An alien presence appeared before them amid the frozen air.

An androgynous beauty with long, flowing hair.

But the figure was unmistakably a spirit, clearly different from a human.

Oh Hyunseong stared blankly up at the translucent figure floating in the air.

"How... How are you..."

Albern, the water spirit.

His former partner, who had accompanied him through more battlefields than he could count and spent most of his active career as a hunter by his side.

He was also an ill-fated spirit who had suffered irreparable damage during the final battle against the queen-class individual and ultimately vanished completely.

I thought I’d never see you again...

Albern was a higher existence beyond comparison with the lower spirits currently contracted with him.

The spirit smiled and approached him.

Oh Hyunseong reached out in a daze, and Albern gently rubbed his cheek against his hand, savoring his touch.

It was a warmth he had not felt in far too long.

Drawing close to Oh Hyunseong, the spirit whispered in his ear in the language of spirits before suddenly disappearing.

As though flowing into Oh Hyunseong’s body, Albern vanished, leaving only a trail of white behind.

The freezing air returned to normal.

The spirit’s overwhelming presence that had filled the space also dissipated.

"Wh-What was that just now?"

Joo Jihye belatedly sprang up as she spoke.

She was so astonished that she had forgotten her legs had given out.

Her heart was still pounding.

The presence she had sensed, brief though it had been, was truly immense.

At first, she had wondered whether a monster had appeared, but that could not have been it.

This had been an entirely different kind of existence.

"A spirit I was contracted with."

"A s-spirit?"

Joo Jihye looked as though she must have misheard him.

But when Oh Hyunseong silently nodded, she became deeply bewildered.

"But... I’ve never heard of an awakened person who uses spirits..."

In fact, this was the first time she had even learned that spirits existed.

Her career had not been particularly long, but she still knew nearly everything there was to know about the hunter industry. Hunters with summoning-type abilities appeared occasionally, but spirits belonged to a classification she had never heard of before.

"Of course you haven’t. I’m the only one."

Oh Hyunseong answered simply.

Even as he spoke, he did not so much as glance at Joo Jihye. His expression was more serious than she had ever seen it.

The easygoing air he always carried had vanished, replaced by a razor-sharp intensity.

It was as though she were looking at a completely different person.

Intimidated for reasons she could not quite explain, Joo Jihye fell silent, unable to say anything more.

A spirit that had completely vanished could never be revived.

Spirits could recover from ordinary damage and return after being unsummoned, but under certain extreme circumstances or exceptional conditions, they could suffer permanent damage.

Oh Hyunseong had made countless attempts to overturn that immutable truth.

It was also why he had obsessed so fanatically over rehabilitation after losing all his spirits in the battle against the queen-class individual.

Even if he retired from being a hunter completely, he had not wanted his career to end with his partners lost forever.

Naturally, every attempt had ended exactly as expected, and he had eventually resigned himself to the truth.

But now he could feel his soul and the spirit intimately connected once more.

So they aren’t dead...!

Oh Hyunseong reflected on the words Albern had left him.

Drops of dark blood fell from his tightly clenched fist.

"Is Jeongil in Korea right now?"

"What...? Oh, yes! As far as I know, he doesn’t have any overseas engagements for a while."

"Let’s go to Seoul. I need to see him immediately."

"What...? The CEO? Right now?"

Joo Jihye stared at him in confusion.

She had originally planned to stay another leisurely day or two before leaving.

But Oh Hyunseong needed to speak with Choi Jeongil at once.

Wheee-ooo! Wheee-ooo!

At that moment, a deafening siren suddenly began to wail.

Oh Hyunseong and Joo Jihye flinched and turned simultaneously.

It was a disaster siren echoing not only here, but throughout the entire village.

Chime!

Both their phones sounded at once as an emergency alert arrived, and an announcement played over the sirens.

It was a prerecorded mechanical voice.

Yet it repeatedly emphasized that this was a genuine emergency.

An urgent evacuation order had been issued due to the emergence of a Gate.

"What the hell is this?"

"It’s an emergency evacuation order from the Disaster Management Agency. A Gate must have appeared near the village."

"But this isn’t a normal alert."

Joo Jihye narrowed her eyes slightly.

Gate response systems were far more organized now, but even so, the authorities did not usually make this much commotion.

Tens of thousands of Gates appeared every year. If the authorities caused this kind of uproar each time, the economy would have ground to a halt long ago.

Such an extreme response generally meant either that a Gate with unusual properties had appeared or that a major Gate of S-rank or higher had emerged.

But the chances of a Gate of that magnitude appearing near a small village like this, rather than around a city, were extremely low.

"They didn’t issue the alert by mistake, did they?"

"Who knows?"

"I’ll get my weapon, just in case."

Joo Jihye went into one of the rooms in the annex.

Neither of them appeared flustered or panicked.

That went without saying for Oh Hyunseong, and Joo Jihye was also a first-rate hunter who made her living in the field.

But to civilians, such a situation could only be unfamiliar and terrifying.

The Yoo siblings’ faces were deathly pale when they came running to his house after hearing the announcement.

"H-Hyunseong! You’re safe!"

"The alarm suddenly started blaring. Did a Gate appear in the village?"

"Calm down. If the alert went off, that means the Disaster Management Agency already knows about it. Don’t panic. Let’s head down to the village first."

Oh Hyunseong calmed the siblings down.

Joo Jihye soon emerged with her face thoroughly concealed beneath sunglasses, a mask, and a hat pulled low over her head. Without even pausing for introductions, they headed toward the village.

"My goodness, what in the world is happening?"

"I didn’t see any Gate on the way here."

"Has Mr. Hwang’s family still not arrived?"

The residents gathered in front of the village hall.

The evacuation facility was located nearby, so everyone had converged there as though by prior agreement.

But no one understood what was happening. Instead of entering the shelter, they were all milling around in confusion.

None of them had ever experienced a situation serious enough to trigger an alert like this. Some even burst into tears from anxiety.

Then a line of vehicles entered the village.

Disaster Management Agency personnel climbed out once the vehicles stopped and began restoring order and directing the residents with practiced efficiency.

Oh Hyunseong and the others, who had arrived shortly afterward, encountered them and entered the civilian shelter.

Joo Jihye, however, looked puzzled as she followed him inside.

"Why are we going in here?"

"Wait here for a moment. I’ll go find out what’s happening."

Oh Hyunseong left the shelter alone.

He spotted an investigator in a black coat near the entrance and immediately recognized him as a hunter, then approached.

"An evacuation order was issued without warning. Could you tell me what happened?"

"A Gate was detected near the village. This is standard procedure, so remain inside and wait."

"But you don’t normally sound the disaster sirens for that, do you?"

"That can vary depending on the circumstances. We’ll take care of it, so go back inside."

"I’ll return immediately. Just tell me what happened. Everyone is frightened. And under ordinary circumstances, you would send only a clearing team, not investigators like you."

"Listen! What do you know that makes you think you can keep arguing with me? Are you a hunter?"

The man scowled.

He was already overwhelmed, and now some country bumpkin from this rural village kept pestering him as though he knew anything about the situation.

But Oh Hyunseong had no intention of leaving. As their voices gradually rose, a nearby hunter approached.

"What’s going on?"

"No idea. I keep telling him to go inside, but he won’t stop bothering me."

"I’m only asking for a basic explanation of the situation."

"For God’s sake!"

"Huh...?"

The hunter who had intervened blinked at Oh Hyunseong.

A moment later, his face filled with shock, and he hurriedly whispered something to his colleague.

The colleague’s eyes widened when he heard it.

He seemed unable to believe it at first, but his expression soon became awkward.

"Uh... I-I’m... I’m sorry."

The man bowed deeply, then hurried away.

Oh Hyunseong wondered what had gotten into him, but the hunter who had intervened approached.

"Excuse me, but you are Hunter Oh Hyunseong, aren’t you?"

"...How do you know me?"

"My name is Seo Jaeho. Naturally, you wouldn’t know me, but before changing jobs, I was a hunter with a private guild."

The man introduced himself.

Back then, hunters in the private sector had commonly belonged to guilds, mercenary-like organizations that preceded modern management agencies.

"And our guild participated in the Northern Defense Battle."

"Then you must have lived through a difficult time."

"Haha, I certainly did. Still, thanks to you holding the front line, I escaped with my life through the retreat route you secured. I still remember it vividly. Thank you. Truly."

Seo Jaeho bowed deeply.

His gratitude was unmistakably sincere.

Oh Hyunseong had never expected to hear something like this after retiring, especially from a stranger rather than a former comrade.

Then again, even if his face and affiliation had been erased from official records, there were bound to be people who remembered what had happened.

In any case, the unexpected encounter made matters simple.

Seo Jaeho gave Oh Hyunseong a detailed explanation of everything surrounding the alert, including the sudden detection of energy waves on the scale of an S-rank Gate and their equally sudden disappearance.

"It was most likely a simple system error, but because a possible S-rank Gate is such a serious matter, we’re conducting a search as a precaution."

"And you haven’t found anything yet?"

"No. Nothing has been visually confirmed."

Generally, the higher a Gate’s rank, the greater its physical size.

If an S-rank Gate had truly appeared nearby, it should have been easy to spot.

Yet despite searching the area around the village, they had found no Gate.

Could Albern’s presence have been detected by the observation network?

There had never been an opportunity for that to happen in the past, but it was theoretically possible.

An existence as powerful as Albern had suddenly reappeared, so it would hardly be strange for the resulting energy waves to be mistaken for those of an S-rank Gate.

More importantly, the timing of the waves’ appearance and disappearance matched far too closely.

"I need to join the search on the outskirts, so I should get going."

"Thank you for explaining."

His conversation with Seo Jaeho ended.

Not long afterward, Han Suyeon called him first.

"Hyunseong, our observation system detected an anomaly. It happened to be in your village. Nothing happened there, did it?"

"Something did happen."

"...What?"

"Albern came back."

"Albern...? The Albern I know?"

"Yes. It looks like that’s what caused the readings. I’ll explain the details later, so take care of this for now. There’s no point making your people search for nothing."

"All right. Give me a moment."

After ending the call with Han Suyeon, Oh Hyunseong waited.

Sure enough, it was not long before the Disaster Management Agency hunters began withdrawing.

No Gate had been discovered during the search, and headquarters had issued instructions to stand down on the assumption that the observation equipment had malfunctioned.

For some reason, however, one of the search teams failed to return even after the withdrawal order was issued.

"Wh-What is this?"

A Disaster Management Agency search team stood frozen in the mountains near the village.

They had discovered an enormous footprint amid the dense undergrowth.

At first glance, it resembled the print of a wild animal. But no animal of such size existed, and an ominous black energy writhed around it.

The erosion was so intense that even the hunters instinctively backed away.

"Could this be connected to the S-rank Gate detected earlier?"

"No, it has nothing to do with those energy waves. With erosion this severe... it must have been here for much longer."

Cold sweat beaded on Seo Jaeho’s forehead.

"A calamity known as humanity’s natural enemy."

Chapter 24

Comments