“Even if you can’t fight, your experience must be substantial. That alone is a huge help.”
At those words, Tae Woon stood up without protest. Gwak Yoonsang once again felt the pressing need to grab hold of Kim Sibaek’s pant leg and somehow keep him anchored in Korea.
While staying alert and doing light stretches, Sibaek sensed someone cautiously approaching. It was Bae Ji-han.
“Hey, mister!”
“…Ah, yes. Have you eaten?”
Kim Sibaek responded a beat late, just realizing the kid was referring to him. Though the others were brimming with curiosity about the unnamed Hunter who had shown such incredible skill, his unfamiliar face made them hesitant to approach. But Bae Ji-han, with both his usual boldness and the fearless recklessness of youth, jumped right in.
“It was my first time eating army food—it sucks. But mister, you were insanely strong. Seriously amazing. You’re S-rank, right? Not just any S-rank either—world-class, easy! Were you hiding your identity all this time? You didn’t even know Tae Woon was that famous, so I started guessing. Maybe you were off in some remote village, secretly saving people like a hidden hero doing volunteer work. Am I right? If you didn’t look so Korean, I’d have thought you were some sword master pretending to be a normie.”
Caught in the flood of words, Kim Sibaek finally managed to get a word in.
“Sword master?”
“Come on, don’t act clueless. Karl Werner—the sword master from Germany.”
“Ah… I know Karl Werner.”
A memory flickered in the back of his mind. As a fencer, it was impossible not to know the name.
The man who had defeated him in the Olympic semifinals. After the match, Werner patted him on the back and said, “See you at the next Olympics, kid.” But Sibaek never returned to the Olympic stage.
Werner had gone on to win three consecutive Olympic golds—a fencing prodigy. It wasn’t hard to believe he’d Awakened and become a Hunter strong enough to be called a sword master.
“Of course you’d know. How could you not? Anyway, can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“When you used your ability earlier, your sword and body lit up, right? Is that part of your power? I’ve never heard of mana glowing like that!”
Mana—the alien energy that began to manifest in the world after the Cataclysm—was the force wielded by those who had Awakened. It was a concept nearly identical to demonic energy, so it hadn’t taken him long to understand.
“Your ability is flight or levitation, right?”
Bae Ji-han couldn’t stop himself from going on, calling it something straight out of a wuxia novel.
“And you look super young—isn’t that like reverse aging or something?”
The way he acted reminded Sibaek of the younger kids at the orphanage, and it brought a faint smile to his lips.
“It’s not really a special trait… more like the power of faith?”
Since his strength stemmed from devout religious belief, that wasn’t an inaccurate way to put it.
“Mister, don’t say stuff like that. With a trustworthy face like yours, you could probably sell jade mats. I already got scammed by some phony who said he could Awaken me. Snuck off behind my mom’s back and got my ass handed to me.”
“There are really scammers like that?”
“Tons. Ugh, if I could just Awaken, my whole life would change.”
As if it understood his frustration, the baby crow perched on Sibaek’s head gave a sharp flap of its wings.
“Oh right, mister. That bird’s your new pet, right? Be careful not to lose it. If you drop it inside a portal, you’ll never find it again. I’ll ask around and see if anyone’s got a string to tie it to your ankle or something.”
“It’s fine. It won’t fly far on its own.”
“Guess crows really are super smart, huh?”
“More importantly, Ji-han.”
“…Whoa. Yeah?”
It was the first time anyone had called him by his name like that, and Bae Ji-han blinked in surprise. Kim Sibaek, still with the bird on his head, smiled kindly. His face looked like it belonged on a jade mat infomercial.
“Do you follow any religion?”
A little distance away from the rest, four people gathered in a makeshift meeting spot where they couldn’t be overheard: Gwak Yoonsang from the Paranormal Phenomena Response Agency, and three Hunters from the Seven Guild.
Tae Woon’s voice sliced sharply through the air.
“What’s the point of splitting into two teams? And why separate me and Sibaek hyung?”
Gwak Yoonsang wiped the nervous sweat from his neck.
“You’ve probably already guessed this, Guildmaster, but no matter how close we get to the department store—the one we think holds the core—we can’t seem to make any progress.”
“The host must be someone who works there.”
“That’s the most likely scenario. But when we scanned the area earlier, we also detected an external core. That means there’s another one.”
Typically, an Eid Portal only contains one core. But in rare cases, multiple cores can be detected. In such cases, the outer core must be destroyed first, or the inner core at the heart of the portal remains unreachable.
And that was the issue.
“Tch.”
Tae Woon scoffed so sharply that even Pi Minhyung and Seo Gaeun flinched—despite having nothing to do with the situation.
“That garbage scanner with less than a 30 percent accuracy rate?”
“…It’s actually 27.83 percent, so if you round up, it’s 30. If it were just Hunters going in, I’d be onboard. But there are too many civilians. We don’t know where the external core will show up—or if we’ll even find it. Searching while trying to protect civilians is too risky.”
Splitting the Hunters into two teams—one to protect civilians here, and a small elite squad to locate the external core—was a reasonable strategy. Sure, dividing their forces added pressure to the defense team, but with four S-rank Hunters present, it was a plan they could afford to execute.
“I agree with Section Chief Gwak.”
“Sounds good to me too. I just want to get out of here and have a proper meal. I’ve been craving Ms. Kang’s sweet and sour pork.”
But Tae Woon wasn’t convinced.
“Then Sibaek hyung and I can stay. Send the rest.”
“Hunter Seo Gaeun is a tank. The Agency already has tanks. It makes more sense to assign her to the strike team. And when it comes to damage dealers, no one matches your firepower, Guildmaster…”
“Me? The useless weakling? I’d just weigh her down. Section Chief Gwak, did you lose a chunk of your brain or something? Huh?”
“…”
Seriously? Sibaek wasn’t even paying attention, so why was he still committed to this ridiculous act? Gwak Yoonsang cursed internally but clenched his fists. He had to win this argument.
Tae Woon was clearly going to refuse any combat role as long as Kim Sibaek was watching. If they wanted to deploy their strongest asset, they had to separate the two.
Then, unexpectedly, Pi Minhyung stepped in.
“You seriously never heard of push-and-pull?”
“…”
“Boss Choi said you and hyung have been holed up at your place together. The guy you’ve been ordering meals with—that was him, right? God, I’m exhausted just thinking about it. He’s probably been staring at your brooding face all day.”
“Hyung thinks my face is cute.”
“…Good for you. Wow. I’m super jealous.”
Having stepped in only to regret it immediately, Pi Minhyung awkwardly withdrew. Still, it did the trick.
Tae Woon, brows furrowed with irritation, finally held out his hand to Gwak Yoonsang.
“Give me the scanner.”
Assigned to the strike team, Tae Woon played it off with a detailed excuse—he was only tagging along as an experienced advisor. Kim Sibaek gave him an encouraging smile.
“Yeah, yeah. Do your best. If you get scared, make sure to hide behind Gaeun.”
As Tae Woon and Seo Gaeun disappeared from view, Lord Biendeoé asked,
[Death and Beauty is concerned—are you sure it’s safe to put someone so fragile on a two-person team?]
“Woonie?”
Kim Sibaek chuckled softly.
“That kid once fought seventeen enemies at once, collapsed from anemia afterward—and still tried to act fine in front of me.”
***
Eid Portals terrified people even more than monsters. The idea that your family, your friends—or even you—could transform into something unrecognizable struck a deeply personal kind of fear. But humans are creatures of adaptation.
As the cause behind the portals became clearer and their frequency dropped compared to the chaos of earlier years, people began treating Eid Portals like traffic accidents—dangerous, but no longer world-shattering.
In the past, a single portal would have made national headlines. Now, it might warrant a passing mention in an online news blurb. Still, just like a major traffic collision, an Eid Portal that swept up over thirty people didn’t go unnoticed.
Government agents from the Paranormal Phenomena Response Agency had sealed off the third floor of the department store, specifically the men’s clothing section where the portal had opened. Since Eid Portals react violently to external stimuli, no one dared approach. Curious onlookers gathered at a distance, but kept their distance. The families of the missing stood quietly, hands clasped in anxious prayer.
Reporters huddled nearby, whispering among themselves.
“Any word on who the host is?”
“Not yet.”
Since the host could offer a crucial lead on the core or the portal keeper, strike teams usually tried to identify them before entering. But in places like this, with dense foot traffic and so many missing persons, that was easier said than done.
A portal’s host only reveals themselves after the portal is cleared. Until then, no one could say if someone currently unreachable was the host, a victim, or just someone with a dead phone.
Despite not knowing who the host was, the strike team had already entered—and yet neither the officials, the crowd, nor the families seemed particularly tense.
And honestly, that made sense.
“They said the Guildmaster of Seven got pulled in, didn’t they?”
