The Intruder in Room 17
The seventeenth floor, where all the VIP rooms were gathered, was quiet.
True to its name, it was where the hospital’s VIPs stayed.
Even the doctors and nurses could not easily come and go there.
At the sixth door on that floor stood two men.
Lee Jae-wook and Kim Sang-cheol.
Both wore resolute expressions.
They looked like men who had sworn they would protect the room at all costs.
But they had not protected it properly.
Someone had already slipped inside without their knowledge.
“Sssnore, phoo…”
Inside the room, where the only sound was snoring, there were two men.
Baek Do-woon lay on the bed asleep, a smartphone still clutched in his hand.
Even his trademark ponytail had come undone.
And standing over him was another man.
Vanum, a direct assassin under the terrorist organization Crowd.
There was no emotion in his eyes, only emptiness.
He drew a dagger from inside his clothes.
Then he drove it straight into Do-woon’s chest.
“...?”
Vanum withdrew the dagger and tilted his head.
The blade had failed to pierce Do-woon’s chest.
He raised the dagger again and stabbed toward the left side of the chest.
Thunk!
He did not hear the sound of steel going through flesh.
What the hell was happening?
Vanum stared at the tip of the dagger he had just driven in with all his strength.
“A shield...?”
So shocked that the word slipped out of his mouth, he muttered a self-mocking curse at his own ridiculous mistake. At the same time, he glared at the skin that had turned to bark.
Who in the world turned on a shield while they were sleeping?
He muttered that to himself, then wrapped the dagger in Sword Qi.
A shield like that was nothing; he only needed to cut through it with sword qi.
The dagger, coated in ash-gray sword qi, shot toward Baek Do-woon’s chest.
And yet,
“...!”
The blade failed to reach his chest once again.
A shield that blocked sword qi?
Vanum looked back and forth between the dagger and the shield, unable to understand what he was seeing.
Then stubbornness flared in his eyes.
He used a skill to unleash the strongest attack he could muster.
Gray smoke burst from his right arm and transformed it into the limb of a beast.
His hand remained human, but the arm itself had become like a gorilla’s.
Die!
Clang!
Even that attack was stopped by the mana shield.
“What on earth is...?”
He couldn’t help but let out a disbelieving groan.
This time he didn’t even think to mock himself for making the mistake of speaking out loud.
He could only stare at his own arm and at Do-woon’s bark-like skin.
Then something green suddenly sprouted from Do-woon’s chest with a pop.
The sprout growing out of his chest was a seedling with only three leaves.
“...?”
The little sprout began to bounce.
Not just in place.
It hopped along, moving little by little across the bed.
Somehow, it was even kind of cute.
Vanum, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to kill Do-woon, stared at the scene in front of him.
The hopping sprout was enough to make him forget what he was doing.
It didn’t stop until it reached Do-woon’s left arm.
It wrapped itself around the sleeping man’s left wrist, its stem still bobbing as he snored.
Then, with its three leaves, it lifted the bed.
Heave-ho.
Watching it, Vanum could have sworn he heard that sound.
And in that instant,
Pine needles. Pine needles. Pine nee...
Vanum jerked his head around and glared at Do-woon’s face.
He thought Do-woon had woken up and run the smartphone app.
Ready to lunge at any moment, he kept staring, but Do-woon was still asleep.
His mouth puffed and panted with each breath.
Then why the hell had the smartphone suddenly started working?
As he looked on in confusion,
“Mmnh, mm. Uh, pine needles?”
Do-woon repeated the word that had come through the phone.
He wasn’t saying it for any purpose; he was only mumbling the word he had heard in his sleep.
And then, from his left hand, a single pine needle shot out with astonishing speed.
The assassin recoiled in alarm and twisted away.
He didn’t manage to dodge completely.
The pine needle brushed past his neck and stopped in midair.
“...!”
The pine needle frozen in the air suddenly coiled around Vanum’s throat like a snake.
He grabbed at it with his thick gorilla arm, trying to tear it off.
“Aaaagh!”
But Vanum couldn’t shake the pine needle loose.
That was because the right hand holding it had begun to melt.
Vanum could only writhe in agony and scream.
He had even forgotten that he had broken into the room in secret.
Do-woon shot upright at the sound of that pained scream.
Still drunk with sleep, he lurched forward, nearly pitching face-first before forcing himself upright again.
“Hah? What now?”
He looked around, and then the hospital room door was flung open rough enough to shake the frame.
Jae-wook and Sang-cheol, startled by the scream outside, had rushed in.
“Team Leader, are you all right?”
“Ah! Th-that...”
“Huh? And who’s this?”
The three of them spotted Vanum at the same time.
Six eyes turned toward the uninvited guest.
That was why only Vanum could see it while he lost consciousness in pain.
The seedling on Do-woon’s shoulder, shaking its leaves.
Was it just his imagination that he heard a faint click of the tongue, like tsk, tsk?
Vanum glared at the sprout, then blacked out.
Seeing that, the seedling clapped its leaves together as if dusting off its hands.
It was as though it were saying, “What a joke.”
“An intruder!”
“How the hell did he get in?”
Because of the chaos?
Jae-wook and Sang-cheol, who had rushed over in a panic, didn’t notice the sprout that had been on Do-woon’s shoulder.
The seedling vanished from his shoulder without a trace.
“Team Leader!”
“Ah, I’m fine. You don’t need to worry.”
Do-woon scratched his tousled hair.
Then he said it as if it were nothing.
“Saessak handled everything by itself.”
“Pardon?”
“Who?”
The two men tilted their heads, completely lost.
He only gave them a faint smile.
I had a dream.
In the dream, I was wandering through a desert made entirely of sand.
For some reason I couldn’t understand, I kept looking for pine needles as I wandered.
In the end, I even shouted for pine needles at the top of my lungs.
Why pine needles, of all things?
“I thought it was just some crazy dream, but...”
When I woke up, I understood why I’d had it.
Saessak had bravely fought the intruder all by itself.
Seeing pine needles, which should have been in my inventory, wrapped around the intruder’s throat made it obvious that I must have been mumbling about them in my sleep.
Jae-wook, looking around, asked, “How on earth did you do that to his arm?”
I could understand why he was asking.
The intruder, now unconscious, had an arm that was far from normal.
It had melted as though someone had poured acid over it.
The rest of his body was fine; only the right arm had turned out like that.
As though the right arm itself had been something “unclean.”
I think I know which organization he belongs to.
“About Do-hee and Tae-cheon—”
“No can do.”
Jae-wook cut me off and refused outright.
“An assassin showed up. We can’t hide that.”
“Jae-wook’s right. I’ll contact them as soon as day breaks.”
“...”
It was the obvious answer, so I couldn’t argue.
If we hid this and they found out later, neither of them would be able to stay in the Baekuncheon Guild anymore.
I’m not the one paying them; Do-hee and Tae-cheon are.
They had the loyalty to listen to me, but not the obligation.
Fine. No helping it.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I figured you’d worry, but I don’t have a choice.”
“You already have an idea who this bastard is?”
“There’s one organization I can think of.”
“I knew it...”
That bastard was definitely with Crowd.
His arm had melted exactly like it had been purified after touching the pine needle.
And there was also this:
Defeated a Follower of the Demon Race. (3/10)
Current completion reward - 2 leaves of the previous World Tree.
The quest window that had appeared in the corner of my vision was proof enough.
The count had risen from 2/10 to 3/10.
Since the number had gone up, this guy had to be a Follower of the Demon Race.
Which meant he was tied to Crowd, too.
By the way, the reward had barely increased from one leaf to two.
Wasn’t that reward a little too stingy?
Not that it mattered, since I hadn’t planned on taking it anyway.
“I’ll explain it separately.”
I said to Jae-wook, who was sitting in front of the unconscious intruder.
He took a set of hunter handcuffs from his magic pouch and bound the man’s legs.
Why the hell do you even carry something like that around?
“...Please just tell Tae-cheon that an intruder got in and that I subdued him immediately.”
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
“And go explain this to the hospital, too.”
“Huh? But then...”
Sang-cheol let the rest trail off.
“Wouldn’t the hospital get scared and kick you out, Team Leader?”
That was probably what he wanted to ask.
If the hospital decided to expel me, there was nothing that could be done about it.
I couldn’t let other patients be put in danger because of me.
Nodding, I said, “Still, you have to tell them. Guys like this might come back.”
“...Right. I’ll let them know immediately.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
As I said that, I looked down at the screen.
Saessak, unlike usual, had let its body droop a little.
It looked like it was sleeping from exhaustion.
It seemed the little thing had worn itself out dealing with the intruder alone.
I felt grateful and guilty, so I tapped the screen hard, as if to tell it to hang in there.
Blue mana flowed into the screen.
Then I noticed something different about Saessak.
“Huh? It grew another leaf?”
The three leaves had become four.
And the stem was longer than when I had checked it before going to sleep.
It was starting to look less and less like something I could still call a seedling.
When had our little Saessak grown like that?
The World Tree seedling sensed that something good was about to happen!
Please pat it gently with Warm Touch, just as always.
Something good?
Could it be...?
The fog in my head cleared all at once.
There was only one good thing I could think of from the message Saessak had sent.
I grinned and tapped the smartphone screen hard with my finger.
Just as always?
No, I’d pat it even more diligently than usual!
Kim Sang-cheol left the room at once.
He needed to explain what had just happened to the staff in charge of the VIP floor.
As he gathered his thoughts, he replayed the scene in the room.
When he had opened the door after hearing a sound like a pig being slaughtered, he had seen it.
Baek Do-woon sitting casually on the bed.
He didn’t look like someone who had just subdued an assassin sent to take his life.
He looked relaxed and at ease, as though he had just woken up.
Baek Do-woon had said it like it was nothing.
“Go explain this to the hospital.”
“Huh? But then...”
Kim Sang-cheol had trailed off.
What if the hospital gets scared and kicks Team Leader out?
He hadn’t been able to say those words to the end.
Baek Do-woon had seemed to understand what he wanted to say and nodded.
Then, in a gentle voice, he had replied, “Still, you have to tell them. Guys like this might come back.”
“...Right.”
He had been astonished by Baek Do-woon’s insight, by the way he had instantly grasped the words Sang-cheol couldn’t bring himself to say.
And at the same time, he was amazed by something else.
Namely, how Baek Do-woon worried about other people before himself.
He said they had to tell the hospital because the assassin might come back, but that wasn’t the concern of someone thinking only about his own safety.
The assassin had nearly caused a disaster for him, and yet Baek Do-woon was more worried about the hospital and its patients than about himself.
“Goddamn, that’s so cool! This is what Baekuncheon should be!”
What Baek Do-woon had shown was exactly the image of Baekuncheon that Kim Sang-cheol had always imagined.
That was why he thought joining Baekuncheon had really been the right choice.
He clenched his fist and even trembled with excitement.
On the night of June 2 turning into June 3, a pure-hearted young man was sinking into the swamp of misunderstanding.
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