The Wolf Beneath the Fleece
"Is this the place…?"
Matsumoto Ken, the Sword Demon.
He was a swordsman with a surprisingly warm heart, but in battle he swung his blade like a demon possessed — and that was how he'd earned the name Sword Demon.
And now, he was swinging a blade worthy of that name.
Sword Demon.
The sword he was cutting through the air with right now truly conjured the image of a ghost.
"Matsumoto-sama?"
"The Matsumoto-sama?"
As he approached the gate, two awakened guards stepped forward to meet him. Both of them were fans.
"Could we trouble you for an autograph?"
One of the guards held out a pen and a sheet of paper, his eyes sparkling. It was a beautiful sight, honestly — the shine of pure innocence, of genuine admiration.
And the answer Matsumoto drew out for such a fan was—
"You're in my way."
"What?"
Shwak!
With the clean sound of a blade parting flesh, the head of the guard holding out the paper soared into the air.
"Kyaaaaagh!"
The other guard, who had watched the whole thing unfold inches from his face, screamed and stumbled backward.
Ignoring him entirely, Matsumoto walked through the gate, murmuring to himself.
"Her favor is mine alone."
"Ugh…!"
Perhaps because I'd finally had a proper night's sleep, my body was refusing to accept this much comfort. I was actually tempted to just lie back down again — that was how peaceful this gate felt.
Gates like this were genuinely rare. Most of them were brutal battlefields where you killed or were killed.
Saaaah…
A cool breeze brushed the bridge of my nose. I couldn't remember the last time I'd lounged around this leisurely since my regression.
"Still, I suppose I should get moving."
One thing I was grateful for: this gate operated on a different time scale inside than out. We'd slept for what felt like hours, but who knew how much had passed — or hadn't passed — outside.
"Team Leader! Let's get going."
"Ah."
At my words, Team Leader Woo Sang-shik's eyes snapped open. He'd been sleeping just as deeply as I had, yet he'd woken at a single call. Impressive, really.
"How long did we sleep?"
"I have no idea."
The fatigue of the past week felt completely gone — it occurred to me that we might have slept a full day or more.
'No way it was that long….'
I looked around the gate. A vast field stretched out in every direction — not a single tree in sight, nothing but grass as far as the eye could see.
"And they told us to find a sheep in all this…."
I understood immediately why this gate had no time limit, no monsters, and a warped time flow. It was absurdly, ridiculously wide. Finding one sheep out here was like searching for a needle on a sandy beach.
"Shall we take it easy, then?"
"Sounds good to me."
The two of us nodded to each other and set out. I kept my five senses fully extended but refrained from using my footwork. Team Leader Woo Sang-shik activated his detection skill too, but didn't run — he simply walked beside me, slowly.
There was only one thought in both our heads: 'Let's savor this peace while it lasts.'
That was it.
We'd been through an absolutely brutal fight — one neither of us ever wanted to experience again. Mentally and physically, it had drained us to the bone.
That was when an unexpected system message appeared.
Someone has entered the gate.
"Huh?"
As far as I knew, the only person inside this gate was Team Leader Woo Sang-shik. We hadn't come simply to clear it — we'd entered on an official commission from the Japanese Hunter Association.
'Who the hell is it?'
There had definitely been awakened guards stationed at the entrance. And they'd just let someone walk in? Not a chance.
'They're either a high-rank Awakener or someone connected to the Association.'
If it was an official from the Japanese Association, the guards letting them through made sense. And if they were a high-rank Awakener, the odds were good they'd killed their way in.
"Let's put some distance between ourselves and the entrance for now."
Team Leader Woo Sang-shik sized up the situation with professional calm and gave the order. The old me, before regression, would have marched straight over and picked a fight.
"We'll keep our distance as far as possible and observe."
The plan was to see whether this newcomer's purpose was the same as ours — clearing the gate — or killing us.
'The former's odds are vanishingly low, though….'
If the gate had been their goal, they would have entered with us. But they'd come in late, like a second wave — which made the first scenario hard to believe.
"Meeeh!"
Just then, a sheep's bleat sounded from behind us. The team leader and I turned our heads slowly.
Standing there, upright on two legs, was one massively bulked-up sheep.
"THAT'S a sheep?"
"MEEEHHH!"
The buff sheep let out a roar — and then bolted. Yes, it ran away.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"
Basic Footwork: Speed.
I broke into footwork and chased after it. With that hulking frame, I'd naturally expected it to smash or fling us aside — instead, it had chosen flight, of all things.
'Our objective is to catch the sheep, after all.'
If it were a sheep meant to attack us, the conditions would have been different. Defeat the sheep. Persuade the sheep. Terrify the sheep. They love piling on every condition imaginable.
But the fact that the quest specifically said catch meant that this sheep's escape skills were first-rate.
"Get back here, damn it!"
"MEEEHHH!"
Hearing my shout, the sheep only sped up. My voice had startled it.
"Hah… hah… hah…."
In the end, I failed to catch the fleeing sheep. Even using Speed, I couldn't catch it. This thing was designed so that it was absolutely impossible to catch alone.
"Hah, hah — Awakener Han Jin, are you all right?"
Team Leader Woo Sang-shik came jogging up behind me, gasping for breath. Judging by his state, he'd been chasing me chasing the sheep.
"What happened to the sheep?"
"See for yourself."
I spread both arms wide as I said it. I hadn't caught it. The team leader gave an understanding nod.
"Being able to chase it at all is impressive enough."
His sincere compliment didn't quite land. Being able to chase a sheep was impressive. Wonderful.
'Is this really the right clear condition for this gate?'
Sudden doubt crept in. Gates like this had existed before my regression too — and of course, those had all been cleared eventually.
"Something tells me catching the sheep isn't the end of it…."
Say you could catch the sheep. Then what would that accomplish?
'Sheep, sheep, sheep.'
Churning the word over and over, an old proverb surfaced in my mind. A wolf in sheep's clothing. The saying goes: it hides its true nature and mimics the gentle and the good.
'Doesn't that fit that thing perfectly?'
It certainly wore a sheep's skin. But looking at its body — at everything else about it — there was no way anyone could call it a sheep.
"I think I've got the direction now."
"Did something come to mind?"
Team Leader Woo Sang-shik, who'd been standing quietly at my side, asked. I'd been the one racing around after that thing, after all, so he'd been keeping silent.
"The sheep we're supposed to catch isn't that thing."
That creature was a decoy wearing a sheep's skin, luring us away — a trap of a kind.
"The real sheep is…."
I stared straight ahead. To any other eye, it would be an empty field, nothing left behind after the sheep's mad dash. But to mine, it looked a little different.
"Hup."
I immediately stepped into footwork. Phantom Fog Footwork — Cyan Step.
The step that shatters all illusion. Effective only against the unreal.
Kugugugung!
The moment my foot landed, the surroundings began to tremble. Cyan Step had one purpose and one purpose only: tearing through hallucinations.
'So the thing wearing a sheep's skin was the gate itself.'
After a brief moment, the tremors stopped — and the sky began to collapse.
"Th-this is—!"
"It seems the sheep's clothing wasn't limited to that one animal."
As the sky and the space around us crumbled away, what emerged was a colossal shrine.
"What on earth is this…?"
"That sheep must have been sent to lead us in here."
I had no idea what this shrine was, but every instinct in my skin was screaming that we shouldn't step inside carelessly.
[Catch the sheep……]
New objective updated:
Defeat the boss monster, the Nine-Tailed Fox.
"A nine-tailed fox…."
If the boss really was a kumiho, then that sweeping mass hallucination from before made perfect sense. An illusion even the Siren's Necklace couldn't defend against.
'That was close.'
One wrong move, and we really could have died in there.
"Looks like this is a boss-hunting type of gate."
"Then the boss would be…"
Team Leader Woo Sang-shik stopped mid-sentence and stared at the shrine building ahead. No matter how I looked at it, there was nothing more suspicious in this place than that structure.
"I'll go in first."
"Are you sure?"
"You'll need Awakener Han Jin more than me to clear this anyway."
For some reason, the team leader's self-esteem had taken a steep nosedive. The Awakener closest to S-rank! A man hailed by that title, the ace of the entire Association. I couldn't fathom what had crushed his pride so badly.
"I learned it clearly from the fight with Envy."
Perhaps he'd roughly guessed my thoughts, because he spoke up first.
"In that fight, you held out fighting alone for ten full minutes, and in the end you killed Envy and saved me and Guildmaster Han Min-joon."
"That was…"
"Guildmaster Han Min-joon at least forced Envy to burn her final trump card. But me? I didn't do a thing, did I."
So the thing grinding down this man's confidence had been me all along.
To Team Leader Woo Sang-shik, a veteran who'd lived the Awakener life for years, I was a rock that had just rolled in out of nowhere. And that rock — awakened barely a year ago — was stronger than he was. Of course his head was a mess.
'I should have been more mindful of where he stood.'
Guildmaster Han Min-joon was a first-generation Awakener; he'd seen countless reports before meeting me. That was probably why he'd accepted me so quickly. But Team Leader Woo Sang-shik wasn't like that.
'How am I supposed to handle this….'
You thought you were special — and then the world held you up against someone else, and you felt yourself shrinking. I knew that feeling intimately. I'd been through it more times than I could count before my regression.
'Not that I could tell him I'm a regressor….'
While I was turning it over in my head, the team leader had already entered the shrine building. Lowered pride or not, he was still a professional — he kept his guard up on all sides and advanced slowly.
Intruder detected within the shrine.
Activating defensive illusion arts.
Along with the system message, a colossal nine-tailed fox materialized out of thin air — presumably to fuel the illusion.
"Kuh!"
The moment Team Leader Woo Sang-shik laid eyes on the fox, he whipped his fist forward. His intent was plain: end it before the illusion could take hold.
Fwoooosh!
Flames ignited across his gauntlets, and the burning fist connected with the fox.
BOOM!