The Villainous Director Is Raising a Child!

"Of course, there's no such nonsense as a Cycle of Life Stone. But..."

I looked him dead in his shaking eyes and said it.

"I do know there's a phenomenon that produces the exact same effect."

His voice was still as cold as the blade that had been leveled at me.

"Talk."

"Not going to happen with these swords still pointed at me."

Han Jewoon glared at me for a moment, then the swords at his back vanished like a mirage.

He sank back into the sofa.

But the killing intent boiling off his whole body was very clear: one more line of nonsense, and I was dead.

"Hunter Choi Juran... her core got destroyed, right?"

I drove the nail in.

"That's why even an S-rank Healer's treatment isn't taking at all."

"...!"

The instant the words were out, all that was left in the room was a silence as sharp and dangerous as a honed blade.

His red eyes were still turned toward me the same as before, but for the first time since I'd met him, I could feel that he was looking at me properly.

"...You."

His voice was low and menacing, like metal scraping metal.

"How the hell... do you know that?"

Even with the Candy of Calm in my mouth, my breath caught.

Strange thing.

That the look pinning me now — no swords involved — felt more overwhelming than the hundreds of blades aimed at me a moment ago.

Inside that suffocating pressure, I gave a casual shrug and sucked harder on the candy.

"Like I said."

I flashed him a smirk.

"My information network is a lot better than Bawi Guild's informants."

He said nothing, only watched me as if he'd bore straight through me.

"...Fine. It's exactly like you said. Three months ago, Choi Juran took a hit protecting a guild member — her core shattered."

Listening to him, I flashed back to the Introduction to Awakening Studies class Han Soeun had put together for the kids not long ago.

[Awakening is a phenomenon where our bodies evolve to use "mana." When you awaken, a second heart called a core forms inside you — the organ that produces and stores your mana.]

[This core is an Awakened's very life. If the core is destroyed, an Awakened can no longer use mana, and in serious cases can even lose their life. Even an S-rank Healer can't restore a core once it's broken.]

[The core is usually located near the navel, but there are rare people whose cores are somewhere else. So we have to always be careful not to let it get broken!]

That was it. The core was an Awakened's second heart.

And Hunter Choi Juran... that heart of hers had been shattered.

"Understood. I'll take a look around this magnificent institute in the meantime, then. Give me a call when you're done."

Grumbling, Seo Jihyeok stepped out of the Director's office, and the moment the door slammed shut behind him, every trace of expression drained from his face.

...He's no ordinary type.

The Guild Master had been right.

Chae Junhyeok isn't just some brainless delinquent. Don't underestimate him.

When he'd first heard that, honestly, he'd scoffed inside.

Chae Junhyeok's reputation in this world was notorious, after all.

Leopards don't change their spots — there was no way a garbage personality like his had flipped overnight, he'd thought.

But what he'd just witnessed in the Director's office had completely overturned that assumption.

The moment the Guild Master had let his aura out.

Even he, an A-rank, had flinched without meaning to — and yet the Director, who wasn't even Awakened, hadn't so much as blinked.

If anything, he'd looked those murderous eyes dead-on and calmly proposed a deal.

That wasn't the kind of nerve a run-of-the-mill delinquent could show.

So the delinquent act was a front after all.

Seo Jihyeok pulled back out the hypothesis he'd shoved into a corner as a no way. And he had no choice but to admit it.

The fact that he had completely misjudged that man — this thing called Chae Junhyeok.

Like Hansel and Gretel's bread crumbs, the clues had already been scattered temptingly all along the trail.

First: the mental fortitude to take an S-rank Hunter's killing intent head-on.

An ordinary person — no, even a decent Hunter — couldn't so much as stand upright in the face of the Guild Master's aura.

But the Director, dead center of that storm of killing intent, had been calmly crossing his legs and rolling a candy around in his mouth.

That wasn't just nerve you could build through training.

What he was born with said it plainly: this guy is a monster.

Second: patience and calculation beyond imagining.

According to the Guild Master, the Director apparently held the ambition of becoming the Bureau Chief.

If he'd ever revealed an ambition like that with no foundation beneath him, even once... his father Chae Ganghyeon would have been the first to remove him.

Publicly Chae Ganghyeon was known as an affable man, but he was brutal to anyone who challenged his authority.

Which was why, for over a decade, the man had disguised himself as a useless delinquent — nothing threatening to anyone — while he waited for the perfect moment.

The fact that he'd been calculating all of this from such a young age and had kept that flawless performance up without a single slip was chilling just to picture.

And last: an information network that saw through everything, and the audacity to shake the whole board.

He'd caught wind of the guild's most closely guarded secret — Choi Juran — faster than anyone, and used that information as bait to propose a deal, on equal footing, to Korea's strongest Hunter.

Not just knowing — the nerve to wield that information as the deadliest possible weapon.

...Hah.

Seo Jihyeok let out a dry, disbelieving laugh at his own train of thought.

Maybe every one of these clues... was leaked on purpose too.

Why on earth would someone who'd hidden himself perfectly for over a decade start showing his hand right now, of all times?

...He judged it was time. He deliberately dropped the bait to pull us onto his board.

The feeling of being jerked around like a puppet in the middle of that huge deception didn't sit well with him, but...

Could turn out to be an opportunity, actually. He's evaluating us — but we can evaluate him right back.

Seo Jihyeok recalled what the Guild Master had said just before they'd come to the institute.

[While I'm talking to the Director, you dig through the place. Best case, you find the cards he's hiding; failing that, at minimum you figure out what he's plotting.]

Just then, a researcher came walking his way from up ahead.

Seo Jihyeok slipped in silently behind him, like a shadow.

A short while later, coming around a corner in the hallway, was a researcher with the exact same face he'd just been following.

He was smoothly slipping a hand-mirror-shaped artifact into an inner pocket of his lab coat, walking on without a moment's hesitation.

That was the exact moment.

Another researcher spotted him from the other direction and shouted at him, voice full of irritation.

"Hey, Kim Minsu! What are you doing here?! Do you have any idea how long ago the Deputy Director called for you — you're still not going?!"

A woman who looked like Kim Minsu's senior came up and roughly grabbed him by the arm.

"You made me late looking for you! Hurry up and come on!"

Reading the situation in an instant, Seo Jihyeok flawlessly switched over and started playing his new role — junior researcher Kim Minsu.

"S-sorry, senior! I was just on my way—!"

Practically dragged along, Seo Jihyeok let the woman haul him off toward the control room.

The scene inside the control room, once the door opened, was even harsher than he'd expected.

At the front of the room, dozens of monitors glowed against the wall.

The front over there... looked like it should have some kind of glass wall — why is it standing empty like that?

In front of that empty frame, more than a dozen researchers were lined up, heads bowed like prisoners.

One middle-aged man was looking down at them.

That's Park Wonjin.

He recalled the face from the file he'd pored over countless times before coming to the institute.

Politically skilled, but keeps his real intentions well hidden — a devious character.

That very line from the file was flashing through Seo Jihyeok's mind at that exact moment.

Park Wonjin, who had been standing motionless, saw him and the woman burst breathlessly through the door — and slowly walked over to the researcher standing closest to him.

Then, without a word, he grabbed the man by the hair.

Thwack!

He drove the researcher's face straight into the control console.

A skin-crawling crunch went up, and at the same time, the researcher's scream and the sound of shattering console glass tore out together.

The shoulders of the other researchers standing nearby trembled in unison, and even the woman who had dragged Seo Jihyeok in stopped in her tracks and clapped a hand over her own mouth.

But Park Wonjin didn't stop.

He grabbed the fallen researcher by the hair, yanked him back up, and slammed that blood-smeared face into the console over and over.

His voice, wildly at odds with this appalling violence, was chillingly calm.

"So you all,"

Thwack!

"think my words,"

Thwack!

"are just something,"

Thwack!

"to laugh at."

He flung the bloodied researcher to the floor like a piece of trash.

Then he turned his gaze toward the woman beside Seo Jihyeok, who was trembling like a leaf.

"Researcher Kim Minjung."

His voice was still... chilling in its calm.

"When did I summon the Monster Research Team?"

"T-ten... ten minutes... ago, sir..."

A smile settled at the corner of Park Wonjin's mouth.

But his eyes were not smiling. Not even close.

"And yet you dare... only crawl in now? That punk of a Director treats me like a dog, and now even trash like you think I'm a joke. Am I wrong?"

At his words, Kim Minjung's face went bone-white.

"N-no! Deputy Director! I'm sorry!"

Watching her drop her head to the floor, Seo Jihyeok promptly bowed his own head too.

Park Wonjin watched the scene and let out a deep sigh.

"Haaah... damn it. Why the hell isn't a single thing going my way these days."

He muttered it as if to himself.

"...Cleaning up after some talentless brat is bad enough without this."

He raked a hand irritably through his hair, and then, as if none of it had ever happened, smoothed his expression over.

"From now on, let's please try to do our jobs properly, yeah? You're all I've got to count on."

The researchers snapped off a mechanical "Yes, sir!"

"So. The Monster Research Team — everyone's here?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Good."

He slowly ran his eyes over every researcher assembled in the room.

"Next week's public evaluation. You're all aware of it, I trust?"

"Yes, sir! We're aware."

"Ordinarily, every one of you would be on the prep team, but..."

Park Wonjin swept his gaze across the gathered researchers, eyes like a viper watching prey.

Then he singled out three of them with a pointing finger, one by one.

"You. You. And you. Step forward."

The three he'd pointed at stepped up with dazed expressions.

"Next week's public evaluation will be run by these three, and me — the four of us only. Everyone else, drop out of the prep."

At his announcement, a murmur went up among the researchers he hadn't picked.

One of them worked up the courage to ask, carefully:

"Deputy Director, but... building out the virtual reality data with only four people is absolutely impossible. Even our whole team throwing itself at it wouldn't be enough—"

Before he could finish, Park Wonjin's cold voice cut him off.

"...When."

Park Wonjin's gaze turned to him.

"Did I tell you to open your mouth?"

The face of the researcher who'd dared the question went pale.

Park Wonjin added, in a cold voice, as if no further questions would be tolerated:

"Three stay. The rest of you, out."

Everyone was too baffled to understand, but no one dared push back.

Right in front of them, the scapegoat was still down on the floor, the smell of blood not yet gone.

The researchers hurried out of the control room, half-carrying their bloodied colleague between them.

Seo Jihyeok slipped out among them, quiet.

Public evaluation, huh... whatever it is, I'm going to have to look into it separately.

That thought was still crossing his mind the exact moment he stepped out of the control room.

Thwack!

A hard impact and his body was slammed back against the corridor wall.

What— he raised his head to find several researchers surrounding him and Kim Minjung.

One of them yanked Seo Jihyeok up by the collar and growled at him.

"Do you have any idea how much the Deputy Director tore into us because you two were late?!"

Along with their furious shouts, a merciless beating began.

Seo Jihyeok saw the senior researcher who'd hauled him in — Kim Minjung — go down with a scream, and reflexively threw himself over her, wrapping her body under his.

Thwack! Thwack!

They'd meant those blows to hurt, but sadly, an ordinary person's fists couldn't inflict a single ounce of pain on the body of an A-rank Awakened.

...What is this — free massage service?

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