Chapter 73
Choi Hee-seok had failed to notice a thing. All he had done was take Do-woon at his word when the younger man said, “We’ve got guests.”
Only after hearing that did he reach out to the flow of mana around them and realize that multiple presences had surrounded the Crystal Workshop.
He was genuinely impressed. A young hunter barely twenty-six years old had picked up on a hidden approach that even he, after twenty years of handling dangerous work, had missed.
As he followed behind Do-woon, he wondered whether the boy simply had an extraordinary sense for presence or a remarkable detection skill.
Either way, noticing people who had concealed themselves this thoroughly was impressive no matter how you looked at it.
“Wait.”
Do-woon stopped in front of the door and looked back up at Choi Hee-seok.
“You don’t need to protect me.”
“Hm? Ah. Are you sure?”
“Yes. Please protect the other two.”
“The other two? You mean me too? Hyung-nim, I’m fine!”
Do-woon ignored Ji Sang-wook’s protest.
Choi Hee-seok gave Ji Sang-wook a quick once-over.
The man was all skin and bones, with a frame that looked as if he had never once in his life touched a barbell.
He could feel mana on the level of a B-class hunter coming from him, but compared to the others, it was practically nothing.
He wasn’t a comrade to fight beside. He was someone who needed protecting.
“Very well.”
He agreed with Baek Do-woon’s judgment and raised his shield.
It was as though he were silently vowing to protect Hong Su-jeong and Ji Sang-wook no matter what.
Ji Sang-wook slumped in disappointment.
Do-woon watched that with a satisfied nod, then opened the green door without hesitation.
Choi Hee-seok thought the young man’s confidence looked good on him.
“Oh…?”
As they stepped outside, someone let out a murmur of admiration.
The voice had come from outside, not from within.
The people surrounding the Crystal Workshop stood still, looking down at them.
Even though they were right there in front of him, he couldn’t sense any presence from them at all.
They looked like dolls with no will of their own, and some of them even seemed like corpses.
He could still feel mana coming from them, so they weren’t dead.
“I didn’t expect you’d come out to greet me like this.”
The man who had voiced his appreciation stepped forward.
He wore a black robe, and a mushroom brooch was pinned at his chest.
Seeing that, Choi Hee-seok muttered, “Crowd….”
“Oh? So you recognize us? I’m honored, Choi Hee-seok-nim.”
“Why are you here?”
“I came by to say hello. Of course, I didn’t expect you to be here.”
Then the man looked away from Choi Hee-seok.
Under his lowered hood, his gaze landed on Do-woon.
Do-woon was idly tapping at his smartphone screen while glancing around with a relaxed look on his face.
“So it was because of me after all?”
“Good to see you, Baek Do-woon-ssi.”
“Are you actually glad to see me?”
“Of course. You are to me-”
“Lee Jeong-geun? Don’t tell me the Canis made an alliance with Crowd.”
Choi Hee-seok spotted one man and spoke before the other could finish.
Do-woon and the mushroom-faced man both looked toward where his gaze had gone.
A man stood there with his shoulders hanging low.
Like the others, there was no sense of presence coming off him either. He only stood there in a doll-like state.
“Lee Jeong-geun?”
“……”
“Ah. He’s in no condition to answer right now.”
“Hm?”
“I’m controlling his mind.”
“What? You’re controlling his mind?”
“Yes. Like this.”
The mushroom-faced man clapped his hands.
Choi Hee-seok immediately stepped forward and raised his shield. Just as he had told Do-woon before leaving the workshop, he was protecting Hong Su-jeong and Ji Sang-wook.
But to no avail, nothing happened.
Choi Hee-seok, still holding up his shield, lowered it with a frown.
The reason the man had clapped wasn’t to attack them. It was to show them, plainly and directly, that he was controlling the minds of everyone present.
Except for Lee Jeong-geun, mushrooms had sprung up over the heads of the people there.
“…Mushrooms?”
Hong Su-jeong, standing behind them, muttered softly.
Her voice was full of fascination, as if she wanted to inspect the thing that had caught her attention right away.
Choi Hee-seok, on the other hand, didn’t find the sight interesting in the least. He only frowned.
What in the world was with that grotesque appearance?
The question rose up in his head before he could stop it.
But then—
“Oh, cute. So that’s what it looks like when something grows out of the top of your head?”
Do-woon said something strange in an excited voice.
＊＊＊
That suddenly made me curious.
What did I look like when Saessak was summoned on top of my head?
I replaced the mushroom in my head with a sprout.
Mm. Yeah, our Saessak was definitely cuter when it grew out of my head.
“Cute? You’re the first person who’s looked at this and said that.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Most people call it disgusting.”
Well, those mushrooms were being used to control people’s minds.
Their judgment was probably the more accurate one.
When I thought about it, I only felt a little pleased because the mushroom on top of their heads reminded me of Saessak.
If that hadn’t been the case, maybe I would have found it disgusting too, just like everyone else.
“As expected of Do-woon-ssi.”
A smile spread across the face hidden under the hood.
The brooch on his chest, shaking as he chuckled, swayed lightly.
A gold mushroom-shaped brooch.
The bastard who dealt in venom had become a centipede man, and the one who commanded giant hornets had become a bee man.
So wouldn’t this guy become a mushroom man?
A mushroom man.
I couldn’t picture it well.
Still, I kind of wanted to see it once.
“Now then, shall we have a little look?”
The man stepped back and flicked out his arm.
One of the mind-controlled people immediately stepped forward.
It was the man Choi Hee-seok had called Lee Jeong-geun.
“Be careful! That man became a wanted criminal the moment he turned A-class hunter….”
Choi Hee-seok, speaking from behind me, went silent.
Gray mana gathered, and Lee Jeong-geun’s body began to change.
In short order, he became something like a huge dog with three heads.
Then he let out a bark: “Woof!”
“Huh? I never heard Lee Jeong-geun was a shapeshifter.”
“No, no! V-substance! He must’ve overdosed on that!”
“W-was I like that too?”
I could feel the three of them going still with shock.
It made sense. This was the first time any of us had seen something like this, so of course it was surprising.
So I moved first.
I tucked my smartphone away, where I’d been calmly tapping the screen, and ran forward.
I ignored the mushroom men charging at us.
Those bastards were—
“Please!”
“Mm!”
—all Choi Hee-seok’s problem.
He was the kind of hunter who’d seen it all and settled down almost at once.
He lifted his sword and shield and used them to protect the two of them while subduing the mushroom men one by one.
“Grrrraaaah!”
The dog bastard roared.
Fine. Then I only had to focus on this dog bastard.
When I looked ahead again, the three heads had all opened their maws wide.
They were trying to tear me apart without mercy.
I slipped past the jaws snapping shut one after another and moved in. Using the index finger empowered by Warm Touch, I slapped the bridge of the rightmost dog head’s snout.
“Yip!”
The bastard yelped like an actual dog and scrambled back.
For some reason, the way it acted really was doglike.
No, maybe it was a real dog after all, since it probably had no consciousness left in the way Ji Sang-wook did.
Its defense was pretty solid.
Honestly, I’d gone in expecting to smash its head in.
I thrust my right hand forward.
“Arca.”
Bang.
Arca shot straight from my hand toward the middle head.
The bastard barked out some incomprehensible noise, then brought its heads together. As soon as the three heads gathered in one place, shield magic activated.
The shield magic of a former A-class hunter blocked the Arca I’d hurled with Saessak.
Unable to pierce its head, Arca returned to my hand.
“Wow. You’re impressive, huh?”
“Grrrraaaah!”
“……”
Right. What was I doing, talking to a beast?
If I gave it Morning Dew, maybe I could make it regain its senses, but the single drop Saessak had given me was already used up.
Even if I still had it, I wouldn’t have fed it to him.
Choi Hee-seok had called him a wanted criminal.
As I poured mana into Arca, I slashed at Lee Jeong-geun as he charged me.
The blue blade that burst out as I swung cut cleanly across everything in its path without touching anything else around it. Under my will alone, it carved only through the giant dog.
The dog, neatly split in half from upper body to lower, dropped away beside me in two pieces.
“Ke, keeng….”
“Disgusting bastard. You’re still alive after being cut in two?”
It looked like it had some kind of recovery skill.
The two halves of its body writhed, trying to rejoin each other.
It was an ugly sight, so I looked away.
I meant to help Choi Hee-seok.
“Oh. As expected of the seventy-ninth-ranked hunter.”
There didn’t seem to be any need.
In that short span of time, he had already subdued and restrained every one of the mushroom men.
Ji Sang-wook was helping him at his side, and Hong Su-jeong was inspecting the restrained mushroom men.
I turned my head toward the opposite side of the workshop.
I wanted to look at the Crowd bastard who had stepped back.
Why was he smiling, even after his underlings had been wiped out in an instant?
He was even clapping like an audience member. It was obvious he’d expected it to go this way.
“As expected, splendid.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
Since I couldn’t make sense of it, I asked bluntly.
Judging by his attitude, his goal wasn’t to kill me.
Then what had he come here for?
“Hm?”
“Did you come here to mess around?”
“Ah. Ahhh. So you didn’t hear me properly? I told you a moment ago.”
He had told me?
I frowned, and the bastard grinned and added,
“I came by to say hello.”
“……”
He really had said that.
He had said he’d come by “to say hello.”
No, I hadn’t expected that meant he had genuinely come just to greet me….
“I like you, Do-woon-ssi.”
“Bullshit. Since when have you even seen me enough to like me?”
“I’m serious. I’d even like to keep seeing you like this. Keep it up from here on out. Ah, and this encouragement is sincere, all right?”
The bastard clenched both fists toward me as if cheering me on.
He didn’t stop there. He even threw back his head and laughed, loud and carefree.
Hoo. For some reason, it felt like I’d gotten tangled up with some insane bastard.
“Since the result was quite satisfying, I suppose this has done.”
“What, you’re saying it’s like you’re just going to leave?”
“Naturally. I came to say hello, so I should head back.”
“And I’m supposed to just let you go?”
I aimed Arca at him.
The blue blade pointed straight at him, but he only shrugged, unbothered.
“What are you going to do if you don’t let me go?”
“Kill you. For my quest.”
“Quest? What’s that?”
“None of your business.”
“You’re being stingy. At least teach me, since we’re so close.”
He let his shoulders droop as he said that.
What the hell kind of closeness did we have, you lunatic?
If Do-hee and Tae-cheon heard that, it would be a disaster.
“Then I really must be going.”
“No, I wasn’t planning to let you-”
A white ring of light burst up from beneath his feet.
An instant teleportation magic circle.
The fact that it activated so quickly meant he must have already prepared it beforehand.
I lunged forward.
I was trying to drive Arca into his body.
But—
“See you again next time, Baek Do-woon-ssi.”
—he vanished after waving at me with a bright smile.
I looked around and asked Saessak, “Saessak, can you feel any trace of him?”
[The World Tree Young Tree says it cannot feel anything.]
[It says the only unpleasant presence it can feel right now is coming from the dog.]
Of course.
He’d used a teleportation spell. There was no way he’d still be nearby.
“Tch. He got one over on me.”
“You did well, Do-woon-kun.”
Choi Hee-seok came over and patted my shoulder.
He was clearly trying to comfort me after seeing me let out a frustrated sigh and act like I’d been checked.
It wasn’t that much of a hit.
Still, I appreciated the sentiment, so I deliberately smiled and answered, “It was nothing. I only dealt with one mangy dog.”
“About that mangy dog—can you turn him back to normal?”
He asked, nodding at Lee Jeong-geun.
The bastard’s body had been reattached after being split in two.
He wasn’t moving at all, just lying there still.
Apparently the mind-control state was still being maintained.
Since he hadn’t received another order, he was simply waiting until one came.
“I can, but do I need to?”
“Hm?”
“You said he was a criminal. Why not just kill him?”
His eyes widened.
What was there to be so surprised about?