# Chapter 189
I knew this was contradictory behavior. It was obvious how Sano would react if I rushed to his mission site less than a day after telling him to leave. No matter what I did, I wouldn’t hear anything pleasant.
But it was better to hear his sarcasm than to never hear anything from him again.
“I just don’t want Je Sano to die.”
That was what mattered most to Iyeon. He spoke firmly, enunciating each word.
“That’s enough. If the situation is fine, I don’t need to meet him. I’ll just check if he’s okay.”
Jonghee fixed her gaze on his face. His pale face looked too desperate to be hiding ulterior motives. Eventually, a quiet voice emerged.
“We can’t fully understand his intentions, but no matter how emotional Sano-nim becomes, he’s not someone who would attempt what he cannot do.”
Je Sano’s arrogance was based on an accurate assessment of his own abilities. Simply put, he went after it because he was confident he could catch it. That’s why, for his secretaries, Sano dying wasn’t even a possibility.
“I know that too.”
Iyeon replied dejectedly. Sano was fierce and harsh, but never stupid. Nor was he weak enough to be easily taken down by whatever attacks Dumugwi might launch.
The probability of him being safe was overwhelmingly higher than not being safe, that was clear.
“I know, but death doesn’t always come in an instant.”
Some deaths happened slowly, eating away bit by bit from very small beginnings. It could be a minor injury or a subtle mistake. Human affairs were unpredictable.
He needed to confirm Sano was safe. It was unbearable to just stand still and endlessly wait for the outcome.
It wasn’t clear how Jonghee interpreted Iyeon’s words. She merely continued their interrupted conversation after a moment of silence.
“Sano-nim left immediately and arrived at the Dumugwi emergence site around five o’clock. After that, he engaged in combat right away…”
“And there’s been no news since.”
Jonghee nodded. Iyeon checked his watch. It was a little past 8 PM.
“Statistically, it takes an average of 2 to 3 weeks to eliminate a Tier 2 mutant. It’s too early to worry when he’s only been facing Dumugwi for three hours. Sano-nim would have expected it to take a few days, if not two weeks.”
After saying that, Jonghee tapped the steering wheel she was holding. She looked like she was thinking about something.
“However, the current situation is somewhat unusual.”
“In what way?”
“For rapid situation assessment, a location tracker attached to Sano-nim operates during missions.”
Iyeon paused.
“Je Sano allows that kind of thing?”
“No, we pre-attach them to all of Sano-nim’s pants pockets. Of course, they’re turned off normally.”
“……”
Isn’t that… illegal? Jonghee, while driving and keeping her eyes on the road, seemed to notice the contempt in Iyeon’s expression and calmly added:
“Sano-nim is aware of it. This is a tacitly approved situation, so please don’t misunderstand.”
“Ah, yes…”
“But Kim Jongchan contacted me saying the tracker’s movement seemed strange.”
“How so?”
“It works fine, but he said it hasn’t moved at all for about two hours.”
Iyeon’s eyes widened. The fact that the location tracker wasn’t moving suggested several possibilities.
Since Jongchan was a regular person, he would be watching from a safe distance even if he was there, like when he filmed Sano’s exploits before. Far enough away that he’d be lucky to see Sano as even a black dot.
The reason Sano fought alone was partly due to his antisocial nature, but mainly because he primarily used large-scale attacks. Having someone nearby would just put them in harm’s way, which is why few people were strong enough to enter Sano’s combat range freely.
This meant that even if he was injured, others would only know much later.
“It’s quite dark, but… could it be in a lull? Don’t Dumugwi stop moving at night?”
“There’s no information yet about Dumugwi being affected by light. That’s one of the concerning factors.”
The secretaries couldn’t check the situation in detail, so they seemed to be trying to prepare various contingency plans in advance. Contacting available hunters or hunter teams must have been part of that.
Iyeon glanced out the window. As the car was heading to the outskirts of the city, there were almost no visible buildings, and everything was pitch black. Only the streetlights illuminating the road were twinkling sporadically.
It would be fortunate if Sano had temporarily retreated due to the darkness. Limited visibility during combat was more dangerous for humans than for mutants. No matter how good Sano’s night vision was, the difficulty between catching something visible versus invisible was worlds apart. Moreover, today was so cloudy that even the moon and stars had disappeared.
“Plus, the environment isn’t great.”
“The environment?”
The car left the road and turned onto a side path. The unpaved road was poorly maintained, bumpy, and surrounded by tall reeds.
In the situation where visibility was poor, Iyeon lowered the window, stretched his neck to look around, and slightly furrowed his brow. Strangely cold air and high humidity.
“Jonghee-ssi, this place…”
And the fishy smell reaching his nose.
“It’s dangerous. We’re almost there, so please raise the window.”
Jonghee gradually reduced the speed. Beyond the reed field spread a pitch-black darkness. Due to the cloudy night and light mist, Iyeon could only discover someone standing not far away with a flashlight after blinking several times. It was Jongchan.
“Dumugwi’s nickname is ‘Water Ghost.'”
Jonghee said while turning off the engine, unbuckling her seatbelt, and opening the car door. As soon as Iyeon followed her out of the car, he realized that what he thought was simple darkness wasn’t darkness at all.
In front of Jonghee and Iyeon who had just gotten out of the car was a vast expanse of black water.
“It sits at the bottom of the lake and puts everything its tentacles touch into its mouth, so be careful.”
“Underwater… underwater, you say?”
Iyeon asked in a daze. If Dumugwi was a mutant that operated underwater, then the battle would also have to take place underwater.
This meant Sano’s position, tracked by the location tracker, had been underwater all along.
Hearing his voice trembling precariously, Jonghee approached Iyeon. She nodded toward the glove compartment inside the passenger seat.
“Open it, please.”
Inside was a mission overview. The document containing general information about the mission Sano had undertaken was quite thick. Skimming through it, Iyeon saw what Jonghee had mentioned. As he quickly flipped through the pages under the car’s interior light, he stopped. It was the part detailing how Dumugwi was discovered.
When recording how a mutant was discovered, it was standard to note even trivial details to preserve clues that the reporter might not have fully grasped. Even for urgent missions, while the overview was generally concise and clear, the discovery part was in a handwritten format.
The starting point of the incident was when a Mugunghwa Tier 3 hunter conducting a mutant tracking mission briefly stopped in a town for a meal and heard not to go near the lake late at night. The hunter asked for details and learned about a “lake monster” story that had been widespread in the town for a long time, which made him suspect it might be a mutant.
Originally planning to investigate in detail after daybreak, he happened to see a couple searching around town for their child that evening. While helping them, he learned the child had gone to the lake for a courage test. The hunter headed straight to the lake with the parents.
Unfortunately, all they found at the lakeside were the child’s clothes.
After barely calming the nearly fainting parents, the hunter immediately jumped into the water. The child had been pushed by the water quite far, but was flailing with a flashlight in hand, so he was quickly found.
The hunter, who located the child by the wavering light from the flashlight, was taking him out when he happened to look back and discovered something like a strangely undulating string in the water.
He didn’t know its exact identity, but the movement was oddly ominous. Fortunately, the distance was quite far, so it didn’t reach where they were, but if the child had gone just a little farther, he would have touched it. Feeling a sudden chill, the hunter quickly took the child to shore. The child sobbed loudly and fell into his parents’ arms.
After hearing the situation, it seemed the child was being ostracized by peers. He had gone to the lake alone because the ringleader of the neighborhood children said if he completed this courage test successfully, they would play with him. The working parents, who had nagged their child to play with friends because they were worried about him being alone in the afternoon, blamed themselves for a while, saying this was how it had turned out. The hunter sent the three family members, who were all crying and blaming themselves, home and retreated for the time being.
The next day, the hunter entered the lake and checked again from a distance what he had seen yesterday. The long string he had glimpsed briefly was still undulating in the same place.
The hunter’s superpower was air compression, enabling long-distance attacks. When he slightly touched the end of the string, which was so long its other end wasn’t visible, other strings gathered quickly from the deep below like bees from an attacked hive.
Only upon seeing that intimidating sight did the hunter realize what kind of mutant had settled at the bottom of this lake. He immediately made a temporary return and reported the incident to the Superpower Management Office.
