Chapter 29
“Ka-kak? What do you mean by that-!”
“Hey, don’t move. You’ll just make it worse.”
I put a hand on the building manager’s shoulder as he glared at me, looking ready to argue back.
Once I had him pinned in place, I twisted the hand holding the dagger just a little.
The building manager let out a scream like a pig being slaughtered.
Cold sweat poured down his face, and then, as if all the strength had drained out of him at once, he slumped to the floor.
“Khuk, p-please... spare me...!”
Of course I hadn’t stabbed him in the side on a hunch alone.
For all that I’d gotten this far by instinct, the guy in front of me was someone from the Hunter Association.
I wasn’t going to pull something like this without proof.
I’d already finished confirming with Kwon Oh-seok and Han Ki-hae that he was on the same side as those bastards, so I’d stabbed him with confidence.
If I hadn’t been sure, I would’ve waited until no one was watching.
I tapped the collapsed manager on the head and said, “Who said anything about killing you? I missed the vital spot, so you’ll live.”
“Huh!”
I had never intended to kill him in the first place.
He had that face on him, the kind that was already thinking about how to run, so I’d only done it to make sure he couldn’t entertain that idea.
And if I killed this guy, there’d be a headache afterward.
Even if he’d been colluding with hunter poachers, if I killed him when my own life wasn’t directly in danger, the Association would still ask, “Why didn’t you take him alive?”
It was the strange sort of situation where you’d get scolded for not doing something more praiseworthy, even after doing something praiseworthy.
That kind of thing was already enough of a nuisance when Do-hee did it to me.
“He was working with hunter poachers. Restrain him.”
As I said that, I looked over at the staff members.
They were so shocked by the sudden attack that they just stood there, faces blank, not knowing what to do.
Then one of them gave me a bewildered look and asked, “The building manager?”
“Yes. Your building manager.”
If someone suddenly told them their manager had been in league with hunter poachers, they’d have a hard time believing it.
They’d spent more time with him than they had with me.
It would’ve been more reasonable for them to suspect me.
“So, no. Never mind.”
“...?”
I considered telling them what I’d heard from Han Ki-hae, then decided against it.
I’d already done all I needed to do.
I’d set the table; I wasn’t about to feed them with a spoon too.
They’d figure it out themselves.
The staff looked at one another, and then—
“My brother’s right! He cross-checked the facts with those guys!”
Only after Jae-sik said that did they finally move.
They fetched silver handcuffs from the building office and restrained the manager, while two of them ran over to Jae-sik.
It looked like they wanted to hear the explanation from him rather than from me.
Thanks to that, things got a lot easier.
“Why are you here?”
I asked as I walked toward Do-hee and Tae-cheon.
Do-hee had thrown up a hazy barrier of light between me and them, and Tae-cheon had his usual sword and shield drawn.
They were protecting me from their party members.
They’d moved to block the others who were trying to restrain me after I’d suddenly stabbed the manager.
Tae-cheon grinned and answered, “...You know why, so why pretend you don’t? We came because we wanted to see you.”
“We’ve got a lot to talk about, don’t we?”
With that, Tae-cheon and Do-hee gave me warm smiles.
Meanwhile, I wanted to scowl.
No one could know how shocked I’d been when I came out of the ant nest and saw these two.
Especially when I saw Do-hee, who was supposed to come on Friday, standing right there in front of me. For a second I thought I was hallucinating from the queen ant’s poison.
Which shouldn’t have worked on me anyway.
“Relax your face, oppa. I’m the one who should be trying not to cry.”
“I was just so happy to see you that I was holding back tears.”
“Honestly, if you can’t say anything decent, at least stay quiet.”
Then Do-hee shook her head.
I asked them the thing I’d been wondering since earlier.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I’m your friend, but I’m also the guild master of Baekwooncheon.”
“So you abused your position?”
“Are you insane? What kind of times do you think these are, that I’d abuse my position? It was a fair trade.”
“Good. I hope so. Do-hee, what about you?”
“...The power of love?”
“Did you put a tracking device on me?”
“W-what! Of course not!”
Then why can’t you see me, Do-hee?
A tracking device? Even if we’re siblings, that would still be a crime.
“Then you came through the warp gate?”
“Yeah. I ran into Do-hee there.”
So that was it. They’d come together by chance.
That was unfortunate for Do-hee.
She probably hadn’t wanted to come with Tae-cheon.
Still, this gave me a way to smooth things over, more or less.
“Do you even know what you just did, Baek Do-woon!”
Han Jae-im, who’d been watching quietly, suddenly shouted at me.
He was the guy who, ever since the orphanage, had been tagging along beside Tae-cheon and picking fights with me over every little thing.
And now, apparently, he wanted to do it again.
I’d really like it if he’d at least hear me out, but he didn’t seem interested.
The fist trembling at his side looked ready to knock my jaw clean off.
And he wasn’t the only one.
The looks the others were giving me weren’t exactly warm, either.
We’d never gotten along, not even back in the orphanage.
They probably thought I’d done something wrong, just like before.
It was a little unfair. This time, it wasn’t all my fault.
Still, I suppose that was the price of the way I’d always lived.
“......”
Among them, only Lee Yeon-ji smiled faintly and waved at me.
Yeon-ji was the only one of the two party members who didn’t dislike me.
That was because I was the older brother and friend of the people she admired, Do-hee and Tae-cheon.
If that weren’t the case, she probably wouldn’t have paid me any attention at all.
Not knowing me as a kid probably helped with that too.
“You stabbed the building manager? Are you crazy!”
“I had a reason, so calm down, Han Jae-im.”
“What reason? You’re just going to start with that nonsense about your instincts again, aren’t you!”
“......”
Wow. The bastard was like a ghost.
I was about to do exactly that, so how had he figured it out?
“Did you fight these people inside the dungeon?”
Do-hee moved over to Jae-sik, who was taking statements from the staff, asking and receiving answers.
More precisely, she was looking toward Kwon Oh-seok and Han Ki-hae, who had been dragged in behind Jae-sik, and then toward Kim Jeong-cheol’s beheaded corpse.
Jae-sik, seeing Do-hee approaching him, shouted his answer like a soldier standing in front of a commanding officer.
He looked exactly like a private frozen in front of a regimental commander.
“Y-yes! That’s right!”
“There’s no way oppa would fight for no reason. So they were criminals, then.”
“Yes! They were hunter poachers!”
“So this place was a hunting ground. Which means there were one or two people from the Association who were in on it. Right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
When I answered, Do-hee’s gaze shifted away from me and onto Han Jae-im.
It was a little like the look she gave Tae-cheon and me whenever we caused trouble.
A little like it, that was all.
There was an absolute difference between the two.
Do-hee’s gaze at Han Jae-im held no affection.
Even if you scrubbed your eyes raw, there was no affection to be found there, only contempt.
“Please use your head for once. Stop lashing out every time your inferiority complex flares up.”
“......”
“My patience has limits too, you know.”
Then Do-hee turned back to me and walked over.
Seeing Jae-im biting down hard on his lip made me feel a little sorry for him.
What was with that sudden inferiority complex? As if he’d ever have one.
Han Jae-im was an A-class hunter, a capable man nicknamed the Prince of Frost.
Why would someone like that feel inferior to me?
By ordinary standards, I should’ve been the one feeling inferior.
I wasn’t, though.
Tae-cheon patted Jae-im on the back.
Jae-im clenched his fist a little, then relaxed it.
“So, a lot happened, did it, oppa?”
“...Are you really that mad?”
“Of course not.”
With a bright smile, Do-hee’s staff fired a Magic Missile.
“You are mad, after all!”
I flinched and dodged the Magic Missile.
The spell flew past where I’d been standing, then suddenly rose into the air.
And then the single missile split into ten, all of them turning back toward me.
She’d already set the trajectory in advance, expecting me to dodge at least one shot.
If it was Do-hee, she’d probably mapped out the movement paths for all ten missiles.
No matter which direction I ran, they’d chase me to the end.
...No, she probably hadn’t gone quite that far.
She’d fired the Magic Missile not to hit me, but to restrict my movement.
In that case, there was probably only one way I could dodge.
I stood still.
Boom! Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
All ten Magic Missiles struck my body one after another.
“If you’d thought a little harder, there was a direction you could’ve escaped the Magic Missile.”
I knew that.
I’d let them hit me on purpose.
The path that would let me dodge the missiles was the one leading straight to Do-hee.
I couldn’t go running to her front door like some rabbit being herded.
That way lay a far worse trap.
If I said that, she’d just get even angrier, so I reacted differently.
“Haha, because there was no need to dodge it!”
“...Tree bark? A shield?”
Seeing the bark that had wrapped around my body, Do-hee’s eyes went round.
Tae-cheon, who’d been watching in silence, looked the same way.
He looked like he wanted to ask what on earth I’d learned a shield skill for.
They didn’t know that I’d eaten the Fruit of the Previous World Tree and that my mana had shot up enormously, so that reaction made sense.
If I’d still had my old mana pool, the shield would’ve shattered instead of blocking all ten missiles just now.
“...I understand why you came back.”
The shield that should’ve broken hadn’t. It was still holding.
That was direct proof that my maximum mana had increased.
So Do-hee nodded, as if understanding why I’d decided to return to hunting.
She didn’t stay calm for long, though.
She glared at me viciously.
“But abandoning Baekwooncheon without discussing it with me at all. Ignoring my messages all this time. And,”
Well, she had every right to be angry.
“I can’t forgive you for leaving our guild and joining that pretty-boy bastard Woo Yeon-hoo’s guild!”
“What? That last part’s a misunderstanding! I never joined his guild!”
“Oh, really?”
“Really! Why would I leave Baekwooncheon only to join some other guild?”
“Yeah, that does sound unlikely. Fine, I’ll take that one back.”
Then Do-hee cleared her throat once and continued, “I can’t forgive you for abandoning Baekwooncheon without discussing it with me. Or for ignoring my messages all this time!”
She repeated her earlier words, only this time carefully omitting the part about Woo Yeon-hoo.
Then she pointed her staff at me again.
It looked like she was about to fire another Magic Missile.
No, now that she knew Magic Missile wouldn’t work, maybe it was some other attack spell.
I thought this was probably the right moment.
I raised my hand high.
“As the first child of Baekwooncheon, I hereby propose an immediate family meeting!”
“......!”
Family meeting.
The moment those words left my mouth, the mana gathering at Do-hee’s staff scattered into the air.
Do-hee stared at me in disbelief, then widened her eyes like a startled rabbit.
She had figured out what I was thinking when I proposed it.
The family meeting was something the three of us—me, Do-hee, and Tae-cheon—had done since we were kids.
We usually held one when there was a serious emotional clash, or when we needed to solve a problem that hadn’t produced an answer yet.
Ignoring the people around us, who were murmuring among themselves with faces that said they had no idea what we were talking about, Do-hee shouted, “Absolutely not-!”
“As the second child of Baekwooncheon, I accept the proposal to open a family meeting.”
As he said that, Tae-cheon winked at me.
As expected, he understood exactly what I wanted without me having to say it.
“Don’t be ridiculous! This is invalid!”
“As the third child of Baekwooncheon, are you refusing the proposal to open a family meeting?”
Tae-cheon asked Do-hee politely.
She trembled, fists clenched.
“I said invalid, not refuse!”
“Yes, then I’ll treat it as an abstention. Therefore, the proposal to open a family meeting has passed with a majority of two votes in favor and one abstention. From this moment on, I declare the Baekwooncheon family meeting open, and I, Lee Tae-cheon, will serve as chair of this meeting.”
“Aaagh! This is so annoying! I knew this would happen, which is why I wanted to come alone!”
Ignoring Do-hee’s exasperated outburst, Tae-cheon and I looked at each other and gave a thumbs-up.
Serves you right for coming with Tae-cheon, Do-hee.