Chapter 800: Release (1)
“Everyone… Myungwoo?”
A familiar face appeared from the kitchen. I’d been worried, and he looked healthy enough that I was about to say so, but before I could open my mouth, Myungwoo hurled the chef’s knife he was holding.
The knife spun through the air. Seong Hyunjae dodged it with only the slightest tilt of his head. Thunk. The knife buried itself in the table.
“M–Myungwoo…?”
“Seeing you just pissed me off all over again.”
Should I bow my head and apologize first? But why had he thrown the knife at Seong Hyunjae?
“I heard what happened. Honestly…”
Myungwoo let out a deep, heavy sigh. Was it better to apologize as fast as possible after all? But I hadn’t pushed myself that hard lately. And one side of the Yuhyun problem was more or less settled now, too.
“Hunter Seong Hyunjae.”
Glaring at Seong Hyunjae, Myungwoo ground his teeth.
…Was he not angry at me?
Seong Hyunjae lowered the corners of his eyes slightly and smiled without a sound.
“Myungwoo, you know Mr. Seong too?”
“Yeah. Unfortunately.”
Myungwoo’s voice was cold. First Chief Song, and now Myungwoo. What the hell had that man done? Even Liette seemed distinctly unhappy with him.
“Mm, but without Mr. Seong, I don’t think we would’ve made it out safely. I don’t know what happened between you two, but…”
“You’ll be angry too once you find out, Yujin.”
“…Me?”
“Very.”
Myungwoo sounded absolutely certain. I looked at Seong Hyunjae. Something that would make me that angry?
“Mr. Seong, did you maybe threaten Myungwoo or steal an item from him?”
“Not at all. If anything, I would say it was closer to the opposite.”
Myungwoo didn’t deny it, so that seemed to be true. Then what was it? No way.
“Did you ever hurt Yuhyun? You said you wouldn’t touch him now, but before that–!”
“I have clashed with the Haeyeon Guild Leader exactly four times. The first time, I withdrew first, in moderation. I have no hobby of wrestling with children. Han Yujin’s precious younger brother was not injured in the slightest.”
Was that when Yuhyun was still a minor? When he’d been busy establishing Haeyeon. Even if Yuhyun was an innate S-Rank, he had still protected him because he was underage. Maybe he really was a decent person… though saying that felt wrong when the number was four.
“What about the other three times?”
“Twice while he was protecting Han Yujin from me. Neither incident remains in Han Yujin’s memory. Those too passed lightly, without injury. It was closer to a quarrel than a fight.”
“…You came after me? Well, I guess that makes sense.”
With Beast Tamer alone, there were more than enough Hunters and nations that would have coveted me. If he had noticed my other abilities on top of that, it made sense he would have targeted me.
“The last time was before the regression.”
“You remember that?”
Was it because he was connected to transcendents after all? Most people had completely forgotten.
“Somehow. Back then, there were observers, spectators, support, and healers. Unlike the previous occasions, there were injuries, but it was not very different from an agreed spar. It ended before long, and both sides were promptly and cleanly healed.”
“No, even so, an unofficial spar? Ranking Matches existed by then! No matter how carefully you prepared, that’s a dangerous stunt that can’t compare to an official Ranking Match! No wonder Chief Song got angry when you did things like that! He doesn’t have his memories from before the regression, but still!”
Instead of answering, Seong Hyunjae merely smiled. What were they doing, ignoring the Ranking Matches? Had he deliberately avoided participating in them to keep his identity hidden?
“So saying this much indirectly is possible. Is it because Han Yujin was not present?”
“What are you even talking about? Yuhyun, is Mr. Seong telling the truth?”
Yuhyun nodded.
“I don’t remember anything related to you, hyung, but the rest is true.”
“Why would you do a dangerous unofficial spar like that? You were a guild leader!”
“…It wasn’t dangerous, and I had to attend at least once. Chief Song Taewon was there as an observer too. It wasn’t exactly unofficial, not really.”
“If it wasn’t an official Ranking Match, then it was unofficial. If nothing happened with Yuhyun either, then don’t tell me.”
My gaze turned toward Yerim. No, surely not. He had just said he had no intention of messing with children. Seong Hyunjae noticed where I was looking and narrowed his brow slightly.
“What an unpleasant assumption.”
“I’m sorry, but, well.”
“…I was on pretty good terms with M–Mister Seong Hyunjae.”
Yerim sounded unusually weak.
“We weren’t super close, but we were friendly. I even thought he was a weird Mister, but fun…”
“I see.”
“Yeah. But, but…”
“Y–Yerim?”
Tears welled up in Yerim’s eyes. I hurried over to her, wrapped her in my arms, and patted her back.
“This still feels awful. I hate it!”
“Yerim…”
“I thought you were–”
Yerim’s voice cut off sharply. Was it because she was trying to swallow her tears?
“I mean, you looked like you were having fun. But for it to be like this… It’s scary too.”
– Yerim, Sanho will always be right by your side!
I couldn’t understand why Yerim was acting like this. I looked back at Seong Hyunjae, who seemed to be the cause. He gave a small shrug.
“I’m sorry.”
“What happened?”
I looked around at the others, but not a single one of them said a word. Was this something I wasn’t supposed to hear? But it was about Yerim. I knew being family didn’t mean I had the right to know everything, but still.
“It’ll be all right, Yerim. Anytime you want, just tell Mister. I’ll do anything I can for you. Anything at all.”
In the end, instead of pressing her for answers, I comforted her. Yerim sniffled. Because she was struggling not to cry, the rims of her eyes turned even redder.
“This time, Mister Seong Hyunjae was definitely the one in the wrong. But I want things to go back to how they used to be.”
“Yeah, Yerim.”
As I rubbed her back, I stole a glance at Seong Hyunjae. He really wasn’t purely nice after all. Fortunately, Yerim soon calmed down.
“Myungwoo, are you okay? I heard you collapsed.”
“It was simple overwork. Rookie wants to meet you.”
“Rookie does?”
Did he know a good method? Right now, we desperately needed help.
“I’m from this world, so I was able to sneak into your space, Yujin, but Rookie can’t. So I’ll connect you through a passage of the unconscious.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Lie down over there.”
Myungwoo pointed at a long bench set along one side of the dining room. Yuhyun sat first, then gestured for me to lie down.
“Close your eyes.”
I closed my eyes as Myungwoo told me to. For an instant, my consciousness blurred, and then a bright space appeared around me. Rookie stood in his original form in the middle of a meadow covered in soft grass. The petal-like hem of his clothing stirred gently in the wind.
“Hello, Honey.”
“Hi, Rookie. How are things on your side?”
“…Complicated.”
Rookie breathed out a long sigh. Then he looked straight at me.
“Honey, do you remember how we once told you to gather fifty Awakened people of S-Rank or higher?”
“I do.”
It hadn’t been long after the regression. Calling themselves system administrators, they had summoned me into a dungeon and told me to apply a keyword to fifty Awakened people of S-Rank or higher. They had said that would let us save the world. Why was he bringing that up all of a sudden?
“But there was actually some scheme behind that, wasn’t there? I felt uneasy about it too, and you changed your mind halfway through and told me not to gather them anymore.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
Rookie nodded heavily.
“I hesitated over whether I should tell you, Honey. In the past, I would have thought there was no need to bother. Awakened people were small, weak beings we had to guide, after all. You had no need to know every little detail, and no right to know it either.”
The transcendents, the Unfilial Children, had been like that. Rookie had been one of the less severe among them, but even so, he had treated us as something like game pieces.
“But I like you, Honey. I like the blacksmith too. I know now that you, that people, are not only small and weak. I understand that we are not so different from one another.”
“I like you too, Rookie. I like Senior Chaos too. I don’t think transcendents are all that different from us.”
There were certainly aspects of them that were far stronger and far harder to understand. But that was no different from the S-Ranks as they appeared to me. Even Yuhyun was incomparably stronger than I was, and he was a different kind of being from me, one I could never fully understand. Even so, we could stand side by side.
“And you are incredible, Honey. Astonishing.”
Rookie looked up at me with large, round eyes.
“I have watched what you have done. After all that, hiding something from you while claiming it is to protect you would be nothing more than hypocrisy and self-satisfaction. You are not a tiny creature I must take care of.”
“I’m still not that strong. I’m still an F-Rank, and I’m enough of a mess that people scold me and worry over me.”
If Senior had come along, he might have grabbed me by the ear on the spot and started smacking my back. Just imagining it made my ear ache.
“But I have a right to know what concerns me. Rookie. Even if I were a truly ordinary F-Rank who had never accomplished anything at all. I have my own will. My own thoughts.”
“Yes. You do. You really do.”
Rookie nodded.
“And the Honey I know now will not blindly sacrifice himself. I believe that.”
“…Yeah. I still have a long way to go, but I’ve learned how to care about myself. I won’t throw myself away recklessly anymore. I can’t promise I’ll never sacrifice myself. But compared to before, I’ll think harder, hesitate longer, and try to find another way.”
I was, that was… For an instant, my head throbbed. Rookie looked at me with concern, and I told him I was all right.
“You came to tell me about why you told me to gather fifty S-Ranks?”
“Yes, Honey. Please listen calmly.”
Rookie swallowed dryly, then continued.
“Do you remember the first time you saw the Final Recompense skill?”
“…Other than the name and duration, it wasn’t that different from Repayment.”
That was why I’d wondered why it was L-Rank.
“Please check it again now.”
At Rookie’s words, I opened my skill window.
[Final Recompense (L) – Upon the death of a keyword-influenced target, receives the target’s skills and stats at double efficiency
Duration: 7 days
※Cannot overlap]
“There should be an explanation attached that wasn’t there originally.”
“…Cannot overlap.”
A vague memory surfaced. Right. It definitely hadn’t been there at first. At some point, it had been added.
“Don’t tell me this is…”
“Unlike Repayment, Final Recompense can overlap. With any number of people.”
Any number.
Even fifty S-Ranks.
Before I knew it, my hands were trembling. My stomach lurched as if it would turn inside out. They had gone out of their way to add a false explanation and deceive me. And at the same time, they had told me to gather fifty people. Which meant–
“No, Honey! Please calm down!”
Rookie shouted. Something with a sweet fragrance wrapped around my body. There was the scent of grass mixed in too. My racing heart settled a little.
“We know that if we force you to use that skill, it will have the opposite effect! It is true that we treated the Awakened lightly, but we are not ignorant of those emotions! I’m on the clumsy side, but the other Unfilial Children understand them as knowledge! All of us, at one time, had ordinary childhoods too.”
“Then why…”
“That is why we gave you another ability.”
“…Another ability?”
“OFF.”
Off. Did he mean the ability to turn skills off? Rookie continued explaining.
“Honey, you can turn passive skills on and off at will. It is an ability that only you possess.”
“Only me…?”
It was true that other people couldn’t turn off their passive skills. I had wondered about that before too. I had assumed it might only apply to L-Rank skills.
“Skills like resistance or enhancement are abilities that remain active continuously. Once you get used to such a skill, you become able to regulate it. That is why, when you obtain a resistance skill that is far too powerful compared to your own capabilities, as you did, Honey, it takes a long time before you can control it.”
Unlike Yuhyun or Yerim, I still couldn’t control my resistance skills.
“…Why did you give me the power to turn off skills?”
“It was a kind of test. A beta version.”
“A test?”
“It was a test for turning off a skill that had already been applied. A test for releasing a keyword.”
A keyword.
The “I love you” keyword of Perfect Nurturer.
“Unlike resistance skills, releasing a keyword and making that effect connect to Final Recompense was not easy. But in order to let you use Final Recompense as humanely as possible, we continued interfering with and adjusting your system window.”
…
I remembered the things the Unfilial Children had said. That if I just gathered fifty S-Ranks, everything would be resolved. That there was plenty of time, so it was fine to take things slowly. That no harm would come to the people precious to me.
“You didn’t urge me to gather all fifty because applying keyword release took time.”
“…Yes.”
“When you said I wouldn’t refuse…”
“Your world had already nearly failed once. You cherished your children, Honey. We thought that if it meant saving them, you would accept it.”
I was sure I would have.
The old me would have.
“If I release the keywords from fifty S-Ranks, what kind of stats would I have? And what happens as a result of releasing the keywords?”
“Normally, it’s addition. But as power keeps being added, once it reaches a certain threshold, it jumps by multiplication. The lowest threshold we predicted was forty people. For stability, fifty. If the keywords of fifty S-Ranks are released at once, then for seven days, Honey, you will possess power approaching that of a transcendent.”
A transcendent. That would be the power to save the world, and the power to go to Yuhyun as well.
“Then with a hundred, two hundred, or more, would I surpass even transcendents?”
“No. The next threshold rises far, far higher. That is why we judged that even in an emergency, we would be able to suppress you, and proceeded with the attempt. By our calculations, at around fifty people, you would be on the weaker side among transcendents. You would merely be at the transcendent level. You might not even come close to the true power of an actual transcendent.”
Still, that was enough. If it had been me a few months ago, I would absolutely have saved the world and then gone to find Yuhyun beneath the tree where snow fell.
“What happens to me?”
“…The condition for Final Recompense is the target’s death. So originally, Honey would have to recognize the keyword release targets as dead. But then it would be no different from using Recompense normally.”
“If not me, then who?”
“Honey’s keyword targets.”
Rookie clenched his fists, then continued.
“All of them will recognize Honey as dead. They will feel that your existence has vanished.”
–TL Notes–
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