“You’re always wearing a suit.”
“Why? Is that strange?”
“No, it’s not like that. I was just wondering if it might be uncomfortable, especially when you’re working. Suits can be a little... well, restrictive, can’t they?”
Jung Haseong quietly studied the Awakened standing beside him. From the vest tailored perfectly to his chest to the dark brown Oxford shoes, every detail of his suit was meticulously formal. Searching his memory, Haseong realized he could hardly recall ever seeing the man stray far from that classic, formal style.
Of course, once an Awakened person came into contact with an object, it basically became subject to the special law of ‘magic conduction,’ allowing even an ordinary pair of scissors to function like an artifact-level weapon. Thanks to that phenomenon, even regular clothing provided at least a certain degree of protection, so there was no danger of an Awakened being reduced to a naked wanderer by a mere gust from a B-rank wind-element monster. Fortunately, disasters of that sort did not happen.
Still, no matter how much manufacturers advertised elasticity or comfort, a suit was ultimately still a suit. Jung Haseong found himself wondering why someone who otherwise seemed to live a fairly laid-back life insisted on formal attire when sweatpants and casual clothes were readily available.
For the past three months, the hero had rarely engaged in casual conversation, so it was rather surprising for him to ask such a personal question. Still, considering that this Earthling had gone so far as to drive him all the way to Incheon, answering him properly seemed the least Giryeo could do.
“As expected, are you simply someone who prefers suits?”
“Rather than saying I like them, they were clothes I personally wanted to wear.”
“I’m sorry, but I think those mean the same thing.”
“Is that so?”
Giryeo answered without turning his head.
“Actually, for a while, it was my dream to put on a uniform and go to work.”
Anyway, it wasn’t a lie.
“At one point, I worked at places like a bathtub factory and in delivery services, and somehow I ended up preparing for the prison guard exam...”
“B, bathtub? A bathtub factory?”
“That was when I was younger. Anyway, it’s common for students to imagine what they’ll look like once they pass an exam.”
“...Right. I did that too when I was preparing for my college entrance exams.”
“My dream for the future was to put on a clean uniform and earn money as a prison guard, but that didn’t work out.”
The blond man continued his small talk in a dry voice, as though he were discussing someone else’s life.
“Things were difficult in a lot of ways. So now, instead of a government uniform, I wear this to make myself feel better. It’s purely for my own satisfaction.”
Whoosh.
When he lowered his gaze, the white shirt immediately entered his field of vision. Just as he had said, after recovering the memories of the body’s original owner, Kim Giryeo had realized that the black suit the vessel had been wearing at the time of death was not something the man had particularly liked. Even so, Giryeo had continued to maintain a similar style of dress.
‘Actually, the biggest reason is that eighty percent of the clothes Esther gave me are suits.’
Apart from his dream of becoming a correctional officer, the true owner of this body—the Earthling Kim Giryeo—had harbored a peculiar yearning for white-collar work, perhaps because he had begun his working life in manual labor. So the alien had decided to preserve the current formal style, as though indulging the original owner’s long-standing desire to wear the sort of office clothes he had once admired.
It was an Earthling trend he would probably never fully understand. From the perspective of an advanced jellyfish, any kind of fabric would eventually become uncomfortable. But if he was forced to participate in this clothing culture anyway, he might as well attach a little meaning to it.
‘It’s efficient enough, isn’t it?’
Giryeo fiddled with the silk tie around his neck.
At that moment, however, the primitive sorcerer, who rarely initiated conversation himself, spoke again.
“To think working in a prison was your dream. I’m sure that if someone like Hunter Kim Giryeo had been guarding it, the prisoners would have felt secure even while incarcerated.”
“Um, sorry, but are you saying my face is so intimidating that even criminals would have been frightened?”
“No. There’s a much more accurate and positive way to put it. Why do you always interpret things so negatively?”
“And what would that be?”
“Charisma.”
Jung Haseong rested one wrist against the hilt of the sunset sword at his waist. Looking at Giryeo’s black tie, he turned the thought over in his mind. He was the sort of person who sifted through his thoughts several times before finally putting them into words.
‘Ah. So that’s why he wears a suit like a uniform.’
As expected, he really was unusual.
Whenever Haseong spoke with Giryeo, he was often met with an unexpected answer, and today was no different. Compared with the waves crashing against the shore before them, Giryeo was astonishingly calm. In truth, this Awakened was less like the surface of the sea than the deep, motionless abyss beneath it. So why did talking to him always feel so unpredictable?
‘And with his hair that completely yellow, he must dye it regularly. I thought he was someone who cared a great deal about his appearance and deliberately kept himself neat, but apparently that isn’t quite it...’
Haseong briefly glanced at his own gray hairs, which were long overdue for a visit to the salon, before continuing.
“Anyway, it must have been disappointing that you couldn’t achieve your dream. I’m disappointed too. I think that job would have suited you well, Hunter.”
“Isn’t the same true for you?”
Only a few seconds had passed since Haseong had thought Giryeo unpredictable, and already another unexpected question had come his way.
“You were originally planning to become a veterinarian, but you Awakened and dropped out, right?”
When the conversation turned to specific careers, Jung Haseong pressed his lips together, his reaction calm yet subtly strange.
Giryeo watched the hero’s expression carefully before asking another question.
“Haseong, are you planning to keep doing this job?”
“Yes?”
“I was just wondering whether you intend to remain a Hunter for the rest of your life...”
There were many meanings hidden in that question.
Somehow, Jung Haseong had ended up becoming one of the most prominent heroes of the modern era. Yet his original dream had been to become a veterinarian specializing in small animals such as dogs and parrots. Granted, that profession also involved wielding a blade, but there was still a considerable difference between making an incision to save a life and cutting into flesh simply to tear it apart.
“It’s a difficult job.”
Moreover, despite his powerful physique, the young man’s mental endurance had not always been able to keep pace. At one point, the strain had even landed him in the hospital.
“Honestly, Jung Haseong, I sometimes think you take on far too much responsibility that you don’t actually need to bear.”
“Don’t need to?”
“Like I’ve told you before, what’s so special about Awakening...? If you search online, you’ll find that recent foreign studies show a clear upward trend in Awakening rates over the past several years.”
“......”
“Surprisingly, humanity is adapting to magic faster than expected. Give it another ten or twenty years and the proportion of Awakened people will rise considerably. The Hunter market will expand, and ordinary civilians will gradually become capable of defending themselves.”
I see.
In other words, no matter what you choose to do from now on, the worst-case scenario—the world ending or anything like that—probably won’t happen. If that’s what you want, honestly, dealing only with the minimum number of necessary dungeon breaks should be enough. Society will keep functioning just fine.
Giryeo spoke carefully to Jung Haseong, his voice threading through the crash of the waves.
“Have you ever thought about quitting being a Hunter?”
His tone was gentle, as though he were asking out of genuine concern, but in truth, an exceedingly sly calculation was unfolding inside his head.
After all, the F-rank swindler standing here had already made Jung Haseong a promise he had no real way of fulfilling. But if, by some chance, Jung Haseong decided to retire, Giryeo would no longer have to provide the troublesome reward for those lessons—a formal team.
If I can’t retire, then you can retire instead!
‘Training Jung Haseong could be considered an investment in the future, so the time I spent on him wasn’t completely wasted. But if he finds out I’ve been running a six-billion-a-month scam for a goal that was never achievable in the first place...!’
Keugh.
The blond man waited nervously for the other man’s answer.
“Do I ever think about quitting? Every day.”
Ooh!
Korea’s fourth S-rank rejoiced from the bottom of his soul.
“But I’m not going to.”
His spirits crashed back down almost immediately.
“Actually, I didn’t choose veterinary medicine out of some grand sense of duty. My grades were decent... and I really liked dogs. Besides, they were always saying on TV that the pet industry was going to keep growing.”
“......”
“Jobs like that usually make good money, right?”
Then the black-haired pyromancer made a gesture that seemed strangely out of character for him. He formed a circle with his thumb and index finger while leaving the other fingers loosely spread—a common gesture for money in this country.
“It was a dream I chose based on practical considerations anyway.”
Oh my.
“So what if my career changed because superpowers suddenly fell out of the sky? Well.”
Haseong shrugged.
He had always been the sort of person who lacked particularly strong preferences, flowing almost like water, and his indecisiveness only reinforced that tendency. Given his current circumstances, however, he seemed to have found a certain satisfaction in the life he had ended up with.
“A world where countless people would be in trouble just because I wasn’t around? When you think about it, there aren’t many lives more fulfilling or important than that.”
Haseong did not even need to wrestle with the sort of existential question middle-aged office workers so often pondered: “What is the meaning of my life?”
‘Still, becoming Korea’s first S-rank and Awakening with such an enormous amount of mana that I couldn’t even control it properly... that might have been a little excessive. But thanks to the person beside me, I’ve improved a lot through training. Honestly, I don’t hate myself nearly as much these days.’
Haseong stood calmly with his hands behind his back. Then, in his usual clear and proper voice, he continued.
“Hunter Kim Giryeo.”
“Yeah.”
“But listening carefully, I couldn’t help feeling that everything you’ve been saying for the past few minutes was secretly meant to encourage me to retire.”
“Huh?”
“As though, if I quit being a Hunter, you wouldn’t have to deal with me pestering you to put me on a regular team...”
“......”
“It’s just my imagination, right?”
Jung Haseong suddenly widened his eyes and stared intently at Giryeo’s profile.
“It’s just my imagination, right? Hunter-nim?”
“M, mhm.”
“Thank you for answering.”
Anyway, it was fine.
Ever since their last meal at the budae jjigae restaurant, Giryeo had noticed a definite change in Jung Haseong’s attitude. Even so, he could only be grateful that he was no longer in the same position as before, constantly on the verge of being roasted alive.
Kim Giryeo wiped the cold sweat from his palm—whether it had appeared because of temperature regulation or something else—and spoke.
“By the way, Haseong, aren’t you getting hungry...? You used your gas to bring me all the way out here, so I’ll buy you something to eat as thanks.”
“A meal?”
“Do you want seafood?”
“I’m sorry, but I forgot my magic-consumption accessories today. I’m not sure there’s a restaurant that would accept an S-rank Awakened at this hour.”
“Well, there are plenty of bakeries nearby. We could buy some bread and eat it by the sea...”
After discussing it for a while, the two S-rank Hunters decided to buy something from a nearby bakery and eat outdoors.
During the conversation, Jung Haseong pulled out his phone and casually suggested, “Since we’re already in Incheon, how about clearing a gate after we eat? As a little souvenir of the trip?”
His companion immediately shot the idea down with a dry remark.
“You’re insane. Absolutely not. Hey, Jung Haseong. We don’t have any plans today, so you’re taking the day off with me.”
“Y, yes?”
“If you try to go back to work before my break is over, just you wait. I’ve told you before—being too obsessed with work is an illness. Or maybe you’re already sick.”
Step, step.
Jung Haseong and Kim Giryeo headed toward the coast in search of food. They had deliberately ventured into relatively rough terrain to avoid the general public, so after walking over rocks for quite some time, it took them a while to reach the sandy beach.
Before they had completely left the rocky stretch behind, however, something familiar yet strangely puzzling entered their field of vision.
Something heavy. Something sharp.
And that distinctive cold, bluish hair that somehow always brought the words “Milky Way” to mind.
Along with a tall figure.
“Huh?”
“What is it?”
Giryeo pieced together the visual information entering his field of view.
‘That’s Kang Changho, isn’t it?’
The subject of the oath had appeared on the beach in broad daylight.
He wore a simple black short-sleeved T-shirt and long cotton pants. Apart from the summer sunglasses perched on his nose, his outfit was utterly ordinary, enough that at first glance he might have looked like any other vacationer.
But considering the enormous wealth at his disposal, it was difficult to imagine someone like Kang Changho choosing such a public place for his summer holiday.
“Kim Giryeo!”
As expected, the other party’s true purpose soon became clear.
The large Awakened approached with a Boston bag bearing the logo of a golf equipment company slung over one shoulder. The moment he came close enough, Kim Giryeo voiced his question without so much as taking a breath.
“What are you doing here?”
The sentence barely needed a proper subject. His contractor understood immediately and slipped his sunglasses into an outer pocket of the bag.
“I thought the direction seemed strange, but you really did come all the way to the beach. Did I interrupt the young people having fun?”
“Hmm?”
“Sorry about that. But Hunter Kim Giryeo has been causing so much trouble lately. I was busy with something else, so I only found out late that you’d left Seoul.”
“Ah.”
“So I rushed over because I thought you might be plotting something strange and trying to enter another dungeon. But looking at the situation, I suppose that’s not what’s happening?”
At the implication that Giryeo might be up to some nonsense, the national hero beside him visibly frowned and shot Kang Changho an irritated look.
Kim Giryeo, however, answered in the same flat, monotonous voice as ever.
“A dungeon?”
During the Gampo Port incident, he had simply been unlucky.
With that Korean stalker around, it was hardly surprising for situations like this to arise from time to time. There was no reason to be startled by something so thoroughly predictable.
“An accidental encounter like the one with the tentacle doesn’t happen often. Why would I deliberately go somewhere dangerous for no reason?”
“Hmm.”
There was a third party standing beside him, but since this was not a direct reference to the Improvement, it should be fine.
“Besides, the oath is already in place. What is there to worry about?”
“I’m worried that someone might try some strange trick.”
Kang Changho slowly moved closer to the group of top-ranking Hunters. Seeing his calm demeanor, Giryeo felt considerably more at ease.
“I have no intention of breaking the [Knight’s Oath], so please rest assured.”
He was just about to add something along the lines of, How could anyone possibly break a contract that had involved their life from the very beginning?
Thud.
But for some reason, the instant the blond man finished speaking, an unfamiliar sound came from nearby.
Thud?
It happened so quickly that Giryeo could not be certain, but that sound was almost like—
“Hmm?”
Kang Changho stopped in the middle of approaching them and lowered his head.
The moment he heard the noise, his gaze had gone straight to the bag.
“Oh, right. I completely forgot about this.”
He muttered something incomprehensible under his breath, then told the others to wait a moment.
Saying that he had something interesting to show them, he opened the zipper of the bag hanging from his shoulder.
‘Could there actually be golf equipment in there?’
Just as Jung Haseong had that thought, something changed in Kang Changho’s expression.
The corners of his mouth, which had remained faintly curved upward until then, slowly fell.
Kang Changho became completely expressionless.
What on earth could be inside that bag to make an S-rank Hunter react like that?
“......”
With a calm face and eyes slightly widened, Kang Changho stared into the bag for a long time.
Then he glanced at the blond Awakened nearby.
His gaze moved from Giryeo to the contents of the bag and back again.
For quite some time, he said nothing, seemingly at a loss for words.
Then, all at once, his brow furrowed and he silently burst into laughter.
No sound escaped him, yet it was the widest anyone had ever seen the S-rank Hunter smile—wide enough to expose even his lower teeth.
But why?
On the surface, Kang Changho’s laughter looked almost innocent, bright enough to evoke the image of childhood.
And yet, at that very moment, a cold warning light flashed in someone’s mind.
Something was terribly wrong.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter