Chapter 62
Blue moonlight settled over the land.
On the dark mountain stood a figure cloaked in black robes.
She took a slow step forward, her heels clicking against the ground.
The alluring sway of her walk continued until she came to the very edge of a cliff.
A bee-shaped brooch pinned to the swell of her chest flashed in the dark.
“Love Orphanage.”
She pulled back the hood of her robe.
Long hair, hidden beneath it, spilled down over her shoulders.
She murmured the names of several orphanages.
The names falling from her red lips scattered into the air.
“Hope Orphanage, Morning Star Orphanage. And Bangju Orphanage....”
Her lips twisted.
A smile formed.
It held a thin, mocking contempt.
Her sneer was aimed at the orphanage a kilometer away.
And it wasn’t only her scorn that reached toward it. There was something else as well.
Her pale hand.
Mana gathered in the palm she held toward the ground.
“Hive Summon.”
What she called forth from her hand was a hive.
A massive hive, as though a new floor had been laid down at the cliff’s edge.
Even the hexagonal holes that made up the hive were huge enough to match its size.
Each opening was as large as the windows of a midsize car, and the bees bursting from them were naturally just as monstrous.
Before long, the mountain was filled with a sound like dozens of drones taking flight.
“At last. At long last, the time has come.”
As she muttered to herself, she closed her eyes.
Her lips trembled faintly.
Satisfaction slowly bloomed across her face.
The face of someone who had waited patiently for a long time and finally reached her goal.
The face of someone reaching out to pluck a luscious fruit only after it had ripened to perfection.
“You’ll never know how much effort I put into this, not until the day you die.”
She let out the words with a trace of derision, then flicked her fingers.
They traced a sideways figure eight.
At once, hundreds upon hundreds of giant bees cut through the night.
At her command, they flew toward Bangju Orphanage.
Watching them go, she snickered.
The laughter that shook her whole body took several minutes to finally settle.
“Come to me, Gang Woo-hyeok!”
She thrust both arms forward.
It looked as though an actress onstage were reaching out to the one she loved.
Like she was drawing a lover into her arms, she clasped at the air.
Her hands slowly came together before her chest.
The pose resembled a nun offering prayer to God.
“Kill that damned bitch, and bring her before me....!”
The words that left her red lips were nothing like a prayer.
They were more like a curse.
After speaking them, she laughed again.
Her lips curled and her shoulders shook.
But the face distorted by laughter soon twisted for another reason.
“....?”
There was no response.
Sensing something was wrong, she shared her vision with the bees through magic.
Layer upon layer of defensive magic still protected the orphanage.
The bees could do nothing but circle helplessly around it, blocked by the barrier.
They rammed themselves against it, but the transparent wall didn’t even budge.
No matter how much time passed, the protective magic over the orphanage refused to vanish.
“What the hell is that brat doing?”
Frustration made her shout the question aloud.
By her calculation, Gang Woo-hyeok should have already shattered the protective magic.
The bees should have swarmed the orphanage and butchered every human inside.
And yet the layered defenses still stood, shielding the place without a hint of damage.
She sent one of the bees whose vision she was sharing along the side of the orphanage to look for Gang Woo-hyeok.
Not long after, he was found collapsed in the office, as though he had fainted.
“That stupid—”
Her irritated remark died in her throat.
Because the life signs of the bees she had sent toward the orphanage vanished all at once.
The connection to the bee she had been sharing vision with through magic was severed too.
There was only one meaning to such a phenomenon.
All the bees had died.
Hundreds of them, each one equivalent to a B-class monster.
“Hhn!”
The fear those bees felt as they died was transmitted directly to her.
The deaths of hundreds crashed over her body in one wave.
The shock made her sway of her own accord.
Then, sensing something, she lifted her head toward the orphanage.
Killing intent.
Killing intent flew from the orphanage, a full kilometer away, toward the mountain where she stood.
Precisely toward where she was standing.
As if whoever was sending it knew exactly where she was.
“Just who is releasing that kind of killing intent...!”
Before she could finish, her question was answered.
A blue tower had risen in front of the orphanage.
She knew perfectly well it was not a tower.
The thing was so enormous it could be mistaken for one, but it was actually a blade.
A blade shining blue, as if a crescent moon had descended from the sky.
And she knew perfectly well who owned that blue blade.
The man rising as Crowd’s newest enemy.
“Baek Do-woon!”
The crescent moon surged forward, cleaving through the night sky.
The World Tree sapling is protecting Manager Baek Do-woon.
The sapling is feeling fear toward the Manager.
I had been about to head out and hunt the monsters surrounding the orphanage.
If I hadn’t heard the auntie’s scream from the office, I would have gone straight outside. I’d hurried back, thinking maybe a monster had broken in.
“....”
What I found when I got back to the office was the auntie, injured.
She was clutching her hand where she’d been hurt.
Thankfully, it wasn’t a serious wound.
If she ate a pine needle, it would heal in no time.
The problem was that the one who’d hurt her wasn’t a monster, but Gang Woo-hyeok.
The kid, who had been sleeping in colored breathing, had woken up and attacked the auntie.
A huge pair of scissors sat in the small hand of a child, wildly out of place there.
Scissors stained with the auntie’s blood.
“I-I’m fine!”
The auntie shouted in a rush.
Her voice was aimed squarely at me.
But I didn’t look back at her.
I kept my eyes on Gang Woo-hyeok, the one who’d hurt her.
The boy stared expressionlessly only at the auntie, his eyes blackened over.
Steam of some unknown sort drifted from his small body.
The sapling says the demonic energy left in the child’s body is controlling him.
The demonic energy is being purified rapidly and will soon disappear.
Saessak explained the state of things to me.
Only then did I understand.
Why those bastards had carried out the orphanage serial killings.
How Gang Woo-hyeok, after having his neck stabbed by them, was still alive.
“So that’s it....”
Bangju Orphanage was protected by Do-hee’s magic.
There were all kinds of spells at work there: shield magic, perception magic, sanctuary magic, and more.
Those spells were maintained through a medium, much like the hair tie that held back the hair at the nape of my neck.
And the medium wasn’t actually an object.
It was Choi Claudia.
The auntie who hardly ever left Bangju Orphanage unless something truly unavoidable came up.
She was the one serving as the medium that kept the protective magic running.
In other words, Crowd had sent Gang Woo-hyeok to kill this auntie.
Whether that was simply to kill her or to wipe out the orphanage altogether, I didn’t know.
“Don’t! I’m really fine, so don’t! Hey, Baek Do-woon!”
I ignored the auntie’s protests and used Warm Touch.
Blue mana gathered at my index finger.
Was it because the World Tree had grown into a sapling?
Far more mana than before surged together and poured into my finger in an instant.
“....!”
He must have sensed something approaching him.
Gang Woo-hyeok’s body jerked, then moved.
I grabbed the hand that was swinging the scissors.
“Grow.”
Crack.
I flicked the finger I was using for Warm Touch.
Gang Woo-hyeok, hit in the forehead, collapsed at once.
I caught the child’s falling body and laid him gently on the floor.
Behind me, I heard the auntie’s frightened voice.
“You didn’t... kill him, did you?”
“What? Has this auntie gone senile? Didn’t you just see me flick my finger?”
I wiggled my index finger as I spoke.
What I’d done wasn’t an attack.
It was only like handing mana over to Saessak, pouring mana into this boy as well.
I’d drawn on the World Tree’s mana in the pine needles and wiped out the demonic energy, so I was simply helping that process along.
“Why would I kill a kid?”
“Hah, haaah. Thank goodness.”
The auntie let out a long sigh of relief.
Anyone watching would think I’d actually tried to kill the kid.
I wondered what she took me for.
Maybe if Gang Woo-hyeok had chosen of his own free will to harm the auntie, that would have been one thing.
But I wasn’t about to lose my mind enough to do anything to a child who was being controlled.
“Here, eat this.”
I took a pine needle from my inventory and held it out to her.
The auntie accepted it, startled by its size.
Her hand had stopped bleeding, but I still couldn’t stop watching it.
“What is this?”
“A healing potion.”
“Huh? What kind of potion?”
She tilted her head, as if she couldn’t understand me.
Well, if someone handed you a giant pine needle and called it a healing potion, who’d believe that without blinking?
Even Hong Su-jeong, who had an emotion skill, had been indifferent the first time she saw one of these leaves.
Before I left the office, I made sure to remind her again.
“You have to eat it. Got it?”
“Mm. Yeah, got it.”
The auntie nodded, still looking flustered.
She opened her mouth carefully to eat the pine needle, but then seemed to doubt whether she should actually chew it and closed her mouth again.
She probably couldn’t quite believe that a pine needle could be a healing potion.
Leaving her to that expression, I stepped out of the office.
Then I said,
“Saessak.”
I called for Saessak.
The sapling says it sensed demonic energy within the range it could perceive.
It is delivering the location of the disgusting energy to the Manager’s mind.
Of course Saessak was smart.
It took care of exactly what I wanted without me having to ask twice.
As I stepped outside, I checked the location it had sent me.
Just as I expected.
Crowd was not far from the orphanage.
They had to stay close if they wanted to control him.
“Hah. Filthy bastards.”
[The sapling agrees with the Manager’s opinion.]
Once I was outside, I saw the giant swarm of bees flying around.
They moved around the orphanage, and though they looked like bees, they were so huge I could hardly think of them that way.
They were more like monsters shaped like bees.
And because there were so many of them, the buzzing was deafening, like a flock of birds beating their wings in the air.
“Aaah....”
“Disgusting!”
They couldn’t get close because of Do-hee’s magic.
Even knowing that, the nuns and children still stared at the swarm, frightened out of their minds.
I could understand that perfectly.
No matter how safe a place was, being surrounded by things like that was enough to make anyone feel a primitive sort of unease.
First, I needed to take that anxiety away.
I thrust my right hand forward.
“Arbor capulus.”
Arca slowly emerged from my palm.
I reached out with my left hand and gripped Arca with both hands.
Then I drove it deep into the ground.
The sensation of the blade’s tip planting itself into the earth rang through both my hands.
Feeling that contact, I spoke in a low voice.
“World Tree Summon.”
All my mana flowed into the ground through Arca.
The mana that sank into the earth soon surged upward before my eyes.
Leaves made of blue mana spiraled violently upward.
It looked as though the leaves were playing among themselves.
Those gently whirling currents slowly gathered into one place.
When they came together, they became a single sapling.
It was taller than me, but it was definitely still only a sapling.
“Wow!”
One of the children let out a breathless exclamation.
That awe spread to the others around her.
There was no fear left in the children’s faces now.
All they could see was the World Tree scattering blue light in every direction.
The giant swarm of bees nearby had vanished without a trace.
“Then....”
[The sapling is rechecking the demonic energy.]
[It is delivering the rechecked location to the Manager’s mind.]
Saessak understood exactly what I meant.
How could it be this perceptive?
Feeling pleased, I drew Arca free.
When I poured mana into it, the blue blade rose high.
“Ah....”
I understood why people called me the Moonlight Swordsman.
Arca’s blue blade looked just like moonlight.
The sapling says it does not like that nickname.