Identification Number

In the end, the Abyssal Kingdom was never cleared.

“Three A-class hunters took part and you still couldn’t clear it?”

“I heard Collector bought the Abyssal Kingdom—is that true?”

“Please confirm whether the monster data obtained from this expedition is reliable!”

“What resources is Collector after in the Abyssal Kingdom?”

Yu Seong-un, one of the expedition members, had to face the press.

“Yes, we failed the clear. It’s also true that Collector purchased the S-class dungeon Abyssal Kingdom, and the monster information reported to the Association is solid.”

“Then about the resources—”

“For more detailed inquiries, please contact Collector’s administrative team directly.”

“Wait just a—”

“Wait or don’t wait, don’t block the road.”

The reporters tried to grab him, but after nearly a week of all-nighters cleaning up the dungeon expedition, nothing reached his ears. The dark circles under his hollow eyes nearly reached his jaw. Yu Seong-un was a very busy man.

“I’ll say it again—please contact the administrative team.”

From the reporters’ perspective, he was probably the softest target. Kang Seo-dam, a high priest of the Sun Temple—the most influential church in Seoul—had had his identity revealed, but getting interview time with him was no easy feat. Cha Ah-ra, for her part, was under personal protection from both the Hunter Association and Collector.

And if they tried approaching the other hunter, Seo Ji-oh, he was nowhere to be found.

Of course not. The “Seo Ji-oh” they were looking for was asleep inside Bi Sa-beol’s gallery.

So cornering me on my commute to and from the office was the natural next step.

He understood—but he was genuinely exhausted. Filing reports with the guild and the Association, checking the state of the sea, burying Ji-oh’s information… He had been so busy that even his actual job as a curator had been delayed a full week.

“Hunter Yu Seong-un!”

“I’m not here.”

“You’re right here!”

“I said I’m not.”

Even in an age when most reporters were awakened, they were no match for an A-class hunter. Yu Seong-un slipped free with unhurried ease and fled into the guild lobby.

An administrative staffer who had been waiting greeted him.

“Good work out there.”

“If you were watching, you could have run them off for me.”

“If we treat the press like that these days, the guild takes the heat.”

“Right. Guild image matters…”

“Unless they get outright aggressive, our hands are tied.”

“I shook them off myself, so we’re fine for now.”

The staffer nodded.

“If we judge the attention is getting excessive, we’ll take measures.”

“Guess I’ll have to camp out inside the guild for a while. Is the lounge free?”

“We haven’t taken on any new recruits in a while, so there’s some room in the dorms. I’ll look into an empty room for you.”

“Honestly…”

Yu Seong-un exhaled a long sigh.

“I don’t understand why everyone’s so obsessed with the Abyssal Kingdom.”

“Probably because it’s the first officially announced dungeon of a humanoid monster to appear in Korea in a long time?”

“Humanoid monsters have shown up plenty of times—we just kept it quiet. They’re all unofficial.”

“And more than that, it’s a dungeon Collector purchased.”

“……”

Yu Seong-un rubbed his throat and asked,

“Is the attention that heavy?”

“They bought an S-class dungeon whose intel hasn’t even been properly mapped yet. People want to know what Collector knows.”

“And they suspect we might monopolize some special resource. It’s not like that hasn’t happened before. Ants starting to swarm soon?”

“The stock price should climb.”

“Not that it’s the kind of thing they’re hoping for.”

They hadn’t bought it for special resources. They had bought it because they couldn’t leave a dungeon so deeply entangled with the Black Cloak running wild. It would be good for the Black Cloak himself as well.

The staffer shrugged.

“If it ever gets cleared, it could even work as a tourist site.”

“Being able to breathe underwater is a massive draw, sure.”

“So in the end…”

The staffer looked him over, then asked,

“What was the connection between the Abyssal Kingdom and the Black Cloak?”

“……”

“Based on what we know, the Abyssal Kingdom and the Black Cloak don’t exactly match. That black cloak is completely out of place in that blue dungeon.”

“…Sometimes the same monster or creature pops up in completely different dungeons.”

Gardeners called such things Children of the Source; to ordinary hunters, they were simply unusual monsters.

“That’s something I need to look into myself.”

“You’ll be busy.”

“You’re not offering to take it off my hands, are you…?”

“I’m not a curator.”

“Fair enough.”

Yu Seong-un clicked his tongue and headed for the elevator.

“Handle the press for me, then.”

“Don’t worry—go check on the works.”

“I should. It’s been a while.”

The moment the urgent work was roughly finished, the place he went straight to was, of course, Bi Sa-beol’s gallery.

He pressed his staff key to the elevator panel and hit the button for the fifth basement level at the far end. Thanks to Collector’s famous habit of pouring money into cutting-edge facilities, even a place that deep arrived surprisingly fast.

“Mm…”

Bi Sa-beol’s gallery, after so long, still carried an overwhelming pressure.

What a stifling place.

Even for an A-class hunter like Yu Seong-un, it was hardly a refreshing space. Eerie? Heavy? A strange air filled the gallery—one that made the whole body prickle as if with muscle ache while scraping raw at human instinct.

Especially the pieces on B5—most of them have rotten temperaments…

With thoughts like these, Yu Seong-un stopped in front of a certain portrait.

“……”

Pitch-black paint covered the face, so there was no way to tell whether the eyes were open or closed.

…I even forget the face sometimes.

He had seen Hunter Seo Ji-oh only a week ago, and his memory was hardly poor—yet he could not summon the face. All that rose before him was the black paint now in front of his eyes.

Is this another effect of the portrait’s face being covered?

With that thought, Yu Seong-un called to the portrait.

“Ji-oh, are you here right now?”

“I am.”

“Oh…”

A quick answer.

“Unusual, seeing as it isn’t dawn.”

The current time was three in the afternoon. For “Ji-oh’s Portrait,” which always insisted on around four in the morning, it was a rare hour to be awake. Yu Seong-un, who had half-worried the rules might be ignored, felt a little relieved.

If there’d been no answer, I was going to leave and come back at dawn.

Still, it was a little strange.

Was talking only at four a.m. never actually a rule? For something that wasn’t, I saw him a lot around then… odd…

At any rate, now that he was awake, a bit of conversation seemed worthwhile.

“Have you been awake this whole time?”

“I heard Mr. Yu Seong-un approaching, so I was waiting.”

“You can hear that kind of sound too?”

“I can sense when someone approaches the frame.”

“Sensing even that—impressive.”

“It’s been a while.”

The portrait asked in that characteristic blunt voice of his,

“Have you been well?”

A full week had already passed since they had gone into the Abyssal Kingdom to rescue the little priest Cha I-sol. Even “Ji-oh’s Portrait”—who was a painting rather than a living person—seemed to have that in mind.

“I was worried when you didn’t show yourself.”

“No need to worry that much. If I’m not around, it usually just means I’m overworking somewhere.”

“That sounds like a reason to worry.”

“I was being dramatic.”

He had left management to other curators, but that didn’t mean he could rest easy. Checking over the precious portrait for any damage, Yu Seong-un eventually asked,

“How about you, Ji-oh?”

“Please clarify the exact intent of the question.”

“It’s hard to put bluntly, but… the mermaid siblings, for one.”

“They’re still not coming out of the sea, but they seem to be doing fine.”

From what he had heard, the mermaid siblings were still hiding in the Abyssal Kingdom and refusing to show their faces. Ji-oh said it was probably because “they got thoroughly scolded and feel awkward about coming to see me.”

“……”

Yu Seong-un was briefly at a loss for words.

“You call that ‘scolding.’”

“Did it look a little extreme?”

“I can’t exactly say it didn’t.”

“As Giovanni, it was the natural course of action.”

“Right—a teacher scolding a student is natural enough, in a way, but… that was… so…”

Would ordinary teachers scold their students like that, Ji-oh?

I thought the portrait developing strange traits after the human personality of Ji-oh died was the issue—but maybe the Ji-ohs have been a little off since they were human. Even living as humans, their roots are the Source, after all?

That breathtaking level of indifference still caught Yu Seong-un off guard from time to time.

Separate from the psychological side, Ji-oh was the one who took the real damage in that situation. He doesn’t seem to feel a thing about it. That much indifference—he really has no intention of pretending to be human.

The memory was still vivid: heat hot enough to evaporate an entire sea, the sacred spear of the sun, and the Black Cloak smiling Giovanni’s smile even while reduced to a wreck…

That beautiful, grotesque spectacle had stolen Yu Seong-un’s gaze. The mermaid named Aria had probably felt something similar, he guessed.

…Anyway, that wasn’t the level of a scolding.

Or maybe, from Ji-oh’s perspective, it had been appropriate discipline. He was already worried about what would happen if a creature like this ever seriously harbored rage or hatred.

Perhaps interpreting his silence as something else, Ji-oh asked,

“Shall I call them?”

“Huh? Ah… no. I don’t have anything particular to say to them.”

“Right now they’re reading my cues and trying to restrain themselves, so I don’t think you need to be afraid.”

“Uh, right…”

Yu Seong-un thought to himself,

They’re only being careful because they’re reading the room—I wouldn’t call that safe.

He had overheard the conversation between Giovanni and Aria in the dungeon. He had realized that the only meaning left to those mermaids was Giovanni.

If they were watching their step, trying to restrain themselves, or even pretending to reflect—it was solely the product of Giovanni’s presence.

Without Giovanni beside them, the mermaid siblings are nothing but intelligent monsters who can only imitate interaction.

Monsters had always been treated as enemies of humanity because they assigned no meaning to humans at all—paying them no more mind than a bug crushed underfoot on the way somewhere.

Looking at the dungeon’s story, the context roughly makes sense.

From the atmosphere flowing through the S-class dungeon Abyssal Kingdom, one could understand the source of their hatred for humans. The only human they had loved had been torn from them in the most wretched form by other humans of the same kind—he understood that much.

Which is exactly why I don’t want to talk to them more.

He got that they were furious at having Giovanni, their only meaning, taken from them—but did they really need to take that out on humans of another dimension?

They seemed to have at least some awareness that it was childish, which made it even more absurd. In the end, they were monsters. Their entire way of thinking was different from humans’.

Right and wrong simply aren’t values that matter to monsters. They only carry out what has meaning to themselves. In that sense, it’s also why I can’t bring myself to see Ji-oh as a monster…

Fundamentally, you couldn’t hold a conversation with monsters. Yu Seong-un gave an awkward smile and asked,

“…The mermaids are one thing, but are you okay? You took a serious hit that day.”

“I am a priest of the sun and a doctor. Injuries of that degree heal quickly.”

The portrait asked,

“Were you worried about me, Mr. Yu Seong-un?”

“Would it bother you if I said yes?”

“It’s a concern with no reason to take offense. I’m sorry for startling you.”

“Well, I was a little startled, but…”

That had been shock at Ji-oh’s choices and the visual stimulus—strictly speaking, not worry for “Ji-oh’s Portrait” itself. The feeling had been real, but his reason had concluded there was no need for it.

Even if Giovanni had died on the spot, this portrait wouldn’t have vanished.

Beings of the Source had notoriously blurred boundaries with death. “Ji-oh’s Portrait” didn’t seem all that different—especially as he appeared particularly close to the Source.

“You’re a skilled priest, and your father is at home. I vaguely figured you’d be fine.”

“Leaving first that day without a proper goodbye, for the sake of recovery, was rude of me. I apologize again.”

“No—I and the others understood. If we’d left you there injured, the mermaids would have chewed us out instead.”

And they might have received hatred and contempt far beyond a scolding.

“The injury was serious—any aftereffects?”

“None.”

“Did it hurt that day?”

“Less than I expected.”

“That’s surprising news in its own way.”

The tattered image of Giovanni from that day rose unbidden.

High pain threshold? Or maybe he’s simply insensitive to pain. But…

Recalling the usually immaculate “Ji-oh’s Portrait” in that wrecked state left a slight discomfort in his gut.

“…Mm.”

Yu Seong-un added after a moment,

“I know you did it because you could handle it—but from our side, we can’t help but worry.”

Hadn’t Ji-oh held his own life hostage to have a “conversation” with Aria?

It wasn’t just a bluff, either.

A formless spear blazing with heat had driven into Ji-oh’s body. He must have modulated it with the skill of a sun god—Yu Seong-un hadn’t felt overwhelming heat—but the seawater had evaporated in an instant, hadn’t it?

Even knowing he was a portrait rather than a human, you couldn’t stay unmoved after smelling flesh and blood char black.

“It really gets to you, that.”

Yu Seong-un regarded Ji-oh as a pretty decent friend and an excellent work of art, and as long as he was still human, he couldn’t calmly accept such a being being destroyed.

“I was worried. It might sound funny saying this to you when you recovered ages ago, but my heart definitely dropped then.”

“It’s been a week.”

“Which is why I came running this hard. I was busy and neglected my curator duties, and there was no way to check on you…”

“I should have sent a letter saying I was at peace.”

“No, well—anyway. I couldn’t come right away, but it was on my mind in all sorts of ways. I’m sorry I couldn’t look after you the moment the work was done—I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

The portrait veiled in black paint continued,

“But I am a portrait. The blood I shed is ultimately paper and paint, so recovery is no problem.”

“……”

…Was that so?

Just as he was starting to be convinced, “Ji-oh’s Portrait” asked in that characteristically flat voice,

“Was it not entertaining?”

“Was that a joke?”

As if to prove he was a being of the Source, even his jokes were thoroughly unnerving.

Moments like this really drive home that he isn’t human.

Yu Seong-un deliberately changed the subject.

“Come to think of it… that was the first time you’d seen Aria in a long while too, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. The first time.”

“And yet you held a perfectly calm conversation with her in that situation. It can’t have been easy.”

As Yu Seong-un saw it, the personality of “Giovanni” was close to human—and yet had twisted corners.

From Giovanni’s standpoint, the situation then was not the kind of thing one could simply brush past. A student he had taught in another dimension had appeared as a vicious monster. And it had happened after his death, after a resurrection that was not quite a resurrection. Even so, Giovanni had treated his monster-turned students as if nothing at all were wrong. It was not a normal personality by any measure.

“She even said she’d eat you, among other things.”

“It was a joke, so it’s fine.”

“…A joke?”

“Aria often made jokes like that when she was young.”

“Uh…”

“She would say she’d eat me if she didn’t like something.”

The portrait continued in an even tone.

“It truly was a joke. Aria knows that as well, which is why I believe she deliberately made the same kind of remark.”

“…Because it was a joke?”

“If things didn’t go her way, she would simply call it the same old joke and pretend it never happened.”

“……”

“In the same way, Aria would have prepared to talk with me—but I won before she could pull that trick, so she simply couldn’t say it.”

After a brief hesitation, Yu Seong-un asked,

“What were you going to do if it hadn’t been a joke?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. They are mermaids.”

“What does them being mermaids have to do with it?”

“Mermaids are a race that lives their entire lives on a single period of memory.”

In that calm, weighty voice, Yu Seong-un suddenly recalled Ji-oh’s “eyes,” which he had seen once before.

“I knew that because they are mermaids, they would be unable to let go of Giovanni.”

Those eyes could never be called human.

“When Aria forced me to choose one or the other—was dying one of my options?”

“…That…”

If Ji-oh had chosen humans then, Aria would have committed suicide; if he had chosen the mermaids, she would have gone on living a life of tormenting humans.

“…But didn’t Aria threaten to eat you, saying you were human too?”

“As I just said, that was a joke. It amounted to her admitting she cannot kill me.”

“Oh.”

“That was when I became certain of my victory. Because I knew Aria still loved me.”

“…I get it.”

The mermaid princess who left herself room to call anything a joke, yet laid out an entire banquet to seize the initiative and press the humans hard—and Ji-oh, who had grasped all of it in an instant, predicted that as mermaids they could not abandon him, and played the suicide card.

“…You’re both cunning…”

“Whether family or friends, fighting is how relationships improve.”

In a gloomy, even voice that carried not a trace of emotion, Ji-oh continued.

“Especially since it had been so long since I reunited with them, openly resolving the conflict seemed to help a great deal in easing the awkwardness.”

“Resolving the conflict, huh…”

In a slightly strange mood, Yu Seong-un asked carefully,

“So do you want those mermaids to be happy?”

“Happy is fine. Not happy is also fine. I simply want them to take responsibility for their actions and their record.”

“So you haven’t forgiven them?”

“No. I have not forgiven them, who were once my students. Until they take full responsibility, the day I wholly accept them will not come.”

“Don’t be sad—their evil deeds weren’t your fault.”

“I know that very well. I have no need to take responsibility for their past. But without me beside them, they will ultimately never change.”

“So you gave them a chance?”

“‘Gave them a chance’ is not the right phrase. I simply took my share of the responsibility. The rest is theirs, and because of me they will undergo at least a minimal change.”

“Not favoritism?”

“I consider it taking responsibility in proportion to the affection that went into the favoritism. If I had not loved them, I would not have tried to take even that minimum of responsibility.”

“Well. Clean, at least.”

Terrifying creatures, all of them.

…This kind of chilling indifference is exactly why humans need to be wary of beings of the Source.

They were impossible to read easily.

(To be continued)