Sihyun chuckled quietly under his breath and swept his eyes over the skill window floating in front of him. He hadn’t gotten a single technique easily.
That was why every single one was packed with memories, and when his gaze reached Heavenly Escape Form, another memory rose up again.
Maybe Taewoon had been around thirteen. There was a time he had to steal a secret manual to progress the quest.
So he tried to leave Taewoon behind and do it alone, but somehow Taewoon found out and clung to him, crying hard and asking if he was abandoning him, which put Sihyun in a bind.
In the end, he’d gone and made a little kid an accomplice to theft, but with those eyes swollen puffy, the kid still smiling bright like it was just great, the memory itself had stayed as a good one.
"What was so great about living while being chased. Haa."
Sihyun ended up letting the laughter slip out, then, as loneliness tried to rise up quietly again, he roughly ruffled his hair and kept scrolling the notification windows that were still piled up high.
But a moment later.
Before he could even gather his thoughts that were about to drift somewhere else, a very, very strange notification that came straight into his view stole Sihyun’s attention.
[system: Title ‘Secluded Justice’ has been added.]
"Secluded Justice…?"
What the hell is this now. He was pretty sure they said you only got one title each.
Sihyun stared hard at the notification window floating there, then shut it and called up his status window again.
But those six letters—cringe, middle-school-edgy as they were—didn’t disappear no matter how many times Sihyun turned his status window off and on. If anything, they’d planted themselves firmly like a nail, right next to his original title that didn’t lose in terms of secondhand embarrassment.
His head started to ache a little, wondering why only he kept getting things that weren’t normal. Sihyun slowly looked over the status window that had changed again, and in the end, he muttered a small curse.
Jeong Sihyun [The One Who Cleaves the World (S)]
Title [Beginning of Ruin, Secluded Justice]
Stamina - 25
Strength - 20
Agility - 26
Intelligence - 19
Inner Power - 29
Luck - 5
"Crazy…. What the hell is this Luck, seriously."
While everything else climbed to around 20, the Luck stat—stuck in place all by itself—was especially jammed into his eyes and wouldn’t go away.
With a chilly sense of bad luck wrapping around him for no reason, Sihyun shivered for just a moment, slapped his forearms a couple times, and just closed the notification windows that were still stacked up.
It wasn’t like he could do anything about it right now, and staring at that “5” wasn’t going to magically change the number.
Sihyun let out a deep sigh, then, as his eyes blurred and started to close, decided he should sleep instead of thinking pointless thoughts, and neatly pulled his messy blanket back into shape.
And right around the time he fell asleep like that. As if it had been waiting for the moment Sihyun collapsed exhausted and drifted off, a transparent status window flashed and rose up.
[system: You are linked to the power of Chaos.]
'What… is linked….'
But Sihyun couldn’t do anything about his mind fading more and more, and he sank deep into the heavy sleep pressing down on him.
***
<Wait?>
He’d definitely just been falling asleep on a soft bed, but when he suddenly found himself standing perfectly fine, Sihyun looked around quickly with a dazed expression.
And he realized where this was right away.
<This is… inside the Divine Cult….>
He’d only stayed here for a very short period, but it was also a place he could never forget. Only then did Sihyun realize this was something like a lucid dream.
It was a dream he really didn’t welcome. Once he woke up from it, it was obvious that for a while, those moments where longing burst up would make things hard again.
Sihyun deeply furrowed his face and scratched his forehead a little with a troubled look.
He had a lot to do tomorrow the moment he woke up, but of course, the face that came with this place kept making his feet move. In the end, thinking, Just a quick look around, Sihyun slowly started walking forward.
Step. Step.
The long, straight corridor Sihyun was walking down now seemed pretty deep even within the grand hall; aside from the rustling of leaves on the trees lining both sides, it was extremely quiet.
The sensations—fresh wind and air, the smell of grass—were very faint, maybe because it was a dream, but he still felt a sense of stability, and his pace grew relaxed.
And the fact that he felt this attached to a space he’d only stayed in for a few weeks made a scoffing laugh slip out.
<What’s wrong with me, seriously. Is it because I’m getting older.>
Sihyun forced a smile like he didn’t care at all and walked toward a place where there might be people.
And before long, from behind a corner up ahead, he felt a small hint of a presence.
Sihyun stopped there, a little expectant, wondering who the first person to appear in his dream would be.
<Is the Black Wind Squad all on standby now?>
<Yes…. They say preparations to deploy the Bongma Yeoncheon Gwangjeoljin are also complete.>
But unlike what he’d been expecting, two people he’d never seen before at all walked out, turning the corner while talking, not even giving Sihyun a glance as if he weren’t there.
In a dream, wasn’t it normal for someone you were close to to appear? Sihyun stood there blankly for a moment at the unexpected situation, then, at their ominous conversation, quickly moved his feet and followed after them.
If he hadn’t heard wrong, that Bongma Yeoncheon Gwangjeoljin was a sealing art used only as a last resort, when you couldn’t deal with the opponent—pulling together all sorts of corresponding vitality. He didn’t know why he was dreaming about something like this, but it made him oddly curious.
But as Sihyun quietly trailed behind them, with the crowd growing thicker, the buildings looking not quite right, and the path feeling strangely familiar, his expression slowly hardened.
At the end of this road—wasn’t the Heavenly Demon Grand Hall located there?
<What? Why are the buildings like that?>
Sihyun slowed his pace little by little, a strange premonition scrambling his head as he lightly knit his brow.
And a little later. Without walking very far, he saw dozens of Elders and Protectors standing with steady spacing, scattered here and there. From the Illusory Heir he’d been in contact with for quite a while, to the Grand Protector, the Left and Right Protectors, and the heads of each faction.
All of them were wounded in big and small ways, surrounding the grand hall with faces full of resolve.
In an instant, the wind that had been blowing stopped.
And in time with that, dark crimson Internal Energy began spreading out like fog, centered on the grand hall that was pouring out a gloomy presence.
It was an Internal Energy color Sihyun knew all too well. Even though he knew it was a dream, his uneasy heart started pounding loudly, thump-thump.
<Begin.>
Yet even with that phenomenon, those who held their ground seemed as if they’d been waiting; after briefly meeting eyes, they began murmuring something.
It started with the Grand Protector interlacing both hands and gathering Internal Energy. Then, as if ripples were spreading out in all directions, the people standing around began doing the same.
As Sihyun, flustered, thought, What kind of dream is this—, it was like air that had been pressed down exploded out; a shockwave spread from the building in front of him, flipping up the skin of the ground and kicking up thick dust.
Koo-ung.
At the same time, Sihyun—caught off guard—got bounced back by the shockwave like a sheet of paper and tumbled onto the filthy ground with a dazed face.
<Ugh, what is this—>
Rubbing his solar plexus at the heavy pain, Sihyun hurriedly lifted his head and looked forward.
Through the hazy dust, the red eyes and white face of the one he hadn’t wanted to meet—yet missed that much—began to appear. Even from a very far distance, that face was vivid, like someone he’d seen yesterday.
<Wait. What are you saying?>
Just then, as if Taewoon had noticed Sihyun’s gaze, his tightly closed lips twitched.
<Found… you?>
"Hk!!!"
Sihyun’s eyes snapped open, and he pushed his upper body up. Outside the window, bright sunlight—who knew when it had risen—was dyeing the sky a clear blue.
"Haa, haa. What the hell… was that insane dream."
With a blank face, Sihyun ran his hand through his messy hair, clicking his tongue softly at the uneasy dream content as he slowly got up. His body felt stiff too, like he hadn’t slept deeply.
A lucid dream was something he’d never experienced in his life, and the content was strange in a way he’d never even thought about. It was like other people were trying to seal Taewoon, but it was ridiculous that such a scene even showed up in his dream.
Still rubbing his eyes that were dry and gritty, as if the dream had left them that way, Sihyun picked up his phone to check the time first.
"Ah…."
But before he could even properly check the time, his gaze caught on a missed call on the screen. It was clearly an unknown number, yet somehow he felt like he knew who it was.
With a mildly annoyed face, Sihyun called the missed number back, then flopped onto the bed again, laid the phone where he could see it, and sprawled out while listening to the ringback tone.
"Sir!!! This is Lee Gyumin!"
"...Yeah. I saw the missed call."
At the voice that felt like it was going to blow out his eardrums, Sihyun jerked without meaning to and twisted his head.
At the same time, his phone nearly fell to the floor, but he snatched it quickly, took a small breath, and brought it back to his ear.
'Wow, insane. I thought I was getting attacked by sound arts.'
"Ah! Since you said you were going to the Hunter Association today, I called in case there was something you might need!"
"Ah. Right."
Twelve o’clock…. Late.
Only then did Sihyun quickly recall today’s schedule.
And he hurriedly pushed himself up and started toward the bathroom.
"I actually had a few things to tell you!!"
"Hold on, hold on! I’m kind of late right now—could I call you later?"
Sihyun tried hard to end the call as he hastily squeezed toothpaste onto his toothbrush. No matter how he looked at it, Lee Gyumin didn’t seem like the type who’d hang up first, so he was getting anxious.
Luckily, Lee Gyumin hesitated a little but said okay and ended the call, and Sihyun washed up at insane speed, then grabbed one hoodie from the closet packed full of them and threw it on.
"No, seriously—why does taking one test have a set time and day?!"
They probably told everyone to come at once because they didn’t want to work.
Sihyun grumbled about the inflexible Hunter Association test schedule and ran up—not downstairs, but to the rooftop.
It was his choice because running there using Lightness Skill was much faster than using transportation like a taxi or a bus.
His footsteps, moving in crossing lines, got faster and faster. And with a whoong sound, Sihyun’s body launched, and in an instant he was vaulting over several buildings.