By Zephyria 
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It felt unsettling. Even if he didn’t feel that way, there had rarely been a time when he actually wanted to accept a proposal from Cheong.
He simply accepted it because, among the remaining options, the blue-headed one was the lesser of several evils. This time was no different. Mu-hae clenched his teeth slightly.
He had spent a month searching. He had scouted every area where Aberrants were reported to appear or where it was deemed dangerous, never shying away from exploration.
It sounded pathetic, but he had even bought hot dogs and snacks and left them in those places. Just in case some hungry creature might catch the scent and wander out.
Considering how the thing had torn people apart and swallowed them, it might have developed a taste for other things by now… but he tried everything, even the slightest possibility. Despite all that, the only thing Mu-hae had gained was the nickname “the crazy mercenary.”
‘Is this bastard the closest lead I’ve got?’
Cheong was the only one who had specifically mentioned Aberrants. Furthermore, those eyes glimmering with interest. He seemed certain that Mu-hae would accept his proposal.
“How am I supposed to trust you?”
“Hmm… I do lie quite often. But I wouldn’t ruin things with a falsehood when something truly interesting is right in front of me.”
Cheong slapped his knee with a face that looked as if he were doing him a great favor.
“Everything I say from this moment on is the truth. If not, I’ll stop bothering your cute piggy.”
At the unexpected boast, Mu-hae’s expressionless eyebrows shot up slightly. In front of Mu-hae, who was still casting a suspicious gaze, Cheong exhaled a cloud of white smoke.
“The task I’ll entrust to you probably won’t be dangerous. If it were, I think it would be hard for you to keep your head on your shoulders. Ah, but it is a request worth about 80,000 Deals. At least to me. Well? Does it tempt you?”
“Information first. Did you verify this yourself?”
“Of course not. I rarely leave Goryeo City. Still, the accuracy should be quite high. If my hunch is correct.”
A pungent scent wavered at the tip of his nose. Mu-hae glared at the billowing smoke and weighed the opportunity presented to him.
It sounded too good to be true, which made it even more suspicious. However, accepting one request with guaranteed safety would be faster and simpler than running around trying to scrape together 80,000 Deals.
“Is there anyone who has actually seen the Aberrant I’m looking for?”
“To be honest? No.”
Heat rose in Mu-hae’s chest at the feeling of being toyed with, but Cheong tapped the tea table to draw his attention.
“Still, I have a hunch. There’s a massive difference between the amount of information a mere mercenary handles and what I encounter. Where you stayed from what time to what time for several days, what you did, what unusual events occurred inside and outside Goryeo City around the same time… If I gather all that into a report, wouldn’t I be able to see things that others overlook?”
It was infuriating, but he was right. At best, the people who came to Mu-hae were just randoms or those selling scraps of information for pocket change.
Moreover, Cheong was exceptionally quick-witted and, in a way that was incredibly annoying, shared a few similarities with Joo-oh.
“I think I’ve been quite generous. I’m not exactly a lenient person, you see.”
“…I’ll accept.”
After a long deliberation, he finally stepped back. In an instant, Cheong’s eyes filled with ecstasy.
He closed his eyes and shook his head slightly, as if experiencing some form of pleasure. As if he had waited for this moment for a very long time, he even let the glass rod he had been sucking drop to the floor.
“Hmmm… Right. I’ve always said it. I like both of you so much.”
“…”
“Ah, did I only tell your friend? Anyway, I’m glad we’ve finally shaken hands properly.”
“Cut the chatter and give me the information you promised.”
“Want a drink?”
At Cheong’s gesture, a steaming tea set was brought in. Unpleasantly, the scent that wafted over was not unfamiliar.
It was the smell of the tea leaves Director Gil often brewed. The properly steeped tea poured into the white cup.
Naturally, Mu-hae didn’t touch it. Even if nothing suspicious was mixed in, food given by a guy like that was always unsettling.
“I see you’ve been wandering around many dangerous places. Wasn’t it truly reckless to go as far as the Crystal Zone and rummage through it? The Beast colony as well… But, every time you did, you left a trace.”
“…A trace?”
As if to show him, Cheong held up a pad and played a video. It was a scene from a forest Mu-hae had visited.
Lush trees. The sound of a quiet wind. A scene that looked like a screensaver, with no Aberrants or Beasts popping out, continued for several minutes.
“See anything strange?”
“…”
“A veteran mercenary should know.”
Facing the video that had likely been filmed immediately after he left, Mu-hae simply frowned in silence. It was pathetic that he hadn’t even noticed while Cheong had been tailing him so thoroughly.
Then, at a certain moment, his heart sank. A sense of dissonance flashed through his mind.
He whipped his gaze toward Cheong. The other man was smiling, his lips curling wide.
“Too quiet, isn’t it? Not even a single insect is chirping.”
It was as if all the creatures of the forest were holding their breath, as if a predator were lurking. It made the few rodents he had seen scurrying during his own exploration feel like a lie.
“Your friend will worry if you keep going to places like this.”
Staring at that smirking face, Jin Mu-hae abruptly stood up.
Suddenly, nothing else was visible. Only the fact he had just realized pierced through his brain.
Cheong’s bait that ‘an Aberrant is wandering near Goryeo City.’ The traces that were left whenever he entered dangerous locations.
Click!
Cheong did not stop Mu-hae as he turned and left without so much as a formal goodbye. He thought he saw the blue-headed man waving his hand at the edge of his vision.
The clue he had obtained was far too precious to let such a thing get on his nerves. The hand shoved in his coat pocket clenched into a tight fist.
‘It hadn’t left.’
It hadn’t just run away that day and disappeared forever. It was still wandering nearby.
Had it been hiding its existence in a place where it wouldn’t be seen, still watching the housemate who had swung a blade at it?
‘Damn it.’
He had rushed out frantically, but he didn’t know what to prepare first. Mu-hae first returned to Starlight Road to pack his things.
A few pieces of equipment he always carried. A pack of cereal boxes covered in dust. A handful of figures that had been standing in a row next to the study mattress.
On his way out, he stopped at a temporary stand and bought five hot dogs. It was the result of coaxing and threatening the owner, who was packing up for the night, with money.
“You’re looking for a bike at this hour?”
The old man at the parking lot picked his ear as if he had heard something insane. No matter how skilled a mercenary was, they didn’t wander outside the city after sunset.
And yet, here was Mu-hae, who was widely rumored to have gone mad, preparing to leave. The old man’s eyebrows twitched suspiciously before he placed his hand on the machine.
“…Whatever happens, it’s not my responsibility. Obviously.”
“I know, so just give me the item I left.”
“I’m not sure about a discount on the parking fee. How about we call it a night surcharge?”
The reason this miser was stalling by mentioning discounts was obvious. He intended to sell the information that the insane Jin Mu-hae had taken his bike and disappeared to someone for money.
If the subject of the rumors just died, there would be no one to retaliate, but as a survival instinct, it was always better to give a warning just in case.
“I’m not interested, so do it within one minute.”
Whether he whispered it or shouted it through a megaphone was no longer his concern. Mu-hae raised his wrist to pay and snatched the modified bike as it rose from the iron cage.
Vrooooom—!
Although it had quite bright lights, it was impossible to fully illuminate the path. The surroundings were too dark under the cloudy night sky, so Mu-hae relied entirely on the GPS to navigate the rough terrain.
Since there were no proper roads, the seat jolted several times. After nearly slipping and wobbling, the handle he gripped tightly became damp.
The place where he stopped after several dozen minutes was a danger zone quite far from Goryeo City. Mu-hae unpacked his bag by the roadside and set down the items he had brought.
Hot dogs filling a paper bag. A slightly crumpled cereal box. A few figures piled on top of them.
“Whew…”
He repeatedly pressed his throbbing eyes with his palms. After being exposed to the cold wind, he finally came to his senses.
He didn’t know why he had rushed out so impulsively. Moreover, coming to a land swarming with Beasts at this hour with food that smelled so strongly.
It was almost the first time in his entire life that he had acted so recklessly without thinking.
‘If they found out, they’d probably try to strangle me.’
Whether it was Director Gil or Teacher Jung, if they heard about this, they would abandon their observational attitude and clutch the back of their necks.
They might even swing a weapon at him, telling him to just go back to lying down with an IV drip.
Thinking about that made him let out a hollow laugh for the first time in a while, forgetting the situation. Mu-hae touched the corners of his stiff mouth and slowly stood up.
“Take it. These are things you like.”
His voice scattered into the void. There was no answer to the words shouted into the air.
Only the freezing air, cold enough to freeze everything, brushed past his hair. Despite skipping meals and sleep, his mind became clearer and clearer.
No matter how much he thought about it, this was madness. Being here in the middle of nowhere at midnight was more absurd than believing in a hallucinatory situation where a human turned into an Aberrant.
Still, he didn’t pick up the items he had set down. Under the light of the bike’s lamp, one of the tinkle friends characters tipped over.
“…”
A terrifyingly quiet and chilly night. Mu-hae stood there for a long time, his breath forming white clouds.
He feared that a Beast or an Aberrant might suddenly jump out after smelling the food, but recalling the memory of the day he collapsed, such things felt trivial.
A massive body… an intense aura that crushed his windpipe…
Jangjugol, where the fishy scent of blood lingered, was a horror that would not easily be forgotten. It remained as a blurred trauma; just thinking about it made his fingertips tremble slightly.
“Before other things eat it, make sure you eat it all this time.”
After waiting until his entire body grew cold, Mu-hae finally slung his lightened bag over his shoulder and turned around.
Had he believed the nonsense of a guy like Cheong too impulsively? Or was it that the other guy, despite being in that state, still slept and ate, and he had just called out to him at a sudden time in a random place?
Aware of the emptiness behind his back, by the time he returned to Goryeo City, the sky was faintly brightening.
A few drunken mercenaries watched Jin Mu-hae walking back into the city on his own two feet and stepped back.
Rustle. Mu-hae took a candy from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. The power of sugar slowly flowed through his exhausted body.
‘It’s damn sweet.’
There were almost no candies left that the damn guy had left behind. Seeing how he had eaten them several times a day, he must have had hundreds of them stockpiled.
He wondered where they were piled up. Mu-hae vowed that he would definitely find the guy’s secret warehouse and make him whine about Jin Mu-hae eating all his candies.
* * *
The “crazy mercenary,” a celebrity of the Goryeo City station, had recently been engaging in a different kind of madness.
He, who originally never went near the food stalls, would buy plenty of various junk foods, ride his bike out every few days, return empty-handed, and drink a few glasses of alcohol.
Some speculated that he had grown tired of dry rations or substitute pills and had developed a taste for sauce-covered food, while others were creeped out, thinking his mental state had deteriorated to the point where he was scattering funeral rice for dead comrades.
Both theories seemed plausible, and several arguments broke out while the person in question was absent. The topic was so provocative that even the greenhorns, who usually played it safe while working among mercenaries, were sometimes unbearably curious about the truth.
So one day, while eating an extra chili hotdog, a greenhorn attempted something reckless. He spoke to that mercenary, whom no one ever thought of approaching.
“The hot dogs here, uh, they’re tasty, right? I don’t know what kind of meat they use, but the portion for the price is, um… decent.”
“…”
“Uh, well, I noticed you buy them quite often…”
Glance. The man, who was packing his hot dogs, scanned the greenhorn with indifferent eyes. His dark brown pupils were sharp and savage, devoid of any human warmth.
Come to think of it, hadn’t they said he nearly killed a mercenary who had picked a fight with him?
Just as the greenhorn’s spine chilled at the thought that he had spoken for no reason.
“Not really. There’s just someone who eats them.”
The crazy mercenary muttered and left the spot.
Whether he was taking the packaging or eating the paper as well… the mumbling sound made him seem like a truly insane person.
185 – I Became an Anomaly in a Dead Game