I Came Back And Conquered It All
Chapter 55

Seo Jin-Wook

‘Geek… Geeek!’

Unlike that of Park Chang-Hee, the curse of Han-Seol did not even get a chance to try and infiltrate my body.

The seed implanted in my heart had evidently first attacked and penetrated with its tentacles. With this, the seed of Han-Seol struggled, spreading something like a red tentacle around it.

‘It’s perishing.’

Witnessing this scene made me wonder about the curse’s mechanism that the system message did not fully expound on.

Why did it want to attack and destroy a seed that had already lost its host?

‘Geeeek!’

The seed of Han-Seol had now clearly reduced its size. A similar phenomenon occurred once more.

A psychological wave had begun to seep from it, connected by the tentacles of my seed. I could now hear a voice.

‘He’s going to be the greatest hunter on Earth. Even if I survive the collapse of Siheung Dungeon, I can’t be as strong as him.’

Voices gradually overlapped, echoed, and changed into different senses.

The life of Han-Seol unfolded before my eyes like a vision.

*

The introduction had begun with a hunter’s desire for heroism.

‘Oh, I have Prophecy! I’m special. I was chosen!’

It was both self-delusion and hypocrisy to say that she didn’t need other people’s recognition and was only doing her duty. Han-Seol wanted to stand out. She wanted to be recognized by people all over the world. However, she found out that she couldn’t rise to be the best, even if she continued to live away from her scheduled death.

‘I can go up to the SS-Rank with this potential Mana. But that’s it.’

The Hunters she had seen in the future had the ability and strength that was the equivalent of a God-like state in her standards, which they had long transcended beyond the boundary of SS-Ranks.

‘If I stay like this, I’ll only be a prophet.’

Jealousy bloomed in her mind. Even though [Prophecy] was her unique skill, she couldn’t perfectly control it. Prophecies always came to her out of the blue, delivering incomplete scenes and information about the future, and then disappeared.

With this in mind, she changed her direction.

‘The kid that will become the most powerful hunter in all of humanity.’

The overwhelmingly strong one, as she had seen him in the future.

However, he was close to a tyrant who committed soaked in madness, beyond the boundaries of law and morality. The state couldn’t act against that one hunter. Even with their all-out efforts, they could not contain him. Han-Seol saw him fight in a scene her Prophecy emitted. She trembled.

‘What if I could own that kid?’

His only weakness was his anxious mind.

‘By being with him from a very young age, to make him only listen to me.’

She had to become the only light that he never had in his childhood.

The plan seemed to be going well for a long time.

Even in the process of his madness worsening, Seo Jin-Wook trusted only one person in the world and followed Han-Seol sincerely.

However, recently, everything had gone wrong.

‘The future has changed.’

After Park Chang-Hee died, Seo Jin-Wook suddenly began to get out of her control.

‘Moreover, he’s gotten stronger at a much faster rate than I had seen in the prediction!’

Seo Jin-Wook’s performance under the guise of Bill Russel was indeed frightening. This was the power of a hunter that only Awakened three months ago. At this rate, he could become much more powerful than she had predicted in decades. First of all, she couldn’t find the same madness in him as before, and she couldn’t control him as she once did.

‘If I can’t have him···’

Han-Seol had not realized that a shady madness had now mixed into her desire.

‘If I can’t have him….I’d rather…!’

*

I frowned at Han-Seol’s life as it flashed in front of my eyes. The curse’s effect that controlled her was the same as Park Chang-Hee’s. Its goal was to amplify a person’s desire, the most vivid feelings, and to flood it with madness.

‘All the nonsense she said in front of me was true. She was just trying to kill me because she didn’t think making me her puppet would work anymore. She wanted to kill me before I could grow even more.’

The moment she had decided to kill me, she had been completely devoured by madness. How could one understand a crazy person? I shook my head.

‘Like Park Chang-Hee, there is no specific memory of someone planting a curse.’

Han-Seol’s memories had rushed through me in an instant, but it was quite time-consuming to compare them and analyze them one by one in order to find suspicious commonalities.

‘Nothing to see after the madness has completely taken over. I’ll have to look at her process of reaching that point.’

I needed to find clues hidden within her memory. It wouldn’t happen in a day or two.

‘First of all, I should return.’

I completely erased the traces of Han-Seol and began to move with Nicole’s body, which had been mutated by the immortal. As I approached the portal that led to the second stage, I saw two lost expedition members that were unable to move due to the thick fog. One of them pointed their finger at me.

“Oh, look over there! It’s Bill Russell!”

It was now time to go back to Earth.

*

I knew it was necessary to mix truth and lie in moderation. This was in order to explain why two Hunters had suddenly died when the dungeon attack had already been completed. I revealed that an alien race from a different dimension had decided to invade as soon as it was cleared. The proof of my argument lay in Nicole’s body, which had been mutated by the parasite. The existence of an alien race with unexpected abilities now shocked the world.

“It parasites in the human body and changes the flesh? And then it pretends to be human, and even manipulates it?”

“How many of them are there? What’s the number of species?”

“If many of them were to infiltrate the Earth, wouldn’t humans be completely devoured?”

So far, the alien race that we had encountered in the dungeon had already existed within some predictable category, whether it was friendly or hostile.

However, the new species had completely changed the concept of potential enemy classification.

Each government now struggled to come up with a manual on how to respond if they were to reencounter such creatures.

‘Well, it would be hard to come up with a reasonable plan right now.’

I was rewarded as Bill Russell upon successfully playing my part, and I returned to the United States after rejecting all the fuss about being rewarded by order of the Nation.

It was now the time to shift my place with the real Bill Russell.

As the hero who played the most important role in stopping the S-Class dungeon collapse, he had come to the media’s attention around the world and expressed disapproval, saying that it became a bigger fuss than he thought it would be.

In a few days, Bill Russell would flip the media again.

He would be announcing his retirement.

‘We’ll need to be on the same page, so I should inform him.’

Bill Russell had to know what had happened in the dungeon in preparation for further interviews, so information on that part was completely conveyed. In the meantime, there was news as big as Bill Russell in Korea. It was about the Celestial Dragon Guild.

“I heard that Han-Seol, the Assistant Guild Master, is dead, too? After Park Chang-Hee Hunter, the bad news only continues.”

“But this time, things have been a little weird. Many of the top-notch hunters are showing signs of leaving the Celestial Dragons.”

“They believe in Han-Seol and follow her, so does that mean they don’t want to continue working under Seo Gyu-Cheol?”

“There was a rumor going around among the hunters about the internal situation. Guild Master Seo Gyu-Cheol has long lost his internal support. They said his guild operational capability is actually worse than that of Han-Seol’s.”

“The saying that it is the best guild in Korea should soon become history.”

Just as she completely captured the heart of the original Seo Jin-Wook, Han-Seol was considered a true leader who could be trusted and was followed by other guild members. I clicked my tongue at the news brought about by her death.

‘It’s a talent to hold the people’s hearts this far without brainwashing skills.’

Internally, Han-Seol’s status was strong and mighty. However, it had been enough to push Seo Gyu-Cheol behind.

“In the meantime, there are rumors that his son, who Seo Gyu-Cheol was pushing him to be his successor, is also missing.”

He desperately wanted to hide an internal situation, but words seemed to leak out as the guild had been shaken to its core. The media’s reaction was divided. While praising Celestial Dragon Guild as they contributed greatly to the attack, others presented a dark analysis of the future prospects in a subtle tone. And, as it began to show that the hunters were actually leaving the guild, Senators called for me. It had been a long time since I saw him face to face.

*

“They were parasitic alien kinds? I’d like to hear more details.”

With a much darker expression than I had ever seen before, I delivered everything I could say in front of him. Some of them were more detailed than what I had reported to the government. It was unlikely that another immortal being would appear in terms of circumstances, but it would be helpful enough to broaden the scope of information about alien races.

When the talk was over, Senators remained silent for a while. Then, he breathed in deeply as he lit his cigar. I watched the smoke spread through the room, and he spoke with a lot of sorrow infused in his tone.

“Losing Nicole hurts my bones.”

I nodded. Nicole also seemed to be a person worthy of Senator’s attention. She could have been dispatched to Korea even though she was only an SS-class hunter because of his help. The U.S. government may not have wanted it.

“We were able to successfully clear by your help of sending her with us.”

I had to admit this fact, since I didn’t have any skills to replace that unique skill.

“In case a dungeon collapses, the judgment that it doesn’t matter since it doesn’t direct one only shows that he only knows one but not the other. We have yet to experience a collapse of the S-Class dungeon. No one can guarantee how fast the fire will spread.”

That was the Senator’s belief. Human beings should make all-out efforts to prevent disasters beyond the borders.

‘He tends to measure risk as conservative as possible. His direction of lobbying people in Washington is also focused on deregulating Hunter and Dungeon items because he believes that humanity’s preparation for unknown threats is still absurd.’

Considering what would happen in the future, the Senator’s judgment was right.

‘Making a black market so that if anyone needs to, they could circulate items outside the boundaries of the law, was of the same intention. Our thoughts coincide in this aspect. As expected, it was good to make ties with him as soon as possible.’

This was to not underestimate future risks. It was a mindset that proved to be the most necessary for humanity now.

“But then…”

He glanced at me.

“Are you going to continue your major career in the U.S.? I’d like to recommend you to do so, too.”

He may not have been saying this out of patriotism when he had just expressed the need to go beyond selfishness among nations.

The following words were just what I had expected.

“The U.S. is one of the countries that gates are mostly discovered in the world. No matter how much power we have, we still don’t have enough.”

He was recommending, for realistic reasons, that the U.S. needed a lot of hunters.

“What do you think about maintaining a state of a freelancer like now, but signing a loose contract with my agency? I don’t want to tie a leash on you, so you don’t have to worry.”

“You’re asking me when you know I’m going to reject it, right?”

Tsk, he clicked his tongue. He spoke once more in a disappointed tone.

“Tell me whenever you change your mind. I’ll take care of you a lot more than one would take care of a freelancer.”

No matter how loose the leash may be, the leash was still a leash. Considering what would happen in the upcoming days, it was only natural for me to choose to belong to the group that would move according to my own will.

And I had already decided where the group would be.

“By the way, I’m not a freelancer.”

The Senator’s eyebrows wiggled.

“I thought I understood that the relationship between the father and the son was dreadful? That the family situation is a mess, too.”

I was sure he already got the details of the Celestial Dragon Guild.

The Senator spoke once more. “Are you going to keep the enemy around as you live as a runaway child?”

I smiled lightly.

“It’s about time that runaway kid returned.”

The Siheung 8 dungeon entered a precarious status much faster in this life than in the future.

Was it a butterfly effect that I had made? Questions still lingered over this assumption.

To make a wild guess, did I influence the Siheung dungeon, simply because I cleared the dungeon that was supposed to be removed later in my previous life?

‘There may be some system behavior that I don’t know, so it’s too early to say …’

Anyway, if one event was advanced, the others could be, too.

One couldn’t just wait to see disasters, such as the collapse of the SSS-class dungeon, to occur simultaneously as in the past.

‘From now on, I can’t do it alone.’

Because of this, I was thinking of using the Celestial Dragon Guild as my stepping stone.

The person who planted the curse could not be identified, but I couldn’t always live while keeping my head down.

‘I will rebuild the Celestial Dragon with my own hands.’

It would be a waste to start at the bottom to prepare for the future. There was no need to give up the items, capital, and reputation that Celestial Dragon had already accumulated. As a first step toward the acquisition, I was going to make Seo Gyu-Cheol come down from his spot soon.

‘Of course, I have to show them that I deserve it.‘

I was going to put an end to moving around with another identity. From now on, I would prove my worth as Seo Jin-Wook.