# 12
Jin-ha was stunned by the sight before him.
Has he controlled the gate now…? He had never seen or heard of such a thing. Why couldn’t he access the Information Eye right now? If only he could confirm this scene with the Information Eye…
The man took Jin-ha, who was so shocked he couldn’t take his eyes off the gate, into his arms and gently pushed back Jin-ha’s disheveled hair.
“I’ll be waiting,” the man whispered, biting Jin-ha’s earlobe firmly. “Come save me again, Lee Jin-ha.”
As Jin-ha was pushed toward the gate by the man’s hands, his foggy mind suddenly cleared, and he realized several things at once.
First, there was no way he wouldn’t recognize the name and face of a Korean skilled enough to take down that enormous spider in one go.
Second, the mana oversaturation phenomenon was still an unsolved condition on Earth, and the only solution was to wait for the mana to naturally dissipate. The reason it couldn’t be artificially resolved was because Earth lacked Hunters who could handle mana with sufficient delicacy. Attempting to do so could potentially cause the patient’s mana to go berserk, making it better to leave it untouched.
Yet the man from earlier had resolved Jin-ha’s mana oversaturation by pushing his own mana into Jin-ha’s body.
Combined with what he’d just learned—that the man was pretending to have fairy sickness when he wasn’t actually afflicted…
When Jin-ha’s wide eyes met the man’s, the blue-eyed man smirked, raising one corner of his mouth.
“…”
Jin-ha wanted to say something, but no words came out. With a dizzy sensation, he felt himself sink as though underwater, then suddenly surge upward before falling on the opposite side of the gate.
Rolling across the ground, Jin-ha grabbed his throat and broke into harsh coughing.
“Jin-ha!”
“Jin-ha, are you alright?!”
“My goodness, he came back on his own…?”
There was commotion all around. He raised his head, gasping. Dozens of people had gathered around the gate.
Jin-ha stared at the gate he had just emerged from, trying to catch his breath.
Why hadn’t he been suspicious of the man all this time? Normally, he would have thoroughly verified the man’s condition before concluding he had fairy sickness. Even if he had initially believed him, he wouldn’t have dropped his guard when the man behaved suspiciously. There had been several opportunities to be suspicious. Yet Jin-ha had trusted the man completely.
“Ugh…!”
Jin-ha groaned, clutching his forehead as memories he hadn’t fully processed came rushing back clearly.
When the fairy’s soul leapt from the fairy tree and lunged at him, the man had saved Jin-ha. The fairy had hesitated despite the man’s threats, hovering around them, and then suddenly disappeared as if caught and dragged away by something.
Yes, almost like magic.
“Bring Jin-ha this way.”
A man who was both a Hunter and a doctor shined a penlight into Jin-ha’s eyes.
“His pupils are responding, so he’s not entranced by a ghost-type monster. Let’s move him to the hospital.”
The man must have done something to him.
Otherwise, Jin-ha would never have so completely trusted a man pretending to have fairy sickness with such unconvincing acting. Hadn’t he even thought about becoming the man’s sponsor if he had no family?
That was a thought his normally suspicious self would never have entertained.
It had been that way from the beginning.
Looking back, it was strange that he hadn’t questioned the absence of a gate nearby when he first regained consciousness. He had thought he was being rational the whole time, but in retrospect, it was as if his brain had been removed.
The man must have done something to him while he was unconscious. Otherwise, Jin-ha would have noticed how blatantly the man was playing him.
“That… bastard…!”
“Jin-ha? Wait, stay with us!”
To play with a person like that! Jin-ha turned his head to glare at the portal. His heart was pounding with anger when his chest grew hot again and his head spun. He felt nauseated and dizzy. Then, amid the pain of his mind burning, the information filling his vision suddenly switched off.
“Jin-ha!”
* * *
The story of Lee Jin-ha—a man famous for his imperturbable calm regardless of circumstances—cursing and fainting quickly became well-known in Hunter society. This was because the Hunter team that had prepared to enter the gate had declared they wouldn’t go in until Jin-ha woke up and explained what had happened.
The mission was indefinitely postponed, and as a result, Jin-ha, who woke up in the hospital room the next day, received a request to join a video conference right away. It was scheduled for an hour later.
“Ah, should I tell them you can’t do it, Jin-ha?”
The middle-aged man nervously checking Jin-ha’s reaction was Section Chief Nam Hyun-seok from the World Gate Information Association, who had become Jin-ha’s supervisor while Jin-ha was dispatched to Korea’s Anomaly Management Agency. He was also the person who had boarded the helicopter to Mount Yonghwa with Jin-ha at dawn.
Though he was Jin-ha’s superior, Nam couldn’t act authoritarian like a typical boss in a regular company or civil service because Jin-ha was a dispatched officer from the Association. Jin-ha had accepted the dawn assignment because Section Chief Nam had an excellent ability to delegate work without crossing boundaries. He was exactly the kind of supervisor a workaholic like Jin-ha needed.
However, this time, he had somewhat crossed the line.
A video conference right after barely returning from being sucked into a gate?
“…It’s fine,” Jin-ha replied tiredly. He had things to say anyway. Judging by how quickly the video conference had been scheduled, his agenda probably aligned with that of the Deputy Director of the Anomaly Management Agency who had requested the meeting.
Jin-ha quietly finished his meal, took a shower, then sat on the hospital bed and activated the video conference system. After entering the meeting room he’d been invited to, the other participants soon joined.
The Deputy Director of the Anomaly Management Agency, the Guild Master of the Hunter guild “Narak” that had been scheduled to enter the gate, and five or six other people.
It might seem strange for external guild members to attend an internal meeting, but it wasn’t uncommon anymore. Hunters weren’t civilians; they were like reservists who could be mobilized in times of national danger.
Korea’s situation was different from countries without resident registration systems. In Korea, awakened status was even indicated on resident registration cards.
Moreover, the Narak guild had prepared to enter the gate at great risk to rescue Jin-ha when he went missing, so they were certainly qualified to attend.
“You’ve been through a lot. I’m sorry to ask right after you’ve regained consciousness, but could you tell us what happened?” the Deputy Director asked as soon as the meeting began. Although he tried to maintain a neutral expression, his tension and anticipation were evident.
Jin-ha first shared what the meeting participants would be most curious about.
“The Mount Yonghwa gate is indeed a dimensional portal.”
“As I thought…!”
“We’ve been waiting for this day. Hey, gather all the data on dimensional portals!”
“We need failure cases as well as success stories, Deputy Director! If we don’t want to stupidly lose the portal, we need to be thoroughly prepared…”
“However,” Jin-ha raised his hand to get the attention of the suddenly excited meeting participants before continuing, “it’s likely different from what you’re thinking.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Mount Yonghwa dimensional portal was clearly intentionally connected to Earth from the other side.”
The room fell silent at those shocking words.
A dimensional portal referred to a path connected to another world. Unlike gates that existed only as locations that disappeared once all monsters beyond were defeated, the place beyond a portal was a complete world like Earth. Portal-connected worlds always contained civilized societies, usually with different types of civilizations than Earth’s, and they had been dealing with monsters for much longer. If successful in establishing relations with them, one could acquire monster-fighting know-how, special weapons, various tools, herbs, and more to sell worldwide. It was an opportunity for great profit.
The problem was that the civilization on the other side of the portal wasn’t necessarily friendly. Currently, 17 countries had dimensional portals. However, only four—the United States, Denmark, Brazil, and Türkiye—had established trade relations and gained the “goose that lays golden eggs.” That’s how difficult it was to successfully establish relations.
In most cases, the worlds beyond portals had class systems, and it was extremely difficult for suddenly appearing foreigners to win the favor of high-status individuals. There were even cases where conflicts escalated to the point where the other world declared war on Earth. Such portals were forcibly deactivated by installing mana-extracting artifacts around them.
Portals usually occurred naturally, so cutting connections through such measures was possible. But if someone intentionally connected it, couldn’t they reconnect and invade even if this side deactivated it due to problems?
“Specifically, I saw a man place his hand on a small portal and expand it.”
“He controlled the portal.”
“Yes. I’m not certain if he actually opened it, but he definitely controlled it.”
All the meeting participants were certain that the “bastard” in Jin-ha’s reported curse was this man.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
