Choi Miyeon looked at the man and was startled. “Dad! What happened to your face?”
“Ah, well. I just tripped, that’s all.”
As if.
Choi Miyeon frowned as she took in her father’s bruised face. She seemed completely unaware of the kind of hell her father was going through in this so-called good place full of good people.
“Oh my god, you just left it like that? Wait here, I’ll go get a potion or something.”
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s nothing. Ah, you must be Hunter Jeong Daon! Nice to meet you. I’m Choi Seonghun, Miyeon’s father.”
“…Yes, hello.”
It was our first meeting for him, but not for me.
Choi Seonghun soon noticed the cat Choi Miyeon was holding. “Huh? That’s Nabi! I found it in the garden earlier.”
“Oh, Dad, you saw it too? It’s so cute, right?”
“But for a cat, aren’t the nose and paws a bit too big? The more I look, the more they are.”
“Grrr!”
“Not a cat!"
Leo smacked away Choi Seonghun’s hand as he tried to touch his paw. Choi Miyeon hugged Leo more tightly. “Well, maybe it’s just an unusual cat. A lot of stray cats have mixed breeds.”
At that point, it felt like her ability to brainwash herself was downright exceptional. In any case, the situation had become interesting.
He said it was a good thing his daughter was a suitable candidate…
And if Choi Seonghun’s daughter was Choi Miyeon… did that “suitable candidate” mean a Hunter in a water-balloon state like her? But then again, when and how were they planning to use someone like that?
Choi Miyeon might have grown up immersed in a cult from birth, her head full of flowers, but I hadn’t. In modern society, a guild is ultimately a group formed to profit from clearing dungeons. Their main goal is usually to make money by selling items or materials obtained from defeating monsters. Even if a guild is rooted in a religious organization, would they really actively recruit Hunters as useless as Choi Miyeon? No matter how I thought about it, it felt deeply unsettling.
If that was the case, wouldn’t it make more sense that the one who truly needed Choi Miyeon wasn’t the Truelight Guild, but the Truelight Sect that served as its parent body?
I can’t shake these ominous thoughts.
The more I considered what a group of fanatics could be capable of, the worse it felt. After all, hadn’t living people already been used as sacrifices just to artificially trigger Dungeon Breaks? There was no proof yet that the Truelight Sect was behind such acts—but if they were… could they be gathering Hunters like Choi Miyeon to use as living sacrifices?
I glanced at the statue of the cult leader standing in the middle of the garden. If that hypothesis were true, this cult would be closer to demon worship than anything else.
While I was running through these possibilities, Choi Miyeon was finishing her greetings with Choi Seonghun.
“Dad, we have a doctrine class, so we’ll head inside first.”
“Ah, right. It was nice meeting you, Hunter Jeong Daon.”
“Um, by the way, what’s that building?” I pointed to a building I hadn’t been allowed anywhere near, despite touring the grounds. It was the building Leo had tried to enter and been blocked from by a barrier.
Choi Seonghun answered with a genial smile. “Oh, that’s the prayer hall. Only our believers are allowed inside.”
“Could I maybe take a look—”
“Ah, Sister Jeong Daon, are you asking because you sensed the barrier?” This time it was Choi Miyeon, her face resembling her father’s, who spoke.
At her words, Choi Seonghun turned to her in surprise. “A b-barrier… Miyeon, you shouldn’t say that—”
“It’s fine. She’s asking because she already knows anyway. Right?”
The daughter was sharper than the father. I had no choice but to nod. “I could feel the flow of mana.”
“Wow, as expected,” Choi Seonghun exclaimed in admiration. “You can sense the flow of mana from that far away? That’s amazing.”
“As you can see, there really is a barrier within our guild. To prevent outsiders from disturbing prayers, we’ve set it up so only our believers can enter.”
“Do people actually interfere?”
“Well, religious folks tend to face persecution, you know.”
Anyone hearing that might think they were enduring some noble martyrdom. More likely, someone had reported them and the police had shown up.
“If you join the Truelight Church, Hunter Jeong Daon, you’ll be able to go there too.”
“How do you join?”
“Oh, are you interested in joining? Our executive would be absolutely thrilled!” Choi Seonghun looked genuinely delighted. It was hard to understand why he felt the need to add that the very executive who had just beaten him mercilessly would be pleased. “It’s simple. We have a blood registry for our church—you write your name there, and you’ll automatically be able to pass through the barrier. Of course, we don’t actually cut your finger. It’s just a small prick with a needle, hahaha!”
A blood registry. No matter how nice they might seem on the surface, it was a stark reminder that they were, in the end, members of a group steeped in madness.
“Oh, Dad. If you say things like that… please, could you just go?” Seeing my expression, Choi Miyeon waved her hands in flustered denial. It seemed she was well aware that her father lacked tact. Asking someone who hadn’t even joined yet to write their name in blood was hardly something one would say. All it would do, logically, was provoke rejection.
“Huh? O-okay, I got it.”
“Hurry up and go. Bye, Dad.” After quickly sending Choi Seonghun away, Choi Miyeon turned back to me with an awkward look. “I’m… sorry. My dad is just really good-natured, so…”
“It’s fine.”
That was what I said, but I didn’t feel good about it.
Partly because the true nature of the Truelight “Church” was starting to show itself, but more than anything else…
I can feel it even from here.
Even though I was standing some distance away, I could sense a thin strand of mana within the wall that made up the barrier. I hadn’t made proper contact yet, so I couldn’t scan the formulas, but I could clearly feel something foreign mixed into the overall flow of mana. It was like a single stitch twisted wrong in an otherwise finely woven fabric.
And that shape was deeply…repulsive.
“Shall we go attend the doctrine class for now?”
“Yes, let’s.”
I turned my steps away.
They said the doctrine class would continue until evening, so I planned to sneak out while everyone was asleep and make contact with the magic circle then.
It had already been a full day and another half since Jeong Daon had stayed behind alone to attend the doctrine classes at the Truelight Sect.
“Last night, all we got was a text saying there was no problem—but is this really okay?” Han Jaeyeong frowned.
Yu Hanul nodded in agreement while sipping coffee. “Saying there’s ‘no problem’ isn’t the same as saying it’s ‘okay.’”
“When you put it that way, it’s convincing. So what now? Are we just going to waste two more days like this?”
Han Jaeyeong and Yu Hanul were waiting inside a car parked near the Truelight Guild building. Naturally, it was Han Jaeyeong’s sports car, so the seats were extremely uncomfortable.
“Since the Truelight Guild is clearly suspicious, I wouldn’t call it a waste. Hunter Han Jaeyeong, you agreed to this too, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t plan to drag things out like this,” Han Jaeyeong grumbled incessantly. From their perspective, things had gone far off plan. “To be honest, I was just curious how Hunter Jeong Daon would react after going into an organization that might be targeting her. You were curious about that too, that’s why you agreed.”
“I wouldn’t say I was curious purely out of interest, unlike you.” At Han Jaeyeong’s sarcasm, Yu Hanul’s gaze briefly drifted through empty space before returning. “Well, I was curious, yes. We need to know what kind of personality a practically confirmed S-rank mage has.”
Did a system message pop up or something?
“Oh? So what do you think she’s like?”
After a moment of thought, Yu Hanul chose his words carefully. “She’s bold and calm. She seems like she’d stay composed even in battle.”
“Oh, that’s rare—hearing you praise someone.”
Because Yu Hanul had such an upright character, people often misunderstood one thing: being morally upright and being sharp in assessing objective facts were not the same. As a result, while Yu Hanul was widely praised, most Hunters who ran dungeons alongside him ended up with a bitter taste in their mouths.
“But she also seems somewhat reckless, and at times, she loses her rationality. I don’t think our compatibility would be very good.”
Like this.
That assessment of Jeong Daon was unexpected enough that Han Jaeyeong raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think that? Swordsmen and long-range mages usually have great synergy.”
“She doesn’t hesitate to rush into danger to protect the weak. If the two of us moved together, there’d be no one to hit the brakes, would there?”
Yu Hanul said something that Jeong Daon would probably have been furious, or deeply unsettled, to hear.
“When we first met, she was covered in wounds because she tried to save an elderly woman who got caught up in a dungeon. And during the second Dungeon Break, didn’t she endure by using her own body as bait to save children?”
“Ah, that kind of thing. Hmm. When you put it that way, I suppose you’re right.”
If Jeong Daon were there, she would have protested vehemently, but Han Jaeyeong agreed with the assessment.
Judging purely by the results of Jeong Daon’s actions so far, it was true. Listening to the way she talked, you might think some monster wearing human skin was sitting there—but objectively speaking, you’d be hard-pressed to find a greater saint.
Yu Hanul at least had enough ability to justify rushing in to protect the weak. Jeong Daon, on the other hand, went so far as to risk being injured—or killed.
“So you’re saying if you move together, you’ll both be too busy looking after the weak to work efficiently?”
“Yes. From my perspective, it’s better to work with you. You’re devious and calculating. If you hadn’t been acting alone back at Gwanghwamun, the aftermath would’ve been unmanageable.”
“At least you know that.” Han Jaeyeong let out a scoff, then suddenly came to their senses. “Isn’t that just another way of saying I’m trash?”
“I didn’t put it quite that way.”
“Honestly.” What on earth these kids were up to, the two of you together—Han Jaeyeong clicked their tongue. “Jeong Daon looks at me like I’m absolute garbage too. You two seem to get along great, why don’t you just date?”
“Isn’t that kind of nonsense exactly why she looks at you like that?”
“…Even so, I kind of agree with your evaluation. The things she says are unbelievably cynical, but when you look at the results of her actions, you’d believe it if someone told you she was the saint of the century.”
On top of that, Han Jaeyeong had seen how much Jeong Daon doted on Jeong Dajeong. To an outsider, it almost looked like Jeong Daon was the older sibling. It was a kind of familial affection rarely seen among mages.
They say mages usually have green blood running through their veins, after all.
The idea that mages don’t understand human emotions was such a well-known tendency it had practically become a meme. Studying magic circles demands enormous mental strain and extreme efficiency, so mages above a certain level inevitably developed similar traits.
Of course, Han Jaeyeong themself was one such mage.
“Anyway, let’s wait a little longer. And if nothing happens, we’ll pay another visit today—”
It was then— KWA-KWA-BOOM! A thunderous explosion rang out.
The sound came from inside the Truelight Sect building.
Yu Hanul and Han Jaeyeong immediately leapt out of the car.