“Huh?” Han Jaeyeong frowned and asked back. “No, in this situation, does that even make—”
But before they could continue, the woman practically collapsed to the floor and grabbed hold of my ankle. “Please, help me, Hunter Jeong Daon!”
She looked utterly desperate. But unlike before, I felt no thrill of standing above someone. A mother’s scream for her child was nothing but unsettling. Even if I had been a demon in a past life, living for nineteen years relying on nothing but one sibling had shaped me this way.
I stepped back, prying her hands off my ankle. “I’m not even a full-fledged hunter yet, and stop cleaning the floor with yourself. Sit down.”
“Thank you, thank you!”
Perhaps because she’d believed no one would help, now that someone had volunteered, tears streamed down the woman’s chin, even though she hadn’t cried while screaming moments ago.
“Please, hurry! Save my child, please! I’m so sorry!”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, so for now, please let go of—”
“Please, hurry, please! Go, right now!”
At this point, it could hardly be called a conversation. She was completely panicked.
Was she telling me to go, or not to go? No matter how much I tried to calm her, she kept grabbing my ankle and hitting me, with no intention of letting go. Irritated, I shot a look at the rookies hunters who were just staring blankly. If they couldn’t help, they could at least support her.
Because of that, the guy who had almost gotten beaten up by me earlier, only surviving thanks to Han Jaeyeong’s intervention before the Dungeon Break, locked eyes with me and flinched hard. “Uh, wh-what? You want me to come too? I—”
“You think I’ve gone insane?” I snorted immediately. “Someone like you isn’t even good enough to use as a meat shield. You’re too small to hide behind, too. Know your place.”
He wouldn’t even last a minute if thrown in front of a shadow ghost, so what use was he?
I was just stating obvious facts, yet the guy named Lee Yunseok gaped at me as if I’d hurled an insult at him. “…Wh-what?”
“And you, ma’am, stop screaming and follow Han Jaeyeong’s instructions. You don’t want to die before you even save your child.”
After I said that, I thought I heard someone mutter something like “what a personality” somewhere in the office, but I didn’t bother paying attention. My identity had already been dug up nationwide anyway, and my reputation didn’t exactly affect the “Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿” quest.
Right now, what mattered to me was that quest, the leash that a stupid collective-intelligence system had snapped around my neck.
I lightly loosened my wrists and ankles, then asked Han Jaeyeong, “If you’ve got anything usable as a weapon, hand it over. My stamina and strength are trash, so something like a lightweight dagger would be best.”
“…Do you know how to use a sword?”
“I’ve tried peeling fruit.”
“Are you joking?”
“I’m not.”
In truth, it was a joke. In my previous world, there was a saying that asking a great archmage how to wield a sword was even more pointless than asking why one plus one wasn’t three. Even Jeong Dajeong used to hand me a peeler whenever he saw me holding a knife to cut apples… He’d foam at the mouth if he saw me like this.
Han Jaeyeong crossed their arms and looked at me. “Are you saying this because you’re confident? You’re really going?”
“No time. If you have a dagger, give it to me. If not, then don’t. If you’ve got something to say, do it within a minute.”
“I’m not trying to stop you, Hunter Jeong Daon, but take a look at this before you go.”
Han Jaeyeong gestured for me to come over. They were peering out the window where light was coming in, observing the area outside the building. Normally, Gwanghwamun Square should have been visible outside, but now it was like a pale fog had settled in; nothing could be seen.
The area had been completely cut off after the Dungeon Break, like a pit dug to herd rats into before killing them.
“This dungeon is full of strange things. An item that can neutralize even S-rank hunters being in circulation is one thing, but the rescue team being delayed is also odd. It’s been over ten minutes. At the very least, we should have seen or heard signs of them entering the building by now.”
“...So?”
“There’s a high chance this was a trap targeting an S-rank hunter from the start. Especially you.”
So Han Jaeyeong was thinking along the same lines as me. Their opinion was worth considering. Unlike me, who had been an ordinary high school girl, they were an active S-rank hunter. They might even have information about potential culprits.
“Then who do you think is targeting me right now? Give me three candidates.”
“That’s a scary question. If I name three people, are you confident you can handle them?”
“Yeah.”
When I shrugged as if it were obvious, Han Jaeyeong laughed in disbelief. They’d been smiling cheerfully even before the Dungeon Break, but that incredulous smile just now felt like the real Han Jaeyeong.
“I don’t think it’s a specific individual. Judging by the scale of this, it could be a guild or on a broader level, even a nation. Any country that’s part of the Hunter Association could be involved, but given how quickly things are moving, maybe Japan or China?”
It was an interesting opinion, so I raised an eyebrow.
“Is a country really going to mobilize just to kill a single trainee hunter?”
“But Daon, you’re not an ordinary trainee hunter, are you? A potential S-rank hunter, and a once-in-a-generation genius who created original magic on the very first day of awakening. Even I dropped my pride and rushed over like this. What foreign country wouldn’t welcome your existence?” Their tone made it sound obvious.
Listening to Han Jaeyeong, it seemed that the Hunter Association had originally been created so countries could help one another when facing crises too large to handle alone. In reality, instead of cooperation, there was intense rivalry even among member states.
Well, that fit far better with the cruelty of human nature anyway.
“So is that why Yu Hanul went out of his way to come get me?”
“Yes. Especially since South Korea has a high number of S-rank hunters relative to its size, everyone figured other countries would want to crush it before it grew any further. Still, it’s surprising they’re being this aggressive even with Yu Hanul attached…”
“So what are you trying to say?”
“I’m not a psychopath. If I could save the child, I would go. But in this situation, even if I step in, it’ll be useless. I’ll just die for nothing. Worse, we won’t even uncover the truth, and South Korea will lose three S-rank hunters.” With their arms crossed, Han Jaeyeong looked at the collapsed mother being supported by the rookies. “An S-rank hunter is someone who shouldn’t die easily in a situation like this.”
Even if the child can’t be saved. He didn’t say it out loud, but that was clearly the implication. I understood well enough what Han Jaeyeong meant by all this.
“Who cares? You stay here.”
“Excuse me?” Han Jaeyeong stared at me as if dumbfounded. “What, after all that explanation, you’re still saying you’ll go?”
“Yeah. I got the message loud and clear that once you can’t use your mana circuits, you’re basically washed up.”
“…Are you declaring you’ll go as a way of criticizing me? I explained the rational reasons behind this situation.”
“You’re being self-absorbed.”
“But you look disappointed. Like a minor who’s grown disillusioned after seeing the true face of a hypocritical S-rank hunter?”
“You’re imagining things.”
Disappointment and criticism only exist when there are expectations to begin with. I have no expectations of humans. Of course people prioritize their own lives, whether that means abandoning their own kind or even committing brutal slaughter. And it doesn’t matter whether others see me now as someone going off to die, or as some newly born hero.
“I’m not going to save the kids out of goodwill, either.”
There’s no way someone who was a demon in a previous life would do something like that out of kindness. There’s only one reason I’m going to save them.
The quest "Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿" is in progress.
When the user engages in behavior that meets social standards, the user’s ability restrictions will be lifted in stages.
If I go save those children now, just how much of my stats will I get back?
That’s all.
Just looking at the way Ayeong’s mother was staring at me like I was a god made it clear enough. Saving children was an act most members of society would deem “heroic.” For example, two days ago, when I protected the reporters and the old lady boss inside a dungeon, my level shot up to 12 in an instant. It had been a group mostly made up of healthy adult men and women, yet simply because I protected civilians, my stats rose that much. Considering that ordinary hunters usually need at least several months of training to raise their overall level to 12, it was an extremely encouraging result.
If the rewards are this clear, there’s no reason to shy away from good deeds.
Stat recovery should be fast, and the bigger the jump, the better. Even this Dungeon Break was almost certainly the work of enemies targeting me, so right now, I needed to raise my stats as quickly as possible.
Today it’s people unrelated to me who are in danger, but with an enemy this persistent, it wouldn’t be strange if they targeted Jeong Dajeong next.
Thinking about that, even if I have to commit acts of kindness that aren’t particularly pleasant for a demon, this isn’t the time to be picky about means and methods.
“…Well, fine. If you insist on going, I won’t stop you. Hanul would probably try to kill me if he knew, but it’s not like I’m dying right now. More than anything, my curiosity matters most to me.”
Though I expected more attempts to stop me, Han Jaeyeong surprisingly handed me a dagger without much resistance. Its blade was sharply honed, well balanced, and light enough that I could swing it with one hand.
In the end, that was the extent of their so-called rational reasoning.
“Then, good luck.”
With Han Jaeyeong’s curious yet unmotivated send-off, the gazes of everyone else in the office poured onto me. Anxious, reverent, fearful, contemptuous; complex emotions mixed together in those looks.
Leaving them behind, I opened the office door. I ran alone down the dark hallway and stopped in front of the emergency stairwell entrance where Yu Hanul had disappeared.
The quest "Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿" is in progress.
Now, the only thing illuminating my head was the message from this stupid hive-mind system.
Well, fine.
I grinned as I looked at the nightmare of writhing shadows beyond the door.
Let’s become a hero for the most selfish reason in this world.