Chapter 81
Rumble—! Thunder struck in the rift’s sky. It was then that the massive monster’s body crumbled.
“The passage master is dead!”
One hunter shouted as he kicked away a collapsed shell fragment. It meant that Mujin, who had entered the black water, had succeeded in eliminating the main body.
As if it were a lie, the weakened lesser monsters either dug tunnels to escape or were killed. Some hunters sat on the ground wiping sweat, while others chased them to the end to take their heads.
“Han Geumseum Hunter, what you just did…”
Choi Seongdo muttered with a pale face as he approached the fallen Rift Control Agency hunter behind Eunseong. Most of the hunters at the scene where the battle had just ended didn’t seem to have noticed the situation here yet.
“It was a clearly intentional attack. I merely fought back.”
Eunseong met Choi Seongdo’s gaze with a deliberately calm expression.
“I know.”
Choi Seongdo only moved his eyes to look down at the fallen hunter. Then, without moving even a fingertip, he froze the man’s heart. Unable to mount even the slightest defense, his limp limbs trembled before he died without letting out a single scream.
“…”
Eunseong witnessed the entire process and felt it with vivid sensation.
Once the life force completely drained from the hunter’s body, the energy that had been healing his wounds scattered, and red blood seeped out. Eunseong stepped back from the pool of blood. Choi Seongdo lightly exhaled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Earlier, I wasn’t looking at Han Geumseum Hunter with suspicion—I was going to ask you to keep it secret.”
“…Which part?”
Eunseong continued speaking while sensing Mujin’s energy approaching.
“This person secretly attacking Choi Seongdo Hunter, or Choi Seongdo Hunter killing this person—which one are you asking me to keep secret?”
“Ha, hahaha. Han Geumseum Hunter.”
Choi Seongdo laughed briefly as if he’d heard something very amusing. Then he completely wiped away the friendly smile he’d been wearing on his face. With a coldly settled expression, he rolled his tongue inside his mouth. Eunseong quietly watched his twitching cheek.
“…Thank you for earlier. I unintentionally owe Han Geumseum Hunter a debt.”
“…”
The few seconds of looking into each other’s eyes felt extraordinarily long.
Really? Eunseong thought that if it weren’t for Mujin, this bastard’s behavior would certainly have been different from now, but he didn’t want to provoke him, so he just kept his mouth shut tight.
The black liquid that the main body had been spewing from the crater had already dried up. Crack—! At the sound of the ground splitting, he turned to see a human figure that had shot up with a pillar of fire, curving its trajectory in a circle to land near Eunseong. Mujin had returned to the surface by breaking through the ground just as the battle’s cleanup was finished. Eunseong, whose tension immediately released, smiled brightly as he welcomed him.
“How many minutes was it since you left the spot next to Han Geumseum, huh?”
Tsk, clicking his tongue, Mujin immediately stood blocking in front of Eunseong. Unlike the heat rising from his entire body, the energy wrapping around Eunseong was soft and warm. As he shook off his hands glistening with black poison, a monster core briefly showed in his grasp.
His murderous gaze turned toward the hunter lying dead. There was no need to hear an explanation. Mujin, who had guessed the entire situation from just Eunseong’s expression, spoke quietly to Choi Seongdo.
“Want to die?”
“Calm down. I had no intention of doing what Baek Mujin Hunter is imagining.”
Faster than Mujin could raise his energy, Choi Seongdo completely gathered all the energy in his body. As if surrendering, he raised both hands low and stepped back. At the same time, hunters began approaching from around them, celebrating Mujin’s return.
“Wow, damn, you pulled that out with your bare hands?”
“Did you put a barrier on your hands? You look fine.”
Then someone stopped laughing and swallowed their breath.
“…Uh, that.”
The hunters who had been admiringly examining Mujin’s hands belatedly discovered the one lying there. The monster core always received the most attention. The atmosphere turned cold in an instant.
“Ah, I thought there wouldn’t be any deaths this time…”
“Fucking rift.”
The voices were closer to dryness than regret. Choi Seongdo, who had been standing closest to the corpse, knelt down pretending to know nothing and searched through the dead hunter’s belongings to tear off his identification tag. Then he activated the man’s guide device.
“It seems like things are wrapping up, so everyone should return. I’ll escort the body.”
Choi Seongdo’s response was swift, as if he’d caught an opportunity to escape. Eunseong couldn’t understand the bastard’s intentions at all and didn’t know what to do. Mujin, who had been looking around, stepped forward instead.
“I’ll handle the cleanup and core destruction myself, so everyone else return first. We’ll retrieve the bike and go up separately.”
“Ah, right. It’d be a waste to abandon that.”
The hunters, who quickly pulled themselves together, nodded their heads. Whether they were novices with little rift experience or veterans who had roamed rifts for a long time, they all shared the same desire to escape the rift as quickly as possible. So they all accepted Mujin’s proposal without complaint.
When the guide devices activated, beams of light wove through the air, drawing return paths in sequence. One or two people first stepped into them. Only the black, wet dirt floor and broken equipment remained where they had disappeared.
The remaining ones didn’t linger long either. Walking into the light in groups of three or four, some briefly made eye contact with Mujin and exchanged silent bows, while others raised their hands in playful farewells.
“Well then, good work.”
“See you outside.”
The words echoed hollowly. Finally, the dead hunter and Choi Seongdo boarded the guide’s light. He kept looking at Eunseong until just before he disappeared. That gaze was somehow chilling, making Eunseong shiver.
Now only Mujin, Eunseong, and the monster core remained in the rift where the guide’s light had completely gone out.
“Is it okay to just let him go like that?”
“There’s probably someone else who noticed besides me, right?”
“What? That the Rift Control Agency hunters tried to kill each other?”
“Hm? They tried to kill each other? I only knew that Choi Seongdo killed him.”
“The dead person tried to kill Choi Seongdo first.”
“Huh. The Rift Control Agency is quite a fragmented group too.”
Mujin spoke and laughed in a tone suggesting it was no big deal. He threw the monster core on the ground and rummaged through his belongings, then took out various things and began cleaning his hands and face. When he poured expensive potion on his hands, Eunseong was surprised, wondering if he’d been injured somewhere, but it was just to wash off the filth. Eunseong watched the amount he was using in amazement before speaking.
“Do things like this happen often in rifts?”
“Often? You should consider it always like this. This place is lawless territory.”
“You’ve been coming to places like this since you were 10?”
“Since winter, so I was almost 11.”
His tone was so indifferent that Eunseong felt his throat tighten for no reason. Mujin himself just became annoyed when the potion and wrapping couldn’t completely clean off all the black stains on his hands.
“Knowing all that, you still said you’d go to the Great Rift alone?”
When moisture crept into his voice, only then did Mujin look up. He habitually tried to ruffle Eunseong’s hair, then realized what was on his hands and clenched his fist.
“When I saw you standing there glaring at Choi Seongdo earlier, you don’t know how shocked I was.”
“I knew you were coming back, so I was fine. I wasn’t scared.”
“I was alone and okay for so long that I keep forgetting. I thought again that I stupidly left you here alone and charged ahead…”
“Are you stupid? What are you talking about?”
“I am stupid.”
As if he couldn’t stand it anymore, Mujin rubbed Eunseong’s cheek with the back of his hand. It was the only place not dirty. Eunseong stiffened in surprise but didn’t reject the touch. As he stood still, enduring with an increasingly reddening face, Mujin bit his own lip hard.
“…I really was an idiot.”
“No. Stop saying things like that.”
“No?”
“Yeah.”
The gaze looking down was so intense it felt ticklish down to the soles of his feet. It was when Eunseong, unable to endure, lowered his gaze that Mujin bent his head and whispered in his ear.
“Then we can do it again when we get home, right?”
Eunseong’s eyes widened greatly. The muddy floor of the rift with its blood pools suddenly looked like a spring meadow. As he exhaled heated breath and raised his head, Mujin’s two eyes glowing yellow were intense.
“What, what do you mean again…?”
“You know everything but you’re asking back—do you want confirmation? Or do you want to avoid it? As you might guess, I won’t accept running away.”
Both of Mujin’s cheeks were tinged reddish. At this expression he’d never seen before, Eunseong also turned red all over like a tomato.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
