abcnovels
Chapter 193:
Chapter 193:
Chapter 193:
Chapter 193
Kang Hye-rim usually stayed in her room or followed Yu-hyun around on her days off.
She had thought that was enough for her.
She had become a famous collector and earned the reputation of a sword master.
But after experiencing the incident in the world of thought, and witnessing the power of the spirit called Chulapantaka, she realized how lacking and inadequate she was.
Maybe that was why she felt a sense of anxiety that led her to the training room, which she rarely visited.
‘Huh? There’s someone here.’
There was a guest who had arrived before her in the training room.
“Ah, hello?”
“Uh, um. Hel…lo.”
Kwon Jia, who was wiping her sweat with a towel around her neck, responded to Kang Hye-rim’s awkward greeting.
The two didn’t have any conversation for a while.
They didn’t know what to say to each other when they faced each other alone.
Kang Hye-rim’s eyes moved to the exercise equipment that Kwon Jia had been using.
‘You train hard.’
Kang Hye-rim felt embarrassed by her own behavior of coming here hesitantly.
“Um… are you going to use this?”
“Huh? Oh, yes, yes!”
When Kwon Jia asked first, Kang Hye-rim nodded her head quickly and answered.
The atmosphere that had been tense seemed to loosen up a little bit.
This time, Kang Hye-rim asked.
“Um, your shoulder… are you okay?”
She had fought with Kwon Jia when she went berserk and injured her shoulder.
It wasn’t serious, but it must have been painful.
Thinking that way, Kang Hye-rim felt sorry and couldn’t look her in the eye.
“Huh? Oh, I’m fine. It was just a shallow wound and I’ve fully recovered by now.”
“That’s good…to hear.”
“That’s good indeed.”
“Yes…”
Kang Hye-rim didn’t know what to say next.
She had a lot to say, but when she faced her, she couldn’t open her mouth as if she had glued it shut.
She had to apologize to Kwon Jia first.
As soon as she thought that, something flew towards her.
Thud.
Kang Hye-rim instinctively caught it with her hand.
It was a wooden sword for sparring.
She sent a look of why did you give this to me to Kwon Jia.
“Do you want to spar with me?”
“Ah…”
Kang Hye-rim realized that this was Kwon Jia’s way of trying to get closer to her, and more broadly, forgiving her for her shortcomings.
She gripped the wooden sword tightly and nodded her head.
“Of course!”
“That’s good. I was feeling restless anyway. It was boring to train alone facing the wall.”
“How do you want to do it?”
“Let’s do it freely. And don’t expect me to go easy on you even if you ask me nicely.”
Kwon Jia sent an intense look. Kang Hye-rim didn’t avoid it.
“I won’t back down either.”
“Good. Let’s start.”
The two exchanged swords in the spacious training hall.
***
“Yes. Please take care of the aftermath.”
-Don’t worry. We’ll handle it well. But how are you feeling?
“I’m fine. I’ve received treatment.”
Yu-hyun talked with Choi Jungmo about the follow-up measures related to the world of thought incident.
Choi Jungmo thanked Yu-hyun.
If it weren’t for him, there would have been casualties and chaos due to the sudden creation of the world of thought.
Yu-hyun brushed it off as something he had to do.
“Still, there’s one thing I regret. I never expected that there would be someone who escaped from the scene.”
-We’re ashamed.
“No. I’m not blaming you. It’s a different story if that escapee is a famous assassin from China’s White Night Society.”
Most of the weeds of Twilight Curtain were arrested on the spot, but there was one person who got away.
It was Ling Yan, an assassin of the White Night Society.
She was supposed to enter the world of thought, but she used puppetry to open up Jinshinsari and fainted from bleeding due to the aftermath.
In retrospect, that worked out as a lucky break for her.
‘The puppeteer. She also set up a talisman outside the world of thought to ward off people. It would have been easy for her to hide herself and escape.’
If Yu-hyun had been there, he would have noticed it right away, but unfortunately, the timing was off.
She sensed that something was going wrong before Yu-hyun came out and ran away from the scene.
If she had any sense, she would hide herself as much as possible, so it would be hard to find her even if he asked Sung Yu-chan for help.
‘But, I’ve taken care of the rest of the assassins from the White Night Society. And the teller from Pentagram who paid them to move must have had a bad time too.’
If that was the case, I didn’t have to worry too much about Ling Yen.
It didn’t matter if she came back to Baiyehui with a petty vengeance and brought more people to attack.
First of all, the security around Incheon Port had become much stronger after this incident.
They wouldn’t be stupid enough to expose themselves.
Even if they broke through the security, it didn’t matter.
‘At my level, I can kill them all.’
That was enough.
Yu-hyun ended the call with Choi Jungmo and sat on the sofa.
This incident was too strange and abnormal to be mentioned in the media. Yu-hyun didn’t want that either.
‘It’s a pity that the rumor that we protected innocent citizens didn’t spread, but the association said they would give us a fair compensation, so let’s be satisfied with that. Anyway, I also got the reward for clearing the world of thought.’
He spent 200,000 TP to engrave a mark on his body, but he received more than that as a reward.
550,000 TP for clearing the world of thought.
Plus another 200,000 TP from the sponsorship of the spirits.
With a net profit of over 550,000, Yu-hyun’s TP exceeded 1 million.
‘And that’s still not enough.’
More than anything, he didn’t want to involve Kang Yura and Seo Sumin in this rumor.
The reporters would tear them apart like ghosts if they found anything suspicious.
Yu-hyun relaxed his body on the sofa and tilted his head back. He stretched out his hand toward the ceiling in the empty room and focused his energy on his fingertips.
Swoosh.
Black letters formed a mask from Yu-hyun’s fingertips.
[Incomplete Mask of ????]
Sharp teeth.
A face that looked like a devil’s with two horns to boot.
Most of all, there were four holes in the mask that looked like eyes. When Yu-hyun wore the mask, only two of them emitted light.
‘Four eyes means… I haven’t obtained the other two powers yet.’
One of them would be [TYPE: Descartes] that he glimpsed when he escaped from Jinsinsari’s delusion.
Yu-hyun slowly put on the mask.
He didn’t need any device to fix it.
The mask was natural as if it had been one body from the beginning.
He wouldn’t even know he was wearing it if he didn’t touch it with his hand.
‘Activate Laplace’s power.’
Yu-hyun used Laplace’s fragment.
[There is not enough information collected at this time.]
‘Hmm. As expected?’
He tried to see the future, but he couldn’t.
He didn’t specify a clear direction for what future he wanted to see, but Laplace needed to collect information from the present to see the future.
‘It’s a kind of conditional future vision.’
But when it was activated, the effect was tremendous.
He survived against Chulapantaka, after all.
Of course, there was also the influence of Maxwell’s power, and Seo Sumin was a hidden card as well.
Yu-hyun took out a coin while wearing the mask.
‘Heads.’
He decided and tossed the coin.
The coin landed on heads.
‘Heads again. Five times in a row.’
Yu-hyun tossed the coin five times in a row.
They all landed on heads.
Yu-hyun didn’t stop tossing the coin.
The coin kept landing on heads.
He pulled out heads 50 times in a row and felt tired.
‘I’m just intervening in the 50-50 chance of a coin toss and I’m tired.’
Maxwell was great for versatility, but it was harder to use properly than Laplace.
Was it because his potential exploded when he faced death that he managed to turn around a near-zero chance of winning?
Yu-hyun couldn’t know for sure. It was his own power, but he didn’t even know the name of the mask properly, and there were too many things he didn’t know.
The only thing he doubted was Satan.
‘He gave me Laplace’s demon fragment. Does he know something?’
As he tried to think further, fatigue overwhelmed him.
Yu-hyun deactivated the mask.
The black mask crumbled like dust and the black gloves that wrapped around Yu-hyun’s hands disappeared as well.
Yu-hyun lifted his arm and covered his eyes.
‘The text was always white too. But it turned black when I used this thing. I’ve never heard of black text before.’
There were other colors, but black?
Yu-hyun wondered if he had touched a really dangerous power.
Yu-hyun chuckled softly.
A dangerous power?
It was funny to be afraid of it now.
Wasn’t he already walking on a more dangerous path than anyone else?
The most frightening thing for Yu-hyun now was not anything else but settling for reality and stopping.
‘I’m tired.’
He felt his eyes closing from the excessive use of his power.
His body, which didn’t need to sleep, sought the most efficient way to recover when it felt more fatigue than its limit.
All he had left was time anyway.
Yu-hyun closed his eyes and let his body drift on the waves of Soma.
…
…
Humming~???
A soft voice tickled his ears.
It felt like a lullaby he heard when he was very young.
Sarang. Sararak.
Something thin and soft tickled my nose.
I opened my eyes that had been closed.
As soon as I opened them, I saw Seo Sumin’s face looking down at me with a smile.
Her hair flowed down like a white waterfall towards me.
“Sumin-ssi?”
“You can call me Sumin. Oppa.”
“Are you in middle school girl mode now?”
“Why? Is it awkward?”
I gave a bitter smile at her changing tone of voice.
“That’s the problem. Both suit you too well. But what are you doing right now? What’s touching the back of my head since earlier…”
“Ah, really. Oppa is a pervert. What do you want to hear from a middle school girl?”
“…”
I shut my mouth.
Seo Sumin said that, but her eyes were still smiling.
Her eyes curved like a crescent moon between her silver hair were very attractive.
I tried to lift my upper body.
There was no need to stay in this state now that I had woken up from sleep.
“…What are you doing?”
However, I couldn’t move as I intended.
Seo Sumin lightly tapped my forehead with her finger and pushed me back down.
I couldn’t get up by force, because the power contained in one finger was so amazing that I had no choice but to ask like that.
Even if he lost his strength, a celestial horse was a celestial horse.
“Well~?”
“I’m busy.”
“You’re so busy that you ignored me when I came and slept? And I know that Seoryeon unni takes care of everything for you. Especially, I heard everything from the unnis. You love working so much, right? You’re a workaholic.”
“That’s slander. By the way, I’m not doing it because I like it, but because it’s what I have to do as a human being.”
“But people can’t keep running forever.”
Swoosh.
Seo Sumin’s soft hand touched my cheek.
“So, at least for now, take a break.”
“I can’t stand it.”
I finally gave up.
“Endure it. You brought this upon yourself.”
Seo Sumin smiled mischievously.
It was the pure smile that she had only shown to the old man when she was a believer long ago.
“You made me like this, so you have to take responsibility.”
“That’s a heavy responsibility.”
“You say it’s heavy for a middle school girl, but I’m so light. Do you want to try holding me?”
“I politely decline.”
As they were talking like that, the door opened and Kwon Jia and Kang Hye-rim came in.
“Ah. It feels refreshing to sweat and exercise after a long time.”
“Hmm. Training like this is not bad for sharpening your sense of combat in large-scale battles.”
“Let’s have dinner later… Huh?”
“Hmm?”
The two who had sweated and showered came in and met Yu-hyun’s eyes at the same time.
Yu-hyun saw their expressions harden and thought ‘Ah, this is trouble’ as he sighed.
Especially Kang Hye-rim, for a moment, looked like her mind had gone to Andromeda as her pupils shrank.
‘This side doesn’t seem to be helping.’
Seo Sumin seemed to be having fun already, and couldn’t control her smile.
Yu-hyun had to somehow get out of this situation by himself.
“Y-y-y-y-y Yu-hyun-ssi what on earth…?”
Kang Hye-rim’s pupils contracted to dots. She took out her phone with her trembling hand.
“I have to report to the police quickly…”
“That’s too realistic of a reaction. Calm down for a moment.”
“You’re so shameless to say that while lying down.”
Kwon Jia said curtly.
She was keeping her sanity unlike Kang Hye-rim, but her expression was quite cold since earlier.
Her usual expressionlessness seemed much heavier.
“In the first place, I’m not breaking any laws as a teller.”
“How old are you exactly, Yu-hyun-ssi?”
As if she suddenly remembered, Kang Hye-rim asked.
She didn’t wait for an answer and muttered to herself.
“Come to think of it, Yu-hyun-ssi looks like he’s in his mid-twenties as a teller, but his actual age must be quite different. Right, now that I think about it, Yu-hyun-ssi said he made me his first contractor when he was just a regular employee. Then his real age is…”
Kwon Jia added from the side.
“That means he’s not even one year old.”
“H-huh?”
When she heard that, Kang Hye-rim looked even more confused.
Originally, Yu-hyun who looked like he was in his mid-twenties being with a middle school girl looked like a criminal act, but now it looked like the opposite.
The middle school girl was holding a cute baby on her lap and cooing at him.
She couldn’t accept that bizarre sense of incongruity properly and Kang Hye-rim came up with one word after a lot of trouble.
“Do you want me to throw you a first birthday party?”
“Do you want to get hit with a stone?”
Yu-hyun finally frowned and said.