Chapter 40 - Broken Clock
[ Broken Clock ]
=== Broken Clock ===
A strategic briefing for the newly evaluated S-class Hunters was currently in full swing in the special conference room on the seventh floor of the Association's central branch.
Despite the gravity of the meeting, Kang Seo-yoon leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed, letting the presenter's words go in one ear and out the other.
'Yoo Ga-on...'
A memory from the outer training ground flashed through her mind.
She remembered seeing Yoo Ra-eun clinging to him, her arm tightly linked with his.
Back then, she had pegged both of them as S-class.
Their movements, their mana density, their raw physical strength—everything pointed to it.
Even if her senses had been slightly off, if that man really was Yoo Ga-on, there was absolutely no way he was an F-class.
And just yesterday,
she had personally verified the results at the Association's testing facility.
Yoo Seo-rin, Yoo Ra-eun, Han Cho-yeon.
All three had received overwhelming S-class evaluations.
Yet the results for Yoo Ga-on, who had stood right beside them, were...
F-class, Snail Husband.
'That's ridiculous.'
Kang Seo-yoon muttered under her breath.
He was clearly far above F-class. How had he managed to trick the evaluation artifact?
It was supposed to be impossible for any Awakened to manipulate the status window detected by an artifact. The thought refused to leave her.
That was why she had acted the moment the results were confirmed, striking before the three women were officially placed under S-class protection.
Even without the Association's official backing, her status as an S-class and her extensive network made running a quick background check trivial.
His name was Yoo Ga-on.
He was related to Yoo Seo-rin and Yoo Ra-eun.
He had lived alone until recently, with an unrelated woman named Han Cho-yeon living next door—
and now, all three of them lived under his roof.
Coincidentally, the sudden jump of those three women from B- and C-class to S-class perfectly aligned with when they moved in with him.
'It's a good thing I moved quickly before their S-class protection kicked in. If I'd been even a little late, digging up their files would have been a nightmare.'
Just then.
Buzz—
"...!!"
A faint pulse of mana rippled through the artifact wrapped around her wrist.
It wasn't a standard alert. It was a signal from the high-grade surveillance ward she had placed around her home, warning her of an intruder.
'Who?'
Without breaking expression, Kang Seo-yoon lowered her hand beneath the table and discreetly summoned a magical projection window.
Real-time feed.
But as the feed loaded, her thoughts didn't linger on the security of her home, but on—
a specific necklace resting on her table.
Her mom's keepsake.
The silver pendant.
Kang Seo-yoon never left the house without it.
She wore it into dungeons, to Association meetings, and even during late-night walks.
It was far more than a simple accessory.
It was the last thing her mom had left her before she died—her only remaining connection to her family.
Her mom had been a Hunter. Though not an S-class, she was highly elite even among A-classes, specializing in defensive barrier magic.
Long before Seo-yoon's Awakening, her mom had spent every night painstakingly weaving protection spells into the metal, thread by thread.
"Seo-yoon, I wove this spell to protect you. Just come back to me safely. Mom will always be by your side."
Inside the pendant was a small photo of her mom, a lock of her hair, and the countless protective wards her mother had stayed up all night to engrave.
Those wards weren't just spells. They were her mother's love and prayers, a heartfelt shield crafted character by character to keep Seo-yoon safe in battle.
Seo-yoon cherished that necklace more than anything else in the world.
Even after she awakened as an S-class Hunter and amassed wealth and fame, she never took it off.
Every night before bed, or when she sat drinking alone, she would cradle the pendant in her palm, aching for her mother.
Though she put on a bright, composed front for the world, she knew a massive, hollow void still lingered in her heart.
But then, one day...
It happened in an A-rank dungeon.
Given the massive gap in their abilities, the boss monster shouldn't have posed any real threat to her.
But the dungeon's rank had been severely underestimated. The boss was actually an SS-rank terror, and it unleashed a lethal strike aimed directly at her throat.
In that split second, the necklace flared with a brilliant light, deploying a barrier.
The protective wards her mother had painstakingly woven night after night had saved her life.
But the cost was absolute. The necklace shattered into pieces.
Under the explosive impact, the pendant tore apart, scattering her mother's photo, the lock of hair, and the carefully engraved wards into useless fragments.
Seo-yoon had collapsed, coughing up blood, but she lived.
Most of her raid party perished, but the split second bought by her mother's wards allowed her to escape the dungeon alive.
The necklace was beyond repair.
Ever since, she would return home each night, sit at her table, and arrange the broken shards before her.
She would gently trace each fragment, weeping in silence.
Logically, she knew it was just an artifact that had simply fulfilled its purpose. There was no reason to grieve so deeply over a broken tool, but her heart refused to listen.
When the pendant broke, a part of her had shattered with it.
The emptiness left by her mother's death only widened with each passing day.
She had taken the fragments to the Association's finest artisans, but they all shook their heads.
"This... is beyond repair. The impact was too severe; even the fragments of the photograph resist restoration magic. And the protective wards... they've been completely burned away."
The grief of losing her mother, coupled with the crushing guilt of destroying her last keepsake to save her own skin.
All of that pain was locked inside those shattered silver shards.
And now, looking at the screen...
A man was slipping through her home security barriers like a ghost.
The primary ward at the front door, the secondary motion-sensor barrier in the hallway, the shockwave ward guarding the living room entrance—
she had paid a top-tier S-class Hunter to install them all.
Yet the intruder slipped through them without triggering a single spark of magical resistance, passing through as if he were nothing but smoke.
It was as if the wards didn't even register his existence.
'...What?'
Kang Seo-yoon's eyes widened.
Having bypassed every security measure, the man stepped into her living room without a moment's hesitation.
He walked straight toward the table where the shattered silver pendant lay.
Only then did his face come into clear view on the screen.
...Yoo Ga-on?!
'Why is he—'
Her mind stalled. A man she had just run a background check on, whose only connection to her was a brief encounter in a waiting room yesterday, was currently trespassing in her home.
'No, there's no time to think.'
Unable to watch a second longer, Seo-yoon bolted upright. She didn't care about the ongoing briefing or the startled stares of the executives around her.
She threw open the conference room doors, sprinted down the hall, and hurled herself out the window.
With her S-class physical stats, she could reach her apartment complex in under three minutes.
She sprinted, her eyes glued to the screen in her hand as she gasped for air.
And—
On the screen, Ga-on stopped in front of the table, staring down at the broken silver pieces.
'This bastard...!'
His hand slowly, deliberately, reached out toward the fragments.
Her breath hitched, her heart hammering against her ribs.
She stared at the screen, clamping a trembling hand over her mouth.
'...Don't touch it.'
Seo-yoon ground her teeth.
As his hand hovered over the broken pendant, a wave of pure fury surged within her.
Not only had he ghosted through her security wards, but now he was going to defile the last remaining piece of her mother.
She clenched her fists tightly.
She pushed her legs to their absolute limit, kicking up her speed even further.
Even as she tore through the streets, wind whipping past her face, she didn't look away from the screen for a single second.
'I'll kill you. How dare you...!'
At that moment.
A soft, gentle light began to bloom from Yoo Ga-on's fingertips.
The broken shards floated into the air.
As if guided by an invisible life, they drifted toward one another, seeking out their matching edges.
The cracks sealed, the jagged edges fusing seamlessly back together,
and the runes of the protective spells her mother had painstakingly woven began to glow with renewed life.
Seo-yoon skidded to a halt.
"...Uh...?"
She froze completely in the middle of the street.
As the light intensified, the fragments melded back into a single, flawless piece.
The pendant was restoring itself.
Her mother's photo cleared, returning to vivid life, and even the single strand of hair settled back into place.
And the protective spells... even her mother's warm, lingering mana seemed to radiate right through the screen.
"...What is this...?"
Seo-yoon's eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
Her ragged breathing hitched, and her racing heart seemed to stop at the impossible sight.
She stood frozen just dozens of meters from her apartment building, staring at the screen, utterly paralyzed.
They had told her it was impossible.
The Association's greatest artisans had given up on it.
Yet now, in the hands of a man registered as an F-class,
her mother's keepsake was being restored, glowing warmer and clearer than it ever had before.
Seo-yoon pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.
Her fury evaporated in an instant, replaced by a staggering shock and...
a sudden, overwhelming warmth welling up from deep within her chest.
Taking a slow, trembling step forward,
she stared at the perfectly restored necklace glowing softly on her screen—
She whispered under her breath.
"...Yoo Ga-on...?"