Chapter 21

The rooftop of a villa shrouded in darkness.

Min Seolah stood there, gazing down at a building below.

It was the building where Siyoon lived.

Pik.

“Hmm?”

A red dot blinked on the tablet she held.

Was it her imagination?

She fixed her eyes on the tablet.

The blinking red dot vanished.

The five dots that had been there dwindled to one.

Even that flickered faintly before disappearing altogether.

‘Wiped out? But it was too quiet.’

The screen she watched displayed the signals of the assassins she had deployed earlier.

Their vital signs going dark meant they were dead.

The five assassins Min Seolah had sent were all C-Rank hunters.

Not amateurs, either—seasoned professionals who had been doing this kind of work for years.

“Should I have sent stronger ones?”

Siyoon was powerful.

From the moment he killed fifteen D-Rank hunters, he was no F-Rank.

At minimum, he could be estimated anywhere from C-Rank to B-Rank.

So Min Seolah had carefully selected assassins to match.

To ensure a clean kill.

But she never expected them to be taken down instead.

“Hmm…”

Min Seolah murmured in thought.

The job she had taken on this time was essentially a double commission.

Hire a hunter to eliminate the mercenaries who stole the product.

Then eliminate the hunter who carried out the commission.

The reason for orchestrating such an elaborate scheme was an experiment.

‘A pharmaceutical company’s testing methods are quite bizarre.’

The new drug developed by Haind: Filester.

A combat-enhancing drug designed for hunters.

As such, clinical trials were essential.

The results that manifest when a hunter consumes it during combat—

they needed to evaluate and calibrate those metrics.

‘In that sense, Kim Chulwon was a suitable test subject.’

Kim Chulwon, a hunter contracted with Haind for three years.

From the inside, they had deliberately leaked information to slowly egg him on.

The theft of the new drug was all part of Haind’s plan.

Otherwise, it made no sense.

Would a pharmaceutical company really let a mere mercenary group steal their new drug sample?

They had let it happen on purpose.

Even the samples the thieves believed they had sold off had been recovered by Haind.

The commission given to Lee Siyoon was merely a means to extract experimental data.

‘It ended up being a double commission, but as long as the results are good, that’s all that matters.’

Haind had explicitly ordered the elimination of the hunter who accepted the commission.

From their perspective, the hunter who took the commission was a liability.

He had witnessed the effects of their new drug firsthand, after all.

If anyone caught on that this was an experiment, things would get complicated.

The hunter who stole the drug, the target who used it, and the pharmaceutical company.

A perceptive hunter would realize the commission was suspicious.

This operation was solely about extracting the drug’s data.

The drug hadn’t even been announced yet; if unnecessary rumors spread, Haind would be in trouble.

That was why they had issued the double commission, and Min Seolah had accepted it.

Now all that remained was disposing of the hunter who had taken the commission—Lee Siyoon.

So once the job was done, Min Seolah sent the assassins as planned.

It was supposed to be simple.

She had Siyoon’s information at her fingertips.

Based on that, sending the right assassins was all it took.

In a way, it was like discarding a spent card.

But so what?

It wasn’t like this was her first or second time doing something like this.

‘I don’t give second chances.’

He hadn’t sat well with her from the start.

An F-Rank hunter who had barely Awakened, yet he had the nerve to refuse her offer.

Her pride had been wounded.

So she had approached him again.

Wrapping it up as an enticing commission.

Whether he lived or died didn’t matter to her.

She could extract the data either way.

‘It’s a shame he didn’t die on that commission, though.’

Packaging a difficult commission attractively, whetting his appetite, then leading him to his death.

Killing a rookie who had refused her in this manner was familiar territory.

But she never expected this kind of unexpected turn.

Tok.

She tapped the tablet.

The screen had gone completely black.

All five C-Rank hunters Min Seolah had sent were dead.

Only then did she sense that something had gone terribly wrong.

“Damn it.”

Her brow creased severely.

Five C-Ranks failing to eliminate a single F-Rank.

This was a disaster.

She had to kill Lee Siyoon before he slipped away.

She was about to call the backup team she had on standby—

Kkwaang—!!

An explosion erupted from Siyoon’s studio apartment.

A blast bright enough to momentarily illuminate the dark neighborhood.

“What in the…”

She couldn’t even begin to grasp what had happened.

Min Seolah hurriedly made a call.

“Get there and check the scene, now!”

An unplanned, mysterious explosion.

Any delay and the evidence would be gone.

She couldn’t let that happen.

At the very least, she had to confirm whether Siyoon was dead.

* * *

Min Seolah pressed her subordinates to check the scene immediately.

As a result, several photos and reports were transmitted to her tablet.

Reviewing them, Min Seolah’s face twisted.

All that remained was the burning studio and the aftermath of the explosion.

Even her sharp eyes caught nothing of significance.

‘Something doesn’t feel right.’

The fact that it happened right after the assassins died made it worse.

Just then, a man quietly approached Min Seolah.

It was her informant.

“Ms. Min Seolah.”

“Did you get the information I asked for?”

“Yes. I investigated the entire vicinity. Everyone caught in the explosion is confirmed dead.”

“Anyone who left the area?”

“No one. We had eyes planted around the area from the start, so if anyone had fled, they would have been spotted.”

Hearing the informant’s report, Min Seolah fell into doubt.

It matched exactly what she already knew.

Unless there was something hidden or undiscovered, the intelligence was sound.

‘Mutual destruction, perhaps? Maybe it was a needless assumption…’

Min Seolah concluded that Siyoon had used the explosion to erase his traces.

But neither the scene nor the surroundings yielded any meaningful traces.

All information and evidence pointed to Siyoon’s death.

‘…Something still doesn’t sit right.’

But that vague sense of unease refused to fade.

‘Still, I should take proper precautions.’

Staying here any longer would yield nothing.

Time was money for an agent like her, so she turned sharply.

“Everyone, pull out.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Min Seolah left, carrying with her a strange sense of unease.

* * *

While she believed Siyoon was dead—

In a back alley near the building, a man’s shadow flickered.

‘She’s leaving.’

The figure watching the direction where Min Seolah had been.

It was Siyoon.

Siyoon’s body had blended into his surroundings to the point of near-invisibility.

His presence was equally imperceptible.

This was thanks to the stealth equipment he had obtained from killing the intruders.

[ Currently wearing ‘Breath of the Hermit +3’. ]

[ Currently wearing ‘Earring of the Hermit +4’. ]

[ Your appearance blends with the surrounding landscape. ]

[ Your presence becomes significantly faint. ]

After the battle, Siyoon had searched the intruders’ bodies.

Most of their equipment was damaged or torn, rendered useless.

But perhaps because it was equipment meant for infiltration, what survived was high quality.

Siyoon selected the intact pieces and turned them to his own use.

‘Of all things, an explosion.’

The explosion wasn’t Siyoon’s doing.

The gas had ignited as a consequence of the fierce battle.

It was a stroke of luck for Siyoon.

He had been able to slip out under the cover of the blast.

He would have escaped anyway, but the situation had changed.

Strangers had seen the explosion and swarmed the scene.

‘I tailed them because it seemed suspicious, but I never expected to see this.’

Among them, a man in a suit surveyed the scene before heading off somewhere.

His constant glancing around struck Siyoon as suspicious, so he followed him.

That was when he witnessed the man reporting to Min Seolah.

‘Suspicious.’

Siyoon watched Min Seolah’s car pull out of the alleyway, lost in thought.