IH Ch 107

Chapter 107

“……”

You must like the Guild Master more than I thought. That’s probably why you’re saying all those sweet, blinded-by-love things like calling him kind and soft—sentiments that would normally require a hundred rose-colored lenses to say with a straight face.

Swirling her drink with her straw a bit harshly, Ahn Yuna mumbled,

“Well… he is a decent person. He treats us like actual human beings, not just tools.”

“……”

“He doesn’t get along with anyone easily, but if there’s even one thing he connects on, he sticks around to the end for that. There’s always a reason behind that.”

Generally speaking, Hunters always favored those with higher ranks. Naturally, most guilds and the Association tried to recruit Hunters who were already high-ranking. But Hwang Jae-i was different. Even if someone’s rank was lower, if he saw the potential for improvement, he kept them around and actively helped them level up. Sure, his methods involved pushing people to their limits, practically working them to death—but if they endured, their skill levels improved without fail. There were even cases where B-rank Hunters were elevated to A-rank under his guidance.

As long as someone put in effort and followed through, a rank upgrade was only a matter of time. That was easier said than done—both for the one being pushed and for the one doing the pushing. But any Hunter who managed to pull through that kind of training would have full confidence in Hwang Jae-i. Even if something unthinkable occurred inside a gate, they trusted that he’d be the one to take responsibility and get them out alive.

“……”

She had grown so used to it that she hadn’t really thought about it, but Hwang Jae-i really was a pretty great Guild Master. Feeling oddly shy after admitting it, Ahn Yuna wrinkled her nose and muttered,

“…He might be kind of a good person.”

Though the subject went unspoken, Dohwa seemed to pick up on the implication and smiled faintly, delighted—as if she had complimented him directly. Seeing that response only made Ahn Yuna feel more awkward.

In an attempt to break out of the discomfort, she fiddled with her phone again, pretending to check something—but then her expression shifted.

“…What’s wrong?” Dohwa, sitting right across from her, immediately noticed the change in her face and stiffened as well.

“I don’t know. It could just be a faulty sensor reading…”

Trailing off, Ahn Yuna slowly got up.

“Dohwa, could you wait here for a moment? Something just came up nearby. I’ll go check it out and be right back.”

“What is it? Is it something with Jae-i?”

“No, it’s not that—”

But before she could finish, Dohwa reached out and grabbed her wrist.

“Let me come with you.”

“……”

The look in his eyes said he was absolutely certain this had to do with something happening to Hwang Jae-i. And though it wasn’t exactly that, the report she had just received was undeniably suspicious. According to the alert, an unclassified heat signature had been detected in the parking garage of Hwang Jae-i’s building—his personal residence.

It hadn’t been known from the start that Hwang Jae-i lived there.

When an entire building in the middle of the city started undergoing renovations, people assumed it was another wealthy chaebol moving in. Then Hwang Jae-i happened to be photographed nearby, and a few persistent paparazzi began to tail him onto the property.

But someone like Hwang Jae-i couldn’t exactly hide. His gleaming blond hair stood out instantly, visible from a hundred meters away. His striking facial features and physique only added to his unmistakable presence. And then there were his eyes—always radiating anger, like a beast ready to pounce, day or night. Worse yet, he didn’t bother disguising himself, so it was only a matter of time before he was tracked down.

Once it became known that the building undergoing continuous remodeling belonged to Hwang Jae-i, things got chaotic. Not just paparazzi—reporters and ordinary curiosity-seekers flooded the area. At one point, it became virtually impossible for Jae-i to enter or leave.

Then some lunatics tried to destroy the building or set it on fire, shouting absurd justifications: that an S-Class shouldn’t hoard such a massive structure all for himself, and that if he was really strong enough to survive anything, he should live in a crumbling shack or on the street.

There was no point entertaining such nonsense. So they responded legally. Starting with unauthorized trespassing, they compiled all the public disruption caused by the visitors: blocked walkways, complaints from tenants in neighboring buildings.

It took time, but eventually people stopped coming around. A few journalists still showed up from time to time under the guise of “the public’s right to know,” but dealing with them was annoying, so they were mostly ignored. Instead, building security was beefed up to an extreme degree. Now, any kind of outside intrusion was virtually impossible.

So the detection of an unidentified heat signal in the parking garage? Highly suspicious.

“We swept the area once already, but nothing stood out. The thermal signals keep appearing and then vanishing. And usually that kind of pattern…”

“Happens when a gate is about to open.”

At Ahn Yuna’s words, a fully armored guard nodded briefly.

So that meant a gate was forming in this parking garage? If that were true—

“Well, bring it on.”

Muttering to herself, Ahn Yuna did mental calculations to estimate when the Guild Master would arrive while talking quietly with the guard. Standing obediently nearby, Dohwa turned his gaze around the parking lot.

It was completely empty. This area seemed used for employee vehicles or disguised cars for undercover use. He remembered the delivery van they’d used to go see the ocean—how it had been parked here too.

Scanning beneath the rims of his glasses, he steadily moved his gaze.

Ahn Yuna was still speaking with the guard, who cautiously suggested they report this incident, but she shook her head. If they announced it now, they’d attract everything that had been trying to enter this space from the start.

“There’s a process, though—”

“Nobody outside knows what happens in here anyway. The moment a gate opens, the Guild Master will take care of it. Who’d find out? Let’s just handle it quietly among ourselves.”

“Is that really okay?”

“I didn’t want to say this, but… the Guild Master’s having a bad day. Best not to provoke him right now.”

“……Has there ever been a day when he wasn’t in a bad mood?”

“……”

Caught off guard by the too-accurate observation, Ahn Yuna fell silent, and during that moment, Dohwa was already walking deeper into the parking garage.

The lot was vast. He had to walk quite a distance before reaching a far corner.

After scanning parked cars with his eyes, he headed toward a section shielded by support pillars. There, the nose of a delivery van poked out from the shadows.

That was the van they’d taken to the beach.

Despite everything that had happened afterwards, those memories remained warm—sitting by the sea with Jae-i, enjoying bowls of noodles and spicy bibimbap. A fond smile unconsciously appeared on Dohwa’s lips as he remembered.

Just then, the delivery van’s hood gave a small jolt.

“……”

As if to confirm what he had just seen, it shook again with a soft clunk. Shifting his body slightly, Dohwa tried to peer around the pillar. Even with his neck stretched forward, he could see nothing. So, he stepped forward toward the front of the van.

This side of the garage was strangely dark. Though it was simply shadowed, the blackness here felt abnormally deep.

Then, from a distance, someone called out—warning him to come back, that it was dangerous. But Dohwa kept his eyes fixed on the back of the van.

Maybe it was drawn by his calm gaze—something within the shadows stirred. As though it had only been waiting, a black mass squirmed into view, its size rapidly inflating.

It clambered swiftly on top of the van, crawling toward him.

“Dohwa!”

Ahn Yuna’s cry rang out.

The mass flattened like a blob over the roof, then split. A seam opened horizontally, then vertically—a gash-like maw that scraped violently along the metal roof, emitting a piercing shriek that filled the garage.

“Ghk!”

Ripping out his earpiece in agony from the noise, the nearby guard dashed to Dohwa’s side and raised his weapon. But the black entity was faster. With spider-like reflexes, it twisted its body, dodged the shot, and pounced on the guard instead.

Even as he tried to shield Dohwa, the guard was struck by something whip-like—sent flying across the garage with terrifying force.

“……!!”

By the time the guard slammed into the opposite wall, Ahn Yuna had already reached Dohwa and was standing behind him.

“Dohwa, don’t move!”

At the same time, she activated the emergency effect Hwang Jae-i had given her. The magic stone split in half, and a translucent hemisphere roughly five meters wide formed around them.

The black creature, touching the edge of the barrier, recoiled immediately with a loud, scraping screech. It leaped back atop the van and flattened its body once again. This time, the van collapsed beneath it with a crash.

From what had appeared to be merely a shapeless blob, grotesque limbs began protruding—deforming like a balloon bulging in the wrong directions. Seeing its twisted, monstrous face, Ahn Yuna contorted hers in pure disgust.

“What the hell even is that?”

Ahn Yuna placed Dohwa behind her protectively.

“When the hell did a monster like that even get in here?”

“……”

A thought flickered through Dohwa’s mind.

When he and Jae-i had fought near the ocean, their voices had risen in anger. At the time, something like a small dark orb had popped out of the shadows. Jae-i had immediately panicked and slammed it into the ground.

It had escaped before they could catch it.

Perhaps… this was that same black mass.

Only now, its form had evolved into something far more horrific.