Chapter 80
Chapter 80
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 80
Chapter Title: A Messy Rescue
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Haon, who had been keeping her eyes squeezed shut to maintain her focus, cautiously glanced to the side.
Just as she’d hoped, a large hole had been blown right where she had made the structure weaker than the rest.
‘How on earth?’
As the dust settled, a beautiful man with a bazooka slung over his shoulder came into view.
“Hello, darling. Did you miss me?”
Haon was so happy to see him she felt like she could cry.
“Nova! I missed you so much!”
It wasn't the reaction he had expected, as Nova stared at Haon with a peculiar expression.
“Could you handle Hunter for me? I have somewhere to be.”
He tilted his head when Haon dragged Hunter over to the hole.
“Are you asking me to kill him?”
“No! Don’t kill him!”
“And where are you going, darling?”
“I’m going to get Juyeol!”
“…”
Nova lifted Hunter as lightly as a sack of luggage, then tossed him unceremoniously to the headquarters staff who had come running at the sound of the explosion.
“N-Nova!”
“Take your boss. He’s not dead. Probably?”
With that, he followed Haon as she ran deeper into the building.
Haon climbed the stairs, mentally rotating the headquarters’ blueprints in her mind.
As her breath grew ragged and her feet heavy, Nova ended up carrying her the rest of the way.
The 7th floor they arrived at was a long corridor lined with archives.
After setting Haon down, Nova spoke with a displeased look.
“Darling. I came all this way to save our boss, and this is how you treat me? What exactly is going on between you and Ghost?”
“Well, we’re frien…”
Haon, about to say ‘friends,’ clamped her mouth shut. She had stopped walking at some point.
The Woo Juyeol here wasn’t ‘Juyeol.’
She considered Juyeol her friend, but she didn’t know if he felt the same. He had only just realized she was a different person from ‘Eun Haon.’
Even if they weren't friends, Juyeol was still the most precious person to her in this dimension, but that was…
Haon looked back at Nova with a confused expression.
“I don’t know.”
Nova smiled brightly and grabbed Haon’s cheeks, stretching them out.
“Wha’ ish i'!”
“How unpleasant.”
“Wha’ in the worl’...!”
Embarrassed by her slurred speech, Haon pushed his hand away and stood before the First Archive.
“Juyeol is trapped in here. I don’t know what’s going on, but…”
After a moment of thought, Haon hacked the panel herself instead of ordering Blue to do it.
Soon, the steel door hissed open, revealing rows upon rows of walls made of metal bookshelves.
“Is this… a maze?”
“Aha. This is a system that activates when the headquarters’ security is compromised. It’s tricky because of all the traps.”
“What? How do you know that, Nova?”
“I ran into it once when I was trying to sneak some data out of here.”
“…”
Haon stared at him, a million questions in her eyes.
She quickly realized this meant Juyeol must have also been trying to steal data. She pounded on the maze wall.
“Juyeol! Can you hear me?”
* * *
Juyeol leaped to dodge a spear that shot up from the ground.
‘What kind of crap did they install in here?’
He had snuck into the First Archive, taking advantage of the fact that there were hardly any Heroes at headquarters and that Hunter was distracted by Haon, but things had gotten complicated.
Suddenly, a massive explosion had shaken the ground beneath him, and the archive had literally turned into a maze.
Bookshelves shot up, moving around to form walls, and traps he never knew existed popped out from everywhere.
[I blocked the spear!]
If it weren’t for this mechanical hamster, his shoulder would have a few more holes in it by now.
Just then, he heard a thumping on the wall, followed by a familiar voice.
“Juyeol! Can you hear me?”
“…Eun Haon?”
“Yes! It’s me! Are you okay?”
“So far. Are you alright?”
“I’m okay for now, too!”
He parried an arrow fired from a bookshelf with the barrel of his gun and took a step forward.
“How did you get here?”
“I didn’t think you evacuated, so I came to help, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“Darling. I told you we should just wait outside.”
Juyeol, who had been smirking, frowned at the voice that followed.
“Nova? Don’t tell me you caused this explosion.”
“It wasn’t him! It was that terrorist from the abandoned factory!”
Haon quickly defended him, and Nova chuckled.
“I just thought of a way to get Ghost out of there quickly.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll need your cooperation, darling.”
“What are you planning?”
Ignoring Juyeol’s fierce tone, Nova answered nonchalantly.
“The same thing you used to do with Dr. Eun every day?”
“…What?”
While he was momentarily stunned, a series of explicit smooching sounds echoed from beyond the wall.
“No, mmmph. Wai, oomph!”
It was accompanied by the sound of Haon struggling.
“You crazy son of a bitch…!”
Juyeol, seething with rage, didn’t quite remember how he got out of the archive after that.
All he could think about was putting a bullet in Nova’s head.
With a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, he burst out of the maze, practically smashing through the final wall.
There, he saw Nova pressing his lips against the back of his own hand while covering Haon’s mouth, a sly smile on his face.
“See? You got out fast, didn’t you?”
Haon, her face flushed crimson with anger, shoved Nova away with all her might.
“Y-You scared me! The whole building almost collapsed!”
Was this his way of appealing to a Hero’s sense of heroism or something? Nova's unexpected stunt had shattered her concentration for a moment, and it had been truly dangerous.
Thankfully, it had only resulted in one of the building’s outer walls collapsing, but the throbbing in her head told her she was reaching her limit.
“We should get out of here now…?”
Watching Nova, who had stepped back willingly, and then Juyeol, Haon wore a puzzled expression.
Nova was looking at Juyeol with a triumphant, I-knew-it expression.
Juyeol stood frozen, his gun aimed at Nova’s white hair, his eyes menacing and his expression utterly murderous.
“Ghost. Why so angry? Are you two something special?”
“Are you trying to get a bullet in your head? What kind of stunt are you pulling on a kid who doesn’t know any better?”
Juyeol snapped back sharply at Nova’s mocking tone.
“What did I do? I was going to do it for real, but I held back so I wouldn’t scare our darling even more.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Nova. She’s not that woman.”
Juyeol snarled, provoked.
“This girl is not the woman you know.”
“…Oh?”
But Nova’s reaction wasn’t what he expected.
It wasn't the reaction of someone who had just heard something strange, nor was it one of shock.
As if struck by a sudden realization, Juyeol slowly lowered his gun.
“…You knew?”
“…Of course, I knew the moment I saw her. Unlike a certain clueless someone.”
“…”
“…”
The two men exchanged a strange look before scowling in unison.
“You son of a bitch, you knew she was someone else and still acted like that?”
“So what if she’s not Dr. Eun? Does that make her someone special to you?”
“Ah.”
At Haon’s small gasp, the two men’s icy gazes snapped toward her.
Haon was covering her nose with her sleeve, and a bloodstain was slowly spreading across the cuff of her plaid shirt.
“Eun Haon!”
“Darling!”
They both rushed to her side at the same time.
“Ugh. Let’s get out of here, quick. My head feels like it’s going to split open.”
Continuing the endless battle of calculations was giving her a headache, but her phone battery was also running dangerously low.
Just because she had an abundance of mana didn’t mean her battery was infinite.
Without hesitation, Nova reached out to pick Haon up.
“Then I’ll—”
“Hold on tight.”
But Juyeol was faster.
Haon hadn’t expected to be carried out by anyone, but she had no energy to struggle, so she quietly wrapped her arms around his neck.
As Juyeol began to dash down the stairs, Nova, who had been standing there with a dumbfounded look, let out a disbelieving laugh and followed them.
* * *
Outside the building, the evacuated crowd was murmuring amongst themselves.
“Is that really Nova?”
“Did Nova do that?”
“What kind of ability is this?”
From the inside, it had looked normal, but from the outside, the building’s exterior was rippling like a wave of cubes, its shape constantly changing.
Firefighters had arrived after being called, but no one dared to enter, merely observing the precarious state of the undulating structure.
Haon, who had been staring intently at her phone screen to keep her fragile concentration from breaking, was set down from Juyeol’s arms.
“We need to get further away from the building. It’s about to collapse. There will be another explosion, too.”
“What are you talking about? Are you saying you and Nova planted a bomb in the headquarters?”
“If you want to die, just stay here.”
Juyeol retorted irritably at the staff member’s words and tried to lead Haon away.
“It’s-it’s really dangerous! You can’t stay here. Everyone, please get back!”
But Haon couldn’t bring herself to leave the people standing so close to the building.
The people, who didn’t trust Dr. Eun Haon, simply glared at her with suspicion.
“If we move away from the headquarters, who knows what you’ll do to it?”
“How do you know it’s going to collapse? How do we know you’re not the one who did all this?!”
Nova, who had been smiling prettily beside Haon, swung the bazooka from his side and pointed it forward.
“Anyone curious to find out how much this hurts?”
The lingering crowd finally scattered in a panic.