Chapter 5
I gathered the goblin corpses into a single heap.
It made the butchering easier.
I pulled my slaughtering knife from the work bag at my hip.
The goblin on the far left would be the first one I took apart.
“Been a while since I’ve worked on goblins.”
I said it out loud instead of keeping the thought to myself.
People said the longer you lived alone, the more you talked to yourself, but that wasn’t the case for me. Until this morning, I’d been part of a guild, right in the middle of group life. I only started talking while I butchered the goblins because I wanted to pretend I hadn’t noticed that someone was approaching.
Namsan Gate was notorious for its filthy air, so people avoided it, but not so thoroughly that not a single person ever showed up. Gates with heavy contamination were common, and masks made for gate work were sold everywhere. A standard gate mask would have been enough here. In other words, it was a place people disliked, not a place no one ever entered.
And yet there wasn’t a single person in sight.
Almost as if the whole area had been sealed off so no one could come in.
“Hup.”
I made a point of adding little sounds every time I moved, like a man who didn’t sense anything strange at all.
The blood drained from the goblin whose head had been severed.
I cut the heads off the remaining two goblins one after another. One of them had already been headless, so I left that one alone.
Rustle.
As I watched the blood run out, I heard a sound.
It was the crunch of dry branches underfoot.
I stayed silent, acting as though I’d noticed nothing.
“Ah, I see. You already knew.”
A calm male voice came from behind me.
Only then did I turn my head and look at the owner of the voice.
He had disheveled hair, a leather jacket, and a smile on his face.
The ease in that smile said the polluted air didn’t bother him in the least.
Any hunter or butcher working in an E-class gate would have been coughing without end. Unless, like me, he had a skill that nullified poison, or the level of air pollution just didn’t matter to him.
The same way someone with enough mana could walk through a high-rank gate without feeling pressure.
“…I thought I’d hidden it well.”
“Hm. You’re serious?”
Apparently my act had been clumsy.
The man approached me, shaking his head.
Then he looked at the goblins and the trees split cleanly in two.
With an almost regretful murmur, he said, “I thought you were just an idiot wandering around after something like that happened. Guess not. I should’ve moved a little faster.”
“……”
I’d been wondering how long he’d been watching me, and there was my answer.
Thankfully, it seemed he hadn’t seen me use my skill.
I’d managed to keep it hidden from Tae-cheon, too; it had almost been exposed to some stranger I didn’t even know.
Still, what was this man’s affiliation?
Was he the one sent to kill me?
Or just someone taking orders?
I kept butchering the goblins as though I had no idea what he was after.
I began skinning the goblin whose blood had finished draining.
“Ignoring me?”
“Goblin corpses rot fast unless you preserve them. If you want to make use of them, you have to hurry.”
“Make use of them?”
“Goblin hides are common gear for rookie hunters.”
“Don’t tell me you use them?”
“If they’re in decent shape, I might as well.”
“I wouldn’t think Lee Tae-cheon’s friend or an executive at Baekwooncheon would be short on money.”
What a way to put it.
Anyone hearing that would think I was the sort of bastard who leeched off his friends.
Of course, that was more or less the image people had of me inside the guild.
A freeloader who landed a good friend.
A parasite who lived off his little sister.
Because of that, more than a few people I’d worked with had apologized for misunderstanding me.
And after they understood, they’d always say Do-hee and Tae-cheon should do something about the rumors about me.
Of course, those two had tried everything they could to clear my name.
They’d argued that I was indispensable to Baekwooncheon.
For some reason, the more they said that, the more the early members like Han Jae-im and the others in the guild seemed to take it as them covering for me.
They seemed to think people like them would never need help from someone like me.
Probably because they disliked me on a personal level.
Two years ago, I hadn’t exactly been a model citizen.
Not that I was all that great now.
Back then, I’d been worse.
“……”
“……”
The man watched quietly as I skinned the goblin hide.
When I’d fully peeled the hide from one of them, he finally spoke.
“So you really are skilled for someone who’s supposed to be a desk worker.”
Praise is terrifying.
He might have been an enemy, but hearing him compliment me still felt good.
I held out the freshly peeled red hide.
“Want one? I can give you this.”
“I’ll pass. The color doesn’t suit me.”
Fair enough. He was dressed mostly in dark colors.
It fit the bleak atmosphere of Namsan Gate.
I set the hide back down on the ground.
Looking at the skin I’d peeled so cleanly made it obvious my effort hadn’t been wasted.
After I retired from hunting, butchering was what I learned in order to survive.
Thanks to that, I was able to build a butchering team in the guild and even serve as the head of the Butcher Management Team.
Not anymore, though.
“Pity. It’s hard to find a butcher at this level.”
Pity?
I looked at the man speaking such a strange line.
What exactly was he sorry about?
The man glanced at my face and let out a small laugh before continuing.
“I already know. You’re quitting as head of the Butcher Management Team.”
“Quitting?”
He didn’t know I’d already left Baekwooncheon.
“Why pretend otherwise? You said so last night.”
“Last night?”
Last night I’d been struggling just to stay alive.
I hadn’t said a single word about quitting the team leader position.
“You told Myeong-hwan, didn’t you? ‘Would Lee Tae-cheon’s friend really be some ordinary desk worker?’”
“……!”
My grip tightened on the slaughtering knife.
Myeong-hwan.
The familiar name told me this man was above Jeon Myeong-hwan in the chain of command.
The man in front of me was definitely from the backworld guilds.
“To think you’d been hiding and preparing for something like this. I’m impressed.”
“…Damn it.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to kill you—”
“You nicked the hide.”
“……”
When I tightened my hand, the slaughtering knife had sliced a little too deep into the hide.
Fortunately, the wound wasn’t severe, so I didn’t have to throw the whole thing away.
If I cut away the damaged part, it would still be usable.
To reduce the loss rate by even a little, I moved the knife carefully.
The man, to his credit, waited until I’d finished skinning it.
“Can it still be used?”
“This part has to be discarded.”
I pushed the cut-off piece aside and looked back at him.
A broad, handsome face was half-hidden by his messy hair.
Jeon Myeong-hwan’s features had been sharp rather than striking, which somehow made him look older.
“You’re not here for revenge over a companion or anything like that.”
At my words, the man nodded.
If he’d come for revenge, there’d have been no need to seal off the area and come looking for me himself. Controlling the people here would have been a lot more trouble than just killing one person.
So he’d come to talk...?
“I don’t have enough grounds to call it revenge on you.”
“Grounds? People from the backworld care about that sort of thing, too?”
“Even shadows exist at night.”
He answered my question with a shrug.
I wasn’t sure it was the right expression, but I understood what he meant.
The backworld was still a place where people gathered, so it must have its own rules.
If they didn’t follow those rules, the backworld probably couldn’t keep existing.
“A failed request is something my guild has to absorb. It isn’t something I’d take revenge on you for.”
“So you’re not going to kill me?”
“Killing you would just be cheap frustration. Whether it’s even possible to kill someone who won’t die even if you stab their heart or smash their skull is beside the point.”
My purpose had been to save people, so I hadn’t chased the trail all the way down.
If I’d known my information would spread this far, should I have pushed harder?
No. That wasn’t it.
Last night, I had been standing in a position where I had to fulfill my responsibility.
Regretting something I couldn’t help would only turn into blame.
I’d done my best.
There was no point regretting it.
“Jeon Myeong-hwan got a little broken, but... well, he was always the type to get what was coming to him. Let’s say his time came.”
As the man said that, a huge amount of mana began gathering in his chest.
I frowned, wondering if he was about to attack.
I gathered mana into my slaughtering knife in response, and then—
A balance scale appeared on his chest as he said, “For that reason, I’d say the scale hasn’t completely tipped.”
It was the very same scale held by the goddess of justice.
“A balance scale...?”
The man nodded and introduced himself.
“Seo Ji-hyeok of the Balance Guild.”
So a man from the Balance Guild could create a balance scale?
No wonder he’d sounded like some kind of administrator from the start.
Seo Ji-hyeok was probably the guild master of the Balance Guild.
“One of my underlings kept pushing me to come, and now I’m starting to think I made the right choice.”
The guild master had been pushed here by one of his subordinates.
He hadn’t come to avenge anyone, and he hadn’t come to vent his anger either.
“Why do you think coming was the right choice?”
“Let’s make a deal. Until the scale finds its balance.”
Huh? A deal?
That wasn’t what I’d expected to hear from Seo Ji-hyeok’s mouth.
Namsan Gate was sparsely populated, quiet, and forlorn.
Not even the goblins that lived here were in sight.
That was because the Balance Guild, a backworld guild, had sealed the place off.
Seo Ji-hyeok stood with his subordinates around him and read a report.
It was a report containing information about Baek Do-woon, the man he had just met.
“Baek Do-woon....”
Former D-class hunter. Retired and turned to butchering.
Established the monster butchering team and butcher management team in the Baekwooncheon Guild.
After that, hunters and butchers in Baekwooncheon began working together.
※ His retirement from hunting was revealed to have been a cover story.
He had not even discarded his hunter license.
He had been hiding his true ability, and that ability was enough to overwhelm Jeon Myeong-hwan, an A-class hunter.
He appears to possess skills related to recovery and regeneration.
“I’ve read it. Take it.”
Seo Ji-hyeok returned the report to Choi Ki-jeong, his deputy guild master.
Choi Ki-jeong received it respectfully and asked, “Did you reach an agreement?”
“Didn’t I tell you not to ask things you already know?”
Choi Ki-jeong already knew, just as Seo Ji-hyeok said he did.
The flow of mana that formed when he summoned the scale had told him as much.
He was asking anyway because he wanted to chide Seo Ji-hyeok indirectly. After all, he had clearly told him, “Kill him,” before Seo Ji-hyeok went to meet Baek Do-woon.
“I told you to kill him. Baekwooncheon is already obnoxious enough with just Lee Tae-cheon and Baek Do-hee. If that bastard starts moving openly, then—”
“Then what?”
“Pardon?”
“How are you going to kill him?”
“How, you say? Because of the regeneration skill? That much should be easy. You know all you have to do is cut off his head.”
The moment he finished speaking, Seo Ji-hyeok let out a sigh.
Choi Ki-jeong couldn’t make sense of him.
The one who wanted to sigh right now was him.
“I can’t kill that thing.”
“Pardon? What do you mean? With the master’s scale ability, surely—”
Choi Ki-jeong stopped mid-sentence.
Seo Ji-hyeok’s words kept scraping at the inside of his head.
I can’t kill that thing.
I can’t kill that thing.
“…That thing?”
Seo Ji-hyeok had referred to Baek Do-woon as that thing.
That bastard, that guy, that son of a bitch.
That thing was not a term used for human beings.
It was the sort of word hunters usually used for monsters.
“…Was he that strong?”
“No, he didn’t look all that strong. Seemed like he had a few screws loose, too.”
“Then why would you say that?”
“Because the world itself isn’t called strong, even though it can’t be killed.”
“…Huh?”
Choi Ki-jeong thought he had just heard something absurd beyond belief.
Was it even reasonable to describe a single human being with the word world?
It was a ridiculous, groundless thing to say.
But Seo Ji-hyeok’s face showed no sign of joking.
“Because the world itself isn’t called strong, even though it can’t be killed.”
That line kept circling through Choi Ki-jeong’s mind.