Chapter 194: Home Visit (3)

TL: SHW

“Do you not know why I started hunting Ark?”

“Sandra. Do you know?”

Hope tilted his head and looked back at Gamble. Gamble, who was sitting on the sofa, blinked several times before drawing her knees up and hugging them. It was an anxious gesture.

“Noah Michel or whatever aside, I was originally planning to catch and kill the bastards running wild in South America’s black markets without a clue what they were doing.”

“Ah.”

The instant he heard that, Hope hunched his shoulders. As though he did not want to catch Hong Seok-young’s eye.

Before Hong Seok-young could continue, Hope hurriedly exclaimed.

“I didn’t want to do it either!”

“So it was your doing after all?”

“I told you I didn’t want to?!”

“But you did it anyway.”

“Who’d want to do something like that when it isn’t even fun! …Or maybe not? Come to think of it, I think there were quite a few humans who did want to.”

“Are you finished?”

Mana surged like a raging storm. A force as sharp as a saw blade crawled across the floor, then shot upward all at once.

Hope jumped in fright and dashed over to Gamble. He climbed onto the sofa and pressed himself tightly against Gamble’s back, and although Gamble looked flustered, she naturally hid Hope behind her.

Seriously… what a fucking pair.

It was so absurd that I could not even laugh. Hong Seok-young seemed to feel the same.

“After pulling that kind of shit… you’ve got some nerve showing your face in front of me.”

“You were fine with it last time! Why are you acting like this now?”

“I was too dumbfounded back then to think about it properly.”

“Then it ended there! It’s already in the past!! Normally, once enough time passes, that, that thing! You don’t get punished anymore!!”

“The statute of limitations? That doesn’t apply to this case. Besides, do you have any idea how much bounty money is on your head?”

“Nooo! There were reasons for all of it!! I couldn’t help it!”

“Most criminals say the same thing. And an awfully high percentage of them give pathetic excuses. I didn’t mean to do it.”

Hong Seok-young smiled even more viciously.

Everyone was at a loss over the sudden change. I was just as clueless. Why was Hong Seok-young acting like this? Had I missed something?

“I couldn’t help it.”

Hong Seok-young growled as if even chewing the words to pieces would not be enough.

“Or if it isn’t that, they say this. I wasn’t going to do it, but the other guy started it.”

“Uh, um….”

“Excuse me, but it wasn’t him. I told him to do it.”

Gamble stepped forward in place of Hope, who had curled himself up small. She could not possibly have been unaffected by the Killing Intent pouring toward Hope, yet Gamble stared Hong Seok-young straight in the eyes and spoke clearly. I had thought she was just an unremarkable Awakened, but if that had truly been all she was, she never would have become Sandra Gamble of Pharos.

“I’m the one who ordered him to do it. So please don’t treat him like this.”

The hands resting on her knees trembled. Her face was pale. Even so, she continued glaring at Hong Seok-young.

Hadn’t they said they were family? There were plenty of families in the world who were worse than strangers, so I almost found it a little touching… but Hong Seok-young merely snorted as if he found the whole thing unbelievable.

“I was trying to think well of you.”

“Didn’t you take us in knowing all of this?”

“I should have.”

“And now you’re acting like this?”

“Because it’s something that needs to be addressed, even if only now.”

Hong Seok-young’s hand twitched. He looked as if he might draw a weapon at any moment.

No, seriously, what the hell was wrong with this man all of a sudden?

I still did not like Hope, but I knew killing Hope now would complicate things in all sorts of ways. And Gamble! Sandra Gamble absolutely could not die right now. Think about all the things that woman would invent later. Sure, I had the blueprints for the Mana Measuring Device, but I had nothing else. I distinctly remembered explaining that part too?!

I needed to know why that man was acting like this before I could even try to stop him. I hurriedly looked toward Lee Mi-seon, only to find her wearing the exact same expression as me. No help there.

“And you admitted it yourself.”

What had made Hong Seok-young change so abruptly?

What had he asked Hope?

There was the rumor that Hope was the boss of Ark, and….

“You call yourself Humanity, don’t you? If you claim to be someone else’s Humanity, shouldn’t you at least have that much decency as a person?”

“Decen… what does that mean?”

“…….”

Gamble widened her eyes and asked back. Her expression suggested that Hong Seok-young’s ominous aura was not affecting her at all.

With Gamble’s level of ability, there was no way she should have been that unfazed. Suspicious, I watched closely, and sure enough. Hope was subtly frowning behind her, looking displeased. He had genuinely been startled by Hong Seok-young’s words, but his expression seemed to say that if Hong Seok-young harmed Gamble even slightly, he would not simply stand there and take it.

Mana briefly rippled around the hand clutching Gamble’s clothes.

“It means how decent a human being you are. Whether you live properly without hurting other people.”

Even in a situation like this, Hong Seok-young explained it for Gamble, whose Korean was still poor.

Hong Seok-young’s empty hand was still twitching restlessly. He, too, had realized what Hope was preparing for. It would have been stranger if he had failed to notice when Hope was right in front of him.

This could seriously turn ugly.

I would probably be fine…. But once things kicked off, Sandra Gamble’s odds of surviving were not high. Lee Mi-seon would be cutting it close too. Her skills as a Hunter were not particularly impressive. Daseon’s Hunters… might be fine. If Han Tae-kyung had been here, he probably would have managed to get himself out somehow too. But since there were no Dungeons to raid over the weekend, I had told him to go enjoy some vacation time, and he had bolted without even looking back.

“I’m trying my best to live that way. Shanshan is too.”

“Even if you say that, after doing something like that….”

I desperately replayed Hong Seok-young’s words in my mind.

The baseless rumor that Hope was Ark’s boss, and the reason Hong Seok-young had started hunting Ark.

Ah.

Wait.

Hong Seok-young had originally been pursuing an internationally notorious criminal organization. Lee Mi-seon and Kim Chae-min had been doing the same. They had only gotten tangled up with me somehow and learned about the laboratory abducting children, but at first, they had definitely been after the people running wild in South America’s black markets….

Hong Seok-young had clearly told me why he was hunting Ark. Part of it was simply because he could not stand by and let them continue, but there had also been a more personal reason.

To recover the remains of an acquaintance who had been murdered inside a Dungeon.

I remembered hearing in passing that so much time had already passed that he did not really expect to recover them anymore. But that did not mean he had given up.

At the very least, he must have intended to find the bastards who had killed someone and even stolen the body.

“…….”

I frowned.

This was no good. Completely hopeless. There was no way to stop Hong Seok-young. No matter what I said from the sidelines, Hong Seok-young would not listen.

And I had no reason to stop Hong Seok-young either.

No matter how desperate the situation was, I could not join hands with people like that. If anything, it gave me chills that they had done something so vile and then calmly come asking us to cooperate. No decent human being could even imagine doing that.

I stepped back. It was my way of showing that I would not involve myself in this. Apparently still unaware of what was going on, Lee Mi-seon looked at me in confusion.

Hadn’t Lee Mi-seon been hunting Ark for the same reason as Hong Seok-young?

…Well, a lot of shocking truths about Ark had come to light since then. It would not have been surprising if she had long since forgotten her original objective.

“Of course I know what we did was wrong! But we couldn’t help it. We needed money to expand our influence while staying out of Michel’s sight….”

Gamble shot back without yielding.

“We tried to handle things in a way that caused as little harm to other people as possible.”

“As little harm as possible? After causing every kind of harm there is?”

“It’s not like we were selling fakes.”

“Fakes? Ha, unbelievable. You did all that because you needed money?”

Hong Seok-young bared his teeth and growled. His Mana erupted even more violently. Lee Mi-seon let out a small groan, apparently finding it difficult to breathe.

Gamble’s face had gone pale as well, but under Hope’s protection, she somehow managed to hold out. Hope was no longer bothering to hide the fact that he was glaring at Hong Seok-young.

Gamble shot to her feet. She was still positioned so that Hope remained hidden behind her.

Hong Seok-young also strode toward Gamble, making absolutely no effort to conceal his displeasure.

“You’re saying you killed people and sold off their corpses just for money?”

“Of course digging up archaeological sites without permission was wrong, but we preserved everything as intact as possible!”

“…….”

“…….”

The Mana that had been boiling violently stopped as if it had never existed.

Gamble’s eyes widened. Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose. The scene looked like something out of an old anime.

“C, corpses? You sell corpses?”

Hong Seok-young’s mouth fell wide open too. As the saying went, a fly could have flown right in.

“Archaeological sites? You looted ruins?”

Then an icy silence settled over the room.

“…….”

“…….”

I had not fully grasped the situation either, but even I could tell there had been some kind of misunderstanding.

Just as I was wondering whether I should step in to break the silence, Hope poked his head out from behind Gamble.

“Mmm. Good.”

Good how?

“I guess this is what people mean when they say we need to talk things out.”

“…….”

“…….”

“Perfect timing, then. We gathered here to talk, didn’t we?”

It annoyed me that he was not wrong.

“…We did.”

“Good, good. Let’s talk. I’m really bad at this kind of thing, but even I can tell there’s a massive misunderstanding between us right now.”

“…….”

Things calmed down considerably.

Hong Seok-young sat down on the sofa with a sigh. Gamble and Hope retreated to one corner of it. Thank goodness the sofa was large. There was enough space between Gamble and Hope on one side and Hong Seok-young on the other to lay Woo I-rok down with room to spare.

Lee Mi-seon stubbornly refused to sit, while I took the armchair by myself. I steeled myself not to be shaken no matter what came out of this conversation.

Of course, that resolve turned out to be useless.

Because Hong Seok-young always managed to say something beyond anything I could have expected.

“I have a brother-in-law.”

“……!”

Startled, I looked at Hong Seok-young.

A brother-in-law usually meant one’s wife’s brother. It was one of the last words I would ever have expected to hear from Hong Seok-young’s mouth.

“My wife’s younger brother.”

Hong Seok-young added that he was the biological son of the American family that had adopted his wife.

“And he was a Hunter.”

Father had never talked about his family.

Not about me, but what should I call them, his old family? No, Father probably still considered them his family, so that was not right.

…His dead family, then. His son, or his wife.

His dead wife’s, family.

“He had a bit of a short fuse, but he was a competent guy. He wasn’t the kind of kid who should have gotten into an accident in that Dungeon.”

I understood why Hong Seok-young had been so furious.

Gamble seemed to understand too. She hunched her shoulders and cautiously watched Hong Seok-young’s face.

“My mother-in-law called me in tears to tell me what happened…. I ended up promising her that even if I couldn’t recover my brother-in-law’s body, I’d kill every bastard who did that to him.”

***

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