The Previous World Tree's Leaf (Conifer Version)
Watching that thing burst out of my smartphone, I felt my mind go distant.
I had vaguely assumed the leaf would come from a broadleaf tree.
I had never once imagined it would be a conifer.
Had the previous World Tree lived in the polar regions?
No, it was the pinnacle of all trees, so maybe where it lived had nothing to do with it at all.
Maybe it spent its time changing freely between a conifer version and a broadleaf version whenever it pleased.
Still, it probably wouldn't turn into a cactus.
...Would it?
"A leaf? Where on earth did that gigantic leaf come from?"
"More importantly, what is that sprout on top of your head? Did it just get rid of all that poison gas?"
"Yes, I think so. It seems to be Do-woon-ssi's skill."
"That's a skill?"
The voices of Woo Yeon-hoo and Yu Jae-i from behind pulled my drifting thoughts back into place.
This was no time to leisurely inspect the leaf.
The leader-mask bastard was still up in the sky.
I reached out with my left hand and picked up the leaf floating above my smartphone.
I could feel the World Tree's energy wrapping my body in warmth.
Just as I'd expected.
With this on me, it should block that bastard's poison like an amulet.
I turned around right away to hand it over to them.
Woo Yeon-hoo was looking at me and the leaf in my hand, while Yu Jae-i was staring at me and the sprout on my head.
"......"
A man with a sprout on his head, holding a giant leaf.
When I imagined myself from a third person's point of view, there was no possible way to call that a normal look.
I could understand why they were staring at me like I was some kind of idiot.
I couldn't even stop my eyes from wandering back to the leaf over and over again.
The countless serrated edges bristling from it like porcupine quills looked as if they could be pulled off one by one and thrown like spears.
Its length and thickness were about the same as the spear in Woo Yeon-hoo's hand, too.
"Do-woon-ssi, what's wrong?"
"I just thought of something interesting."
"Pardon?"
Ignoring his question, I looked up at the sky.
Probably because Saessak had been summoned above his head, the bastard still didn't look in great shape.
He kept shaking his head to clear it, and every time he did, his body swayed back and forth in the air.
No matter how you looked at it, he looked like a mosquito that had been hit by household insecticide.
A centipede? No, it was a mosquito.
"Gah! You cursed bastard! What the hell did you do? Wh-what is this disgusting smell?"
Seeing that state of his, I figured I might actually be able to hit him...
As confidence welled up in me, my right hand naturally slipped my smartphone into my pocket and tore a single leaf free from the leaf itself.
The long blade of greenery in my hand felt firm yet elastic, as though I were truly holding a spear.
The tree-branch form had already been a perfect weapon in itself, so why wouldn't this leaf be one too?
"Just stay still!"
I pulled my body to the right and hurled the leaf like a javelin.
Whoosh!
The leaf left my hand and shot up into the sky.
Just then, the mosquito bastard managed to clear his head and glare at me.
He'd finally recovered because Saessak above his crown had vanished.
"What kind of trick is thi...!"
He shouted and swung his arm to knock the leaf away.
Thunk!
"...What?"
What was knocked aside wasn't the leaf, but his arm.
The leaf pierced straight through his arm with ridiculous ease.
A leaf that pierced an arm...
Once I realized the attack worked, what came next was simple.
I just had to keep throwing leaves at the bastard, who was too busy freaking out over having his arm pierced by one.
"W-wait, what is this, stop...!"
One. Then two.
Each time a leaf sank into his body, he screamed at me to stop.
If he were begging, he might've had a chance; barking orders at me, though, was hardly going to make me stop.
He couldn't dodge the leaves I'd been throwing in rapid succession.
"Gaaah...!"
With several leaves lodged in his body, he plummeted to the ground.
Watching him like that, I felt the kind of satisfaction you get after finally swatting every mosquito that kept you awake on a summer night.
That was a relief and a half.
Even with five leaves embedded in him, he still wasn't dead.
Thrashing, he shouted at me.
"Ugh... Crowd will... we'll hunt you down!"
"Yeah, yeah. I'll look forward to it."
Muttering absently, I walked toward him.
He glared at me as though he meant to kill me, ranting nonstop about how I would "never die cleanly" and how "my comrades will definitely avenge me."
He was losing black blood by the gallon, and yet his mouth was still alive and kicking.
"We who serve His will are eternal...!"
He couldn't finish the sentence. The light left his eyes first.
Whatever grudge he held, it was strong enough that he died without even closing his eyes.
"Jeez, what a disgusting bastard."
Like when Kim Jeong-cheol died, the corpse reverted to human form.
If he'd died in his transformed state, I could've taken the body to the government or the Association and proven the existence of the Followers of the Demon Race, but that was a shame.
It was a human corpse no matter how I looked at it, so there was no way I could carry it around and go looking for someone.
If I dissected it, maybe I'd find something different...
But in this state, bringing it in would only prove murder.
I defeated the Followers of the Demon Race. (2/10)
◈ A leaf from the previous World Tree
◈ Can be used as a leaf-shaped throwing weapon
This quest looked like the kind that could be completed midway through.
Now that I'd brought down two of them, the reward I'd earned was once again a leaf from the previous World Tree.
"Will it be the conifer version again?"
After muttering that to myself, I closed the message window without claiming the reward.
The more of them I defeated, the better the rewards would get.
I should finish the quest when I could get a better prize.
As I sorted that out in my head, I pulled the leaves embedded in the bastard's body free.
"So what's your real identity?"
After I removed the leaves, Yu Jae-i came up to me and asked as I searched the corpse.
I couldn't exactly tell her I was a World Tree caretaker, so I pretended not to hear her and rifled through the pockets.
She tapped my shoulder and then crouched down beside me.
"Could you at least stop pretending not to hear me?"
As she said that, she looked at me.
Her hair slid down in a soft line along the slightly tilted curve of her neck.
"Hahaha..."
"Don't try to brush me off with a laugh, either."
Even so, Yu Jae-i didn't press any further.
She'd figured out what I was doing and decided to let it go.
She searched the corpse like I was doing.
From the pocket on the side I hadn't checked yet, she pulled out a wallet.
"A terrorist group, and he carries a wallet? Oh, there's an ID card too."
"Probably a fake."
"Still, let's take a look."
Woo Yeon-hoo, who had sat down across from us with a thud, held out his hand.
She handed over the ID card and wallet at once, and he peered down at the ID card he'd received.
His eyes widened as he examined it.
"It's real."
"Huh? Why would it be real?"
He took out a Hunter license from the wallet and checked that as well.
"This one's real too."
"What kind of terrorist organization executive carries real ID?"
"Arrogance. Or overconfidence, perhaps."
"Aren't these guys just idiots?"
"How did you figure that out?"
"Ah... not long ago, someone asked me to make a counterfeit license. That's when I learned the difference between real and fake."
As she said that, Woo Yeon-hoo looked at me.
When she caught the meaning of his gaze, she smiled with one corner of her mouth lifted.
She didn't ask why I'd made the fake license or what I used it for.
She must have known where it had gone.
A D-class Hunter had hunted monsters in an A-rank Gate to bring back materials, so it wasn't hard to guess what it had been used for.
Woo Yeon-hoo held the ID card and license out to me.
"The name is Yong Du-sik. A B-class Hunter."
"B-class?"
A B-class Hunter had unleashed poison strong enough to subdue an A-class Hunter?
It was too hard to believe, so I checked the Hunter license he'd handed over.
The license really did say, "B-class Hunter."
Thud...
The strength went out of my fingers, and I dropped the ID card and license I was holding.
It wasn't that the bastard's poison had finally taken effect on me.
It was something one thought had suddenly struck me.
"Don't tell me... no way..."
Kim Jeong-cheol, a C-class Hunter, had used Sword Qi, something reserved for A-class Hunters.
He had only been imitating it, so in truth he must have been around B-class level.
Once he transformed, he would've been at the level of an A-class Hunter.
Yong Du-sik was the same.
After transforming, the B-class Hunter had displayed power surpassing that of an A-class Hunter.
Which meant there was only one conclusion to draw.
It granted at least one full rank's worth of power.
"Do-woon-ssi?"
"What suddenly got into you? What's wrong?"
Then what happened if a being on the level of an A-class Hunter transformed?
Wouldn't it gain power corresponding to an A+ class, or even an S-class...?
It was insane.
And yet my intuition screamed that it was right.
There were only four S-class Hunters in the entire world.
Two in the United States, one in China, one in Russia.
They were beings beyond the beyond.
Even Han Jin-hwan, Korea's number one Hunter and the man said to be the closest to S-class, was only A+ class.
"...I need to learn more about Crowd."
"Why?"
"Don't these bastards get stronger when they transform, like some kind of transforming robot?"
"So?"
"What happens if someone at A-class level transforms?"
"Ah...!"
"Wouldn't they gain power... on the level of S-class?"
When I told them what I'd intuited, the two of them widened their eyes in disbelief.
It was probably hard to accept.
I understood that.
I couldn't believe it myself after saying it out loud.
The problem was, my intuition was usually right when it was pessimistic.
"That's ridiculous!"
"Yeah, that would mean we're overestimating Crowd way too much!"
"Power on the level of S-class? That's absurd beyond absurd."
"Fine, let's say those guys really are that amazing. Then why didn't they just drag me off right away and instead keep trying to persuade me?"
That was true, too.
If they were such an incredible organization, why hadn't they kidnapped her and instead come back over and over to try to convince her?
Why did it have to be Yu Jae-i in the first place?
"Did he say why he was taking you?"
"He did. He told me to make some kind of key."
"A key?"
"Yeah. He said if I made it, he'd tell me about my father."
"Did he say what kind of key it was?"
"No. When I demanded to know how I was supposed to trust them, he said he'd give me time to think and threw me straight into an underground room."
That was a little out of left field.
Since they were a terrorist group tied to the Followers of the Demon Race, I had assumed they would tell her to make some kind of weapon.
A weapon with high killing power and no easy way to defend against it.
Something like a mana bomb, for instance.
But instead of that sort of weapon, they wanted her to make a key?
What on earth was so important about that key?
"Did they happen to show her the blueprint for the key as well?"
While I was thinking about the key, Woo Yeon-hoo spoke up.
As he said, if they had something they wanted made, they might have had a blueprint for it.
If they wanted her to make it from scratch, then they wouldn't even have that.
Yu Jae-i frowned and fell into thought.
"A blueprint... Ah! They did shake something around while they were talking. Could that have been it?"
"Then there was a blueprint, but they still specifically wanted Yu Jae-i-ssi."
"I didn't check, so I don't know if that was really a blueprint."
"It wasn't on the corpse?"
I searched just in case, but there was nothing like a blueprint.
All I found on Yong Du-sik's corpse was the wallet.
"Then..."
Woo Yeon-hoo turned his head and looked toward where the hideout had been.
The hideout was gone without a trace, leaving only the first-floor wall here and there, standing miserably in the wreckage.
If the blueprint had been there, it had definitely been swept away when I swung the World Tree around.
"......"
"......"
"Uh, sorry?"
For some reason, it felt like I should, so I apologized with sincere innocence.