115 – It’s the Time for Heroes and Gallants! #1
Urk-urk-.
Prince Juhyun kept feeling an annoying throbbing sensation at his temples.
‘My head’s not split open, is it?’
His head had continued to hurt from the blow he’d received from the old man’s rock-like fists.
Even though the old man wasn’t an Awakened One, his fighting skills had been incredible.
‘That old man, come to think of it, seemed to know Hanamjin.’
Whatever the case may be, he wasn’t an ordinary person. If he could learn combat techniques from this old man, Prince Juhyun could become even more famous than he already was. His minimum goal was to become stronger than Hanamjin.
While harboring such thoughts, Prince Juhyun returned to the hospital. After a brief examination, the boy headed toward the room next to the private one where he’d been hospitalized.
“Kim Mori”
This was the name of the patient in the adjacent room. She was the eccentric patient who had angrily screamed at the visiting women when Prince Juhyun’s father, Chairman Wang, had visited, causing everyone to be chased away.
Knock-knock.
As Prince Juhyun knocked on the door of the hospital room, there were sounds of movement from inside.
—-Gim-mat—-.
“What flavor?”
Creak, squeak.
As the door opened and he entered, a half-undressed girl began to rant.
“Get out, you creep! I’m changing clothes! You pervert!”
“Kim Mori, what could I possibly see from you?”
Hmph.
Prince Juhyun snickered and kicked the wheelchair near the entrance of the hospital room roughly aside. His gaze then turned toward the patient, who was hurriedly changing into her bland hospital gown.
She was a girl with a neatly cropped bob hairstyle. It wasn’t so much about showing off her style but rather for convenience that she had cut it that way.
Besides the slightly pointy ends of her eye, her face could be considered decently pretty, though it was marred by a large scar running from her left jawline to just below her nose.
Most importantly, Kim Mori had mobility issues in her legs. A few years ago, while riding a motorcycle, she had severely injured her back, leaving her unable to walk for life—or so it seemed. She was supposed to be attending her final year of high school.
At the age when one should be running around and learning how to dress up beautifully, she had already spent years living as an inpatient. Consequently, patient Kim Mori’s personality had become sharp, and she had a strong tendency to become hysterical.
But somehow, Prince Juhyun had become friends with this girl in the neighboring room. Whether it was a sense of camaraderie between those who had suffered great wounds or an affinity among the misfits, they had connected.
“Here, eat this.”
Prince Juhyun extended a bag of dried fruit to Kim Mori. Mango slices.
Kim Mori accepted the bag, opened a window, and placed one of the mangoes on its sill.
“What are you doing?”
When Prince Juhyun asked, Kim Mori replied.
“For the squirrel.”
“What squirrel?”
“You know, sometimes a big squirrel comes to the tree visible from here. It’s super large—like a dog. I’ve even named it Kangkang.”
Are there really giant squirrels resembling dogs anywhere in the world? Prince Juhyun scrutinized the thick branches visible through Kim Mori’s window, his eyes partially closed as he scanned them.
“Isn’t that a possum?”
“Hey, do you think I can’t tell the difference between a squirrel and a possum? I used to chase them around in the orphanage endlessly. It’s a squirrel, a dog-sized squirrel! It even barks like a dog!”
Kim Mori was increasingly making strange claims. At that moment, Prince Juhyun spotted a glass bottle on Kim Mori’s desk. When he sniffed the leaves inside, the sour smell of sweat caused a chill down his spine.
“This is Witch’s Herb, isn’t it? Kim Mori, where did you get this from?”
“That? Some sisters gave it to me. They mentioned something about a rehabilitation center called Abraxas, I think. Their card is around here. They said they’d help me walk again. sh*t, what a joke.”
Though Prince Juhyuan hadn’t heard of this “Abraxas” name before, he vividly remembered the herb from the chaos caused during the formation ceremony of the extermination team. The “Witches’ Sect.”
What was the reason those wicked women had approached Kim Mori, a patient?
Prince Juhyun placed the glass bottle in his pocket as he said.
“You should not talk to those women if they come again. They are part of a cult.”
“What do you mean, who are you to tell me what to do? Are you my boyfriend? Do you like me?”
Teasing half, mocking half, and self-hatred half.
Prince Juhyun, sensing the complex emotions in Kim Mori’s voice, answered honestly.
“Would it be bad if I liked you?”
“I can’t walk and probably never will. And my temper is awful.”
“So it’s bad.”
“Wow—”
With a sharp frown at such an honest admission, Kim Mori said to Prince Juhyun:
“Then grant me one wish, and I might not say no to going out with you. There’s this guy in your school named Geum Tae-sung, right? He’s been bugging me, so can you scare him off for me? You’re really good at those things, right?”
Geum Tae-sung from Class D.
Prince Juhyun recalled the male student who was a member of the “No Leftovers Day” group and had once been considered a promising young star.
He had once thought of Geum Tae-sung as a rival rather than Hanamjin and had subtly kept an eye on him. But after meeting Hanamjin, Geum Tae-sung had become irrelevant.
“It’s also because of that guy that I have to stay in this bed. Can you avenge me? And warn him not to come near me again.”
Huuuh—.
Kim Mori tried to exert force on her legs but they wouldn’t budge. Her glance naturally fell on the card from “Abraxas.”
If only she could move her legs again, even if it meant relying on a strange cult, who wouldn’t want that?
#
#
“So, she lost it completely, right!”
Late evening.
Under the moonlight, Bangdaengi was throwing a tantrum loudly.
Her voice was so loud that it was hard to understand what she was saying.
Let’s summarize.
“So, Seugal was at this ‘treatment ward’ and seemed to be having a conversation with some women, and then she went crazy and began attacking people, causing complete chaos, right? Agree?”
“Yeah, the women were running, and Seugal kept chasing them! I also tried to catch up, but she was running too fast, and I lost her.”
“Yeo-reum?”
“She went home because it was late.”
It’s total chaos! I shouldn’t have assigned this task to girls.
Taking Bangdaengi’s lead, I sneaked into the “treatment ward” under cover of darkness.
This place, operated by the Abraxas foundation, was a rehabilitation center or nursing home, but in simple terms, it was one of the Witches’ Sects facilities.
It looked quite professional, though. White walls, tasteful patient rooms, and women in white gowns moving about, giving it a futuristic vibe.
Who would have guessed that such a facility existed beneath Eden Farm? The greenhouses and fields on the upper level were fake.
I couldn’t help but think of Old Man Hugi’s bomb shelter.
“Checked room 5?”
“Not much improvement. But room 10 is reacting well. Their eyesight is almost fully restored.”
“Room 9 samples?”
“It’s a miss. They’ve been sleeping all day.”
I was eavesdropping on this conversation between the women dressed in white gowns—whether they were doctors or researchers was unclear—when Bangdaengi nudged my side and whispered.
“There are a lot of patients here. They’re treating them with some strange drug, and it seems they are conducting experiments similar to artificially creating Awakened Ones!”
Is this a lab where they make sick women artificial Awakened Ones using special ingredients extracted from Witch’s Herb and bl**d Rose?
The rehabilitation center is just a cover; they needed human samples.
It was truly an unethical place.
“Still, Seugal shouldn’t have gone so far as to attack them.”
“…Could it be because of her mother? Seugal’s mom suffered from an incurable disease before she passed away. She’s said to have been sick even before I was born. She was a really good person. Perhaps seeing patients exploited for experiments didn’t feel distant to her.”
Seugal’s mother had suffered from an incurable disease?
I recalled how Seo Do-cheol, the power broker in the southwest, had conducted Awakened One experiments on children at the orphanage where Yeo-reum and Kim Ma-ri lived.
Seo Do-cheol had conducted those experiments and research to find a cure for his wife’s incurable disease—”artificial awakening.”
That made sense.
Thinking about it this way, Seugal and Yeo-reum’s relationship seemed subtle.
Did the suffering of Seugal’s ill mother create a victim like Yeo-reum?
Whatever it was, what mattered now was to follow Seugal. How do you find her in this vast underground facility, which was almost as big as Old Man Hugi’s bomb shelter?
While pondering this, Baek Yeo-ul pulled out a wolf spider named Kangkang from her bag.
“Kangkang, do you remember Seugal’s scent? If you don’t, go woof-woof. If you do, neigh.”
—-Neigh…!
“Find out where Seugal went!”
Hopping…hopping…hiss-hiss…
With its eight busy legs, Kangkang headed somewhere. A spiral staircase leading to a deeper underground level soon came into view.
‘How can this facility be so large?’
Old Man Hugi’s bomb shelter had been handmade. Although impressive for a one-man job, there were still some amateurish finishes in the details.
However, it was clear that professional architects had been involved in constructing this enormous underground structure.
To build something like this secretly would be impossible without permission from the city hall, district office, or at the very least, a government agency.
What was strange, though, was the scattered debris all around as if bombs had just exploded here and there. They looked like fresh scars.
‘Did Seugal attack this place?’
When I arrived underground, in the dim lighting, I discovered a massive water tank filled with dozens of rocks. The tank was surrounded by a rough metal frame, looking old and worn with faint stains and rust marks from old experiments.
Nearby walls had various complex pipes and cables tangled like spider webs, and the air carried a distinctive smell of disinfectant mixed with oil.
Don’t research labs or tanks in video games or movies where they incubate suspicious bio-weapons look exactly like this? This must be a similar place in real life.
“Hey, Hanamjin, these rocks—”
“Yeah, they’re ‘Concept Stones.'”
The strange tank containing Concept Stones. There’s a label that says “Strawberry.” Could this be a strawberry Concept Stone?
“Kim Department Head, now that everything’s done, let’s resume the work.”
“Yes. I almost died. Suddenly, out of nowhere, that crazy girl started causing chaos.”
“A Witch’s Herb addict, perhaps? Anyway, those Witches’ Sect women need to stop spreading the drug.”
Whoosh!
People were visible drawing the solutions from the tanks into containers.
A few faces looked familiar to me.
“Those people there, they’re Nam Bada’s security team.”
I don’t know their names, but they were Awakened security personnel for Nam Bada. What are they doing down here?
Come to think of it, hadn’t I heard that Nam Bada was collaborating with Yoo Dogwan on awakened experiments?
The pieces click into place.
‘The security’s tight. If Seugal went this way, the chances are she must’ve been caught. The crazy girl running loose certainly sounds like Seugal’s story.’
Behaving like she’s the captured princess herself.
You, Seugal, occasionally get into such annoying situations.
And yet…you’re absolutely adorable!
I want to bite you all over! If I meet you again, I’ll surely bite your ears!
For now, I decided to stay hidden around the corner and listen a bit more to the people’s conversation.
“There are a lot of damaged labs. Is there any issue with the ‘Special Class Concept Stones’? If something happens there, it’s not just as simple as quitting our jobs!”
“What?! They are stored in Zone 0! Nothing can harm them even if a nuclear missile drops there, so no need to worry.”
‘Special Class Concept Stones’ stored in a place where they’re safe from a nuclear missile?
Now that sounds intriguing. With the battle against the Red King impending and my need for power and leveling up growing stronger, this could be quite beneficial.
It’s perfect timing!
Could it be thanks to Bangdaengi’s newly acquired ‘Luck’?
My amateur goddess of luck, Bangdaengi, asked worriedly.
“Hanamjin, what should we do? There are too many people here. It looks difficult to find Seugal. Sneaking around also has its limits. There are surveillance cameras everywhere!”
Bangdaengi seemed worried, but my solution was simple.
“Come here!”
I stepped out from the corner and called out.
A startled Bangdaengi shouted,
“Hey! Hanamjin!”
“It’s time for hero and gallant, Hanamjin! Bring me cola, women, and Seugal!”
Nothing is more effective than a direct breakthrough. Detours aren’t my style either.
“Intruder!”
“Intruder!”
“sh*t, how many intruders are there today!”
“But isn’t that Hanamjin?”
“Isn’t Hanamjin dead? What’s with all the chatter!”
Clank, clack!
Clack!
Guns were aimed at me from various directions. “Emotion” let me sense that the security personnel would fire without hesitation. This facility’s secrecy was extremely important.
Even for me, guns can be intimidating. The bullets in those chambers aren’t tranquilizer rounds, after all.
While I might have dealt with armed security if I’d been alone, Bangdaengi was behind me now.
Would Bangdaengi’s “Misfortune” affect if she were shot?
No one knows how misfortune might ricochet the b*llet and cause unintended destruction to the research facility.
With the situation as it is, there’s no other move but to reveal my cards.
“For your information, I’m President Nam Tae-geon’s grandson. If you sh**t at me, you’ll never get away with it.”
