“Huh…….”
Baek Yulheon stared in admiration at the cactus, which was larger than a human.
“A second Tower Plant…… This one looks dangerous too.”
When Baek Yulheon reached toward it, the spines slowly began extending.
Noticing what was happening, my sister grabbed his hand.
“That’s far enough. Go any closer and you’ll get stabbed.”
“It can pierce an Awakened’s body?”
“I got hurt a little.”
“What!? Where? Where did you get hurt!?”
“It already healed.”
Baek Yulheon let out a sigh of relief.
Then he narrowed his eyes and glared at the cactus.
“……Berna Spine.”
“……How did you know?”
Berna Spine.
I could not hide my surprise when that name came out of Baek Yulheon’s mouth.
It was exactly the same name that had appeared in the information I saw.
Baek Yulheon shrugged.
“It’s one of the few plants that has actually been given a name.”
“Oh…….”
“It’s probably because it inhabits the middle floors, where the largest number of Awakened are currently concentrated.”
‘Given a name?’
A plant that had been named.
That phrase bothered me.
The name displayed in the Information Window should have been the plant’s original name.
Could a name given by humans somehow replace its true name?
Then what about Azure Breeze?
‘……Does that matter right now?’
The name itself was not important.
What mattered was that Baek Yulheon knew about this thing.
He stroked his chin for a moment before speaking.
“First of all, that thing is a Carnivorous Plant.”
“Carnivorous?”
“To be precise, human blood is its staple food. It can obtain nutrients from the blood of other creatures too, but it prefers humans above all else.”
“……How does it even eat?”
“It absorbs blood through its spines. When we approach and the spines extend only slightly, that isn’t a warning. It’s simply making the smallest possible wound so its prey’s blood doesn’t spill onto the ground.”
“…….”
‘That’s horrifying.’
When I looked more closely at the cactus, every trace of my sister’s blood from earlier had disappeared.
I could not even tell which spines had stabbed her.
“Berna Spine is a dangerous plant, but it normally isn’t much of a threat to Awakened.”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t Sohyeon tell you? Forget sucking their blood—it usually can’t even pierce their skin.”
“Ah…….”
“Mid-floor Awakened who’ve climbed beyond the 30th Floor generally possess bodies that are far tougher than normal, barring special cases. So it isn’t considered a threat. Even the Tower Climbing Manual says, ‘Destroying it upon discovery is recommended, but ignoring it is also acceptable.’”
“……There’s a manual like that?”
“But! This one is different.”
Baek Yulheon pulled something from his pocket.
“……What’s that?”
“An ordinary rock. I picked it up on the way here.”
Before I could ask, ‘Why?’
Baek Yulheon threw the rock toward the cactus.
CRACK!
“Wow.”
“……It pierced it.”
The rock was suspended in midair.
From a distance, it looked almost as though it were levitating, hanging from a single thin spine.
“It went straight through without even cracking the rock.”
“……Why did you throw that?”
“A test.”
“A test?”
“That’s probably about as tough as my skin is right now.”
“……?”
Skin?
A rock?
“Haha! What’s with that expression? Sohyeon’s should be about twice as tough as mine.”
“…….”
I was speechless.
When I looked at my sister, she merely shrugged.
“Now we’ve proven that if I approach it, I’ll just end up looking like a rag.”
“……That doesn’t sound like good news.”
“No, it’s fine. We proved something else too.”
“What?”
Baek Yulheon moved two steps sideways from where he had been standing.
Then he threw another identical rock from his pocket.
CRACK!
“Uh…….”
Now there were two rocks floating in the air.
They were at the same height, and their positions differed by exactly the two steps Baek Yulheon had moved.
“What does this prove?”
“Speed.”
“Speed?”
“I threw the second one harder than the first. But it stopped at the same point.”
“……?”
“That means this is roughly the maximum speed at which those spines can extend.”
“……And that helps us somehow?”
“It won’t help me or Sohyeon, but I know someone it will help.”
“Someone……?”
“You know her too, Sohyeok. Didn’t Sohyeon tell you?”
“I thought you were going to bring her yourself. I was pretty disappointed when you showed up alone.”
“Urgh…… There’s a reason for that.”
Baek Yulheon pulled out his phone.
After tapping the screen several times, he showed it to us.
“Look at this.”
“Uh…….”
“Wow. What is this?”
The screen was covered in red.
It was not a photograph.
“Your call history……?”
And every single entry was an outgoing call.
In other words, Baek Yulheon had personally made all of them.
The recipient was—
“Hyeon Chae-rin. Isn’t this enough to terminate her contract?”
“……We’re already short on Awakened. Firing her would be a bit much.”
“Do you know why she’s doing this?”
“No. Not exactly. Though I can’t say I have no idea.”
Hyeon Chae-rin.
I definitely knew her.
But—
“Chae-rin can actually help us deal with the cactus?”
At my question, Baek Yulheon and my sister both turned toward me.
Then—
“Yeah.”
“Absolutely.”
They nodded as though there was no doubt about it.
‘……She’s that useful?’
Hyeon Chae-rin should still have been an Awakened somewhere in the 30-floor range.
I could not imagine how someone weaker than my sister, who was already in the 50-floor range, could be that helpful.
‘I thought they were going to introduce me to someone whose skin was literally as hard as stone.’
When I looked at Baek Yulheon skeptically—
he manipulated his phone with a meaningful smile.
“Sohyeok, look at this.”
“……A photo?”
“Proof that Chae-rin can help.”
I took the phone from Baek Yulheon.
It was a photograph of Hyeon Chae-rin.
She was drenched in sweat and holding something in both hands.
‘What is she holding?’
I enlarged the photo with two fingers.
Only then could I clearly see what she had in her hands.
“……Huh?”
My gaze moved from the phone—
to the cactus—
then back again.
After squinting for a long moment, I asked,
“Are these spines?”
“Yeah.”
Her hands were filled with sharp spines.
Yet her smooth skin did not have a single scratch.
Seeing my bewildered expression, Baek Yulheon proudly began explaining.
“This happened when Chae-rin had just cleared the 26th Floor. She was having trouble dealing with enemies that flew through the air, so she came up with a clever solution. She ripped every spine out of a nearby Berna Spine and threw them. With Chae-rin’s throwing skill, the enemies dropped one after another. When she finally returned from the Tower, we managed to take this precious photograph.”
“……Wow. That’s creepy.”
My sister grimaced at the way he spoke as though proudly bragging about his daughter.
“You sound like she’s your own child.”
“White Lotus is like my child. Every guild member is precious to me.”
My sister shuddered as though she had goosebumps.
Baek Yulheon forcibly ignored her, though his expression turned slightly gloomy.
“Oh.”
Then something strange occurred to me.
“But…… you can’t bring plants from inside the Tower back into reality, can you?”
“Right. That’s why the spines crumbled less than a second after we took the photo. I guess the System glitched because it recognized them as Chae-rin’s weapons.”
“……The System can glitch?”
“How should I know?”
Baek Yulheon spoke as though it were nothing important—
but the idea continued bothering me.
“Anyway! This works out perfectly.”
“Perfectly?”
“I’ve been looking for Chae-rin too, and you need her right now. We might as well look for her together.”
“……You’re dumping your work on us, aren’t you?”
“Urgh…… I told you, I’m not. It’s mutually beneficial.”
“I’m sure it is∼.”
My sister mocked him.
It was understandable.
After all, her relationship with Hyeon Chae-rin did not seem particularly good.
Baek Yulheon apparently wanted to bring the two of them closer somehow—
but knowing my sister’s personality, that would never happen.
Not unless she personally decided she wanted to become closer to Hyeon Chae-rin.
“But if she’s completely missing, how are we supposed to find her?”
“Huh? Ah, I explained that badly. She hasn’t completely disappeared. I know where she is.”
“What? Then…… can’t you just bring her out? It’s not like someone’s physically stopping you.”
“Well…… I suppose it’s more that I can’t do that. Or maybe that I shouldn’t.”
“Excuse me……?”
Whatever was going on, it was clearly complicated.
‘Well, dealing with the cactus comes first anyway.’
“Let’s go for now.”
“R-Really?”
“I need Chae-rin too.”
Baek Yulheon grabbed my hand with a broad smile.
Meanwhile—
“Tsk.”
my sister openly looked displeased.
“If you don’t want to come, Sis, you can stay…….”
“I’m coming.”
“……Okay.”
We got into Baek Yulheon’s car and headed out to meet Hyeon Chae-rin.
Meanwhile—
at the Management Bureau.
“Location?”
“……Still nothing.”
Without exaggeration, this was the institution in South Korea with the most active flow of information concerning Awakened.
Not a single incident involving Awakened in South Korea occurred without the Management Bureau learning about it.
They should not have needed much time to uncover information about ‘Undecided.’
‘So why?’
There was nothing.
Not a single piece of information.
It felt like chasing the shadow of a person who did not exist.
Only two days had passed since Undecided cleared the 1st Floor.
Naturally, the Management Bureau’s highest-priority surveillance targets were people who had Awakened recently.
Yet not one of them displayed anything suspicious.
Then perhaps it was someone who had Awakened in the past.
Circumstances strongly suggested that Undecided had undergone a Second Awakening, so they prioritized Awakened whose recent movements had seemed unusual.
But—
‘Nothing.’
They had even requested assistance from other Management Bureaus.
Yet after searching through every Awakened in South Korea, they had found no one who appeared to have undergone a Second Awakening.
‘Do we have to widen the search to people who Awakened more than ten years ago?’
Maverick.
That monster had undergone a Second Awakening exactly one month after his first Awakening.
So perhaps the interval between an Awakening and a Second Awakening was generally not very long.
‘No. That’s wrong.’
There was only one precedent in the entire world.
There was no way they could treat it as an absolute rule.
“Expand the search among Combat-Type Awakened to include those who Awakened as long as twenty years ago.”
“……Twenty years?”
“I don’t care if they’re over seventy years old. If they underwent a Second Awakening, they’ll straighten their bent backs and fight.”
Undecided.
An Awakened who had suddenly appeared and thrown South Korea into an uproar.
“If you don’t find them, consider yourselves dead.”
I will find them.
No matter what.