Chapter 733

At some point, I’d become the kind of person who could go three days and nights without sleep and still be fine. Even so, getting a good night’s rest was a wonderful thing.

Especially when I woke up refreshed in a place where I was staying with my precious family.

“Home really is the best.”

I sat down at the enormous dining table, and Team Leader Choi gave me a sour look from across it.

“This is my home, technically.”

“Is that important right now?”

“I would say so. It is a matter of legal ownership.”

“I’m starting to wonder if homeless people can even bear to live.”

“Anyone listening would think you really had no house and no money.”

As if.

I had a house in my own name now, and more money than I knew what to do with.

But even with trillions of won¹ sitting in my bank account, I’d be hard-pressed to find a safer place for my family and me to stay.

No. At least not anywhere in Korea.

From the outside, it looked like an enormous mansion. In reality, it was an impregnable fortress wrapped in layer upon layer of protective Magic.

And since the public still knew it as Cheon Taemin’s mansion, it would not be an exaggeration to say that it carried more symbolic weight than even the Blue House.

With everyone watching, breaking in is practically impossible. Even if an S-rank Hunter attacked, we could buy more than enough time.

For someone like me, who put my family’s safety above all else in every situation, it was the perfect place.

Of course, Team Leader Choi might feel differently about suddenly having us as housemates.

“Now that I think about it, I’m being pretty shameless. Should I start paying rent this month?”

“If you offer, I will accept it. At ten million won² per person, forty million³ a month should do.”

I gazed out the window at the sunlight pouring down and muttered:

“Ah, nice weather.”

“……”

“Anyway, why’s the rent so high? You even got the math wrong.”

“My calculations are always accurate.”

“What are you talking about? Ten million each makes thirty million⁴, not forty. My father died ages ago.”

“There is one more person.”

No sooner had Team Leader Choi said it than a blond foreigner came ambling down the hall and dropped into a chair.

“Feed me.”

Speak of the fucking devil.

Putting everything else aside, the very first thing he said after getting up and seeing our faces made it clear he was a first-rate lout.

“You gonna get your own damn food, or eat after I smack you?”

The Skeleton King considered his options carefully.

“I shall get my own food.”

“Good choice. Bring mine while you’re at it.”

“……?”

“Oh, and don’t forget the soup. Forget it and you’re dead.”

One of the mansion’s best features was the artificial intelligence in the kitchen, which always had hot food ready.

A little later, the Skeleton King brought me a meal, grumbling all the while. Team Leader Choi watched as I polished off my yukgaejang.⁵

“Mr. Jin Taekyung, you always eat well.”

“People aren’t machines. You have to eat to live.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes. It’s been a while. I probably collapsed almost the moment I lay down.”

Team Leader Choi nodded as if he had expected that answer.

“So that is why you could not answer your phone.”

“My phone?”

“You received calls from several places during the night. Have you still not checked?”

“Huh?”

Only then did I check my smartphone. It had vibrated so much that I had switched it to silent, but there were now more than a hundred missed calls and messages that had piled up since last night.

What the hell?

The names scattered through the list were too familiar—and too illustrious—to write off as ads or spam.

Prince Felix of the United Kingdom, whom I had met during the operation to suppress the Arch Lich. Faye Chen, an S-rank Hunter.

Chuck Hagel of the United States, with whom I had destroyed a terrorist organization only two weeks ago by modern reckoning, and Magic Johnson, a name that had become impossible to leave out.

That wasn’t all.

President Baek Hanseong was on the list, of course. So were President Doramp Jr. of the United States, whom I had met during my visit to the Pentagon, and Chairman Xiao Yang of China.

“It was a long night,” Team Leader Choi said, raising his coffee cup with a tired look. “Longer than I expected. Though I did hear quite a bit of news.”

“News?”

“Yes. Chairman Xiao Yang, in particular, passed along something interesting.”

Tap, tap.

Team Leader Choi tapped the tablet PC in front of him with one long finger. A hologram rose above the screen and projected dozens of images.

Flash.

“……What is this?”

Once the images had formed, I frowned and put down my spoon.

I had a strong stomach and was used to gruesome sights, but I couldn’t keep eating while I looked at these.

“Why are there so many corpses?”

“They were prisoners who were alive and well and incarcerated at Beijing Special Detention Center as recently as last night. And among them are some faces you know, Mr. Jin Taekyung.”

“I do?”

Swish.

Team Leader Choi waved a hand instead of answering. The images scattered and vanished, all but one, which expanded before me.

“Do you recognize him now?”

I studied it in silence.

The middle-aged man lay there peacefully, as though deep in sleep. His face was familiar, but the Skeleton King recalled his name before I did.

“That human. His name was, ah…… Wu Xueming? Some peculiar name like that.”

He smiled smugly when Team Leader Choi and I looked at him.

“Ha-ha. You underestimate the information-gathering abilities of this body. Unlike lazy creatures such as yourselves, I devoted myself to my smartphone even at the expense of my sleeping hours.”

“You just couldn’t sleep. You’re dead, after all.”

“……”

The Skeleton King grew dejected and began picking at his yukgaejang. Team Leader Choi nodded before speaking.

“Former Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. And……”

I finally remembered everything about Wu Xueming and cut in.

“Wu Heixing’s father. His son was the bastard who teamed up with Lee Jungryong to kill me.”

“Correct. Wu Xueming was effectively China’s second most powerful man, and the leader of the Crown Prince Party—Chairman Xiao Yang’s strongest political rival.”

I knew all that. After the operation against the Arch Lich, Wu Xueming had raised questions about his son’s death, and I’d learned plenty about him.

One of the main reasons Wu Heixing had been able to cause so much trouble and get away with it was his father’s family. The Wu clan was among China’s most distinguished.

But……

“Didn’t all that corruption come out and knock Wu Xueming out of power? Last I heard, he was waiting for trial.”

“That is correct. Chairman Xiao Yang seized the opportunity, and most of the Crown Prince Party, including Wu Xueming, was imprisoned.”

“And now Wu Xueming is suddenly dead?”

“Wu Xueming was still middle-aged, and he had spent decades drinking potions like water for the sake of his health. His cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest, but there is no way he and some fifty of his relatives could all die the same way at the exact same time.”

“Relatives? Then those pictures……”

“According to Chairman Xiao Yang, every one of them belonged to the Wu family. Some were children.”

“……!”

The annihilation of an entire household.

Those words sounded like something out of Murim. A chill ran down my spine, and an almost unbelievable thought struck me.

“Team Leader Choi. You don’t think……”

But before I could finish, Team Leader Choi shook his head.

“Chairman Xiao Yang did not do this. If anything, he wanted to win Wu Xueming over more than anyone.”

Win him over.

Wu Xueming had been Xiao Yang’s greatest political rival. Now that he had no hope of a comeback, Xiao Yang had no particular need to kill him. Then again, he had no reason to keep him alive, either.

So what did he hope to gain by winning him over? What did Wu Xueming have?

The Crown Prince Party’s collapsed influence? His vast fortune, which was all but certain to be seized?

I silently rolled the word persuade around in my mind. Before long, I realized the answer.

“……The Mana Cultivation Method.”

At the single word that escaped like a groan, the Skeleton King blinked, and Team Leader Choi answered in a low voice.

“Yes. Chairman Xiao Yang was trying to win Wu Xueming over in order to obtain the very Mana Cultivation Method that had turned Wu Heixing into an S-rank Hunter.”

An S-rank Hunter with that level of power would naturally discover a unique training method of his own at some point.

But Wu Heixing had been different. He had already learned a Mana Cultivation Method passed down through his family, and after his death and Wu Xueming’s downfall, I had stopped paying much attention to the matter.

But the fact that Wu Xueming and all his relatives suddenly died last night means……

I didn’t care what Xiao Yang planned to do with the method. What mattered was that the destruction of the Wu family had ended his attempt to get it—and who had done that.

I already knew the answer.

“Odin Guild.”

A dry voice, unfamiliar even to me, slipped between my lips. Team Leader Choi ran his fingers over his coffee cup, which had gone cold.

“That seems most likely.”

“……”

“According to Chairman Xiao Yang, Wu Xueming appeared willing to cooperate. He had little choice. If he refused to hand over the Mana Cultivation Method, he faced life imprisonment at the least, and possibly execution. But……”

Team Leader Choi trailed off and bit his lip.

“Someone else would not have wanted that.”

It felt as though the blood throughout my body had frozen.

They had made their move. Faster than I’d expected, and with far more cruelty.

But even so, to wipe out an entire household……

I looked at the hologram, still hovering above the table. Women, children, old people. All of them lay in a sleep from which they would never wake.

Simply because they had been born into the Wu family.

Did they go this far to stop the Mana Cultivation Method from getting out? Or……

Was this a reply to what happened last night?

The thoughts hovered on the tip of my tongue, then scattered. I stared at the faces of the dead for a while before speaking.

“Team Leader Choi.”

“Yes. Please, go ahead.”

“If you’ve got time, want to go out for coffee?”

“I do not mind. But where would we go all of a sudden?”

“Let’s see. Was it Paris?”

“What?”

Team Leader Choi looked at me, puzzled. I went on calmly.

“Odin Guild. I feel like going to see the boss’s ugly mug.”

“……!”