Chapter 56

Had Dad really been on bad terms with Pado?

He had only told Morae not to get too close to Pado once, but that had happened after Mom had subtly guessed at Pado’s feelings.

Something like that was normal enough to say as a joke.

“He doesn’t hate him, but… he feels a little cold? Like he sees him as a stranger?”

Jimin crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head in thought. Morae listened carefully, puzzled by what she was saying. Jimin was Eun Jisung’s coworker and disciple, so she couldn’t simply brush her words aside.

“When I mention Pado, he tells me not to get attached to him too easily. I know he’s probably just worried, not trying to interfere, but he normally doesn’t say things like that. I thought he’d be happy that I was finally getting close to someone besides Lord Sea God and that I was finally spending time with another person.”

“Even if he’s my dad, he probably wouldn’t be happy about an eighteen-year age gap…”

“No—Pado is like a son to me. He looks like Lord Sea God!”

“That isn’t exactly a reasonable excuse that most people would accept.”

‘He’s like my son’ was something people said when they treated someone like a parent would. It wasn’t something Jimin could casually throw around without any basis.

Especially in her case, there was an unspoken phrase before ‘like my son.’

‘The son of the person I love.’

It was dangerous in the extreme.

“Listening to this, isn’t it just that Auntie handled herself badly?”

When Morae subtly let a cold edge show in her voice, Jimin jumped up and down in protest.

“No! I’m saying I’m worried because if I say, ‘Pado looks just like Lord Sea God!’ people might misunderstand!”

“Does he really look that much like him?”

Since the topic of Lord Sea God kept coming up, curiosity began to bloom in Morae’s mind.

Jimin’s habit of saying that Pado resembled Lord Sea God bothered her.

“To the point where he looks like his child?”

Morae could guess what her father might be thinking. The same question surfaced in her own mind.

Was Pado the son of Lord Sea God, Lee Ucheong?

Lord Sea God, Lee Ucheong, was a man who openly had multiple wives.

Lee Ucheong’s wives were women who had his children, separate from the dozen or so lovers he was known to have.

It was a dangerous era, and since he had been hunted by the government, there probably weren’t that many women who had his children. Still, the general belief was that there were at least four or five.

He had been that popular of a man, and it had also been a chaotic time when many people were pushed into reckless decisions by impulse.

Even so, all of them claimed their pregnancies had been planned rather than mistakes. He wasn’t simply a womanizer. He was what people called polyamorous, and apparently, having many children had been his dream.

Because he had received a sentence that erased his records, very little information remained. Most of what was left was about his popularity, which showed just how extraordinary a person he had been.

However, unlike his fame, his wives and children were mostly shrouded in mystery.

During the era when underground Hunter hunting was common, Lee Ucheong had hidden the locations of his wives and children. Perhaps he simply wasn’t the type to show them off. People only knew that he had many children, but no one had ever confirmed their identities.

Then, after he was imprisoned in the ocean prison, the identities of his children sank completely beneath the surface.

Of course, there was no way to be certain, but rumors were easy to spread.

Counting backward through the years, his children would now be between nineteen and twenty-eight years old.

Pado was a man in his twenties. His mother had never revealed his father’s identity, and he was a water ability user.

The possibility that he was Lee Ucheong’s son flickered faintly in Morae’s mind like heat haze.

After thinking for a moment, Jimin tilted her head slightly.

“He isn’t similar enough to worry about. Especially his personality. They’re not alike at all. If he were like Lord Sea God, by now young people would probably already be grabbing each other by the hair.”

Hearing that, Morae understood what kind of worry her father had been carrying.

Morae’s generation didn’t know much about him, but the name Lee Ucheong had once been synonymous with a top-star Casanova.

Already possessing natural star power, he became an S-rank Hunter after the Gates opened and enjoyed popularity that reached the heavens.

And as if to repay that popularity, he displayed a spectacular romantic history that turned everything around him upside down.

He never hid his complicated relationships with women. As a result, fights broke out between the women themselves, and conflicts also erupted between the people who cared about those women. There wasn’t a single peaceful day, and sometimes things even turned bloody.

Yet he stubbornly went around declaring that he loved many women.

He had truly been a troublesome man.

Having someone like that inside an organization was a headache. No matter how much the world changed, the easiest thing to destroy an organization was always human relationships and romantic conflicts.

That was probably what Dad was worried about.

“What? Then I guess Auntie was wrong. You always jump to the wrong conclusions.”

“What—?”

“Back then, the most famous water ability user was Lord Sea God. So when you heard that Pado was a water ability user who didn’t know his father, you probably immediately thought of him. You worried first even though Pado isn’t that kind of person.”

Compared to Lord Sea God Lee Ucheong, Pado was a man who had nothing to worry about.

He even kept his boundaries so firmly that he rejected Downtown Workshop’s request to meet him.

He only resembled Lee Ucheong in a few ways, which naturally brought that name to mind. It was obvious that it had just been a passing concern.

“Wasn’t it just half a joke? Auntie, you’re not very good at telling those things apart.”

“That’s so mean—! Morae is bullying her auntie—! I even told Morae not to get attached to Pado too—!”

“That’s just a normal worry from a father with a daughter. Who wouldn’t worry when they have such a cute daughter? There’s no need to take it seriously.”

Morae had been briefly surprised when she heard that her father was uncomfortable around Pado, but it turned out to be nothing serious.

Since there was a possibility that Pado was Lee Ucheong’s child, it was probably just a vague sense of unease.

“But Pado really could be his son.”

“There are tons of candidates for that man’s children.”

The number of water ability users whose fathers were unknown was larger than people expected.

The early days after the Gates appeared had been a chaotic era, so many children had been born without knowing their fathers. And since water abilities covered such a broad range, it was an extremely common ability.

Lee Jinseo, Yu Kang, Baek Huira…

Just from the names that came to mind immediately, there were already three people.

“And as long as his personality isn’t like Lord Sea God’s, it doesn’t matter even if he is his child. A womanizer’s tendencies aren’t inherited.”

Even if every single suspicion turned out to be true and he really was Lee Ucheong’s son, nothing would change.

A tendency to chase after women wasn’t genetic, and the name ‘Lord Sea God’ was now nothing more than an old medal from a bygone era.

More than a decade had passed since Lee Ucheong, who had once dominated the world under the name Lord Sea God, had been imprisoned.

It was around the time when the resentment people held toward him would begin to fade, and there was nothing left that could really be called an inheritance.

Unlike Morae, who was the daughter of Eun Jisung and Han Nokyeong and benefited from her parents’ reputation, Lee Ucheong’s imprisonment meant there was no glory left for his descendants to inherit.

If Pado truly was Lee Ucheong’s son, the only conclusion people would reach was something like:

‘He’s strong because he takes after his father.’

The fact that he was the son of a man who had had countless relationships and children with different women bothered Morae a little—very, very slightly—but from the Legion’s perspective, it would neither be a loss nor a benefit.

“Really? Then does that mean Pado only likes Morae? Well, I guess he could have taken after his mother too.”

Remembering something Nokyeong had said, Jimin made a comment that completely missed the point.

That simple remark made Morae’s heart lift slightly, but then she remembered yesterday’s disaster and immediately became gloomy again.

“Who knows about that, but at least he’s not the type to go wandering around chasing after people. If, if, really, by some tiny chance, something happened and he left the Legion, he wouldn’t fight with us—”

A thunderous crash rang out.

Before she could finish speaking, another sound came from somewhere in the building, like something had been smashed apart.

Morae might have dismissed it as an ordinary internal accident, but the recent events made her uneasy. At Morae’s gesture, Jimin opened the door and stopped someone passing by.

“What happened?”

“They said Pado got into a fight with the others.”

“Pado? Why?”

“I don’t know. They said Pado knocked six people down!”

No sooner had the words left their mouth than Pado had caused trouble.

The internal violence incident they had feared had actually happened.

Right after she had decided to support him, he caused something that looked like the beginning of conflict between S-rank Hunters.

Yu Pado, you unbelievably frustrating guy!

Morae threw off the blanket and rushed outside.

The situation was a disaster.

Six people were lying unconscious at Pado’s feet, and the seventh person was being beaten into a miserable state.

A lounge and the hallway had been completely wrecked. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Water and scorch marks covered the area.

Even the crowd surrounding the fight had an uneasy atmosphere. Most people looked worried as they either tried to stop Pado or went looking for someone who could.

No matter how you looked at it, this was far from an entertaining spectacle.

“What is all this?”

This wasn’t something she could simply stand by and watch.

Morae pushed through the harsh, tense atmosphere and stepped between the last remaining fighter and Pado.

The man’s name was Kim Jihong. He was a friend and fellow colleague who had known Morae since they were quite young. The other six who had fallen were similar.

They were around the same age, friends who had been close for anywhere from two years to as long as ten.

Since there weren’t many people their age around, they seemed to have become close with Pado as well. Yet suddenly, they were fighting him like they were insane.

The expressions of the six fallen people and the one still standing were filled with such hostility that they looked at Pado as if he were their sworn enemy.

Even Pado, who was winning effortlessly, had an equally sharp expression.

He wasn’t acting arrogant or relaxed. Instead, he grabbed Kim Jihong and threw him around with a brutality that looked almost desperate.

The scene was so brutal that even the people who had gathered just to watch out of curiosity clicked their tongues and said this wasn’t right.

This wasn’t a sparring match, an accident, or even a minor dispute.

The way they glared at each other and screamed was exactly like people whose feelings had been hurt and were throwing real punches out of anger.

“Hmm? I asked what you’re doing.”

When Morae, one of the Legion’s central figures, appeared, the atmosphere became restless.

Morae coldly snapped at them and grabbed Jihong, who had barely managed to get up and was coughing water out of his nose and mouth in pain.

“Why are you doing this to a new recruit? Who said you could seriously fight with a fellow comrade?”

Morae deliberately scolded Jihong instead of Pado.

If she stopped Pado while he was overwhelmingly winning, it would hurt his pride badly. She was trying to protect his dignity.

Jihong was older and had more experience.

She was telling him to be understanding toward Pado as a senior, but Jihong only glared at Pado with a vicious expression.

“Comrades don’t fight seriously with each other. But is that guy really our comrade?”