Chapter 124 – Headhunter (Part Four)

*Thud!*

Il-hyeon opened the door and stepped inside.

The house, spacious enough for a large family, was completely empty.

Hyeon-seo, Seong-won, and the summons, who were supposed to be watching the house while he was away, were out struggling at the site of another Gate.

“Whew, I told her I wouldn’t be sleeping at home for a while, but she still…”

Quickly kicking off his shoes, Il-hyeon carried the large bags in both hands to the dining table.

The bags were filled to the brim with side dishes his mother had packed for him.

Laying out the containers one by one, Il-hyeon placed them inside the neat, nearly empty refrigerator.

While organizing, Il-hyeon spotted something, pulled out some cheese from the fridge, tore it into small pieces, and tossed them to the mouse.

The mouse deftly caught the pieces of cheese flying toward it.

Il-hyeon’s permanent summons, which didn’t use his power, subsisted on Ether Cores, but they all had a few favorite foods.

Among them, the mouse loved cheese; it would go crazy for just a few small pieces.

He’d heard that, contrary to their popular image, real mice weren’t particularly fond of cheese, but this one seemed to be different.

“Squeak, squeak!”

While the mouse excitedly pounced on the cheese, Il-hyeon headed for the room in the farthest corner.

A faint white light was leaking from the crack under the door.

Without hesitation, Il-hyeon threw the door open and was met with an enormous amount of cores inside.

“Ha, I didn’t expect this much…”

Il-hyeon muttered, looking at the cores filling the room.

Hyeon-seo and Seong-won, who had remained with A-Team to defend the front lines, had been steadily accumulating the cores they received as their share.

They were officially A-rank Awakened contracted with Aegis, and as team members participating in operations, they received their rightful share of the pay.

As they were busy fending off high-rank Gates day and night, the number of cores they obtained naturally increased.

However, since they had inherited the same Predation ability as him, they must have felt the urge to devour the cores themselves.

Knowing this, Il-hyeon had told them it was fine to absorb a reasonable amount.

They were the ones who had earned the cores, and their getting stronger was no different from his own power increasing, so it didn’t matter.

But seeing that they had left so much for him filled him with gratitude.

“They’re better than me in so many ways.”

Il-hyeon turned his head, surveying the cores in the room.

It wasn’t just the sheer number.

There were almost no relatively low-quality cores, like E-rank or D-rank.

Each and every core was high-rank, and there were a great many of them.

Il-hyeon took a step closer to the heaping pile of cores.

He picked up one of the cores emitting a white light.

*Crack!*

As the core shattered, Ether flowed out from within and was absorbed into Il-hyeon’s body.

He immediately picked up another, and it took quite a long time for him to absorb all the cores in the room.

* * *

Aegis headquarters, located in Seoul.

Its magnificent scale was as imposing as ever.

Even the terrorists, who had been committing one insane act after another, wouldn’t dare think of attacking this place.

It was only natural, as this was where the highest concentration of the world’s top-ranking Awakened was currently gathered.

In fact, it was busier than usual, with more vehicles, transport aircraft, and people coming and going, all preparing for operations against high-rank Gates around the world.

And into the midst of it all, Il-hyeon arrived.

*Clank!*

Opening the helicopter door, Il-hyeon stepped out, glanced around, and headed toward the building on the left.

‘Is my team on an operation outside? Looks like I won’t be running into them.’

A-Team was currently abroad, fending off a Gate.

Il-hyeon, who could vaguely sense the location of his summons, knew this easily.

Entering the building, he took a staff elevator down to the basement.

As Il-hyeon walked down the basement corridor, a few employees who had gotten to know him greeted him first.

Even in this hectic situation, they asked what had happened to him since it was his first appearance after his suspension, but Il-hyeon gave a vague answer and moved on.

He couldn’t talk about Raven or Jeong Jin-seong, with whom he had been working.

Just then, a woman approached from the opposite direction.

“Hm? Il-hyeon? We meet again.”

Yoon In-hye, Aegis’s D-Team leader.

She recognized Il-hyeon first and struck up a conversation.

Yoon In-hye was clad in a Defensive Coat and various pieces of equipment, including a communicator, looking ready to head out to the field at a moment’s notice.

Behind her were three team members, including the famous Kim Tae-seop with his Petrification ability—all of them well-known figures.

It was his first time seeing them in person, but he recognized their names and faces instantly.

“Is your work over there finished already?”

“I had to come to Korea for something, so I stopped by in my spare time.”

Il-hyeon replied with a faint smile.

She had been a great help in many ways, cleanly removing Seo Jeong-hwa’s brainwashing and even extracting crucial clues from her subconscious.

Thanks to her, an operation that could have taken a much longer, roundabout path had succeeded quickly, so he had a favorable impression of her.

However, for Il-hyeon, who had many secrets, facing her was always unnerving.

Her ability to read anyone’s mind if she wished.

Fortunately, Team Leader Yoon In-hye had said herself that she didn’t normally read people’s thoughts, which was a relief.

“It’s a shame, but it looks like we won’t have time to talk this time either. We have to head out immediately. I wish you the best of luck in your work.”

“Thank you, Team Leader.”

Without a moment to spare for a leisurely greeting, Yoon In-hye walked past him.

The members of D-Team with her also had to move quickly to a Gate on the verge of activation, so they simply exchanged nods with Il-hyeon before passing by.

‘There certainly are a lot of people gathered here.’

Besides the D-Team he had just encountered, Il-hyeon saw Awakened from other teams moving about busily as he walked.

He saw many faces he had never seen before.

Team members he’d never run into due to different work schedules and even Awakened who had been on vacation had all been recalled.

High-ranking Awakened with illustrious names were stationed throughout the headquarters.

It was rare for all of them to gather like this; even Lee Soo-yeon, who had worked there for years, had mentioned it was a first.

Until last year, when the rate of Gate generation was more manageable, it was difficult for Awakened from the same organization to gather in one place like this.

With more time on their hands, they would gather only when necessary and depart for a scheduled Gate activation.

But now, they were dealing with an incomparable volume of Gates, with numerous surprise Gates appearing as well.

Even if they gathered in one place and waited to depart immediately, there was no guarantee they could arrive in time.

As Il-hyeon rounded a corner in the hallway, he saw a familiar blonde beauty standing there.

It was Sera from B-Team, with whom he had been on a few operations.

“Haha, good to see you. Have you been well?”

“Huh? What are you doing here?”

She was inspecting her rifle, her Defensive Coat splattered with green blood, and she seemed genuinely surprised by Il-hyeon’s unexpected appearance.

“Is your suspension over?”

“Not yet. I’m just here for something else.”

“Seriously, we’re this short-staffed and they give you a month’s suspension for something like that? It’s ridiculous. Those old geezers who can’t even catch an E-rank monster are unbelievable.”

Sera fumed as if it were her own problem.

If left unchecked, she seemed ready to unleash a torrent of curses against the international organization right then and there.

“Calm down. I’m working on something else right now, anyway.”

“It’s related to the terrorism, right? How’s that going?”

“It’s not too bad.”

“That’s a relief. Things are pretty tense here, with so much work and dealing with monsters all the time. A lot of the team members are on edge.”

Sera said, glancing around.

No matter how experienced the Awakened were, continuously witnessing people die before their eyes was bound to take a toll on their mental state.

Moreover, while most of Aegis’s team members were professionals who took meticulous care of themselves and had bodies that could endure several sleepless nights, they couldn’t prevent the gradual accumulation of fatigue.

“Looks like you’re not heading out to the field right away, Sera?”

“I was running around all night. I’m about to drop my gun off for repairs and then get some rest.”

“Ah. Then I must be holding you up when you’re tired.”

“No! Not at all. I have stamina of steel, you know? And I was put through a much worse wringer before I came to Aegis.”

“The wringer…”

For someone who looked so clearly foreign, she used some rather colorful vocabulary.

Finding his expression amusing, Sera suddenly grabbed Il-hyeon’s arm.

“Since you have time, I’ll walk you where you’re going. You’re welcome, right?”

“Huh…?”

Clinging to him with her arm linked through his, Sera dragged the blinking Il-hyeon along.

Contrary to her appearance, a brutish strength pulled him forward.

“W-wait, that’s not the right way!”

* * *

“So, you’re telling me I have to run an operation with those bastards?”

Oh Ji-seok, Aegis’s E-Team leader, enunciated each word in a menacing tone.

The pressure emanating from him, an A-rank Awakened, was enough to make an ordinary person’s legs give out.

But the staff member sitting with him at the table spoke with a calm demeanor.

“That is correct.”

“And what did you say was the reason for giving me such a shit assignment?”

“In terms of schedule and combat power, it is the most suitable…”

“Son of a bitch! I’m already pissed off these days, and now this fucking bullshit.”

*Crash!*

The glass tumblers on the table fell to the floor and shattered.

Oh Ji-seok, having spat out the curse, leaned forward sharply and continued.

“Hey, are you ordering me to do this knowing I don’t associate with those government brats? What is this, are you trying to pick a fight with me?”

“It cannot be helped.”

“What do you mean, it can’t be helped, huh?”

“It is a direct order from the Director.”

“…What? The Director?”

Oh Ji-seok’s aggressive expression froze for a moment.

The staff member slowly nodded, driving the point home.

Hesitating, Oh Ji-seok clenched and unclenched his fists, bottling up his anger.

Then he shot up from his seat and headed for the door.

“Fuck it, fine. Do whatever the hell you want.”

*Bang!*

Oh Ji-seok violently kicked the door on his way out.

Under the force of an A-rank Awakened, the door was naturally torn from its hinges and was about to fly into the busy corridor.

But someone on the other side of the door instinctively caught it.

The door was horribly crumpled, but it didn’t crash into the people in the hallway.

“Who the hell are you?”

Oh Ji-seok squeezed through the mangled doorway.

As the door he had intended to send flying was stopped midway, the irritation he had barely swallowed down began to rise again.

“There are other people around. That could have been dangerous.”

Il-hyeon said, holding the tilted door.

He and Sera had been passing through the hallway when the door suddenly came flying at them, and he had blocked it.

A staff member walking down the corridor had nearly been caught in it.

“What? Dangerous? Haha. Hey, aren’t you going to greet your senior properly?”

“…?”

Oh Ji-seok shot at Il-hyeon, trying to pick a fight.

Caught in the sudden, unprovoked situation, Il-hyeon tried to figure out his intentions.

“You’re Kang Il-hyeon, right? The rookie from A-Team who’s been causing such a stir.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“You stay out of it. Just because the other team leaders coddle you, you think you own the place? Can’t you even read the room?”

Oh Ji-seok aggressively pushed back Sera, who was trying to intervene.

“What’s a guy on suspension doing here? First, you run off to an unauthorized site, and now you’re coming back whenever you feel like it?”

“Why are you suddenly acting like this?”

“Haha, seriously… I’m already pissed off, and you think I’m going to be in a good mood when a guy like you crawls in and starts lecturing me?”

Oh Ji-seok had never liked Il-hyeon, who was being talked about excessively by the other teams.

And now, he had shown up at the worst possible moment and even stopped the door he had kicked.

The fact that someone could have gotten hurt, even if unintentionally, was no longer a concern for him.

“All that praise from everyone must be getting to your head, huh? This bastard, you just stood by and watched while that C-Team prospect died. I never liked your arrogant attitude from the start.”

“…!”

To think he would bring that up here.

Sera, standing beside them, looked at him with a disgusted expression.

No matter how angry one was, talking about a colleague who died during an operation was a clear taboo among Awakened—truly low-class behavior.

*SLAM!*

In an instant, Oh Ji-seok was grabbed by the collar and shoved.

He slammed hard against the wall, and the reinforced wall, made of special materials, cracked and splintered.

Il-hyeon, who had pinned Oh Ji-seok to the wall, looked like a completely different person the moment Lee Tae-hee’s name was mentioned.

Il-hyeon spoke coldly to Oh Ji-seok, who was glaring back at him.

“I’m warning you. Don’t cross the line.”

“Haha, this crazy bastard…”