Chapter 39: From Here On, This Is the Wargod’s Domain (5)

“Ugh… damn it. This is disgustingly hard!”

Late November winter is cold. The North is even colder.

They go on about global warming and such, in the South cherry blossoms were already starting to bloom from early March, but up here it had already begun to snow.

And on that pure white field of snow, our Lude was…

[Hang in there, Nari! You can do it! Just a little more!! The Lord of Chaos does a cheer routine.]

‘Lude… how did you end up shoveling out there all by yourself… Those Wargod bastards are really rotten. They’re truly rotten.’

“Ha… I know. These punks are really rotten!”

He was shoveling hard.

Not metaphorically. Literally shoveling. He was shoveling the piled snow off the road.

Without a Constellation’s power. Without the power of illusion. All by himself.

Lude, trembling so hard from the cold that he had put on fur earmuffs, drove his shovel into the snow with heavy thunks. The sound of scooping and heaving filled the air.

And in the jeep parked a short distance away, Lee Jisung idly sipped corn soup from a thermos.

“Wow, as expected of our rank one! Truly someone who grew up without ever breaking a sweat. Look at those arms shaking. How little muscle did you ever use, hmm?”

“Shut it! You’re the ones who banned me from using a Constellation’s power in the first place!”

“Aren’t you on the evil alignment? If monsters coddled by a gate try to escape to feed on your spirit energy, can you take responsibility? Up here, manual labor takes absolute priority.”

Grit. At that, Lude ground his teeth and went back to scooping. His reddened fingertips were trembling.

Every muscle in his body screamed. He was sure to wake up tomorrow with brutal soreness.

He put off the thought of asking Kang Ihyun to cure it later, then yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Why don’t you make Kang Ihyun do this, he’s obviously the tank! Why me!”

Lude had never imagined he would be sent outdoors to shovel, and he wore an aggrieved expression.

Lee Jisung snorted and shrugged.

Through the faintly shared view, Lude could see that Ihyun was working indoors. Which only made it feel more unfair.

“Mr. Kang Ihyun is examining guild members inside. The doctor here isn’t an Awakener. Do you know how rare it is to get a Hunter who can heal to come all the way out here?”

“It still makes no sense! Look at me, I’m the flimsy one, why should I do this?! I’m the rank one!”

“Hey now, you will use formal speech while you’re here~ We’re guild members, but you two are reservists!”

“You told me earlier I didn’t have to use formal speech! Do I have to do it? Should I? I’ll ditch this whole job at once!”

“Just listen to your words. You can’t be so rude to your elders!”

Despite Lude’s prickly temper, Lee Jisung just burst out laughing and lowered his sunglasses.

A few hours earlier, during the inventory inspection, he had been that intense, yet somehow the two got along fine.

Contrary to appearances, he was easygoing, and he chose to interpret Lude’s cockiness as the typical hot blood of someone in his twenties. Thanks to that breezy personality, he let it slide.

“But~ wasn’t it Ihyun who came up here for your sake in the first place? Shouldn’t you, if anything, be feeling sorry for him?”

“…”

Lude flinched, his expression freezing. Sensing he had struck a nerve, Lee Jisung only shrugged and continued casually.

“If it were me, I’d work harder out of guilt for sucking up his holy power.”

‘...Now that he says it, he’s right. I can’t refute that.’

Lude huffed, then went back to shoveling in grim silence.

His nose, red from the cold, sniffled once. Watching him, Lee Jisung glanced at his wristwatch, then stepped down from the jeep.

“All right, that’s enough.”

“Huh? There’s still a ton left.”

“You want dinner, don’t you? In this weather, if you shovel without eating, even an S-rank can’t dodge a nasty cold.”

Still the type who wanted to finish a task perfectly, Lude looked out across the distance, shovel in hand.

He had worked for hours, yet there was still a long stretch of snow to clear.

Lee Jisung snorted, opened the jeep’s passenger door, and Lude, after a brief stare, climbed in with a sniff.

“Here, drink this.”

Lee Jisung wiped the mouth of the thermos lid with a wet tissue, refilled it with corn soup, and handed it over.

Lude took it with both reddened hands and sipped. As the frostbitten chill in his body melted, he exhaled a breath of relief.

“And put these on. Without Kang Ihyun, I can’t look at you with my naked eyes.”

“…”

Lee Jisung pulled out a pair of sunglasses identical to his and pressed them into Lude’s hand.

Lude stared at the sunglasses. Not his style.

“Regular sunglasses don’t work on me.”

“They’re custom. They block people like you and me who can’t perfectly regulate our energy. They’re fine.”

“…They are not my style.”

“Just put them on when you’re given them. Do you know how much these cost?”

The moment price was mentioned, Lude unfolded the sunglasses with a single hand and put them on without another word.

Only then did Lee Jisung’s nagging headache lift. He fired up the jeep with a purr and pulled out smoothly.

Despite all that shoveling, the path was visible again after not even five minutes of driving. Lude frowned at the unfairness, then his expression shifted to puzzled.

“This isn’t the way back to base.”

“Please. We didn’t bring rank one here to do nothing but shovel. It’s about time that it opens.”

“…Time for what?”

“The gate you’re going to handle.”

“Huh? I thought you said you don’t clear the gates up here.”

In the jeep earlier, Lee Jisung had explained that Wargod’s role was not to exterminate gates, but to “manage” them, harvesting resources and magic stones and letting a gate recover its strength. Lude’s eyes went wide.

“Well, this time it’s different. That’s why we called you.”

Winter darkness fell fast. Headlights on, Lee Jisung’s eyes narrowed a touch.

Lude sensed the chill in Lee Jisung’s demeanor and kept his mouth shut.

The jeep rattled several more times. They passed multiple signs warning that entry was prohibited because the gate was under Wargod’s control, then Lee Jisung finally stopped the vehicle.

These were not the usual signs he had seen along the way. Red signs reading “Danger Zone, Absolutely Do Not Enter” were posted every ten meters.

Farther up stood an iron gate shackled tight with chains and a “No Entry” sign.

Up to now, the scariest signs he had seen had been things like, “This gate is under management, if you enter by accident, survive for one week. Wargod has rescued 70 percent of entrants!”

Lude looked out the window at the gate.

“What is that?”

“A stage-type gate, class 4, ‘Labyrinth of Crete’.”

“Class 4, stage-type? Then why call me? Isn’t this something you all can handle yourselves?”

“Once you go in, it flips to class 2.”

At that, Lude snapped his head toward him. Lee Jisung slid his sunglasses down slightly and stared into the gate’s interior.

Class 4 outside, but class 2 once entered.

It was just like that gate at Migeum Station. Feeling Lude’s eyes on him, Lee Jisung narrowed his own.

“Yeah. It’s just like the one you went in. That’s why we called you. We want you to solve this.”

“Why me of all people?”

If gates had jumped up two classes before, that meant it wasn’t a temporary phenomenon like the press conference had implied.

Lude recalled the white cult leader who had come out of that gate. There were things that still did not add up.

Something strange was happening, and someone was keeping it quiet.

“You’ve got experience, so I figured you might know something more. The fewer people who know the secret, the better, so we brought only you here to ask for help.”

“Why only me? Wouldn’t Kang Ihyun be more trustworthy?”

“No. We can’t use him. He’s got too many people around him.”

Lee Jisung’s eyes slitted. He let out a long sigh.

“How many private companies do you think want a piece of this region? Kang Ihyun is Sanctuary’s successor. We’re not pretending we’re pure, but there’s a world of difference between a public enterprise supplying energy down south and Sanctuary occupying it and controlling supply. Your electricity bill would skyrocket.”

“Neither Ihyun nor the guildmaster are those kinds of people!”

“I know Ms. Sujin’s character. But her father, Kang Ihyun’s grandfather, is… different. So this must not reach his ears.”

‘Grandfather…?’

A word he had never heard before popped out, and Lude stared at Lee Jisung, then shook his head.

More important than that, he still had questions he needed to ask about the situation.

“Isn’t this a state secret?!”

“It is.”

“You’ve got Jeong Suho. What were you going to do if I said no, letting all this slip early?”

Even if he was the rank one, Lude was a mere Hunter of the Republic of Korea. Wargod had an S-rank too, and he was the God of Battle at that.

Despite that, they had called Lude here to deal with this gate.

A bad feeling rose in Lude’s chest, and he looked at Lee Jisung. Lee Jisung’s face had gone cold as he stared at the gate.

“That one can’t be managed. Extermination is the only answer. Jeong Suho tried to clear it and got hurt badly. That’s why he hasn’t been able to come south for six years.”

Lude’s eyes went wide. Lee Jisung continued evenly.

“…If you refused, we were ready to get on our knees. Help us. You’re the only one who can save Korea.”

* * *

‘…’

In the base camp infirmary, Kang Ihyun checked the second sight and smiled faintly under a white coat.

‘They even brought up that worthless old man? These bastards are starting to cross the line.’

A sharp rage tore up inside him, but he could not show it.

Instead, he looked down coldly at the guild member on the bed and pressed the ankle again.

“Oh dear, your ligaments… are badly damaged.”

“Eek!!”

Catching the dark blue of Ihyun’s eyes, the guild member jerked on the bed and shook his head frantically.

“I’ll use it less! I’ll use my ankle less! Then it’ll heal, right? I don’t need anything weird done, right?!”

“Unfortunately, ligaments don’t heal on their own… Let’s treat it here and now…”

Grinning like a mad doctor, Ihyun made the guild member’s eyes brim with tears.

It looked very much like he intended to vent the stress of being dragged up here through perfectly legal medical care.

He took something from his inventory that looked like an ultrasound device and tapped it with his hand.

A menacing whirr rose as sacred flame infused within spun rapidly.

At the drill-like sound, the guild member’s jaw dropped. Ihyun delivered the coup de grâce with merciless brevity.

“Starting today, daily extracorporeal shockwave therapy.”

“Nooooo! Have mercy!”

[The Constellation, Staff of Purification, wipes your sweat and says good job.]

Finishing the session while the guild member screamed, Ihyun let out a long sigh and released the ankle.

Treating people all day had his shoulders stiff.

“Good news is, there’s only one more patient and I’m done. I’m more worried about the talk with Lude after work.”

With a frown that curved into a smile, Ihyun exhaled.

That centuries old fox had figured out that Lude was softer than he looked, so of course he would start evoking the Republic’s safety, state secrets, Jeong Suho’s injury, and so on, to tug at Lude’s sympathy.

“Even if he’s rank six, he’s still S-rank. Are we really saying he can’t handle it? Ridiculous… They’re doing everything to shove Lude into that gate alone.”

Rolling his shoulders, Ihyun sighed hard and signaled for the next person to come in.

The door swung open. Someone stepped inside. Ihyun turned and put on his calm smile again.

“Hello! Where does it hur—”

And he froze. Because of the person standing before him. Silver hair, blue eyes, about five centimeters shorter than Ihyun.

Wargod’s S-rank, Jeong Suho.

He was lowering his head, bowing respectfully.

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