The Lantern Friend

There I was on the screen, throwing myself into the gnoll pack, and a heartbeat later Han Gyeol piled in after me. The two of us cutting the pack down — boss included — played out from start to finish. So that was why the crowd had been buzzing once the mess was cleaned up. Someone hadn't run. Someone had stayed and filmed the whole thing.

The camera zoomed in, pulled back, shifted angle. From the look of it, they'd shot the footage while hiding behind the subway car.

Kids these days really had no idea their lives were worth anything. Tsk. Or did they? Strictly speaking, weren't these the kids of the past?

"Ha-jun, you're seriously amazing."

"What is it this time."

"Seeing it on TV, it's like a movie."

Gyeol couldn't tear his eyes from the screen. On it, they were busy praising us — a heartwarming little story in the middle of a disaster, and so on.

I looked slowly around. The lobby, the grounds outside the hospital: people everywhere. Far off, at the entrance to the emergency room, ambulances kept arriving one after another. It wouldn't only be the bridge over the Han River where we'd been. Casualties had to be pouring in from every district in the city.

Why did it have to be today? If I had come back just a little earlier, couldn't I have stopped today's tragedy, even a little? Right on the heels of that thought came another: maybe nothing would have changed at all.

Until a short while ago I hadn't been an Awakener, or anything else. Just an ordinary, worthless, thoroughly unimpressive person. No one would have believed a word I said.

Anyway, one thing was certain now. I had regressed. And that meant everything I had lived through was going to happen again — every incident, great and small, even setting aside those few horrific dungeon breaks and the guild wars.

And the final battle. What had become of that? If I hadn't died then, would I have gotten to see this world still intact? What had been waiting on the other side of that last fight?

What I knew for certain was that the quest event had killed an enormous number of people. I'd died before I could see the outcome, but the penalty for failing that event had been the extinction of humankind.

Ah. Now that I thought about it — had we failed? That event. I was almost sure I'd seen a sight like that after my mind cut out.

Then we were in serious trouble.

I have to stop it.

If I started preparing for that day now, could I change the future? A future where I didn't die. A future where people didn't die. Could I take a future hurtling toward ruin and make it into something better?

If I grew stronger. If I made Gyeol stronger. If I brought people I could trust over to my side and made it so we could brace for that horrific future.

"Huh? Hey, those people over there..."

"Oh, you're right. Those are the kids from the Nutube video, aren't they?"

"No way. They're on the news right now."

"This is wild. I heard university hospitals in Korea have departments just for Awakeners — guess they really are Awakeners."

"You didn't see? Earlier there were tons of people coming in saying they'd just awakened."

"I wanna be an Awakener too."

"Hey, become an Awakener and you have to fight freaky monsters for no reason. You're throwing yourself onto a battlefield."

"But I heard they make a lot of money?"

"Because they do the job with their lives on the line!"

"Oskill's channel said those two awakened today. Total rookies."

"What, seriously? In the video they were practically flying. You're not supposed to be able to do that right after awakening, right? I saw that on Oskill's channel too."

"Are you an otaku? Why do you know so much about Awakeners?"

"...The person who filmed the original video said they awakened today. That Oskill guy was going on and on about how it was impossible."

"Wait, what? So what's the story?"

"Should we just ask them now? We can tip Oskill afterward."

"Whoa, for real? Should we?"

"What, are you two actually otakus?"

Somewhere along the way, the whispering around us had started in earnest. A few people clutched their phones and craned their necks, clearly angling for a photo.

It hadn't even been five hours since the incident, and already people recognized us. Social media was a lot more frightening than I'd thought. Tsk.

This wouldn't do. For now, we needed to get home.

"Feels like everybody's talking about us, doesn't it?"

Gyeol caught the mood as well and knotted his brow hard. Then he just started walking, long strides, straight ahead. The problem was that where he was headed wasn't the exit.

"You take a picture?"

"Sorry?"

"I asked if you took a picture."

"Ah... well, that is..."

"You did."

Gyeol snatched the phone from the man in glasses and checked the screen. An instant later — crunch. In his hand, the man's phone crumpled like a sheet of paper.

"Gyeol!"

I latched onto him in a panic. He didn't so much as budge. He just glared at the man. Ha. This was bad. Gyeol had never cared what he smashed through once he was angry.

"Why are you taking pictures of someone else's face."

"No — wait, Gyeol!"

"You wanna die?"

"Stop!"

Talking him down wasn't enough, so I stepped in and blocked the man myself. Only then did the light come back into Gyeol's eyes.

"No. That bastard was snapping your face whenever he felt like it. Look."

Look at what? All he held out was a phone smashed to pieces.

"Um, I'm really sorry. I'll write down a number, and we'll compensate you. He only just awakened, that's why he's like this. And honestly, you did film without permission. You know about portrait rights, right? Haha. Yes, please do contact us. Let me just borrow a pen..."

"Ah, yes. Here."

I borrowed the ballpoint hanging around the neck of a girl who looked like a student and wrote the number on the man's hand.

"Why are you giving him your number."

"It's fine, it's fine. Calm down. This is the awakening energy doing it to you."

"No, I'm—!"

"Yeah, yeah. This sort of thing burns off fast anyway. Let's go home."

I gave the pen back and patted Gyeol's back, watching the crease between his brows dig in even deeper.

"Ah, h-hey...! Um...!"

I ignored the voices trying to call us back and hurried out of the hospital with him. Behind us, the huge electronic billboard carried on with the report.

We got home, and while I showered first, Gyeol had collapsed on the living room floor and fallen asleep. No amount of shaking woke him.

"Was he like this back then, too? No. He wasn't. Right — back then he never used skills, so of course he didn't wear himself out like this."

I pulled a blanket over him, shook the water out of my hair, and went into my room.

"All right. Shall I take a look at the status window?"

A low hum, and a status window like a game screen unfolded in front of my eyes from the thought alone.

"Health and the basic stats haven't changed much."

They'd risen only a little. Exactly as much as one level.

"Hmm... huh?"

Poking around the window, I startled.

"Another skill I've never seen before?"

"A lantern friend? Is this a joke?"

It was definitely a skill I'd gained by leveling up. The sloppy description made my temper spike. Even so, I had the feeling I ought to test it. Was it really a good idea to try a skill I'd never seen in my life inside the house?

Caution said one thing. My finger did another, reaching out to tap the skill. The status window answered not only to thought, but to a touch like this.

Shrrrrk!

Mana drained out of me, and dizziness came with it. Right — my mana had been nearly empty, and I'd gone and used a skill before it could recover.

Thud.

I toppled sideways, but my head stayed perfectly clear. Through the tilted view, a blue light. So this was the lantern friend: a spherical flame about the size of a baseball, bobbing in the air.

"It really is a goblin fire?"

"Mwoong."

"Huh?"

The goblin fire had made a sound. A faint resonance, close to an animal's bark. No eyes, no nose, no mouth — nothing but flame. And yet every time it cried, it seemed to squirm, soft and yielding.

"Mwahng."

"Hhk!"

The flame — the goblin fire — pressed right up toward my face. I hunched against the heat I was sure I'd feel, but none of it reached me.

"Mwoooong!"

"Y-you..."

Friendly as anything, the goblin fire went so far as to nuzzle its flame against my cheek.

"Good thing it isn't hot, at least... hm?"

Fss, fss. As it rubbed against me, I felt stamina and mana recovering. A very small amount, but exact.

"Ah. A buff-type pet."

I'd seen this sort of thing before the regression. The skill cost mana to use, but keeping the summon out was far more profitable — a support-type pet. Hunters with a high-performing pet skill of this kind could do, alone, the work of three or four Hunters of the same rank and the same class.

"This is seriously insane. How did a pet skill like this end up with me..."

Before the regression, I had been the one doing this little thing's job. Only for Gyeol, granted.

"Mwoooong!"

The goblin fire looked delighted. It burrowed in like a puppy, and something tugged in my chest. A pet... I was glad, plain and simple. But why had a skill I didn't know appeared at all?

"Is a god actually helping me?"

"Mwahng!"

As if answering, the goblin fire barked loud. And then — rrrip. A mouth split open across it.

Chomp.

And it bit me.

"Aaaagh! What — what!!"

I shoved the thing off with what little strength I'd managed to scrape together. The goblin fire wasn't strong. It gave way easily enough, spun in a circle where it was, and then came charging at me again.

"Y-you little bastard!! This isn't a game!"

Nom, nom. Like a puppy that had only just cut its teeth, it set about chewing on my head.

I dragged it off again and trapped it in my arms. Unsummoning it would have been easier, but thanks to the thing, my mana and stamina were recovering faster than they had before I'd called it out. Held against me, it seemed to settle a little.

Somehow, right now, it felt like Gyeol...

"Oh. There was a Soul Stone in the inventory, wasn't there."

Patting the goblin fire — currently gnawing away at my left hand — I opened the inventory. The moment I thought of taking the Soul Stone out, a small light kindled in the air.

"What even is this."

Tok.

An item summoned itself onto my outstretched hand.

"Star candy?"

What sat on my palm was very small, and many-colored. The shape of it was exactly like star candy — the kind packed inside those hardtack cracker snacks, the kind you eat with the crackers. A candy that was nothing but a lump of sweet sugar.

"Mwoong!"

Who knew when it had noticed, but the goblin fire brought its mouth in close to my right hand, the one holding the Soul Stone.

"Ah. I get it. Pet food?"

A new skill, a new item — that would make a certain kind of sense. And I'd been told Gyeol didn't have any Soul Stones. Still, before the regression, I didn't think pet food had existed as its own item.

I held the Soul Stone out to the goblin fire. Its reaction was strange.

"Mwahng! Mwahng!"

With that tidy little mouth, it only mimed eating.

"What? Eat. Here, good boy. Eat."

It went through the motion a few times, then looked up at me. No eyes, so I couldn't be sure "looked up" was the right phrase, but the mouth was pointed my way. It had to be looking at me. When I stayed still, it started repeating the same behavior.

"...What. Don't tell me. You want me to eat it?"

Absurd. And yet, somehow, that seemed to be exactly what the goblin fire was saying.

"You want me to eat an item that hasn't even been tested?"

A Soul Stone. Eat that. No matter how I turned it over, it was nothing but ominous.

"Mwahng! Mwahng!!"

The goblin fire nodded. Of course it was only a round shape, so it didn't actually have a head to nod...

"We can actually communicate...?"

Marveling at the goblin fire, I still looked down at the Soul Stone with suspicious eyes. To the eye, it really was a sugar candy. Even so...

"It's not like it'll kill me, right?"

I tipped three Soul Stones into my mouth at once. Regression or not, I was clearly just as out of my mind from awakening energy as Gyeol was.

It's not like it'll kill me, he says.

"Hm?"

Sweet. The taste of star candy, familiar as anything. The taste of a crunchy lump of sugar.

"Mwahng! Mwaahng!"

The goblin fire spun round and round, plainly thrilled. So that was it — my personal pet wouldn't do anything to harm me. Something along those lines. But I still couldn't tell what the Soul Stone had actually done. My stamina hadn't risen. My mana hadn't risen. There was no sense of a buff, either.

That was when a system window rose in front of my eyes.

Ding.