Not only had Kim Giryeo killed the boss monster the organizers had hidden away, he had also smuggled out their trump card—the A-rank Hunter.
"God..."
All the strength suddenly drained from the black market dealer's body. Cold sweat covered him, and his face turned deathly pale. Thanks to the violent suspect collapsing into a helpless mess, the detectives were able to proceed with their work much more easily.
It was an unexpected ending.
***
The following Saturday marked seven days since the black market case had come to an end.
Seonwoo Yeon had gone out to enjoy her first proper weekend in quite some time, but her thoughts were still full of work.
"Whoo."
What had happened to Kim Giryeo afterward?
Seonwoo Yeon had countless questions she wanted to ask him. Had he known there was actually an A-rank Hunter in the black market? Had the A-rank's disappearance been his doing? If so, how had he managed it? Had he opened the dungeon exit while escaping? And after getting out, what exactly had he done on his own?
The questions kept piling up, but there was no way to get any answers.
For the past seven days, Seonwoo Yeon had repeatedly tried to contact him, only to hear the same automated message every time: Kim Giryeo's phone was turned off.
"Customer! Come over and try a dumpling. This is a new product from Ottogi, and young people love it!"
"Ah."
"It's freshly cooked."
She possessed the Searcher skill.
If she truly wanted to, she could track down her target right now.
But Seonwoo Yeon never put that thought into action.
Abuse of authority. Invasion of privacy.
Even if she hadn't been a public servant, her personality alone would have prevented her from doing something like that.
"It's delicious. Please give me a bag."
"Yess."
In the end, she had run straight into the wall of proper procedure.
It had been confirmed that Kim Giryeo was involved with the black market, but there was no evidence that he had actually purchased anything.
Could they perhaps question him for attempting an illegal transaction?
Unfortunately, that wasn't possible either.
In cases involving illegal gambling or drug deals, simply being present at the scene could sometimes be enough to raise a presumption of guilt. But when it came to dungeon items, the law unfortunately had no provision for attempted offenses.
Which meant the police couldn't arrest him or even bring him in for questioning.
Because, well, the law simply didn't allow it.
If they wanted to detain him, they would at the very least have needed to prevent him from leaving the scene at the time.
At this point, even testimony from the captured Blueshell merchant wasn't particularly useful. Ŗ𝐚𐌽ồβĚŞ
"Thank you- Enjoy your meal!"
Seonwoo Yeon listlessly tossed the frozen food into her shopping cart.
Then, a sentence that Hunter had once spoken suddenly came back to her.
"...Without a warrant?"
Such arrogance.
That man must have known from the beginning that things would end up this way. That was probably why he'd been able to act with such confidence.
After all, he was S-rank.
If he had decided to force his way out, what could a mere Association employee like her possibly have done?
Even if the black market had been completely sealed off, Kim Giryeo probably would have escaped unharmed anyway.
"I'll just go home and make dumpling soup today..."
Whoo.
Seonwoo Yeon left the store with a heavy heart.
Her shopping was finished, and all she wanted now was to go home and rest.
But while she was waiting for the light to change at a crosswalk, a familiar silhouette caught her eye.
A neat suit contrasting sharply with flamboyantly dyed hair.
"Hunter Kim Giryeo."
It was him.
The S-rank Hunter had emerged from an alley on the opposite side of the street and stopped there, checking something that looked like a notebook...
Flash.
At that moment, the traffic light changed.
As soon as the pedestrian signal turned green, Seonwoo Yeon hurried across the street and quickly caught up with him.
She hadn't expected to run into him by pure chance like this.
"Giryeo-ssi."
At the sound of his name, the blond man raised his head.
He looked mildly surprised, as though he hadn't even noticed the Association employee approaching.
And then came the truly shameless part.
Noz.
Who was it that had made her head so complicated she could barely think straight?
How could he greet her this casually?
"You seem healthier than I expected."
"Yes?"
"I couldn't reach you for so long that I thought something might have happened to you, Giryeo-ssi."
Giryeo answered.
"...You tried to contact me? Oh, I'm sorry. My phone actually broke a little while ago."
"Ah."
"I dropped it on the ground, and suddenly the screen stopped working."
"Your phone?"
"But it's such an old model that they said replacement parts are difficult to find..."
My phone has already been at the repair center for a week.
After saying that, Giryeo bowed his head and apologized once more. He then added that he hadn't expected the Association to try contacting him during that period.
"No, if your phone is that old, just buy a new one this time. You can simply move the SIM card over."
Seonwoo Yeon suspected Giryeo was making excuses and pressed the issue, but his reply remained perfectly calm.
"I didn't buy it myself, so I didn't want to replace it carelessly."
The S-rank Hunter stood upright, looking down at her.
A quiet atmosphere.
And an expression so cold and impassive that it might as well have belonged to someone without blood in their veins.
There had been so many things she wanted to ask when they finally met again.
But now that she was standing face-to-face with him, Seonwoo Yeon suddenly wondered whether any of those questions even mattered.
That cold-hearted Hunter looked like the kind of person who wouldn't so much as blink no matter how relentlessly she questioned him.
Even if she sat him down and interrogated him for three days and three nights, she doubted she'd ever be able to see through him.
"Oh, by the way, Seonwoo Yeon-ssi. Why were you trying to contact me?"
Giryeo continued.
"Well... was there something you wanted to ask? For example, why I was there last Saturday?"
In truth, he had been rather concerned about the fact that a public official had caught him entering the black market.
He had already prepared a suitable excuse in case she reported him later, but Seonwoo Yeon didn't seem particularly interested in that subject.
I entered the dungeon by mistake.
I was there to catch a dangerous criminal.
She was already well aware of the sort of excuses Giryeo might come up with.
Besides, at this point, determining the truth of the matter would be difficult anyway.
"Not that. But if you're asking whether there's something else I want to know... there is."
The sorcerer of Earth continued in a cautious voice.
"After everything that happened, I spent some time thinking about it on my own. And no matter how much I thought about it, something still didn't feel right."
"What part?"
"Blueshell is an awakening drug that becomes less effective the higher a Hunter's rank is, correct?"
The blond man considered her words and realized she was right.
As she'd said, Blueshell only produced dramatic effects on people around E-rank at best.
Because of that particular characteristic, it could easily become a clue that exposed someone's weakness in an instant.
However, Seonwoo Yeon hadn't brought this up because she'd discovered the secret of some F-rank.
"But the fact that you bought it..."
"Could it have been for pain relief?"
Giryeo, who had been subtly avoiding ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) her gaze, suddenly turned his head in surprise at what came next.
"I looked through the records in the Association archives. It said that when Blueshell was first discovered, it was practically treated as a new type of aspirin."
"..."
"Neither you nor I respond very well to the painkillers currently on the market. The higher someone's awakening level is, the more resistant their body becomes to ordinary medication."
"..."
"That's why Blueshell used to be administered as a painkiller specifically for high-ranking Awakened."
Her grip tightened around the shopping bag.
"I've thought something was strange for a long time. Actually, much longer than just this past week."
This wasn't an idea that had suddenly occurred to her overnight.
It had begun last winter.
Hunter Kim Giryeo had once fallen into a trap inside the Labyrinth of the 13th Month, and during his escape, he had done something truly shocking.
Until now, she had only been frightened by the choice he'd made.
But looking back on it now...
"What if he was someone who wouldn't feel pain even after doing something like that?"
If he possessed some hidden method of enduring the pain of losing a limb, then what had happened inside the Labyrinth of the 13th Month finally made sense.
And so, based on everything that had happened so far, Seonwoo Yeon asked:
"When exactly did you start using Blueshell?"
Blueshell's effects were so powerful that you wouldn't even notice being slapped.
"How could someone use something that dangerous..."
Seonwoo Yeon's expression gradually darkened.
"Giryeo-ssi, you watch the news often. Then you must know how high-ranking Hunters who abused it ended up dying."
Her eyes trembled.
For the past seven days, she'd been thinking about this alone, and somewhere along the way, her thoughts had hardened into a completely mistaken assumption.
"And this might be going too far, but..."
"You can tell me."
"Is it connected to that? You once said you were past your prime. So... are you actually in pain now because you're injured somewhere?"
Oho.
"Indeed, that's probably overthinking it."
Giryeo was genuinely impressed by Seonwoo Yeon's unexpected misunderstanding.
Taking Blueshell because of old injuries...?
At this point, he found the bizarre turn of events almost fascinating.
Still, this was twenty-first-century South Korea.
A misunderstanding like that wasn't exactly harmless.
The country's judges were never lenient when it came to something like Blueshell.
"Hmm."
After clearing his throat with a dry cough, Giryeo calmly began to explain.
"I understand what you're trying to say. However, there's one major misunderstanding..."
"Misunderstanding?"
"I've never even put Blueshell in my mouth."
And there was objective evidence to prove it.
"Wait, don't you already know this, Seonwoo Yeon? I was detained last week because someone reported me as a suspected drug offender!"
The blond man raised his voice in disbelief.
"Do you know how many hairs they pulled out of my head there?"
"Ah."
"For your information, every single test came back negative."
And the fact that Kim Giryeo was confidently walking around like this meant that no Blueshell had been found at his home either.
After a brief pause, Seonwoo Yeon spoke in a subdued voice.
"...I'm sorry. But I really only said it because I was worried about you, Giryeo-ssi."
As expected, the person who had reported him as a suspected Blueshell user had been none other than a certain B-rank Hunter from the Association.
But it hadn't been because she was some merciless stickler for regulations.
She had simply been genuinely worried about him.
If someone she knew had become addicted to Blueshell, then the right thing to do was stop them as quickly as possible and help them receive rehabilitation.
To Seonwoo Yeon, it had been an act of goodwill.
"Excuse me, but with so many good potions available these days, why would I go through all that trouble just to use Blueshell as a painkiller?"
"I just wondered... if you used too much of it during the early days of Dungeon Shock and became addicted, wouldn't you keep looking for it afterward?"
The man, who had been staring at her for a while, fell silent.
Well, he'd already expected that this employee wouldn't simply keep quiet.
At least now, however, he could confidently insist on his innocence.
"Honestly, if Kang Changho had confronted me about the Blueshell incident, I was planning to use the painkiller theory myself. But I suppose I shouldn't try that with a government official standing right in front of me."
Having made his decision, he continued.
"Anyway, once again, what happened last time was a misunderstanding."
His voice was flat.
"I've never been involved in any Blueshell transaction. I was simply gathering information."
"That's..."
"But did it really sound that way to you? Like I was actually telling the dealer I intended to buy something?"
There was a subtle pressure hidden in his next words.
That was simply how people were.
If they were even slightly distracted, they could forget details from something that had happened only a few days earlier.
Who could ever trust their own memory completely?
When someone was pressed to declare with absolute certainty that they remembered something correctly, almost anyone would begin to waver.
And in the end, even Seonwoo Yeon began doubting what she herself had witnessed.
"If you really have nothing to do with Blueshell, then that's a relief, but..."
Eventually, she couldn't help but soften.
Giryeo was a high-ranking Hunter, after all.
He wasn't the kind of person who would have any interest in such trivial goods from an underground market.
That left only one possibility.
He must have gone there for some other purpose.
The destruction of a human-trafficking ring.
The pursuit of brainwashed Awakened.
And the way he had protected an investigator in danger inside the black market.
"Did he have some other objective this time too?"
That was the fatal mistake.
Kim Gyeo was someone with far too many admirable qualities for people to question him relentlessly.
Because of that, even someone as straightforward as Seonwoo Yeon showed him a measure of flexibility.
Had she known what kind of soul actually inhabited that shell, she never would have done so.
"By the way, Seonwoo Yeon, it looks like you're on your way home from grocery shopping."
The alien wizard soon opened his.
"Did you buy dumplings?"
"Ah, yes."
"I hope they haven't thawed while we were talking. Anyway, you should head home. I'll be going too."
After saying that, Giryeo naturally continued on his way.
Once he had put some distance between himself and Seonwoo Yeon, he pulled a small notebook from inside his coat.
After adding a brief notation to the page, he finally completed his task for the day.
[Other records]
1 - X
2 - X
3 - O (Interchangeable)
4 - Δ (Dangerous, Prohibited)
For reference, Alphaurians commonly believed that when it came to lies, the person who was deceived bore more responsibility than the liar.
That was simply how their innate logic worked.