The silence settling over the alley was heavy. Igyeol swallowed dry saliva. The chilling sensation that had brushed past his fingertips. He felt his spine stiffen at it. It wasn’t simply from surprise.
The demonic energy hidden within him along with the curses was stirring just from that man’s appearance alone. A perfect incompatibility. Igyeol blinked rapidly. I need to avoid him. His instinctive senses, faster than his head, were saying so. Otherwise, he would end up exposing ‘this thing’ he was harboring.
Igyeol unconsciously avoided his gaze staring intently at him. The man, Sung Yohan, fiddled with the name tag while staring at Igyeol.
The oversized hoodie and slippers, and the carelessly tousled hair. Uniquely, the hair mixed with white like highlights in places made his impression peculiar. Not completely black but with an ashen mixed feeling. Like looking at ash remnants left after everything burned away. Sung Yohan tilted his head crookedly.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“…Wh-what are you talking about.”
Igyeol unconsciously stammered. He thought he should play dumb and just pass by.
“…Don’t know, so go on your way.”
Igyeol frowned deeply and tried to pass by Sung Yohan. But Sung Yohan blocked Igyeol’s path. An excessively handsome face with narrowed brows was looking at him. Igyeol pretended to be unbothered, frowned, and looked at Sung Yohan.
“I asked if you know this child.”
“I said I don’t know.”
“But you,”
“What.”
Ah, I said I don’t know, seriously so talkative. Was Rank 1 originally this common a bastard? It was bewildering. Even when watching on TV, he felt unpleasant from that energy, and as expected, meeting him in person felt even more unlucky.
Look at that overflowing Holy Power energy. He could feel it just by being close, and he thought if they touched, his cursed body might completely burn up. Igyeol looked at Sung Yohan while breaking out in a cold sweat inside. Sung Yohan glared at Igyeol with a crumpled expression.
“What do you mean, what.”
“……”
Igyeol glared back without backing down. What’s with staring at someone you just met with that shitty expression. Igyeol tilted his head to the side at the sharply rising irritation.
Even at the crooked gaze, Sung Yohan didn’t remove his excessively blatant stare. When Igyeol endured and endured and finally opened his mouth to say something, only then did Sung Yohan speak.
“You reek of a terrible stench.”
“…What?”
Sung Yohan frowned as if extremely displeased. Igyeol momentarily lost his words, then stupidly retorted. Stench… what? Even if he’s unemployed, saying he stinks when he washes and cleans himself every day maintaining cleanliness… this bastard.
“You seem to be living completely covered in curses, so you probably reek because you have such a wicked temperament of cursing others.”
“Wh… what are you saying?”
“Well, that’s your business anyway, so never mind. This child, do you know them? Did you perhaps curse this child?”
The attitude of treating someone like a criminal out of the blue completely crossed the line. Igyeol glared at Sung Yohan and laughed emptily in disbelief. What do you take people for, spouting nonsense right now.
More than that, his stomach was starting to feel worse and worse because of that damn clear Holy Power that bastard was emitting. Igyeol spoke with an uncomfortably grimacing face.
“So treating people like trash at first meeting is the etiquette of South Korea’s Rank 1 Hunter. On broadcasts you wear white clothes and act like an angel going ‘I love you, brother~'”
“I don’t want to say such things to someone who spreads curses like you. Just answer my question.”
“Ha— I just passed by and saved him from being shaken down by punks, why. Do you feel like calling me brother now?”
“…You didn’t spread a curse?”
“This bastard—”
“Bastard?”
Sung Yohan’s eyes narrowed. Igyeol flinched, about to pull his hand out of his pocket in anger, but he pressed down and endured knowing that if he pounced and got into a fight with the current Rank 1 ranker, he wouldn’t have a good time here.
He didn’t even think he would lose as a returnee who’d crossed the Gate of Reversed Heaven, but for now, his energy harboring ‘that thing’ and Sung Yohan’s energy were too incompatible.
Igyeol bit his lips firmly.
“Hey, whatever, go on your way.”
Igyeol waved his hand dismissively. Then he glared at Sung Yohan and walked past him with swaggering steps. Sung Yohan looked down at the name tag in his hand, then looked at Igyeol walking away.
It’s strange. He was clearly a man from whom the Demon Realm’s energy could be felt. The Demon Realm’s energy so powerful that the fragment of God harbored within him reacted could be felt from that man. Even now his heart was pounding like crazy.
But strangely… when facing him, the throbbing headache was peculiarly subsiding. That pitch-black man was absorbing his excessive Holy Power, and he could feel his overheated body calming down.
Sung Yohan found this bizarre sensation extremely unpleasant. He shouted toward the back of Igyeol’s head as he went his way.
“You saved him? Without any compensation? Don’t think about lying. If you tried to steal something from that child, or approached to obtain something—”
“Ah, this bastard, seriously.”
Igyeol, who’d been trudging toward Dumang Mountain with both hands in his pockets, turned around with a shit-eating expression at the voice heard from behind. No, I was just trying to pick up a name tag and some shitty thing stuck to me.
Igyeol stood crookedly and turned to look at Sung Yohan. The very tall man with an imposing physique was looking at him with an extremely sensitive expression. Igyeol chanted ‘patience’ three times and laughed.
“Hey, I get that you’re frantic because you lost the kid, but you got the wrong number, you know?”
“Tell me where you hid him.”
“Would I have hidden him? Can’t you see? That I’m empty-handed? He ran away on his own two feet. Over there~.”
“…Over there?”
Igyeol indicated the end of the alley with his chin. Sung Yohan’s gaze naturally headed that way. That direction was a place where, leaving Miyang-dong, a huge mountain ridge could be seen.
It was precisely the direction of Dumang Mountain where Igyeol was going. Sung Yohan’s eyes wavered. Dumang Mountain currently had no restrictions for gathering Hunters trying to enter the C-rank dungeon. If Kang Yeongwon went there…!
“Ha—”
Sung Yohan gritted his teeth and swept back his hair. As expected, children are troublesome to raise in many ways. Especially children who make a fuss about awakening.
Kang Yeongwon was an Awakening aspirant. He had an older sister, but his noona had fulfilled her role as an Apostle during the past Gate of Reversed Heaven incident and returned as a corpse. Without leaving anything behind. Kang Yeongwon had some kind of debt about that, and dreamed very much of becoming an Awakened.
Since awakening usually happens in crisis situations, this time too he must have chosen to directly enter a dungeon.
“Damn it….”
“Whaat? D-damn it? I even told you the location, and damn it? You really want to fight with me, don’t you?”
Excited Igyeol rolled up his sleeves and strode toward Sung Yohan. Sung Yohan became very tired. Igyeol didn’t actually intend to fight.
He stood in front of Sung Yohan thinking he should just deal with him appropriately and escape, and raised his arm. He’d intended to lightly push his chest, but Sung Yohan grabbed Igyeol’s wrist first.
“Urk—”
As expected of Rank 1, to grab my arm, this is the first time for such a thing— as soon as he thought that, in an instant tremendous Holy Power poured in through the skin that made contact.
“…!”
Igyeol’s face turned pale in an instant. The Holy Power pouring in clashed as if to burn away the demonic energy that boiled up like lava through his blood vessels. Igyeol gritted his teeth at the pain as if an explosion was occurring inside his body. His vision spun.
“…Let go.”
“You—”
“I said let go!”
“Kugh—”
Boom—!
At Igyeol’s shout with his head lowered, Sung Yohan’s body was flung away in an instant. It was as if an invisible barrier formed and pushed his body away. Thanks to that, he let go of the wrist he’d been gripping.
Sung Yohan looked at Igyeol with a strange expression. Igyeol shook off his grabbed wrist and raised one corner of his mouth.
“Just… get lost, no, I’ll get lost. Let’s never see each other again.”
Though the corner of his mouth trembled slightly, Igyeol strove to compose his expression while pretending to be unbothered, glared at Sung Yohan, and moved his steps forward with strides. Yohan stared blankly at his own hand with a somewhat surprised expression, then stared at the distancing Igyeol.
At the demonic energy he felt, he’d unconsciously grabbed his arm. Usually when seeing him, those ‘corrupted’ by demonic energy, curse-type sorcerers and such couldn’t move or were terrified. His power was incompatible with such people.
But it was strange. That man was rather confident… and when they just touched, rather his Holy Power was tremendously sucked in.
Thump— thump—
His heart was beating very fast. That man casually devoured the Holy Power that the ‘fragment’ embedded within him endlessly produced.
Excessive Holy Power was a disaster for Yohan. No matter how much he poured out, the endlessly generated Holy Power had reached the point of making him explode. So he needed to release it, but there was no way to release it, so he’d been holding it in. But just from grabbing that man’s wrist, Holy Power was sucked in.
The throbbing headache, and the sensations that had been vividly raging from excessive Holy Power also calmed down.
Yohan’s eyes subsided strangely. This… I need to catch him. I need to verify.
He clenched the name tag and watched Igyeol exit the alley and head toward Dumang Mountain until the end, then followed after him.
