Chapter 163

"Waaah! Fireworks!!"

"Direektuh! Let'sh watch the fireworksh too! Yeah? Come on!"

The kids, worked up, grabbed at my coat and bounced up and down.

I didn't want to miss the flashy finale either, and was about to hurry off myself.

"Everyone, stop."

Han Jewoon cut in, easy as ever.

"I know a spot with a way better view than from the ground. Want to head there?"

"Huh? Where's that?"

At the kids' question, Han Jewoon smirked and pointed up.

"…the sky?"

That was when it happened.

Crrrrrack!

A grotesque tearing sound — like space-time itself being ripped open — rang through the air, and out of the gaping split, dozens of swords came pouring down like lightning.

Kwoooooom—!!

Wait — the hell?! He's pulling out his ability here?!

Rank One flexing his ability like this — a spectacle I hadn't seen in a while — had my jaw hanging open.

"Ha ha, no getting shocked already."

Han Jewoon flicked a hand at the air with an easy smile.

The swords, scattered sharp in every direction, converged on a single point with ferocious speed, as if drawn by a magnet.

Whrrrr, chak! Chak chak chak!

Along with a brisk metallic clatter, the swords wheeling in midair interlocked and packed seamlessly together in an instant, forming an enormous, flat steel platform.

"Right — allow me to show you to your VIP seats."

Platform finished, Han Jewoon placed a hand on his chest, bowed politely, and offered a dashing greeting.

Then he stepped over to the kids — eyes gone round as rabbits' — took each hand, one by one, carefully, and fondly escorted them up onto the steel platform.

Half-hauled up onto the platform by his hand myself, I felt a heavy vibration — and the steel island we were standing on drifted up into the air.

"Whoa! Wait — hold on! Is this actually safe?!"

The ground under my feet was already dizzyingly far below; I panicked and yelped, and Han Jewoon burst into an open laugh.

"Ha ha ha! The squirts don't so much as blink and the guardian's the biggest chicken? Come on. Special custom present for our timid Junhyeok-adult here."

Then he waved a hand lightly through the air.

One of the swords making up the floor popped up and locked itself firmly in front of me, like a sturdy handhold.

"Hold on to that tight."

Han Jewoon tacked it on teasingly and cranked the platform's altitude up another notch.

With cool late-autumn air brushing across my face, the amusement park's night view — bulbs twinkling — spread out beneath us, dazzling as a village straight out of a fairy tale.

And at last.

Pheeew — pow!

Paaaaaht—!!!

An entirely different order of thing from watching it from the ground.

An overwhelming spectacle — not overhead but right at eye level, like an entire cosmos exploding.

Ten thousand golden meteors poured down like a waterfall, then bursts of red and blue radiance alternated and swallowed the darkness.

Pow—! Pow-pow-pow-pow!

"Woaaah…!"

The kids let out gasps too full for words, their flushed cheeks stained in every color of the light.

Using the pitch-black night sky as an enormous canvas, flowers of light bloomed without pause.

With grand bursts, golden fireworks drew long trails as they poured down, and before their light could even fade, silver and red rockets shot up one after another, filling every inch of the view.

An unreal closeness — like you could reach out this instant and grab a fistful of that dazzling stardust.

Losing track of time, we watched the endless feast of light bursting before us for a long stretch.

"Direektuh…"

Cradled in my arms, Hayun murmured it, unable to pull her eyes off the night sky.

"Today wash sho, sho, sho much fuuun…"

After Hayun's soft, heartfelt words, the other kids' voices came one by one.

"That's right. Thanks to you, we got to see something like this… really, thank you, Director."

"Thank you, mister!"

The moment I met the kids' eyes — genuinely happy — a corner of my chest tightened, aching.

The amusement park, the animal headbands on their heads, these fireworks pouring down brilliantly overhead.

For these kids, every single thing was probably a first in their lives.

The past of these kids I'd only ever read about on the page had been bitterly cold, and the reality I'd seen with my own eyes was every bit as brutal.

So the honest happiness on their faces hit me almost past bearing.

Since coming into this body, this felt like the first time I'd carved a bit of real warmth into these kids' lives.

But in the middle of such a tender stretch, a sad, quiet dread began to spread through one corner of my heart.

…how am I going to leave them, later.

The kids were all looking at me, without exception.

Blind love and trust, without a fraction of doubt mixed in.

Those defenseless hearts — several times over, no, many, many times bigger than the thin affection I'd offered — scared me.

Afraid I'd let this tender warmth go to my head.

Afraid I'd sink deep into their blind love for me, throw over the promise that I had to leave, and want to stay by their side forever.

…anything but that.

A thick lump rose to the top of my throat, and in the end I couldn't manage any reply.

I only looked up quietly at the sky as the fireworks burst and held the small shoulders leaning into me close — carefully, as if they might break.

Soon enough the last fireworks staining the sky red scattered, and Han Jewoon's swords slowly lowered altitude and settled us back on the ground.

The moment their feet touched down, the kids' eyelids began dropping too, heavy.

"Nnh… Direektuh. My eyesh keep closing…"

"Sho sleepyyy…"

Fair enough — after running around like that all day, they were bound to be spent.

I carefully lifted Hayun, dozing with her face buried in the hem of my coat, and Kang Taemin — practiced by now — scooped Hajun and Suho up, one in each arm, in a single smooth motion.

The rest of the kids, rubbing their eyes hard, followed obediently behind me like ducklings after their mother.

Han Jewoon grinned at the peaceful procession.

"Genuinely had a great time today. Thanks to the squirts, I got some play in too."

"…Pretty sure you were the one having the most fun."

At my jab he burst into an open laugh, then, alongside Yun Gyeongha who'd come up beside him, gave a light wave.

"I'd love to see you all the way home, but it's time I headed off too. I'll be in touch soon."

With the cheerful farewell, Yun Gyeongha activated his ability, and with a rippling wave, the two of them dissolved into the air.

Leaving the bright lights and the sweet smell of cotton candy behind, I hitched Hayun securely up in my arms and walked out through the park's front gate.

Click.

…huh?

Just then, an out-of-place sound brushed my ear from somewhere.

Something oddly like a camera shutter — I stopped, was about to look around, when —

"Nnnh…"

Startled by the cold night air, Hayun shivered and shifted in my arms.

Just my imagination, maybe…

The worry that the child might catch a cold weighed heavier than some unidentifiable sound; I shook the uneasy question off, briefly, and picked up the pace.

A few days later.

The Director's office at the new guild, remodeling complete.

In the room — significantly wider than before — I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and a pen at my desk.

Time to seriously start preparing.

Burying the warm memories of the amusement park deep in my chest, I began writing out plans for drifting slowly away from the kids, one by one.

Step one.

Deploying the kids into Gates as guild members.

Sending the kids in there was worse than death to me, but this whole business had driven something home to me, bone-deep.

[Back when they were being abused at the institute, sure, they needed your help. Not anymore. They aren't fragile little things who only get protected one way.]

[That's the standard for non-Awakened. For Awakened, age means nothing. The only measure is how much strength you hold.]

Han Jewoon's and Cha Yul's cold, hard-headed advice.

Right. The kids had already grown too big to keep locked inside my narrow embrace.

I drew a long breath and made up my mind — to give the kids a real chance to stand on their own as Awakened.

Of course, that didn't mean I wanted to be the lion that shoves its cubs off a cliff, so I wrote down my own safety measures along with everything else.

Gates: only deploy the kids into Gates rated at least two grades below their own ranks.

Formally, at proper commission rates, hire veteran guild members to accompany the kids.

Suho and the twins excluded from deployment. Focus on training instead.

Having written that much, I tapped the pen against my lips and fell briefly into thought.

Would this much be enough?

After a short deliberation, I steadied myself and moved the pen to the next step.

Step two.

Obtaining a Refined Chaos Mana Stone for the kids' growth.

Unlike ordinary Gates, overload Gates were death zones crawling with unpredictables — sending the kids into one was far too dangerous.

If Bawi Guild came along like last time, that would ease things at least, but…

Can't exactly borrow another guild's top-tier muscle every single time.

Wondering how to handle it, my eyes drifted to a thick stack of documents on one side of my desk.

Profiles of the twelve gladiators I'd rescued from the Icarus arena a while back.

Right after tearing the arena down, I'd freed them and promised a perfect retirement plan — enough to live off comfortably for the rest of their lives.

But half of them — six — turned down even the enormous severance payment and stubbornly, ridiculously, insisted on joining the guild.

"What kind of insane talk is that?! I'm the one who threw you into that living hell — and you want to work under me? Cut it out — take the money and get out of here, now!"

I jumped up and tried to stop them, but they didn't budge an inch.

"You may have been the one who put us in hell, but in the end it was you who pulled us back out too. Rather than spend the rest of my days as a toothless tiger, I would sooner die on the battlefield, as an Awakened should. The debt of pride you've restored to us as Awakened — grant me the chance to repay it, however I can."

At the blind Swordsman's firm declaration, the other fighters behind him nodded too, eyes glinting strangely.

A vow of eternal gratitude, of all things.

I tried to talk them out of it several times, but there was no breaking the stubbornness of fighters seasoned by battle.

In the end, I threw up the white flag and had no choice but to take them on as formal guild members.

And so Nest Guild's Team Two (tentative name) was formed.

In pure combat terms, honestly, this was as good as a windfall landing in my lap.

They'd already been hunters with reputations to their names even before ending up in the arena, and on top of that they were living weapons in their own right — survivors of dozens, hundreds of death matches in the Colosseum.

But I couldn't deploy them to a battlefield right away.

Restoring lost limbs and eyesight, repairing bodies torn to pieces — that came first.

State-of-the-art prosthetic arms and legs, mana-engineered to wire straight into the nerves. Custom sensory-amplification gear for the blind Swordsman.

Luckily, that was a field the old institute had been researching steadily for years.

With no expense spared on funding or expertise, rehabilitation was moving along noticeably smooth and fast.

…once these men make a full recovery.

Once these veterans, who'd walked the razor's edge between life and death, were fully settled in, they'd become the sturdiest shield the kids could hope for.

On top of that, if they got their old skill fully back, they might be able to break through even an overload Gate and bring me a Refined Chaos Mana Stone.

Preparations for the kids' independence, and for their secondary awakening.

The puzzle pieces for both goals were slowly clicking into place.

Which leaves…

Clearing away, in advance, the disasters that would fall on Bawi Guild in the original story.

Oh Taejin, the biggest bomb of them all, had already been carried off by Fox — no way for me to touch him now.

But so long as Han Jewoon had a firm grip on his fatal weakness, even if he did come back one day, it wouldn't be much of a problem.

And… one more thing I absolutely have to prevent…

The moment my thoughts reached that point, my brow tightened on its own.

That incident.

The tragedy that would brutally clip Rank One Han Jewoon's wings and, in the end, force him into retirement.

In the original it was supposed to unfold in the distant future, after Cha Yul had fully grown up — but the seeds of the tragedy had almost certainly been planted already.

Where the hell do I even start looking for a lead…

Just as I was tearing at my hair —

Crash-bang!!

With an almighty racket, the tightly shut office door burst open — nearly off its hinges.

"D-D-Director! We've — we've got a huge problem!!"

Lee Jinwoo, ashen, burst in without knocking, panting.

"What is it, why the fuss? A Gate open somewhere? Or did the owner run off again?"

"N-no, it's not that…! O-one of the kids'…!"

Lee Jinwoo swallowed hard, raised a trembling hand, and pointed outside.

"Th-the parents…! One of the kids' parents are here!!!"