Chapter 42

“I thought it seemed fishy from the start. Sending the number one to the North, where everything was full of state secrets. I figured they wanted to dig up information, but Lude said there weren’t any wiretaps.”

Lude only nodded on the side. His skill, “Wait, is this for YouTube?” could detect wiretaps. Since it didn’t trigger, eavesdropping hadn’t been the goal.

“Then the real goal was to clear that gate. But the Wargod guild master wouldn’t bring Sanctuary in just to clear a gate for them. The only conclusion is that someone with enough clout deliberately sent you this way. And the only person with that much pull is you. Right?”

Lee Jisung grinned. His sunglasses flashed under the fluorescent lights. Kang Ihyun frowned a little, then spoke again.

“From the patients we treated yesterday, a lot of those diseases looked like they’d been neglected for a long time. Up here there was one regular doctor and one pharmacist, not a Healer.”

In Kang Ihyun’s judgment, just like ligament damage that extracorporeal shock waves could repair, the ailments among Wargod’s guild members would have healed with about a month of proper treatment.

“The supplies were kind of bad too, and that corn soup they handed out yesterday was past its expiration date.”

“You noticed that already huh.”

Lude added on, saying he’d found the packet tossed on the car floor.

Either way, it was obvious Wargod’s “Owls” were being neglected by the South. In a voice full of certainty, Kang Ihyun spoke again.

“Is Wargod purposely sending the strong and outspoken people north And keeping them from coming back down?”

“Ugh.”

Looking helpless, Lee Jisung fiddled with his sunglasses and crossed his arms. He looked between Lude and Kang Ihyun and lowered his voice.

“Can’t be helped. Let’s keep this off the record. If number one here can sniff out bugs, I’ll trust it. Well, not that it matters if someone is listening anymore.”

He let out a deep sigh and took off his sunglasses. His sharp eyes seemed to pierce through them. Leaning both forearms on the table, he smiled.

“You know our Wargod guild master is ex-military, a non-Awakener civilian, right?”

“Was he?”

“Y-Yeah.”

At Lude’s question, Kang Ihyun only nodded. As if that alone told him a lot about the partnership between those two, Lee Jisung chuckled and took a sip of instant coffee.

“He’s a parachute appointee.”

“A parachute appointee?”

“So he’s got almost no command ability. A ton of resentment, too. Since he’s a non-Awakener civilian from the start, he looks down on Hunters. Seems like it gets to him. So any Hunter with even a slightly higher rank or louder voice, he ships them up north and makes sure they can’t come down if he can help it.”

Internet use here was restricted as well. In that state, anyone with some seniority got sent only upward. And whenever possible, they were kept from returning south.

For Lude and Kang Ihyun, who had only ever worked under Kang Sujin, a leader with superb command skill, it was unimaginable. Still, it was the kind of thing that could happen somewhere.

With a grimace, Lee Jisung said,

“Our work isn’t like the South’s. Doing well doesn’t show, but screwing up stands out. They’re sending people up here on purpose so they don’t rack up flashy achievements.”

“Then there has to be complaints.”

“Of course. That’s why, on the Owls’ side, they treat Jeong Suho and me as the practical bosses. Which is why Jeong Suho is always a thorn in the guild master’s eye.”

Wargod’s only S-rank, and the top Production-type Hunter in the country. The guild master’s attempt to protect himself was instead turning the North into the center of “practical combat power.”

“But even if we wanted to hit the guild master where it hurts, Suho can’t leave the base because of his status ailments. That’s why I tapped every connection I had to call you two, to clear the gate in his place.”

“And what about Jeong Suho’s own wishes in that process?”

“I didn’t ask?”

With a playful “ta-da,” Lee Jisung spread both hands at Lude’s question. Lude’s face tightened hard. He slapped the table with a bang and growled,

“Are you kidding me right now…!”

“Hey, what I’m saying is, he said he wanted to go down south too.”

At the words that Jeong Suho wanted to go down, Lude’s fingers twitched. He tried to brush it off with a “whatever, I’ll just shake it off,” but…

That was separate from how long it would take his heart to “really” let it go.

[Our Nari, how deep must the inner wounds be. The Lord of Chaos comforts you.]

“Anyway, I’ve explained enough, right? Leave our Suho out of this now. He wouldn’t be able to resolve the status ailments there anyway. You two go have your fun.”

“That won’t do.”

“Why not now!”

“Why do you think the Wargod guild master approved this in the first place? If we clear it, that means Jeong Suho can’t manage a class 2 gate.”

With a long, heavy sigh, Lee Jisung propped his chin on his hand. There was no way the guild master had sent Lude and Kang Ihyun north with the genuine goal of “clearing a class 2 gate.”

The goal had been to have the external pair, Lude and Kang Ihyun, clear the class 2 gate in order to shrink Jeong Suho’s authority, then use that as an excuse to lower the Owls’ say within the guild.

Thinking they’d been dragged into something fairly political and messy, Kang Ihyun exhaled sharply, then spoke again in a tone of puzzlement.

“But did you really not know something even I knew, Mr. Lee Jisung?”

“No, I really didn’t.”

“That couldn’t be true?! My aunt called you a fox who’d lived a hundred years!”

“Haha… you two are so direct and head-on. I’m more used to the noble-lady speech patterns of guild masters from romance novels, so I’m not used to you.”

“Here’s the thing,” he said, slumping over the table. Pouting like someone far younger than his age, he tapped the tabletop with his index finger and spoke in a quiet voice.

“Jeong Suho… wants to go into that gate alone.”

At that, Lude, who had been fiddling with his hands as if none of this concerned him, suddenly looked up. He looked puzzled.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. It’s almost obsessive. He insists on solo runs, and he always comes back defeated!”

Saying he hadn’t been thrilled about Lude and Kang Ihyun coming up this time either, Lee Jisung pulled a few sheets from his inventory.

It was the gate report Lude had glanced at yesterday, “Labyrinth of Crete.” Kang Ihyun read through it carefully.

In a grumbling tone, Lee Jisung continued,

“Maybe it’s trauma. That gate was his first field training site.”

He explained. At age fifteen, having entered Wargod as an S-rank from the start, Jeong Suho had requested the South, but, thanks to the guild master’s “check,” he was immediately assigned to the North.

And the first gate he entered, the class 4 “Labyrinth of Crete.” There…

“He lost all his guildmates to the boss monster. It jumped to class 2 mid-run.”

“Damn…”

“Even for an S-rank, clearing it alone must have been impossible. He barely escaped, then they discovered he’d been afflicted with status ailments. After that he tried several more times, but only added more ailments and never cleared it.”

“So he’s thinking, fine, I’ll handle this infuriating thing myself?”

Still playing solo cat’s cradle with threads woven from spirit energy, Lude spoke.

The Jeong Suho Nari knew was terrifyingly obsessive once he fixated on something. And if what he’d fixated on this time was that “anger,” insisting on a solo clear made sense.

“Then wouldn’t that mean we should go with him? If we clear everything ourselves, he’ll be furious later.”

“No, it’s enough as long as we only remove the status ailments. That’s why.”

Even so, it was right to bring Jeong Suho along. While they were going back and forth about whether to bring Jeong Suho or not, Kang Ihyun, still studying the report, spoke up.

“No, we need to bring Mr. Jeong Suho.”

“Huh?”

Kang Ihyun pointed at the paper. More precisely, in the section describing the boss monster, the “Minotaur.”

“Looks like a Greco-Roman myth-type gate. The boss applies status ailments through… curses.”

Like gates patterned after archangels, the Twelve Gods, the Seventy-Two Demons, or the constellations, many gates copied a specific mythology.

“Among those, Greco-Roman monsters use a skill called curse, and status ailments from curses don’t resolve just because you clear the gate.”

Lee Jisung’s eyes widened. Step by step, Kang Ihyun explained that status ailments fell into different categories depending on their nature.

If a status ailment was rooted in a person’s own psychology, like Lude’s “people-avoidance,” Healers couldn’t cure it. As common knowledge had it, temporary ailments picked up inside a gate generally lifted when you cleared the gate.

But even ailments acquired in a gate needed different cures depending on how they were inflicted.

“There are various skills that inflict status ailments. Among them, the curse skill is quite powerful. It always follows a resolve-what-you-tied rule. If the one who inflicted it doesn’t remove it themselves, it never lifts, not even if you die.”

“What…?”

“Looks like you don’t have Priests here of as high a class as I am, so you didn’t know. Still, if Mr. Suho made a pact with a Greco-Roman constellation, he would have known himself. So why didn’t he…”

Kang Ihyun trailed off. In all three of their minds, another possibility linked up. The reason Jeong Suho insisted on solo runs. And why he hadn’t mentioned anything about curses.

“If we’d known, we would’ve tried to figure out a way together.”

“And if we failed, we’d all come back saddled with status ailments. So…”

By challenging it alone again and again, he reduced the chance of other guild members being afflicted.

The more he tried, the more his own ailments would pile up. But if even the sole S-rank, Jeong Suho, couldn’t clear it, the chances for other guild members were slim.

What kind of state of mind kept you charging in, knowing the odds were that low The conference room sank into silence, and then Lude’s voice came low.

“Bring Jeong Suho. In front of me. Right now.”

* * *

“Man, what a windfall.”

“I know. It was Mr. Kang Ihyun who brought it. Guess he’s the kind of guy who takes care of things like this, even if he doesn’t look like it.”

Two guild members at the barbed-wire fence shared swigs of high-proof vodka while checking each gate’s condition through binoculars.

Up here in the harsh North, where supply lines were broken, that sort of thing was precious. And since they’d picked a day and treated everyone too, Lude and Kang Ihyun were like angels descending from the sky to Wargod’s people.

“Hey, don’t let the boss catch you. Got it? Lee Jisung might look the other way, but the boss never will.”

“Of course. I’m watching the line, Eek—!”

At that strangled cry, the other guild member glanced aside. Jeong Suho was staring at them, his blue eyes glinting ominously.

Both men trembled. Maybe because he was S-rank. He was only twenty-five, but his presence was overwhelming.

“W-We were wrong, boss! We really only drank a little, just a tiny bit!”

“Y-Yeah, really! We won’t touch it again. We’ll toss it, we’ll toss it!”

Eyes dark and fierce, Jeong Suho walked toward them. Powerless, the two squeezed their eyes shut.

‘We’re screwed. We forgot the boss moves without a sound…! Still, for a moment there, we were happy!’

Not, “we won’t drink again,” but, “we’ll just be more careful when we drink.” That was the conclusion they’d already reached when, before Jeong Suho reached them, a ping sounded.

“B-Boss…?”

After checking the message, Jeong Suho furrowed his brow hard, then spun on his heel and strode off. The two men clung to each other and then made baffled faces.

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