To be honest, I think it’s absurd from the very start that the system is telling me to help Yu Hanul.
It treated me, who was the “Destroyer of Worlds” back in my previous life, as a potential threat. Then it bound me with a quest with a bizarre name, and as if that weren’t enough, it now tells me to help the hero defeat this world’s Demon Lord? Fine. Even if I bend over backward a hundred times and accept that I’ve been given some ridiculous “Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings” kind of quest, I can at least do a few good deeds. It raises my stats too, after all.
But to say it would also give me a clue to identify this world’s “Enemy of Humanity” by showing Yu Hanul memories from his past life?
Is it telling me to go die on my own or what?
If Yu Hanul finds out that I’m the very “Destroyer of Worlds” he killed in his previous life, he’s really going to welcome me with open arms, isn’t he.
From the beginning, it was suspicious enough that the system showed Yu Hanul those memories at all.
There were three figures who appeared in those memories: Yu Hanul himself in his previous life as the hero, the Demon Lord who was killed by that hero’s hand, and the king who gave the order to defeat the Demon Lord.
If a question asking which of these could be considered the “Enemy of Humanity” showed up on the college entrance exam, it would be question number one. And it would be so absurdly easy that people would skip past it without even bothering to explain the solution. Everyone would think the Demon Lord killed by the hero was the “Enemy of Humanity.”
As someone who’s already in the middle of doing good deeds by completing that “Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings” quest, it’s frustrating enough to make me jump up and down in indignation.
More than anything, why on earth are all these ties from my previous life gathered so densely in this world?
Did they cram only my enemies from my past life into this world or something?
If that’s the case, then maybe my belief that there is no god was wrong. If the two enemies from my past life who took my life have both been reborn into this world, then this world, which looks relatively peaceful, might itself be the punishment given to me.
“Gya.”
Leo, who had been viciously tearing apart a cat toy that Jeong Dajeong had hurriedly bought, widened his eyes. The mechanism inside the squeaky toy had broken.
“This is broken!”
“Weren’t you trying to break it?”
"No."
Thump. Thump.
Leo smacked the toy a few times with paws that were huge compared to his body, then turned back to look at me. “Can’t control strength. Weird!”
“You suddenly crossed into another world and even got nerfed, so that might happen.”
In fact, the very act of crossing dimensions through such a strange method must have dealt considerable damage to his physical body.
Leo drooped his ears and looked at me with an exaggeratedly pitiful expression. “Master, help? Help?”
“You’ll have to wait a bit to get the materials needed to reconstruct your body.”
He was a familiar into whom I had breathed a fragment of my soul. His body had also been made from extraordinary, precious materials, so remaking it would require not just money but also the right luck.
“Whine…”
Perhaps because he had reunited with his master after so long, or because he was dispirited by his shrunken body, Leo collapsed onto the bed without any complaints. Jeong Dajeong had bought him a cat hideout, but he wasn’t paying it any attention.
As I stroked Leo’s absurdly tiny head, I sank into thought.
So then, in what form do they exist in this world?
(T/N: There’s no description of the king’s gender until now. Although there’s a bigger possibility them being a male, it doesn’t completely close the door of a female king)
There were many possibilities.
They could have been reincarnated with memories of their past life intact, like me. They could have no memories, like Yu Hanul. Or, like Leo, they might have descended into this world by chance due to some trigger. My blood relative from my previous life was also a powerful archmage, so any of those scenarios were possible.
But what was most astonishing was something else entirely.
Just what had they been doing to end up becoming the “Enemy of Humanity”?
Enemy of Humanity.
The reason I became the “Destroyer of Worlds” in my previous life was because the system, the collective intelligence of humanity, judged that my existence was detrimental to the survival of humans in that world. If so, then this “Enemy of Humanity” must have been judged using the same line of reasoning.
And Yu Hanul was once again chosen as the entity to oppose that “Enemy of Humanity”.
Seriously, his luck is atrocious.
To be caught between me and my sibling and forced to clean up the mess of the world, both in his previous life and his current one; he really is pitiful.
In every sense, these lingering ties from my past life are nothing if not sticky and persistent. That goes not only for Yu Hanul, but also for the “Enemy of Humanity.”
I had felt a sense of incongruity when someone broke through my unique magic barrier at the supermarket. It wasn’t something that could be done unless they already knew about my unique magic from the start. But if it was the work of someone who knew me from my previous life, then everything made sense.
And while some things fell into place, there were still others that I couldn’t understand.
Just how did they recognize me and attack me in the first place?
How on earth did they figure out that Jeong Daon was that “Destroyer of Worlds” from a previous life?
And more importantly, I don’t even know why they attacked me to begin with.
I won’t deny that my ties from my past life were complicated in many ways. To be honest, they were so tangled and messy that I’d rather not recall them at all. But in the end, didn’t that past life wrap up cleanly with my death at the hands of the hero, who was the other party’s subordinate?
If we’re being precise, shouldn’t it be the loser—me—who holds a grudge?
Why on earth would they go so far as to cause a Dungeon Break just to vent their anger when they were the winner.
“They really are someone I can’t understand at all. Don’t you think so?”
“Meowk.”
“What kind of sound is that?”
Leo rolled around wildly on the bed, trying to dodge my hand. Still, petting him made me feel a little more at ease.
As Han Jaeyeong had pointed out, ever since I saw those memories through Yu Hanul, I had been feeling somewhat impatient.
Up until now, no matter who this unidentified enemy was, I hadn’t considered them that serious a threat. After all, the fact that my soul was actually the “Destroyer of Worlds” was something only I knew, and if things really got dangerous, I figured I could just grab Jeong Dajeong and flee to another dimension.
But now, that was no longer the case.
I clenched my fist. I’ll have to find them and kill them first.
The problem was that the system had only provided hints, without clearly showing where the exact “Enemy of Humanity” currently was, or even who it was. Then again, the system is nothing more than a collective intelligence created to increase humanity’s chances of survival—it isn’t a convenient, all-knowing tool. In other words, it simply meant that the system had recognized that some kind of threat was currently being posed to humanity’s survival.
Well, if they caused a Dungeon Break at the cost of human lives, it’s no wonder the system would sense a threat.
In the span of just one week, two people had been reduced to fragments and killed. That alone meant a hole had been forcibly punched into this dimension’s safety net…
“Grrr!”
Leo, who had been rolling around on the bed, suddenly let out a low, throat-scratching growl.
“Intruder!”
“An intruder?”
Just as I started to get up, I heard the sound of a car engine. It was the strained engine noise of a compact car struggling to climb the hill.
I raised an eyebrow.
Don’t tell me—
The engine sound approached our front gate and then stopped, after which there was no sound at all for a while. Leo, however, kept his ears pricked and maintained a strong, alert posture.
“Strong! Stronger than Master!”
“How would you know that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
You little—
When I stepped out of the room and opened the front gate, I saw a head sticking up above a small compact car. The cold weather made the air billow white. Leo, cradled in my arms, let out a choking sound.
"Scary!"
Of course you’d be scared, Leo. In his past life, or rather, from Leo’s perspective, this was an enemy he had clashed with countless times before. He had even died several times because of him.
“Why here?!”
That’s what I’d like to know too.
"Yu Hanul?"
Sure enough, standing in front of the house was Yu Hanul, wearing a padded jacket over his hospital clothes. He looked startled when I suddenly appeared after opening the gate.
“This is my house. Why are you the one acting surprised?”
“Oh, no, it’s not that. Ah… did you realize I was here because of the car noise? Sorry about that.”
“There’s no need to apologize. Though if you had business, it would’ve been nice if you’d contacted me first.”
“Hahaha, you’re right.”
Even his reply sounded oddly weak.
I quietly took a closer look at Yu Hanul. This guy… he’s really not in good shape.
Compared to the mountain-like presence he had in the dungeon, where he cut down dozens of monsters with a single sword, he now clearly looked lifeless and sickly; definitely not normal. He didn’t even comment on the random cat in my arms, which was strange in itself.
“Aren’t you supposed to still be in the hospital?”
“Yeah, I am, but…”
It wasn’t just his body that was in bad condition. He looked dazed somehow, like his soul wasn’t fully here.
In that absentminded state, Yu Hanul opened his mouth. “I felt like I had to see you…”
"..."
"..."
Silence fell between us for a moment.
The first to break it was the flustered Yu Hanul. “N-no! That’s not what I meant… I’m not saying this with any weird intentions…!”
"...”
Rather than focusing on Yu Hanul’s reaction, I checked the presence around us and let out a sigh. Since yesterday, a few reporters had been staking out near this house, but fortunately there was no one around right now. If someone had taken a picture of this scene, it would have made for some pretty sensational New Year’s news. Things were already noisy enough because of all the articles. Throw in a scandal with Yu Hanul, and just imagining it made my head hurt.
“Don’t get the wrong idea—no, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with you or anything…”
“I know. I’m not misunderstanding.”
If I were an ordinary nineteen-year-old woman, I might have felt a flutter of romantic excitement in Yu Hanul’s words. But I had been through far too much for that. At the very least, I was seasoned enough to detect the faint suspicion and inner conflict in Yu Hanul’s eyes.
It’s probably… the aftereffects of the “ego exploration” spell.
Yu Hanul wasn’t the kind of lunatic who would lose his mind over feelings for a woman he’d known for only a few days and run out of the hospital. The cause was that I had cast “Self-Exploration” on him.
Basically, I had entered the surface of his unconscious, so Yu Hanul wouldn’t have consciously recognized me. Still, his unconscious would have detected traces of my mana. And for an S-rank Hunter with senses as sharp as Yu Hanul’s, that would be an unpleasant sensation he couldn’t ignore, like having his private space trampled.
Strictly speaking, if it weren’t for the system giving me a quest to help Yu Hanul, this would have been an unforgivable rudeness on a person-to-person level. No one wants their thoughts to be exposed.
That said, if it hadn’t been for me, Yu Hanul would have been bedridden for at least another month, so you could also call him ungrateful.
Of course, that’s ignoring the possibility that, from Yu Hanul’s perspective, he might have preferred lying in bed for another month over letting someone else into his mental world.
He probably hasn’t realized yet that those were memories from his past life…
The problem, though, was that the system had given information that was far too vague. The scene the system showed him, of the hero killing the Demon Lord. The lingering, unpleasant traces of mana left in his unconscious. And me, whose mana matched those traces. Anyone would find that suspicious. If it were me, I would have killed first and asked questions later.
No matter how I thought about it, it was irritating. If I’d known it would turn out like this, I wouldn’t have helped him using the Self-Exploration spell in the first place.
…Spilled water can’t be put back.
So now the question was how I should deal with him. That, too, was one of my dilemmas.
If I want to investigate who the Enemy of Humanity is, joining Yu Hanul’s quest would be efficient, but…
Since the system itself had assigned the quest, it would likely be as cooperative as possible when it came to helping Yu Hanul. And since he was a bona fide “hero,” becoming his companion would also increase the chances of smoothly completing the “Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings” quest. Setting aside my personal discomfort, it was efficient.
The biggest problem, however… was that I had to hide my true identity from Yu Hanul.
"Um, Daon." Yu Hanul spoke. His expression was unusually serious. “I asked this when we first met, but I’ll ask again.”
“…Okay.”
“Have we ever met somewhere before?”