Chapter 120

No. 120

Yoo-seong walked briskly through the corridors of the Korean Embassy in Japan.

He passed by a Japanese employee who was watching a video on his cellphone. As soon as the employee recognized him, his mouth dropped wide open.

Yoo-seong continued walking without pause.

How many times had that happened to him today?

Every Japanese person he’d encountered had such a reaction. Through Yang Chang-guk, Yoo-seong’s footage of Murata had spread like wildfire.

Yukio Murata was the Prime Minister. He had to put the country and its people above all else.

But now, everyone felt betrayed by him.

It was a betrayal. There was no other word to describe it. They’d seen how their Prime Minister had seemed satisfied with waiting for hunters to arrive.

He had gambled the lives of his citizens on luck.

Even as the interpreter next to him cried and begged Yoo-seong to help, the Prime Minister himself had not budged.

Rather, he had smiled triumphantly at Yoo-seong.

It was so creepy.

‘It’s what they call karma,’ Yoo-seong thought as he turned his gaze through the embassy’s wide windows. In front of the embassy, about ten or twenty people were gathered.

Each one of them wore a headband with red, Japanese letters on them.

Yoo-seong couldn’t understand what was written, but he assumed the messages were protests against him.

They were members of a right-wing group supporting the Prime Minister. However, they were an outright minority.

Twenty people were nothing compared to the large-scale protests happening in Tokyo right now. Yoo-seong had saved more than four hundred people by himself.

On top of that, despite the Prime Minister’s attitude, he had closed a crack that even a circuit breaker couldn’t. And, after closing the crack and sending the video to Yang Chang-guk, Yoo-seong had returned to the rescue site and continued his rescue.

Only after there were no survivors left had Yoo-seong come to the embassy.

Yoo-seong turned his head and continued walking toward the basement of the embassy building. Originally, it was a spacious hall used for events inside the embassy. But right now, everything inside it had been put away in consideration of Yoo-seong’s needs.

It was now a large, empty space where he could train.

Yoo-seong placed his sports bag, water bottle, and towel in the corner of the wide hall.

After taking a seat in the center…

Howoook-!

Yoo-seong raised his CE.

Go-oh-oh-oh-!

He pulled Aura out of his body, controlling it to the utmost, preventing a Corona. It was all just basic control training, one of the most basic training moves for beginner hunters.

In the past, Yoo-seong had always kept up such training. However, in the past year – including six months in the alien world – he’d had no time at all. It felt as if he had undergone a non-stop series of incidents.

Go-oh-oh-oh-!

Yoo-seong’s concentration increased endlessly. He pushed his sensations to the limit, trying to reach every corner of his body.

This session wasn’t just control training. It was more of a self-diagnosis, an inspection and evaluation.

‘I knew it,’ he thought as he felt the pulsation of his changed core. ‘It didn’t grow much.’

He measured the total amount of his CE. The Jade Pill provided him the ability to regenerate CE. Thanks to it, he could use CE to his heart’s content without worrying about exhaustion.

However, his core had remained the same.

The total amount of his CE remained unchanged.

‘What would happen if I increased my CE total?’ he wondered.

As Yoo-seong had realized countless times before, his total amount of CE was below average.

Now, he couldn’t get more of Sung-wook’s CE, but he could use CE extracted from monsters. It was still possible to expand his core and grow his total CE amount through injection.

‘I recover one-fourth of my total amount of CE every time. If the total amount is increased, I won’t need to wait for the battery to be fully charged,’ he was convinced.

The wider the core, the more CE he had, the more he could maximize his new ability.

‘When I return, I’ll split my training time and invest in CE injection.’

Of course, there was no rush. The Jade Pill gave him an option to use CE beyond the total CE amount of his core.

Besides, with Auto-Hunt, he could also choose to be efficient.

However, Yoo-seong didn’t want to settle. He wanted to continue improving his skills and abilities, and not just because of his duty.

It was something he had realized in his battle with the Thunder Ape.

‘Defense.’

He had replayed the fight against the Thunder Ape several times in his mind in the last dozen hours. Whether his opponent was a human or a monster, Yoo-seong wasn’t worried about his offense.

His movement and Aura control were on a different level, thanks to Auto-Hunt. He also had a powerful Aura blade.

However, apart from attack power, the reason Yoo-seong had successfully overcome the struggles he’d faced so far was his defense.

How many times had the Queen’s Hug saved his life?

Despite the help of that sturdy armor, though, it had limitations.

With regards to Aura, offense and defense were vastly different.

For example, with minimal Aura, he could extract a blade so thin yet so sharp. It wasn’t something he could do with defense.

If he wanted to stop a blow, the Aura he had to use must necessarily equal the power of the attack. Of course, he had an impact dispersion technique with Steinnible.

But even that, in the end, wouldn’t stop the Thunder Ape’s fist.

If Auto-Hunt hadn’t taken the Ape’s ivory horn when it did, Yoo-seong wouldn’t have had a chance against the maximum-charged beast.

That was why he needed to expand his core. It was to increase the total amount of his CE that could be devoted to defense.

Then it would be safer for him to research the object currently in his slot.

He turned his eye to the item – the Thunder Ape’s Ivory Horn.

This was the biggest loot from his Japanese hunt.

With Auto-Hunt, he had been able to cut it off neatly, but Yoo-seong couldn’t handle it with his bare hands. Of course, he hadn’t just left it in his slot unattended.

He’d tried to combine it with the Queen’s Hug, but he received a message.

‘No synthesizable items.’

Yoo-seong had thought that it would be a matter of finding the right combinations for it. When he synthesized using the Turtle Dragon’s eye, he had based it on the book that listed objects that could contain the monster’s energy. He needed some sort of recipe with detailed information, just like he’d found in that book.

‘This horn would have a handling method like that,’ he thought.

It had to be in ancient books like Yang Woo-ryang’s.

“Whoo!”

With a long breath, Yoo-seong finished his diagnosis.

His body was soaked in sweat. Six hours had passed without him noticing.

Yoo-seong took his large water bottle and chugged on it.

‘Not bad,’ he thought. ‘It’s definitely good to have this room.’

“Just wait three days, Yoo-seong. This won’t take long,” Yang Chang-guk said with a confident expression.

After three days, Yoo-seong would be able to leave this country.

It would be impossible for the Japanese government to keep detaining him.

Yang Chang-guk himself was not at the embassy right now. He was riding the ripples caused by Yoo-seong, with Korean Foreign Affairs him.

He was working hard to support Yoo-seong. Yoo-seong believed in him, so he would wait patiently.

He decided to use his spare time for analysis and research.

“Well then.” He took a few A4 sheets from inside his sports bag.

There were four printed sheets of paper. Three of them had diagrams of the human body. They were the first four pages he’d taken from Leto’s research facility.

It had summaries on how to use energy. He began reading them over and over again.

“No matter what I think of it,” Yoo-seong said out loud to himself, “Sung-wook is a genius.”

Sung-wook had invented the Parasitic Bee and Spider Walk without any reference for systemized Ki. Yoo-seong had invented the Spider Threads Tech, but its principle was the same as Sung-wook’s Parasitic Bee. Therefore, it could be said that Sung-wook was equally responsible for its invention.

Now, Yoo-seong had to work alone.

He might not have Sung-wook’s genius, but he had a lot of advantages he could use. Auto-Hunt, as well as the Volcano Tech and various other Techs he’d obtained over the six months he’d spent in the alien world.

And a wealth of resources for reference.

Yoo-seong folded the pages and placed them back into his bag.

Go-oh-oh-oh-!

He raised his Aura once more and regulated his breathing. All the necessary conditions were in place. All that remained were enough concentration and time to burn.

Fortunately, Yoo-seong had them now.

‘Five. Four. Three. Two.’

Yoo-seong counted down silently.

‘One.’

Suddenly, a voice interrupted his concentration.

“Yoo-seong?”

It had come from outside the door.

Yoo-seong opened his eyes and saw a tall, scholarly-looking man approach him. It was Ambassador Joo Young-jin. He was the man who had given Yoo-seong permission to use the hall for his convenience.

“Oh, did I disturb you?”

“No, Ambassador. What brings you here?”

The man scratched his head as if he were in trouble. Yoo-seong had a bad feeling about this. Ambassador Joo Young-jin was a man of few words and was very considerate. That he had to interrupt Yoo-seong during training meant that something big had happened.

“Now, at the embassy… there is an intruder.”

At this, Yoo-seong stood immediately.

***

Walking down the hall with Ambassador Joo Young-jin, Yoo-seong asked about the trespassing.

“The intruder is in your office right now?” Yoo-seong’s voice was filled with concern.

“Yes. Actually, a report came in an hour ago. A woman was looking for you. We couldn’t let her in because, first of all, she isn’t even Korean.”

After getting rejected at the entrance, the woman had stepped back. But, a few minutes later, she had reappeared at the Ambassador’s office somehow.

“She asked me to bring you. No matter what. She looked pretty desperate. It’s not the usual crazy person,” the Ambassador said.

“She looked as if she was going to turn the entire embassy over. Civilians could get hurt,” he added.

Yoo-seong nodded. “You have judged accurately.”

Someone skilled enough and bold enough to sneak into an embassy. She was probably a hunter, or at least a CE user.

Yoo-seong clenched and unclenched his fingers, preparing for a fight.

“I think I know who it likely is,” he said.

“Really?” The Ambassador’s eyes widened. “Who is it?”

“I know of only one woman who would be crazy enough to do it.”

‘Chika Sukune.’

A girl who would destroy everything if she couldn’t get what she wanted.

“Ambassador, you must not go in. Go to the first floor instead,” Yoo-seong warned. “I will finish it as quickly and quietly as possible.”

“Well, please.” The Ambassador tapped his shoulder and left him in front of the office door.

With a firm expression, Yoo-seong walked in, pushing the door open with his feet.

Bang-!

“Why did you come here?!” he said immediately as he took a step inside. “Haven’t you suffered enough-”

He stopped mid-sentence.

The woman that was waiting inside was not Chika Sukune. This person, with her hoodie pulled down firmly, was much taller.

Meanwhile, Yoo-seong was berating himself.

How could he not have thought of it sooner?

Was it because he was in the middle of training and thought it was an urgent matter?

If Chika Sukune were rejected at the entrance, she would not sneak in.

Instead, she would barge in and destroy everything her way.

Yoo-seong tried to open his mouth.

He had to take back the harsh words he’d just said. However, when the woman raised her head, and the hood covering it fell back, Yoo-seong could not find the words to say.

The woman approached him with tears in her eyes. And as she ran towards him…

Yoo-seong smelled a familiar floral scent.

Whispering soft words while sobbing, Yang Biyeon hugged Oh Yoo-seong tight.