Unlike the thoroughly tense Wonhyeok, Haje was entirely at ease.
The shaman, too, cheerfully offered the two of them seats.
“It has been a long time since anyone came from outside the village. It is not yet time to submit tribute, after all.... Come in. We were just boiling pork together. Please have a bowl.”
“I am overwhelmed by your generosity.”
Haje followed the shaman’s lead and sat down boldly in the middle of the villagers.
Although Wonhyeok was nervous, he assumed Haje must have some plan and followed him.
Then Haje spoke through the chatroom.
[Chatroom: (Private) / Haje]
Haje (1st): Clerk, try using your skill.
Jade Willow (10th): ...Do you mean <Look with New Eyes>?
Haje (1st): Yes. There was no mention of it working only on Awakened people. There is nothing to lose by trying.
At those words, Wonhyeok discreetly rubbed his eyes and looked at the shaman.
Just as Haje had said, a profile truly appeared.
Hae Juhun
Ordinary Person, Shaman, 36 years old
—A shaman settled in Anseong.
—Villagers’ Faith: 80 / 100
*A +50 modifier is applied!
It was brief....
Wonhyeok felt disappointed without meaning to.
There was hardly any useful information.
When Wonhyeok conveyed the profile, Haje tilted his head and spoke through the communication network.
[Chatroom: (Private) / Haje]
Haje (1st): Why is there something called “Villagers’ Faith”? It would be less strange if that shaman were the village headman or the magistrate.
Jade Willow (10th): Exactly. Even if it is not tribute season, this is the busiest time for farming. Though it is midday, it does not seem like they are having a snack break either....
Haje (1st): And why does Faith have a modifier?
Jade Willow (10th): Yes, the communication network shows it that way, but I cannot possibly know what it means exactly.
The shaman had already gone to serve food to someone else.
She was so attentive that Wonhyeok could almost mistake her for an innkeeper rather than a shaman.
Haje accepted the pork generously offered by a villager and said, “Let us eat and think afterward. The food has done nothing wrong.”
“Has a hungry ghost gotten into you....”
“What did you say, Clerk?”
“I said the pork is cooked well.”
After being given salted vegetables that had lasted since winter and spring greens as well, Wonhyeok thought.
Their hospitality was excessive.
The Ghost Gate byproducts had made harvests and food storage far more abundant, but that applied only to agricultural produce.
Livestock still needed time and care. They had to breed and raise it.
Besides, crops only grew after seeds were planted.
Yet these villagers had abandoned their farmwork and were slaughtering pigs for a feast in spring.
The lake was right nearby. They would be better off catching fish!
With his mouth itching to say something, Wonhyeok left Haje behind as he ate the pork and salted vegetables with gusto, then asked a nearby villager.
“Excuse me, sir. Why was this pig slaughtered? Is there some happy occasion in the village?”
“Oh, indeed there is. Our shaman held a dodang-gut, a village guardian rite, yesterday. This pig was used for it.”
“A dodang-gut...?”
“Yes. Our village used this pig as an offering. Before the rite, we took it around the village and gathered up all the misfortune clinging to every corner, then held the ritual.”
At those words, Haje spat out the pork he had been eating.
“PTOOEY!”
Startled by that crisp action, Wonhyeok looked back and forth between the kindly villager and Haje before giving an awkward smile.
The villager who had answered him also stared at Haje as though dumbfounded.
“No, Messenger! Why did you spit it out? If it tastes bad, do not eat it! Do not eat it!”
“Right, I am not eating it. Ugh, it has ruined my mouth.”
After saying that, Haje beckoned for Wonhyeok, who had been caught awkwardly in the middle, to stand up.
The commotion seemed to have reached the ears of those around them, and the villagers turned to look.
Wonhyeok panicked and whispered to Haje.
“What are you doing all of a sudden?!”
“Clerk, do not even think about eating that pork.”
“You spat all over the plate in front of you. I am not a beggar, so why would I eat it?”
“Right. It is a relief that you will not pick it up and eat it.”
Damn it, this man!
Wonhyeok glared at Haje, whose nonsense had flared up again, then shrank his shoulders as he felt far sharper gazes than expected.
The villagers were glaring at them with hostility.
“Shaman Hae was kind enough to share with them.... Yet these Messengers do not even know gratitude.”
“Did they just refuse the meat Shaman Hae boiled?”
“We worked hard to keep calamity from entering the village, and then outsiders come in and....”
The murmurs gradually grew louder.
Startled by their sudden change in attitude, Wonhyeok glanced at Haje.
Haje surveyed the surroundings as if looking for the shaman. Then he clicked his tongue and grabbed Wonhyeok.
“I suppose we should not expect to sleep comfortably in Anseong. Hold on tight, Clerk.”
“This is all your fault....”
The moment Haje slung the resigned Wonhyeok over his shoulder and left the square like a bolt of lightning, Wonhyeok struck Haje’s shoulder and shouted.
“Wait a moment, Haje! Please stop!”
“What?”
Wonhyeok pointed toward the square they had escaped.
Once the two had left the square, the villagers returned to laughing, chatting, and eating pork as though nothing had happened.
Seeing that, Haje tilted his head again.
“Interesting.”
“It seems certain that the shaman used some kind of trick. Though I still have no idea why she did it.”
“What more is there to learn? If a shaman is using such tricks, there are only two possibilities. Either that shaman is not human, or the deity she received is some sort of mad thing.”
With that, Haje set Wonhyeok down with a thud on a quiet corner of the road.
Thrown down as though he were suddenly a sack of rice, Wonhyeok staggered upright and sighed.
“Then... judging by the surroundings, most of the villagers seem to be gathered in the square, so there is one thing we must do.”
“What a bother.”
Ignoring Haje, Wonhyeok cried, “We must find the missing people!”
To do so, they first needed to determine where to search.
Wonhyeok looked around, groaned, and said, “The shaman is the most suspicious person, so it would be good if we could inspect her shrine.”
“If the boss appeared immediately and we had to run a raid, could you hold out, Clerk? Let us search somewhere else first.”
...He did not know what that meant, but it seemed roughly like Haje was asking what they would do if they went there and stepped into a trap.
“There are important places for shamans besides their shrines. For example... guardian posts or guardian trees....”
“We already saw the guardian posts. Hm.... Where would the guardian tree be?”
Haje sounded as though he were merely humoring Wonhyeok, but Wonhyeok paid him little attention. He strained his eyes and searched the village.
He wondered whether some of the sticky ghostly aura he had seen at the guardian posts lingered elsewhere.
Sure enough, faint trails remained along the paths.
“One trail of ghostly aura leads to the square, one toward the back of the village, and one toward the village’s west.”
“What do you see?”
This time, Haje sounded genuinely surprised.
Wonhyeok blinked and pointed to the ground.
“The ghostly aura is still here.”
“I cannot see it.”
At those words, Wonhyeok suddenly felt his confidence shrink.
Could he be seeing something that was not there...?
Then Haje abruptly said, “Your eyes really are sharp, Clerk. It is strange enough that you could not see it in Ansan.”
“R-really...?”
Certainly, until his time in Ansan, Wonhyeok had needed to strain his eyes just to see the traces left behind by a ghost that had only recently passed through.
Perhaps because he had Awakened, his eyes had become this sharp when it came to uncanny powers and wicked spirits.
‘My entire life, I avoided Ghost Gates and uncanny powers and wicked spirits.’
Still, he could lament later.
Wonhyeok gathered himself and suggested they choose where to go first.
Then Haje crooked a finger and said this.
“Let us guess which way we should go.... Ding-dong, ding-dong, coffee—ta-da.”
‘What kind of nonsense is that now?’
Wonhyeok grumbled inwardly as he followed the direction where Haje’s finger stopped: the village’s west.
There, a guardian tree stood with its thick trunk casting a shadow.
“This is another entrance to the village. And this guardian tree is not doing its job either.”
“The aura here is even worse than around the guardian posts....”
At the sight of ghostly aura extending from every part of the trunk as though it were descending along five-colored ritual streamers, Wonhyeok felt slightly sick.
“It does not seem that a guardian shrine stands here with the tree. Then that shaman cannot have been connected to this village for very long. Yet the villagers believe in and follow her so completely. It is strange.”
“The Faith shown in the communication network may be the result of some trick as well.... But I do not see anywhere here to hide people.”
The ghostly aura was so dense that Wonhyeok felt as though he might suffocate.
He spoke as if he had entered a foul-smelling pit.
Then Haje beckoned to him and pointed at something.
It was a large stone cairn.
“We will find out if we look.”
“...No way.”
“It is always ‘maybe’ that gets people killed, Clerk.”
With that, Haje committed an act of grave impiety: he kicked the stone cairn beneath the guardian tree and knocked it down.
What kind of madman would even think of kicking a stone cairn beneath a guardian tree?
He was practically inviting a curse!
Yet that madman was Wonhyeok’s accompanying inspector. What a cursed fate for a clerk.
Naturally, Wonhyeok was the only one who panicked.
“Ahhh, please do not!”
“Oh, what a windfall.”
Haje bent over and dug through the ground.
Wonhyeok, who had been hopping in alarm, cautiously bent down as well when he saw Haje’s reaction.
There was a small jar covered in talismans.
Wonhyeok immediately pressed his lips together.
“...It is not a jar containing calamity, is it?”
“This is neither a crossroads nor a shaman’s shrine. Why would anyone bury it beneath a stone cairn unless they intended to torment the guardian tree?”
And if she had truly been a shaman who properly protected the village, she would not have buried such a thing....
“Still, this is not a trace of the missing official.”
Then Haje did something even more shocking.
He tore off the talismans and popped the jar open.
“Have you truly lost your mind?”
“Look at this, Clerk.”
Wonhyeok had been about to scold Haje, but he went pale when he saw the inside of the jar Haje held out.
It was fortunate that he had not eaten the pork earlier. If he had eaten anything, he would have vomited at once.
“There is a human head in here.”
What fit perfectly inside the jar was a single human head.