FLIA 124

Go Jaewon faced an enormous grudge. He sweated cold sweat like rain and he stumbled back step by step. Because they were all such familiar people, the strangeness was so horrifying it was beyond words. Then he suddenly realized. Why was Lee Chanha so quiet? He looked at the former deputy-leader of the Sunrise Team. And he flinched.

From earlier, Lee Chanha had not blinked once. He was streaming tears of blood. It was a hateful gaze so extreme that Go Jaewon could not even imagine it. His hatred for Go Jaewon was so intense that the blood in his body seemed ready to boil, and from enduring that fury the pressure burst the vessels in his eyes.

The only one who sat calmly with a gentle smile was Lee Hyunmook. He looked down at his wristwatch and spoke.

“Ten seconds.”

The shadow cast beneath Lee Hyunmook was excessively dark. No, dark alone could not describe it. It was emptiness. His eyes were black. Of course Koreans had black eyes, but his were black in a way that was terrifying. To the frozen Go Jaewon, Lee Hyunmook started a countdown.

“One.”

At the same time, the shadow stretched toward Go Jaewon in an instant.

“Two. Three…”

No matter how many times he repeated that it was only a hallucination, it was useless. Go Jaewon was overcome with extreme fear. Afraid the shadow might touch him, he did not even look back and ran. He fell disgracefully once, then he got up almost crawling, and he ran out of the building in panic.

Nearby, Yohan had been watching them. He sighed in exasperation. He had been hiding his figure with Lee Chanha’s hallucination so as not to draw Go Jaewon’s attention. To conceal even his presence more perfectly, Lee Hyunmook had even sat facing Yohan’s direction. Yohan approached the group and started scolding.

“He really is a bastard. Doesn’t he remember what he did? He only gets angry and leaves acting like he’s the victim.”

To Yohan, it looked like Go Jaewon got guilty all on his own, then made excuses, shouted, gave up talking, and ran away. Not only Yohan but everyone around had seen the same hallucination. Go Jaewon thought only he had seen it, but in fact he was the only one here who did not see a hallucination.

“Right? He’s still a very rotten bastard.”

Seo Yakrin, who was muttering angrily, was pressed down gently by Yoon Seungryong’s arm around her shoulder. Yoon Seungryong glared viciously in the direction the traitor had run, then he answered with feigned ease. Ju Hoyoung took out his game console without blinking once. Lee Chanha hid the traces of blood-tears with hallucination and smiled. Only Lee Hyunmook stayed unconcerned and detached, as if nothing had happened.

Since the commotion of Go Jaewon’s visit had happened, they had lunch early. The menu was food provided free to guild members in the cafeteria. When Yoon Seungryong piled food on his tray like a mountain, the people eating glanced in surprise. Yohan took a few bites and exclaimed.

“Wow! This is really delicious!”

“It tastes just like the food we ate at the Sunrise Guild.”

Lee Hyunmook smiled as he drank the hot galbitang broth. Among the employees who had transferred to the Taeyang Guild were also the Sunrise Guild’s cooks and nutritionists. Yoon Seungryong in particular had sought them out himself, offered much better conditions, and persuaded them. He was truly serious about food.

After the meal they had a guild introduction. They each bought a drink in the first-floor cafeteria, sipped it, and went up to the second floor. There were fitness facilities, nap rooms, and a music room, but the most eye-catching was the arcade space. This part reflected Ju Hoyoung’s opinion very strongly. The training rooms on the third and fourth floors also had excellent facilities, and unusually, to relieve stress, there were several sturdy roly-poly dolls that could be beaten endlessly.

“They can endure up to ten hits.”

Seo Yakrin, who had already tried punching them, smiled as she told Yohan. Everything else was ordinary. Only the place shone with cleanliness and disinfectant was visible everywhere. Lee Chanha said with a faint smile,

“Disinfection is important for hygiene.”

Everywhere there were things prepared for his team members, but nothing was prepared for Lee Hyunmook himself. He only watched warmly as his people enjoyed themselves.

The last place they stopped was the support room. It was a place that provided survival kits, rations, and many useful tools and weapons for employees dispatched to the rifts. Inside the Taeyang Team’s exclusive equipment storage, Yohan jumped.

“My weapon!”

The weapon with the black-and-white Eternal Stone that he had not seen for a long time was placed there. Yohan grabbed the weapon and stroked the Eternal Stone, enjoying its smooth and cool feel. But the joy of reunion lasted only a moment. His current formal position was not with the Taeyang Team but as an ordinary guild member, so naturally he could not carry something as precious as an Eternal Stone weapon. Besides, the feel was somewhat strange, so Yohan tilted his head.

“Is this really my weapon?”

“No, that’s a fake. The real one is here. The company security is still loose, you see.”

Yoon Seungryong said “tada” and took Yohan’s spear out of his subspace to hand over. When Yohan held it, he felt the overflowing power and knew this was really his weapon. He cherished it, stroked it, then let it go with regret.

“I’ll see you again later…”

Yohan, looking glum, handed the weapon back to Yoon Seungryong. After that simple in-house tour was finished, they returned to the meeting room. Lee Chanha continued the meeting that had been interrupted by Go Jaewon’s visit.

“When the guild maintenance is fully complete, we will begin real activities, such as rift exploration and monster subjugation. Until then, Yohan-gun will be temporarily assigned to another team.”

“Which team will it be…?”

Yohan was curious. He looked forward to working with the Taeyang Team, but at the same time he felt burdened.

“The Little Lamb Team. It is a team mostly made up of new recruits.”

“What?”

Yohan doubted his ears. Little Lamb Team? Did he really hear that right? Lee Chanha smiled when he saw Yohan’s reaction.

“We told them to name their teams freely, and they came up with names like this. It didn’t have to be related to sheep at all.”

At present, the Taeyang Guild had a total of five rift exploration teams. The first was the Taeyang Team, made up of Lee Hyunmook, Lee Chanha, Seo Yakrin, Yoon Seungryong, and Ju Hoyoung. The other four were made up of awakeners transferred from the Sunrise Guild or newly recruited ones, and their names were as follows.

Golden Mary Team, Taeyang Rising Team, Ani-yang Team, Little Lamb Team.

Among them, the Golden Mary and Taeyang Rising Teams were composed of awakeners who had transferred from the Sunrise Guild. Their original team names had been Golden Bug and Sunrising, but they had been changed. The Ani-yang and Little Lamb Teams were newly gathered, younger awakeners who had awakened only recently. Yohan pointed at one of the names and asked.

“Any-yang…?”

“It is not Any-yang but Ani-yang.”

Ju Hoyoung corrected his pronunciation. It seemed the team name contained a pun¹. Yohan was reading the information on the members of the Little Lamb Team with interest when Seo Yakrin, looking into her phone at a notification that had just popped up, said with surprise,

“Our Yohan is in an article!”

***

“An low-level Awakener of the Physical Enhancement type…”

Go Jaewon’s frowned when he read the article that had just been published. It was about the unidentified man who had escaped together with Lee Hyunmook and the other former Sunrise Team members. It called him Mr. A and did not reveal his name, but it described in detail what kind of ability he had. The article ended with the note that this person had joined the Taeyang Guild.

Reactions from people were varied. Some said they were jealous. Some said if he had lived together in the Abyss, of course bonds would form. Some called it parachuting. Some said if they could join the Taeyang Guild too, they would be willing to fall into the Abyss themselves, which was downvoted heavily as ridiculous.

But to Go Jaewon, none of these reactions mattered. He glared at the recorder on the table.

Go Jaewon had turned on the recorder to confirm that what he had experienced that day had been a hallucination, but he soon turned it off. Those horrifying, insane words were not hallucinations. Terrified, Go Jaewon muttered,

“…Did they all go crazy in the Abyss?”

He then recalled the high-level awakener with hallucination abilities. That awakener was a foreigner, and even yesterday had been hunting monsters in a distant country, saving people. There was no reason for him to come to Korea and cooperate with such tricks, and it was not physically possible either.

Then was it a mid-level awakener? But could a mid-level really show the exact same hallucination all at once in such a wide space to so many people…?

1. it means « Not a sheep » ↩︎