Chapter 98

Looking back, I realized that I had never gone on a mission or patrol alone with Alexei before.

Even though he was my roommate and we had spent the most time together since joining the Special Unit, there hadn’t been a single occasion.

In fact, whenever I went on patrol, I usually filed an outdoor duty request first and then took care of personal matters.

Like checking on Velada and Flauros at Ground Zero, or sneaking into Moon Ah-rin’s fan club, the “Rescue Club,” to volunteer for some pruning activities on behalf of the Tartaruga family—and eating three rice balls by myself each time to lower the fans’ average decency score.

I wasn’t the only one who loosened up a bit during patrols like this.

But with Alexei, there was no way I could slack off so openly.

The moment we stepped outside, an inexplicable sense of malice hit us.

Screech! Boom!!

“Hmph, looks like we’ve got a taxi today.”

“No one’s in the driver’s seat?”

“Any injuries, brother?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then let’s move. Best to get out of the city as quickly as possible.”

The driverless taxi suddenly swerved and lunged toward Alexei.

Using his ability, he shredded the car like paper and immediately started running with me on his back.

Alexei, approaching the pinnacle of Awakened, moved so fast that if I relaxed for even a second, I’d fall right off his back.

I extended my transparent tentacles fully to wrap around him, watching the rapidly changing scenery blur past.

Above us, dozens of gargoyles with black wings flapped ominously, targeting us.

“Aren’t there a lot of monsters following us?”

“Ever since we survived Daegu, it’s been like this every time. They see me as someone’s lover and try to kill me with rage in their eyes.”

“……”

“Let’s head for the mountains. We’ll have the advantage there.”

Swinging his axe, Alexei smashed the gargoyles as he ran straight onto the iron road.

Citizens riding the nearby Gyeongbu Line train leaned out their windows and cheered as we passed at insane speed.

On his back, I readied my magic.

The fifth-tier White Horse, the soaring Thunder Hawk.

It was natural for me, evaluated as mid-range in the promotion test, to be casting fifth-tier magic.

But if Alexei were a mage, he would have immediately noticed something suspicious.

It had taken me less than a second to form the sigils on the back of a giant moving at hypersonic speed while being chased by monsters.

The sky quickly darkened, and dozens of bright yellow lightning bolts struck around us.

The lightning transformed into birds charged with electricity and launched toward the gargoyles hovering in the sky.

The gargoyles dived sharply, trying to shake off the hawks, but the speed difference was obvious.

Taking advantage of their distraction, Alexei safely entered the mountains and wedged his axe into the base of the largest tree to catch his breath.

I pulled out a water bottle from my robe and handed it to him.

“Here, water.”

“Thanks, brother.”

“Are we safe now?”

“No. This is just the beginning.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than the sounds of leaves and stones being trampled erupted from all directions.

Small plants snapped, rotting leaves crunched, signaling countless monsters charging at us.

It wasn’t just from the ground.

Had they deliberately been hiding? Cockatrices and Deathlinks glided from the previously blue sky, circling above.

I knew the movements of Norkel, so it wasn’t her doing.

No, it was too inconsistent to attribute this to any single faction.

All of this was merely the aftershock of me casually claiming in the council that Alexei was my lover.

It was a vivid reminder of just how terrifying an Apostle of an Outer God could be to the demons, and how easily those around him could fall into danger.

“Hah! Today’s really our lucky day!”

At the same time a massive number of monsters appeared, both of our smartwatches began ringing.

Alexei turned off the emergency alerts and tied back his hair.

Ignoring the monsters rushing in, he drew up an enormous amount of mana and shouted to me.

“Cover the sky, brother!”

“Understood.”

Thrown into a desperate defensive battle, I leaned against his back, pulled out my tentacles, and formed hand seals.

Dozens of pairs of tentacles intertwined, sketching a pole of power across the sky, then dozens more layered over them, forming a black galaxy that erased the stars of the night.

At the same time, Alexei gripped the handle of his axe and exerted force.

With a thunderous roar, an entire massive tree began to topple.

A tremendous cloud of dust exploded outward.

“Kahahahaha!!!”

He carved through the monsters while freely charging through that cloud, a sight that could only be described as a living killing chariot.

Even amid movements so violent that my field of view flipped completely with every blink, I calmly continued forming seals, raining down all kinds of magic without distinction between White Magic and Black Magic.

Normally, I would’ve had to stay tense to fend off enemies approaching too close.

This time, that level of vigilance wasn’t necessary.

The Butcher of Bishkek had my back completely covered.

He threw one axe, severing a manticore’s tail, then drove the other straight into its mouth.

When he clasped hands with the massive troll that charged next, the shockwave sent the manticore’s corpse flying far into the distance.

For a moment, I wondered if I needed to help Alexei now that he’d lost his weapon.

I immediately realized it was a needless worry.

As he drew up mana, the troll’s fingertips, forearms, elbows, and shoulders shattered in an instant.

It was a brutal, destructive spectacle, as if unimaginable force had torn muscle away from bone itself.

An ability that separated flesh from bone.

Alexei mounted the troll as it collapsed in pain, retrieved his axe, and began hacking at its neck as if felling a great tree.

Crunch! Crunch!

Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

After dozens of blows, he finally severed the troll’s head.

At the same time, a wyvern flock that had dived from above, aiming for his exposed neck, was pierced clean through by my pole of power and fell helplessly.

Wyvern blood poured down from above like a waterfall.

“Kahahahahaha! This is great, brother! For our first time fighting together, our coordination isn’t bad at all!”

“I agree. Though I think the ride comfort could use some improvement.”

Alexei cheered as he was drenched in it.

Meanwhile, I opened the parasol I’d recently bought to prevent my leash from charging, not allowing a single drop to touch me.

Our personalities couldn’t have been more different, but our teamwork was flawless.

On a small mountain in Seoul, now littered only with monster corpses and fallen trees, only the two of us remained standing.

“I don’t sense any more monsters nearby. Looks like that’s the end.”

“Indeed. That was a good patrol. Let’s head down and have a bowl of gukbap.”¹

“Before that, didn’t you have something you wanted to say to me?”

“……”

Alexei wouldn’t have dragged me—someone who rarely left his room—out into the fresh air just for leisure.

I’d indulged his diversion long enough. It was time to hear the real reason.

“If you have a request, feel free to say it. We’re brothers, after all.”

Perhaps because I’d started exerting my strength more openly and receiving requests from others more often, it didn’t feel like a heavy burden.

If it was a favor from Alexei, who had taken care of Mala-nim in my stead, I could accept it without hesitation.

After leaving the cleanup to the reinforcement unit that arrived late, we descended the mountain.

Alexei took me to a nearby sundae gukbap restaurant.

Silently pouring cubed-radish kimchi brine into his bowl, he finally spoke.

“Hayan.”

“Yes.”

“Are you truly my brother?”

“Of course. We may not share blood, but we are brothers.”

“Then I have one request. Include me in the assault team for the Thirteen Palaces of Emptiness.”

This was a bit unexpected.

He wanted to enter the Thirteen Palaces of Emptiness?

Did that mean he wanted to take part in killing the king?

His request felt unfamiliar to me, coming from someone who usually only cared about fighting strong enemies.

“If I were in charge of selecting the team, I’d obviously do it. But I don’t actually have the authority to put you into the assault unit.”

“Hayan is close with Commander Ha Yeri. You’re also close with the other commanders and officers. There must be a way you know that I don’t.”

He was pushing me quite openly to use my connections for his convenience.

When we first met, he’d said he didn’t even want to talk to cowards.

If he’d truly fallen morally, the most likely influence would’ve been the person closest to him—but since that person was me, and I was clearly not a bad influence, there had to be a reason.

“Is there some kind of story behind this?”

“Hayan knows. Why I came to this country.”

“I remember. You said it was to open a boneless fried chicken shop after retirement.”

“It was to kill the ones who slaughtered my family and my village with these hands.”

Ah. Right.

That escalated faster than I expected.

The target of Alexei’s burning desire for revenge was an Archduke’s faction that had killed his family, and a criminal organization that later razed his hometown to the ground.

Judging by his words, this time it seemed to be the latter.

“Kandu Vailanish. The leader of the criminal organization called Blood Covenant. He’s the current owner of the Thirteen Palaces of Emptiness.”

“How can you be so sure? I heard the king’s identity still hasn’t been revealed.”

“The condition of the victims we heard about during training was exactly the same as when he came to our village.”

All the blood in their bodies had vanished.

Alexei’s hometown was in an inland country located close to both China and Russia.

“I must enter the Thirteen Palaces of Emptiness. Cutting off his head and hanging it in the dormitory will be revenge for the villagers who couldn’t even close their eyes in death.”

“Please don’t plan on hanging a human head in the dormitory.”

What exactly was he planning to do in a shared room?

I genuinely wanted to help Alexei.

Even if his request had been something as unforgivable as pouring cubed-radish kimchi brine into my gukbap, I would’ve accepted it with tears in my eyes.

But unfortunately, including him in the assault unit was far beyond my authority.

“As I said, I don’t have any say in personnel decisions.”

“I see…”

“However, it might still be possible to get you into the assault unit.”

That said, it wasn’t completely impossible.

“Really?”

“Of course, but you’ll have to help me.”

“Just say the word. If it’s something Hayan asks, I’ll do anything. If I need to learn stealth techniques, I’ll even bow my head to Kang Ha-neul and learn from him.”

“No, I’m not planning to raise your stats any further. There’s a much simpler and more reliable method.”

“Hm? A simpler method? What do you mean?”

I gave him an answer so simple that even the orphans of Ground Zero could’ve come up with it.

“We just make it so there’s no one else who can go but you.”

That meant eliminating every other candidate.