No Cause of Death
Chapter 6
The six vacuum packs had pushed the weight of his backpack past fifty kilograms. Unfortunately, even after undergoing his DNA mutation, Haneul hadn't gained a shred of extra strength.
What am I going to do? I'm not confident I can head out on another sweep lugging this thing around.
Besides, Haneul was a firm believer in self-preservation above all else, and his honest feeling was that he didn't want to spend even one more second in this dangerous place than he had to. When he glanced down at his half-broken watch, the hands were still spinning in circles, unable to settle on any direction — which meant this was no Guided Transfer zone.
Then again, what I've gathered is surely more than enough, isn't it?
Just the Monster Soul Stone embedded in the pack leader's forehead would easily tip three kilograms on a scale — and Haneul had five more stones besides. On top of that, he had secured six Snow Wolf carcasses. The wolves' bones and blood were excellent research materials in their own right, too.
This should be plenty. Time to head back before things get any more dangerous.
Haneul pulled a rope from his belt, knotted it around the backpack, and used a motorized portable pulley to hoist the heavy load up into the tree. A short while later, he was grunting and groaning his way up after it.
"Hah... hah... hnngh."
Only now did Haneul truly appreciate how punishing it was to climb a tree with a broken arm. After catching his breath in the branches for a moment, he forced his aching arm to move, shouldered the backpack, and hurled himself into the blue mist.
One stroke of luck was that the magic beasts of Highland could neither perceive this blue mist nor, even if they sensed it, ever pursue anything into it. That was a critically important point. If Highland's beasts could use the mist as a corridor to invade Midland, humanity would be facing a threat to its very survival on the spot. But no such thing had ever happened — a fact humanity had confirmed through experience countless times by now.
Leaving Highland and returning to Midland Seoul, Haneul was wracked by dizzying vertigo the whole way. When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was Luin's dumbfounded face.
"What kind of lunatic dumbass does this? You touch down in Highland and immediately bolt right back? Huh?"
Thick curses came spewing out of Luin's mouth on the spot, but Haneul didn't even have the strength to answer her yelling.
"Uuuugh."
"Huh? What's wrong with— whoa. Whoa!"
Drenched in cold sweat, Haneul collapsed. Luin jumped, startled. Only then did she spot his left arm — torn open and broken — and her expression froze solid.
At first, Luin had written Haneul off as the biggest coward alive. When Shinseung Group's Awakened entered Highland, the norm was to stay at least three or four days. Honestly, even four days was short — gathering magic crystals or new materials usually took far longer, and it wasn't unusual for some Awakened to remain in Highland for months at a stretch. Being Awakened herself, Luin knew all of this well.
Everything's done for today, so I can just come back and check on them in a few days.
She'd been thinking exactly that, ready to leave right after sending the greenhorn interns in — and at that precise moment, some featherbrained intern had come bursting out of the blue mist. Her temper had flared sky-high, and she'd opened fire with a double-barreled curse. Then, moments later, Haneul keeled over flat right in front of her.
"Hey, hey! Stay with me. Open your eyes, damn it!"
"Uuungh."
Before Luin could take any sort of action, Haneul's head lolled to the side.
"No no no. Hey! Stay with me!"
Luin hastily slung Haneul over her back and bolted for the surface — and in doing so, ended up shouldering Haneul's backpack as well.
"Huh?"
Her eyes went round at the pack's unthinkable weight. But there was no time now to wonder what was inside it.
Put out the fire in front of you first.
For the moment, Luin focused on getting her patient to safety.
Chapter 7
The next morning, Haneul lay in a private room on the seventh floor of Gangbuk Shinseung General Hospital by Seodaemun Station in Mapo District, staring blankly up at the white ceiling. A milky-white pack of nutrient solution and a clear pack of painkillers were plugged into his right forearm; his left arm, naturally, was in a cast. Wire-connected sensor patches clung to his forehead, his temples, and his chest.
Whether thanks to the painkillers, the pain he felt wasn't too bad. Even the bone-splitting ache in his chest had dulled to a dry stiffness.
My body's fine... but I want to see a mirror. That hand in my Mental Image — was it real? No way I dreamed all that... right?
Haneul replayed the scene in his head — the one where he'd brought down six Snow Wolves. However many times he turned the memory over, those astonishing moments simply refused to feel real.
By the way, what happens to the Snow Wolf carcasses? Monster Soul Stones seemed pretty expensive — is the Group going to take every last one?
Like most people from Old Earth, Haneul had spent his entire childhood scraping by in a miserable orphanage. That was why he was so curious about who owned the Snow Wolf carcasses. Not that the rights were ambiguous: all materials and knowledge gathered in Highland by contract workers vested in the company. That clause was spelled out explicitly in the employment contract Haneul had signed in his own hand.
Even without the clause, an individual Awakened had no hope of disputing ownership with Shinseung Group. The instant the Group cut its support, an Awakened would lose the pipeline for all manner of essentials — from the watch that served as a compass in the Highland world on down to detox injections, scent-masking sprays, Spatial Compression Vacuum Packs, and the rest of the survival kit.
Which meant death, plain and simple.
Haneul had no intention of being greedy about it. All he hoped for was a modest reward.
They say Shinseung Group pays out truly generous rewards if you discover and recover a relic — maybe there's something like that for Soul Stones too?
That was the humble little wish Haneul harbored.
Meanwhile, at that very same moment, in the VIP lounge of Gangbuk Shinseung General Hospital, Shinseung Group HR Team Leader Lee Jaein was having a conversation with Luin. Before coming up, Jaein had wrapped up a meeting with the hospital's chief of surgery, who briefed him there on Haneul's condition.
A ruptured muscle in the left arm. Severed tendons. Bone shattered into nineteen pieces. Beyond that, the rest of Haneul was unscathed. He had originally been covered in abrasions, and five of his ribs had cracked — but all such minor wounds had healed before anyone knew it, a testament to the extraordinary vitality he possessed.
When Jaein had first taken Luin's urgent report of Haneul's injuries, his heart had dropped like a stone. No one in the Group knew that Haneul was Strategic Planning Head Lee Myungwoo's own flesh and blood. Even Luin didn't know his true identity. Haneul was the private assignment Jaein had been charged with seeing through personally.
And what if the young master had died on his very first entry into Highland?
Merely imagining the fallout was enough to make cold sweat run down Jaein's back. Fortunately, Haneul's condition wasn't serious. Only then did Jaein finally breathe a sigh of relief and take Luin's follow-up report. This one covered the spoils Haneul had brought back from Highland.
"I got photos of them. Here."
Luin enlarged the pictures she'd snapped of the Snow Wolf carcasses on her phone and showed them to Jaein.
"Good lord. Is this for real? Good lord."
Jaein swiped through the photos one by one, clicking his tongue all the while — yet his ears were wide open, hanging on Luin's every word.
"The most striking thing is that no cause of death whatsoever was found in the Snow Wolf carcasses. No external trauma, of course — and no toxicological reactions either."
"Is that even possible? Then how did the young mas— no, how did intern 550895 manage to take down Snow Wolves?"
"Even the Monster Analysis Team couldn't clock out last night over this — they convened an emergency meeting. But it sounds like they couldn't reach a conclusion."
"What?"
Jaein crooked one eyebrow upward. Luin shook her head.
"They swept the entire bodies of the carcasses with the analysis team's MRI equipment and ran every test in the book, and the conclusion was still that the beasts' cause of death was undetermined."
"They even ran an MRI and still couldn't pin down the cause? Don't tell me the beasts' internal organs were perfectly intact?"
"Yes. No external injuries — and no internal damage at all, apparently."
"Good grief."
Jaein pressed a palm to his forehead. He made a show of being vexed, but in truth the corners of his mouth were curling faintly upward.
I don't know exactly what it is, but the result isn't bad. One way or another, it's obvious the young master has Bloomed with a truly powerful ability.
For Jaein, a man of Strategic Planning Head Lee Myungwoo's line, this was welcome news.
Two weeks shot past like an arrow. Today, May 12th, was the day Haneul would be discharged from the hospital. Thanks to the swift recovery granted by his exceptional vitality, the cast on his left arm had already come off early last week, and his other injuries had healed up clean as well. The only reason Haneul stayed in the hospital another full week was the HR team's thoughtfulness.
"He's a hero who bagged six magic beasts on his first deployment. Of course we owe him at least that much."
That was how Jaein framed the special treatment. Haneul's record was so unprecedented that not a single person on the HR team considered it favoritism in the slightest. Thanks to which, Haneul had spent his convalescence in comfort in the general hospital's airy private room.
In the meantime, Luin sat down with him several times. Honestly, she was curious what kind of ability Haneul had Bloomed with. At first, Haneul threw up an iron wall.
"As I understand it, I'm not required to report on my ability in detail. I apologize, but I'd ask that you not pry."
That much was true. Among the abilities Awakened the world over had Bloomed, many lost half their potency the moment their details were laid bare. So most Awakened wanted their abilities kept under wraps as much as possible — and the more lethal the ability, the more fiercely they guarded it.
Luin coaxed him gently.
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not asking you to expose exactly how your ability works. Just give me a rough idea of the category. That's the only way the Group can back you up, you know."
"The Group would back me up?"
At his pushback, Luin nodded along with great enthusiasm.
"Yep. Those Snow Wolf carcasses you brought in last time? In excellent shape. One of them was even carrying a Monster Soul Stone of outstanding quality."
"Oh!"
Haneul's face brightened at once. Catching the shift in his mood, Luin leaned into the pitch.
"And it's not just the soul stones, either. Snow Wolf bones are prime material for weapons, and the hide is just the thing for leather armor."
"That's a relief."
Haneul's eyes gleamed with anticipation. Luin grinned.
"Exactly. And thanks to that, it looks like the Group is set to approve a reward."
"A reward?"
"You know, that sort of thing. Word is you'll be getting the Top Intern award at the end-of-internship ceremony — but honestly, the certificate isn't what matters. The prize and the cash bonus that come with it are the real name of the game."
At last, the thing Haneul had been hoping for had been spoken aloud.
"A prize and a cash bonus, you say?"
Haneul's eyes shone as bright as they possibly could.
The Soul-Harvesting Puppeteer
Author | Junon
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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