Chapter 793

With the whole world searching high and low, the chances that The Prophet had slipped into a major city full of people were close to zero.

So the tight search net spread across the Middle East, centered on the main force, was focused on monitoring underdeveloped areas. The place we headed to right away was no exception.

Wasteland stretched out on either side of a track so rough it hardly deserved to be called a road.

Beyond it lay a desert as vast as the open sea, dotted with little stands of trees like reefs.

And there, familiar faces were waiting for me.

“You’re with the main force, righ—huh?”

Surprise flashed across a face so young it belonged more to a boy than a man. Xiao Shen stared at me, dumbstruck, then cried out.

“Mr. Jin!”

“Damn it. Why does that Chinese kid have to be so loud?”

Chuck Hagel had come along in Team Leader Choi’s place in case anything happened. He let out a deep sigh.

“Do me a favor. Can’t you do something about that kid? Every time I see him, all he talks about is you. My ears are starting to hurt.”

“Well, he is pretty attached to me.”

“There’s attached, and then there’s that. Wilson wasn’t even that bad.”

“Who’s Wilson?”

“My dog. Whenever I came home after a few days away, he’d charge at me like a maniac. Must’ve thought I was an intruder.”

“Maybe Wilson just had a bad temper?”

“He died three years ago. It was summer.”

“……”

Shit. He’d played two cheat cards at once.

The Talullah¹ moment and the summertime sentimentality hit me so hard I could barely breathe. By comparison, I was glad to see Xiao Shen, who’d just sprinted over like a track athlete.

“H-how could someone as shabby as Mr. Jin come all the way to a place this precious?”

“You’ve got that backward.”

“Oh.”

I patted the statue-like Xiao Shen on the shoulder, then looked around.

The place was definitely shabby.

Sticky blood and a foul stench covered everything.

As I gazed at a pool of blood the size of a small lake, a familiar voice reached me.

“You’re slow as hell. What took you so long?”

I turned. A figure was walking out of the darkness, countless pairs of monster eyes gleaming eerily behind him.

Shing.

Dozens of Hunters accompanying us as our supposed entourage reflexively drew their weapons. I stopped them with a casual wave and answered evenly.

“I got here as fast as I could.”

“Already talking nonsense. I’ve been waiting at least a week.”

“Well, I did sleep for a long time.”

“So you dumped this great king in a shithole like this while you rested without a care?”

“More or less.”

“Damn it.”

Scuff. Scuff.

For all his grumbling, he couldn’t hide the pleasure on his face as he drew closer.

I greeted the Skeleton King for the first time in a week.

“You’re still alive.”

“I am. Though I died a long time ago.”

They say even a dog can learn to recite poetry after three years at a village school.

I gave a quiet laugh at the Skeleton King’s practiced retort.

Behind him stood an army of well over a thousand monsters, even by a rough count.

Though, technically, it was an army of the undead.

“Looks like you’ve more or less finished up. What about the rest?”

“There are none. I took care of every last one.”

I nodded. If the Skeleton King said so, then that was that.

Even Michael Silbert, who’d kept his identity completely hidden by controlling the two energies coexisting inside him, had once aroused the Skeleton King’s suspicions. Whether he wanted the role or not, the Skeleton King was a monster—and when it came to magical power, he was the foremost expert.

And his abilities are exceptional.

In Murim, a Supreme Peak master is called a one-man army.

An S-rank Hunter in the modern world might not compare to a Supreme Peak master, of course, but they weren’t treated all that differently.

Each was a superhuman operating on a different level from ordinary people and Hunters.

Even among such people, the Skeleton King’s abilities stood out.

Any capable S-rank Hunter could take down an army of monsters alone. Finishing the job in less than thirty minutes without a single casualty was another matter.

“So that’s i-mon-je-mon—monsters against monsters.²”

“I-mon-je-mon? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know the four-character idiom? Passed down to us by our wise ancestors…”

“I have no need for it. I’m a citizen of the great United States of America.”

“If I remember right, just a few months ago you read ‘alligator’ as ‘arigatou.’³”

“I’m Japanese American.”

“……”

“Konnichiwa.⁴”

Is this guy fucking insane?

I stared at the Skeleton King, who could swap out his family tree at the drop of a hat, with some bemusement. But I didn’t have much to say. He’d held off a Monster Wave by himself. The least I could do was praise him instead of cursing him out.

I sighed and started to turn away. Then a question occurred to me.

Why did he call for backup?

The Skeleton King was powerful. As long as his magical power held out, he could create an endless army of the undead, and his own fighting ability was no joke.

So why?

Just to protect Xiao Shen?

Or…

Was there something else?

I turned back. Maybe my thoughts showed on my face, because the Skeleton King was watching me with a subdued look I hadn’t seen a moment ago.

“What?”

“Hmm.”

“What is it?”

After a brief silence, he answered.

“Even this great king doesn’t know.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t work out what did it, or how it was possible, no matter how much I thought about it. I tried to find it, but it had already vanished without a trace.”

“What do you mean, ‘it’? What the hell are you talking ab—”

“You’ll understand when you see it. You’ll remember, too.”

Remember what?

Before I could make sense of it, the Skeleton King gave an order.

“Bring them here.”

Thud. Thud.

At his gesture, three headless undead ogres approached with heavy steps. Then, with a care that seemed impossible for creatures their size, they set down what they were carrying.

The moment I saw the twenty bodies of people who had once been human, I understood what the Skeleton King meant.

“…Fuck.”

The curse escaped through my clenched teeth like a groan, mingling with the cool desert air.

Chuck Hagel came over to inspect the bodies. The cigar fell from his mouth.

“Holy shit.”

He wasn’t the only one.

“What the hell is this…?”

“Damn it. Henry?”

Shocked cries and curses broke out all around us. Those who made no sound simply stood there, stunned.

Was it because the bodies had been so horribly mutilated?

No.

The other Hunters and I had seen countless horrific sights. On a battlefield reeking of monsters and blood, even a severed limb wouldn’t make us bat an eye.

But even people like us had never seen anyone die like this before.

Almost none. A handful of us, myself included, had.

“Fuck. Jin, is this…?”

“Yes.”

I kept my voice as calm as I could.

Moonlight spilled through gaps in the slowly parting clouds. Beneath it lay twenty bodies drained of all vitality, their skin and bones shriveled like mummies.

I thought of someone who’d died the same way only a month ago, in an unnamed hideout.

“Siegfried Bassmann.”

One of humanity’s three great Grand Mages. Or rather, one of the three who had been.

Whatever had killed him was here in this desert.

Ding!

The distance to the site and back was the same, but the return trip felt incomparably shorter.

My head was full of questions.

How?

It wasn’t just me. Everyone had been certain Michael Silbert killed Siegfried Bassmann.

The reason was simple.

Bassmann was a Grand Mage, but unlike Magic Johnson, a War Mage who specialized in combat magic, he was a scholar through and through. That was why Johnson had suspected him of designing Area A. Bassmann was a master of barrier magic based on Magic Formations, as well as an expert on monsters.

Would a mage that skilled—and that reclusive—have protected his hideout with nothing but a tarp?

Like Area A, his hideout had been concealed behind all kinds of barriers. Only a handful of people in the world were strong enough to break through those spells.

And of that handful, Michael Silbert was the only one who’d wanted Bassmann dead.

But…

We got it wrong.

I knew it the moment I saw the bodies.

I’d been wrong. We all had.

At least on the day Siegfried Bassmann died, Michael Silbert hadn’t been the one to visit the Grand Mage’s hideout.

If Michael had killed him, the Quest window still occupying a corner of my vision should have disappeared long ago.

System

Quest

An Unknown Death

The reclusive Grand Mage, Siegfried Bassmann, has died for unknown reasons.

But everything has a cause.

Discover how he died and who killed him.

Grade: Supreme Peak

Restriction: Jin Taekyung

Mission: Discover the truth behind his death (Incomplete)

Reward: ???

Failure: ???

The System wasn’t all-powerful.

It gave me a vague direction to follow, but it never told me how far I was from my destination or what traps lay along the way.

That was probably why I hadn’t noticed anything strange about this Quest, even when I checked my System messages and Quest windows right after waking up.

I’d simply assumed it was still open because I hadn’t gotten the full truth about Bassmann’s death out of Michael Silbert.

To me, the Cataclysm Main Quest was the root I had to pull out right away. Everything else was just a branch.

That had been my crucial mistake.

Branches and roots served different purposes, but they were parts of the same tree. Follow a root upward and you reached a branch. Trace a branch down and you reached the root hidden deep underground.

I just hadn’t uncovered it yet. Even if it was hidden now, I could find it someday.

And in that sense, the first person I went to see after returning to the main force was one of the largest branches on the sick tree that was Michael Silbert.

“Someone died about two hours ago. Not just one person—twenty.”

A faint smile crossed the gaunt face on the other side of the table as soon as I sat down and said it.

“You’re impatient. You’ve invited a guest here—can’t he at least have a cup of coffee?”

Coffee. A smile. A guest.

I licked my parched lips.

Strangely, I wasn’t angry. No—maybe I’d reached the limit of my patience the moment we began.

“I’m going to ask you one thing. Listen carefully and answer me, you crow bastard.”

Huginn froze under my killing intent. I put into words the question that hadn’t left my mind the entire way back.

“Did The Prophet kill Siegfried Bassmann?”