8화
Seung-chan’s continued rebuttals were getting on her nerves.
She tried her best to calm her mind.
"What exactly do you want to do?"
She asked, her tone slightly chilly.
"The combat methods of Demons."
"What did you say?"
Ji-eun asked back with a look of disbelief.
"It’s not like we’re Hunters."
Her question was laced with the accusation of how on earth they were supposed to investigate something like that.
"The professor said it, too. This class requires a bit of imagination."
"That sounds like you’re planning to write a work of fiction."
"Don’t worry about it. I’ve already looked into where to find the materials."
"……."
"Could I ask you to handle the presentation materials?"
It was a command disguised as a request.
‘So, the answer was already decided, huh?’
Anger flared at his attitude of trying to manipulate her.
"If you go with this topic, you definitely won’t regret it."
"You’re not the professor giving the grades, are you?"
"I promise. You won’t be disappointed."
"And if I am?"
"Then you can look for a different partner even now. We’re both adults, so I’m sure the professor would understand."
"……."
If that happened, she would only become a laughingstock.
‘Fine, Lee Ji-eun. It’s not a bad topic. Besides, since he’s so confident, it wouldn’t hurt to trust him just this once.’
There was no point in starting a pointless power struggle when she would be the one losing out in the end.
"The combat methods of Demons. Let’s go with that."
"Then that’s settled."
"……?"
"Let’s call it a day."
"What?"
"The meeting is over."
"Wait, already……."
Ji-eun checked her watch.
Exactly ten minutes had passed since she arrived.
"I’ll send the materials via messenger."
"Haa……."
Ji-eun couldn’t hold it in any longer and let out a sigh.
"Look here. I think you’re under some misunderstanding because I was the one who suggested being partners first. Time is……."
Just then.
"Oh! It’s Lee Ji-eun!"
Someone recognized her.
"The girl crush Lee Ji-eun?"
"I heard she went to this school. Wow."
It seemed that pulling her hat down and hiding behind sunglasses had only made her stand out more.
Once people started noticing her, the sound of camera shutters could be heard from everywhere.
Before Ji-eun could even react.
"I’m heading out first."
Seung-chan, leaving her behind, quickly vacated his seat.
BurgerKingdom, located across from Burgeria.
Seung-chan, who had confirmed through the window that Ji-eun was getting into a taxi, checked his watch.
It was about time for his real appointment to show up.
That was exactly why he had deliberately chosen a location near the university district.
The information broker, Kyle.
He hated the smell of human food, and Seung-chan enjoyed teasing him about it.
And when it turned two in the afternoon.
"What’s the reason for making me meet you in a place like this, being such a nuisance?"
A man approached Seung-chan’s table.
He was in his mid-thirties with greasy, unkempt hair.
With dark circles heavily sunken under his eyes, he looked exhausted to anyone who saw him.
"Long time no see."
"Hmph. You can eat food that smells disgusting even just by sniffing it. Are you trying to show off?"
Kyle said, wrinkling his face.
"You’re still living just as gloomily as ever, man."
"What did you say, you punk?"
"I was just thinking of you, trying to get you to go out and get some fresh air. Besides, I’m a client, aren’t I?"
Seung-chan said with a smile.
Demons operating in the shadows used nicknames or English names rather than their Korean legal names to prepare for Hunter pursuits.
His Korean name was Lee Kang-il.
On the surface, he ran a small business called Gangil Computer, but in reality, he was a general information broker dealing with intelligence from the world of Demons and Hunters under the name Kyle.
Kyle scoffed at Seung-chan’s relaxed demeanor.
"That doesn’t change your true nature. You’re going to be……."
"Let’s get straight to the point."
As Seung-chan cut him off with a smile, Kyle scoffed once more.
"If we’re talking about the point you like, you’re going to die soon."
"I’m going to need to hear more about that. Why?"
Seung-chan straightened his posture and asked back.
"I heard you hunted Notorious a while ago?"
"I did."
Even if he said "a while ago," it had only been two days.
"That news has reached the Hunters, too. I heard your danger rating has been upgraded to B."
‘The Association, as expected. Their information gathering and response are fast.’
Just as Kyle operated as an information broker for the Demon side, there were corresponding brokers for the Hunters.
It was an industry where keeping secrets meant staying alive.
He couldn’t know the details, but the speed at which information spread was faster than he had thought.
‘That must mean they’re paying that much attention to each other. Or perhaps Notorious was a bigger deal than I thought.’
*Slurp.*
He took another sip of his cola.
As the carbonation flowed down his throat and into his chest, his head felt refreshed.
It was a feeling most ordinary Demons would never know in their entire lives.
"I’m honored. Or wait, am I really being hunted?"
Hunters also had various ranks and duties, but they were largely divided into low-rank, high-rank, and top-rank Hunters.
Comparing them to Demon ranks, C to E were low-rank Hunters, A to B were high-rank Hunters, and S-rank were classified as top-rank Hunters.
The general view was that if the ranks were the same, Hunters who had undergone high-level training and used the power of artifacts were stronger than Demons.
That was why low-rank Hunters, who made up the largest number in the D to E range, carried out investigation and hunting missions alone.
C-ranks worked in teams of two low-rank Hunters for investigations and hunts.
And then, the problematic B-rank.
Once a danger rating of B was issued, an investigation would begin under the direction of a high-rank Hunter.
Depending on the specific nature of the target, they would sometimes team up with low-rank Hunters.
‘A high-rank Hunter means at least a B-rank artifact user.’
Unless he knew what kind of power the artifact possessed, he couldn’t easily face them.
Just as Demons had the major variable of Special Techniques, Hunters had various variables depending on what abilities their artifacts held.
"What are you going to do now? Surely you didn’t go wild in the Arena without even knowing this much."
"What else can I do? I have to eliminate them before my tail gets stepped on."
"This area is going to get noisy again."
"It’s been noisy for a while now."
Seung-chan said nonchalantly.
"It was only this much because I’ve been managing it."
"Don’t push yourself too hard. I don’t want to lose a regular customer."
"How kind of you."
Seung-chan grinned and took out the money he had prepared.
"This is for the information. Please contact me if you get any more information related to me in the future."
Kyle checked the contents and smiled back.
"Ah."
Kyle, who seemed to be leaving without a word, suddenly stopped.
"There’s talk that the Hunters are going to raid the Arena soon. It’s just a rumor, a rumor."
Kyle said it as if it were nothing, passing by, but Seung-chan could tell the weight of it was not trivial.
"This is on the house."
"I’ll keep that in mind."
Seung-chan watched Kyle walk across the crosswalk, keeping his distance from the humans, and then tidied up his seat.
‘It might really get noisy.’
If the information had reached him, there was a high probability that the people at the Arena already knew.
"It’ll work out somehow."
He sucked all the remaining cola through the straw with force.
By the time he stopped by the library and returned home, the evening was well past.
The data organization, which he thought would be finished quickly, took quite a while as he had to tailor it to Lee Ji-eun’s level.
[Can’t you be home earlier? I made dinner, so eat.]
Whether she had eaten first or not, various dishes were left on the table along with a note.
"Is she still studying?"
Hyun-ah, who had returned from the library, had the light on in her second-floor room, perhaps focusing on her studies again.
There was no benefit in upsetting a 19-year-old high school girl.
Seung-chan quietly went to the kitchen, scooped rice from the cooker, and turned on the stove for the kimchi stew she had made.
‘Hyun-ah will be an adult next year.’
Living faithfully in the present, quite a bit of time had passed since his parents passed away.
It was when Seung-chan was 19 and Hyun-ah was 14.
They weren’t his biological parents, but he had received so much love that they might as well have been.
Seung-chan was an adopted child.
The couple, who thought they were infertile, adopted 5-year-old Seung-chan, and a year later, Hyun-ah was miraculously born.
It was a peaceful life.
Seung-chan acted the part of a lovable human child.
He knew that doing so would make them happy.
In reality, his adoptive parents treated Seung-chan like their own flesh and blood, and that remained the same even after Hyun-ah was born.
The two grew up happy, receiving their parents’ love.
Seung-chan awakened as a Demon around the age of 7.
He felt Magic Power circulating in his body, and by the time he entered elementary school, Demon Transformation became possible.
He didn’t use that power recklessly.
It was because he couldn’t forget the moment his biological mother was murdered.
Even though he was young.
Instinctively, he lived by hiding his Demon power as much as possible.
By the time he became a middle schooler, his Magic Power had grown to the point where it was difficult to control his Red Eyes.
Like a child in a growth spurt, he could feel his Magic Power increasing day by day.
To prepare for situations where his power couldn’t be controlled, he wore contact lenses for five years to hide the fact that he was a Demon.
He practiced operating his Magic Power in his spare time, and by the time he became a high schooler, he had become somewhat accustomed to handling his strength.
Around that time, his Appetite became active, and there were many days when humans looked like chunks of meat to him.
Seeing Hyun-ah in her middle school uniform, he had started drooling without realizing it.
No matter how much human food he ate.
The hunger that wouldn’t subside drove Seung-chan mad.
Just as he was about to give up on being human due to the agony of what felt like sharp awls scraping his lungs.
His adoptive parents passed away.
It wasn’t a normal death; it was murder.
According to the police, burglars had broken into the house while Hyun-ah and Seung-chan were at school.
He wasn’t given the right to identify his parents’ bodies.
Even so, he was certain.
The traces of Magic Power remaining in the house and the investigators who carried the scent of mana.
‘The two of them were murdered by a Demon.’
He sensed that the moment of his first hunt was approaching.
Seung-chan was young, and he lacked information.
He had no choice but to do the legwork himself.
He stopped going to school and went back and forth between the house and the outside, searching for traces of the Demon.
It was only after making contact with the Demons in the shadows that he finally found a lead.
They were an E-rank and a D-rank Demon, respectively.
They were scouting for new prey on a beach in Busan.
It had taken him three months to track them down as they moved from region to region, raiding empty houses.
"Finally found you."
Even when Seung-chan revealed his true form, the creatures showed no sign of surprise.
"Still just a kid? I'll let you live, so go back and drink some more of your mother's milk."
"You were the ones who killed them."
"Little baby. Should I rip off your limbs to help you come to your senses? Do you even know that you die if your neck gets torn out?"
They were acting cocky, judging only by Seung-chan's outward appearance.
The two-on-one battle began.
Neither their strength nor their speed in their Demon Transformation state could match his own.
Combined, they were at most C-rank.
It felt absurd that his foster parents had been murdered by such beings, that his own happiness had been shattered by them.
"Die."
He surrendered his body to his rage.
When he came to his senses, he realized he had ripped the throats out of both Demons.
With his first hunt, he had committed Cannibalism.
All that remained was a sense of emptiness.
At the same time, his Appetite for humans had significantly waned.
When he returned home, Hyun-ah rushed at him.
"I thought you were dead!"
She had been watching over him with a heart full of anxiety as he left the house for days at a time.
"I thought you were going to disappear and leave me all alone."
She finally burst into the tears she had been holding back.
"It's okay."
His only remaining family.
"I won't leave you behind ever again."
That day.
Seung-chan had to hold Hyun-ah for a long time as she couldn't stop her tears.
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