By Zephyria 
“You can take your time. From behind, the line of your waist when you move is so sleek and beautiful. I want to touch—ah, we agreed not to talk about this for a while. Un-i’s cute mistake.”
“…….”
Before Na Jeong-woo could even process Tae-un’s words, he felt a sensation of floating. It wasn’t that wings had sprouted or that he had suddenly awakened the ability to fly. A moment later, a chest pain hit him, as if his ribs were snapping.
‘……Ah. Did I just get hit in the chest?’
His last memory was the faces of the guild members staring blankly at him as he flew toward the ceiling of the sparring room after being struck just once.
✽ ✽ ✽
Yang Eun-ho:
The Tohu Guild Master and the Sky High Vice Guild Master contacted me again asking to arrange a meeting with the mentor. What should I do?
Justina, who had a very firm impression of Kim Si-baek during the giant vine raid, and the Vice Guild Master of Sky High had been contacting Tae-un directly to pester him. When Tae-un blocked them, it seemed they had moved on to badgering Yang Eun-ho.
Tae-un firmly tapped the keypad.
Tell them I’ll kill them if they keep hitting on my man.
Yang Eun-ho’s reply came seven minutes after the message was read.
Yang Eun-ho:
Yes.
It was a response that encapsulated seven minutes of agony, but Tae-un didn’t care. Even that was not enough time to simply gaze at the person sitting across from him.
“Hyung, is teaching the guild members going okay lately?”
“Rather than teaching, I’m just helping them out bit by bit. It reminds me of the old days, so it’s fun.”
“If you like teaching kids, why don’t you try being a daily lecturer at the Awakened Academy? I heard there’s a vacancy.”
Without a second thought, Kim Si-baek shook his head.
“The guild is unavoidable since I’m active as a hunter, but I don’t want to belong anywhere else. This is a place I will eventually leave.”
Tae-un paused for a moment at those words, but he continued the conversation naturally, so Kim Si-baek didn’t notice the dissonance.
“I understand. More importantly, how did the quest go?”
“Hold on.”
Kim Si-baek chewed and swallowed the last remaining piece of cha gio. Immediately, a message appeared stating that the quest had been completed.
[Quest 04. CLEAR]
[What kind of people are Koreans? They are the people of eating. Did you enjoy the dishes you couldn’t eat in Korea 21 years ago in the world you returned to? u.u*]
[Eat out with a dish you’ve never had before (3/3)]
He had ordered pho, cha gio, and bun cha at a Vietnamese restaurant, and fortunately, they were counted one by one. He no longer needed to spend time searching for famous restaurants while worrying about what other dishes he hadn’t eaten 21 years ago.
“Hyung saved the world again today.”
“……Yeah.”
Kim Si-baek replied lukewarmly and took a sip of the pho broth.
The place where the two were eating was a restaurant in a busy district. From the moment they entered, glances of curiosity didn’t stop, but no one dared to gather the courage to ask for an autograph. It was because of Tae-un. Due to his indifferent and fierce impression, no one approached them openly unless his companion was someone like Pi Min-hyeong, who could neutralize the atmosphere with sociability.
However, today was different. A high school student in a school uniform bravely approached.
“Um, excuse me…… You’re Hunter Kim Si-baek, right?”
As Kim Si-baek looked up, the high school student’s cheeks flushed with nervousness, and they continued to speak in a disjointed, stuttering manner.
“My, my sister is a civil servant, and she was seriously injured at the Management Center. Everyone thought she was going to die, but I heard the Hunter treated her. Thank you so much for saving her.”
Bowing deeply, the student carefully held out a bag of cookies that looked as if they had been bought in haste from a nearby cafe. After a brief hesitation, Kim Si-baek smiled softly and took the cookies.
“I’ll enjoy these. Thank you.”
“A-Ah, no! I’m the one who’s thank—thank you…… I don’t even care if the Hunter is actually a cult leader. F-Fighting!”
The student, whose face had turned bright red, hurriedly said goodbye and bolted out of the restaurant. Through the window facing the sidewalk, he could see friends noisily calling out to them.
Kim Si-baek fell into thought while fiddling with the cookie bag. It was a feeling that was both familiar and strange. Recalling his memories, he soon realized why. It had been a very long time since he had received a thank-you from ordinary people.
〈The baby Your Highness saved has already married and even had a child.〉
〈The descendants of the city Your Highness helped……〉
〈Your Highness’s……〉
A thank-you from ‘ordinary people’ who lived their lives faithfully day by day amidst the danger of magical beasts, without magical power or divine power.
As the war with Edokus intensified and he spent a long time leading the front lines, Kim Si-baek finally realized that the lives of ordinary people, which he hadn’t heard of for so long, were deeply embedded and close by in this place.
Ah.
Suddenly, he gained a realization. The reason why trivial and insignificant quests continued.
The quests made him visit cafes, take one-day classes, and eat out. If the quests hadn’t been forcibly assigned, Kim Si-baek’s range of movement would have hardly left the 7777 Guild building. In fact, unless it was an occasional suggestion from Tae-un, he had never gone out for personal leisure.
Part of it was that he could handle most of his work in the penthouse and the guild building, but above all, it was because he did not wish to blend deeply into life on Earth.
Kim Si-baek was a person who would leave.
〈I have no intention of dating, so you don’t have to worry. Isn’t it irresponsible to date while performing a quest that determines the fate of Earth’s destruction? Besides, I don’t want to leave traces of myself in a place I’ll be leaving.〉
Not wanting to leave traces didn’t only apply to lovers who shared their hearts. Kim Si-baek tried not to form deep bonds, and he would not do so in the future. The same went for the guild members he had become acquainted with and the younger siblings he had missed so much. That was also the reason why he had never visited the orphanage.
Kim Si-baek did not expand his relationships beyond official interactions as a guild member with anyone. Whether it was Bae Jihan or the HG Guild Master, Kim Si-baek had never contacted them privately first. Except for the brief deviation of stopping Detective Park, the only exception was Tae-un, who remembered him.
If it weren’t for the quest today, Kim Si-baek would not have gone out of his way to find a Vietnamese restaurant, nor would he have happened upon the high school student. And probably, the quests would continue to forcibly push him outside.
Since he was active as a hunter, he would continue to save people, and ordinary people who blend into his daily life, like the high school student he met today, would increase. The obvious truth that mak slecht and Earth are ordinary worlds where ordinary people live ordinary lives unfolds anew.
A thin wrinkle formed between Kim Si-baek’s brows.
He could not fathom whether this was beneficial or harmful to him.
Nor the true intention of the system that forced this upon him.
A strange guest had been visiting the cafe located in the 7777 Guild building for a few days.
His clothes were shabby, and he always paid with crumpled cash, leading the employees to whisper that he might be an illegal immigrant. On the other hand, his Korean was very fluent. There was no hint of a foreigner in his accent, leaving the staff wondering about his identity. That guest was Edokus.
‘The prices in this country are insane!’
Edokus’s hand trembled as he paid cash, faced with a terrifying cost of living where it was hard to even buy a single cup of coffee after working for an hour until his legs hurt. Moreover, since he wasn’t a guild member, he couldn’t even accumulate extra points.
Unaware that he was receiving only half of the minimum wage, he ordered the cheapest espresso again today. Since he was merely mimicking a human body and had long since lost the five senses of an ordinary human, it was a relief that he couldn’t taste the terribly bitter espresso.
In truth, he didn’t have the luxury to waste money like this. Edokus had many questions. How he had been flung out as a fragment, and why that fragment happened to be a sliver of his time as a human.
〈You must not resent the world. What you should resent is the grandfather who should not have become king, and the mother who could not stop such a grandfather.〉
Thanks to that, his mother’s advice, which he had forgotten after becoming a chaos grand warrior, echoed in his mind from time to time.
It was a perplexing situation in many ways, but chaos remained silent as if it had completely forgotten him, and he had to find a way to survive. No matter how much he thought about it, there was only one path.
He had to kill the apostle of death and beauty.