Chapter 353

“Anyway, what’s the point of showing up without warning?”

Lee Hwayoung rolled her eyes in disbelief. Honestly, she had assumed that hunter had been far too busy with his own affairs lately to spare her any attention.

Besides, the man standing before her was unmistakably her own son.

And yet, strangely enough, the longer she looked at him, the more uneasy—and even repulsed—she felt. In particular, the way he kept calling her “Mom, Mom” grated on her nerves.

She couldn’t quite explain why it disturbed her so much.

“Sa...”

Lee Hwayoung drew in a deep breath.

Then, straining her throat, she suddenly screamed into the silence.

“Please save me! Help! Someone in the neighborhood, call the police! Kim Giryeo is trying to kill someone!”

For someone who had already been captured, it was an act that required tremendous courage.

“Help me!”

But somehow, no response came.

It was seven in the evening. The other residents should still have been awake.

Yet the entire villa remained eerily silent.

It wasn’t simply that her neighbors were ignoring her. Now that she had finally noticed it, the whole building was unnaturally quiet.

The ventilation fan from the barbecue restaurant nearby.

The occasional roar of a delivery motorcycle passing outside.

“Huh?”

Normally, she complained endlessly about those sounds, and nothing ever changed.

Yet now, even the noise from the young man downstairs had vanished completely?

“It’s like magic, isn’t it?”

A chill ran from the nape of her neck all the way down to her toes.

“This is why being born after the Dungeon Shock is such a blessing, Mom. When else in our lives would we get to experience incredible magic like this?”

“......”

“They say building a soundproof room with science is quite a hassle. But with this, there’s no need for lengthy construction at all.”

A soundproof room.

So that was what he had done.

“Of course, old technology and new technology each have their advantages and disadvantages. Still, somehow, I prefer this sort of method.”

Hwayoung barely managed to understand what was happening.

Apparently, the hunter was using something called ‘magic power’—one of the forces that had turned half the world upside down.

[The Infinite Power Core], [the Pyromancer’s Necklace]—

Items used by Awakeners were usually expensive and subject to strict ownership restrictions, which meant ordinary civilians rarely had the opportunity to see them up close.

“Are you insane? You used supernatural powers just to stop me from calling the police? An Awakener using that on someone like me—an ordinary person?”

This was not how she had wanted to experience the changing world.

For the first time in her life, Hwayoung found herself regretting that she had been born in the modern era rather than the Joseon Dynasty.

“Hmm.”

And she wasn’t the only one whose attitude changed.

The hunter, who had seemed to be idly grasping at clouds only moments ago, soon shifted his stance as well.

“Anyway, putting the soundproofing aside, I came here today to keep a promise I made some time ago...”

“......”

“Mom, didn’t you say you were planning to go to Kang Changho around summer and spread some articles about me?”

A conversation from the past flashed through her mind.

Hwayoung remembered most of what the dyed-haired hunter had said back then.

Perhaps because of that, her expression stiffened immediately, and she spoke in a hurried voice.

“Don’t do that... Let’s talk first. Just for a little while.”

“Talk?”

“I-I’ll give you money. This isn’t about what happened before, is it? I’ll pay everything back. Even if I have to borrow it, I’ll give you everything I have, so please... just give me a little more time, okay?”

“It’s a little late.”

“It doesn’t matter if the bank is closed! You can do everything through mobile banking these days. If that doesn’t work, I’ll call someone I know and borrow the money from them.”

Although her hands were bound, her entire posture was one of desperate supplication.

“That’s not what I mean by ‘too late’...”

Unfortunately, her efforts produced no favorable result.

One hunter was suppressing his magic power to the absolute limit in order to conceal his presence.

Because of that, Kim Giryeo wasn’t radiating any noticeable energy at the moment.

Even so, the sight of him pacing across someone else’s living room in black dress shoes was becoming more unsettling by the second.

“Anyone could tell that I mean the timing itself is far too late.”

The mage continued in the same calm manner.

“If someone offered you a hundred billion won in exchange for dying tomorrow, would you take it?”

Of course, for people who had nothing, time could sometimes be worth less than gold.

Still, Giryeo casually shifted his weight before continuing his explanation.

“I’ve thought about this for a long time. In a capitalist society like this one, money and time are essentially interchangeable.”

He went on to say that the two were resources that could be converted into one another, much like different units of measurement.

Speaking in terms difficult for an ordinary person to follow, the man swept his tired gaze across the living room.

“So, in a sense, financial criminals aren’t all that different from people who stab others with knives.”

“Ugh...”

“Suppose someone scams a young adult out of ten million won. Isn’t that basically the same as stealing part of that person’s youth?”

“......”

“To earn that money back, they have to work and save every penny. Then who compensates them for the years they lost in the process?”

The words poured from his mouth without pause.

“And when someone is truly desperate, there are even people who die because they don’t have so much as a hundred thousand won.”

After all, opportunities to sit down and have a proper conversation with family didn’t come often.

“Hmm.”

Kim Giryeo rambled on for a while before finally falling silent.

Since his second awakening, one particular trait of his had become much more noticeable.

Expressiveness.

Now that he no longer needed to struggle so desperately to conceal his weaknesses, Giryeo had recently begun revealing more of his true nature.

The reason his close acquaintances had barely noticed the change was simple.

His face.

As an alien being, he had never been particularly fond of conveying emotion through facial expressions.

“It’s troublesome, but if I leave things as they are, my true feelings show.”

Until now, he had gone to considerable lengths simply to blend into human society.

But after gaining substantial power through his reawakening, Giryeo had actually become even more indifferent.

He had reduced the frequency with which he deliberately displayed emotions on his face, having decided there was little point in doing so.

“......”

Although he had become quite accustomed to Earth by now, ironically, it was precisely because he had learned how dangerous suspicion could be that he had stopped trying so hard to disguise himself.

So even when he fell into deep thought, not so much as a crease appeared between his brows.

“I... um... son...”

Such a change in the hunter could only inspire fear in an ordinary person.

Feeling a sudden chill, Hwayoung hurriedly spoke again.

“Think carefully. Did I ever beat you or do anything truly terrible to you? Fine, yes, I made one big mistake before!”

“......”

“But I never abused you. I would never do something like that! There are people in this world who’ve done far worse things than me. Do you really have to hunt me down and kill me over this?”

But then, what exactly was the meaning of the next sentence?

“I’m not going to kill you.”

“Huh?”

The young man in the suit spoke calmly.

“I know I’m saying this rather late, but I’ve actually changed my mind a little. I recently heard something encouraging from a friend.”

For reference, there weren’t many people he would openly call friends.

At most, there were Ahn Yoonseung and Seonwoo Yeon—the person he was referring to now.

“—Apparently, people here sometimes change for the better as time passes?”

The phrasing sounded strange.

But Hwayoung’s son gave her no opportunity to question it.

“Besides, after thinking it over carefully, I realized there had been quite a bit of room for leniency from the very beginning.”

At that moment, Kim Giryeo’s eyes shifted.

“But there’s something I’ve wanted to ask.”

He lowered his gaze until it met hers, as though preparing for a serious conversation.

“Do things like maternal love and paternal love truly exist here?”

It was such an unexpected question that Hwayoung couldn’t even process it at first.

Was this some kind of sarcastic joke only younger people were supposed to understand?

“Where I used to live, things like that didn’t really exist.”

“......”

“Maybe it was because people had many offspring at once. Or perhaps it was because their lifespans were so long.”

“......”

“Either way, they could live for more than a thousand years. And in a society where you were actually taxed for having children, who would recklessly keep producing the next generation?”

“......”

“So where I came from, parents genuinely believed in the saying, ‘You should be grateful simply for having been born.’”

The longer he spoke, the stranger the conversation became.

“But when I look around the internet here, strangely enough, people often say you’re heartless. Or they react with shock, asking how a mother could possibly have no maternal love...”

“What?”

“Of course, as a son, I criticized you for it at first too. But after taking a step back, I realized that their reaction is actually harder for me to understand.”

“......”

“The most important set of genes is your own. So why do people here instinctively protect their children first when they get into a car accident?”

The man before her did not appear to be speaking metaphorically.

“And ever since I learned how childbirth works, the whole thing has become even more mysterious.”

The dyed blond continued.

“Do you really think love can arise from pain?”

Fortunately, the overall mood did not seem particularly hostile.

He soon continued in an almost positive tone.

“In that sense, I completely understand parents who feel no attachment to their children. I don’t think maternal love is something that can simply be taken for granted. From a survival perspective, it can even be a disadvantage.”

Then, after quietly listening to everything he had said, the homeowner finally spoke.

“Th-then why are you doing this to me?”

He kept insisting that there was nothing inherently strange about a parent failing to protect their child.

Yet here he was, holding captive a member of the older generation who had failed to care for him.

“Are you seriously asking because you don’t know?”

But the moment she asked, the other person raised his voice.

“You’re the one who made our Giryeo suffer over thirty million won!”

Now that tens of billions of won sat in his bank account, it was almost absurd to hear him say it.

“This is obviously revenge over money. I can understand your circumstances, but that has nothing to do with this.”

And with the conversation having reached this point, Hwayoung was finally certain.

The man standing before her had casually said the name ‘Giryeo’ as though he were talking about someone else.

At last, she voiced the suspicion she had been suppressing.

“You... °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° You’re not Kim Giryeo, are you...?”

Even then, she had thought she recognized him.

“What? Then who are you? And my—my son? Where is my son?”

But on that subject, he had no real answer to give.

“Anyway, I am grateful that you gave birth to me. The fact that this ‘me’ is able to live like this now... naturally, you deserve a great deal of credit for that.”

“But when passing judgment, emotion has to be set aside. So let’s look at this rationally...”

Scrape.

The man who had been sitting down rose to his feet.

“Considering the fact that there was an accomplice who abandoned the son alongside you, and that prolonged financial hardship left you vulnerable to temptation...”

“Wait!”

“I’ll reduce the sentence considerably. Twenty-four years.”

“Listen to me. Wait, just wait!”

“Because that’s how long Kim Giryeo spent alone.”

Only then did Hwayoung notice that the blond psychic wasn’t wearing gloves.

An unpleasantly intricate tattoo covered the palm of his bare hand.

Overcome by sudden terror, Hwayoung blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“This isn’t fair! Like you said, if I’d had money, I never would’ve done any of this! If I hadn’t been poor, I wouldn’t have committed any crimes!”

From her point of view, this was undeniable proof that her only real crime had been poverty.

That made the situation feel all the more unjust.

But the moment the man wearing Kim Giryeo’s skin heard her words, one eyebrow rose ever so slightly.

“Is that so? Good. That’s good to hear. Between you and me, I’ve actually been curious about that myself.”

“Oh.”

With that brief exclamation, he finally reached out to make the contact he had been postponing.

“If you truly are the kind of person who would have chosen differently under better circumstances, then the next twenty-four years won’t be a nightmare.”

***

...Several days passed.

[Hospital Room]

A nursing hospital in Seoul.

Normally, this was a place for elderly patients weakened by age.

But today, an unusually young patient had been admitted.

“Is that true?”

“I saw him checking in at the front desk earlier. He was dressed sharply in a suit, just like on TV.”

“So that patient is Hunter Kim Giryeo’s mother?”

A famous Korean hunter had personally come all the way here to arrange a family member’s hospitalization.

Yet today, the atmosphere in the ward felt unusually tense.

“Hey, his mother? What are you talking about? Is everyone so busy these days they don’t even watch the news? Kim Giryeo grew up in an orphanage.”

“Gasp.”

“That woman abandoned her own child when he was young.”

Of course, it was unfortunate that she had fallen ill.

But that didn’t mean people could simply overlook everything she had done in her life.

“And I saw something about her in an article. Apparently, a coworker from the restaurant where she used to work recently brought up the issue of the statutory share of inheritance. She was asking whether she could get a cut of Kim Giryeo’s estate too, practically with won signs in her eyes.”

“Wow. Seriously?”

“Yeah. Reporters are incredible. That restaurant interview is already everywhere.”

The hospital staff chatted among themselves while hanging laundry on the rooftop.

“Tsk, tsk. Still, I suppose she got lucky with her son. Imagine having a stroke right when he happened to visit her house...”

“If she’d been living alone, things could’ve ended very badly.”

“They say Kim Giryeo found her collapsed on the floor, barely able to move. And since he has plenty of money, he can afford expensive caregivers and proper hospital treatment. I suppose she’s still his birth mother, after all.”

“Oh my.”

“It hits especially hard because he’s around the same age as my own child. How can Hunter Kim Giryeo be so kind?”

“What a devoted son. Truly, what a devoted son.”

Would they ever know what kind of dreams the hospital’s newest patient was having?

The fact that someone’s wish to spend the rest of her life without working had finally come true would probably remain a secret forever.

“Now that we know the magic works properly, let’s use it the same way when it’s time to punish Andy Oliver later.”