Chapter 442 — Returning Home (1)
The Murim Alliance had given us an entire detached annex of our own. I appreciated the consideration, but with a hot spring right behind it—or maybe because there was a hot spring and they didn’t bother much with heating—the room was chilly. Honestly, the fact that it was Western-style to begin with didn’t sit very well with me. At the very least, you should take your shoes off before going into the bedroom. At our place, we even keep wet wipes by the entrance at all times, and when the kids come back from a walk, we make sure to wipe their feet properly. We even have waterless cleanser.
‘Ondol really is the best.’
How nice is floor heating, seriously. Or at least an electric blanket. It made me want to go home as soon as possible. Even when we were being held by the military, the lodging had been pretty lousy. The hotel inside the dungeon had been decent, though. At least, because Yoohyun was there, I hadn’t slept cold. If he hadn’t been, I might really have caught a cold.
“This is my first time making tea like this, so I’m not sure I brewed it properly.”
Since everyone except our party had been dismissed, Yoohyun brought the tea himself. The stone chair in the walled rear garden had been warmly heated by Irin. Since it was still early, the sky held a faint mix of reddish and violet hues.
“Thanks.”
“They say it’s good for the body.”
Then it probably tasted awful. Just seeing my little brother seriously consulting Teacher Hoyeon last night about medicinal herbs had left a bitter taste in my mouth all by itself. That elderly gentleman even had a skill for brewing medicine, and they said that if he used the skill, it somehow tasted even worse.
‘He had as many as five optimization skills.’
One of them was even SS-rank. We hadn’t managed to get one of the A-rank ones, but just looking at his skills alone, you could honestly call him an S-rank healer.
- Hyung, the chair isn’t too hot, right?
As Irin climbed onto the back of my hand, they asked. Maybe because of what had happened at the hotel, they seemed to be watching my mood.
“Yeah, it’s perfect.”
- Do you need anything else?
“No, it’s fine. Rin-ah.”
- Yes!
“I’m grateful that you always take Yoohyun’s side. But I still wish you’d calm down at least a little.”
Rin spun around once, hid their head inside my sleeve, and thumped their tail.
- If hyung doesn’t upset Yoohyun, then Rin wouldn’t have to do that…
“No matter how close people are, sometimes they still fight. That’s how they adjust to each other. And you’re going to become an older sibling soon too, so you need to act a bit more grown-up.”
I didn’t know whether that would make them a hyung, noona, unnie, or oppa, but at the word older sibling, Irin popped their head back out and jumped.
- Rin has nothing to do with the water elemental!
“You shouldn’t say that. It’s still your younger sibling.”
- I hate it! Hyung! It’s fire and water! Of course that’s how it is!
“Yoohyun and Yerim get along just fine.”
- …….
Irin snapped their mouth shut and just stared at me. What, they get along pretty well in their own way.
“After me, Yerim’s the person Yoohyun is closest to. Isn’t she?”
- They’re not close! They’re only juuuust barely okay! And if you leave hyung out, Peace is first and Bak Yerim is second!
I had no idea whether that was actually true, or if Peace was only first because he had a fire attribute. Either way, that meant they really were close with Yerim. If you counted Peace too, that meant two friends already.
“Peace gets along with Yoohyun too, right?”
- Grruung.
Peace, who had been curled up in my lap, tilted his head. It looked like he hadn’t understood what I’d said. But if you thought about it, Rin counted as a friend too, didn’t they? They could even talk. At this point, that was basically an ordinary friend.
“When is the Seseong Guild Leader coming back? Maybe I should go into the hot spring one more time. The one in Japan was nice too, but now that the weather’s getting colder, outdoor baths really are great. Except for how cold it is when you get out.”
“Should I make one in the rooftop garden?”
“The walls are high, so if we put a roof over it, no one would be able to see in… I’ll think about it.”
A private outdoor bath. Wasn’t that a bit too luxurious? Our house didn’t even have actual hot spring water, anyway.
“If we make the contract with Teacher Hoyeon safely, I’m thinking maybe we should push the former MKC healer toward the Breaker side. What do you think? Or would it be better for them to stay unaffiliated?”
Yoohyun fell silent in thought for a moment before answering.
“I think Breaker would be better. If they aren’t affiliated with a guild, then in practice they’d end up under the Association. It would be fine if they went to the Awakened Management Office, but there’s no way that’ll happen.”
“That’s true. The Management Office wouldn’t be able to handle their price tag in the first place.”
It would certainly be nice to have an A-rank healer in public service, but unless it was someone overflowing with a spirit of service, no one would willingly choose that. If it were an item with the same ability instead of an actual person, it would be easier to justify funding it from the national budget. But if it was a person, then people would definitely start shouting things like, “Why won’t a public servant getting paid a salary heal me?!” and all that.
As the sky gradually brightened, Noah came outside as well. Yerim showed up a little later, stretching and asking what we were eating for breakfast.
“I want something spicy!”
“From the morning? You’ll ruin your stomach.”
“My stomach is S-rank too~”
Teacher Hoyeon had already left ahead of us to meet the family the Murim Alliance had rescued. His daughter and son-in-law were also planning to go to Korea with him. Since they were the family of an A-rank healer, not only entry but immigration approval would be granted immediately.
It was only when we had finished breakfast and were starting to think maybe we should get going too that Sung Hyunjae finally came back.
“Why are you so late?”
Just how thoroughly had he swept through everything for it to still smell burnt—wait a second.
“What happened to your face?!”
There was a faint scar left on Sung Hyunjae’s cheek. It wasn’t a serious wound, but the meaning behind it was very much serious.
“…What happened?”
I asked as I hurried over to him. Sure, if you fought military Hunters, you could get hurt. But there was no way Sung Hyunjae would casually let someone get a hit in on his face of all places. On top of that, it still hadn’t healed.
“Did you use a potion? Even without treatment, if it’s a shallow wound it should heal quickly.”
Sung Hyunjae glanced around at the people from the Murim Alliance, then lowered his head toward me and used a sound-blocking item. His lips barely moved as he answered.
“It was a kind of immobilizing skill.”
“Immobilizing?”
“More like hardening. It seems it can be applied not only to the target’s skills but to wounds as well. It fixes the wound in its current state, so potions don’t work on it.”
“Then will it leave a scar?”
No, but why the face of all places. That was the one part that absolutely didn’t deserve this.
“It’s slowly coming undone. I alternated between antidote items and curse-breaking items, and it seems it fell under the curse category.”
He said it was a high-rank effect, which was why it hadn’t been completely removed.
“I suspect it’s a conditional type—something like, it hardens whatever it cuts with a sword.”
“That’s a pretty convenient condition. Usually they’re much fussier.”
Curses without conditions or a price tended to be weak. Unless it was something innate to the species itself, like Rauchitas and the curse poison dragon type, curse skills were difficult to use offensively in battle. That was why they were mostly used in the form of contracts based on mutual consent.
I reached out and cupped the wound on Sung Hyunjae’s cheek. The faint scar vanished completely.
“If your face was the only place that got hurt, did you let it happen on purpose just to test it? And why your face of all places?”
“It wasn’t me who aimed for the head.”
“Then who was it?”
For Sung Hyunjae to be acting like this… My brow furrowed without me noticing.
“…Was it Chatterbox’s side?”
“To be precise, it seems Chatterbox reached out to those who believe the appearance of dungeons is God’s will.”
“Ah, those people…”
A sigh slipped out of me.
“I guess they really would be perfect to use. They’re people who think the end of the world is the right thing, after all. But if I remember right, they weren’t that powerful. Though the terrorism was frequent.”
Because they opposed clearing dungeons, none of their Hunters were S-rank, and most of them were low-rank. Still, overseas they used firearms and explosives, so the damage they caused was substantial.
“They placed little value on their own lives, so they were rather exhausting to deal with.”
Sung Hyunjae spoke openly, showing exactly how troublesome he found them. He said he had run into them several times before.
“Even for an S-rank Hunter, daily life isn’t that different from that of an unAwakened person.”
If they chased you to a hotel and blew it up, or charged into a restaurant and sprayed machine-gun fire everywhere, of course they would be a nuisance.
“I rather liked that café too.”
He said they had planted a time bomb there.
“I’d previously received reports that they were active in North America and Europe, and that recently they’d spread as far as South America.”
“There wasn’t really anything in Korea right up until just before the regression.”
Sung Hyunjae explained that the Hunter guilds had tried uprooting them several times, but it had been impossible. Above all, the fact that so many of them were unAwakened had been a problem. There had even been cases where, because an unAwakened person shooting a gun posed no real threat to a mid-rank or above Awakened person, they simply paid compensation for property damage and walked free.
“There was even a legal precedent stating that if someone acted with clear awareness that the other party would neither die nor be seriously injured, it could not be considered attempted murder.”
“…That’s not wrong, exactly, but it still feels unfair.”
That being the case, it seemed Sung Hyunjae had also found them quite troublesome.
“They were annoying.”
“Is that why you went to India and Egypt?”
“And now there are S-rank Hunters too.”
Without meaning to, my eyes turned again to the spot on Sung Hyunjae’s cheek where the wound had been.
“For now, two.”
“…There could be more.”
“They came with a prophet.”
“What? A prophet? That really is cult behavior.”
“A prophet who cannot see Korea’s future.”
The moment I heard that, I understood. The corners of my mouth stiffened slightly.
“Memories from before the regression?”
“He said they started surfacing about a month ago.”
“If it was a month ago, then it might have been the King of Harmlessness, not Chatterbox, who interfered.”
If I’d known this would happen, I should have asked in detail what they had done in our world. Of course, it still could have been Chatterbox. They had been acting together with the King of Harmlessness.
“…If he’s a prophet, then he’ll naturally be in an important position, and the S-rank Hunter who came with him is probably the strongest one they have. How was he?”
“If there had been no restrictions, I would have dealt with him on the spot.”
Sung Hyunjae said it lightly, as though it were only natural. Yeah, yeah, of course you would. We were just way too advantaged right now, and there was no way Chatterbox wouldn’t know that. They were definitely going to try to find some kind of method.
I asked Sung Hyunjae to gather information on that cult. It seemed to have changed a lot because of Chatterbox’s intervention, but we still needed to know as much as possible.
“Hunter Miller knows quite a lot about them.”
“Evelyn does?”
“She ran into them often enough to get sick of it.”
Ouch.
Anyway, with Sung Hyunjae back, we came down the mountain to return home. Of course, before heading to the airport, there was something I needed to take care of first.
“Now then, no need to worry~”
The five Hunters who had been in charge of the military’s item storage were looking at me with anxious eyes. I held up a round, flat glass plate in front of them.
“This is a one-time-use curse-breaking item effective up to S-rank.”
It was actually an F-rank disposable lighting item. Only 10 points. Duration, one hour. Brightness level, about enough to use as a sleep lamp. Something you’d turn on in a tent when camping outdoors. Since our world still didn’t have items like this, they wouldn’t realize it was fake.
“Don’t move, and when I give the signal, take your items out.”
“Is this really… going to be all right?”
“Of course! Just trust me and leave it to me. If you can throw away that little bit of fear, you’ll win back your freedom! Curse-breaking items are rare. It’ll be hard to get another chance like this! If you miss this opportunity, you’ll have to go find the Saintess instead~”
While soothing him, I wrapped my arms tightly around the Hunter from behind. Looking at the lighting item as it began to glow, the Hunter started taking items out of his inventory. A bracelet appeared in his hand.
Naturally, nothing happened.
The expression of the man himself—and of the other Hunters watching around him—brightened immediately.
And so did mine. Come on, let’s get them all out.
A flood of items came pouring out, and the Hunter stepped back, visibly relieved. After seeing that first successful example, the second Hunter approached me without hesitation.
“Please take care of me!”
“Yes, yes. Don’t forget that you’re not allowed to leave anything behind.”
Naturally, I’d made them sign a separate contract first. Once again, items piled up, and then the third, the fourth, and finally the fifth Hunter all went through the curse-breaking process. Fifty points’ worth of lighting items shattered one after another with sharp clinking sounds.
‘My lips, calm down.’
Just looking at the pile of items made the corners of my mouth lift on their own. My stomach felt full just from seeing them.
‘Read only on MugenCodex’
“Don’t touch anything. Don’t even think about putting them into your inventory. Step back.”
I was starting to feel reluctant about giving the Murim Alliance their share. Still, I had priority. Together with a Murim Alliance appraiser who had signed a contract forbidding the use of inventory, I sorted through the items.
“Nineteen S-rank, fifty-seven A-rank, and three B-rank items.”
Sadly, there were no SS-rank items, but there were six whole S-rank weapons. I was thrilled.
“I’ll take all the blades for now. That makes three. There’s someone I need to give the S-rank wire to as well. One of the two belongs to the Seseong Guild Leader, and as for the spear… well, I’ll leave that one for you.”
It was a little regrettable, but a promise was a promise. Since I was giving away higher-value weapons, I decided I would take more of the remaining S-rank items instead.
After dividing everything up that way, the number of S-rank items that fell into my hands came to twelve in total.
I could fully outfit our Yerim with these.
