Chapter 154 - Chapter 151: Episode 149 - Chills
For the first time in a month, the two of them stepped out of the house.
They looked affectionate enough, walking together with their hands tightly clasped, but given their similar features and the lack of any real age gap, they looked more like a pair of close siblings than lovers.
Every so often, they would glance at each other.
Whenever their gazes met, they'd shyly look away, though their minds were worlds apart.
Seon-ah was looking at Sophia, his beloved, while Min-ah was looking at Seon-ah, her beloved son. Even if they both called it "love," the weight of those emotions was entirely different.
While Seon-ah turned his head away out of genuine shyness, Min-ah looked away to hide her guilt, sighing inwardly.
'As if betraying Hyeon-tae wasn't enough, I even violated my own son with my own hands... I choked him... so hard I nearly crushed his cock...'
Seon-ah, blissfully unaware of her inner turmoil, asked with a happy smile.
"So, where are we going, Sophia?"
"We're heading to the Han-il Guild, Seon-ah."
"The Han-il Guild, you say..."
The moment the name crossed his mind, Hyun-ah's face appeared in his thoughts.
Recalling how she'd treated him like nothing more than a semen dispenser, a wave of terror washed over him.
He had never met anyone so insane. The way she'd treated his mother like an object, extracting his semen only to shove it into herself with her fingers—it was truly sickening.
As Seon-ah trembled, Min-ah must have felt the faint shaking in his hand. She reached out to stroke his face.
"It's okay, Seon-ah. We're just stopping by to see your aunt so we can find a place for us to live. You don't need to worry. But if you don't want to go, I'll find another way."
"Ah... no, Sophia, there's no need to go through the trouble for my sake. I just had a bad memory for a second. But asking my aunt for a house... is she in real estate within the Han-il Guild?"
"Pfft! Hahahahaha! A real estate agent? I guess that's not entirely wrong, considering she owns most of the land in the country."
"...?"
Seon-ah tilted his head, looking confused by my answer.
I couldn't help but laugh at his innocence, but honestly, it was the truth.
If my younger sister, Lee Shin-ah, inherited everything from our mother, Lee Han-il, she would effectively own all that land.
When Mother first became an S-class, I was too young to remember the details, but she had bought up vast swathes of land and buildings in areas that couldn't be reclaimed due to S-class Gates, picking them up for a song before clearing the Gates herself.
The scale of an S-class Gate was immense.
Even the smallest ones covered a radius of twenty or thirty kilometers, shrouded in thick fog, and everyone knew they were no longer human territory.
Unlike typical Gates, S-class Gates weren't just for monsters to plunder; they were essentially occupied territory.
Because of that, they didn't disappear once the plundering was over; they remained there forever unless destroyed directly.
Mother, who had cleared not just one, but four of those S-class Gates, was hailed as a true hero at the time.
Later, when the public learned she'd bought the land at bargain prices, there was a controversy over her "bargain purchases," but by then, it was water under the bridge.
She reinvested in that vast land, built infrastructure, and multiplied her wealth exponentially.
That was the secret to the Han-il Guild's long-standing reign as the number one guild in South Korea.
A massive amount of capital.
With that wealth, they built state-of-the-art training facilities, hired the best trainers from around the world, and equipped every field agent with high-end gear—the kind where a single item was worth more than a human life.
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Remembering how difficult it was to maintain the successor position—because unlike the Hwaryong Guild, you had to be a master of business management to handle that kind of capital—my head started to ache again.
Anyway, because Mother and the Han-il Guild were so wealthy, the assets held by my younger sister, Lee Shin-ah—the current representative and official successor—were bound to be astronomical.
I had once held an executive position at the Hwaryong Guild and earned dozens of times more than an average office worker, but my wealth was nothing compared to theirs.
I was planning to go and ask her for a favor.
Well... if she didn't grant it, I was planning to settle some old personal grudges—or, you know, clear the air.
To ensure we had a place to live and that the high-ranking hunters of the Han-il Guild would protect my son, Seon-ah, Lee Shin-ah had no choice but to listen to me.
If she refused, there was only one thing to do.
The only answer was to have a "conversation" with my fists and beat her until she agreed.
To be honest, I had nothing to hold back now that I had something precious to protect.
Besides, remembering how Lee Shin-ah used to push me around in the past because I lacked power, I felt a strong urge to settle that score.
'I wonder what my rank is now... If I attack while coating my body in magic, I feel like my power would easily surpass even Maria's...'
Considering my current state, even Maria, the expedition leader, didn't seem like she'd be a match for me.
However, I had no intention of getting re-ranked.
Even if I were the first person in the world to be labeled SS-rank, I wouldn't feel much excitement.
There was no need to go through such a tedious process just to settle a petty, personal grudge.
Everything depended on what Lee Shin-ah did.
.
.
.
"Achoo."
A chill ran through my body.
It had been about a month since I'd faced that cold dawn air on the mountain while wearing a restraint suit, but suddenly, I felt freezing.
Am I getting old?
No, my physical age was twenty-nine, so that couldn't be it.
It made no sense that I, who lived a balanced life for the sake of my health and kept my body in peak condition, would suddenly fall ill.
I had a hunch it was from that time.
After taking Hyun-ah—who had fainted with broken limbs—to the Han-il Guild's emergency medical center, I'd put her in a restraint suit, locked her in the house, and returned to work. It had been a month since I'd been back on duty, so maybe I was just exhausted.
I never imagined the aftermath of not resting for a month would hit me all at once.
Since I hadn't had any health issues after being judged as S-class, this was the first time I'd ever felt such chills.
"I should drink some warm coffee..."
Lee Shin-ah stood up, poured three scoops of black granules into her cup from the water dispenser in her office, and filled it with hot water.
Most chairmen or guild representatives had secretaries bring them coffee, but Lee Shin-ah hated that.
Having people constantly coming in and out of her workspace bothered her and made it impossible to concentrate.
When she first became the representative, her schedule was so packed with meetings and site visits that she'd thought about hiring help, but she'd long since gotten used to doing things herself.
In fact, she felt more comfortable when she was alone.
She sipped the steaming coffee and looked at the documents again.
Lee Ji-ah.
It was a proposal from her younger daughter.
Her daughter, who had been promoted to an executive position a few months after awakening as an A-rank, had submitted it.
She scanned the document to see what it was about.
'Increase in participating personnel for efficient and rapid Gate destruction'
It was a suggestion to increase the number of personnel in the existing vanguard teams.
However, something strange caught her eye.
It was a proposal to include at least one male in each team.
'No... has she been infected by some kind of machoism...'
But it wasn't what she had initially thought.
It was a suggestion to use one "male" in the clearing teams as bait, arguing that it would speed up the process of destroying Gates by drawing out monsters.
This had been a subject of controversy in the hunter world for a long time.
The argument was that using a male as bait would resolve the Gate faster, but if it failed, the male could be dragged off by monsters and suffer a horrific fate before dying.
However, since female hunters often lost their lives to monster attacks, some argued that there was no distinction between men and women when it came to risking one's life—a debate that remained unresolved.
Lee Shin-ah, however, was firmly against it.
The very idea of using someone as bait was dehumanizing, and Shin-ah felt a deep resistance to it.
'I'm sorry, but I have to reject this, Ji-ah. People must be treated as people...'
She shuddered.
Thinking of that, she remembered the incident where she and Seon-ah had suffered at the hands of Hyun-ah, who had treated them as a semen dispenser and a straw, not as human beings.
"Haa... my whole body is shivering again... did I suddenly start aging..."
There was no way she was aging; she'd only become an S-class a few years ago.
Knock, knock.
Someone knocked on her office door.
The person didn't even have the courtesy to identify themselves.
Should I say something?
No, I should see who it is first.
"Hmm... come in."
The door opened with a rough shove.
Two people stepped into view.
And a sharp, angry voice pierced the air.
"Come in? Shin-ah, you've changed. To think you'd talk to your older sister like that... Now that you're the representative, you don't care about anyone, do you? You're really full of yourself."
Lee Shin-ah finally realized why she'd been having chills all day.
The moment she saw that face, her body began to tremble violently.
"O... older sister?..."
"I'm sorry for being blunt, but let's start with a favor. If you don't grant it... you know what happens, right?"
There was a subtle, chilling threat in her words—a warning of what she would do if she didn't get her way.