By Zephyria 
“Are you okay?”
Running to him in one breath, Kim Si-baek found Tae-un leaning against him with a frail smile. As he held the heavy weight of the body, he felt around to check for any bleeding wounds. At that touch, a suggestive moan escaped Tae-un’s lips as if a button had been pressed.
“Hng…♡”
“…….”
Kim Si-baek stopped his hands and silently gave Tae-un’s backside a loud smack.
“Hitting my butt is a reward, though…”
“Do you want to play around?”
“Ah, but it’s true that I’ve suffered from the heat.”
Touching the nape of his neck, the skin was indeed flushed and scorching hot. Kim Si-baek hurried to heal the heat throughout Tae-un’s body as well as the burns he had discovered late. Being human himself, it was only natural that he worried more about Tae-un than anyone else.
The flushed skin soon returned to its original pale hue. However, it seemed he was truly exhausted from a lack of energy, as he remained leaning weakly against Kim Si-baek’s shoulder.
“I’ll recover if I rest, so you can just leave this as it is. Actually, soaking in your scent is the best recovery medicine, Hyung.”
“…….”
Driven by a strong impulse to treat him further, Kim Si-baek supported Tae-un and walked back slowly.
“How is your divine power? I think you used a lot today.”
“That’s true, but the hunters are thanking Lord Biyendwe directly, so I’m recovering quickly. In the end, it’s a plus?”
“As I thought, building a temple would be the most effective. If we build a temple, I’ll make statues of you and the crow out of 24K pure gold.”
“That would undeniably look like a cult.”
“What do you mean ‘undeniably’? My butt is bouncy, so you can just keep pounding it… Ow.”
Even in his exhausted state, Tae-un’s tongue continued to wag until he was pinched in the side, finally forcing him to shut his mouth.
Upon returning to where the defensive line had been, the people who had evacuated began to appear one by one. Among them, there were children who immediately caught Kim Si-baek’s eye.
“Daddy!”
“Seo-yeon! Seo-jun!”
Pi Min-hyeong opened his arms wide and embraced the siblings running toward him. The children, who had been holding back their tears, finally let go of their tension and burst into loud sobbing.
“Daddy isn’t hurt at all. Look, I’m perfectly fine, right?”
Pi Min-hyeong, who had changed out of his blood-stained clothes before meeting the children, continuously comforted them. Since their biological parents had died while hunting magical beasts, they must have been so anxious. Kim Si-baek wore a soft smile. He was truly glad that Pi Min-hyeong and the children were safe.
As Pi Min-hyeong lifted the siblings and spun them around, he put the dinosaur headbands on them—the ones they had been clutching tightly in their hands. Small smiles bloomed on the children’s faces, which were smeared with tears and snot.
Coincidentally, a stall that had previously sold animal headbands had collapsed nearby, abandoned by its owner. Kim Si-baek picked up a chick headband rolling on the ground and dusted it off. Even in this chaos, the yellow fluff of the chick remained soft.
“Un-ah, lean your head down a bit.”
Tae-un tilted his head in confusion but obediently leaned forward, allowing Kim Si-baek to slip the chick headband onto his head. A chick with sparkling eyes sat neatly atop Tae-un’s head. It was adorable.
“Ack! So cute!”
Actually, Kim Si-baek’s hands had been itching since Pi Min-hyeong bought the dinosaur headbands for the children. He had only held back because he was in the middle of a quest. But now that the quest was complete and the anxiety fog was defeated, there was no need to restrain himself.
“How can a grown man look so good in bright yellow?”
He felt happy just imagining Tae-un wearing yellow clothes and walking, looking just like a chick. It would be a giant chick, the size of an ostrich rather than a turkey, but that was fine. Kim Si-baek had recently learned the phrase “the bigger it is, the cuter it is” from the smartphone-addicted Biyendwe.
Tae-un, staying still with the chick headband on, slowly curled the corners of his lips and spoke in a deep, low voice.
“Cheep.”
“Do it one more time, Un-ah!”
“Cheep cheep.”
In contrast to Kim Si-baek, who was highly excited by the cuteness that dealt a critical blow to his heart, a bizarre silence fell over the surroundings. Even Biyendwe stopped flapping its wings and perched dumbfoundedly on top of Pi Min-hyeong’s head.
“Uncle isn’t cute…”
Pi Min-hyeong quickly covered the lips of his innocently babbling son.
✽ ✽ ✽
Just because the divine realm had received Earth’s dimensional coordinates didn’t mean dimensional travel could be performed immediately from mak slecht. While a dimensional connection to Earth was possible, maintaining it so that humans and avatars could travel was difficult. Furthermore, it had to be a round trip, not just one way.
Nasluik sank into deep thought while examining the dimensional travel magic circle he had learned from the God of Omniscience and Foresight, who imparted wisdom in exchange for a price. The pontiff, who was assisting him, asked tentatively.
“Can you not find a way?”
“I could modify the magic circle, but I cannot guarantee how long it will take. It would be helpful if something that could serve as a medium were detected on Earth…”
How much time had passed since then? It was around the time the elderly pontiff was beginning to grow tired.
The pendulum floating in the void between the three-dimensional magic circles suddenly moved in a circle. Nasluik’s eyes shone intensely.
“This is it, this is it!”
“Hmm?”
“The fragments of Edokus disappeared, didn’t they? Thinking that the fragments might have been dragged along when Your Eminence was transferred to Earth—despite feeling skeptical that it might be a futile effort—I connected the divine power of the God of Death and Beauty, which is faintly linked to Earth, and the principle of how that works is…”
After a long, rambling explanation of a theory that was difficult to understand even for the pontiff, who was a magic scholar, Nasluik shouted, admiring his own genius.
“Edokus’s magical energy will serve as the foundation for the passage.”
“How?”
“Unlike Your Eminence, who was born on Earth, or the God of Death and Beauty, who is an artificial avatar, Edokus is a being crafted in mak slecht, even if he is currently in fragments.”
The pontiff, understanding the crude summary to mean that Edokus’s very existence served the role of stabilizing the dimensional travel passage, slapped his knee.
“Then can we proceed immediately?”
“Now that I know Edokus is there, I must modify the magic circle accordingly. And to engrave the magical energy into the magic circle, I need to analyze Edokus’s magical energy, but since he became fragments, there is a difference from when he was a complete adult, so with the existing data…”
“Wait, wait.”
The pontiff waved his hand before the explanation could get long again.
“In short, does that not mean Edokus must manifest his magical energy once more?”
It sounded simple in words, but it was a fatal obstacle. There was a possibility that Kim Si-baek, who had detected Edokus from that single burst of magical energy, had already killed him, or that Edokus might hide his magical energy forever to avoid being killed by Kim Si-baek.
However, Nasluik answered confidently and arrogantly.
“If it’s that guy, I think he’ll cause some kind of trouble regardless.”
After all, he was a fellow who would do anything just to avoid death.
✽ ✽ ✽
In the brief moment Kim Si-baek looked away toward Biyendwe, who was flying and playing above Pi Seo-yeon and Pi Seo-jun, Tae-un had disappeared.
“Have you seen Un-i?”
“He dumped all the work on me and headed over that way a moment ago.”
Pi Min-hyeong, who had been tasked with the primary follow-up processing to be discussed with the support team of the Jeongmyeong Guild that had arrived, grumbled slightly. He wanted to help, but he knew nothing about guild affairs and had to find Tae-un.
Kim Si-baek gave a quick nod of thanks and turned away. Biyendwe, who considered the orphanage children a safe zone second only to his apostle and the human who acted coy with that apostle, remained behind.
He found Tae-un in a deserted goods shop. Inside the shop, where the doors were wide open and the staff and customers had all fled, the cluttered items scattered about recalled the chaos of the time.
“What are you doing here?”
Tae-un, who had been sitting curled up against the wall, looked up. Kim Si-baek had caught a glimpse of what sounded like labored breathing, but the face looking up at him seemed fine.
“I was looking to see if there were any other cute headbands like mine.”
“You’re cute no matter what you wear.”
While responding reflexively, Kim Si-baek anxiously examined Tae-un’s complexion. Noticing this, Tae-un smiled brightly as if it were nothing.
He looked perfectly fine, but because he was the type of person who tried not to show pain in front of him when he was truly hurting, Kim Si-baek couldn’t help but worry.
‘Is there still some heat left from when he fought the magical beast?’
Before Tae-un could push him away, Kim Si-baek reached out and touched his forehead, his eyes widening. His forehead was too hot.
“What happened? Were you hurt earlier?!”
There had clearly been no injuries.
As he hurriedly crouched down to check for wounds, Tae-un, who had been trying to stop him by saying, “I’m fine…”, suddenly clamped his palm tightly over his mouth.
“Cough!”
His shoulders shook violently as a series of coughs erupted. Because he was wearing very dark black gloves, it wasn’t immediately obvious, but there was no way Kim Si-baek wouldn’t recognize the identity of the dark red liquid flowing between his fingers.
“Un-ah!”
Before the shout, which sounded like a single scream, could fade, Tae-un’s unconscious body slumped slowly into his arms.