Chapter 167

I was feeling an unfillable emptiness.

It wasn’t because I had been reunited with my childhood friend who I thought was dead, nor was it because Cheon So-baek had lost her left hand because of them.

And it certainly wasn’t because I had ended up staying over while visiting her in the hospital only to find that the hospital food tasted worse than expected.

The top floor of Seoul Central Hospital.

Lying in Cheon So-baek’s bed while she was away, looking down out the window where humans looked like ants, my eyes suddenly drifted to the food tray placed before me.

True to its reputation as the best hospital in Seoul, the patient meal was composed of a bland but substantial menu.

Braised short ribs, Dokdo shrimp, and a three-headed barley dried corvina caught from the Han River.

Every single item was a mouth-watering dish, but at the same time, danger lurked everywhere.

Like lead or mercury, they were fatal poisons that people hadn’t recognized back then, but looking back at history, they had secretly gnawed away at humanity for a very long time.

Namely, carrots and lotus roots.

I couldn’t possibly let Cheon So-baek eat food mixed with such terrible things.

After meticulously picking them out and devouring the rest, I looked out the window once more.

If those teeming tentacles and people down there were truly ants, I would have tossed the remaining leftovers without a second thought.

But doing such a thing now would obviously mean my neck would be the one falling next for overworking the nurses.

Just then, that emptiness rushed in again.

This time, I could clearly perceive the reason.

Whether deep within the heavens or inside a soft sleeve.

I was yearning for Mala-nim, who had always stayed by my side.

“Ugh…”

Was it because my female hormone secretion had increased as I aged?

Just thinking about Mala-nim, from whom I had been torn apart, brought a flood of tears to my eyes.

If only Mala-nim were here during such a difficult situation.

She would have been able to dispose of all these evil carrots and lotus roots.

“Waaah!”

“The discharge paperwork took quite a long time. Hayan, now we officially need to head to the Council… What on earth are you doing?”

Witnessing me throwing the carrots and lotus roots held in my chopsticks against the glass window, Ha Yeri gripped her sword without hesitation.

A moment later, I found myself listening to her speak while forcefully stuffing the side dishes I had discarded back into my mouth.

“Chew properly and swallow, or it’ll get stuck in your throat.”

“Gulp.”

“Once you’re done eating, come sit over here. We need to talk.”

“Yes?”

“Isn’t it about time you went to the Council? Last time you said you were going, you just ended up verifying that Patel was alive and well to the witches at the festival, and that was it.”

Seated upright at the edge of the bed, Ha Yeri spoke to me like a mother trying to get her thirty-something son, who had done nothing but play New Monster Wars RE:VIVE! in his room, to go get a job.

“It’s already been months since the movements of the demons went off the radar. It really is time for you to go out there and mingle with them.”

“But I have so many missions, and I have to tend to the sick…”

“Even so, I can’t keep covering for you forever just because I know your identity. Wasn’t putting the Patel mask back on your own decision, Hayan?”

Of course, it was.

Only by having Patel exist could we unite the nightmare demons and the witches as one, maintaining the balance of power within the Seat of Flame.

Additionally, stepping forward as Patel was the only way to approach Flauros and Veladatrix—who both held Star Scars—in a friendly manner.

However, meeting the two who had long displayed an ambition to claim me meant they might demand a blood pact this time for sure.

Furthermore, Ha Yeri constantly pressuring me to go to the Council also made it difficult to lift my heavy feet.

“But Mom, you didn’t give me my finger back. You promised to return it once I got a job—no, once I put the mask back on.”

“Who is ‘Mom,’ exactly?! And it’s attached right now!”

“This is a fake. Look, it bends all the way backward… Ouch, ow, ow, ow!”

“Your other fingers bend quite nicely too. Good for you, having such a flexible body.”

Holding the finger that was grasping a fork with her tiny hand, she forcefully shoved a chunk of carrot—which had been lingering till the very end—deep down into my throat before standing up from her seat.

“Hurry up and get up, we don’t have time. Isn’t it tonight?”

“Aren’t you being too harsh without even giving me time to rest? Not long ago, I risked my life fighting the Archduke of Necromancy!”

“I received a report stating you did nothing but cheer from behind while No Yeon-hwa dealt with him, so where do you think you’re lying!”

Right, that did happen.

The events in Busan were covered up by Yoo Se-byeol, No Yeon-hwa, and Cheon So-baek to prevent the fact that I was an Apostle of the Outer God from leaking out.

Though, of course, the price for that was mortgaging my soul to the three of them…

Normally, I would have feigned defeat around this point, gotten up, and followed Ha Yeri, but recently, my stress had accumulated considerably.

On top of consecutive missions, I had to cater to the whims of three women who stuck to me day in and day out unlike before, my connection with Mala-nim had been severed, and to make matters worse, my childhood friend—whom I thought had become a ghost—was alive, causing me to have nightmares every single night.

Perhaps that was why.

The thought of having to put on the Patel mask again brought tears to my eyes involuntarily.

“Sniff…”

“You’re really determined today, aren’t you? If you think that will make me give up… Hayan? Are you crying right now?”

“Who’s crying? It’s nothing.”

Wiping the corners of my eyes with my empty sleeve, I pushed my body up from where I lay on the bed.

“Let’s go, let’s go. I was just throwing a brief tantrum.”

“Are you really alright?”

“Even if I’m not, what choice do I have? It’s for the sake of humanity. My condition doesn’t matter, so let’s get moving. You should get ready too, Commander Ha Yeri.”

“…Sigh.”

Letting out a small sigh after observing my state, she turned her steps and climbed back onto the bed.

“Come here.”

“Commander Ha Yeri?”

“This is an absolute secret from the others. It’s not good to give off the impression of being too close to a specific agent.”

With that, she had me lie down with my head on her lap and covered my eyes with her hand.

“Calm your mind down and tell me what’s been going on.”

Her usual serene voice.

Neither the sensation of her thighs against the back of my head nor the hand covering my eyes moved in the slightest, as if reflecting her true nature of steadfastly holding her ground even if the world fell into chaos.

Perhaps that was why.

With my eyes closed, I cautiously poured out the worries that had been weighing on me to Ha Yeri.

“I see, so the tentacle you were raising ran away from home again…”

“There are several other reasons too, but right now, I miss her the most.”

“I will look into it as much as possible on my end. Is there anything else you want?”

“Please send Yoo Se-byeol and Commander Cheon So-baek away on a mission somewhere far.”

“I can’t force their schedules, but I’ll contact the Commander-in-Chief and request her cooperation. Have you calmed down a bit now?”

“Yes.”

I regained my composure with astonishing speed.

As I sat up, Ha Yeri was staring at me intently as if trying to read my expression.

She was a woman rumored to have no emotions and was sometimes even called heartless by her own division members, but that just meant she was someone in whom one could place profound trust.

What would it have been like if, upon entering the Special Unit, I had accepted her proposal from the very start and joined Division 2?

Perhaps it would have been much easier to operate than it was now.

If I had known she would accept my aberrant magic, the Outer God, the tentacles, and even my wretched background without prejudice, there wouldn’t have been any need to hide it in the first place.

“What are you looking at?”

“You have pretty feet.”

“Are you teasing me again? Claiming I’d need to wear children’s shoes because there are no matching sizes for me at the department store?”

“I didn’t mock you in such specific detail.”

‘I hope I get a chance to lick them someday.’

Having delivered what I personally considered the highest form of praise a man could offer a woman, I stepped out of the hospital room.

The underground parking lot was packed with numerous cars.

Taking out her keys and starting her car, I questioned Ha Yeri.

“Oh, by the way, speaking of the Council.”

“Yes?”

“We can obtain information, sure, but isn’t it troublesome to engage in full-scale activities there?”

It was a characteristic of the Council where advantages and disadvantages coexisted.

While there was no risk of having one’s identity exposed and being attacked en masse, conversely, it was also difficult for our side to directly approach the opponent’s true body or base.

The demons likely participated diligently every single time precisely because they knew that fact.

An underlying understanding existed that there was nothing to lose even if they rubbed shoulders with hostile factions.

“It can’t be helped. I know it’s frustrating, but we don’t have any other options either.”

“About that, it might be different this time.”

Using Norkel’s smartwatch, I displayed a message transmitted from the Witch Trade Association to Ha Yeri.

‘Walpurgis Night.’

It was an event akin to a festival for witches, indicating that a day when the boundaries between the Demon Realm and the Council collapsed would arrive once every few decades.

This meant it would be held on a terrifying scale, with not only the demons on Earth but also entities from the Demon Realm participating.

If so, the Council was no longer a space where only spiritual bodies could enter.

“We’ll be able to produce much more definitive results. Aside from assessing Trishy’s condition after the great invasion, we could preemptively eliminate an Archduke attempting to descend upon the surface.”

“Why are you only telling me such an important fact now? We should be deploying our entire military force this instant…”

Ha Yeri hurriedly tried to contact Seona again to cancel her attempt to send Yoo Se-byeol and Cheon So-baek somewhere very, very far away—no, entirely on an overseas business trip—but I grabbed the steering wheel instead, restraining her.

Leaving aside Cheon So-baek, who could barely use her hands, Yoo Se-byeol was also still merely at the entry stage of Upper Level rank.

Their skills were woefully inadequate to cross over to the Demon Realm right now and fight demons, let alone an Archduke.

With them unable to even capture a single head of a criminal organization, having the other commanders step forward would only result in a repetition of what happened last time.

Therefore, the correct choice here was for her and me—and perhaps calling just one more person—to move as a small elite group.

“We can’t just carelessly increase our numbers without an invitation. The Spirit Speaker keeps track of the identities of everyone who enters the Council.”

The Council was a type of server.

Just like the Bureau, entry records were left behind, and it could even overload depending on the volume of data being transmitted.

The reason Ha Yeri had safely slipped through when she disguised herself was simply because the presence of Mala-nim in her Incarnation form and her own existence as an Upper Level Awakened roughly lined up with the witches’ calculations, allowing them to escape notice.

If Upper Level Awakened came pouring into the Council in droves, the demons would undoubtedly notice, even with Rubietta’s cooperation.

“Then are you saying we just have to watch this great opportunity pass by with our eyes wide open?”

“No, I have a plan.”

An Awakened possessing a level of strength that would allow them to slip right in without being noticed at all.

At the same time, someone who was an object of terror to all demons and was now even hailed as the last hope of humanity.

“I-I can’t do something like that! I’ve never talked to a demon in my entire life!”

“Calm down, Deputy Commander Moon Ah-rin. Right now, you’re the only person I can ask.”

“Is this a situation to be calming down over?! More importantly, why are you wearing the Patel mask, Mr. Hayan!”

And unexpectedly, she was a person who had helped in locating the missing Mala-nim before.