Chapter 387:

Chapter 387:

“...What is the relation between that and Miss Jia’s puppy ears?”

“They are not puppy ears! They are wolf ears! Wolf!”

The heavy atmosphere vanished in an instant as if it melted away.

Kwon Jia, who let out a squeak with a flushed face, covered her head with both hands and spat out a lament as if she was consoling herself.

“It was all because I learned this Heavenly Thunder God Technique a long time ago, in the second cycle, when I met Fenrir and gained his power.”

“That was a very long time ago.”

“No matter how many cycles I repeated, this power was always available to me as soon as I started. Maybe it was because I didn’t need to inherit anything from him and I had a good affinity with this power.”

“But, is that related to this?”

“Listen to me till the end. Anyway, as I kept using this power, Fenrir’s energy naturally seeped into my body. And what is Fenrir? He is a wolf.”

“Right. The problem is that he is not just a wolf.”

“That’s it.”

“What?”

Yu-hyun widened his eyes at the unexpected conclusion.

“What do you mean by that’s it?”

“That! It’s because I used Fenrir’s power too much and I was influenced by him that I became like this! Do you need me to say it twice for you to understand?”

“You didn’t even say it twice.”

“What did you say?”

“Ah, no. Nothing.”

Anyway, Yu-hyun understood why Kwon Jia had wolf ears on her head.

In the end, it was because she had used the Heavenly Thunder God Technique, which could be called Fenrir’s power, for a long time that the wolf ears, which could be considered Fenrir’s characteristic, manifested as part of her body.

“By the way, are you okay in other places?”

“O-other places? What do you mean?”

Kwon Jia hid her hands behind her back with a slight panic.

“No, I mean, if you have ears, then maybe a tail...?”

“...Is that your preference?”

“...It’s just a common sense question. Usually beastmen have both ears and tail attached to them. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I-I don’t have anything like that!”

Kwon Jia shouted and moved her butt further back.

Yu-hyun realized another fact from her instinctive attitude.

‘Ah. She has a tail too.’

Yu-hyun decided not to point out that part.

Kwon Jia must be feeling more embarrassed and ashamed than anyone else since she had wolf ears on her head.

“Sniff sniff.”

At that moment, Kang Hye-rim, who had been quiet, reacted again.

She sniffed as if she smelled something and then glared at Kwon Jia with fierce eyes.

“W-what is it?”

Kwon Jia felt nervous as Kang Hye-rim stared at her strangely again.

Kang Hye-rim approached Kwon Jia and then stroked her head.

Kwon Jia’s expression froze as if she was being treated like a pet.

***

Yu-hyun managed to stop Kwon Jia before the sun set and prevented any problems from happening.

However, he needed to explain the situation to Kwon Jia about Kang Hye-rim, so he told her everything that had happened since he woke up until now.

“I see...”

Kwon Jia couldn’t hide her bitterness after hearing the whole story.

She knew about Kang Hye-rim becoming the Black Thunder Lord.

She had wondered if Kang Hye-rim wouldn’t have fallen so low if she had stayed with her back then.

But, she thought that finding Yu-hyun was more important than anything else.

So she left her comrades behind and embarked on an endless journey.

“You too... You’ve been through a lot.”

“Ah, and there is something else I want to say to Miss Jia.”

“Yeah. It’s about Laplace, right?”

Kwon Jia knew what Yu-hyun was going to say and took the initiative.

At the same time, black letters rose behind her back and Laplace showed himself.

Laplace immediately knelt on one knee before Yu-hyun and bowed his head.

[Oh. My lord. You have returned.]

“It’s been a while. Laplace.”

[I have waited for a very, very long time. While you were away, I diligently assisted Miss Kwon Jia by your side, but you were always on my mind.]

“You have worked hard.”

[Ah. Receiving your praise is already a great reward for me.]

“Good. Come back to me.”

At Yu-hyun’s command, Laplace nodded happily and soon returned to him.

Yu-hyun felt the power in his body rise even more and closed his eyes briefly to savor it.

***

The sun set and night came when he heard the news that each representative was heading to Old Town.

The Salio Empire would also need some time to prepare to move, so there was still some time left.

The representatives of Midland, Zhongtian Alliance, Foreigner, and Earth side agreed to meet in Old Town for a meeting, so he had to wait patiently until then.

So Yu-hyun decided to finish the unfinished words with this only opportunity.

“Did you call me?”

“Yes. Jia and Seoryeon are both here.”

“Well, you asked me to come.”

Kang Hye-rim was still clinging to Yu-hyun’s side.

Kwon Jia frowned at the sight, but didn’t say anything. She knew how Kang Hye-rim was doing from Yu-hyun.

Still, she couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed, and she felt her tail droop.

“So what do you want to say?”

“The unfinished stories.”

“But it seems like we’ve done everything we could.”

“Isn’t there a fragment left?”

“Oh, right.”

Fragment.

Precisely, a piece of a torn book from Codex’s library.

Yu-hyun had been focusing on collecting fragments until he was caught in a massive explosion.

And some of the fragments he had were given to others.

“Jia, you have a fragment now, right?”

Yu-hyun brought up the story of the fragment without hesitation, as Baek Seo-ryeon needed to know this too.

People who were not allowed could not recognize or know the truth about the fragment. But maybe because of the influence of being with Yu-hyun for a long time, Baek Seo-ryeon understood the whole conversation.

“Yes. I still have what I had before.”

“And after that, you didn’t collect any more fragments?”

“...Yes. When I collected all the fragments, the second mythic war broke out. I think Codex itself had some influence.”

“So in a situation where we have to postpone the war as much as possible, we shouldn’t collect fragments recklessly.”

But in this mixed world, there were people who had fragments.

And he didn’t know what kind of wind blew in the last five years, but surely more people knew about the existence of fragments than before.

Even if he left it alone, someone who had a fragment would move to collect other fragments.

But that wasn’t important.

“Jia. I have some clues about the real power of the fragment.”

“The real power of the fragment?”

“What is it?”

Yu-hyun calmly recalled what had happened last time.

The moment he chose to become human at the horizon of the story, and tried to save Kang Hye-rim who was disappearing as a letterpress.

“Look.”

Yu-hyun grabbed the book floating above Kwon Jia and Baek Seo-ryeon’s heads with his hand.

They were surprised when a book suddenly appeared in Yu-hyun’s hand.

They instinctively realized that Yu-hyun’s book was not an ordinary book.

“I have the power to see other people’s books. And in this book, all the stories that the original owner has accumulated are written. I used this book to prevent Hyerim from dying.”

Kang Hye-rim, who became a transcendent being, was destined to die without leaving even a corpse and become scattered as letterpresses.

But Yu-hyun took her disappearing letterpresses from her book and filled in the empty parts and stitched them together, barely preventing her death.

But it wasn’t enough to revive her completely with just the stories in Kang Hye-rim’s book.

“So I need your books. Your books have your stories written in them, but more than that, they have your past with Hyerim.”

That was why Yu-hyun was looking for his old colleagues.

If there were stories of colleagues who remembered moments with Kang Hye-rim, then he could really wake her up completely.

“I’m going to start that process again.”

It was his second time dealing with books completely since then, but his sense of then was still clear.

And by handling Kang Hye-rim’s book, Yu-hyun was able to use her skills as well.

With this, he could open up a new way to become stronger here.

“But I don’t want to use your books without your permission. That’s why I called you.”

“Yu-hyun...”

“...You’re really a considerate man.”

Kwon Jia and Baek Seo-ryeon readily agreed.

For Kang Hye-rim’s sake, they didn’t mind giving up some of their stories.

They didn’t know what effect it had on them, who could be called the owners of the books, but even considering that, their feelings for Kang Hye-rim were strong.

They also felt guilty about Kang Hye-rim’s change.

“Then I’ll go.”

Yu-hyun turned the books in both hands into letterpress pieces and handed them to Kang Hye-rim.

Kang Hye-rim didn’t know what it was, but she accepted it naturally because Yu-hyun gave it to her.

At the same time, the letterpresses seeped into Kang Hye-rim’s body, and light began to flow from her.