Chapter 83
People in robes were seated around the round table.
It was a table meant to symbolize the absence of rank, a circle where no one stood above or below anyone else. And yet, ironically, the people seated around it made the differences in status feel unmistakable.
That was because only two of the eight people present were doing any talking.
The two who were speaking both wore brooches shaped like a circle and a skull on their chests.
“What did she do?”
“She kept repeating that she wanted to die, as if she’d given up on everything... so I took care of her.”
“Took care of her... not killed her?”
“Well, once she stopped having any will of her own, it amounts to the same thing.”
As he said that, the skull looked around at the others.
It was a quiet pressure, but a pressure all the same.
Whenever the skull’s gaze, hidden beneath the robe, seemed to land on someone, the others would turn their heads away or flinch.
Fear. Dread.
Those emotions were all over them.
Seeing the round table fail to function as a round table, Circle let out a sigh.
“Fine. I’m sure you handled it well enough.”
“......”
“Now then, let’s get to the point.”
“The point?”
Circle projected a video into the center of the round table.
It was a clip the Hunter Association had uploaded to WatcherCast.
Inside the video, an association host and A-class hunter Jeong Ha-seol were talking.
The subject of their conversation was the two potion bottles laid out in front of them.
A transparent potion and a green-tinged one.
“Has everyone seen this broadcast?”
At last, the others were given a chance to speak.
Those who had kept their mouths shut all this time answered one after another, “Yes, we have.”
Only the skull seated opposite Circle tilted his head.
“What is that?”
“Two high-grade potions the government put on sale two days ago. The clear one is a healing potion, and the green one is a mana potion, apparently.”
“High-grade potions?”
At Circle’s explanation, the skull leaned forward.
He wanted a closer look at the potions in the video.
With Jeong Ha-seol’s permission, the host tested their taste.
High-grade potions were extremely expensive.
Since there had been no supply on the market, the price had gone up even more.
So it wasn’t something you could just gulp down, which was why the host had only dabbed a bit onto a pair of metal chopsticks to taste it.
It was, quite literally, only a sample.
[Ugh... It really does taste like mint chocolate.]
[Tasty, right? Tasty, right?]
[......]
The host looked utterly baffled.
And the skull felt that confusion just as clearly.
“Mint chocolate? What’s that?”
“Mint cho... well...”
Circle broke off and glanced to the side.
At the look, the ant seated beside him answered at once.
“It’s a food from Britain called mint chocolate. Just what it sounds like: mint and chocolate combined.”
“So that’s what it is.”
“Mint and chocolate? Honestly, the British...”
The skull shook his head and leaned back in his chair.
He scratched at his chin, then let out a long sigh.
“...This has gone wrong.”
“Wrong doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“All the trouble we went through to keep high-grade potions out of Korea, and now it’s all gone to waste...”
“And that’s not all. Thanks to this, sales of Violet Violence, which we’d prepared as a substitute potion, have dropped too.”
“What about Violet Powder?”
“Sales have dropped there too, though it’s still moving. Unlike potions, that stuff is for losers anyway...”
“That’s something, I suppose.”
The skull nodded and muttered to himself.
Despite calling it something to be thankful for, his voice was thick with frustration.
Circle seemed to feel the same way, because he let out a deep sigh.
A moment later, the skull asked, “Didn’t you say the government had already released all the high-grade potions it had?”
“Yes.”
“Then—”
“Those aren’t the Bio guys’ potions. They’re a new product.”
“A new product? Where was it made?”
“Apparently at Crystal Workshop.”
“......?”
The skull tilted his head.
It was a name he’d never heard before.
Circle, across from him, nodded.
“I’d never heard of it either until now. Turns out it’s just a little hole-in-the-wall place.”
“Tch... Did they find out what it was made from? We may need to stop the supply of materials right now.”
“I thought the same thing. So I had it investigated immediately.”
“As expected of you.”
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t identify the materials themselves. But we did find a likely source.”
“A source...?”
Circle lowered the video hovering over the round table.
Then he brought up several photographs.
In the first, there was a beauty with her hair tied back, exposing her forehead with refreshing clarity.
The skull knew exactly who she was.
“Yu Jae-i...?”
“Yes. It seems the owner of Crystal Workshop is friends with Yu Jae-i.”
“A blacksmith couldn’t possibly be the source of a high-grade potion...”
The skull trailed off.
As though he had just realized something, he scratched at his chin with his hand.
So Circle waited silently for him to say it himself.
“Baek Do-woon.”
“Exactly. The workshop owner made the potion after Baek Do-woon visited.”
Saying that, Circle flipped to the next photograph.
This one showed a man coming and going from Crystal Workshop.
The quality was blurred, as though it had been taken from CCTV footage, but the man with his hair tied back was unmistakable.
Baek Do-woon.
The man who had been getting in the way of everything they tried to do lately.
“Again, Baek Do-woon.”
“It’s obvious. This can’t be a coincidence. He knows what we’re trying to do and is blocking us.”
“Then... this is no longer something we can tolerate.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
Then Circle and the skull rose at the same time.
The others, who had been listening quietly from the side, also stood up at once.
The ant-brooched man seated right beside Circle asked politely, “Will you be killing Baek Do-woon?”
“There’s something we need to do first.”
“Something we need to do...?”
“First, we should go see that person.”
“......!”
That person.
At the word, several of them clenched their fists.
Some swallowed hard; others shivered.
Fear. Dread.
And reverence.
Those emotions were all tangled together in them.
“What kind of man is Baek Do-woon, really?”
“Why has that person not yet given the order to kill him...”
“This time, we need to hear it for sure.”
With those words, Circle and the skull vanished at the same time.
With the two leaders gone, the eight who remained looked at one another.
Since there was nothing more to say among themselves, they exchanged glances for a moment, then left one by one.
Only the one wearing the ant brooch remained.
He stared at the seat that had been empty from the beginning.
“The mushroom bastard failed, but...”
Slowly, he turned his head.
His gaze fell on the center of the round table.
“Baek Do-woon...”
He muttered the name and clenched his fist.
He squeezed so hard the knuckles went white.
His whole arm even trembled faintly.
“If I kill him... they’ll surely reward me generously!”
Greed oozed out of him.
That greed burst into laughter, and only after he had laughed to himself for quite some time did he finally leave the conference room.
Then, in the dark room, only Baek Do-woon’s photograph remained projected there.
In it, Baek Do-woon wore a sly smile, one corner of his mouth lifted just slightly.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Ah, hot...!”
The moment I came back from Sanctuary, a wash of heat hit me all at once.
Even the backrest was scorching, so I had to pull away from it immediately.
The inside of the car had been baked by the June sun.
I hurriedly started the engine and turned on the air conditioner.
The cool mat attached to the seat activated on its own.
Feeling the temperature gradually come down, I leaned back against the seat and kept peeling away from it and settling back again.
By the third time I leaned into the backrest, it had finally turned completely cool.
“Phew...”
Enjoying the chill spreading from my back, I looked down at my smartphone.
I wasn’t planning to play Grow the World Tree.
Well, that wasn’t true exactly. I did plan to, but I had something else to take care of first.
Buzzz, buzz.
I checked the messages that had been rattling my phone.
While I’d been in Sanctuary, three people had sent me messages.
Kim Sang-cheol, Ji Sang-wook, and Woo Yeon-hoo.
I checked them in the order they’d been sent.
The first message was from Kim Sang-cheol.
[Chicken delivery completed. Jae-i-noona told me to thank you.]
“...Noona?”
What’s with that “noona” nonsense?
Since when is she your noona?
Frowning, I moved on to the next message.
The next sender was Ji Sang-wook.
[I took down the video that targeted you, hyung-nim.]
[I also uploaded an apology video at the same time.]
[Here’s the video link.]
[https://www.watcherca....]
He didn’t need to send me the video link too...
I replied with a casual, “Good work.”
Just as I was about to check Woo Yeon-hoo’s message, Ji Sang-wook sent another one.
What was with that reply speed?
Anyone looking at it would think he was sitting in front of his phone waiting for me to answer.
I read the new message from Ji Sang-wook.
[Yep yep. Have you finished everything on your end?]
To that, I answered, “Not yet.”
The matter in front of Crystal Workshop had been wrapped up more or less.
I’d restored Jeong Geun to normal and handed him over, and I’d also removed every mushroom that had grown on the heads of his subordinates.
But things involving the ones who had become Crowd thralls like Jeong Geun were nowhere near over.
Baba and V.P. were still circulating in the shadows.
New Ji Sang-wooks, new Jeong Geuns would keep appearing.
No, there might already be more people who had been turned into those things.
I’d have to catch them.
For the World Tree quest, and for the first fruition I needed to achieve.
“The problem is the government and the Association are going to get obsessed with hunting Crowd from here on out...”
Once that happened, Crowd would inevitably crawl back underground.
No matter how much of a terrorist organization they were on a global scale, they couldn’t face an entire country’s government and Hunter Association head-on.
If they had that kind of power, they wouldn’t have been hiding in the first place.
They would have stepped into the open and handled things directly.
So I’d have to deal with Crowd before the government and the Association did.
“Tch...”
The thought crossed my mind that maybe I wouldn’t be able to clear the quest after all.
It was an organization even the world hadn’t been able to pin down.
Could I really find them...?
[I see. I’ll be in Seoul for a while, mostly resting.]
[If you need anything, just contact me anytime!]
“What a carefree bastard.”
Some people are worrying their heads off, and he’s going on vacation...
Well, I get it.
Ji Sang-wook had gone through the experience of turning into a monster and then becoming human again.
On top of that, while he was coming back, he’d lost all that strength to me, and his muscles had wasted away completely.
Wanting to rest was only natural.
I let him go have his fun and checked Woo Yeon-hoo’s message.
It was definitely about the pinecone trade.
[This is Woo Yeon-hoo.]
[I’m leaving a message because you didn’t pick up.]
[Please contact me when you have time.]
[I’ll be waiting.]
“......”
The message was as solemn as his voice.
Maybe that was why I could almost hear that serious tone in my ear as I read it.
I closed the app and called him.
After a few rings,
- Hello.
Woo Yeon-hoo answered.
His voice was as serious as the message.
“This is Baek Do-woon.”
- Ah, Do-woon. I’ve been waiting.
“Is that so?”
- Yes. I was very interested in the pinecone.
“That’s good to hear.”
Woo Yeon-hoo was the one who would be paying for the pinecone.
No matter how much Shin Yoon-jin or Kim Ji-yeon fussed, if he didn’t buy it, it was all pointless.
Of course, that wouldn’t happen.
He might not be able to buy it if he lacked the money, but there was no way he wouldn’t want it.
- So I’m calling to ask whether you could meet right away.
“Right now?”
- Yes.
It didn’t seem like his interest was just empty politeness.
The fact that he wanted to meet immediately made that clear.
If we could close the deal quickly, that was fine with me too.
Better than dragging it out.
“All right. Where should we meet? Jae-i’s Blacksmith?”
- Ah, if it’s all right with you, Do-woon, I’d like to meet near Sinnonhyeon. Would that be acceptable?
“Well, the location doesn’t matter much.”
- Then please come to the Coincidence Who building near Sinnonhyeon Station.
Coincidence Who?
I’d never heard of that building before.
I’d never heard the name before, but it might be a place I’d recognize once I got there.
“Understood. Then let’s meet at Coincidence Who.”
- Yes, thank you for accommodating me.
“By the way, there’s no need to contact Ji-yeon separately. I’ll bring her with me.”
- Ah, so she’s nearby, then. Very well.
“All right. See you later.”
- Yes.
Click.
We ended the call at the same time.
As I opened Grow the World Tree, I got out of the car.
“...Huh?”
I stopped halfway out and stared at the screen.
The screen looked different from usual.
Normally, only Saessak stood there alone, but not this time.
“What on earth...?”
Inside the screen, twelve elves were bustling about.
Cute as SD characters.