Chapter 613

The Training Room was silent again today.

Countless kinds of weapons lay strewn across the floor, and the walls—enchanted with automatic restoration magic—had been reduced to a miserable ruin.

At the center of it all… I sat cross-legged, lost in thought.

More. Just a little more.

I was almost there.

The final piece of this enormous puzzle.

Right after parting ways with Jinho hyung¹, I had shut myself in the Training Room and begun the last stretch of work to find it.

Even if the stress made all my hair fall out, even if the worst happened and I risked qi deviation, I had to get through it.

No matter what it took, I had to complete this puzzle before I left.

For the future.

I had only started searching for the final piece recently, but I’d decided to put the puzzle together months ago. It was probably after the battle with the Arch Lich—the incident dubbed the Small Cataclysm.

If this keeps up, everyone will be in danger.

The thought had come to me out of nowhere one day. As time passed, my unease turned into certainty.

Magical power levels had risen abnormally. Monsters had grown stronger, and human casualties—which had fallen dramatically after the Great Cataclysm—were once again mounting everywhere.

Humanity needed another kind of power. After a great deal of thought, I made my decision.

I would create martial arts.

I would give them a new sword and shield against the dangers and disasters growing by the day.

Of course, it was anything but easy. What I created had to be safe enough for even the lowest-rank Hunter to learn, yet limited enough in power that evildoers couldn’t exploit it.

But… at last, I found the final piece of the puzzle.

Yes. This is it.

After hundreds of attempts, I had found a single path.

The moment I completed the still-unnamed cultivation technique—

Ding. Ding. Ding.

As if congratulating me, a series of lively alerts rang out.

Team Leader Choi—or rather, Choi Minwoo, now Guild Master of the Peace Guild and Vice Guild Master of Ares Guild—was so busy he barely had time to breathe.

During the week he’d been away, the matters awaiting his attention had multiplied into the hundreds. His temporary personal secretary was sweating bullets as calls from powerful figures poured in.

“G-Guild Master. The Blue House has proposed a luncheon.”

“Political figures and the Federation of Korean Industries would like you to attend a social gathering…”

“The Guild Alliance has proposed a partnership on Gate-related business…”

“Regarding the establishment of overseas branches…”

Some invitations couldn’t be refused. Others easily could. Choi Minwoo’s answer was always the same.

“All right. Schedule it.”

He followed a schedule planned down to the minute, spending each day like a machine and barely sleeping. The people around him watched his punishing routine with concern.

“Okay, pick one. Team Leader Choi, Guild Master Choi, or Vice Guild Master Choi. What should we call you?”

“Please call me Team Leader Choi. That’s what I was when we met.”

“All right, then. Team Leader Choi, I’ll be direct… Get some rest. Cut back your schedule and leave the little things to your secretary.”

“She’s right, Team Leader Choi. You may be young, but you can’t keep this up without wearing yourself out.”

“I’m fine. Please don’t worry, either of you.”

“Team Leader Choi.”

“No, listen…”

As for me, I’m fine.

His voice was calm, and his answer never changed. Song Song and Im Kkeokjeong, who had tried to talk him out of it, could only fall silent.

The answer that reached their ears was the same as before, but the answer that reached their hearts was different.

As for me, I’m fine.

Choi Minwoo left them with that one phrase, the same and yet different, and continued burying himself in work.

He even dismissed the personal secretary who had been helping him a little, then plunged into days busier than ever.

So it was hardly surprising when the subject came up during a private meeting with President Baek Hanseong.

“You seem very busy these days.”

“That’s why I like it.”

“I hear you don’t even have a secretary anymore. Is there a particular reason?”

“Coffee.”

“Pardon?”

“She couldn’t make coffee. That’s all.”

President Baek Hanseong assumed it was a joke and laughed it off, but every answer Choi Minwoo had given him was sincere.

Choi Minwoo liked being buried in work so completely, and the coffee made by his young secretary had been strangely awful.

More than that, he was grateful to forget, if only for a little while, the longing and grief for someone who kept coming to mind.

“Enough idle talk from me. Let’s move on to the next item.”

One day passed. Then another.

While Jin Taekyung trained in an isolated space, Choi Minwoo isolated himself amid countless people.

Perhaps that was why, one day, a name suddenly came to mind. As he drove himself mercilessly hard, just as he always did, the longing he had buried deep inside rose to the surface.

“Driver Jung, turn the car around.”

“Pardon? I’m sorry, but I believe our next appointment is at…”

“Cancel everything today. There’s somewhere I need to go.”

The driver’s startled eyes met his in the rearview mirror. Choi Minwoo sank back into the limousine seat.

Warm spring air and sunlight came through the half-open window as he headed to meet someone.

Step. Step.

The hill he climbed alone was high and steep, and his footsteps were heavy. Or perhaps it was his heart.

Sorrow and guilt over the one person he could never reach, even if he climbed this high, steep path a hundred or a thousand times, weighed on Choi Minwoo’s heart.

Pluck. Pluck.

Along the way, he picked an armful of early spring flowers. The pure white violets didn’t seem like enough, so he added scarlet moss phlox from the clusters growing beside the path.

The man who was no longer by his side had always said he liked red.

And yet he always wore black suits.

It was only recently that Choi Minwoo had learned what color he liked most, and why he had sold all those motorcycles.

Why he had quit drinking despite once keeping alcohol so close, and why he had trimmed the shaggy beard and long hair he had grown out before neatly parting it.

Why did you do all that? You were enough for me.

He knew everything now, but he had learned it all too late.

With an ache in his chest, Choi Minwoo kept walking.

On the warm, breezy hilltop, a large burial mound awaited him, and the three characters carved into the granite gravestone stood out with unusual clarity.

The late Kim Hwajong.

What could he say?

Choi Minwoo stared at the old butler, laid to rest on this warm hill instead of a cold, snow-covered mountain. At last, he opened his mouth.

“I’m here.”

His usually steady eyes trembled. He bit down on his trembling lip and slowly went on.

“…Grandfather.”

The word he had held in his heart, but never once said while the old man was alive, finally escaped him.

Whoosh—

A wind swept over him from somewhere. The grass on the hill bent low, and the branches waved.

Choi Minwoo set his bouquet beside the mound. Then he froze.

What’s that?

His eyes widened. He was looking at the back of the gravestone.

Words he had never noticed before were carved there.

You came.

Thank you, and I love you.

Be happy.

“……!”

Who had carved them? He should have wondered, but right now, it didn’t matter.

Choi Minwoo stood frozen like a stone statue, staring endlessly at the short message.

His heart shook like flowers in the wind. Something rose from deep inside him, closing his throat and making his eyes burn.

“Ah.”

Overwhelmed, he let out a choked sigh.

“You came sooner than I expected. I thought I’d have to wait at least a few more days.”

A voice sounded behind him.

Choi Minwoo turned. Someone stood there holding a small box.

It was the Skeleton King.

Why was he here? What did he mean, wait?

The questions vanished as quickly as they came. What Choi Minwoo needed now wasn’t a reason, but warmth. An answer to a question he couldn’t resolve alone.

“May I ask you one thing? Just one?”

Normally, the Skeleton King would have curtly said no. This time, he readily nodded.

“Anything.”

“If it were Mr. Jin Taekyung… what would he do at a time like this?”

The Skeleton King understood the sudden question at once.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because he’s stronger than anyone I know.”

The Skeleton King stared at Choi Minwoo in silence before answering in a low voice.

“He would have cried. Without a doubt.”

“……!”

“And then he would overcome it and go on living, forever remembering the person who left.”

That was enough.

Choi Minwoo let the tears he had held back fall. With them, he let out his grief and regret, his longing and guilt.

The Skeleton King quietly stepped away. It would be better to give him the contents of the box a little later.

He remembered what Jin Taekyung had said when he entrusted him with it about half a day ago.

“Sorry, but I need a favor.”

“No. I refuse. Go away.”

“Give this to Team Leader Choi. No one else.”

“You damnable human. Now you’re not even pretending to listen. Do I look like an errand boy to you?”

“I’m not asking because you’re an errand boy. I’m asking because I trust you.”

“…What exactly am I supposed to give him?”

“Martial arts.”

“What?”

“He’ll understand when you tell him. There’s a letter in the box, too. Make sure he reads it.”

“No. How am I supposed to find someone I haven’t even seen lately…?”

“Wait at Butler Kim’s grave. Even if you see him before then, don’t say a word. He’ll probably need time to get through this.”

No matter how the Skeleton King looked at it, Jin Taekyung was a strange human.

For one thing, Choi Minwoo had arrived at the grave just as Taekyung had said he would.

And he was even stranger for the fact that once he fell asleep, he would not so much as blink even if someone grabbed him by the collar and shook him awake.

Damn him. He has the nerve to give me a petty errand like this while he sleeps without a care?

Jin Taekyung had repeatedly begged him not to wake him under any circumstances, so he was probably dead asleep by now.

The more the Skeleton King thought about Jin Taekyung, the more infuriating he found him. But honestly, for some strange reason, he did not feel all that bad.

I can entrust it to you because I trust you. Trust, huh? Hmm. Hmmm.

The Skeleton King nodded as he remembered the box in his hands and Jin Taekyung’s words, then muttered quietly.

“…Sweet dreams, you devious human.”

Whoosh—

The wind blew once more. It swallowed one man’s sobs and the voice of a monster who had, before he knew it, grown close to people.