Dangerous sprouts should be uprooted in advance, that's the rule. If I had my way, I wouldn't want to just sit and watch. If it's a sprout I can pull, I'd like to get rid of it now.
It was a simple matter. I just had to touch him lightly.
I could kill Yeom Hajae instantly with nothing more than an offered handshake. Not just the civilians here, but the other guild members—and even Choi Haegang—easily….
But if I did that, it'd be no different from what I'd done before regression. I'd thought the same way back then too. Dealing with them is easy. I'd carried out what I'd thought, without much hesitation.
And yet, he'd survived. Just one.
That one had come back six years later and stabbed me properly in the back. A blunder of the past had ended up getting me killed.
That fact kept nagging at me.
How had Choi Haegang survived my attack and grown that strong? Until I knew clearly, I couldn't act rashly.
"Trembling? Me?"
"…."
Had he been watching me, worried I might panic or something?
"Haha, ah…."
I slipped the hand he'd pointed out behind my back.
"It's nothing. I just remembered a bad memory."
"You don't need to feel embarrassed. You don't need to hide it…."
Yeom Hajae scratched his cheek.
"Honestly, I get scared every time I come in too."
"…."
"I lost family in a dungeon."
Yeom Hajae seemed to be under the misimpression that I, like him, held some bad memory tied to dungeons. I didn't bother to correct that misunderstanding.
"…I did lose something important too."
My life, that is. It wasn't exactly the dungeon's fault—it was because of Choi Haegang—but still.
Ignoring the somehow wistful look in Yeom Hajae's eyes, I counted the number of survivors visible behind him.
Six… seven…. Including Yeom Hajae and me, nine total?
Three of them were injured. Four Hunters falling in together must be great fortune for those people.
My being here was misfortune.
If I left things as they were, Yeom Hajae would take down the monster and destroy the core, clearing it on his own like in my past life.
But that was a problem. I needed the artifact. And if possible, I had to figure out a way to safely eliminate Choi Haegang too. Now that the boss's summons had come down, I didn't have time to sit around idly waiting for the clear like last time.
My head was a mess.
"……?"
While I was deliberating over what to do, I suddenly felt warmth on my hand. When I looked at the hand that had been seized, Yeom Hajae smiled awkwardly.
"Still, having someone beside you like this makes it okay."
His business apparently wasn't over yet.
"See? You feel better, right? From now on, don't bear it alone."
Yeom Hajae lifted my hand. The trembling had stopped.
Naturally, it wasn't thanks to Yeom Hajae holding it. It was because I'd consciously stopped it.
I smiled and gave him an answer.
Crackle.
"Ow, that stings."
Startled, Yeom Hajae let go.
"It's static…. Haha…."
He laughed awkwardly.
"Let me treat your—"
"Hajae-hyung, where are—"
Just then, on the far side, I saw people in a flustered huddle around one of the injured. Yeom Hajae must've seen it too, because he glanced at me, gauging my reaction.
To send him off quickly, I broached it.
"You should get going. Looks like they're calling for you over there."
"Ah, then I'll…. Call me anytime you need me!"
He kept turning back, so I waved him off in farewell.
"Hm…."
Too easy. To have so little wariness toward others….
Maybe that was why Choi Haegang, standing beside Yeom Hajae, looked completely at ease.
…Wasn't there a saying about keeping your enemies close?
Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to grow close with Yeom Hajae like this and collect information on Choi Haegang.
So I could learn what kind of ability he had.
And so I could kill him whenever the time came.
"Haaa…."
I lifted the hand Yeom Hajae had held. When I released the tension, it began to tremble again.
Scared of coming into a dungeon?
No, wrong. This was just….
"Mya—ang."
"It's not time yet."
I changed the subject of my observation.
Yeom Hajae. He was tending to the injured.
It seemed he was the type who couldn't leave a wounded person be. Whether wounded in body or in spirit.
A righteous disposition. Among Hunters, it wasn't exactly rare. The kind of person such types liked was obvious. Someone kind and weak, or something….
Kind, I wasn't confident about.
Maybe I'll just play weak to my heart's content. Right around the time my thoughts reached that point—
"Meow!"
The cat bit down on my pant cuff and clung. It seemed to have some complaint, but I had no ability to understand animal speech. I looked down at the cat and grinned.
"I've got a whole plan."
After that, the cat wailed in dissatisfaction several more times.
"Hajae…."
There it was again. When he turned around, there was the brown-haired man.
"Sorry. I'll be back in a bit."
Yeom Hajae left his spot. How many times had he been called away in these few hours?
Watching to see what he was up to, Kim Minjun saw him chatting and laughing. Patting backs with thumps, throwing an arm over a shoulder. Then even abruptly grabbing the man's hand—at the sight, the Atlas Hunter, Kim Minjun, narrowed his eyes.
"No matter how I look at it, that guy's not a sick man."
That man was suspicious in many ways. Even in all this chaos, he was neatly dressed, and his suit was an extremely expensive brand. Yet despite the tidy appearance, there was something cocky in his bearing that caught the eye.
And what was with the name Kim Cheolsu, anyway. It practically screamed fake name.
The most suspicious part was elsewhere, though. It was that excessively relaxed attitude. All the other civilians were petrified with fear, sniffling, while only that man sat there grinning and grinning. And he wasn't even a Hunter! The man, exuding ease, looked exactly like someone with a card up his sleeve.
Once, Kim Minjun had brought it up to the leader, asking if it wasn't strange. The leader wore a bitter expression.
"He's probably just putting on a brave face. The more a person's like that, the more of a mess they are inside."
Looking at that immaculate face, his insides didn't really seem like a mess. But seeing the melancholy in the leader's eyes, Kim Minjun read the room and shut his mouth.
In any case, the leader either didn't sense the strangeness or didn't care, because he approached the man without a second thought. If anything, he seemed glad to be summoned over like that.
It had been less than half a day since they met, yet the two looked strangely close. The leader was friendly by nature, sure, but how on earth had the man won him over….
Kim Minjun sought sympathy from the comrade beside him.
"Hey, Haegang-ah. Isn't it weird?"
"…Dunno."
Choi Haegang seemed to spare Yeom Hajae's direction a brief glance, then started staring at the floor. He just stood there fiddling with the sheath strapped to his waist.
Kim Minjun clicked his tongue, deeply frustrated.
That guy Choi Haegang—it'd been over five years since they'd met, and he still couldn't tell what the guy was thinking. No, was he even thinking anything at all?
The sharp impression that had felt scary at first was slowly starting to look like nothing but spacing out. Just as the man called Kim Cheolsu was suspiciously grinning away, this comrade was suspiciously expressionless.
While Kim Minjun was eyeing Choi Haegang with displeasure, someone dropped down from above.
"Hyungs, there's nothing in this room."
It was the youngest, who'd gone out to scout. The moment his feet, floating in midair, touched the ground, the wings on his back vanished.
Frozen for a moment by the sudden presence, Kim Minjun rapped the youngest on the head.
"Ow!"
"You scared me! Quit coming down so suddenly like that."
"I mean, then what am I supposed to do…."
The youngest muttered in an aggrieved voice, clutching his head. Choi Haegang, who hadn't even blinked at the two's commotion, asked.
"Nothing there?"
"Nope. No monsters, nothing—doesn't seem like there's so much as an ant around. Couldn't find the core either…. How are we supposed to get out?"
The key to clearing a dungeon wasn't dealing with monsters. The crucial part was destroying the core. And the core was hidden inside the body of the boss monster.
The monster with the core was usually somewhere not far from the gate. So there was no need to take the risk of going all the way inside, but….
"The problem is we don't have a detector."
They hadn't been deployed on a call from the Association—they'd just charged into a gate that opened right in front of them. There was no way they'd have proper equipment.
In this situation, finding the core would require a fairly tedious process. Kim Minjun swallowed a sigh.
When a problem hit, his eyes naturally turned to someone dependable. As it happened, he met eyes with Yeom Hajae, who'd looked back this way.
Hurry up and come.
Gesturing with that meaning, he grumbled.
"What is that guy even doing? We're in the middle of an important talk and the leader's off on his own."
The youngest tossed out,
"Hajae-hyung's sometimes way too kind to civilians. A total pushover."
"You brat. Calling your hyung a pushover?"
"It's true, though."
Whether the two comrades bickered or not, Choi Haegang said his piece.
"You said there were no monsters around."
"That's how it looked from above."
It was too early to conclude from a single vantage point, and everyone knew it.
"…You and Hajae-hyung go look around."
"Huh, what about you?"
"I'll keep watch."
With those words, Choi Haegang closed his mouth again.
Click, click.
He just kept repeating the motion of lifting his blade with his thumb, gripping the sheath, as if mulling something over.
The sun tilted, and before long the sunlight reached even inside the planks. With the cat sprawled and purring in the light beside me, I sat in the innermost spot.
Yeom Hajae had gone off saying he'd search.
In truth, it was a search that would come to nothing. The core was inside the body of the monster that would enter this place after sundown.
But since I had information I had to dig out, I couldn't very well do anything that might draw suspicion. I didn't bother stopping him when he said he'd do his best. What mattered was after Yeom Hajae came back empty-handed. By then I had to have a plausible plan in place to get my hands on the artifact.
For now….
Once I get out of here, what do I tell the boss.
It was while I was deep in my own important deliberations.
"Kim Cheolsu. Got a moment?"
"…?"
From the entrance, Choi Haegang called me. When I hesitated, he added,
"Hajae-hyung's calling for you."
He's back already? Why is he calling for me?
There's no way.
Half in doubt, I went out. And immediately regretted it.
BAM!!!
"Khuh…!"
"What are you."
[Karma: 59779(-10)]
