Chi-Woo increased his speed the more Ru Amuh chased after him. Ru Amuh was incredibly shocked to find out that he was having difficulty closing the distance between them even though he was running with all his might. Feeling a sudden sense of urgency, he mobilized his holy power to amplify his speed. He thought he would be able to catch up to Chi-Woo easily, yet Chi-Woo responded by speeding up again. Chi-Woo’s speed would only be possible for someone of at least rank C in agility; although it took him longer than he predicted, nevertheless, Ru Amuh was able to catch up to Chi-Woo by using holy power on top of his superb physical abilities.
“Huff! Huff!” Chi-Woo collapsed to the ground and heaved. Ru Amuh didn’t look as strained, but he couldn’t hide his obvious tiredness.
“You must have made a contract…with a god,” Ru Amuh gasped after a while. As he stayed lying on the ground, Chi-Woo looked up at Ru Amuh and expressed his admiration.
“As expected of you, Mr. Ru Amuh. But I didn’t think I would get caught so fast. I can’t compare you to that guy at all.”
“That guy?”
“There’s someone like that. Although I left it in the square.” Chi-Woo smirked and got up.
“What happened, sir?” Ru Amuh asked as soon as Chi-Woo got up.
Chi-Woo raised both hands to calm Ru Amuh before heading to the fortress.
“Let’s walk and talk. You haven’t eaten yet, right?”
“Sorry? Ah, yes… I haven’t, but the food supply is…”
“Don’t worry about that,” Chi-Woo said, and Ru Amuh hurriedly followed Chi-Woo.
As they walked, Chi-Woo answered everything Ru Amuh was curious about except the part about the die. Ru Amuh was amazed after hearing Chi-Woo’s explanation.
“Then, at that place, did you…!”
“It was a coincidence. Or maybe it was fate.”
And eventually, they arrived at the square. Coming to a stop, Ru Amuh slowly looked around his. People were gathering in groups of threes and fives to eat and cleaning up after themselves once they finished. He had never imagined he would see such a scene again. And while looking upon the area where warm sunlight shone, Ru Amuh took in a deep breath, an indescribable feeling rising inside his heart.
“Huh? What is it doing?”
Chi-Woo moved. Heroes who hadn’t eaten yet were gathered in one place.
“Sorry. Excuse me.” While pushing heroes out of his way, Chi-Woo made it to the center of the group and furrowed his eyebrows.
“Don’t be like that. Please give us a couple more sacks…!”
“Byu.”
Chi-Woo murmured under his breath, “Who is this guy kidding?” Chi-Woo had left the bun at the square to distribute the food supply as it saw fit, but now, it was monopolizing the supply. It was completely unbelievable how the bun was snorting at the hero who was begging for some food.
“Hey.” Chi-Woo approached the bun and asked, “What in the world are you doing? Hey?”
“Byu?” The bun was confident; it seemed to be saying ‘they are my food anyways, so it’s up to me who I give it to.’
“How is that yours? It’s mine. Quickly give it to me. You know how long these people have been starving for?”
“Byu.” The bun snorted like it was telling him there was no chance of that happening, and a vein popped out of Chi-Woo’s forehead.
“Give it. Quickly.”
“Psh!” Like it was doing a great favor, the bun threw up one sack of food supplies. That was the end of Chi-Woo’s patience.
“You bastard. Give it to me. Give it!”
“Byu? Byu, byu!?”
Chi-Woo stuck his fingers into where he thought the bun’s mouth was and stretched it sideways hard. The bun jumped up and down in resistance, and the two fought for a bit. Chi-Woo ended up victorious. Eventually, he pulled out his club and smacked it repeatedly, and the bun poured out a pile of sacks.
“You are just a bag. Why are you so greedy?” Chi-Woo nudged the bun, telling it to behave from now on, and the bun became much more obedient.
Meanwhile, Ru Amuh looked down at the slime that had thrown up sacks while whining with curiosity.
“Teacher, is this…?”
“Ah, this is the friend I met in the place I told you about. Let’s go. I’m sure you’re hungry” Chi-Woo responded while lifting a sack.
“Yes, Teacher,” Ru Amuh responded. “To tell you the truth, though...”
“I know,” Chi-Woo cut him off. “I also have a lot of questions I want to ask you.”
“…”
“But let’s eat first,” Chi-Woo said, noting how rough Ru Amuh looked. Ru Amuh seemed to have gone through many difficulties since the last time they saw each other.
“Let’s eat well, wash, sleep, and talk afterward,” Chi-Woo continued, knowing that they would only be able to have a proper conversation if both the speaker and the listener were healthy. After staring at him blankly for a while, Ru Amuh laughed.
As Chi-Woo expected, the recruits weren’t in a good condition. They had suffered casualties from the recent incident, and their already dwindled number of survivors had further decreased in number. Still, there was nothing that could be done to change the past. Heroes who had returned to their normal states needed to be taken care of, which made the food supplies Chi-Woo had brought back all the more important. Chi-Woo had the still able-bodied members feed and take care of the injured, and of course, he himself didn’t stay idle.
“Hm….” After regaining some consciousness, Eshnunna’s nose wiggled as she caught a smell that made her stomach growl. She peeked her eyes open, and before she fully regained consciousness, her breath hitched. As her blurry vision came into focus, she saw Chi-Woo looking down at her with a bowl steaming with hot food.
“How…?”
After they ran out of food supplies, Eshnunna had ventured outside thinking that she couldn’t sit still and do nothing. She didn’t really remember what happened afterward. She had heard a burst of chilling laughter, and her vision blurred. It almost felt like she had dreamt a long dream—one where a young man had appeared.
“…A dream.” As she tried to remember what happened, Eshnunna gasped without meaning to.
“A dream?” Chi-Woo repeated with his eyes opened wide. Then his eyes sparkled, and his face turned stern, “Ah, yes, it’s a dream.” Then, he continued, “This isn’t reality. I am appearing in your dream.”
Eshnunna was still in a daze, but she suddenly seemed certain of the situation she was in. Yes, it made more sense that she was in a dream; there was no way Chi-Woo would’ve returned.
“Why…are you in my dream…?” she groaned.
“When…are you coming back…?”
“…”
“I waited…for so long…waiting…?”
“…”
“Please… just say something…please…” Eshnunna struggled to breathe out each word, pausing to catch her breath in between her utterance.
After a stretch of silence, Chi-Woo said in a low voice, “I think it’s about time now.”
“…Sorry…?”
“Time for me to go.”
“!”
Eshnunna’s eyes widened. They burst open like she had been splashed with water.
‘What did he just say?’
“You’re going?”
“It can’t be helped,” Chi-Woo said coldly, his expression indifferent. “No one is coming to save me no matter how much I wait.”
Eshnunna opened and closed her mouth.
“I also waited…”
Chi-Woo put a bowl in front of Eshnunna. “While I was starving in the cold… Ms. Eshnunna, you were here eating warm food.”
“No.”
“It must have been fun. You must have completely forgotten about me and laughed and had fun.”
“No. That’s not true! I never did that!”
“Is that so? Then why didn’t you come back for me? I was the one who waited for you so much! I saved you! I thought you would also save me! I survived while clutching onto this hope!”
“That…! I-I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But there was a reason…!” Eshnunna sat up in horror.
Chi-Woo coldly replied, “It’s fine. Since we did know each other for a while, I’ve simply come to say my last goodbye.”
“Please wait…!”
“Goodbye.” With this, Chi-Woo slid far away from Eshnunna and slid far away, embodying the spirit of Michael Jackson as he moonwalked backward.
“Please don’t go! Please just wait a bit! Please…!” Eshnunna got out of the bed and frantically ran towards Chi-Woo. As soon as Chi-Woo stepped out of the door—
He came to a halt as Ru Amuh was about to come inside. Ru Amuh’s eyes widened as he said, “Teacher?”
Chi-Woo stopped.
“Awwwwhhh—!” Eshnunna ran towards them while crying, but she also stopped moving when she saw Ru Amuh look at them with surprise. She didn’t fully understand the situation, but she looked between Chi-Woo and Ru Amuh.
“…” Silence fell between the three of them. Then, after a short while…
“Ah.” When Chi-Woo was about to quickly turn around, Eshnunna shot him a furious glare.
* * *
Ru Hiana saw Chi-Woo burst out of the building where injured patients were gathered and yelled, “Oh, Senior!” But then she saw Chi-Woo running away at full speed, and she tilted her head in confusion. “What are you doing?”
“Exercise!” Swoosh! Chi-Woo ran past Ru Hiana; it was so fast that her hair flew in the wind. Ru Hiana blinked at his unexpected answer.
“Stop! I told you to stop!” Swoosh. Eshnunna also passed her by. Chi-Woo was running away with all his might, and Eshnunna was chasing after him with tremendous momentum.
“Stop! Stop there! Can’t you hear me?”
“I’m sor—!”
“I’m going to kill you! Kill yooooooou!”
Ru Hiana stared as Eshnunna and Chi-Woo suddenly began a fierce chase across the fortress. Ru Amuh was also running after Chi-Woo and Eshnunna. They ended up in Chi-Woo’s house. Ru Amuh didn’t know why Eshnunna was chasing Chi-Woo, but he heard her furious voice coming out from Chi-Woo’s house. He also heard loud noises of things falling and breaking and someone rolling on the ground. While this was happening, Ru Amuh quietly waited. Chi-Woo told him to come back after taking a nap, but he didn’t listen.
While he was waiting, Allen Leonard also joined him, with Ru Hiana right behind him. The reason why she came was a bit ridiculous; she was worried that Chi-Woo might disappear again while she was sleeping, so she wanted to check up on him. As a result, a total of five people gathered at Chi-Woo’s house.
* * *
“…So.” They didn’t know what had happened inside, but Chi-Woo’s hair was completely disheveled when he appeared again. Chi-Woo paid it no mind and looked at the four people around him and asked, “How did this happen?” He had asked the question out of pure curiosity, but the four people around him took his words a bit differently.
Ru Amuh looked ashamed, and Ru Hiana deeply bowed her head because it sounded like he was scolding them. He seemed to be saying, ‘Even though I was gone, I didn’t know things would become this bad.’ Of course, not everyone interpreted his words like that, and Eshnunna fixed her clothes while throwing a sharp glare at Chi-Woo.
“If you’re wondering how things became like this…” Allen Leonard spoke up slowly with a bitter smile. To summarize his points, the mutants had evolved again into new monsters and grouped up to attack them. At the same time, the broken ones reappeared as well, and the recruits were stuck in between the two fractions, exploited and used by them.
There were two parts that Chi-Woo focused on: the mutants had evolved again, and the recruits were stuck between and used by two factions. The monsters that came out in Evelaya and the monsters that attacked the fortress were both results of the mutants evolving again.
“How are you sure of this information?”
“It’s because I saw it firsthand,” Allen Leonard replied. “While I was looking for medicine, I went all the way to the capital, and it was full of monsters.”
“What about the mutants there?”
“They were being eaten. By the monsters.”
Chi-Woo sighed; it was not good news. “What do you mean by the recruits being used?”
“That was Zelit’s guess.”
“A guess.” One faction had used the fifth and sixth recruits to keep another faction in check; it seemed as if Allen Leonard was referring to those incidents. Honestly, Chi-Woo had made a similar guess in the back of his mind. Moreover, he recalled what the White Horse General had said to him when he ambushed the ranch. Even though he couldn’t be completely sure of it yet, the two factions might be involved.
‘But there’s too little information.’ They needed someone with good reasoning; someone who could use what little information they had to think of possibilities outside of the box. In many ways, it was regrettable that Zelit wasn’t present. “Now that I think about it, what happened to Mr. Zelit…”
Allen Leonard replied, “He didn’t die, but he’s dead asleep.”
Ru Hiana added, “Even though he wasn’t the first one…he went mad pretty early on.”
“Uh, is that so?” Chi-Woo replied with a slight look of surprise.
“Yeah. Well, he looked all right…but he must have felt really weighed down.” Ru Hiana smacked her lips. “We said it was all right, but not everyone was okay…” Zelit was the one who pushed and planned for the food exploration mission. In the end, his plan had failed, and the recruits lost Chi-Woo, a person who was vital to their group. Thus, Zelit seemed to have received criticism from the other recruits behind their backs, and he also seemed to have struggled emotionally. Ru Hiana explained that must have been the case since Zelit, with his cold personality, wouldn’t have gone mad so easily.
“Let’s first wait until he wakes up,” Chi-Woo said and looked at Ru Amuh. Allen Leonard and Ru Hiana both talked, but Ru Amuh had been keeping his silence. And even after this, Ru Amuh did not say a single word.
* * *
They reached a decision. They decided to push all matters aside for now and focus first on taking care of those who survived. Even though it was a minor decision, there was nothing else to do at the moment other than to take care of the recruits. Chi-Woo spent the whole afternoon taking care of those who were injured and organizing the area before returning home late at night. After getting the drowsy bun to lie down and sleep, a person he had expected came to visit him. It was Ru Amuh.
“Sir, I apologize for visiting so late. There is something I need to urgently tell you.”
For the whole day, Chi-Woo could feel that there was something Ru Amuh wanted to say to him, so he had looked at Ru Amuh when they were all gathered together. “Why are you telling it to me now, instead of when everyone was here?”
“I wanted to tell you when we’re alone.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Ru Amuh paused and continued, “It’s a matter only I know; No one, not even Ru Hiana knows.”
“…It seems that something happened to you too, Mr. Ru Amuh.”
Ru Amuh didn’t say anything, but he didn’t deny Chi-Woo’s words.
“Tell me from the beginning. One thing at a time.”
Ru Amuh got permission to talk. He took a deep breath and began relaying a story that he couldn’t tell anyone before. “Sir, after you went missing in the Evelaya volcano…”