There was no emotion in the conclusion. It was just a plain statent of fact.
Song Hwayoung took guilds that ran on nothing but the guild master’s ability as cautionary examples, and tried, in her own way, to establish a system inside the guild. Her goal was to make it so the guild could be maintained even if Song Hwayoung disappeared.
Im Haekyung also rated that kind of course of action highly. Of course, no matter what judgnt Im Haekyung made, it didn’t have much to do with Song Hwayoung.
But for that successful judgnt to continue and for the guild’s internal system to truly take shape, it needed a little more ti. There also needed to be more good manpower than there was now—people who could support Song Hwayoung’s opinions.
Song Hwayoung’s dical certificate said she’d suffered simple external injuries and fractures. If they just found an excellent healer, she’d be able to recover quickly with the self-healing ability that high-rank Hunters uniquely possessed.
What was worth paying attention to was the next line.
“After clearing the Gate, having difficulty handling mana.”
It was only a single line, but it wasn’t sothing you could just skim past. It wasn’t just saying handling mana had gotten a little trickier.
According to the report that ca with the dical certificate, inside the Dungeon, Song Hwayoung had suffered a fairly severe injury while saving another Hunter. It would’ve been better if she’d ended up with just a few physical injuries, but unfortunately, that severe injury didn’t only affect her body. The compressed mana in the Dungeon had burst out, and it caused damage to the mana itself that Song Hwayoung carried within her body.
Since it was an incident entangled with a foreign guild’s Hunter, it seed like it had been treated as a fairly important issue even inside the guild. On Song Hwayoung’s side, they hadn’t wanted it known outside, but originally, the more people who know a secret, the harder it is to keep.
As a result, Song Hwayoung’s current condition had passed through a few processes and was now sitting neatly in front of Im Haekyung.
“What a sha.”
Song Hwayoung herself probably felt it too, but this could never be a temporary symptom. It ant mana had surged and punched its way out through her body, and it was fortunate it had only ended at damage to her mana capacity. Well, either way. At least her mana hadn’t completely bottod out and killed her.
Predicting what would happen next was easy. From here on, Song Hwayoung would naturally step back from running Dungeons, and once that happened, the SH Guild would have to be grateful just to run C-rank, or low B-rank, Dungeons. The current SH Guild didn’t have a Hunter with ability anywhere close to Song Hwayoung’s.
If the operation of a guild whose footing was already narrow ended up going like that, the result was obvious. In the process, if Song Hwayoung overdid it and sothing went truly wrong, it would collapse imdiately—and even if that didn’t happen, it would only be buying ti until collapse.
It was an empty ending to the point it made all the past they’d watched over—for deterrence and protection—feel aningless.
Im Haekyung set their phone down and, with their fingertips, rubbed the smooth surface of the paper again. The texture of the paper against their fingertips felt oddly vivid.
Once they’d reached a conclusion, they returned again to the original question. Even Song Hwayoung, who they’d thought was more deeply connected to them, was now soone they ran into more often as the guild master of the guild Seo Jehyun belonged to.
Because they’d readily agreed to the request of Seo Jehyun, who’d called for help, work had piled up. And in the middle of that, Seo Jehyun had beco a state inside the Dungeon that was fascinating beyond belief, so for a while, they’d almost gotten buried in it. No—maybe, seeing that even now, when they finally had so breathing room, they were still having these thoughts, they’d already been buried in it a long ti ago. And now, on top of that, even bitter news about the guild master of the guild Seo Jehyun belonged to was coming in.
Interesting.
How did Seo Jehyun, even when choosing a guild, end up joining the SH Guild of all places?
There were oddly many points of contact. Though they didn’t know whether Seo Jehyun welcod them or avoided them....
Avoids....
What does a person who lives a life centered on interest even avoid? Sothing that breaks their interest? Sothing that ruins it?
Im Haekyung knew their temperant wasn’t good. It wasn’t so much that they’d made that judgnt themselves, as it was that they knew the viewpoint of looking at them from society’s eyes.
It wasn’t an environnt where you could wear neat clothes and learn everything from one to ten from a kind educator, but Im Haekyung had passed through educators that were, in their own way, excellent. From the orphanage director, to school teachers, to the previous parents who’d adopted them.
Those people couldn’t be excellent educators just by themselves. Because Im Haekyung t them, set a goal, and wanted to achieve it, only then could those people be labeled good educators. If the results were satisfying, scars were dals.
The orphanage director’s habitual slapping, the school teacher’s sneers, and the two-facedness the previous parents carried didn’t really matter. That was just one part of them.
The orphanage director was an alcoholic old man who’d been abandoned by his wife, the school teacher was a middle-aged person suffering severe depression, and the parents who’d adopted them were currently maintaining an obligatory marital relationship.
Im Haekyung understood their misfortune deeply, and at tis, even helped them greatly.
Because it wasn’t that difficult to brainwash happiness into them within their misfortune.
Where could you find people who didn’t want a happy life? But if they had conditions that made it impossible for them to be happy, then you just had to make them able to feel satisfaction without conditions.
Of course, in this process, their opinions had diverged from “Song Hwayoung,” whom they’d spent quite a long ti with.
In so sense, Im Haekyung understood Seo Jehyun, but from another angle, they didn’t understand him at all.
Im Haekyung wanted the add-ons that ca with status and power, but Seo Jehyun didn’t. His impulsiveness and interests were pleasant, but if you chased him, it felt like a waste of the many things you’d end up letting slip away.
However, if you thought about it carefully, just keeping those interest factors at your side... how should I put it, it could make you feel like you were alive.
It wasn’t bad.
Seo Jehyun approached it far too casually for soone who said he wanted to wipe out Cheonmyeonggyo. He wasn’t the type to make ticulous plans in the first place, but this ti was especially so.
He got distracted by sothing else.
They didn’t know what it was, but if this incident had basically confird that Seo Jehyun had rged with a fiend beast, that alone would be enough to make him lose his mind.
Hadn’t he even failed to see Cheonmyeonggyo through to the end and co out in the middle, tossing it aside?
Hmm....
Right after finding out Seo Jehyun had interest in Cheonmyeonggyo, Im Haekyung started investigating Cheonmyeonggyo.
It was a cult, but what they claid wasn’t completely nonsensical bullshit. In the first place, even this upheaval itself didn’t make sense, so looking for religion was natural. The religion’s doctrine, too, was based on facts to so extent.
Of course, even so, it was still a cult, and the bizarre structure of running solely for the cult leader didn’t change.
But what Im Haekyung was curious about wasn’t Cheonmyeonggyo itself. What they were truly curious about was why Seo Jehyun had co to pay attention to Cheonmyeonggyo, and what exactly he’d been interested in. Those two things.
The easiest way to resolve that curiosity would’ve been to call Seo Jehyun over, sit him down in front of them, and use ntal control to make him spill the truth smoothly. But if they tried that thod one more ti, it was certain it would cause damage to a mind that had dense taboos laid over it.
So Im Haekyung threw out a bait that was a little more boring—and interesting.
Im Haekyung stopped by shops run by illegal guilds under Cheonmyeonggyo, collected information directly, and left a few clues. Making soone mistake one person for another wasn’t that difficult. If you put on a mask, you see the other things. Voice, speaking style, intonation, gestures and attitude, habits, posture....
If you had a similar build and added just a few elents, it was enough for soone to make a mistake.
The fact they didn’t ntion it openly and only leaked information to a few people made it feel especially plausible. Even though there were limits to what they could gain because Seo Jehyun wasn’t {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} the one going around gathering information, sothing interesting got snagged in the process.
A worthless bastard—soone who was the younger brother of a certain civil servant guild mber, and who was continuing contact with soone presud to be Seo Jehyun. And because he was such a nobody, it made them even more curious.
Why he’d wanted to approach Cheonmyeonggyo badly enough to et trash like that.
And now, only after Seo Jehyun’s interest had cooled, Im Haekyung could finally guess one thing.
Did he want a fiend beast rge?
It made you wonder what kind of lunatic would use a Dungeon as a thod for fiend beast rging, but when it was Seo Jehyun, it sohow felt plausible.
When had he introduced himself as so appraiser, and then suddenly he was freely using freezing Skills. If that was actually a fiend beast’s ability, and he’d used Cheonmyeonggyo’s Dungeon to swallow that ability....
It’s possible.
Im Haekyung looked again at the paper with Seo Jehyun’s data printed on it.
By now, Seo Jehyun might have already heard that soone was impersonating him and stirring up Cheonmyeonggyo.
Will he notice?
Or maybe, since it had drifted away from his interest, he wouldn’t even try to find out.
Either way, it didn’t matter. In any case, this ti, it was them who’d learned and seized Seo Jehyun’s secret.
And they’d even prepared a small “gift” for Seo Jehyun, who’d revealed that secret to them.
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