Chapter 331

Meanwhile, around the same time, on a clear afternoon at a police station somewhere in the city.

"Huh—"

Things had been quiet for a little while, but seriously—had this country ever known a truly peaceful era since the days of Dangun?

While someone else was leisurely deciding what to have for lunch, a national law-enforcement agency was naturally dealing with an emergency.

The reappearance of Beasts.

An unprecedented crisis had broken out only recently.

Gates were already enough of a headache, yet Awakeners kept causing incidents on top of that, as if determined to make matters worse.

From the police perspective, it was enough to drive anyone insane.

"Phew!"

Still, this was exactly the kind of work this man had signed up to do.

One officer assigned to the case struggled to settle himself at his desk.

Placing both hands on the laptop keyboard, he spoke in the gentlest tone he could manage.

"Alright, we're done with the personal information. Now, please describe in as much detail as possible what you witnessed inside the dungeon."

There was no point intimidating people who weren't even suspects.

"Yes."

But despite the smooth beginning, the statements that followed quickly left the investigator bewildered.

"So, what you're saying is..."

"What we saw back then was..."

"So ultimately, you're asking how we managed to take down three Beasts, right? Honestly, it's easy to explain."

The real problem was that every witness gave the same answer.

"Giryeo-ssi did it."

"It was Hunter Kim Giryeo."

"If I remember correctly, that was when Kim Giryeo stepped in—"

The officer recording the statements abruptly stopped typing and clutched his head.

After staring at the ceiling for a long moment in an effort to calm himself, he asked again.

"So what you're saying is this, right? To summarize—right from the start, the fourth S-rank Hunter lured the strongest-looking one in there... Enzo Ciano, was it? Away from the group. Then, somewhere out of sight, he practically beat the suspect half to death all by himself before returning to the others much later."

"Yes."

"And if I put all the witness statements together, that Enzo Ciano guy was even carrying legendary-grade equipment inside the dungeon, correct?"

"That's right."

The story was absurd from the very beginning.

Forget for a moment that an American Hunter had suddenly appeared in Korea.

This was an incident involving that legendary modern weapon—the kind whose very name sent chills down a person's spine.

And yet one extraordinary Hunter had supposedly neutralized every threat?

"Crazy."

No matter how ridiculous the story sounded, there was nothing else to go on.

The investigator compiled the testimonies of Seo Esther, Jung Haseong, and an Association employee.

The resulting reconstruction of the incident was simple.

"To put it bluntly, Kim Giryeo singlehandedly neutralized every foreign S-rank."

And alone, no less.

Apparently, he hadn't originally intended to take such an active role.

But once the [Book of Destruction] activated and the Korean Hunters were incapacitated in an instant, he had stepped forward without hesitation...

Or so the witnesses claimed.

The more the investigator typed, the more muddled his thoughts became.

And what confused him even more was the fact that the expected number of casualties simply wasn't there.

It didn't make sense.

One ability-user had fought three Hunters of the same rank.

Even Kim Giryeo's hospitalization didn't appear to have been caused by ordinary external injuries.

"Hmm..."

And as the testimonies continued, another strange detail surfaced.

Although Esther's vision had been obscured by her own hair at the time, she remembered one particular moment during the battle.

Enzo's attack had suddenly focused in a single direction.

Kim Giryeo had taken the hit head-on, been smashed into a wall, and remained motionless for a while.

"Just between you and me, Investigator, I was so shocked that it practically snapped me out of fainting."

However, Kim Giryeo eventually stood back up on his own.

Immediately afterward, Esther said she experienced a sensation unlike anything she had ever felt before, even as an S-rank Hunter.

Then, in the blink of an eye, everything was over.

For reference, neither Esther nor Jung Haseong had fully understood what exactly they had felt in that moment.

But once the testimony of a woman in her twenties was added to the report...

"I'm not lying. I'm telling you honestly. That's really how it felt."

"Really?"

"Detective, my innate Awakening level is about average for B-rank. So... how do you feel right now?"

"Well... no, wait. Then could it be...?"

"Yes. Exactly. What you're feeling now is the same kind of pressure we felt from Hunter Kim Giryeo."

It was absurd.

"No, seriously. Then just how high is Jung Haseong's innate Awakening level?"

According to Seonwoo Yeon, the sensation experienced by the dungeon raiders had simply been pressure caused by an overwhelming difference in Awakening level.

"No way. What is that even supposed to mean?"

The investigator's fingers stopped over the keyboard.

He had tried to maintain as objective an attitude as possible, but the longer he listened, the more unbelievable the story became.

If he wrote down exactly what the witnesses were telling him, wouldn't the conclusion essentially be this?

A Hunter who could terrify S-ranks.

A Hunter who overpowered and killed other S-ranks.

A Hunter who cleared an entire dungeon almost singlehandedly.

And such an extraordinary person existed right here in South Korea.

"On top of that, why was he the only one who ended up hospitalized? I just can't make sense of any of this."

His head felt ready to split apart.

Every answer created two more questions.

Honestly, the simplest way to resolve the confusion would have been to hear the explanation directly from Kim Giryeo.

But the famous dyed-blond Awakener was still confined to a hospital room, to everyone's concern.

Calling him in for questioning under those circumstances was impossible for humanitarian reasons.

So the police continued with the witness interviews, suppressing their growing curiosity.

"Ahem. Understood. Then we'll stop here for today. If anything else comes up during the investigation, we'll contact you again at this number."

"Ah, yes."

That concluded the first round of basic questioning.

"Phew—I can finally breathe."

Once the high-ranking Hunters summoned for testimony left the room, the atmosphere in the precinct immediately became lighter.

Now that they had a rough outline of what had happened inside the dungeon, it was time to deal with the real headache.

"Right. Hey! By the way, did the results come back on the bodies they recovered?"

"Ah, yes. Forensics just called."

Three Beasts had illegally occupied a dungeon within the country.

That sentence alone was enough to make anyone break into a cold sweat.

But an even more shocking truth emerged afterward.

"Seriously, I don't understand. Why would people like that suddenly show up here?"

Beneath those thick bone masks had been top-tier Awakeners from several different countries.

The investigators confirmed the identities of the three suspects whose bodies had been recovered outside the dungeon.

After removing and examining every piece of clothing and equipment, they were able to establish beyond doubt that the group's leader had indeed been a well-known Hunter from the United States.

"Huh."

To think someone that famous had been involved.

Enzo Ciano.

To put it crudely, the man had a personality overflowing with showmanship.

Thanks to that, even his notorious alcoholism hadn't prevented him from amassing a huge fanbase worldwide.

And after Brooklyn Morgan disappeared, a major guild called Spectrum had even begun promoting him as their next public face.

"This investigation is going to be a nightmare from the very beginning."

Why would someone like that travel all the way here just to cause trouble?

"And on top of that, he was carrying the [Book of Destruction], which should have been national property."

The investigator absently rummaged through the gum on his desk while thinking.

But no matter how much time he wasted, no conclusion came.

This case was simply too large in scale for any ordinary person to grasp.

"Hmm."

If it had merely been a celebrity S-rank psychic involved in some incident, that would have been one thing.

But this was a case involving the disappearance of a Western national treasure—an object that should have been under the highest level of security.

Could this even be cleaned up properly?

"If you think about it logically, the U.S. will probably deny any involvement no matter what..."

Then another concern entered his mind.

It concerned the Awakener whose name had appeared in every single witness statement.

"But now that I think about it, something doesn't add up. Kim Giryeo... According to the fourth assessment conducted by the Association, his Awakening level was clearly lower than Seo Esther's."

Wasn't self-defense already notoriously difficult to judge?

One of the officers thought that, personally, there was some merit to Korea's strict standards when it came to ruling on self-defense.

But if that same strict law were applied to someone who appeared to have transcended even ordinary S-rank standards...

"A Hunter who singlehandedly killed three foreign S-rank Awakeners who had illegally entered the country..."

How would people react?

Could the situation spiral into something even worse?

These were roughly the concerns that passed through the investigator's mind without him even realizing it.

***

Before long, that concern became reality.

"Yes?"

Just two hours later.

Annex Building, First Floor, Korea Hunter Association.

"Wait, so... what you just told me—is that actually confirmed? Not just being discussed, but finalized?"

"That's what I heard. Seonwoo Yeon was so curious that she kept asking around until she finally got the information and passed it along."

It was the sluggish part of the day when she normally would have been preparing fax documents for another government department.

But the Awakener with the compound surname was visibly pale, her body trembling faintly with nerves.

She had just received a piece of news from a colleague within her own agency that struck like a bolt from the blue.

"Three foreign Awakeners died... and they've decided to formally indict Kim Giryeo?"

After giving her statement that morning, Seonwoo Yeon happened to hear the news.

Her expression immediately darkened.

Kim Giryeo's reawakening had saved lives.

Naturally, her first instinct was to defend what he had done.

"That's strange. When I gave my statement at the police station, the atmosphere seemed normal. Even when Hunter Kim Giryeo's name came up, they didn't seem like they were trying to pick a fight or anything...?"

Still, when three people were dead, it was only natural that the matter couldn't simply be buried.

Yet a few things continued to bother Seonwoo Yeon.

At first, the investigative agency had seemed prepared to pressure the United States over the [Book of Destruction] incident.

But somewhere along the way, the focus had subtly shifted.

Regardless of who had initiated the violence inside the dungeon, the investigators had decided that murder was the most serious issue.

Therefore, they claimed they needed to determine whether Kim Giryeo's actions had been legally justified.

"What happens if they decide there was something wrong with the way he handled things?"

Seonwoo Yeon firmly believed that no individual should stand above the law.

So, in one sense, she could understand why Kim Giryeo was being formally charged.

The problem was the suspect himself.

"Why are you so surprised? I was always this strong."

She still forgot it sometimes.

A certain S-rank Hunter had revealed that he was an extraterrestrial being from some unidentified star cluster.

"To use an analogy, it's like I'm the protagonist of a martial-arts novel who had all their meridians cleared yesterday. Starting today, I can finally live properly."

From what she'd heard, some drastic change had recently come over him.

But trying to interrogate an alien—a genuine extraterrestrial being who was already somewhat eccentric—using the customs and legal assumptions of Earth...

"I've got a really bad feeling this is going to get worse."

A chill ran through Seonwoo Yeon.

Thinking back, the alien who had risen from his sickbed had said some rather strange things regarding self-defense.

And she couldn't shake the fear that her acquaintance—who probably had little understanding of this planet's laws—might accidentally create additional charges for himself.

So she went so far as to use half a day of precious leave and headed straight to the hospital after lunch.

"Anyway, from what I heard, Hunter Kim Giryeo isn't considered much of a flight risk right now, so the police only sent a normal request for him to appear. Then it should be fine if I warn him in advance, right...?"

Getting permission to visit the hospital was easy.

Perhaps that man also had something he wanted to discuss, because when Seonwoo Yeon contacted him through messenger, he replied ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) that the timing was perfect and didn't refuse.

"This is my first time seeing one. So this is what a hospital VIP ward looks like."

The [Searcher] skill, which she'd learned cheaply thanks to an item acquired in a dungeon, turned out to be extremely useful at times like this.

"Upstairs."

Having received clear permission, Seonwoo Yeon didn't hesitate to track down the alien.

By the time she reached the familiar rooftop garden, she found the person she had been looking for without much difficulty.

Kiiek.

Still, judging by appearance alone, he always looked convincingly human.

Who in the world would look at that man and imagine some unidentified extraterrestrial creature?

"As expected. He's here."

He wasn't dripping green slime like the aliens that appeared in various forms of media.

Nor did he have an upside-down teardrop-shaped head.

He looked like nothing more than an ordinary young Korean man—the sort of face you could easily pass on the street in any neighborhood.

"Hmm."

Seonwoo Yeon soon approached the S-rank Hunter.

But almost immediately, an unbelievable sight unfolded before her.

At first, the flowerbed had blocked her view, so she hadn't noticed.

As she drew closer, however, it became obvious that he was already meeting someone.

And the man wearing a fierce expression—his face stiff and sharp like a coiled viper—was gripping the other person's hospital gown tightly with both hands.

"What..."

More precisely, what she saw was this:

The righteous hero of the new era, famous for saving countless Koreans, was currently clutching an elderly patient by the collar.

"Huh?"

Kim Giryeo noticed her at that exact moment.

Perhaps he hadn't expected anyone to arrive while he was in such a situation.

His face remained expressionless, but there was a faint trace of fluster in the way he immediately opened both hands.

"Hello. I don't know what you're thinking right now, but let me explain first—it's a misunderstanding."

Who was that elderly patient?

And just what in the world had happened between the two of them?