The Novel's Extra - Side Story 74 – Chae Nayun (29)

It was already dawn by the time we returned to the train. Chae Nayun scurried to her room while I sat by the window.

I needed time to think. Not only about what happened today with Chae Nayun, but also about the jewel that was being transported in the train. Also, there were a few other minor things in my mind that I had to sort out.

“…”

I placed my hand on the table and rested my chin in my palm. The sun was starting to rise on the horizon and illuminated the surroundings.

I admired the scenery for a bit before turning my eyes to the VIP Cabin. I already knew how many people were inside.

There were quite a lot of Asians and a jewel kept in a safe within the cabin.

[Eye of the Sun] [Ancient Relic]

— A relic found in the ruins of an ancient pyramid. It may be used as a source of light.

The ancient relic possessed immense potential.

I wondered why they were taking risks and going to such great lengths just to transport that jewel to Russia? Was this related to Kim Sukho?

If that was the case, I needed to steal that ancient relic.

“… Who goes there?” I immediately placed my hand on my gun and asked when I felt a presence in the corridor.

“Just a human?” a familiar voice replied.

A girl emerged from the dark. It was the American cadet we met earlier in the day, Loelle.

“I’m on my way back from hunting,” she said.

“… Alright.”

I noticed her right arm was tainted dark red, which bothered me. I was certain she was a good person in my settings, so it would be best if she didn’t stray and remained useful to me later on.

“Your right arm looks strange,” I tested her.

“Ah, this? It’s nothing serious. I was born with it. Oh, what year did you say you were in?” she asked in response.

“First year.”

“Then why are you speaking so casually? You do know that I’m two years older than you, right?”

Loelle crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me.

I simply smirked and shook my head, “Sorry.”

“Be careful from now on,” Loelle growled and wobbled back to her room.

I got up from my seat and went to my room as well. There, I found Jin Sahyuk instead of Kim Suho in our room.

She was sitting on a chair and grinding a sword against another sword.

“You’re here?” she asked while grinding her sword.

Sseuk…! Sseuk…! Sseuk…! Sseuk…!

I instantly froze and gulped before walking towards her.

She raised a brow at my awkward approach.

“Yeah, I’m here. Also, I know why you’re here,” I said.

I decided to come swinging right out of the gates. However, I couldn’t see any signs of surprise, disbelief, or anything else on her face. Instead, she simply smiled in response and unleashed her killing intent.

I refused to back down and added, “And… you’re probably looking for your… servant.”

“…”

Her eyes glimmered while glaring at me. It felt as if everything in the room, including the air, had frozen.

Jin Sahyuk inspected me from head to toe, “As expected. You’re that guy, right?”

She was probably referring to Kim Chundong.

Anyways, I shook my head and replied, “I have that person’s diary.”

“Diary?”

I showed her my smartwatch on my left wrist.

Jin Sahyuk blinked a few times while staring at it. It looked like she was trying to disassemble the watch with her intense gaze.

“How the hell is that a diary?” she grumbled in disbelief.

It was an expected response from someone who came from a civilization where machinery and technological advancements didn’t exist.

“Huh? Then were you expecting a paperback book? Who uses that these days? Everyone uses a smartwatch in this day and age, you know?”

“…”

Jin Sahyuk seemed to be pondering something before finally nodding.

“I can show you the contents of the diary with this,” I projected a hologram from my smartwatch.

Jin Sahyuk impatiently stretched her hands to grab it, but her hands simply phased through the hologram.

She looked visibly upset and asked, “Hey, what’s going on? Why can’t I touch it?”

“I have to grant you permission to read it. I’ll let you read it in exchange for one condition.”

“One condition?”

“Yeah, I want you to help us.”

Jin Sahyuk frowned and scoffed in disbelief.

“One hundred seven times,” she whispered.

I stared into her eyes, which glared at me like an apex predator.

Then she continued, “That’s the number of times you would’ve been dead if it wasn’t for me. I’ve already helped you countless times. It wouldn’t be enough even if you kowtowed to me for the rest of your life… but what? A condition?”

“Ah, so that was you? Thanks for that.”

“… What?” she looked surprised.

I awkwardly scratched my cheek in response.

To be honest, I was already under the impression that someone was helping me since I came across information last night that all of the assassins sent to kill me had died despite me having done nothing.

“The help I’ll be asking from you this time isn’t something too difficult,” I said.

The ingredients required to wake Chae Jinyoon were probably the [Heart of Adaptation] combined with various other ingredients. The final ingredient was probably her, Jin Sahyuk.

I needed her cheat-like ability, which allowed her to form her mana into whatever she wished.

“I’ll tell you everything after you help us. I’ll show you the diary that person left behind, Kindspring or Winterspring, whatever his name was. I’ll even tell you what kind of person he was.”

“…”

Jin Sahyuk silently stared at me, but I didn’t avoid her nerve-wracking gaze.

In the end, she leaned against the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. It was the body language of a king who was commanding her servant to spill the beans.

***

Meanwhile, Chae Nayun was lying in bed.

Hehe…

He…

Hehehehe….

Hehehehehehehe….

Hehe…

He….

Hehehehe….

Hehehe…

She started laughing in an eerie manner and couldn’t suppress the laughter welling up from inside her. Well, she didn’t want to suppress it in the first place.

Thanks to her, the light sleeper Yoo Yeonha woke up and began trembling in horror.

Hehehe…

Hehehehe…

“W-What’s going on?” Yoo Yeonha asked with a nervous gulp.

She slowly peeked at the bed below and Chae Nayun’s face suddenly popped up in front of her.

“Kyaaaaaahk!

Yoo Yeonha screamed and crashed to the floor. She fell face first with her legs over her head and saw Chae Nayun crawling towards her.

“What are you doing? Are you alright?” Chae Nayun asked.

‘It’s you again, Nayun!’ Yoo Yeonha gritted her teeth and got up. She glared at Chae Nayun with killing intent.

“Hehe….” Chae Nayun was still smiling like an idiot.

“… You seem to be in a good mood?”

Chae Nayun flinched at her words. Then, she cleared her throat and feigned ignorance, “Not really.”

“Hmm… It seems something good happened today… with Kim Hajin.”

“…?!”

Chae Nayun’s eyes shot wide open. She started trembling as if struck by lightning.

“H-How did you know?!” she asked.

Yoo Yeonha smirked and replied, “I didn’t. I was just testing you.”

“Ah… That’s cheating…”

“That’s not what’s important. What happened between you two?” Yoo Yeonha asked.

Chae Nayun awkwardly scratched the back of her neck and replied, “Well, nothing. Just… I confessed everything…”

“Confessed?”

“Yeah, that the assassins were sent by Kim Sukho… and the rest is… a secret.”

“Alright.”

Yoo Yeonha didn’t seem that interested while Chae Nayun was itching to tell her what happened.

However, Chae Nayun held her tongue because she knew that Kim Hajin would be in a pinch if she divulged what happened to anyone else.

‘We’re basically going to depend on each other from now on, so… I shouldn’t do anything that would burden him… still… I want to tell someone… It should be fine if I told Yeonha, right? I mean, she’s quite tight-lipped after all… Yeah, I’ll see if I get a chance later on and tell her then. Not now,’ Chae Nayun thought.

“Can you set it aside for tonight and please go to sleep? You do know that we have to hunt tomorrow, right?”

“Oh, you’re right.”

Only then did Chae Nayun finally realize that they were in a class and not a field trip. She needed to hunt as many monsters as possible to increase her points.

How many did she hunt yesterday? Well, she spent the entire day tailing Kim Hajin, so she only got two kills.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter…” she muttered.

She couldn’t care less if she dropped to the 1,000th rank. After all, life was meant to be enjoyed.

Chae Nayun giggled for the last time and plopped onto her bed.

She began to reminisce about everything that happened while squirming with joy. It was only after five in the morning when she finally managed to sleep.

***

We were still at the first stop when the second day arrived. The stop had restaurants, accommodations, shops, self-defense forces, etc. so it wasn’t too uncomfortable.

“Hihi…”

Except for the fact that Chae Nayun kept clinging to me like gum.

This was probably the last place anyone would come on a date, but she clung to my arm while pointing here and there.

However, I didn’t hate it. No, I should probably say that I liked it even.

“Oh, right… We have to go hunt. We’ll end up in last place at this rate,” Chae Nayun said after a while passed.

Only then did I remember that we were technically in class right now.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

I pulled out my gun from its holster and Chae Nayun led the way as I followed from behind. We ventured into the forest and found a troll almost immediately.

“Gwuooooh!”

It was quite a big one holding a club the size of a baobab tree.

Thud!

The enormous troll swung its club, but Chae Nayun easily blocked it with her sword despite not even being half the troll’s size.

I shot the troll in the eyes and the explosive bullets blew up its eyeballs.

Chae Nayun didn’t miss this opportunity and cleanly cut off the troll’s head from its shoulders.

It took us exactly five seconds to kill the troll.

Chae Nayun giggled and clung to me after mercilessly killing the troll.

“We’re quite the pair, right?” she said with a big smile.

“… Yeah, we’re quite compatible,” I replied with a smile.

I didn’t intend to smile, but my mouth wouldn’t listen and smiled on its own.

“See? I told you. We’re invincible together. Anyways, send the coordinates. Let’s go hunt the next one.”

“Okay.”

… We immersed ourselves in hunting after that.

We easily killed trolls, orcs, mountain boars, jungle chimpanzees, man-eating flowers, forest yetis, etc.

By the way, the forest yetis were rank 1 intermediate monsters, but they didn’t stand a chance against our combination.

Not to mention, my SP skyrocketed after we hunted thirty monsters in under three hours.

We sat on the grass and took a break.

“Hey hey hey, look at this!” Chae Nayun said while resting her chin on my shoulder.

She showed me her smartwatch with a funny video playing.

“Hahaha! Hey, isn’t this super funny?”

“… Yeah.”

I stared at Chae Nayun reclining back to the point where I could hug her by simply wrapping my arms around.

“Huh? What are they doing?” Chae Nayun asked while pointing towards the other end of the dark forest.

I checked with my vision and saw Loelle lying flat on her face. Neither of us said anything as we rushed over to her.

“Hey, what happened to you?” Chae Nayun asked.

Loelle was covered in cold sweat and writhing in pain. I noticed that she was grabbing her right arm.

“It’s… nothing…” she said.

“I don’t think it’s nothing from the looks of it,” Chae Nayun replied.

She walked over to Loelle and I followed suit after checking our surroundings for any potential threats. Then I inspected her arm, which had fully turned dark red.

“Kyak! Don’t touch it!” she screamed when I reached out.

The result of my diagnosis was… a powerful curse.

“How does it look?” Chae Nayun asked.

“I think I can cure it,” I replied.

“Then what are you doing? Hurry up and cure her.”

“…”

“What? Cure? Cure what? Have both of you gone mad?! Don’t you dare! Don’t come near me! I warned you already!” Loelle growled at us.

“Shut up,” I said before enveloping my hand with stigma and grabbing her right arm.

It was possible to lift the curse, but it was quite a powerful one so it would definitely hurt.

“Kyaaaahk! Arrrgh! KYAAAAAHK!” Loelle screamed like a wounded beast.

Well, that wasn’t strange since her ability was to turn into a beast in the first place. Ironically, she seemed to have activated her ability as her teeth turned into sharp fangs. She also grew a tail and animal ears on top of her head.

However, she couldn’t maintain her ability as her transformation went back and forth.

It took around three minutes to fully lift the curse. It was only after I used up half of stigma that the curse was finally lifted.

“Grrrwaa…”

Loelle was out cold on the ground and foaming at the mouth.

“Heok, what’s wrong with her? Is she dead?” Chae Nayun asked.

“No, she survived, but I think I’m going to die…” I replied as I suddenly felt lethargic after using up half of stigma in one go.

My knees gave out and I almost fell, but Chae Nayun instantly ran up and caught me.

She caressed my cheek and asked, “But what do you think she was doing here?”

“Who knows…?”

However, it didn’t take long for us to figure out what she was doing in this dark forest all alone.

“Huh? Hey, Hajin! Look at this!” Chae Nayun exclaimed while pointing at a sparkling stone that fell out of Loelle’s pocket.

[Eye of the Sun] [Ancient Relic]

— A relic found in the ruins of an ancient pyramid. It may be used as a source of light.

It was the Eye of the Sun.