Chapter 109 : Chapter 109
Chapter 109
A furious gale swallowed the area.
Dust billowed up like the smog of a city, and the ground shook as though an earthquake had struck.
Screams erupted from every direction.
A thunderous boom rang out as buildings collapsed.
Fragments of tools flew in from who knew where, and a sandstorm made it difficult to see what lay ahead.
“This is insane, seriously!”
This situation, almost like a natural disaster, began the moment the Knight Golem Monica had summoned swung its cross-sword at the gumiho.
Judging by the changes in the village, it looked as though the battle between the two colossal bodies had been fierce, but in truth, the gumiho’s body was torn apart the instant the Knight Golem swung its blade.
From the very start, the gap in power was so overwhelming that it was not even a contest.
The problem was the mana storm that formed when the gumiho fell.
All my effort in cutting off its tails one by one became meaningless. Monica brought it down in a single blow, and the mana the gumiho had been carrying, now ownerless, slammed into the village.
“If only you would think about what comes after.”
Usually, when environmental mana became this densely concentrated, the chance of a rift opening rose sharply.
And in a place this close to the barrier, monsters beyond it could react to the environmental mana and attack the barrier.
But fortunately, my Demonic Eye did not detect anything unusual.
Relying on the Demonic Eye, I moved to find Monica, and soon spotted her bustling about within the sandstorm.
She was holding a large sack and collecting the gold fragments that had made up the statue.
……
Where had she even gotten that sack?
It looked fairly thick, as though she had already filled it with a substantial amount.
And she seemed to have forgotten what kind of position we were here under.
“Damn it! My golden whale! My statue!”
Who would ever think that she was the caster who had just summoned the Knight Golem that disappeared moments ago?
Half resigned, I began gathering the gold fragments around her.
In the current situation, it did not look as though persuading her would be easy.
More than anything, I had to get her out of here before the dust settled.
If someone remembered her face and brought up the Knight Golem, her identity as a Special Affairs Division investigator would be exposed.
“Her face is not known, but she is the only awakened being who can summon a Knight Golem.”
As I frantically picked up gold pieces, the thought suddenly struck me: what right did Monica have to take them?
“Such an absurdly brute size.”
Off to one side, I came upon a mana stone the size of a car.
It seemed to be the gumiho’s.
No matter how much it had undergone enlargement, this was not a normal size for a mana stone.
When I looked into it with the Demonic Eye, it seemed the forcibly absorbed mana had not properly fused, leaving it bloated into this abnormal size.
In other words, its optimization was a complete mess.
“Well, at least it means nobody else can run off with it.”
With a mana stone this large, it would be easy to clearly explain the circumstances that had forced the village to be destroyed.
Having made my judgment, I placed my hand on the mana stone.
Usually, when a giant monster of this kind was exterminated, the awakened being who touched the mana stone first was granted a stat increase.
One might call it a kind of experience.
It had originally been one of the “fortunate encounters” designed for Lee Eunho, the protagonist of my novel, but whether that method still applied here or not, an unknown force seeped into me.
“I got lucky.”
In the past, a System Message should have appeared in a moment like this.
Instead, I called up my status.
[Durability 13.3] [Strength 4.7] [Stamina 3.0]
[Agility 20.0] [Intelligence 16.1] [Magic Power 5.0]
As expected, my Intelligence had increased by 0.8.
That meant I now had 0.9 left until 17, the unspoken benchmark for A-rank Hunter characters who used magic.
But I could not simply bask in satisfaction.
The Magic Power displayed beside it looked so pitiful.
“Haah….”
A little later, Monica seemed to have filled the sack to her satisfaction.
Perhaps because the statue had weighed five tons, the sack itself was as large as a motorcycle.
She slung it over her shoulder as if it were nothing and approached me.
“You have grasped the whole truth of the incident, have you not?”
Her attitude did not demand accountability from her partner.
The cause of all this had been entirely my fault for failing to deal with the gumiho, yet she did not scold me.
It was almost as though she had anticipated that things might unfold this way.
Setting aside the destruction of the statue, of course.
“Yes, if there is nothing I have overlooked.”
“Good. Then I am going back up to Seoul. It will be troublesome if I draw attention.”
Like Monica, investigators in the Special Affairs Division did not pick at their colleagues’ mistakes.
It was not merely because her personality was broad.
From the beginning, she had simply not expected me to perform perfectly.
Perhaps the reason we had deliberately walked from Pyeongtaek Station to Geumgorae Village had been to assess my physical ability.
Even our first meeting in that alley had been a subtle test.
……
It was only natural that a probationary investigator would not meet a senior investigator’s expectations, yet for some reason, I felt irritated.
But I had no right to show that feeling, so I put on an expression of forced busyness.
Then, in petty spite, I pointed at Monica’s sack.
“Wait a moment. Are you allowed to take those gold pieces?”
Monica answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Of course. They are mine. Right before all this chaos started, I pulled a royal straight flush.”
She was saying she had passed through a 0.000154% probability.
As if to prove her luck, she displayed the five winning cards with one hand.
“Of course, who would believe me if I said I drew them right before the chaos? So if people ask about the statue, tell them that fox bitch shattered it into dust. I already took a little less gold with that in mind.”
“Ah, yes…”
“Then I will leave the rest to you. See you later in Seoul.”
With those words, Monica vanished from sight in an instant.
Even the dust seemed to realize she had left and slowly began to settle, revealing the ground.
The village was, as expected, utterly wrecked.
I followed the direction she had disappeared with my eyes and muttered belatedly,
“So Monica, the very icon of bad luck… actually won at a game?”
***
Hero Preparatory School in the 4th Scholastic District.
Do Minyeong ran through campus from early morning, working up a sweat.
In the chilly winds of spring, she often substituted aerobic exercise with machines in the Hall of Endurance, but in the full bloom of summer like this, she preferred kicking off the ground and running with her own legs.
“The last lap…!”
Unlike her, many cadets thought poorly of running on bare ground.
If they were going to spend that time and effort, they argued, it would be better to use the machines in the Hall of Endurance for high-intensity cardio.
Do Minyeong did not deny the argument, but her early-morning long runs were a habit, a routine formed overseas, where she had not had a proper environment for training.
A vicious habit, like the kind that made her feel guilty for neglecting training if she did not sweat from the morning onward.
Of course, that did not mean she avoided high-intensity machines.
After finishing this habit, she would still follow a tightly packed workout schedule in the Hall of Endurance.
“Good. My condition is not bad today, either.”
After finishing her run, Do Minyeong brushed her damp hair to one side and pulled up the hood of her daily uniform.
It was about time for the cadets who had woken early to start coming out of the dormitory.
Not that a hood would make her unrecognizable, but it was closer to a psychological measure, allowing her to focus on training without constantly reading the room around her.
Because Do Minyeong’s reputation was what it was, many cadets could not help being conscious of her.
Even after spending an entire semester together at Hero Prep.
Without giving her sweat time to cool, Do Minyeong headed for the Hall of Endurance.
Today’s workout schedule was lower-body training to firmly stabilize her center of gravity.
For someone who used a sword, it was essential.
“I should hurry before the tension in my legs loosens.”
Soon, Do Minyeong reached the grounds of the Hall of Endurance.
But at the edge of the grounds, she halted unnaturally.
Because she had run into Gong Minwu, a Combat Division cadet and her childhood friend, on the same approach.
……
……
Normally, Gong Minwu and Do Minyeong avoided each other as much as possible, keenly aware of one another.
In the first place, it was unusual for her to run into Gong Minwu at this hour at all, the first such occurrence since enrolling at Hero Prep.
The fact that they had met like this meant Gong Minwu had been waiting for her on purpose.
Sure enough, Gong Minwu spoke in a low voice.
“I heard you filed for a transfer.”
“It is none of your business.”
“Is that so. I thought you would stay in the Investigation Division since you have been sticking to him the whole time.”
Him.
He was clearly referring to Ji Seokhyeon.
Between Gong Minwu and Do Minyeong, there was only one person who was ever reduced to a pronoun like that.
“I would prefer it if you did not make assumptions.”
“Assumptions. Well, whether you transfer or not has nothing to do with me.”
“If it has nothing to do with you, why are you going out of your way to make yourself seen?”
“Because I want to know about him. With Lee Eunho gone, you were the closest person to him, as far as I knew. …But it does not seem like the kind of mood where I can get an answer comfortably.”
……
How could their relationship be described?
Gong Minwu, the only cadet at Hero Prep who had shared childhood years with Do Minyeong, was a special existence to her.
That was precisely why he was someone she did not want to be entangled with.
Staring at Gong Minwu, Do Minyeong said,
“If you are thinking of using him, you should stop. Ji Seokhyeon is not as soft as I am.”
……
It was a warning with unmistakable weight.
Yet Gong Minwu spoke without showing any reaction.
“The Combat Division will be different from the Investigation Division. But if it is you, you might manage somehow.”
With that, he turned his back on Do Minyeong.
Without realizing it, she clenched her teeth.
At some point, the morning air had chilled her cheeks.
***
The incident that occurred in Geumgorae Village was brought to a safe conclusion.
Since it had happened outside Seoul, where Dispel was absent, I worried it might be difficult to prove the case, but the weight carried by the name of the Special Affairs Division was greater than I expected.
The people in charge defended me incessantly, as if they would applaud even if I picked my nose.
“So this is what it feels like to be treated well.”
When the gumiho disappeared, the residents of Geumgorae Village woke from the spell that had controlled their minds.
Fortunately, their memories of the time they had been dominated were wiped clean, but the village itself had been destroyed beyond the point of habitation and effectively vanished.
Worse still, the disgraceful incident that had taken place in Geumgorae Village would spread among Hunters in the blink of an eye.
“At this point, reconstruction as a village near the barrier is impossible.”
Realizing the situation, the residents showed the will to head to a nearby city on their own.
Change had finally come to people who had failed to keep pace with the era.
“Of course, once the incident is forgotten, their stance might change again.”
In any case, once everything was settled, only then could I afford to think about Monica’s luck.
That is, the setting that whenever Monica won a pot, misfortune inevitably struck the people around her.
Ordinarily, such a thing would be nothing but superstition, but in this world, it was not something I could dismiss.
Because it was a setting I had personally recorded in the character bible.
In other words, misfortune caused by Monica was structurally guaranteed to occur.
“The problem was that the only person around that woman was me.”
So I scrutinized my condition as if my eyes were on fire, but I did not see any obvious misfortune.
Had letting the gumiho escape been the misfortune itself?
Just as I was about to settle into that optimism, something I had forgotten suddenly surfaced.
My smartphone, sleeping quietly in my inventory.
I pretended to reach into my pocket and pulled out the phone.
Then, as if possessed, I checked my stocks…
“Damn it!”
Unluckily, Hyeonseong Express stock had dropped by fifty percent compared to the previous day.
A plunge that was difficult to accept logically.
When I checked the news right away, a headline about Hyeonseong failing to win a national project to build a forward base in Gangwon-do dominated the front page.
……
Unlike the original work.