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Chapter 213: An Ominous Feeling (5)
It was natural for me to wonder what had happened. I grabbed my hot chest and stepped back, but my body refused to move properly. It was obvious why.
‘Magic? None was cast… Something like this… Is it possible?’
I’d heard in class that simple magic could be completed with no chanting, but I didn’t think it was really possible.
Perhaps this was an improved version of the trapping magic.
There were many thoughts in my mind, but none could explain the situation I was in now.
“Ah… Ah…”
As I slowly turned my head, I could see a dark room. This was an eerie atmosphere where no single light could enter.
As if a magical power occupied the said room, it was getting harder and harder to breathe.
“Ah… Ahhhhhh!”
Without even realizing it, screams continued to pop out of my mouth before I could even comprehend what was happening.
“Don’t do this! Ahhhhhh!”
“…”
“S-Save me… Save me. Help me. Help me. Help me.”
“I-I’m not killing you. I can’t kill you.”
“Don’t come close! Don’t come close!”
“B-B-But I want to. Hehehehehe.”
It was natural to realize what the anxiety I felt at that time was. I wasn’t mistaken, and it wasn’t that she was sick.
The fear I felt then began to rise to the end of my chin. I couldn’t even feel the pain of having a dagger in my chest.
In this confined space, I couldn’t even move my body.
The most terrifying thing was Hayan’s expression as she looked at me. Her lips were completely twisted, and her eyes strangely looked empty.
‘What to do?’
I can’t think of anything.
‘What should I do?’
I couldn’t think of anything else. If I moved a little, I would die. No, dying was not the problem.
I just wanted to get out of this place. My body had been trembling so much.
‘He knew.’
Lee Kiyoung knew that this woman was a completely crazy bitch.
‘That’s why he told me to put on the cloak and go out.’
He already knew in advance that this would be the result.
“Instructor Jung Hayan, please do not do this. I have done nothing wrong. I just….”
“Eeeeekk!!”
“Ahhhhhhhhh!”
All of a sudden, she stuck something into the back of my hand.
“This thief! P… Prostitute!”
Pain spread throughout my whole body. It was so frustrating that I couldn’t move my whole body, and I couldn’t even scream properly.
“Fool! Stupid!”
“Ahhhhhhhhh!”
Tears continued to pour out of my eyes, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on in my body.
“It hurts! It hurts! Save me. Please… Please save me.”
I was scared of what she was doing because the pain had been transmitted from so many places simultaneously. When I finally came to my senses, I felt like there was no sensation in one of my eyes, and my limbs weren’t moving properly.
Obviously, I was going to die here. However, I couldn’t let that happen. I only realized now how to survive. In fact, it could be said that I had realized it for a long time.
I just didn’t have the right time to speak. I had been busy screaming over and over again.
“This is a… lie. Nothing… happened…”
“…”
“No such thing…”
“Uh…”
“Happened…”
I could barely speak. I felt so numb.
At this point, the room became completely quiet, save for me spitting out blood every now and then.
“What… did you say?”
“It’s…a…lie. No such thing…”
“Lie.”
“It’s… It’s true… I made up everything up….”
“What?”
“All… made up… I’m sorry… Save me… please.”
“What? What? R-Really? Yes. I think it really is.”
“Save me…”
“Oh my god. What do I do? What do I do? B-by any chance, has anyone seen you coming in here?”
It was a voice that seemed a little embarrassed.
I didn’t know if her anger had subsided a little because of the words I just said, but she completely sounded different from before.
As usual, Instructor Jung Hayan was correct. It seemed that my consciousness was gradually fading, but I had no choice but to grasp it straight.
I knew that answering the question had something to do with survival.
“Yes… Red Mercenary members… Some of them…”
If no one had seen me, she would have no qualms about killing me right off the bat.
‘Damn…’
If I were to think about it, there had been several signs. It was the same as Chang-ryul Oppa’s advice, and most other colleagues told me not to do anything useless.
Even instructor Lee Kiyoung had sent me a signal. I could remember him looking at me as if I was pathetic. Tears popped out of my other eye.
“Do not cry.”
“I won’t… say… anything. Save me.”
“I said I’m not killing you. W-Where is the potion? Consider this a punishment for lying. You can’t think this way, Han Sora! You shouldn’t fool an instructor!”
“Yes…”
“H-How can you tell a lie like that?”
“I’m… sorry.”
“But really, w-what should I do? I can’t be caught by Oppa….”
“It’s okay… I… My eyes keep closing….”
“Y-You can’t! Die!”
Her attitude was so different from the previous one that I felt confused. After I felt something warm sprinkled all over my body, I passed out.
I prayed that I at least would wake up somewhere other than in this room.
* * *
No matter how much I thought about this…
‘She exaggerated too much…’
I thought Jung Hayan would do this right, but I couldn’t imagine that she would do this.
She seemed to have relieved all of her recently accumulated stress.
If Jung Hayan hadn’t gone to Sun Hee-young, Han Sora would be dead, without fail.
Of course, I did not blame Jung Hayan’s actions. It seemed that it wasn’t right to compliment her, so I went in the other direction.
Rather than focusing on what made her wrecked, I was patting her head for punishing a trainee for trying to do something bad.
As a result, Jung Hayan gradually thought that she had been praised for what she had done.
When I asked Sun Hee-young to bring her to me with only external wounds healed, she gave me a guilty expression. But when I told her about the problem, she immediately asked for a reward with a triumphant expression.
I felt a bit disconcerted by her sudden change in attitude. Anyway, I was a little busy, but I had a pretty good time with her.
In the meantime, the demonstration had passed, and most of the trainees finished their first class change.
I, who would be in charge of training for the manufacturing production, also gathered wizards to give alchemy lectures. Blue offered Lee Chang-ryul a higher salary than expected.
‘It’s because he wanted it.’
They wanted an environment in which they could practice rather than salary or down payment.
Chang-ryul was not as shitty as I had expected him to be. He wanted a narrow room where he could be by himself, as well as a heroic-grade item that he could use as a weapon.
‘What an unusual guy.’
Of course, everything was going well with Yoo Ahyoung, too.
Kim Hyunsung did not understand why I wanted to recruit her, but he relented upon my insistence. Though Ahyoung couldn’t be said to be naturally talented, her legendary-grade of stats became better as the days passed.
It was probably around this time that Han Sora Han woke up and started coming to the classes. Of course, a tremendous aftereffect remained on her body.
At first, most of her magic power circuit had been broken. In Sun Hee-young’s words, she could only recover after about a year, so her life as a wizard was actually over.
Of course, it didn’t seem like she couldn’t aim for recovery at all, but the fact that her body was a mess was undeniable. One of her eyes could not recover, and she had developed a limp. The fun part was that she came to listen to an alchemy lecture hosted by me.
‘Thak you… for giving me a chance.’
‘What?’
‘Thank you… for trying to save me… back then.’
It was annoying to deal with her from my perspective, so I just waved my hand for her to get dressed. But from her point of view, she had accepted that I gave her a chance.
Of course, the results weren’t good, but I didn’t know Han Sora would accept it that way, so I just nodded.
Absurdly, she was incredibly focused on class.
I didn’t know if she wanted to become a full-time alchemist, but she didn’t give up on her life anyway. The most interesting part was that she was being a little harassed by those who always crowded her.
I couldn’t check it with my own eyes, but it seemed that she had quickly become the weakest in the newly formed group.
‘After all, humans are fun…’
If my memory was correct, it means that the people who followed Han Sora, calling her Eunni, had started tormenting her. All I had seen were them laughing at her and calling her a dork, but she probably suffered worse.
Of course, I didn’t feel any sympathy. It seemed a little pitiful to see them smack her legs while she was wearing a bandage, but her pain didn’t make my heart squeeze.
Besides that, anyone could see that Han Sora, struggling with a painful life, had shown that she did not want to meet Jung Hayan. When she met her once, she pissed herself.
‘What on Earth did she do?’
I had to think about that. Perhaps that was not the only painful thing.
It was natural for her not to receive an offer from any guild as she was not available at the demonstration due to her long absence. It meant that, at the end of the training period, she had nowhere to go.
When I lost all interest in her, I immediately focused on finding a backline.
This was because Kim Hyunsung did not pay much attention to the new recruits this time around, contrary to my guess that he would bring in as many talents as he knew in the future.
Of course, he sometimes was dubious about his memory, so he slowly looked at the trainees’ faces, but he realized that there was no one he was looking for.
In short, Blue had not yet used its three other priority bargaining rights.
Even today, Cha Hee-ra asked me about it.
“Is it really okay to not kick her out, honey?”
“What?”
“That stupid girl, Han Sora or something.”
“What? It’s alright.”
“Whoa.”
“Why?”
“Nothing. You just seem a little bit more generous. Weren’t you the type to go till the end to chew, bite, taste, and enjoy this kind of thing?”
“It depends on who I’m dealing with. If I had thought about it from the beginning, I would have just killed her. Rather, how much did you pay them for compensation?”
“A hundred gold per person?”
“You didn’t give much. No, it’ll be a lot from their point of view.”
“They’re about to fail anyway, but it’s meaningful that they ran first to me and reported. I don’t think they’re good kids, but they did a good thing. Anyway, that Han Sora, or whatever her name is, is also very pitiful. The ones who call themselves her friends told me all of her plans. I find that funny.”
“From their point of view, they thought it would be more beneficial to appeal to our sides.”
“They asked me if they could join the Red Mercenary as a reward. I wanted to smash their heads, but I held myself back. By the way…”
I braced myself for the real conversation.
“Do you have any plans to use your rights, honey? Other guilds won’t wait, either. I’m trying to block the transfer market as much as possible, but the small and medium-sized clans are soon going to feel furious. How about just recruiting anyone?”
“Hmm… Our Guild Master won’t like that. In the first place, Blue is aiming for elite recruits…”
“My gosh. Every day, it’s all about Kim Hyunsung. You two have something going on between you, right?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay, then. Anyway, are you thinking of using it? The Black Swan Leader, Park Yeon-joo, that bitch is raging. She even screamed, asking if we made an alliance.”
“Ah, I’m also indebted to her. I can give her one. And in our guild, I think I can just open it when the recruitment of Yoo Ahyoung is finished… Oh, and Hee-ra. I’ll just give you the remaining one. But, by any chance…”
“Ahn Ki-mo?”
“Huh?”
“He said he wanted to go to Blue…”
“Can he, Hee-ra?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll get the money, though. Our guild also invested in that bastard.”
“That’s okay.”
“Well… He said something about being loyal and whatever… Ahn Ki-mo, that bastard. Don’t trust him too much. He’s very clever. When he came in, he said that this was his grave, that he’d stay with the Red Mercenaries until he died. And now? He says he wants to go to Blue. I thought he was a comedy actor. You have to be aware as to when you’ll get backstabbed. I’m warning you in advance, okay?”
“Okay…”
For some reason, he definitely looked like that type of character.
Though I had fun during my conversation with Cha Hee-ra, now was the time to move things along.
As I stood up, she looked up at me inquiringly.
“Going to the interview, honey?”
“Yes. I have to go see Yoo Ahyoung. I want to recruit this one quickly, but she just won’t come to us easily.”
“Originally, big kids are like that.”
“That’s sexual harassment, Hee-ra.”
“I didn’t say which part of her was big.”
At this, Cha Hee-ra laughed at me knowingly, which incited my feelings of guilt.
I was forced to leave the office in a hurry.