“Take your time. Watching from behind, the way your waist moves so sharply and cleanly—it’s gorgeous. Makes me wanna touch it—ah, right, we agreed not to say things like that for a while. That was just a cute little slip from Woonie~”
“…….”
Before Na Jungwoo could even process what Tae Woon had said, a strange sense of weightlessness hit him. Not because he’d grown wings or awakened flight powers out of nowhere.
No, it was the crushing pain that hit a moment later—like his ribs had just cracked.
…Wait. Did I just get punched in the chest?
His last memory was of the guild members staring up at him in stunned silence as he flew toward the ceiling of the training hall after taking a single hit.
***
[Guildmaster Justyna and Vice-Guildmaster of Sky High reached out again. They’re asking for a meeting with your Mentor. What should I tell them?]
Justyna and the Sky High vice-guildmaster, both thoroughly impressed by Kim Sibaek during the Giantvine raid, had taken to pestering Tae Woon directly. When he blocked them, they’d shifted their attention to harassing Yang Eunho instead.
Tae Woon tapped out a reply with zero hesitation.
[Tell them if they keep sniffing around my man, I’ll kill them.]
Seven minutes passed after the message was read before Yang Eunho finally responded.
[Okay.]
It was a single word, but it held the weight of seven full minutes of inner agony. Tae Woon didn’t care. He didn’t have time to worry about that when he could be looking at the man sitting across from him.
“Hyung, how’s it been, helping out the guild members lately?”
“Helping isn’t the right word—I just keep an eye on them from time to time. It’s fun. Brings back memories.”
“If you enjoy it, how about trying a guest instructor gig at the Awakener Academy? They’ve got an opening right now.”
Kim Sibaek shook his head without a second’s thought.
“I’m in the guild because I have to be, if I want to work as a Hunter. But I don’t want to tie myself down to anything else. This place… is somewhere I’m supposed to leave someday.”
Tae Woon paused at that, just for a second. But he picked the conversation back up so naturally that Kim Sibaek didn’t notice the shift.
“Got it. Anyway, how’s your quest coming along?”
“One sec.”
Kim Sibaek chewed and swallowed the last piece of fried spring roll. As soon as he did, a notification popped up.
[Quest 04. CLEAR]
[What kind of people are Koreans? The kind who live to eat, of course! Did you enjoy the dishes you missed out on 21 years ago? u.u*]
[Try a dish you’ve never eaten before (3/3)]
They’d ordered pho, spring rolls, and bun cha at the Vietnamese place, and luckily, each dish had counted. Now he didn’t need to go on some elaborate foodie pilgrimage wondering what meals he’d missed two decades ago.
“Once again, Hyung, you saved the world today.”
“……Mm.”
Kim Sibaek responded with a reluctant hum as he spooned up some pho broth.
They were eating in a restaurant in one of the city’s busy downtown areas. Ever since they walked in, people had been sneaking glances their way—but no one had the nerve to ask for an autograph. That was thanks to Tae Woon. With his cold, sharp features and intimidating aura, he wasn’t exactly inviting. Unless you had the friendly charm of someone like Pi Minhyung, no one dared to approach them directly.
But today was different. A high schooler in uniform mustered up the courage and walked right up to their table.
“Um, excuse me… Are you Hunter Kim Sibaek?”
Kim Sibaek looked up, and the student flushed bright red with nerves as he began to speak, stammering slightly.
“M-My sister’s a civil servant, and she got seriously hurt at the Management Center… Everyone thought she wasn’t going to make it, but we heard you saved her. Thank you so, so much.”
The student gave a deep bow and carefully offered a bag of cookies—probably something he’d rushed to buy from a nearby café. Kim Sibaek hesitated for a moment, then smiled softly as he accepted them.
“Thanks. I’ll enjoy them.”
“N-No, really! Thank you! I mean, even if you were secretly in some cult or something, I’d still think you’re awesome! F-Fighting!”
Face flushed to his ears, the student gave a quick, awkward bow and ran out of the restaurant. Through the window facing the sidewalk, they could see his friends crowding around him, chattering excitedly.
Kim Sibaek turned the bag of cookies over in his hands, lost in thought. The feeling was strangely familiar—and yet unfamiliar. As he rifled through his memories, he suddenly realized why.
It had been a long, long time since ordinary people had thanked him like this.
“The baby you saved back then? She’s all grown up now. Married, with a child of her own.”
“The descendants of the city you protected…”
“Thanks to you, Your Grace…”
Words of thanks from “ordinary people”—those with no Mana, no Divine Power, simply living each day to the fullest in a world still plagued by monsters.
In the midst of the full-scale war with Edokers, always stationed on the front lines, he hadn’t heard those kinds of words in ages. Only now did Kim Sibaek realize how close those everyday lives were here—how much of them had soaked into this place.
Ah.
The realization struck him like lightning.
This was the reason for all the silly, mundane quests.
The system had made him visit cafés, take one-day classes, and eat out. If those quests hadn’t forced him out, he would’ve spent nearly every hour inside the 7777 Guild HQ. The truth was, if not for Tae Woon occasionally dragging him along, he wouldn’t have stepped out for personal enjoyment even once.
Though he could handle most of his duties from the penthouse or the guild headquarters, the real reason was simpler—he didn’t want to get too deeply entangled in life on Earth.
Kim Sibaek was always meant to leave.
“I’m not looking to date, so you don’t have to worry. Isn’t it reckless to fall in love when I’m in the middle of a quest that could decide the fate of the world? Besides, I don’t want to leave pieces of myself behind in a place I’ll have to walk away from.”
And by “pieces,” he didn’t just mean romantic attachments. Kim Sibaek avoided forming deep ties of any kind—and he wasn’t planning to change that. Not with the guild members he’d come to know. Not even with the younger brother he’d missed for so long. It was the same reason he’d never once visited the orphanage.
He drew a hard line between himself and others. Every connection stayed strictly professional. He’d never once reached out to Bae Ji-han or the HG Guildmaster in private. Aside from one brief moment of weakness—when he called out to Detective Park—the only exception was Tae Woon, the man who remembered him.
Even today, if not for the quest, Kim Sibaek wouldn’t have bothered seeking out a Vietnamese restaurant, let alone crossed paths with that high school student. And more than likely, the quests would keep pushing him out into the world whether he liked it or not.
Now that he was active as a Hunter, he would keep saving people. And just like today, more and more ordinary lives would brush up against his own. Slowly, the truth became clear: both Mak Slechth and Earth were, in the end, worlds where ordinary people lived out their ordinary lives.
A faint crease appeared between Kim Sibaek’s brows.
Whether this turn of events was a blessing or a curse—he couldn’t say.
Nor could he decipher the true intent behind the system that kept pushing him into these situations.
***
A few days ago, a strange new customer started showing up at the café inside the 7777 Guild headquarters.
He wore threadbare clothes and always paid in crumpled cash, which got the staff whispering about whether he might be an undocumented immigrant. But his Korean was flawless—native, even—and his pronunciation betrayed no foreign accent, making his identity all the more puzzling.
That mysterious customer was Edokers.
The cost of living in this country is insane!
Edokers’s hands trembled as he paid, the price of a single coffee wiping out what he’d earned from an hour of hard labor. And since he wasn’t a guild member, he couldn’t even collect loyalty points.
Unaware that he was being paid less than half the minimum wage, he once again ordered the cheapest item on the menu: a shot of espresso. His body merely mimicked a human form, and it had long since lost any true sense of taste. Thankfully, that meant he couldn’t actually feel how bitter it was.
Truthfully, he couldn’t afford to waste money like this. He had too many questions and no answers. How had he ended up expelled as a Fragment? Why was that Fragment a remnant of his human self?
“Don’t blame the world. If you must resent someone, blame your grandfather who never should have become king—and your mother, who failed to stop him.”
Lately, that old warning from his mother—one he’d long forgotten after becoming a Paladin of Chaos—kept ringing in his ears.
It was an absurd, tangled situation, but Chaos had gone utterly silent, as if it had forgotten him. He had no choice but to find his own way to survive. No matter how he looked at it, there was only one path left to him.
He had to kill the Apostle of Death and Beauty.
