Chapter 28

Chapter 28

A single sheet of paper gently fell into Kang Ha-min's hand.

He stared at it blankly.

Baek Cheon-myeong stared at it too.

"Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong, um, this is..."

"This time, even I don't know."

An item even Baek Cheon-myeong didn't recognize.

A completely mysterious reward had appeared.

"Well, we'll know once we use it!"

It felt strange,

but a reward was still a reward.

So far,

none of the Tower rewards had been useless.

At that moment,

light began leaking from the Dimensional Invitation.

"Ow, hot!"

Ha-min felt heat and dropped it in surprise.

Flash!

Light spread outward.

The Dimensional Invitation disappeared completely.

At the same time,

a pillar of light shot straight into the sky from the place where it vanished.

"W, what is this?"

Kang Ha-min stared in confusion.

Baek Cheon-myeong narrowed his eyes.

The light continued upward until it reached the ceiling of the world.

Baek Cheon-myeong walked closer.

Then he lightly stabbed the light with his wooden sword.

"This is connected to something."

"What? Connected?"

"Yes. I can't say exactly what, but it appears to be one-way."

"Something can come from the other side, but we can't go there."

"Something can come here?"

What kind of situation was this now?

Kang Ha-min looked up with a complicated expression.

For now,

the pillar of light simply connected to the sky.

Nothing else happened.

"The Tower created this situation, so it probably won't immediately harm Master."

Tower rewards were random,

but they were fundamentally adjusted for Hunters.

The Tower usually didn't give rewards that directly harmed the recipient.

If it did,

Hunters would lose the motivation to keep climbing.

"Mist."

At Kang Ha-min's call,

fog gathered in the distance.

The Mist Hermit appeared from within it.

"Can you watch this light and tell me immediately if anything happens?"

The Mist Hermit nodded.

It didn't need to sleep.

It could continue watching indefinitely.

Ha-min left the matter to it.

Then they exited the Heavenly Spirit Medicinal Forest.

"Woof!"

Once outside,

the Shih Tzu walked into the bathroom,

turned on the water,

and washed its own paws.

It took care of itself so well that Ha-min barely needed to do anything.

Baek Cheon-myeong had ordered it to protect him,

but it was also excellent as an ordinary pet.

Ha-min made a decision.

It was time to give it a name.

"How about I call you Aji from now on?"

The Shih Tzu stared up at him.

"...My family name is Kang. So if you put Kang in front of Aji, it becomes 'gangaji,' puppy."

Ahem.

Was that too lazy?

"Woof!"

But Aji didn't seem to care.

It wagged its tail happily.

The fact that it liked anything Ha-min suggested was honestly adorable.

Ding.

A message arrived.

It was on Baek Cheon-myeong's phone.

[Yoo Ah-rin: Hunter Baek Cheon-myeong, the sword is ready.]

A message from Yoo Ah-rin.

The sword had been completed faster than expected.

"I'll go."

Baek Cheon-myeong immediately walked toward the window.

"There's a door over there."

"That elevator is too slow. It doesn't suit my personality."

Of course.

Baek Cheon-myeong had adapted surprisingly well to modern society.

But moments like this made the distance between his era and the present obvious.

He opened the window

and calmly stepped into the sky.

No matter how many times Kang Ha-min saw it,

he couldn't get used to that sight.

Baek Cheon-myeong called it Void-Stepping Technique (凌空虛道).

According to him,

Kang Ha-min could use it too.

But Ha-min had absolutely no confidence that he could open an apartment window

and calmly walk into empty air.

That is genuinely impossible.

No matter how he thought about it,

all he could imagine was falling to his death.

Come to think of it, Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong is famous now.

If he walked through the streets,

crowds would gather.

Flying through the sky might honestly be better.

Kang Ha-min sat quietly

and shared Baek Cheon-myeong's vision.

The bright blue sky spread around him.

Recently,

Ha-min had flown through the sky so many times through Baek Cheon-myeong's eyes

that he was slowly becoming used to heights.

"We're here."

Baek Cheon-myeong reached the Hunter Marketplace without trouble.

By now,

it was a familiar place.

"Welcome, Hunter Baek Cheon-myeong."

The employees stood in a line and greeted him.

Complete VVIP treatment.

"Hunter Baek Cheon-myeong, we've been waiting for you!"

Yoo Ah-rin quickly appeared.

"Please, this way!"

She guided Baek Cheon-myeong toward the VVIP room with a bright smile.

As always,

she treated him with absolute professionalism.

Once inside,

Yoo Ah-rin prepared expensive tea and placed it before him.

"The weapon you've been waiting for will be ready in just a..."

"Your name was Yoo Ah-rin, correct?"

Baek Cheon-myeong lifted the teacup.

"Ah, yes."

Yoo Ah-rin looked confused.

Then,

Pour.

Instead of drinking,

Baek Cheon-myeong slowly tilted the cup downward.

The expensive tea spilled onto the luxurious carpet.

...Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong?

Even Kang Ha-min hadn't expected that.

Baek Cheon-myeong didn't answer.

He slowly turned toward Yoo Ah-rin.

His crimson eyes contained cold, empty emotion.

"Where is that woman?"

"What?"

Huh?

Kang Ha-min was confused too.

What did he mean?

Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong, what are you...

But the confusion didn't last long.

Kang Ha-min knew Baek Cheon-myeong wasn't the kind of person to say something like that without reason.

Don't tell me.

The moment Ha-min realized what was happening,

his gaze changed.

The Yoo Ah-rin in front of you isn't the real one.

His conclusion was correct.

The fake Yoo Ah-rin's eyes changed immediately.

"...Heh. As expected of an S Rank Hunter who's breaking Tower records."

The corners of her mouth stretched unnaturally wide.

It was something inhuman.

Something wearing Yoo Ah-rin's face.

Even through Baek Cheon-myeong's senses,

Kang Ha-min could feel a terrible wrongness.

His instincts screamed that this woman wasn't really a Hunter.

Could she be...

One of the Returnees who attacked Deus?

They had already attacked Deus, a globally famous Hunter.

There was no reason they wouldn't target Baek Cheon-myeong too.

Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong!

Even Deus had nearly died with a hole through his abdomen.

Kang Ha-min shouted because he was worried.

But Baek Cheon-myeong merely watched the fake Yoo Ah-rin without concern.

"Since you figured it out, I'll tell you something useful."

"Hunter Yoo Ah-rin is..."

"Enough nonsense."

Her words were cut off.

Baek Cheon-myeong had never intended to listen.

Instead,

he slowly stood from his chair while gripping his wooden sword.

"You'll tell me everything soon anyway."

"...As expected of an S Rank Hunter."

The fake Yoo Ah-rin looked irritated by his arrogance.

"Let's see how long that confidence lasts."

"You won't even have eyes to see it."

"What?"

The fake Yoo Ah-rin felt something strange after hearing those words.

A thin black line had suddenly appeared across her vision.

The black line extended,

shifted slightly,

then split.

"Huh?"

The moment she realized something was wrong,

Crash!

Her head split into two halves

and her body collapsed.

Everything happened instantly.

Kang Ha-min panicked after seeing a human head split before his eyes.

Baek Cheon-myeong lifted the corpse over his shoulder.

"Master, we're returning."

Only then did Kang Ha-min understand what he meant.

Kang Ha-min was a Gravekeeper.

A corpse was something he could always raise again.

Yes. Bring her back immediately.

Yoo Ah-rin had been kidnapped by Returnees.

To find her,

they needed to revive the corpse.

Yoo Ah-rin had been kidnapped.

Baek Cheon-myeong had killed someone in order to find her.

But right now,

the living person mattered more.

Rather than argue about what Baek Cheon-myeong had done,

Kang Ha-min chose to raise the corpse as quickly as possible.

Baek Cheon-myeong raced through the sky and returned home almost instantly.

He immediately placed the corpse in front of Ha-min.

Kang Ha-min had seen many monster corpses.

But this was his first time seeing a human corpse up close.

He quietly steadied his breathing.

"Mr. Baek Cheon-myeong, now that we know the Returnees are targeting you, I understand things like this may happen again."

Kang Ha-min had lived a slightly more moral life than the average person.

To him,

a human life was more important than almost anything.

He considered that one of his personal principles.

When Baek Cheon-myeong had cut down the Returnee without hesitation,

Kang Ha-min once again realized that the two of them came from very different worlds.

To Baek Cheon-myeong,

a human life wasn't much different from a monster's.

"But the world you're living in now is our world."

In modern society,

murder was forbidden.

Of course,

people still died in wars and Dimensional Breaks.

But human life still couldn't be treated this lightly.

"Understood."

Baek Cheon-myeong agreed without complaint.

"But Master, remember one thing."

There was only one condition.

"This body cannot spare someone who threatens Master's life."

To Baek Cheon-myeong,

nothing mattered more than Kang Ha-min's survival.

That would never change.

Kang Ha-min nodded.

He didn't want to harm people either.

But if someone threatened his precious family

or his own life,

that was different.

A person's principles naturally changed depending on what was at stake.

"Yes. Do that."

Then Kang Ha-min activated his skill on the corpse.

Threads of mana extended from his body

and wrapped around the woman.

A moment later,

her corpse jerked violently.

The face and body that had imitated Yoo Ah-rin began melting away.

In their place,

skin resembling a chameleon's appeared.

She looked far closer to a monster than a human.

But she had once been a normal person.

"Ugh... ngh..."

A voice came from her mouth.

This was Kang Ha-min's first time using the skill on a person.

He felt slightly nervous.

Then her eyes slowly opened.

The woman's expression was blank at first.

But gradually,

her face began twisting.

She remembered what had happened to her.

"A, ah, aaaaaah!"

She grabbed her face and screamed.

Her head had been split cleanly in half.

It wouldn't be strange if that memory became permanent trauma.

But there was no time to comfort her.

"Name."

"Huh, what?"

"Tell me your name."

For the first time in his life,

Kang Ha-min spoke with a completely cold expression.