I was startled when I saw it.
“No, you—!”
There was no doubt that the creature in front of me was one of my retainers. The retainer I had just summoned by searching the dimensional rift, created by embedding a fragment of my soul…
But my retainer was originally a house-sized, fearsome leopard, yet the one that had appeared before me now…
“It’s a baby kitty!”
Just as one of the kids with a missing front tooth shouted, it was only about the size of a cat.
A baby leopard, no bigger than my fist, with black-tinted fur, tilted its head. “Grrr?” It seemed confused by the sudden change in the ground beneath its feet. No matter how you looked at it, it resembled a cat that had been lazily napping in some back alley and was suddenly startled awake, rather than a former Demon Lord’s retainer.
“No, you idiot…!”
“Yelp!” The baby leopard I smacked flinched in surprise and sprang straight up. It must have jumped nearly a meter into the air. About to bare its teeth after being struck out of nowhere, the baby leopard froze the moment it looked at me. “Grrr…?”
Even in the form of a beast, it was a retainer created with a fragment of my soul. It might not be able to speak, but its intent came across clearly. If I had to sum it up, it felt like: “…Is this a dream?”
The leopard sniffed the air suspiciously. It must have felt the resonance of our souls and realized I was its master, but my different body seemed to make it doubtful. What, had it thought I was long dead and been having the time of its life on its own all this time? Thinking that made me even more annoyed.
“Get a grip, you—”
“Ah, ah!”
“She hit the cat!”
“You can’t do that!”
I was about to hit it again, but the children’s desperate cries made me lower my hand. Even the teachers’ gazes were sharp with reproach.
“Hunter Jeong Daon, I didn’t think you were that kind of person…”
“Why would you hit an innocent cat…?”
“…That’s not a cat. It’s something I created… like a byproduct of magic.”
“What’s a byproduct?”
“Trash?”
“You’re calling a cat trash?”
“That’s so mean!”
"..."
No matter how you looked at it, I was the villain here. I didn’t mind being the villain, but given that I now had to constantly judge whether my actions would be socially condemned or not, those looks felt like they were tightening around my throat…
Still, the summoning had turned out fine, but why had my retainer ended up so small?
Sensing my dissatisfaction, the retainer opened its mouth wide in an indignant display. “How would I know?”
I was momentarily dumbfounded, but after examining the retainer’s condition, I quickly realized the reason.
It’s because of my stats.
Summoning the retainer through the rift had worked, but as the system message indicated, it had ultimately taken the form of a summoning spell. In other words, since the retainer was currently summoned by me, its power had been nerfed to match my own system-suppressed stats.
Of course. If the system is limiting my stats, there’s no way it would let my retainer operate at full power.
If the retainer could exert its original strength, it would be stronger than an S-rank monster, and considering that S-rank monsters are treated as calamity-level threats in modern-day Korea, that made sense.
The system is wary of “Jeong Daon”.
This thing had just handed down some laughable judgment about me being just, and now it was suddenly on guard again. But regardless of the system’s reaction, the fact remained that I had successfully summoned my retainer. Even with its abilities restricted, it was still a retainer bearing a fragment of my soul. The mere fact that I’d succeeded in summoning it was an undeniable gain.
Put simply, with a retainer, I no longer needed to throw myself in as bait like I had in the emergency stairwell earlier. And no matter how nerfed it was, its durability and physical strength would still be better than mine at a mere Level 20.
I gave the retainer an order, “Deal with those monsters.” So much time had passed that, rendering my earlier slaughter meaningless, monsters were once again beginning to emerge through the rift.
The retainer tilted its head, looking back and forth between me and the monsters prowling beyond the window. “Are you joking?”
Sure, back at its peak it had fought heroes who could split the world in two with a single sword, so being told to suddenly hunt low-level monsters must have seemed ridiculous.
“You might not even be able to handle that. Take a look at yourself before you complain.”
“Gya?!”
Only then did the retainer seem to realize that it was no longer the house-sized leopard it used to be, but now only the size of a kitten. It leaped several meters straight up on the spot.
“Gyaa! Grrr…”
“What is this?”
“Is the kitty angry? Is it hurt?”
“Is it because you hit it, Big Sis?”
“Can’t you pet it instead?”
“...”
Hearing the children’s innocent remarks, the creature made a visibly disgusted expression. Even if it looked nothing more than a cute pet in its current form, it was still a retainer containing a fragment of my soul. There was no way it would enjoy being treated as something adorable by humans.
But regardless of its wishes, the children were completely captivated by what looked, on the outside, like an irresistibly cute cat.
“Big Sis, what’s its name?”
“Huh? Its name…”
I’d never really given it a name.
A name is something you give when you need to distinguish yourself from others, isn’t it? And since a retainer containing a part of my soul was no different from my own limbs, I’d never felt the need to name it.
…But telling them the truth would have made me look terrible, so I hastily blurted out a name that came to mind.
“…Leo.”
“Gya?!” The leopard stared at me with its mouth agape. That expression probably meant something like, “Are you crazy?!”
It let out a growl at the completely half-hearted name, but thinking about it, for something made up on the spot, it wasn’t that bad. At least it was intuitive. Wasn’t it better than Jeong Daon?
The teacher seemed to read the mood and hurriedly tried to placate the children. She said, “Wow, Leo! That’s a really cool name, isn’t it?”
“It’s weird.”
“I-I saw an animation my mom showed me! Leo was a lion in that!”
“Then is it a lion? Not a cat?”
The creature, dissatisfied with the name it had just been given and daring to protest to its master, finally stepped outside only after getting smacked once more at an angle the children couldn’t see.
“Um… can a cat like that really fight real monsters?”
“That thing is no different from a monster itself.”
The teacher didn’t say anything in response, but she seemed to feel that I was being too harsh.
Why are humans such creatures who are so easily swayed by appearances?
The leopard took up position squarely in front of the daycare door and lifted its head high. Compared to its former self, it looked rather pitiful, but the aura emanating from its body was undeniably proud.
Kiiieeek!
The monsters that had been approaching this way after sensing living beings hesitated when they detected the retainer’s presence.
Humans might be weak to appearances, but monsters could sense the retainer’s true standing. At the moment the shadow ghosts that had been about to swarm forward faltered—
Boom!
The baby leopard drew its paws together, crouched, and then leapt high, landing in an instant where the shadow ghosts had gathered. Leo gave them no time to scatter, swinging its thick forepaw down in a single strike.
Crunch! The shadow ghosts was smashed to pieces by the leopard’s paw.
Honestly, that was only to be expected. Even if my mana was restricted, Leo was still a retainer infused with a fragment of the soul of a former archmage, and that body itself was one I had personally constructed. If it couldn’t manage even this, my reputation would be in shambles.
As if asking whether they’d seen its might, Leo lifted its head proudly and turned back toward the children. Excited by the retainer’s brave display, the children burst into applause.
“It’s a brave cat!”
“That cat is super strong!”
“...”
Being called a cat by such small creatures, the leopard looked at me with a deeply wounded expression.
Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about that, even as your master.
In any case, thanks to successfully summoning my retainer, I decided to leave the protection of the children to it and go search for the core myself.
“Mrrp?” the leopard protested as if to say I’d only just reunited with it after so long, only to abandon it again, but there was no helping it.
I couldn’t help but note how the children, who had just been calling me a hero moments ago, were now completely absorbed in the tiny cat and didn’t spare me a glance. Geez, after I’d put my life on the line to save them.
Still, it was fortunate that, thanks to the baby leopard drawing their attention, the children, who had been on the verge of exhaustion, had regained some energy. Amid all that, the daycare teachers offered me words of encouragement.
“P-please be careful!”
“You’re still so young to be doing something this dangerous… Thank you, and please take care of yourself.”
Not that those words gave me much strength…
As I climbed back up the emergency stairs, I let out a deep sigh. Just what were the other Hunters doing that none of them were showing their faces? I tried sending various signals toward the cameras installed in the daycare, but there was no response. Something had clearly gone wrong on Han Jaeyeong’s side.
How did I end up like this?
A Demon Lord is supposed to sit on their throne and wait for the hero to come. Having to go out and hunt the enemy myself is hardly fitting. Isn’t this the kind of role the hero, Yu Hanul, is supposed to play?
Come to think of it, I wonder if Yu Hanul is okay. He’s not dead, is he? No, worrying about an S-rank like this is kind of ridiculous.
Maybe it was because we’d been entangled since my previous life, but even if I wasn’t exactly worried, I couldn’t help thinking about him. And from what Han Jaeyeong had said, it sounded like he’d gotten dragged into this again today simply because he was looking out for my safety.
First, I’ll check the place where Yu Hanul disappeared earlier…
The culprit who moved Yu Hanul somewhere without anyone noticing was highly likely to be the same one who caused this Dungeon Break. If I followed their traces, there was a good chance I’d also find the core; the center of the rift. With that in mind, I headed for the emergency passage where Yu Hanul had suddenly vanished earlier, and before long, I realized something.
On the footage, Yu Hanul had disappeared around the 7th-floor emergency passage, and from that point onward, the space leading to the upper floors was completely cut off. It was as if an invisible wall were blocking the way. I couldn’t advance any further.
This is… a barrier spell? I frowned, not because I didn’t understand the situation.
“When did they even do this?”
There had been no such barrier when I’d rushed up the emergency stairs to reach the daycare. If a barrier spell had been in place back then, I wouldn’t have been able to reach the daycare in the first place, which meant that someone had deliberately cast a barrier spell after I arrived at the daycare, with the intent of isolating me…
The problem was that I hadn’t sensed the barrier being set up at all. With a barrier of this level, there was no way I wouldn’t have felt the flow of mana.
At this point, I was genuinely curious about the enemy’s identity. Was there really a mage on Earth this powerful?
Hah. When I find out who it is, I’m going to burn that face into my memory.
They were undoubtedly an archmage, easily ranking among the top three across both my past and present lives.
Even so, magic always leaves traces. This isn’t a matter of the caster’s skill. When human will defies the laws of the world, it naturally leaves scars behind. Of course, even those scars eventually fade before the absolute law of time, but the magic used on Yu Hanul hadn’t been cast that long ago. There would definitely still be marks left behind.
I crouched down and searched for traces of the magic circle that had to be hidden somewhere.
There it is.
Carefully, I retraced the faded remnants of the magic circle with my mana. My plan was to fully restore the magic circle and use it to pursue the culprit. It would be an impossible feat for an ordinary person, but my enemy would have to consider it bad luck that I happened to be an exceptional mage even across all dimensions.
The spatial coordinates… they’re not far. Still within this building.
That made sense. Since the culprit had turned this entire area into a dungeon, they would have to be nearby.
Flash!
As I poured mana into the restored magic circle, I felt the activation of the spell and my body being displaced.
Blink.
In the span of a single blink, the surrounding scenery changed completely.
“…So I’ve been moved to the rooftop of the building.”
Perhaps because of the Dungeon Break, the scenery felt divorced from reality. In the middle of downtown Seoul, where it’s usually hard to see a blue sky because of fine dust, the sky felt unusually close.
But I didn’t have the leisure to admire the view.
“Yu Hanul!”
That was because I’d spotted Yu Hanul collapsed in the middle of the rooftop.