The Way of Life for a Terminal S-Class Hunter - C108
Seo-heon tried to rush towards Woo-hyun, ignoring Lee-han who stood in his way. It was an unstable gait, like a child chasing after parents abandoning them.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Lee-han blocked Seo-heon, whose eyes had lost their strength. Though Lee-han flinched momentarily seeing the crazed eyes, it was only for an instant. Afterwards, he tried to confront Seo-heon without showing any signs of shrinking back, judging it was the way to protect Woo-hyun.
Faced with that pure intention, Seo-heon was enveloped by an inexplicable sense of defeat. This was unfamiliar to him.
‘I have to capture Woo-hyun even if I have to kill Shin Lee-han.’
It was a thought mixed with terrible jealousy. If he harmed Lee-han, Woo-hyun would never forgive Seo-heon. That’s why Seo-heon hadn’t deliberately touched Lee-han or tried to remove him from Woo-hyun’s side until now. Seo-heon was missing even such basic calculations.
‘Don’t go.’
The sentence he couldn’t utter aloud whirled inside Seo-heon, scraping his insides. He thought he needed to get rid of Lee-han to erase that pain.
“If you lay even a finger on Lee-han, don’t even think about seeing my corpse.”
Before that desire could be acted upon, a curse-like restraint was placed on Seo-heon. Watching Woo-hyun leave without sparing him a glance to the end, Seo-heon endured pain like being burned.
“Baek Woo-hyun!”
Woo-hyun left as if Seo-heon was invisible. Though he belatedly tried to move his feet, only Lee-han remained before him.
“If you want to go, why don’t you kill me and go? Then he really won’t show you even the tip of his hair.”
It was a dilemma. To chase Woo-hyun, he needed to take down Lee-han, but then Woo-hyun would never accept Seo-heon.
“I just need to make sure he doesn’t even know you died.”
“You really are out of your mind.”
Seo-heon infused magic into the sword he was holding and charged at Lee-han. As the acceleration was faster than predicted, just as the sword was about to graze Lee-han’s face – his hand stopped with a thud. His hand trembled in midair as if wanting to move forward, but remained still as if caught in a spider’s web.
[If you lay even a finger on Lee-han, don’t even think about seeing my corpse.]
Woo-hyun’s words rang in Seo-heon’s head. That restraint bound his body even before his mind could understand. Lee-han was equally surprised. He had been prepared to receive some wounds, but his opponent was frozen with a distorted face.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I have no intention of going easy on you. I’ve always disliked you.”
Lee-han took out his staff. It was a tool he rarely used normally due to difficult control, but there was no one else around and he needed to use every tool available to face Seo-heon.
“The feeling is mutual.”
Seo-heon stepped back a few paces, looked down at his sword in disbelief, then charged at Lee-han again. Seven or eight black spheres the size of basketballs floated around Lee-han before flying towards their target.
Even Lee-han who cast the skill couldn’t accurately grasp their irregular trajectories. Nevertheless, Seo-heon easily shattered the black spheres flying from all directions with ice blades condensed with magic. It was an impossible feat without precisely calculating how much magic was condensed.
Yet despite this, the battle did not tilt in either direction.
‘I can’t attack.’
In his mind, Seo-heon had taken Lee-han down countless times. But strangely, his body refused that command and stopped just before attacking. As if the master it had to obey wasn’t Seo-heon. As this situation continued, Seo-heon had no choice but to accept it.
‘It was a fight I couldn’t win.’
His mistake was, paradoxically, thinking he could win. He should have acknowledged defeat earlier and handed control to Woo-hyun. He should have entrusted all judgment without thinking.
‘I can’t resist anyway.’
There are truths one only realizes when faced with extreme situations.
‘If Woo-hyun says to die, I’ll die, and if he wants to live, we’ll live together.’
From the beginning, the decision was not in his hands. Yet he had struggled in vain trying to obtain it. Seo-heon decided to comply with Woo-hyun’s last words. Dropping his sword to the ground, he grabbed Lee-han’s wrist as he approached.
“Ugh.”
Seo-heon, who blocked the skill at point-blank range, was not unscathed either. Magic bursting from Lee-han stabbed at him.
“You know where Woo-hyun went, right?”
Seo-heon asked with certainty. It was a conclusion drawn from thinking Lee-han’s confidence came from knowing Woo-hyun’s whereabouts. And in fact, it was correct.
“Even if I knew, do you think I’d tell you? I won’t open my mouth even if it kills me. Besides, it seems I can beat you sufficiently right now.”
“Even if it means Woo-hyun dies?”
Lee-han’s movements, which had maintained the offensive even with his wrist grabbed, slowed.
“What?”
“Didn’t you vaguely suspect it too?”
Seo-heon easily detected Lee-han’s wavering. Seeing that Lee-han didn’t think his words were mere bluster, Seo-heon thought it likely that Woo-hyun had shown some symptoms.
“…What difference does it make if you go?”
It was a deflated voice. Lee-han was confident in risking his own life, but not Woo-hyun’s.
“At least I know how to save Woo-hyun. Right now, it’s impossible except for me.”
“He didn’t seem to want you to save him.”
Certainty gradually faded from Lee-han. He wasn’t sure if Woo-hyun’s promise to find a way to live was sincere or just lip service to pacify him.
“If Woo-hyun says no, I’ll back off too. I won’t insist further and will give up, so you can step in then. In his current state, Woo-hyun will become a vegetable again before long.”
The chances of finding a way to live before Woo-hyun entered a semi-comatose state again were extremely low. Lee-han’s momentum died completely. Though he had tried to exclude Seo-heon no matter what, there was one reason for his hesitation.
‘Halo said before that I couldn’t save him either.’
If so, he couldn’t understand why he had told Woo-hyun when to run away. He pondered what role he was playing, how he could help Woo-hyun. As a result, Lee-han decided to set aside his emotions.
It was the last thing he wanted to do, but at the same time the quickest way to save Woo-hyun – that was to send Seo-heon. Along with that came a vague intuition that if he sent Seo-heon to Woo-hyun now, his turn would never come.
‘The only reason I don’t want to send this bastard to him is because of my feelings.’
Lee-han reached that conclusion. Though he had helped him escape, he was also the one making him get caught. He couldn’t grasp the clear outline of what meaning this procedure had.
‘It was probably a necessary process.’
Lee-han felt it would be okay if he had built a bridge for Woo-hyun to live on.
‘Because he did that for me.’
Seo-heon waited for Lee-han’s choice without showing impatience. Though Seo-heon didn’t want to admit it, Lee-han’s way of loving had some resemblance to Woo-hyun’s. He was someone who would sacrifice for the one he loved and think from others’ perspectives. He also knew how to suppress his own desires.
Despite looking at the same person, he stood at the opposite extreme from Seo-heon’s methods. This stemmed from Seo-heon’s personality flaws. The monster Seo-heon loathed would pop up like this and reveal its presence. No matter how hard he tried, Seo-heon could never become similar to Woo-hyun.
‘Unlike that kid.’
Lee-han dropped his staff to the ground. It was a clear expression of surrender. The two men felt a sense of defeat for different reasons.
“I put a chip in the watch I gave him that can track his location. It can’t pinpoint the exact location, but it can track the approximate position and updates once an hour.”
***
[In exchange for giving you this, respect his wishes. And as promised, if you fail to persuade him, your chance is over.]
The location tracker Lee-han gave really only tracked the “approximate location”. Moreover, since it didn’t update at each movement but only once an hour, he had to wait much longer to determine the final destination.
‘It’s best to conclude it’s Everest.’
The location had been marked in a similar place for over four hours. Since it was moving slightly, the watch hadn’t been abandoned.
‘I’ll move immediately.’
Dragging his battered body, Seo-heon urgently hired a hunter who could use teleportation skills. While preparations for movement were being made, Seo-heon kept pressing the burn on his forearm. It was an unconscious action he wasn’t aware of doing.