Chapter 184

I let out a small, incredulous laugh as I asked back, and Julia nodded, expression pure and utterly earnest.

"Yes. We'd like to bring you over to us, Deputy Guild Master."

"No — but why on earth would you want me…"

I was still struggling to hide my bewilderment when —

Beside me, Leo — who'd been diligently sawing away at his kids' cutlet — cut in through a mouthful of meat.

"It's not just you—! Cough! Cough-cough!"

Before he could finish, the cutlet he'd swallowed too quickly had clearly wedged in his throat.

The way his tiny fists were pounding at his own scarlet-flushed chest was so violent I hurriedly held out a glass of water.

"Slow down. No one's stealing it."

"Gulp, gulp… kwaah!"

Draining the water in one go, Leo caught his breath, roughly, then jabbed his fork straight across the table.

"It's not just you — we're taking that girl with us too!"

Following the fork tip, my eyes landed on Sea-ah, who was chewing pork cutlet with round, blinking eyes.

"Sea-ah? What do you want with Sea-ah, all of a sudden…"

"What do you mean, 'why'! She had her second awakening!"

Leo snorted like I was asking something obvious.

"Don't you think shoving a talent that phenomenal into some pea-sized speck of a country is a waste for all humanity?"

The whole picture snapped into place for me in an instant.

Ah — they came to scout Sea-ah.

Made sense… no way the world's Rank One guild would come all this way specifically for me.

Their real target was Sea-ah; I was just tacked on as her guardian.

Once I'd caught on to their real angle, my head actually cooled.

That heavyweights had crossed an ocean in person meant Sea-ah's value had spiked that high — and the flip side of that was clear: she was exposed to threats.

Word that Sea-ah had a second awakening cannot get out.

In the hunter world, there are no permanent allies.

Today she's a scouting target; the second things sour, she could be flagged as a potential threat and lose her head over it.

I ran the scenarios in my head at speed and put on a perfect mask.

Feigning slight exasperation, I let out a light sigh.

"Ah… I take it you didn't see the Korean Bureau's press conference. Sea-ah's second awakening was misinformation, formally corrected by the Bureau. You've come all this way for nothing…"

But rather than backing off in embarrassment as I'd expected, Julia kept her placid, unshaken smile fixed on Sea-ah.

"I've already seen the press conference."

"…So then why—"

"I don't put stock in processed information. I only believe what I see with my own two eyes. And the moment that girl walked out of the Gate, I knew — that she'd achieved a second awakening."

At the noble, unflinching voice, my heart dropped.

How? There were no signs on the outside. Don't tell me — can she see mana, like Teacher Kim Sunja?

Before I could even open my mouth in my panic, Julia gently addressed Sea-ah.

"But you haven't yet fully realized your second awakening, have you?"

"!"

"?!"

At the unexpected words, every one of us went wide-eyed.

"What does that mean?"

At Sea-ah's question, Julia's clear blue eyes glinted, strange.

"Fully bloomed second-awakeneds can instinctively recognize one another. To put it more precisely — we can read another person's mana flow."

Read mana flow? At a term I'd never heard, I quickly pressed.

"Mana flow? Do you mean you can see mana visually, like Teacher Kim Sunja?"

"No, not the same as reading the grain of mana clearly, the way the [Soul Blacksmith] does. More like sensing it, faintly."

Once Julia's explanation was over, Leo cut in with a scoff.

"Ha! What did you think a second awakening even was?"

Isn't it just the base ability getting an upgrade?

As if he'd read my complacent thought right off me, Leo's face went incredulous as he spoke.

"The core widening, raw power going up — nothing that simple. The quality of the mana, the quantity, the flow moving through the body — everything evolves to a level you can't even compare with before!"

"The quality, quantity, and flow of mana…?!"

That was when.

Behind Han Soeun's glasses, an eerie glint flashed.

Her signature mad-scientist switch had flipped.

"Evolution — do you mean structural rearrangement of the internal mana circuits, or actual densification of the mana particles themselves?! Compared to a first-awakened, how far does the range of sensory reception expand — do you have any quantified data—!"

"C-calm down!"

Rattled by the unexpected zeal, Leo covered his fluster with a cough and slipped back into strutting.

"Listen up. The reason existing abilities jump to a whole new level after a second awakening is thanks to the mana quality skyrocketing to a whole different dimension!"

He tipped his chin up, triumphant.

"And on top of that, your senses sharpen too — a properly trained Awakened can see straight through another person's mana capacity."

Then his eyes flicked over to Sea-ah.

A mocking edge crept into his voice.

"But… this squirt has a second-awakened right in front of her and can't sense a thing — looks like nobody's actually trained her since her second awakening?"

"…"

"…"

Number Two and I clamped our mouths shut, dead silent.

The dart had landed dead center, and it hurt.

"Th-that's… because there are no other second-awakening cases in Korea…"

Number Two stumbled through a shabby excuse, but her voice trailed off — even she seemed to know it wouldn't hold water.

It was an undeniable fact.

Korea had no sample of second-awakeneds at all, and there was zero chance the world's top guilds or nations would willingly share their premium intel on second-awakeneds.

Which meant that even after Sea-ah's second awakening, we hadn't managed to change her training approach at all.

Why?

Because none of us knew exactly what a second awakening was, let alone how to train someone to handle it.

In the end, all we could do was recycle the existing training curriculum.

Teacher Kim Sunja had at least been dedicated to teaching Sea-ah personally, but even the teacher had never taken on a second-awakened as a student.

Anyone who reached the orbit of a second awakening was, by definition, so transcendent they were far past needing anyone to teach them.

However she'd read what was churning in my head, Julia folded her hands on the table and pressed on, graver.

"If you were to come over with Sea-ah, Deputy Guild Master, we can guarantee the best treatment we're capable of offering. A training curriculum perfectly tailored to a second awakening, needless to say… and if you wish, you may naturalize with the rest of Nest's children and every one of your guild members as well."

For an instant, my thoughts stopped, as though I'd been hit over the head.

I can bring all the other kids too?

This was a perfect chance to resolve my longest-running headache in one stroke.

The guild called the strongest in the world. Under a fence that vast, the kids could be perfectly shielded from Chae Ganghyeon's grasping hands.

And not just that. With top-tier support behind them, the kids would grow at a rate incomparable to now.

Above all, even when the day came for me to leave, the kids would have a solid roof over their heads.

The offer was tempting enough I nearly nodded on the spot.

But a scrap of reason stopped my head before it could start bobbing.

Isn't this a little strange, though? They'd go this far to bring us over?

However rare second-awakeneds were, these people were already the world's strongest.

No reason for them to come to us bowing down with terms this extraordinary.

The most suspicious piece was the offer for an entire foreign guild's members to naturalize together.

Even for Veritas Guild, world Rank One, that was an extreme play that would be difficult to absorb.

The naturalization of an Awakened is a leak of a nation's core combat strength.

International law imposed strict controls, and there was no way Korea's Awakened Management Bureau would take that lying down.

Add in the international and domestic backlash that would pour down on Veritas for openly poaching another country's hunters.

Diplomatic friction and astronomical costs to swallow.

They'd shoulder every one of those risks — just for us?

The math didn't add up, no matter how you cut it.

And one more thing…

Was it really all right to twist the flow of the original this drastically?

Of course, the original's plot had already been bent out of shape more than a little, but I'd still tried to keep the main trunk intact.

But the protagonists leaving Korea — the main stage — for America?

For a moment, a strange, cold premonition brushed the back of my neck — that this was something I absolutely could not let happen.

Firmly shaking off the ominous feeling clawing through my head, I put the most essential question out first.

"I appreciate the extraordinary offer, but why exactly do you want us this badly?"

"…"

"Even if Sea-ah is a second-awakened, isn't Veritas already the unshakable Rank One guild in the world? Your firepower has to be overflowing — no real reason to bring us over specifically."

At my question, the boiling air inside the gukbap-joint room turned to ice in a heartbeat.

A silence so heavy it choked.

In that strange gap, instinct told me:

There's a hidden reason.

After a long while, Julia opened her mouth, heavy.

"…I'm sorry, but I can't tell you that reason at this table. If you accept the naturalization, I'll tell you everything then."

The rider only thickened the suspicion.

Not the kind of thing to decide on the fly.

"I see. For now… let me think it over a bit more."

As I politely drew a line, Leo stuck out his lip and shot back.

"Ha! Honestly — we say we'll take care of everything and you're still hesitating! What a coward!"

"Watch your mouth."

That was when.

Sea-ah, who'd been quietly sawing away at her cutlet, set her knife down on the plate and answered back, cold.

"Don't talk to our Director like that. You can't even eat one bowl of gukbap — you're stuck with a kids' cutlet just like me. Who are you calling a coward?"

"Wh-what?!"

Skewered on the point, Leo — face flushed tomato-red — leapt to his feet.

"Y-you cheeky little squirt! You ordered the cutlet because you can't eat gukbap either!"

Even at Leo's aggrieved counter, Sea-ah kept a placid face and neatly folded her arms.

"I'm ten. Isn't it normal for a kid to be eating a kids' cutlet?"

"Wh-what—"

"But one look at you and you're way older than me. Shouldn't a grown-up 'oppa' be embarrassed to be sitting next to me sawing away at a kids' cutlet?"

"Grr, grrrrr—! You, you little—!"

The atmosphere was turning ugly enough that the table looked about to flip, and just as I hurriedly moved to get between them —

Screek—!

The old sliding door of the private room — shut tight until now — slid open with a brisk clatter.

"Well said, our Sea-ah!"

The man leaning casually in the doorway sauntered in, clapping and utterly at ease.

Striking features you could feel just looking at, and that trademark languid ease dripping off him — a red-haired man.

Han Jewoon had arrived.

He strode over, draped an arm easily around my shoulder, and, throwing a glance at the stiffened Julia, tilted the corner of his mouth up.

"However much you want our Junhyeok, waltzing in to carry off someone else's precious family whole — isn't that pretty far outside the code?"

"You—!"

Whether the other side was grinding her teeth and glaring or not, Han Jewoon coolly turned his gaze back and dipped his head down toward me.

"If you fall for the schemes of these transparent bums, I'll be seriously hurt, Junhyeok."