Chapter 54
Chapter 54
Jeong Suho thought back to just moments ago. He had entered Nari’s deep world and saw that his own status ailment had vanished.
“Even Olympus is keeping quiet, so you shouldn’t be strutting around like this right now…”
[Constellation, the Goddess of Wisdom and War is now-]
Crackle. At the Lord of Chaos’s mention of Olympus, his Constellation raised a translucent indirect message, then let it fade again. It looked like she was trying to hold her tongue, but Suho, who had spent long years with his Constellation, knew better.
They said every Constellation had a different way of talking to their Incarnation, but his goddess didn’t toss out indirect messages carelessly.
When he once asked why, she had answered, “War always begins with a single word, so the fewer words, the better.”
With someone that cautious sharpening her edge like this, there was no way she would address the Lord of Chaos. That message was clearly for her sole incarnation, Jeong Suho.
‘Now.’
Only his eyes moved as Suho took stock of the situation. The Lord of Chaos was locked in a power struggle with Kang Ihyun’s Constellation and wasn’t even glancing their way.
Keeping his movements and breath as quiet as possible, Suho drew a knife from beneath his cloak. It was the cloak he’d received as a gift when he contracted with his Constellation. If it was a weapon, he could stash it inside without limit.
Whether that was a Gatling gun, a pistol, or the razor-keen knife his Constellation had gifted him.
‘…It might work.’
Suho began carefully sawing through his own bonds with the jackknife he’d taken from the cloak. Sticky mucus clung to the blade, but it seemed to be working.
As he kept a calm face and quietly rasped the knife back and forth, a sharp pain shot through his finger. His brows twitched and a sound almost escaped him, but,
[Status Ailment :: Vow of Silence is now active! Sometimes keeping quiet helps. Your voice will not come out.]
‘Thanks…!’
Vow of Silence. It was one reason Suho couldn’t speak and had to use a handheld terminal to communicate.
It wasn’t something inflicted by the Minotaur’s roar. He’d gotten “marked” by the guildmaster after arriving in Sanctuary, and then the ailment was applied.
Most days it was annoying beyond belief, but in a moment like this, it helped, so that was a relief.
‘Come to think of it, once I got the Vow of Silence, I was practically forced to be careful with my words, so maybe it wasn’t all bad.’
In a way, the status ailments had helped him grow. As that idle thought drifted by, a system message popped up before Suho’s eyes.
[The effect of Status Ailment :: Vow of Silence is easing!]
“…?”
Blue system messages popped one after another. The Vow of Silence’s effect weakened bit by bit, again and again, and finally,
[Status Ailment :: Vow of Silence has disappeared!]
[Trait :: A Careful Remark acquired! There’s a time to talk and a time to keep quiet. You will think once more before you speak.]
“…!”
He’d half given up, thinking the ailment wouldn’t clear even after handling the Minotaur’s Gate, but now it had changed form.
A curse he’d laid on himself, a “status ailment.” In that instant, Suho dimly understood what it “was.”
Bang! Standing atop the Minotaur’s head, which lay fallen with a gaping hole blasted through its chest, Suho’s blue eyes gleamed with a fierce light.
“Listen.”
Crack. He drove the knife into the ground beside the Minotaur’s face, then pulled a healing potion from his inventory and dripped a single drop onto the monster’s wound.
The Minotaur healed just enough to speak and snorted.
【Ha! Do you think I’ll lift all your curses just because of this? I won’t. I’d rather die, ha ha, ha ha ha!!】
As the Minotaur ignored him and kept talking, Suho’s eyebrow ticked up. He spoke in a chill tone.
“It doesn’t matter.”
【What?】
“Even if you don’t lift them, it doesn’t matter. I figured out how to clear status ailments on my own. Even if it takes time, I’ll get there.”
The Minotaur’s eyes flew wide. The biggest drawback of abilities that inflict status ailments is that “when certain conditions are met,” the afflicted can clear them on their own.
Granted, almost no Hunter could actually do that, so it was a drawback in name only.
Still, what can you do? Suho had already pulled it off twice.
“My life’s always been one mistake after another, all improvisation.”
Suho spoke quietly. Since childhood, he’d had trouble sitting still. He’d fidget with an eraser when nervous, or bounce a leg.
He simply couldn’t make himself do things he hated. He couldn’t keep up with tidying or cleaning. Yet when it came to what he liked, he’d get so absorbed he’d lose track of time.
As the list of things he didn’t finish grew longer than the things he did, he kept turning his eyes elsewhere.
Wargod’s tests said he had trouble regulating his own attention. Nari had told him, “I’ve never seen you finish one thing properly.” When he asked a doctor, they said that played a part too.
Suho was sure that tendency had hurt Nari. Even so, he’d been told it was okay. He didn’t have to fix it perfectly to stay at her side.
“Even so, she said it was okay, because I had a lot of strengths.”
He had a lot of strengths.
Everything carries both the bad and the good. Once Suho realized that, he resolved to use his disposition for good.
Then the status ailment of hyperfocus surfaced as a Trait. His sense of time and space vanished. That uncontrollable, excessive focus wrung out his very last drop of mana.
A Trait that let him see only the target he had to take down right now, and when combined with the Ranger technique of declaring a Domain, it produced the effect of erasing every obstacle between himself and the target.
And at last, he removed what had been bothering him right before his eyes. Of course, at the moment he’d slipped back into a “status ailment.”
“I can turn this back into a Trait now. I know how.”
【…What do you want.】
The Minotaur muttered, staring at Suho. It was a total defeat. On top of that, the man had even awakened some strange new Trait.
A monstrous Trait that “deleted” any obstacles between him and the designated target.
Now the matchup between Suho and the Minotaur has flipped. Suho no longer had anything to fear from him.
The Minotaur’s eyes narrowed. He couldn’t tell why this man, who no longer needed anything from him, was doing this. Suho soon spoke.
“Hand over resources, but not excessively. I’ll take only enough for you to keep your Gate and your power structure running. If you don’t get greedy, I’ll let you off.”
【What?】
“What I’m saying is, I’ve got work to do.”
Absurd, but reasonable. The Minotaur looked up toward the ceiling of the cavern. Through several conversations, he’d learned the rough outline of who Suho was.
Public guild Wargod, and S-rank at that.
An oddly, almost impossibly upright man.
* * *
“All right, everyone, good work! Wow, you cleared a class 2 Gate and cured every status ailment too. You’re lifesavers, really.”
“Just let us go home. Don’t keep us any longer. My partner’s exhausted from treating you.”
From the back came the quiet sound of an engine turning over. The very next day after they cleared the “Labyrinth of Crete” Gate, after finishing everything at Wargod, they were headed back down to the border with the South.
At the same chain-link fence where they’d first met Lee Jisung, a van directly dispatched by Sanctuary was waiting. Kang Ihyun was already inside. Lude was just about to get in when it happened.
“Yeah, yeah. Just take this and go.”
“What is it? Glasses?”
Lee Jisung pressed a glasses case into his hand. Click. He opened it right there and found a round, rimless pair trimmed with obsidian beads that glinted along the chain.
“You said sunglasses don’t suit you, right? I had something made that will look good on you. It was really expensive, so be careful.”
“Hm.”
Click. Lude took out the glasses and hooked them over his ears. The obsidian glittered along the chain, drawing eyes toward his gaze.
But even if people met his eyes now, they wouldn’t recoil in fear.
“Do they look good?”
“Y-Yeah. They look good.”
Behind Lee Jisung, Jeong Suho clapped a couple of times with a bashful grin. Lee Jisung shot him a puzzled look.
Since emerging from the Minotaur’s Gate, Suho had been trailing after Lude with a dopey smile.
Nari was used to that version of Suho, but among the folks at Wargod, Suho was famous for blade-straight behavior and a fiery temper, so of course they found it odd.
And when everyone at Wargod asked Suho whether he already knew Lude, whether they were friends, he thought for a moment and said, “We’re going to be friends, starting now,” which only made it stranger.
“Right, thanks. You too, thanks. I’m going. Next time we’ll… actually, I’m never coming up again. You come down to me.”
“Yeah, I will. I’ll definitely come down. We’ll see each other again later.”
“Yeah, call me.”
“Okay!”
At Suho’s bright reply, Lude waved a couple of times and turned away. It really was time to go.
He slid into the back seat of the black van with a soft thump. Beside him, Kang Ihyun cracked his eyes open, nearly dozing. A Sanctuary staffer, after making sure their seat belts were on, drove.
“Are you really okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just a little tired. Don’t worry.”
Pale as paper, Ihyun smiled as usual and gripped his own wrist.
He’d been off ever since facing the Minotaur.
While Suho spoke with Nari, Ihyun had drawn the Minotaur’s attention up front. For certain reasons he couldn’t use the holy sword, but he said he could handle it.
So Nari trusted him and left it to him. But after Suho stepped forward, Ihyun’s condition crashed. Even if Lude had noticed the change in the moment, all he could do was prop up a body that could barely stand.
That was why Sanctuary had sent a car to meet them. Lude had realized something was wrong with Ihyun and immediately contacted Sanctuary.
It felt off. From inside his deep world, Ihyun’s power had swung wildly.
Even when fighting the Minotaur he hadn’t worn his usual white armor and holy sword, but used unfamiliar means and silver daggers.
He was even using miasma, the yellow demonic energy, not holy power. A force completely opposite to sanctity, something ordinary priests could never wield.
‘Could someone originally use both holy power and miasma?’
The question rose naturally, and as if to answer it, boop, an indirect message popped up.
[The Lord of Chaos explains that among all classes, only “excommunicated priests” can use miasma.]
“…What?”
Lude’s eyes widened. He hadn’t received any messages since they left the deep world. It had been a while. The Lord of Chaos continued.
[Priests who fail to meet certain conditions are excommunicated, and their holy power turns into miasma, the message reiterates.]
‘…So you’re going to play dumb now? Not even going to say where you were or what you did?’
The Lord of Chaos fell silent again. Lude glanced sidelong at Ihyun. Pale, Ihyun had turned his head toward Lude but stared out the window.
“Hey, you…”
Could it be that Ihyun had done something that got him excommunicated? The Incarnation of an archangel? Lude brushed it off and spoke to Ihyun, but the man still didn’t answer.
“Kang Ihyun? …Ihyun?”
A chill crept over Lude. He grabbed Ihyun’s shoulder. Droop. Ihyun’s head drooped limply.
“…Huh?”
He had passed out, blood dripping from his nose. At some point a red stain had spread across his abdomen too. Alarmed, Lude shouted.
“A hospital!! Take us to a hospital now! One that treats Awakeners!”