62 — Chapter 62

“Huh?”

“You said punishments for criminals aren’t affected by the Pact. Then, if someone frames a person instead, they could injure them without breaking the Pact’s rules.”

The car screeched to a stop.

I pointed ahead at the green light as Lee Do-hwan halted right in the middle of the road.

“What are you doing? We’re almost there—keep driving.”

“…I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”

“When we first met, you said you worked for the Judiciary Department, didn’t you? That means you had access to verdicts—you could have tampered with them anytime.”

Truthfully, I had known from the first moment that he was the culprit.

He wasn’t from the Security Department like Seo Chae-rin, yet the thick scent of blood and killing intent clung to him.

Even before Awakened appeared, detective fiction had never sold well—and getting found out right away? Just bad luck.

After all, deceiving the instincts of a tentacle user was no easy feat.

I’d already known he was the culprit, but just saying so wouldn’t close the case.

So I spent time collecting solid evidence—altered verdicts with changed handwriting showing victims’ names, and CCTV footage from inside Busan’s government complex.

When I thought back on it, him volunteering to meet in person had probably been to confirm whether No Yeon-hwa was really in Seoul.

Lying would’ve been meaningless before her Word-Spirit ability.

He must’ve confirmed she couldn’t come to Busan—and waited until we left empty-handed.

But even as I pressed him, Lee Do-hwan refused to admit guilt.

“Wait, that doesn’t make sense! The culprit’s sitting right behind us, and you’re accusing me?”

“He’s just a pervert. Seo Chae-rin told me recently that a series of sex crimes against elderly people had been going on. That must be him.”

“……”

Right on cue, the real pervert had gone out to “relieve himself” again, giving me the perfect excuse to lure Lee Do-hwan out past Cheon So-baek’s surveillance zone.

Two criminals caught in one operation.

If this were Seoul, I’d be getting a Special Unit Civil Merit Award with a one-day field experience bonus attached.

Maybe I really did have a knack for investigation.

The only question left was why he had done all this—but with my Tentacle of Suggestion, that wouldn’t be a problem for long.

“Well then, shall we take it slow and talk thi—huh?”

Since everyone else had already seen my tentacles by now, I planned to tweak his memory from the start. I extended a few tendrils toward the steering wheel—

But when I turned, Lee Do-hwan was gone.

---

“Damn it! That brat who kept bothering me for fishing spot recommendations—why’d he suddenly turn into some kind of detective!?”

And what the hell was that monster? Tentacles? Don’t tell me the Special Unit had a black mage all along—?

There was no time to think.

The moment his identity was blown, Lee Do-hwan activated his ability and sprinted with everything he had.

The taxi he’d abandoned at the intersection shrank in the distance in an instant.

No sound of pursuit followed.

Had he given up?

Relieved, he glanced back—only for Hayan’s face to pop up right beside his shoulder.

“So where are you headed? I thought you didn’t want to go outside.”

“Gahhh!?”

---

I was clinging to his back.

Despite being a mage, his balance was absurdly good—no matter how he twisted or shook, I didn’t fall off.

He tried to cast black magic, but my tentacles shot out and tangled his fingers, disrupting the hand seals.

“Feels weird holding hands with a guy. Mind stopping soon?”

“Get off me!”

Hundreds of tentacles slipped between his fingers, obstructing mana flow. The sticky slime coating them began to take shape—molding itself into the skyline of Haeundae’s Marine City.

It looked just like the residential complex that had collapsed when the Sea of Decay overflowed.

I held up the glistening, living sculpture in front of his face and asked casually:

“Tada, impressive, right? It’s my new Review Event reward gift.”

“M-monster!!”

“Monster? Don’t be rude. They’re very gentle. If you hurt their feelings, one might sneak to your bedside while you’re sleeping and crawl into your ear~”

“Hiieeek!”

Letting out a near-scream, he swung a punch—and suddenly his body felt light.

Taking advantage of the brief opening, Lee Do-hwan sprinted at full speed.

He finally realized he’d reached the very place he had been running toward.

From the moment he stepped out of the taxi, Lee Do-hwan hadn’t been heading for Busan’s outskirts—but toward its center.

Because his goal from the very beginning hadn’t been murder itself.

The Pact of Mutual Annihilation.

If half of Busan’s citizens consented, the city would instantly be erased.

But there was one fatal flaw that no one knew.

When the Dragon Immortal first established the three Pacts—the Pacts of Protection, Non-Aggression, and Mutual Annihilation—unlike the others, the Pact of Mutual Annihilation only applied to those who had been living in Busan at that time.

Meaning: the decision of destruction rested solely in the hands of the few elderly survivors still alive today.

While working in the Judiciary Department, Lee Do-hwan had accidentally learned that fact.
Ever since, he’d been quietly reducing the number of those elderly behind the scenes.

The reason was simple.

He truly loved Busan.

If Busan ever resumed open relations with Seoul—and the truth about the Pact of Mutual Annihilation was revealed to the world—Busan would become an unbearable liability.

He’d narrowly avoided suspicion last time, but there was no telling when the Word-Spirit caster sent to maintain the Pact might discover the truth.

So before that happened, he needed to erase the weakness—himself being the only one who knew it.

The death of all elders.

That, he’d been told, was the salvation the Outer God desired—and the truest act of love for the city.

The one who had first whispered the truth of the Pact to him had said exactly that.

“Just a little more… I was almost there!”

It wasn’t Flawless Heaven herself, but being exposed by her subordinate still stung. Even so, it was too early to give up.

Breath ragged, Lee Do-hwan finally arrived at his destination: Busan’s only long-term care hospital.

After years of quiet investigation, he had gathered there all the elders capable of triggering the Pact.

If he could take them hostage, he could reverse the situation in an instant.
With the kill switch for the entire city in his hands, not even the Ability Management Bureau could arrest him.

Squeezing out the last of his mana, Lee Do-hwan slammed open the darkened hospital door.

But someone was already there.

“Oh my, hello there.”

“Huff… huff…! Cheon So-baek-nim!?”

“What brings you here at this hour?”

A red-haired woman sat in the lobby, calmly reading patient charts. On the counter beside her stood a small tower of red brick fragments.

Better known by her epithet Flawless Heaven, Cheon So-baek could tell what kind of battle had taken place just from the faint traces of magic lingering in the air.

Frantically wiping the sticky slime from his hands with a flicker of black mana, Lee Do-hwan stammered,

“Ah, it’s nothing! I just remembered something urgent for work and dropped by for a moment.”

“For that, you’re sweating quite a lot.”

“I-It’s fine, just rainwater! More importantly, So-baek-nim, I have something to tell you!”

He didn’t have time to think about why she was here.

Half his mind was on escaping from Hayan, who had been chasing him moments ago. The other half was on reaching the ward where the elders slept.

Without pausing for breath, he spilled everything to Cheon So-baek—that Hayan was using Black Magic, that he wasn’t really a Special Unit agent, but some thing wearing human skin.

“I see, is that so?”

“There’s no time! You must alert the Bureau and the Union right away—”

“Tch. No signal again.”

“S-So-baek-nim?”

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“It’s been bothering me for a while now—could you stop pretending we’re close?”

Her voice was sharp and cold enough to pierce straight through his heart.

Outside the window, the raindrops began to freeze, cracking and splintering with a harsh crrrk-crrrack! as ice spread across the glass.

Resting her arm atop the stone tower, Cheon So-baek’s smartwatch chimed.

She glanced at the message that had just arrived, sighed deeply, and waved her hand dismissively.

“I’m in a really bad mood right now. Do you have any idea how much trouble you caused me? And to top it off, there’s a typhoon starting today—so I won’t even get to show off the swimsuit I packed.”

…Swimsuit?

There wasn’t time to process that.

The frost creeping down the walls had already reached the floor, sliding into his wet shoes and splitting the skin between his toes.

“If you were going to get caught, you should’ve at least been caught by me. What a disgrace. Don’t bother with your ‘secrets,’ I’ll take care of them myself. What, you think I can’t even count how many fingers a person has?”

“W-wait—!”

“Quiet. Any more excuses, tell them to the Union.”

Well, there goes my chance to keep that elective slot next semester—her small sigh, worrying about the Red Tower’s future, was the last thing Lee Do-hwan heard before he lost consciousness.

---

A few days later.

With Lee Do-hwan’s confession, the serial killings of elders and Awakened that had shaken Busan came to an end.

Citizens were more shocked to learn that, alongside his crimes, there had been another offender—an unrelated pervert who’d been targeting elderly victims during the same period—than by the fact that a Union executive had committed murder at all.

Through Do-hwan’s testimony, the conditions of the Pact of Mutual Annihilation left by the Dragon Immortal were revealed. In response, relief centers and elder protection facilities were established throughout the city.

The handful of elderly who still held the power to detonate Busan would now live under Union supervision—but with much better welfare than before.

There was a minor uproar when some of them, upon hearing that diplomatic exchange with Seoul was resuming, panicked and nearly pressed the “kill switch.” But the oldest among them—ninety-six-year-old Grandma Park Mak-rye—calmed everyone down, saying that her late husband had asked her in a dream that night to forgive them. It was a touching ending to a tragic affair.

“You’re taking all of that?”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you get the hotteok?”

“I was bored this morning, so I went to the senior center and showed them some magic tricks. The grandmas gave me these.”

“……”

By the time our departure for Seoul approached, I had packed the cooler full of fish I’d caught and seed hotteok the grandmas had given me.

Watching me, Seo Chae-rin muttered,

“Never thought Do-hwan would be the culprit.”

“I didn’t either. How’s the atmosphere in the Union?”

“A total shock, obviously.”

No one knew why a mere civil servant like Do-hwan had adopted such extreme ideals.

His testimony hinted that someone had manipulated him—but uncovering that person’s identity was proving difficult.

The only clue left was that the one behind it all had justified the plan as a noble cause.

Since Busan had neither a Magic Tower nor a Prayer House, we’d asked around the Yellow Tower, known for its ties to the Outer God of Justice, to see if they had any leads.

“At least the damage was minimal. And they said your conditions will be granted soon.”

Starting the boat with practiced ease, Chae-rin glanced sidelong at me loading my luggage and asked quietly,

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“What’s your deal with Yeon-hwa?”

“Agent No Yeon-hwa? We’re friends.”

She might not think so, though.

Apparently unsatisfied, Chae-rin changed her question.

“Then what about the one you came here with?”

“Commander Cheon So-baek?”

“Imagine this: furious Yeon-hwa and Flawless Heaven both fall into the Sea of Decay, surrounded by tentacles. Who do you save first?”

“The tentacles.”

I answered immediately.

Even with all my grudges toward them, I wouldn’t just leave two furious women to drown in a sea of tentacles.

“Looks like she’s here. You can go help her with the luggage if you want.”

“Thanks. Huh… this doesn’t feel right.”

With Chae-rin’s permission, I hopped off the boat.

Across the road, Cheon So-baek was dragging a large suitcase toward the harbor. Her expression was sour—probably still sulking about not getting to swim, despite the clear weather after the typhoon.

I hurried over and took her bag.

“Here, let me carry that.”

“Oh my, thank you. Why are you suddenly being so polite today?”

“My respect for you just naturally overflows, Commander So-baek.”

“Really? How strange.”

There was a reason an Apostle of an Outer God, known for never bowing to money or power, was suddenly acting this humble.

That night, the reason I hadn’t been able to chase Do-hwan to the end was because he’d entered the radius of Cheon So-baek’s mana domain.

I had no idea what words were exchanged between them, but cornered as he was, he might have revealed the truth about me.

Since that night, I’d been living in constant dread that the word tentacle might one day slip out of Cheon So-baek’s mouth.

“Oh, right!”

“Eek! It wasn’t me! I’m not raising any monsters! There’s just one in the sea before departure—it was all its idea!”

“What are you talking about? I meant that daily login thing you always do. Aren’t you doing it today?”

“Ah…!”

So she was talking about the mobile game.

I instantly stopped kneeling, halted my desperate tentacle-shaped praying hands, and flattened myself naturally to the floor.

From my usual eye level—where her skirt hung just right over her thighs—I looked up at her and pleaded,

“Please, could you? If I don’t log in during the 20-hour voyage, I’ll miss the double raid reward event.”

“……”

“So-baek-nim?”

“Fine, fine. I swear, there’s no one as kind and considerate as me. I’ll do it.”

Giving me a complicated look, she pulled a piece of red stone from her pocket.

Then she built another makeshift magic tower.

With the tentacle relay turret from Seoul having advanced further south since last time, the signal should’ve been even stronger now.

-Crkkk… krrr-crkk!

“Huh?”

But as I brought my smartwatch close to the red stone tower, instead of a connection, all I got was loud static.

And then—voices came through.

-Damn it… the turrets, all of them…!

-Those bastards… it’s a trap! The demons got us!

It was a desperate cry—one that unmistakably belonged to Kang Ha-neul.