Chapter 37

Chapter 37.

“It begins now.”

-Yes, Brother. I am standing by.

I used the Synchronization Ticket.

[Target?]

[Lee A-un]

Flash!

The ticket scattered bright light as it softly vanished.

“How is it?”

-Ooooooh! Brother?!

Lee A-un’s astonishment came through.

-Something appeared in front of my eyes! It says it is a ‘Contract’? Huh? Huuuh? What is this? A time limit?

“What is happening?”

-What... is this?

“?”

Thud.

“Lee A-un?”

It was not the click of a call disconnecting.

It was the thud of a phone falling onto the floor.

I focused all my attention on my hearing.

Bzzzt— Bzzzzzt—

“....”

All I could hear was a strange sound like static crackling.

It was not the kind of noise one heard when call quality was bad.

Something... something was happening.

“Hello?”

The moment I cautiously called out to Lee A-un.

[Agent.]

Snowy cautiously spoke to me.

[Hunter Lee A-un’s vital signs have disappeared.]

“Disappeared? Are you saying he died?”

[No. I mean they literally disappeared. Missing.]

Had the Possession Ticket worked properly?

What had he meant by the ‘Contract’ and ‘time limit’ he mentioned before vanishing?

‘I will hear the details from Lee A-un himself.’

I turned my gaze toward Lost Honor.

I had moved Nebula to the front of the giant Gate where I had first met Han Seol-ah.

After waiting for a moment.

[Aaagh!]

Light suddenly flashed in midair, and Lee A-un dropped down.

“...He really came.”

A tingling chill ran up my spine.

When it was Han Seol-ah, my impression had only been something like, ‘An existing Hunter has been added as an NPC.’

But this was different.

The entire body of a ‘real person,’ who had just been speaking urgently through my watch moments ago, had dropped into my monitor!

[Huh? Huhhh?]

Even though I had roughly explained the situation to him, Lee A-un looked utterly flustered.

He checked whether all his limbs were there.

He also groped around various parts of his body.

His head moved without rest as he frantically took in the unfamiliar medieval scenery.

Click.

I moved Nebula in front of Lee A-un.

[Hmm?]

The moment Lee A-un sensed my character approaching, lowered his gaze from the sky, and stared at my character.

[Eeeekyaaaaaaaah!!!]

Lee A-un leaped up like a cat that had seen something terrifying and began screaming.

[Brother, Brotheeeeer!!!!]

“What, what is it? Why is he acting like this?”

[Huaaah...]

Lee A-un collapsed onto the ground.

Was he really this frightened?

“Han Seol-ah was not like that.”

My character was a little big and black, but he looked impressive.

Just how timid was this guy?

I moved Nebula a little distance away and waited for Lee A-un to regain his senses.

[Hoo, hoo.]

After trembling for quite a while, Lee A-un squeezed his eyes shut and began muttering rapidly like someone chanting a spell.

[Brother. Yes. That is Brother. He is the one who saved me. He is the one who gave me a new life... He is an angel. Behind that evil spirit is Brother.]

Most of it was praise directed at me, so I let it pass, but one strange word stuck sharply in my mind.

‘...Evil spirit?’

[Hoo. Yes. Mm. Good. It is all right.]

Smack! Smack!

Lee A-un slapped his cheeks until they turned bright red, then shouted with spirit.

[I am ready, Brother!]

“Hmm.”

Lost Honor did not have a chat function.

Whisper could be used because the function had been unlocked this time... and to begin with, it had a usage limit of three times.

I had to save it for the moments when it was necessary, so thoroughly implanting my ‘plan’ in him outside the game beforehand had been the only perfect arrangement.

And the first part of that plan was...

[The Contract... Yes. I saw that, and I pressed ‘Yes.’ I was certain it would become an enormous opportunity for me, so the thought of pressing ‘No’ never even occurred to me. But this is strange. I cannot actually remember what the contract said.]

If he met Nebula, he would explain exactly what he had experienced.

‘A Contract, an offer he could not refuse... But the important contents of the Contract are missing.’

Hmmm.

Lee A-un seemed to be scraping together his memories as he clutched at his head, but the result did not change.

[And after I pressed ‘Yes’... I feel like I went through something, something truly incredible. But I cannot remember that either. It feels like someone erased only that scene with an eraser.]

‘I cannot tell how he was possessed and arrived here either. Hmm. Someone erased his memory? Who? And how?’

Considering even Snowy’s ‘missing’ declaration, it seemed that being possessed into the game meant he was judged to have completely disappeared from Earth.

Then he reappeared inside Lost Honor.

‘In that case, dimensional transfer?’

Lee A-un’s briefing continued.

[Ah, when I came to my senses, I was here... and, um, I am sorry, but Brother’s character? He really looks incredibly vicious and frightening.]

“What is frightening about him? He is cool. Black and shiny.”

I could tolerate insults against me.

But I could not tolerate insults against Nebula!

“I ought to just...”

I was tempted to challenge him to a duel and crack his skull open.

[It does not feel like this place is a game at all. My body, my Mana Hall, and everything else feel exactly the same as when I was on Earth. Rather than inside a game, it feels like I am just in some kind of set? Or a theme park? Something like that.]

“That just means it is full of realism.”

In any case, Lost Honor was a game.

The briefing afterward was nothing but useless admiration.

I opened a portal and took Lee A-un to the hideout.

It was to clear the Epic Quest that had begun the moment I confirmed Lee A-un’s existence.

[Emergency Epic Quest]

[Save the Republic of Korea from the Crisis of Destruction 3]

[Quest Objective]

[Awaken ‘Lee A-un’ to EX-rank]

The quest objective was simple.

It was the same objective as Han Seol-ah’s earlier one.

[Quest Reward]

[Corridor of Constellations - ‘Possession’ Enhancement]

[Possession Ticket]

“Possession Enhancement, huh.”

It seemed to mean the Possession Ticket would become stronger.

The Possession Ticket possessed the tremendous ability to make someone possessed into Lost Honor, but selecting the target was quite demanding.

The system would only recognize the target if I wrote their affiliated nation, Hunter rank, alias, and real name completely and accurately.

It could also only possess Hunters belonging to the same nation.

The reward saying ‘Possession’ would be enhanced probably meant those conditions would be relaxed.

While choosing the elixir I would feed Lee A-un, I thought about the method of Awakening him to EX-rank.

“The difficulty is... still unknown.”

It was not clear exactly how much currency and time I would have to invest.

I would only be able to estimate it once I knew how dangerous the curse afflicting Lee A-un was.

Of course, I was not saying it was impossible.

“This should do.”

From Storage No. 98, where I kept only Legendary Elixir-type items, I took out an elegant glass bottle filled with golden liquid.

It was the elixir, ‘Pure Elixir Containing the Divine Blood of the Great Golden God.’

Just the modifier attached to the name of the elixir placed it in a completely different dimension from the ‘Red Elixir’ Lee A-un had drunk earlier.

If Red Elixir was a 10-point elixir, this ‘Pure Elixir’ could be called an 800-point elixir.

Its effect was simple and clear.

There was only one.

Removal of all curses.

It was not a cheap effect like removing curses of a certain grade.

It removed ‘all’ curses.

In Lost Honor, the modifier ‘all’ literally meant everything, with no questions asked and no exceptions.

There was no curse in this universe that this elixir could not remove.

This was a specialist elixir created by pouring every function the elixir possessed into curse removal alone.

I threw a Pure Elixir in front of Lee A-un.

Without hesitation, Lee A-un gulped the Pure Elixir down in one shot.

***

“Wow, this is really delicious.”

Was this what the taste of heaven was like?

He sensed a sweetness he had never tasted even once before.

Lee A-un sank into the aftertaste.

‘But...’

If he recalled what Brother had explained to him beforehand, the moment he drank this, golden light was supposed to flash from his body, and all his curses were supposed to be cured...

‘Why is there no change at all?’

Was it because the medicine had not taken effect yet?

Blink. Blink.

“Brother?”

At that moment.

THUMP!

An enormous vibration, one that seemed to make his entire body tremble and resonate, burst out from his heart.

It was a heartbeat so powerful it was absurd to think it had come from a human heart.

“Kraaaagh!”

At the same time, agony that felt as though his whole body were being torn apart swept over him, and Lee A-un collapsed onto the floor.

“Urgh, uuurgh!”

Disgusting chunks, whether blood clots or something else, surged out of his mouth again and again.

Lee A-un could not confirm it himself, but at that moment, ominous black mist was billowing out of his entire body.

‘I-I am dying...! I am dying!’

Just as Lee A-un was about to let go of his sanity from that tremendous pain and torment.

Hissssss!

Golden mist rose from Lee A-un’s entire body.

The golden mist devoured the black mist in an instant and warmly enveloped Lee A-un’s entire body.

“Huuu—”

The pain disappeared.

All the strength left Lee A-un’s body at once, and he went limp.

But it had not disappeared completely.

Lee A-un’s insides were still being torn to shreds, but because the pain he had first felt had been so intense, the agony now only felt faint.

Moreover, the elixir’s function was healing his wounds at ultra-high speed.

Therefore, the pain Lee A-un was feeling right now was...

A refreshing sensation, as though he were receiving a massage.

‘This is nice... Haaa.’

Bliss.

It felt as though a superhuman-class masseur were directly massaging his organs...

Lee A-un cautiously opened his eyes.

Perhaps he had shed tears of blood, because his vision was bright red, and his eyes felt dry and stiff.

Beyond his vision, he saw the giant black knight looking down at him indifferently.

It was a form of terror that seemed to stop his breath.

However, Lee A-un looked up at that being with bloodshot eyes and forced the corners of his mouth upward.

‘Yes... This pain and this monstrous form are the trial the angel prepared in order to let me be reborn!’

Lee A-un smiled in ecstasy, foamed at the mouth, and fainted.

***

“Ugh, disgusting. I really thought a demon was about to pop out, damn it.”

Phew.

I stroked my startled chest.

When Lee A-un let out that horrible scream, blood burst from his entire body, and black mist poured wildly out of him, I thought he had been possessed by an evil spirit.

Truly, it was the kind of visual one would see in a horror game.

The golden elixir was forcibly joining and stitching together Lee A-un’s body, which had been turning into a lump of meat, and molding it back into something vaguely human.

It looked as though a god with golden hands was shaping a human out of clay.

‘I never thought I would actually see the metaphor of a person being molded from dough, damn it.’

Even faith I had never had began to form. Insane.

Until now, my character had always eaten things just fine with a click and a flash.

‘What if the power of the elixir and the power of the curse are colliding?’

In any case, it seemed to be a positive sign.

It probably meant the curse was that powerful.

‘Hmm.’

Lee A-un was sleeping soundly.

It seemed he had entered a stable phase.

‘He should be fine.’

I could not keep watching Lee A-un forever.

I did not have much time.

“Snowy.”

[Yes, Agent.]

“You can see him here, right? Keep a close eye on him, and if anything strange happens, tell me.”

I propped up the phone that had become useless with Snowy’s appearance at an angle.

“You can check through this smartphone lens, right?”

[I can, if you grant permission.]

“Fine. I grant permission. Do it.”

After two beeps, beep—beep—Snowy’s voice flowed out of the smartphone speaker.

[Installation complete. I will monitor the screen from now on.]

“Yeah, thanks.”

Now I could leave my seat with peace of mind.

I was busy.

I had to make Lee A-un EX-rank. In the process, I had to clear all the Hidden Quests too.

I also had to design what ability I would obtain through Synchronization.

I had to prepare countermeasures to capture Resonar as well.

And so on.

“Roughly speaking, how this Awakening Failure survives in a ruined world...”

Sigh.

Surviving in the Republic of Korea was this difficult.

“One step at a time.”

The more urgent things were, the more I had to take the long way around.

“It is almost time.”

I turned my attention to Cheol-su’s House TV.

[Good day. I am Han Seol-ah.]

Han Seol-ah’s press conference began right on time.

As soon as Han Seol-ah’s greeting ended, a reporter’s question stabbed in.

[Is it true that you have become an EX-rank Hunter?]

Immediately afterward.

Silence settled over the press conference hall.

As though choosing her words.

Or perhaps as though trying to seize control of the atmosphere.

Han Seol-ah let out a thoughtful ‘hmm.’

[It is true.]

[...!]

She turned the press conference hall upside down.

[This cannot be!]

[I-Is it real? She says it is true?]

“Han Seol-ah...”

The first thing I, who was this busy, had to do was...

To discipline Han Seol-ah.

Han Seol-ah had to become stronger.

“You are not ready yet.”