It’s a good thing, it was still a warning message; there was no emergency quest, like back then with Hwang Dongsuk or Kang Taeshik.
“It’s pathetic if you lose right in front of your omega.”
Swish-!!
Goto Ryuji’s outstretched hand, aimed at Jin Woo’s eye, narrowly missed and ended up slicing his cheek just a little. If his reflexes that had reached the absolute limit, didn’t react in time and tilt his head out of the way, he might have really lost his eye just now.
It was an attack that clearly carried the intent to kill, and it was clearly aimed at a vital spot of the human anatomy. But more importantly, What Goto Ryuji said just now. Was that a challenge?
Is he challenging him for the claim of Park Jongryeo? Such a thing would never be accepted during a training match like this.
Grit.
In the blink of an eye, the atmosphere changed.
“Ah.”
Baek Yoonho unconsciously spat out a frightened gasp.
The first person to sense the abrupt shift in the atmosphere was actually Goto Ryuji, however. Unfortunately for him, although his body understood the change, his head could not.
The chilly air roused sleeping goosebumps to break out all over his body, and all the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He had never, ever felt like this before.
‘This, what is this….?’
Even before his brain had the time to process anything, Jin Woo grabbed his wrist, hard. Goto Ryuji tried to yank his arm out with all his might, but it wouldn’t budge.
‘What kind of strength is this….?!’
His gaze briefly lingered on his wrist, before moving on to Jin Woo’s face. And he found an icy cold glare.
But what caught Goto Ryuji’s attention even more than Jin Woo’s cold eyes were his right shoulder and his raised right arm. Jin Woo’s arm was cocked back by a lot; a tightly-clenched fist at the end of that arm was aiming at Goto Ryuji’s unguarded face.
The air sinking lower all around Goto Ryuji pressed down on his shoulders. He suddenly couldn’t breathe anymore.
Why?
Why did he inexplicably think of the word ‘death’ right at this moment?
But, then….
“Alright, that’s enough!”
Baek Yoonho and Park Jongryeo jumped into the fray purely out of instinct and grabbed hold of Jin Woo’s right arm.
Jongryeo was tightly hugging Jin Woo’s shoulder as if he was trying to pull it down, while Baek Yoonho was grabbing onto his wrist with everything he had.
When Jin Woo looked back, Jongryeo hurriedly shook his head. Even Baek Yoonho was looking at him with anxious eyes.
‘…….’
The smell of fresh blue Iris and cedarwood helped Jin Woo to cool his agitation down.
“Fuu.”
Jin Woo let off a short sigh and released Goto Ryuji’s wrist.
The Japanese man rubbed his now-freed wrist and retreated quickly. Meanwhile, the interpreter hurriedly arrived near his side.
Jongryeo spoke to him.
“Let’s stop the sparring session here, since the mood seems to have turned for the worse. Please tell the Japanese for us.”
The interpreter nodded his head.
When Jongryeo’s words were relayed to him, Goto Ryuji proceeded to glare at Jin Woo for a long time, before spinning on his heels to exit from the gymnasium without saying single a word.
“M-mister Goto!!”
The voice of the interpreter as he ran after Goto Ryuji sounded so pitiful. Baek Yoonho finally spat out a sigh of relief and lowered his head at Jin Woo.
“Forgive us for butting in.”
“…”
“That man is supposed to lead the Japanese team in the operation a few days from now. I couldn’t just stand by and watch, even though there was a chance that something might go horribly wrong for us.”
Baek Yoonho cautiously studied Jin Woo’s expression and asked.
“Did I do something unnecessary?”
“No, not at all.”
Jin Woo readily admitted to it.
Baek Yoonho was right. If something happened to Goto Ryuji and that led to an unnecessary snag in the operation, then both countries might end up suffering severe consequences afterward.
So, he never thought of assigning any blame to Baek Yoonho or Park Jongryeo after they interfered in a timely fashion.
“Wow….”
Now that the situation seemed to have calmed down, people absorbed in spectating on the sparring session between Goto Ryuji and Jin Woo quickly approached him. The way they looked at him went through a noticeable change.
The first one to make his approach was the Master of the Shining Star Guild, the massive-framed Ma Dong Wook.
“Huhuh!!”
Ma Dong Wook laughed genially.
“To be able to walk away with only a small scratch on your cheek after having a bout with the one and only Goto, you’re truly something else, young man!”
Regretfully, no one else seemed to have figured out what happened here besides Park Jongryeo and Baek Yoonho.
“Ooh!! You have really firm muscles! What an outstanding physique!”
Ma Dong Wook touched Jin Woo’s shoulders and arms while expressing his genuine admiration.
“My Guild is full of Mage-type Hunters, so we’re severely lacking in melee-types at the moment. Instructor Sung, if you haven’t thought of a Guild to join, how about joining mine?”
“Excuse me, Ma Instructor-nim?”
Having been quietly observing the situation from behind until then, Choi Jong-In stepped forward and raised his voice.
“Yes?”
When Ma Dong Wook turned his head, Choi Jong-In spoke up as if he was waiting for this moment.
“Hunter Sung Jin Woo is actually a Mage-type Hunter.”
A massive earthquake erupted within Ma Dong Wook’s eyes.
“What was that?!”
__________
On the other hand….
Goto Ryuji escaped from the confines of the gymnasium and, after quickly distancing himself from the interpreter, he checked his wrist.
‘……’
His wrist was bruised black and blue all over. Even though the weather wasn’t all that hot, there were cold sweatdrops visible on his forehead. He pulled out his phone and dialed a familiar number. After a couple of rings, he could hear the sound of the phone’s receiver being picked up.
Click.
– It’s Matsumoto speaking.
“Association President.”
– “Is it you, Goto? What’s the matter with your voice?”
Goto Ryuji did his best to calm his trembling voice.
“In South Korea…. There’s an incredible Hunter in South Korea.”
– “More than you?”
“More than likely, sir.”
– “…..”
“I think there’s a need to modify our plan a little bit, sir.”
Matsumoto Shigeo didn’t immediately say anything, but rummaged through something for a while instead, before finally asking a question.
– “The name of that Hunter is?”
“It’s Sung Jin Woo. He’s a Re-Awakened, evaluated as an S-rank recently.”
– “This is strange. Such a name doesn’t exist.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Such a name didn’t exist?!
Did that mean the Hunter Goto Ryuji met just now was a phantom, an illusion? Well, he did kind of feel that he had been bewitched just now, though. However, didn’t he also personally enter the Korean Association’s website to confirm that that man was supposed to be a Mage??
“What do you mean, sir? How can Sung Jin Woo not exist?”
– “Actually, we have received the final list of the Korean Hunters participating in the operation not too long ago.”
“Are you saying Sung Jin Woo isn’t on the list?”
But, how could that be?
Unless Go Gunhee had gone truly senile, there was just no way that he’d form a raiding party without the strongest member available.
Matsumoto Shigeo spoke calmly from across the phone line.
– “Choi Jong-In, Ma Dong Wook, Baek Yoonho, Park Jongryeo, Im Tae-Gyu, and Min Byung-Gu.”
As if to signify that there was no need to modify their plan at all, Matsumoto Shigeo spoke in a voice filled with conviction.
– “These six are the members of the Korean team that will leave for the raid in four days.”
________
Baek Yoonho took a deep breath.
Even after the two men who turned the inside of the gymnasium chaotic had left, his heartbeat didn’t want to slow down at all.
‘Was such a thing even possible?’
Having witnessed something that he’d been hypothesizing in his head for real, Baek Yoonho had difficulty trying to hide his astonishment.
‘An Awakened that can really grow stronger….’
Just what would be that man’s true value? He couldn’t even dare to imagine it.
This was his reason for standing back and watching on from the distance at the efforts of Choi Jong-In, Ma Dong Wook, and Im Tae-Gyu as they tried to scout Jin Woo. He remembered Choi Jong-In’s confused stare directed at him, as he didn’t even bother to sweet-talk the youth.
‘If it was me, I’d probably never even think about joining a Guild with an ability like that.’
Indeed.
All the attempts to scout Hunter Sung Jin Woo were a waste of time. However, there were all sorts of ways to form a good relationship with a brilliant Hunter that didn’t involve scouting him.
Time to activate the ‘Plan B’, then.
Vrrr….
His mobile phone suddenly began vibrating. Seeing that the vibration didn’t last for long, it must’ve been a text message. Without thinking too much, he pulled his phone out and took a look.
It was an alert sent out by the Association. It was the final list of the participants for the ant subjugation raid taking place four days from now.
Baek Yooho skipped past the lengthy list of the Japanese Hunters and scanned the list of the Koreans, only for his eyes to widen in surprise.
He shot up from his spot on the wooden bench.
“Hunter Sung Jin Woo isn’t on the list?!”
___________
The mass media was whipped into a frenzy.
– To eradicate the monsters that turned the island of Jeju into a barren wasteland, the nations of South Korea and Japan form a united raid team!
Where would you find another story that could stimulate the interests of the country’s citizens even more than this news?
TV channels ran news segments related to this upcoming raid all day long, while every front page of newspapers was completely dominated by the topics of the united raid team.
However, it was only Korea’s media that kept talking about this matter. Even though the number of Japanese Hunters participating in this operation exceeded the Koreans by threefolds, no one thought it was strange that the Japanese media kept quiet over the upcoming event.
And when a handful of articles did appear online, the comments that followed said articles were negative to say the least.
â”” What did you expect when the Koreans are too weak to close a Gate by themselves?
â”” Why are you cleaning up the sh*t left behind by the Koreans?
â”” Are they going to compensate us for the damages those ants caused here or not?
â”” Useless Japanese Hunter’s Association, and irresponsible Korean Hunters, why dontcha all kick the bucket together on Jeju Island? LOL.
While the two parties thought of two different things regarding the same upcoming event, time continued to tick down towards the date of the operation.
In the meantime, these past few days proved to be the happiest Jin Woo had been since his mother was admitted to the hospital.
Many things went through a change. First thing first – the Sung family returned to their home with their mom as soon as she was discharged from the hospital.
Clank….
When he opened the front entrance, the first thing saw was the messy living room of the apartment, all thanks to Jin-Ah being alone while he was kept busy inside the Demon’s Castle.
“….”
Jin Woo began pinching his sister’s cheeks, and with gentle laughter, Mom tried to stop him.
The very first thing their mother had to do after returning home from four years of coma, was to clean the house. Jin Woo tried to dissuade her, but in the end, he couldn’t win against her insistence. Eventually, the whole family rolled their sleeves up to clean up their home.
Once the house was spotless, the complexions of all three brightened up considerably as well. The apartment that had always felt empty and lonely after Mom’s admittance to the hospital now seemed so full of life.
For the first time in a long while, Jin Woo got to stretch his legs and go to bed without any worries in his mind. And on the next morning, when he got to the living room….
He got to truly appreciate the fact that his mother had returned when he saw the breakfast neatly arranged on the dining table. Park Kyung Hye stopped cutting the spring onions, turned her head towards Jin Woo, and asked.
“Did you sleep well, son?”
With still-sleepy eyes, he replied as a smile bloomed on his face.
“….Yes, Mom.”
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