Chapter 182
When Orfen spoke, a quest window appeared right in front of Do-Jin’s eyes. He knew immediately he wasn’t going to walk away from it.
[The World of a Child Who Lost Their Mother]
Grade: Common
Objective: Find Orfen’s missing mother
Reward: Orfen’s Favor
A mother is the entire world to a child. Help the child who has lost his mother.
Do-Jin didn’t believe they’d actually find the kid’s mother. Nothing about Orfen’s story sounded recent, and the way the villagers kept their mouths shut said everything they refused to say out loud.
There’s no way this ends well.
He cursed in his head, then looked at Orfen, who waited for his answer like it was the only thing keeping him upright.
“Yeah. I’ll help you.”
Even if he couldn’t promise results, he could at least give the kid a chance.
Was I his age when I wondered about my own mother?
Do-Jin didn’t exactly miss her, nor did he envy anyone else who had one. But he remembered lying awake sometimes, wondering what kind of person she might’ve been and why she wasn’t there.
“Really? You really mean it?”
Orfen’s face lit up so fast that Do-Jin felt something twist in his chest. He found himself hoping for the kind of miracle that didn’t happen in real life. He didn’t care how impossible it sounded. If there was even the tiniest chance, he wanted the kid’s mother to still be out there somewhere, alive and reachable, no matter how the world had to bend to make it happen.
***
Unfortunately, there was no miracle. Do-Jin followed Orfen through forests and over mountain paths, but they didn’t find even a trace of the kid’s mother. They’d started searching around noon, and the sun was already sinking by the time they accepted they had nothing to show for it.
Orfen stared at the orange sun caught on the horizon line with a blank expression that somehow felt heavier than crying. “Sir... do you think I’ll ever see my mom again?”
It was easily the hardest question Do-Jin had heard in a long time. Thankfully, he didn’t have to answer it.
“Right. You wouldn’t know. There’s no way you could.”
Do-Jin didn’t know whether to be relieved or guilty.
“But still... thank you. You helped me look for her. You really are a good person.”
“Let’s head back before it gets dark. I’ll walk you to the village.”
“It’s okay. You’re busy too. I can walk home by myself.”
There was no way Do-Jin would send a kid into the woods alone when the sun was already dying. He wouldn’t be able to sleep all night if he did that.
“Stop arguing and show me the way to your village. I’m staying there tonight.”
“Um... our village isn’t that great, though...”
“A small inn is good enough.”
“There isn’t one...”
No matter where it was in the world, someone would rent out a room if they got paid enough. With his mind set, Do-Jin put Orfen in front of him and followed the child toward the village.
“By the way, are you a boy or a girl?” Do-Jin asked since they had nothing else to talk about, but Orfen didn’t answer back.
“There. It’s over there.” The kid swished a bent reed like a pointer and showed the direction.
A village waited at the base of the slope they walked down, the kind of place hunters would gather and live together. Once they reached the edge of the village, Do-Jin glanced back at Orfen, planning to drag the kid somewhere and feed him something warm.
However, Orfen wasn’t there. He stayed with Do-Jin up until they entered the village, and then he disappeared. Maybe he slipped home the moment they arrived. A dry quest-completion message popped up, as if that was exactly what had happened.
Do-Jin stared at the empty space beside him, feeling the absence of the kid who had been there all day, then turned away. He grabbed a villager and asked where to find lodging. Contrary to what Orfen said, the village wasn’t small at all. It actually had a proper inn with real business going on.
“I’ve never seen you before. Are you a mage, huh?” The innkeeper spoke with easy friendliness when he saw Do-Jin sit down. It was an unusual reaction, since most civilians tended to be wary of mages, but maybe running a business made him friendlier than most.
Do-Jin nodded and paid upfront. “Can I get some food first? I’ll also need a room for the night.”
“You got anything smaller than gold? I don’t have change for that.”
“Keep the change.”
“Well damn. It must be nice being a mage. Thanks. I’ll get you my best meal and the nicest room I’ve got.”
Do-Jin gave a polite nod, then asked the question he’d been waiting for. “Do you know a kid named Orfen?”
Though the village wasn’t incredibly small, it also wasn’t big enough to be called a town. Places like this usually meant everyone knew every kid running around the streets. Do-Jin expected the innkeeper to tell him something about Orfen, maybe how the boy lived, whether he had a father, anything. However, the innkeeper’s reaction didn’t match anything Do-Jin had imagined.
“Who are you?”
His voice shook like he was angry or scared. Do-Jin opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but someone else got there first.
“You son of a—!”
A hairy drunk slammed his cup on the table and shot to his feet, shouting as if Do-Jin had just spat on his ancestors. He glared straight at Do-Jin with bloodshot eyes.
“Who the hell do you think you are, saying that cursed name out loud!”
The innkeeper rushed forward. “Calm down, Hugo! Look at the man. He’s a mage!”
“I don’t give a damn! What? Being a mage gives him the right to throw that dead brat’s name around like it’s nothing? I’ve already had a shitty week because that kid keeps showing up in my dreams, bawling for his dead mother!”
Several other men grabbed Hugo before he could lunge across the room. They weren’t protecting Do-Jin, but protecting Hugo from getting himself vaporized. The three of them dragged him outside like a troublemaker kicked out of a bar. The rest of the inn fell silent, and eyes shifted to Do-Jin.
“What was that about?” he asked calmly.
“Why are you looking for that child?”
“I met him in the mountains earlier today.”
The innkeeper’s face twisted as if someone had shoved something rotten under his nose. “Damn it. Stop talking nonsense. Didn’t you hear what that man said? That boy is dead.”
Dead? He walked and talked like a living child, though? Do-Jin had even checked him with the Magic Eye. Everything about the kid was normal and perfectly alive.
“I kept telling myself the villagers were just scaring each other with stories, but maybe the brat really is wandering around as a ghost,” the innkeeper muttered with a mix of fear and pity.
Do-Jin didn’t get the sense that the man was lying, which made it worse because he had definitely met a living, breathing Orfen.
Maybe it was another kid with the same name or someone pretending to be him. No... the quest isn’t even the problem right now.
Worried that this wasn’t the whole story, Do-Jin pulled out another gold coin and set it on the counter.
The innkeeper gave him a look that said, “Great, a mage who wants trouble, just my luck.” But still, he reached for the coin.
“I need the full story.”
“Fine. Where do you want me to start?”
A little money did wonders. The innkeeper explained what had been happening, though there wasn’t much to explain. For the last few years, children had been disappearing, not just from this village, but from the nearby regions too.
The missing kids had started appearing in people’s dreams. Disappearances weren’t rare in a world full of monsters, but Do-Jin couldn’t dismiss it, not when he was already tracking the Cult of Ruin.
The dead children appearing in dreams, huh...
They could be Wraiths, a specter-type monster, but Magic Eye had shown Orfen as alive.
Could a Wraith really be high-level enough to fool even that?
Although it made far more sense that Orfen was a survivor, someone who escaped the same disappearance cases everyone assumed were fatal, Do-Jin decided to dig into the missing-children cases first, as there was a good chance they were related to the Cult somehow.
Just then, a shrill scream cut through the night. By the time the sound registered, Do-Jin was already running. A terrified woman sprinted toward him down the street. He didn’t stop her. Do-Jin knew someone drowning in fear wouldn’t give him any answers.
He ran past her, following the direction she’d fled from, and the stench of blood hit him almost immediately. Stepping into a narrow alley, he found the body of a muscular man he’d never seen before. It was torn apart so violently that it barely looked human anymore. Beside the corpse stood a child he had never seen. The child turned his head toward Do-Jin. His skin was ghostly pale, but he smiled like they were old friends.
“You’re the nice man.”
The child’s face flickered like a corrupted video feed. It distorted, snapped, and settled into one that Do-Jin recognized. It was the face of the boy he’d met that afternoon.
***
“You did this?”
Do-Jin looked at the mutilated corpse as he asked, and the thing wearing Orfen’s face answered with a bright smile.
“Yeah. This man killed Zephe’s mom. He finally admitted it today, so we killed him. Oh, Zephe is the girl.”
Orfen’s face flickered and shifted. Then, a freckled girl appeared in his place, smiling with a sweetness that didn’t match the blood around her feet.
Do-Jin finally understood that he was dealing with a Wraith Cluster. It wasn’t the official term, but it was the only label that really captured what it was. Sometimes creatures like this had different names, and sometimes they evolved into named monsters, but at their core, nothing described them better than that. Multiple spirits had been fused into a single moving will that formed this monstrosity.
And it’s a memory eater... Do-Jin sighed inwardly.
The villagers said the missing kids appeared in their dreams, so he assumed this thing must’ve crawled through their memories over and over, pressing against the barriers people built around the truth. Eventually, it found someone tied to their deaths, and once that memory broke open, victims became predators and predators became prey.
I really hoped I was wrong...
Do-Jin wished the Magic Eye had shown him a living child. He wished he’d been tricked by some rare illusion ability, anything that meant Orfen had survived. Yet the truth stood in front of him wearing a child’s face.
“Is your revenge over now?”
The children shook their heads. “No. We’ll keep looking for our moms and dads. We’ll find the bad people too. This bad man told us something. He said he wasn’t the only one.” The girl, Zephe, spoke with tears in her eyes. “He said he sold my mom and me. He said he hurt her and did worse things too.”
The way she spoke made something clear. Her memories were broken. This Wraith Cluster had formed because the children propped each other up until their souls tangled together. Do-Jin had no idea what he was supposed to do with something like this.
“Are you a good person?” The cluster tilted its head as it asked the question.
“No,” Do-Jin answered without hesitation.
“I knew it. I knew you were a good man.”
The Wraith Cluster lifted its small, pale hand as if wanting someone to hold it, as if wanting an adult to lead it somewhere safe.
“Will you help us find our mom? This man said she might still be alive somewhere.”
Do-Jin stepped forward. He reached out and took the small hand of the child standing in a pool of blood. “Yeah. Let’s go see her.”