Chapter 795

System

Quest success conditions met!

Mission: Discover the truth behind the death (Complete)

Quest An Unknown Death successfully completed!

You have obtained the special Item Eyes of Truth!

You have gained a large amount of EXP!

System

Quest success conditions met!

Mission: Discover the truth behind the death (Complete)

Quest An Unknown Death successfully completed!

You have obtained the special Item Truthful Eye!

You have gained a large amount of EXP!

Ding. Ding. Ding.

The System messages appearing before my eyes and ringing in my ears were the final confirmation that everything Huginn had said was true.

But a Quest was just a Quest. I wanted more.

Everything about Muninn—or the person called The Prophet.

“Spill everything you know about him. Don’t leave out a single thing.”

I leaned in until Huginn’s trembling breath brushed my face.

“This isn’t what we agreed at the start…”

“An agreement? Of course I’ll keep it. Just not now.”

The condition for keeping my promise in the first place was confirming that The Prophet had killed Siegfried Bassmann. But in this relationship, I was the one holding all the cards.

“Talk. Or you’ll rot in prison until the day you die.”

“…!”

“You know what I’m like. If I say I’ll do something, I do it. Quit trying to outthink me and open your mouth. Go ahead and mix in a lie if you think you can get away with it.”

You could learn a lot from a person’s eyes. The resignation that had just taken over Huginn’s told me he’d finally given up.

“…Fuck.”

The curse came out almost like a sigh. Then he began to speak.

“I don’t know much about him, either. Not exactly what the current Muninn is like.”

I’d grabbed a potion bottle at his first words, but what he hurriedly added made me frown.

The current Muninn?

That was too loaded a phrase to brush off.

It sounded as if…

“Like he hasn’t always been the same person.”

“That’s right. He’s changed several times.”

My mind raced. I slowly set down the potion bottle and stared at Huginn.

“Tell me more.”

“Since I became an adult and officially began serving the Guild Master, I’ve met three Muninns. Including the ones before then, the person now called The Prophet is the fifth Muninn.”

“Before that?”

“Before the Great Cataclysm ended. There were war orphans everywhere you went. I was one of them, though I wasn’t a little kid.”

I didn’t need the details to picture what had happened.

Good people and bad people saw the world differently. Good people might have pitied the countless orphans left by the Great Cataclysm. Others saw a way to further their ambitions.

Lee Jungryong found Go Jun the same way.

The good fortune of Awakening came equally to everyone in humanity after their twentieth birthday.

In that sense, orphans with no one to rely on were lottery tickets that hadn’t been scratched yet. Huginn must have been a diamond Michael Silbert had plucked from the mud.

And…

“That’s when you met Muninn.”

“More precisely, the first Muninn. That was the first and last time I saw him.”

“The last? What happened after that?”

“The Great Cataclysm ended. The Guild Master wanted to keep my existence secret, so after I’d trained in secret for a while, he brought me to his side. That was the day I became Huginn. He introduced me to a man I’d never seen before.”

“The new Muninn?”

Huginn nodded.

“What happened to the first Muninn?”

“I don’t know. The Guild Master only told me he’d gone missing during the Great Cataclysm. He probably died in the war.”

“Gone missing? If he was Michael Silbert’s right-hand man, he must have been highly skilled.”

Huginn gave a bitter smile at my look.

“If you don’t believe me, I can’t help that. But it’s all I know. I hadn’t even Awakened back then. I wasn’t Huginn yet.”

“When exactly was this?”

“Spring of 2021. The Guild Master was already famous. After the Great Battle of Paris, he was becoming one of the heroes who represented France—no, Europe.”

I studied Huginn’s expression for a moment, but couldn’t find any sign of a lie in his face or eyes.

The important part came next.

“The Prophet… Who’s the fifth Muninn?”

“Hmm.”

“Think back. Just tell me what you know. Everything you saw and heard.”

Huginn frowned in thought, but it didn’t take him long to answer.

“A white man. Most of his face was covered, so I didn’t get a good look at him. His build didn’t seem suited to close combat, though. That was only my impression.”

You couldn’t judge a Hunter by their build alone—not when you had someone like Jeok Cheongang, with his slight frame, as proof.

But if someone as skilled as Huginn had gotten that impression, it was worth taking seriously.

The problem was that it gave me nowhere near enough to identify The Prophet.

“A white man. Possibly a ranged Hunter. That’s all you know?”

Huginn swallowed dryly at my calm but icy voice, then answered.

“That’s why I said I didn’t know much. I saw him only once, about three years ago. And even then, the Guild Master ordered me to leave right away.”

“Then how do you know he’s The Prophet? Or that he killed Siegfried Bassmann?”

“The Guild Master told me when the time came. That’s how it’s always worked with Muninn.”

“Always?”

“I stayed by the Guild Master’s side and acted as his hands and feet. They were weapons he sent on more dangerous missions. They’d be gone for a year, sometimes several years, then suddenly appear again. I was always brought in afterward.”

“For example?”

“Information about Sky—Cheon Taemin. And…”

“And what?”

“That…”

Smack!

My palm whipped across Huginn’s cheek. He spat blood and muttered a few words through his pained expression.

“Tokyo. Leviathan. A Magic Gem.”

“…!”

“The Muninn from three years ago brought back all that information. That’s everything. Damn it.”

I stared at Huginn, frozen like a statue.

Anger?

No. Shock.

He knew about Leviathan from the start. He used a Magic Gem to lure it to Tokyo.

And the one who gave that information to Michael Silbert was none other than Muninn—the very man now called The Prophet.

The truth sent a chill down my spine, as if someone had poured ice water over me.

How the hell?

For all the heights modern civilization had reached, the deep sea remained largely unexplored. Yet he’d learned of the calamity lurking in its dark depths.

Perhaps he’d done it all on Michael Silbert’s orders. But was that the whole story?

Damn it.

I swallowed the curse rising in my chest.

Now I understood why no one had ever noticed Muninn.

A hidden blade who visited Michael Silbert in secret, sometimes after a year, more often after several. Unlike Huginn, he hadn’t stayed at Silbert’s side day to day. And since he was sometimes replaced because of his dangerous missions, there’d been no way to notice him.

Even Huginn, who’d handled most of Michael Silbert’s affairs as his right hand, barely knew anything about Muninn.

One thing was certain.

He’s dangerous. Far more dangerous than I thought.

He’d taken down Siegfried Bassmann, an outstanding Grand Mage, all on his own. He’d also drawn the outlines of the events behind this terrorist attack and supplied the information to Michael Silbert.

Michael Silbert hadn’t done it on his own.

Michael Silbert had reached his current position thanks to the loyal Muninns who’d died for him.

I didn’t know what the earlier Muninns had accomplished. But the man I now knew as The Prophet was far more than a mere subordinate.

Another root. Or a second Michael Silbert.

Where the hell did he find people like them?

No matter how vast the world was, no matter how many secrets it held, things eventually leaked out somewhere. Just as the great Guilds secretly trained new S-rank Hunters beyond the public eye.

This was beyond anything I’d imagined.

They must have been handling the dirty work for a long time.

Five Muninns. And the fifth Muninn.

They were Michael Silbert’s darkest shadows. For years, they’d smuggled unrefined Magic Gems out of the Middle East and Africa without pause and stored them away. They’d been his warehouse keepers, his informants, and the blades he used to eliminate rivals.

At least until Michael Silbert died.

But now the Prophet had all of it.

He wasn’t merely a pair of hands and feet like Huginn. The arm called Muninn had broken away from its dead master’s body and grown a body of its own.

The Prophet.

An heir who commanded countless fanatics of a religion followed by twenty percent of the world’s population, and who’d inherited everything his dead master had hidden.

That madman now held the knife by the handle.

And maybe…

“Fuck.”

No. Not that. I couldn’t jump to conclusions on information I wasn’t even sure of, especially now.

I forced the thought from my mind and sprang to my feet.

I had to tell everyone what I’d learned and call back the search teams scattered across the Middle East, as fast as I could. The Prophet was strong enough to kill a Grand Mage alone. I’d sent those teams into the desert to prevent more deaths, not to throw their lives away.

“W-wait!”

Right. Huginn was still here.

I turned at his desperate cry. Before he could say another word, I snatched a potion bottle from the box and brought it down on the crown of his head with lightning speed.

Crash! Thud.

Huginn lost consciousness in a single blow and toppled over with his chair.

A concussion at the very least. But he’d been drenched in potion, so he’d probably be fine.

“Live a nice, long life, okay?”

I spat phlegm toward him, brushed the glass dust off my hand, and walked outside.

I nodded toward the torture technicians pacing outside the door.

“He talked a fair bit, but there might be more he hasn’t told us.”

“Oh, then…?”

“Get it out of him. Squeeze out every last thing, even if you have to wring his soul dry.”

Their faces lit up.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll do my best. There are a lot of methods we haven’t tried yet.”

“Oh, look at this, Michael! Santa left us a whole box of potions!”

“We’ll put them to good use, Boss!”

A promise?

You make those with people. Not trash like Huginn.

“Everyone on the leadership team, to the strategy room. Right now.”

I listened to Team Leader Choi answer over the phone as I crossed the hallway. Then I turned to look out the window.

Tonight, the moon showing through the clouds looked unusually red.