# Chapter 18
Baek Seonwoo wasn’t entirely reliable, but Ko Ijae was a relatively capable Esper, so even if a few monsters acting as scouts crawled in, he could handle them on his own.
The problem would be if the monsters, sensing something wrong with their nest, came rushing in as a swarm…
Well, the only option then was to kill them one by one by bursting them before the ground wasp monsters, realizing they were under attack, could form their battle lines.
“This little punk whose wet behind the ears is scurrying around like a hedgehog pretty well.”
But first, let’s catch and tie up this damn brat. The method wasn’t complicated.
The limitation of physical-type Espers, who could demonstrate lethal power comparable to anyone else if conditions were met, was that, conversely, they couldn’t use their abilities fully when those conditions weren’t met.
Since he needed to find the center of attack to exert centrifugal force, Yeo Dowoon poured out sporadic glaciers in abundance, intending to prevent him from establishing coordinates.
Sure enough, Yoon Minoh struggled just dealing with his attacks and couldn’t find his center point.
“Revenge canceled, revenge canceled!”
Yoon Minoh, whose tender flesh had been cut several times by the edges of the glaciers, raised his voice vehemently.
However, while saying this, he shattered the glaciers and counterattacked as if he had no intention of submitting quietly, so Yeo Dowoon couldn’t believe his words about canceling revenge. Yeo Dowoon, who had also brought out flames, swiftly swung his hand.
“Aaaargh!”
Burning flames are always suitable as a means to directly stimulate the opponent’s fear. The old saying of the elders that if you want to drive away wild beasts, you should build a high fire, was not wrong in any way.
Yoon Minoh fluttered away like a pigeon. Having previously had his back singed and burned, he seemed to feel more fear.
But as a sleek buzzing sound of wings began to linger from beyond the sky, Yeo Dowoon could only ruffle his hair as if annoyed.
He created an ice barrier with superhuman concentration and said as he trapped the resisting Yoon Minoh:
“Excuse me, Ijae hyung.”
-Hello? Dowoon, can you hear me?
Hearing Ko Ijae’s voice transmitted through the receiver, Yeo Dowoon replied irritably:
“I can hear you, are you checking on someone?”
-So… um. We got out. We’re surrounded by ground wasps, though.
“How many could there be that you’re trapped there?”
-There’s a lot. Even I was surprised. Seonwoo almost died, of course.
“Just escape before it’s too late.”
Looking up at the sky turning dark gray, Yeo Dowoon decided to put aside his desires cleanly. He wanted to punish the unregistered Esper who had shown such audacity before him, but it was a futile desire.
He trudged over to the barrier he had created and kicked it brutally.
Bang!
“Stop playing tricks and get up, you pervert.”
Yoon Minoh, who had been pretending to be dead with his tongue sticking out, finally straightened his bear-like figure awkwardly.
There’s no greater humiliation than this. Pondering how to get out of this predicament, he respectfully put his hands together only after Yeo Dowoon kicked the wall again threateningly with another bang.
He answered with a bow:
“Yes, hyung-nim. I’m listening.”
“Those things, how many do you think you can burst at once?”
The position Yeo Dowoon pointed to was a swarm of insect-type monsters filling the entire sky.
The so-called ground wasps.
Narrowing his eyes and counting their numbers tentatively, Yoon Minoh let out a hum.
“If they don’t move, I can tear them all to death.”
At his confident boast, Yeo Dowoon scolded him:
“If you don’t want to create a sea of blood, don’t think about running away and come out to catch those bastards.”
“…Uh, so, you’re talking about the monsters floating up there, right?”
But that was the end of the explanation.
Crash! As the shattered ice wall slashed past his cheek, Yoon Minoh swallowed a gasp as he faced Yeo Dowoon’s piercing gaze. Afraid of those murderous eyes, he averted his gaze, and the monster brood came into view.
What eventually filled Yoon Minoh’s wandering vision abundantly was the magnificent spectacle of the monster swarm beginning to freeze beautifully like stars in the night sky.
“F…uck… Hurry!”
As expected, Yeo Dowoon felt a familiar anxiety associated with the sensation of eardrums bursting and blood flowing. If he went berserk again here, he would inevitably be confined to the examination room.
Still, he could swear he didn’t rush in recklessly like before.
If it had been his prime when the possibility of going berserk was only 0.02%, he would have taken on the entire process of freezing, bursting, and melting by himself, but now the situation was very different.
“What are you doing, you crazy bastard! Kill them already!”
Ignoring the ringing in his ears, Yeo Dowoon barked, and Yoon Minoh also hurriedly established coordinates. Perhaps because it was the breeding season, they had gathered in large numbers.
The total was about 1,300, and whether he could grab the center point for all of them simultaneously was something to be determined by trying. But Yoon Minoh could sense something strangely uplifting in his heart.
The novel excitement that someone stronger than him was watching his back motivated him.
<Kik, kirrrrrk-!>
The scout ground wasps that Ko Ijae and Baek Seonwoo were dealing with emit screams in succession. Following them, the swarm of monsters that had frozen solid in the sky were also shattered by Yoon Minoh, pounded like hail.
But they didn’t recklessly pierce the ground. This was because flames that blazed in the empty air skillfully melted the hail that had split into tens of thousands of pieces.
“Haha… crazy!”
It was Yeo Dowoon’s rare and marvelous fire show that Baek Seonwoo had so longed to see. Yoon Minoh, who laughed uproariously as if cheering, quickly turned around.
Yeo Dowoon, experiencing the precursors of going berserk, was kneeling in the middle of a downpour, nearly collapsing. Artificial rainwater carrying the distinctive sour smell of monsters fell heavily on his hair.
Yoon Minoh took a step forward, trembling with anticipation.
At first, his intention was to find the bastard who had planted the damn word ‘resignation letter’ on his Pacific Ocean-like back and somehow punish him severely.
The reason was that the thought of having to live his entire life with such an unglamorous phrase engraved like a tattoo made him very uncomfortable and indignant.
Yoon Minoh, who knelt on one knee in front of Yeo Dowoon, supported him and said:
“Hyung, you’re really famous everywhere.”
How else could it be that wherever he left footprints, the internet would buzz with breaking news?
Espers had always been beings living under the great interest of the public along with celebrities, but Yeo Dowoon was the person who stood at the center of the crowd, being mentioned most frequently among them.
“Just the type to attract hate.”
Even he had been thinking only of catching and punishing him, and this was truly strange.
Looking at Yeo Dowoon, who now had one eye soaked in blood and couldn’t even open it, Yoon Minoh whispered salaciously:
“I heard you go easy on kids in school uniforms, so I deliberately wore this…”
“……”
“If I had known this would happen, I should have dressed up in a suit instead.”
His gloomy gaze explicitly scanned Yeo Dowoon’s entire body. His mouth watered at the appetizing flesh color revealed through the soaking wet white shirt.
He looks cold, so I should take him to a hotel first.
Since it’s come to this, how about showering together? Yoon Minoh was deciding things for his own pleasure when he was suddenly startled by the coldness rising from his wrist and stopped moving.
Yeo Dowoon, who had been slumped, was now smiling with a satisfied expression.
“…You know what?”
A playful laugh followed.
“No one but me can break this.”
The excellent Esper, who teasingly caressed Yoon Minoh’s wrists tightly bound by ice handcuffs extending from the ground, calmly added:
“Take good care of Delta, junior.”
And then he fainted as if his fuse had blown.
***
The last time, he had been carried in frozen cold like dry ice, but this time, it was a high fever that nearly cooked his liver to death.
The view of the hospital room with a few cacti placed on the windowsill was becoming familiar.
Seeing Yeo Dowoon putting together a puzzle in perfect shape, when he had expected him to be struggling to breathe with an oxygen respirator, Kwon Jeonghoo brushed back his messy bird’s nest-like hair and asked:
“…Did Cha Haseong visit?”
Tap. Yeo Dowoon, selecting and inserting a puzzle piece, answered dryly:
“No.”
“Then why are you fine?”
“I managed with medication.”
“…Why?”
“Because I returned in less than half a day.”
The duration of guiding is about 12 hours in total.
Returning far before that time was up, it seemed he could recover steadily with just medication administration despite all that commotion.
Anyway, he was born with a lucky body.
Kwon Jeonghoo walked over heavily, like someone suffering from neurasthenia, and picked up the bottled water on the bedside table. After drinking it to his heart’s content, he murmured in a voice that hadn’t shaken off sleepiness:
“Gooood job.”
With an expression that anyone would recognize as irony.
