The reason Jin Ye-seul had slipped out of the Academy and gone wandering was a simple one.
Yu Ji-hyeok had asked her to meet with Yoon Seul-hye.
The problem was that Yoon Seul-hye was no longer staying in the Academy dormitories. She was lying low in a remote spot well away from the school, keeping out of public view because of the scandal that had broken through the Association and the press.
Since Yoon Seul-hye couldn't move, Jin Ye-seul ended up being the one who had to go to her.
With Henir's Shadow, the actual travel was no trouble, but the fact that all of this cut into time she could have been spending with Yu Ji-hyeok was something Jin Ye-seul couldn't bring herself to hide her irritation about.
Not that she intended to hide it.
So Yoon Seul-hye had ended up taking her irritation full in the face, trembling head to toe like a leaf in the wind.
'And here I was wondering who it could be.'
She'd noticed the eyes on her long before this.
If she'd known they were the lackeys of the man sitting in front of her, she wouldn't have bothered with all the trouble in the first place—a regret she now chewed on too late.
"…Am I really that much of a chore to be around?"
At Lee Eun-gyeong's faintly smiling question, Jin Ye-seul gave a laugh as if to say what on earth he was talking about.
"A chore? Hardly."
The smile on her face came across as almost bashful, and Lee Eun-gyeong returned it with a small one of his own.
It was then that Jin Ye-seul spoke quietly.
"I was just sitting here deciding whether to cave in the side of your skull or pulp the whole thing. If anything, it's less a chore than a serious deliberation."
"……."
The bluntness of the threat seemed to rob him of an answer for a moment.
She grinned and added,
"If I leave you to your own devices, you'll start climbing all over me without the faintest idea of your place. It's genuinely disgusting, but I'm stuck sitting across from you anyway—so spare yourself the misconception."
"…Is it because of that Yu Ji-hyeok—that World Tree clan boy?"
The moment Yu Ji-hyeok's name left Lee Eun-gyeong's mouth, his voice slipped into open contempt before he could stop it.
In his head, Yu Ji-hyeok had already been filed away as something subhuman—a man who'd worked his way into the good graces of his fiancée, Jin Ye-seul, while his back was turned, and who was now trying to skim off the connections and influence Lee Eun-gyeong rightfully should have gotten through her family's name.
More than anything, the fact that Yu Ji-hyeok was a member of the World Tree clan—a member of its main household, no less, holding one of the highest claims to succession—wasn't something he could stomach.
"So instead of me, you're sticking with that guy—!?"
The instant the words left his mouth, a sharp ache lanced through his throat.
He moved his hand on reflex to feel for the wound, only to find he couldn't.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, something he couldn't identify had wound itself around his body and was squeezing.
The pressure and pain were like having a massive serpent crushing his windpipe, and cold sweat broke out across his back before he was even aware of it.
"…I'm only going to warn you once."
Jin Ye-seul whispered quietly.
"If that filthy mouth of yours says Ji-hyeok's name one more time… I won't be letting it pass."
She stared at him as she spoke.
Lee Eun-gyeong wanted to answer, but with every part of his body feeling as though it were being ground to powder, all he could manage was a nod.
"Ye-, Ye-seul, I'm doing this because you're in danger!"
The moment Jin Ye-seul loosened Henir's Shadow's grip on him by the slightest margin, he blurted it out in a frantic rush. Jin Ye-seul tilted her head a fraction of an inch, as if to ask what he meant.
"You—being around Yu Ji-hyeok puts you in danger, and that's why I came to find you like this!"
Watching him shout it, Jin Ye-seul looked at him as if telling him to explain himself in detail.
He pressed his fingers to the throat that had been sliced open by something razor-sharp, blood seeping between them, and spoke.
"There—there are people coming after him right now. And they're planning to kill everyone connected to him."
"……."
"They got in contact with me, too… The point is, one slip and not just Yu Ji-hyeok but you, Ye-seul—you could die. I told them I'd cooperate just to buy time, tried to bargain at least for your life, but it's not going to work out. So if you cut yourself off from him right now—right this second—I can protect you."
As he spoke, he furtively closed his hand over Jin Ye-seul's.
Wordlessly, she looked down at the fingers gripping her hand, the thumb stroking softly across the back of it as he kept talking.
"Ye-seul, let's start over. We were too young back then, both of us. I'm not saying let's get married right now. Finish at the Academy first, do everything you want to do. I can afford that. I'm not blowing smoke—everything you want, I can put in your hands. Anything you want to do, I can make happen."
"I can wait for you. And it's just a mid-tier Hunter guild right now, sure, but I can grow it into something even the Ten Powerhouses can't laugh at, give it a little time. I've got the ability and the plan, all I need is time. And, yeah, there's a bit of an age gap between us, but that's nothing the two of us can't get past, right?"
"And let's not kid ourselves here, all right? You really think that bastard Yu Ji-hyeok is in this for real? No. Ye-seul, you're just too innocent—you don't know how men and women work, and that's exactly what he's banking on so he can use you. The only reason he's clinging to you the way he is, is because of your family's name—!"
His face contorted as if from frustration, then suddenly slackened into puzzlement.
A moment later, eyes wide with confusion, he opened and closed his mouth and clawed at his throat, only to realize he couldn't even draw breath.
That wasn't all.
His body had begun to stiffen all over. Even his mana was no longer circulating properly. By the time the only part of him he could still move freely was his eyes, Jin Ye-seul let out a sigh.
"The longer I let you talk, the further you crawl."
She drew several iron needles from inside her coat and laid them out carefully on the table.
Iron needles?
His eye twitched at the sight, and Jin Ye-seul reached over and flicked her finger against the needle that was, somehow, already buried deep in the back of his neck.
"~~~~!!!"
In that instant, agony shot through his entire body like a red-hot poker dragged across raw nerve.
And yet, Lee Eun-gyeong couldn't so much as flinch, let alone scream.
Watching him flatly, Jin Ye-seul tossed off the words as though discarding them.
"Funny, isn't it? How sticking a few needles into someone's head means you get to move them however you want."
His eyes darted around the room.
They were in a café, and there were people he had planted there—both among the customers and among the staff.
But somewhere along the way, he realized he was now in a space filled with nothing but black.
When on earth had—?
"Speaking as someone who's actually met the Ten Powerhouses—what kind of arrogance does it take to run your mouth about catching up to people like that? With ability at this level, you couldn't even be the errand boy at one of their guilds, let alone a real player."
Jin Ye-seul picked one of the needles, held it up to eye level as if examining it, and gave a small nod. She kept the rest of her body still and turned only her eyes on him.
"And I'm pretty sure I told you not to say a word about Ji-hyeok ever again."
Holding the needle, she stepped slowly toward Lee Eun-gyeong.
He couldn't do a thing.
"Don't worry."
She whispered, like a nurse soothing a patient.
"I won't kill you. Though… I can't promise something won't go wrong upstairs, or that you won't be left with some kind of aftereffect. You might wear diapers the rest of your life, or end up drooling everywhere you go, but, well… better than dying, isn't it?"
She slowly traced his head with her fingers, lining up a needle.
"Shhh… it's all right. You won't remember meeting me… you won't remember any of it. You'll just spill everything you know to me."
As she spoke, Jin Ye-seul couldn't keep a small, contented smile off her face—pleased that she'd come away with information useful to Yu Ji-hyeok, and that, thanks to it, she'd been able to spend time talking with him alone.
Still smiling, she looked down at the man who had once been her fiancé.
"Don't make such a frightened face."
She whispered.
"It won't hurt at all."
And, as promised, it didn't.
"Oh, Ye-seul just texted."
Sitting in a chair waiting for Yu Ji-hyeok, Lee Yu-na pulled out her phone.
"'I might be a little late. Make my excuses to Ji-hyeok and the others.' Huh? Ye-seul's gonna be a little late, guys."
"Hah—anyone else, maybe, but her?"
Choi Hyun-woo muttered, looking thoroughly surprised.
The other kids wore expressions that all silently agreed with him.
"She must have something seriously important on. It's not like she'd flake on plans for no reason."
Han Su-yeong muttered it in a flat, unbothered tone.
She stretched her arms wide and slumped half-sprawled across the table.
"Nnngh…!"
"You that tired?"
"Yeah, a little."
After answering Choi Hyun-woo, Han Su-yeong covered her mouth and yawned.
Watching her blink hard, fighting off sleep, Choi Hyun-woo spoke up.
"So what's with Ji-hyeok suddenly calling all of us together?"
"Right? It's not like him to just round people up like this."
Ivan chimed in with a laugh.
"And whenever he does pull us together, something always goes down. Wonder what it is this time."
He chuckled and tossed it off like a joke.
"Bet you anything he's bringing artifacts again. Says it feels weird going around with just weapons and armor."
At his murmured guess, a chill flickered across Lee Yu-na's face.
She glanced down, almost on reflex, at the back of her own hand.
A faint pattern there was giving off a soft glow.
"……."
Unease prickling at her for reasons she couldn't name, Lee Yu-na quietly swallowed.
She'd honestly rather be back to fighting some Seven Calamity—at least then her stomach would settle. If he was about to start handing things out again, she knew she'd be so overwhelmed she wouldn't even be able to look him in the face.
It was right then that—
"Oh, that crazy bastard, for real…"
Han Su-yeong let out a small curse under her breath.
At the end of her line of sight stood a tall, blond-haired male student hovering at the edge of the space, glancing their way. None other than Rogers Nael.
"After getting clocked in the jaw and still coming back, he's gotta be seriously gone on you, Su-yeong."
Ivan murmured it in a tone of grudging awe, shaking his head slowly.
Lee Yu-na, whose expression had been all worry a moment before, snapped her gaze toward him with a hard glare.
"It's not that."
Cutting Ivan's near-admiring tone off cold, she said,
"Look at his eyes. His head's probably full of, 'How dare someone like you dump me?' He'll cling on like a leech until something pathetic comes out of Su-yeong's mouth. At this point, the only reason he's still showing up is spite."
"How would you even know that, Yu-na…"
Ivan started to ask without thinking, then coughed and managed to cut himself off.
He knew well enough what kind of men had latched onto Lee Yu-na in the past, and how much of a toll it had taken. He'd actually helped her shake a few of them off back then.
"Oh, hell, here he comes. He's coming over."
Ivan clicked his tongue and muttered it, and Han Su-yeong sighed.
Lee Yu-na, normally even-tempered but now bristling, looked ready to move; Choi Hyun-woo shifted in his seat to head it off first when—
"Tch."
Rogers Nael, mid-approach, stopped dead as if he'd noticed something.
His face twisted in an unmistakable grimace, visible even from across the room, and he turned on his heel and walked off in a hurry.
"Ah—!"
Eyes narrowing in puzzlement at the abrupt retreat, Han Su-yeong's expression bloomed almost instantly into a wide smile.
Yu Ji-hyeok was walking over to them.
A bulky bag in one hand.
"Wait…?"
"Don't tell me that's—"
Lee Yu-na's voice shook, and Ivan stared at him with a look that said it couldn't be.
When he reached them, apologizing for being late and opening the bag to reveal rows of rings lined up inside, the two of them closed their eyes against the sight, both visibly trembling. The pressure they were feeling was beyond words; their stomachs were already turning.
"Sorry I'm late. This is what kept me."
"Wh-what is all this, Ji-hyeok…? It's, it's not what I think it is, right?"
At the question Lee Yu-na barely managed to force out, he gave a wry grin. Then he plucked one of the rings out of the bag.
"You probably already figured, but these are made from my scales too."
Lee Yu-na and Ivan sucked in a breath almost in unison. Halfway through speaking, Yu Ji-hyeok glanced around and tilted his head curiously.
"Where's Ye-seul?"
"Oh, she said she'd be a little late. Looks like something important came up."
At Lee Yu-na's words, Yu Ji-hyeok nodded as if it made sense.
His easy reaction made Han Su-yeong's eyes narrow for a beat, though she smoothed her expression a moment later.
"Look, I know it's a lot, and you might think I'm overdoing it… but I figured it was better than us all regretting it later."
At his words, Han Su-yeong wove a barrier around them without prompting, sealing them off from the rest of the room.
He let out a small sigh and went on.
"They're going to make their real move during this festival. And…"
He began to lay out, in detail, every part of the plan he'd been putting together.
Milited's Children. Choi Jun-hyeong and the Association. The Six Stars. Yoon Seul-hye. Alice Blesbuck. Every faction they'd brought into their orbit—and the trap that he, having seen them coming, had laid in return.
Only after walking them through all of it did he quietly pick up a ring.
"…All of you, be careful. The one breaking out this time, I can promise you flat out, is so much weaker than Minerva it's almost embarrassing to even compare them."
"But the way she put it, when she swore on it… they might end up being more of a pain to deal with than even she was. That's the kind of thing Milited is."
So when that happens, this is going to matter.
"…There isn't much time left."
Yu Ji-hyeok murmured.
It was something every person there had been faintly feeling already.
A few days later.
With the festival now only a breath away.
An urgent message arrived for Yu Ji-hyeok from Alice Blesbuck.
A horde of monsters—easily numbering in the hundreds—had stormed the research facility.
Thankfully, she and Kath Ryle were unharmed, but in the chaos of the attack, Natalia Milited's whereabouts had become unknown.
At the news, Yu Ji-hyeok only smiled.
Everything was going exactly to plan.
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