Chapter 10

After unleashing a torrent of slander against the Downtown Workshop, Morae finally calmed her mind for a moment.

“…No, it’s not that their taste is low. Even if you don’t listen very well, your skills are good, so it’s natural for people here and there to want you.”

Thinking about it, she felt she had reacted a bit too sensitively.

Isn’t an able, strong man a factor for popularity in any era and any country? Pado possessed the qualifications to become an S-rank Hunter.

Since he was a precious talent she had personally unearthed, naturally he would be popular. Putting on a mighty show of swagger, Morae instantly wiped the expression off her face.

“Still, don’t get the wrong idea. There are plenty of people in this underworld who won’t hesitate to launch a physical assault just to snatch up a strong Hunter. If you let your guard down just because they look innocent, you’ll regret it. There’s probably a snake coiled up inside them.”

“Like you?”

Pado sneered. Morae jerked her head away and steered the conversation elsewhere.

“All that aside, they just don’t have enough going for them. Everyone else is simply on a completely different scale compared to us. Everywhere else is the same.”

History, power, skill, and capital.

In no aspect were there many organizations that could stand shoulder to shoulder with a time-honored underground syndicate that had been around for twenty-seven years.

At the very least, the Downtown Workshop had the unique perk of having “polyamorous women deeply interested in Pado,” but the rest weren’t even worth keeping in check.

“Since we’re the best, take a breather and think about it wisely with a clear head.”

Morae puffed out her chest and shoulders with pride.

Her wet clothes clung tightly to her body, revealing the contours of her breasts. Pado’s gaze flickered for a moment.

“You talk real easy for someone who isn’t even going to help me catch a breather.”

“Kneel and beg and I’ll help you out.”

“Forget it.”

Cutting her off flatly, Pado handed over his jacket. Or rather, he more or less tossed the white jacket right at Morae.

Then, Pado stepped over the carcass of the water snake and walked toward the waterfall. Silence descended once more, and his face settled into an expression where it was impossible to guess what he was thinking.

Throughout their conversation, even though he hadn’t chimed in, he hadn’t seemed displeased, but now conversation had abruptly died. He seemed lost in thoughts of his own, but his inner motives were hard to read.

Morae hurried her steps to chase after him.

“Slow down!”

“…”

“Will you walk a bit slower? It’s not like we have to rush.”

Even though Pado was carrying all the supplies, Morae was the one lagging behind.

Though Morae was a proper ability user and an underground Hunter in her own right, her abilities couldn’t hold a candle to Pado’s. Keeping pace with a Hunter as tough and physically gifted as him was a tall order.

The order given by the commander was to investigate the waterfall and track down the source of the high alkalinity. Hadn’t he also asked to bring back anything if there happened to be something inside the waterfall?

The waterfall wasn’t going to run away, and given its intense alkalinity, nobody else would be approaching it anyway, so there was no need to rush. She had said it several times, but Pado’s stride didn’t shorten a bit.

In the end, Morae trotted over with her wet body and grabbed onto Pado. By the time Morae grabbed hold of Pado’s shirt, the waterfall was already close.

“Why are you walking so fast?”

“Because I want to get it over with quickly.”

Pado, barely managing to open his mouth, muttered quietly.

“Why?”

“That’s your errand, isn’t it? Faithfully carrying out orders to contribute to the legion. I’ll get it done for you fast.”

“Being faithful and rushing are two totally different things. What are you going to do if you just blindly jump into the waterfall and run into enemies? To do it properly, you have to be way more ca—”

Morae’s voice, preaching in earnest, cut off mid-sentence. Pado’s expression was unusual.

It was the look of someone telling her to go ahead and vent all she wanted. He didn’t look angry, but he wasn’t warm either. The face quietly gazing down at her felt somewhat lonely, yet at the same time arrogant.

Morae parted her lips, waiting for Pado to speak. She felt uneasy, sensing that unpalatable words were about to drop.

Realizing Morae was bracing herself and waiting for him to speak, Pado massaged the nape of his neck.

“Out of a sense of loyalty, you should probably be the first to hear it.”

Morae didn’t ask anything back. In this context, this conversation promised to be nothing short of anxiety-inducing.

As if knowing that fact all too well, Pado wore a faintly apologetic look inwardly.

“I’m planning to leave the legion soon.”

The follow-up words—“I just decided that a moment ago. I’ll work hard until then”—struck Morae hard.

She had steeled herself the moment he brought it up, but Morae was genuinely loud.

“Are you out of your mind? Where to? Why? Have you lost your damn mind?” The offensive started with those words and refused to stop. She had braced herself ever since rumors started spreading that he might head somewhere else, but now that the piercing glares were actually landing on her, it was too chaotic to bear.

Pado avoided the gazes driving into the back of his head and approached the lake where the waterfall poured down.

“Bewitched by some woman, no doubt.”

Morae muttered venomously. At first she had been flustered, but now a stream of words close to personal attacks poured out.

“Why are you so obsessed with women? I’m not leaving because of a woman, so don’t get the wrong idea.”

“If not… then there’s no reason for you to go anywhere else.”

Morae, who had been about to spit out a harsh retort starting with ‘For all you good looks’, managed to bite her tongue just in time.

“Why wouldn’t there be? If I want to leave, I leave.”

“A sensible person wouldn’t make a judgment like that.”

Is that so? Pado twitched his eyebrow and shot a sideways glance.

“It’s not like you have a clear goal or something you want to do, and since you’re from the outside, you don’t have a hometown or family to look after either—”

Hearing the mention of family made Pado’s heart uneasy. The topic of having no family was inherently prickly to him.

Morae meant no malice. It was an undeniable fact that people with families to care for sometimes moved organizations, and it was equally true that Pado had neither friends nor family in the floating city.

In the world of fugitives and outlaws, the foundation is similar to the outside world. People battered and beaten by the harshness of life often cling solely to their families and close friends, or live harboring romantic notions like achieving a family’s dream or helping a friend realize theirs.

Turning their backs on a prestigious, large-scale organization to form a small, club-sized faction usually happens for reasons like that. Either to go chase a dream or to help someone precious.

Except Pado had no such person.

Until quite recently, he had lived outside the floating city in the lawful world where the government’s reach extended, leaving him with no personal ties within the city. Even his only mother had passed away long ago.

With no one else in the world, the person closest to him was Morae. Even though they were always at each other’s throats.

To put it the other way around, his relationships with everyone else outside her were worse than his relationship with Morae.

Pado had nowhere to go and nothing he was responsible for. There was no reason for him to be swept away by sentiment and leave. Morae knew this all too well.

“We have our own autonomous territory, and as an organization with a history and strength that ranks among the best, you have nothing to envy—”

After adding these obvious arguments, Morae finally raised her left arm.

On the glass screen of an analog-style wristwatch, numbers close to 500 million flashed into view.

“You still owe me 500 million won in debt, too.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to pay it back.”

“Where are you going to scrape up the money from? If you work under me, I’ll give you jobs so you can pay off the money steadily, but if you turn that down and leave, you’d have to be a total idiot.”

“You know whose fault that debt is in the first place, right?”

When he shot a meaningful look at the mastermind behind the debt, Morae glared sideways at him.

“That was your choice. Acting petty only makes you look pathetic.”

Morae’s unyielding words pierced Pado’s heart. If it had been an unjust accusation, he would have brushed it in one ear and out the other, but it had enough truth to sting.

The massive debt was ultimately a choice he had made himself. Even if the cause was Morae, blaming someone else would make him look low and sleazy.

He accepted the criticism gracefully and fiddled with the watch screen.

“Ignoring all of this, there’s no reason to go somewhere far worse than us. Unless your eyes are blinded by women.”

Hearing things this far, Pado could guess Morae’s line of reasoning.

She wasn’t just picking petty fights. Through her own rational deduction, she had concluded that the West Sea Legion lacked nothing except romance.

Except for subjective metrics like friendship or love, her pride in believing they were the best at everything else simply made Morae’s suspicions biased.

“I’m not saying I’m going to the Downtown Workshop.”

“Then what is it?”

Morae attacked aggressively.

“Or where else are you planning to go?”

To avoid being treated like a man running away because of a woman, the atmosphere demanded that he answer the reason for his departure.

He had thought she was just throwing a tantrum, but she was sharp when it came to things like this. Pado turned his head to avoid Morae’s gaze.

“Anywhere’s fine as long as the direction aligns. If conditions permit, I could even work alone.”

“What kind of vague answer is that? What do you want? What is it you actually want to do?”

“Not much.”

“Not much… fine, even so, it’s not like making a living would be hard. Probably! But still!”

Just as Morae said, the West Sea Legion was solidly built, ranking among the top underground organizations. To put it in corporate terms, it was a leading conglomerate with stable sources of revenue.

Rather than going somewhere else without a special goal, staying put in the West Sea Legion was better. Anyone else told this would have called him spoiled and ungrateful.

Yet Yu Pado was indeed a spoiled guy.

Those who awakened bizarre abilities, collectively called Hunters, made up roughly 10% of the current population.

While that might sound like quite a number, Hunters with genuinely useful abilities made up less than 30% of them. And among those, Hunters capable of properly fighting back were at best a fifth.

The contaminated zones eroded by the Gates were places fraught with every kind of danger. Having a special ability or two didn’t mean you could romp around as if it were your own living room.

While Hunters could survive within the contaminated zones, genuine, hardcore Hunters capable of actually conquering those zones weren’t common.

Someone like Pado, nearing S-rank Hunter status, wouldn’t lack for anything no matter where or what he did.

Talking like a reckless child about wandering freely without a purpose suddenly sounded quite romantic coming from someone with his level of skill.

He didn’t need worldly goals or to chase after being the number one. After all, he possessed the power to overturn any situation at any time.

Quick with her calculations, Morae finished her arithmetic and glared at Pado with a pout. Inside her head, simulations on how to trap Pado seemed to be spinning furiously.
Even an idiot could tell. Morae wanted him.

So much so that she had spent 500 million on the spot just to claim Pado. So much so that she had rushed over in a frenzy upon hearing mere rumors just to catch him.

And so… so much so that they had ended up sleeping together after a game of chicken.

She craved Pado that badly.

Impulsively, Pado stepped close to Morae and yanked on her hair. Grasping her long, damp hair, he cupped her cheek with his other hand. As he leaned in as if to kiss her, Morae shoved Pado away with all her might.