Chapter 125

Chapter 125

“Whoa.”

“You’re really light. How about building some muscle? For someone who’s even awakened to be this weak—”

“You don’t talk about someone’s weight like that, you know.”

Jeong Seojin lifted me with both hands, then immediately started supporting me with just one. I placed my hand on his shoulder and balanced myself out of habit.

‘Ah.’

Come to think of it, this situation—balancing on someone else’s arm—was pretty familiar to me. Mr. Yoon Juyeong, the future Jeong Seojin, and Avan had all carried me like this during combat.

“…Looks like someone’s done this for you before? You seem pretty used to it.”

“I didn’t realize it myself, but I guess so… Actually, if I’d gone through all that and still hadn’t gotten used to it, that would be stranger.”

Considering how many crisis situations I’d been through where I was moved around like this, the familiarity I felt was only natural.

Having convinced myself of my own question, I grabbed hold of Jeong Seojin’s clothes tightly so I wouldn’t lose my balance and fall.

“Now that I’ve got my balance, we can go right ahead—Jeong Seojin?”

“…Ah, yeah. What?”

“Are you upset? Your expression doesn’t look good at all.”

“Not really.”

Despite his words, the emotion on Jeong Seojin’s face was unmistakably clear. Displeasure and irritation, or maybe dissatisfaction. Unlike the future Jeong Seojin, the younger one’s emotions were plainly visible, and I stared at his face in wonder. Was five years really enough time to change a person’s personality that much?

‘Huh?’

As I was admiring his handsome face—so different from his future self, with emotions laid bare—I noticed a golden accessory sparkling on his earlobe and stared at it in surprise. I remembered that in the future, he hated wearing anything besides clothes on his body. Was it different in the past?

“Anyway, I’m going. Hold on tight.”

“Ah, yes.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to admire the earring glinting on Jeong Seojin’s earlobe any longer. I had to grip the fabric near his shoulder tightly and endure the top speed of an S-Rank awakener.

* * *

At the peak of Bukhansan, where I arrived with Jeong Seojin, there was a massive dungeon painted pitch-black and a giant monster that had apparently just come out of it.

“…That’s a lot of legs.”

Jeong Seojin muttered, looking disgusted as he saw the creature wrapped around the dungeon’s outer wall. I silently agreed with him wholeheartedly. The monster climbing the dungeon wall looked like a centipede made of bones, but there was a half-formed lump of flesh stuck where its head should have been.

‘Gross.’

That was honestly my first impression upon seeing it. As if having so many legs wasn’t disgusting enough, there was a patchwork of flesh on its head… I stared at the bizarre lifeform—no, monster—with a mix of revulsion and horror.

“Yoon Seohee.”

“Ah, yes?”

When you see something gross and shocking, you usually can’t take your eyes off it even though you don’t want to look. In that sense, I was still staring at the grotesque centipede-shaped monster when Jeong Seojin suddenly set me down on the ground and called my name.

I stumbled as I planted my feet on the ground and immediately met his gaze. Jeong Seojin took my hand and placed a square, machine-like object in it. I glanced down to examine what was in my hand.

‘A signal flare?’

Just as I was about to wonder why he’d given me something like this, Jeong Seojin spoke first.

“I’m going to catch that thing now.”

“…Wouldn’t it be better to have at least one more ally? Of course, I’m useless, but if Guild Master Kang Mu—I mean, Kang Mujin—”

“No.”

Jeong Seojin cut me off immediately.

“If I fight relying on others’ help, I can’t get stronger myself.”

“…Jeong Seojin, you…”

“Anyway, just wait there knowing that.”

As if he had no intention of listening to me any further, Jeong Seojin turned his back on me. Only then did I recall what the future Jeong Seojin had told me.

When I’d asked him—wasn’t he already the strongest in the country, did he still feel lacking, why was he so obsessed with strength—he’d answered.

‘There are things I need to reclaim and things I need to find out.’

Are you pursuing strength for the same reason as your future self, right now?

Thinking of the future Jeong Seojin who had passed by like an afterimage, I opened my mouth.

“Is it for the sake of reclaiming something and finding something out?”

Jeong Seojin, who had been heading toward the monsters, stopped dead in his tracks. Whether he was flustered or angry, he said nothing for a moment, then slowly turned around to meet my gaze.

“…How do you know that?”

“It’s true that I’m hiding a lot from you, but I think I’ve already told you the core of it. At the very least, I—”

“Right. You know everything about my relationship with Princeps.”

Jeong Seojin cut me off as if he already knew, adding his own words. I didn’t react. In truth, I knew his goal not because I’d experienced Princeps’s past with him, but because his future self had told me directly. But I still had no intention of telling him that part.

So I said what I’d originally meant to say.

“I know there’s something you desperately want because of the past.”

But if that past desire keeps pushing your present self into danger—

And if that’s why you’ve been thrown into a life-or-death situation where even someone as weak as me has to protect you—

“But if those things threaten your present self, I don’t want to just watch.”

I wouldn’t stand by and watch him throw himself into danger anymore.

I clenched my fists, putting strength into both hands, and met Jeong Seojin’s gaze squarely.

“Jeong Seojin, don’t go alone. Let’s at least bring Guild Master Kang Mujin… or at the very least, allies with minimal combat capability. Please, don’t treat your own danger like it’s nothing.”

Jeong Seojin said nothing for a long moment. He kept his unfocused eyes fixed on where I stood, maintaining a long silence.

How much time passed?

Enough time for the bone centipedes that had crawled up the dungeon’s outer walls to descend back to the ground. Then, slowly, Jeong Seojin opened his mouth.

“Right… for an unknown person who has the same mana and voice as Princeps, and knows my past… it’s possible you’d figure out that much.”

“……”

“But you’re wrong about one thing, Yoon Seohee.”

The tall man, easily over 180 cm, strode up to me. I felt an instinctive pressure from the shadow looming over me, but I didn’t step back. Jeong Seojin looked down at me with his unfocused eyes.

“It’s true that I’m ‘finding’ something. But what you said about ‘reclaiming’ something—that’s a completely unfamiliar notion.”

“…Huh?”

That couldn’t be. The future Jeong Seojin had definitely told me.

That he had things to reclaim and things to find out. And then he’d added that what he needed to find was the savior who had rescued him in the past, and what he needed to reclaim was his family, the ones he’d lost to his enemies.

“…That can’t be. I definitely heard it. What you need to find is Princeps… your savior, and what you need to reclaim is your family—”

“Looks like you’re mistaken about something.”

Jeong Seojin’s large hand gripped my shoulder. He leaned his face close to mine, as if presenting an undeniable truth.

“If you really know that much about me, you should know I have little interest in my biological family.”

“……!”

I froze in sudden shock and confusion.

He was right.

Only then did I recall Jeong Seojin from when I’d been assimilated with ‘Princeps.’ The young Jeong Seojin I’d watched in the past, as Princeps, had never once sought out his biological parents.

For a child that age, it would have been normal to show some lingering attachment to one’s parents at least once, but young Jeong Seojin never had. Not only that—in the past, he hadn’t even shown any resentment or anger toward his parents.

I felt as if I’d been struck hard on the back of the head as I met his golden-tinged black eyes, fixed on me without focus.

‘Then…’

Then what was the ‘thing he wanted to reclaim’ that the future Jeong Seojin had spoken of? Had he lied to me? That couldn’t be. Basically, Jeong Seojin was the type to stay silent about things he didn’t want to say, not someone who told lies.

‘No, actually, there was that one time…’

The rank-boost buff received through the ‘Ruler’s Garden’ lasts as long as I stay by my master’s side. That was the lie Jeong Seojin told when I first used my skill on him and established our master-servant relationship.

But at the same time, a little while later, when we were in England together, Jeong Seojin honestly confessed the only lie he had ever told me.

The claim that the rank-boost buff from the Ruler’s Garden lasts as long as I stay by my master’s side is a lie. The reason I told this lie was because I wanted to keep you close and observe you, since you possessed an ability that was far too dangerous…

After he told me all of that, he apologized to me once more. He said he was sorry.

His voice as he apologized to me wasn’t all that different from his usual voice, but I knew for certain that the apology he offered was by no means a light one.

And so, I wondered once again.

‘Did the future him come to want something that the past him had not wanted?’