gave perks to hunters who could deal with monsters.
One of those perks was the right to exempt B-class or higher hunters from military service.
This time, I wasn’t going to cheat.
Like a national athlete winning a gold medal.
I was going to take the lawful route, fair and square.
The problem was.
I’m only D-class.
I had started as F, but I’d been promoted two steps after my contribution during the Gangnam Station multi-gate incident.
I clicked my tongue, disappointed.
And I killed the Cheonyang-ji cult leader too. That should count for something.
Of course, there was no way I could officially say that had been my doing.
Even if Jeong Myeong-su had disappeared, it wasn’t as if Dio Guild had gained any clear advantage from it.
Depending on how things went, the public could even turn their criticism on me.
As I doodled idly in the notebook, one short sentence emerged.
- I need an official achievement.
I circled the line over and over again.
There. That settles it.
There was more than enough reason to jump into the incident that would happen three months later.
First, I had to prevent innocent casualties.
Saving citizens from monsters was the obvious duty of a hero.
But this time, there was also a personal benefit involved.
If I racked up enough merit, my hunter rank would rise.
I didn’t have the luxury of idly collecting scraps of achievement one by one.
Just once.
If I could produce a result that the entire nation would have no choice but to notice.
Then, according to the maximum promotion limit, I could rise two more steps.
That would make me B-class.
Exactly the threshold for military exemption.
I tapped the keyboard again.
The search term was water-dwelling monster.
The screen filled with all kinds of monsters reported around the world.
As I thought. Nothing.
Among all those images, the one I was looking for wasn’t there.
Something unprecedented.
The bastard I’d be facing this time was a brand-new monster that had never existed before.
It only lives in the memories of my previous life.
My phone rang.
The caller was Karki.
When I answered, his bright voice spilled through the line.
“Commander! Ah, no, wait. Purple Devil! I’m calling to report the mid-stage progress!”
Karki was so absorbed in the roleplay that he called me Purple Devil and acted the part with complete conviction.
I decided to play along.
“This is Purple Devil. My comrade Brahma. How goes the work on the P5 suit?”
“The design is almost done! I’m still thinking about what color to use, y’know!”
The Blue Knight material was a deep blue.
If I wanted it to look like my usual suit, but in purple, I’d have to dye it separately.
I thought of the battles I’d fought in all sorts of places: the Dio Guild rooftop, dungeons, a kendo hall, a giant stadium.
This battlefield would be the wide-open sea.
An underwater fight.
“Blue isn’t bad. Just change the mask to purple.”
“Roger that!”
Through the receiver, I heard a clatter so loud it nearly burst my eardrum.
Something must have been getting cut, because a cutter was screaming like mad.
“Don’t push yourself too hard.”
“Got it, Commander! I’ll call you when it’s finished!”
Karki hummed cheerfully.
He seemed to genuinely enjoy being the helper sidekick.
I checked the time.
Guess I’d better head out.
Tonight, there was a guest who’d come to the factory in secret.
As I pulled back the throttle, the Honda XR80 roared to life.
The headlight cut through the darkness, leaving a pale afterimage and kicking up the wind.
The Ilsan Hunter Industrial Complex was so enormous that if I didn’t use a vehicle, it would take forever to get anywhere.
I turned the corner and rolled into an open lot.
It was late, so there was no one around.
In the silence, I saw someone standing beneath a street tree.
The woman standing in front of the container box was tall enough to stand out even from a distance.
I squeezed the brake and drifted to a stop.
“Ugh. Dust.”
The other person covered her mouth and coughed, showing obvious displeasure.
Her silhouette came into full view.
A woman with a bob cut, resembling a black cat.
It was Lee Yu-seol.
“There you are,” she said, looking at me.
“Did you really have to drag me out to a backwater place like this? In the middle of the night, too?”
Lee Yu-seol scowled openly.
For security’s sake, I’d chosen a place that was convenient for me instead of Dio Guild’s headquarters.
She had every right to complain.
“If you were worried about people seeing us, there were plenty of other places. A fancy restaurant, maybe. Omakase would’ve been nice, or maybe...”
Lee Yu-seol came closer and rested a hand on my shoulder.
“I wouldn’t mind somewhere quiet where it’s just the two of us, either.”
She slipped easily into a casual tone and pressed the tip of a long fingernail into my shoulder.
The touch was surprisingly sultry.
Lee Yu-seol and I had joined forces for our own goals.
After enough conversation, she’d apparently relaxed a little, because every so often she tried these joking little teases on me.
Nice try.
I grabbed her by the nape and shoved her back.
“Ghk!”
Her back slammed against the container box.
Bang!
“Cut the crap.”
Lee Yu-seol struggled in my grip.
Her neck was so slender I could have wrapped one hand around it, and yet she was still an A-class hunter.
Despite her delicate appearance, her combat ability was top-tier.
But after returning from Cheonyang-ji, I had changed.
I had faced Yohan, one of the finest swordsmen in South Korea.
I had killed Jeong Myeong-su, a magician comparable to an S-class hunter.
Lee Yu-seol was no longer my match.
She was a talent with an exceptional sense for reading her opponent.
There was no way a woman with Sense wouldn’t know that.
All she could do was smack my hand and plead with her whole body to be spared.
I loosened my grip.
“Kkhh!”
Lee Yu-seol dropped to her knees, gasping for breath.
She rubbed at the reddened skin around her throat and glared up at me, eyes wide.
“Were you seriously trying to kill me? Over a little joke!”
“I was joking too.”
At that, she couldn’t bring herself to strike back. Instead, she only huffed and shouted in frustration.
“How can you treat a lady so rough? Do you do this to your girlfriend too?”
Unfortunately.
Neither in my previous life nor in this one had I ever had anything resembling a woman in my life.
“Hey! I asked if you do this to your girlfriend too!”
Lee Yu-seol kept prodding far more insistently than necessary.
So that was what she was curious about.
She wasn’t reacting out of anger, and she wasn’t trying to bait me into violence.
There was a reason for her question.
I ignored it and looked down at her.
“You don’t know where this is?”
“……”
Lee Yu-seol slowly looked around.
This meeting place wasn’t Factory 4, my own base.
This was Factory 7.
The place where the former Chi-do Gang, now the Yeong-cheol Suho-dae, was based.
And the place where—
“It’s where your whole group swarmed in to kill me.”
Lee Yu-seol had a record.
Her crime had been storming the Ilsan Hunter Industrial Complex with Seo Gwang-pal and Dio Guild agents.
“We did become allies for strategic reasons, but I don’t trust you. I haven’t forgiven you completely, either.”
From the start, this hadn’t been about building an equal relationship and helping each other out.
It was about putting her in my grasp and controlling her.
“Don’t yap so much. Remember who’s above you.”
My voice dropped, and Lee Yu-seol’s own voice shrank with it.
“...I wasn’t coming to kill you then. I was coming to recruit you.”
“Either way, because of you, the dormitory burned to the ground. People almost died, too.”
Seo Gwang-pal’s headless body had been buried in the back hill.
“If you don’t want to be buried there with that bald bastard, you’d better choose your words more carefully.”
Lee Yu-seol stood and lowered her gaze.
“That was a long time ago. I’ll apologize again for what happened back then.”
Only then did her bravado finally collapse, and she became obedient.
“When I call, you come running, no matter where. Even if it’s hell.”
“...Yes.”
The discipline was over, so I moved on to the main subject.
“I need a personnel transfer.”
“You want me to move your department?”
Hunters were usually assigned to combat teams.
They went out into the field, killed monsters, and entered dungeons to close gates.
“If not combat, then where? Intelligence? Training?”
For reference, Instructor Nike belonged to the training team.
“Send me on temporary assignment.”
Dio Guild had branches in various regions as well as headquarters.
Inside the guild, I was still only a D-class hunter.
If I wanted freedom of movement, I needed Lee Yu-seol’s help.
“That’s outside my authority. The team leaders at each branch...”
“Hey.”
I cut her off.
“I’m not asking you right now. I’m telling you to do it.”
She clamped her mouth shut.
Once you spend enough time in the workplace, you naturally start to understand the dynamics of hierarchy.
Lee Yu-seol might be the one helping me.
But if her usefulness as an assistant ever dropped too far, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw her away.
I might not need Lee Yu-seol, but Lee Yu-seol couldn’t achieve her goals without me.
Sharp as she was, there was no way she didn’t understand that.
“Ha. I’ll look into it.”
She watched my face carefully as she spoke.
“Where are you going?”
Her casual tone had vanished entirely, and she was forcing out honorifics through clenched teeth. I liked that.
“Busan.”
Lee Yu-seol brushed the dirt off her knees.
“Got it. May I ask why?”
Before, I had said something similar to Go Pil-hun.
“I’d like to hold Cheonyang-ji accountable.”
It had been about uncovering the truth behind Instructor Nike, who had killed the intern hunters.
At the time, Go Pil-hun had rejected my proposal.
“Hunters protect civilians from monsters. That should be enough, shouldn’t it? Don’t go making trouble for no reason.”
Heh. A trap of his own making.
Go Pil-hun would end up ensnared by the very words he’d spoken himself.
“There’s something I need to do as a hunter.”
“...Oh. I see?”
Disappointment was written all over Lee Yu-seol’s face.
Moving for justice was completely unlike her.
She probably doesn’t care at all.
Lee Yu-seol let out a small sigh.
She’d come all this way because I summoned her, only to get scolded to pieces and then be sent home with extra work.
I’d already used the whip enough.
Time for the carrot.
I stepped closer to Lee Yu-seol.
She flinched, probably thinking I was about to hit her again.
She even clutched the side of her throat with both hands.
“This time...”
I reached out lightly and patted both of her shoulders.
“This is also about bringing Go Pil-hun down, so I’m asking for your cooperation.”
Replacing the head of Dio Guild.
That was the thing Lee Yu-seol wanted most.
“Really?”
Her expression brightened.
Now that she’d heard a justification closer to profit than justice, her red lips curved into a smile.
I was a liar. But—
“Trust comes first in any deal.”
I got back on the motorcycle.
“Let me know as soon as you get a result.”
“Understood. Ah, right.”
Lee Yu-seol called out to me.
“Could this... have something to do with the Cheonyang-ji incident?”
She had a rare talent and a natural instinct that was sharp enough to count as a gift.
As expected. Her intuition is razor-sharp.
Nike, the instructor I’d killed, had belonged to Cheonyang-ji.
And I had recently requested temporary leave from Dio Guild.
After that, Cheonyang-ji’s massive gathering had turned into a total disaster.
Honestly, even without Sense, that would be suspicious enough.
There was no hard proof, though.
“Why? Are you afraid I went and did something to the Cheonyang-ji cult leader?”
The media hadn’t covered Jeong Myeong-su’s death.
No, they couldn’t have.
The cult leader was still alive.
Jo Jeong-hwan was faithfully standing in as his substitute.
“...It’s true you cut off Go Ju-hun’s head.”
Lee Yu-seol mentioned the former head of Dio Guild.
“If you put your mind to it, you could kill the Cheonyang-ji cult leader too. It wouldn’t be easy, but still.”
“Hmm. Fair enough. Since you brought it up, should I just go ahead and kill that cult bastard too?”
“Hah.”
Lee Yu-seol let out a hollow laugh, looking exhausted.
“You’re a proper outlaw, aren’t you? Ugh. You’re scary.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered.
“Should a righteous hero be like this?”
Lee Yu-seol knew exactly who I was.
Purple Devil was a hero, yes.
But I never claimed to be righteous.
“I’m not righteous.”
I started the motorcycle.
“Then what are you?”
Well.
A hero who erased all evil from the world.
“I guess you could call me a hero of evil destruction.”
I roared away, kicking up a cloud of dust behind me.