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Chapter 49
The smile I’d been wearing almost shattered in an instant.
Wait. What. What!
How the hell did he find out?
Where did I slip?
That thought lasted only a moment.
I glanced up at Kim Junghun’s face—and immediately understood.
No, he hasn’t actually found out.
It’s just deduction and speculation. A hypothesis built from guesswork. He has no proof.
Once that judgment settled in my mind, I opened my mouth and answered his words.
“Yes, it was I who summoned Young Master Hyunwoo to that building… but I didn’t lay a hand on him myself.”
“……”
That wasn’t a lie.
It was Moo-yeong who killed Cho Seong-hwan—not me.
Seemingly unaware of that truth, Kim Junghun furrowed his brows slightly and pressed on.
“And why did you involve Hyunwoo?”
“It was because Young Master who ordered me to report Young master Cho Seong-hwan’s treachery.”
“Lies.”
A single, sharp word.
With it, Kim Junghun’s gaze pierced right through me.
“Hyunwoo knew nothing. He had no idea Cho Seong-hwan was raising monsters, nor that he had opened a rift. He simply followed your word, raided the lab, and detected the rift there—nothing more.”
“……”
“But according to the family’s informants, you were serving as Cho Seong-hwan’s errand boy right up until then. The perfect position to orchestrate this whole affair.”
A faint but crushing aura began pressing down on my body.
As if granting me one last chance, Kim Junghun’s voice came again, heavy and commanding.
“Speak. Why did you plot all of this?”
Here we go. The real moment.
I steadied my faltering mind—on the verge of collapse—and spoke toward him.
“It was because the Pungyang Cho Clan was already preparing to raise a rebellion against the main family.”
“A civil war?”
For the first time, Kim Junghun’s composed face cracked.
I had deliberately chosen not to use the word treason.
Instead, I said civil war.
The reason was simple.
That lofty phrase “punishing traitors” was just a pretext.
For him, the true concern was always the safety of the family.
“Cho Seong-hwan was running a secret laboratory in Hanseong, refining monster hearts in secret from the court. He was forging weapons out of those jades to arm his personal guards—and was planning to break through the royal guards and strike directly at the main house.”
Information even Kim Hyunwoo didn’t know.
My final contingency—prepared in case everything went wrong.
“Do you have proof?”
“I do.”
I took out one monster heart I’d prepared in advance before entering.
One of the 120 stolen from the Pungyang Cho Clan laboratory.
Kim Junghun received it and examined it carefully for a while.
“A monster heart without any serial engraving.”
Feeling the faint aura flowing from it, his face darkened.
“Cho Gang-woon… so this is how far he was willing to go.”
“I understand that conflict between noble families should be avoided at all costs. However…”
“If they were the ones who moved first, then that changes everything. My actions were not misguided.”
He fell silent for a while, lost in thought.
But only briefly.
“So, war with the Pungyang Cho Clan was inevitable, then?”
Looking down at the monster heart in his hand, Kim Junghun placed it gently on the table before speaking again.
“I won’t ask why you didn’t report this directly to me. No doubt Hyunwoo silenced you. He must be too busy consolidating his own power.”
“I apologize.”
I bowed my head in response, but Kim Junghun continued, indifferent.
“Have you decided to become Hyunwoo’s right hand, then?”
“I have no ties within the family. To serve by your side, Young Master, would be the greatest honor imaginable.”
“…I see.”
What on earth is he thinking?
With an unreadable gaze fixed on me, Kim Junghun slowly spoke again.
“How old are you this year?”
He doesn’t even know his own son’s age?
I swallowed the bitter laugh that rose to my throat.
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen… fifteen, is it.”
As if contemplating something, he repeated my age under his breath.
Then, as though having made some private decision, he nodded to himself and stood.
“Then the timing is perfect.”
“Pardon?”
I blinked in confusion.
“When the time comes, I’ll send word.”
“……”
“I’ll send an official uniform along with it. When you receive the message, report to the palace.”
At his blunt words, my thoughts tangled into chaos.
Enter the palace?
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
I blinked, too stunned to speak, and as confusion clouded my face, Kim Junghun spoke again—slowly, with a weight that settled over every syllable.
“I shall petition His Majesty the King… to grant you an official position.”
*****
BUWAAAAANG—!
A heavy-caliber minigun mounted on a gunship roared to life.
Tracer rounds poured downward like streaks of red lightning, slamming into the earth below.
What those armor-piercing shells struck was something no longer human—something that defied all logic.
“KRAAAAHHH—!”
A grotesque creature covered in a black-red exoskeleton, claws that could slice through Grade-3 artificial bodies like tofu, and eyes utterly devoid of reason.
The same kind of monsters that had ravaged seventy percent of the world three centuries ago, when the Rift Incident first erupted.
“Beho Unit 3 is suppressing the forward swarm of monsters!”
“Reform the line! Evacuate the wounded and the rest—follow me! We won’t get another chance!”
Wave after wave of monsters.
And standing against them—heavy weapons fire and soldiers patched together with prosthetic bodies.
Not a single man among them was unscarred.
Every soldier bore a body cobbled together from steel and flesh, each with their own mismatched cybernetic parts.
Yet despite that grotesque sight, they moved as one—precise, synchronized, flawless—driving the horde of monsters into a single kill zone.
Then, a shout:
“Target marked!”
“Target marked! Headquarters confirmed artillery strike! Impact in—3…! 2…! 1…!”
The moment the call ended, cluster munitions rained down on the monsters’ concentrated position.
KUKWAAANG—!
Thunderous explosions.
Choking smoke.
Unexploded shells hurled into the air.
And through the chaos—monsters bursting apart in sprays of yellow fluid, their screams drowned in the inferno.
This was the Northeastern Front—the first line of defense keeping the rampaging monsters from Manchuria’s contaminated zone from pouring into Joseon.
“Is that true? You’re saying the chaos in Hanseong… was all orchestrated by them?”
Inside a temporary command post at the center of that front line, Yu Sang-hyeon looked up from his battle map, turning toward the distorted voice coming through the radio.
– It was Young Master Kim Chang-woon and us, sir. Thanks to the monster you sent, we were able to pull it off perfectly.
“…Hehe.”
A twisted laugh slipped from Yu Sang-hyeon’s lips.
Every syllable that came through the comms carried a different tone, as if the speaker’s voice were patched together—clearly voice modulation.
“So, you’re telling me… one female monster from the Northeast managed to tear apart the great Pungyang Cho Clan?”
– We were just as surprised, sir. None of us thought things would escalate this far.
“Hah. Now that I think about it… it was the same when he saved me and Arin.”
As Yu Sang-hyeon murmured, memories of the boy from Hanseong flickered before his eyes.
The way that child moved people like chess pieces—using everything and everyone at his disposal.
The unwavering conviction.
The audacity to throw himself into danger without hesitation.
He had met countless warriors on countless battlefields… but never someone like that.
No. It wasn’t courage—it was calculation.
Kim Chang-woon.
That boy wielded schemes as his weapon.
Every gesture carried intent.
Every smile concealed his real thoughts.
Every word was a dagger wrapped in silk.
For a man like Yu Sang-hyeon—a soldier of the front lines—such an ability was alien, unreachable.
He was a warrior, not a politician.
– General?
“…Ah. My apologies.”
The voice of Imetal—the modulated one—snapped him out of his thoughts.
– We’ll contact you again as soon as new information from Hanseong arrives. Maintaining the connection is risky, so we’ll withdraw for now.
“Understood. It’s been… an enlightening conversation.”
Connection terminated.
Staring down at the Choreng-i mask communicator in his hand, Yu Sang-hyeon turned to his adjutant.
“Where’s Arin?”
“She’s entered the contaminated zone with the 3rd Battalion. They dropped at coordinate 310 — the central nexus point. By now the battle should be …”
Before the officer could finish explaining—
KUNG-!
The ground itself quaked, shaking the entire command tent.
A single shockwave strong enough to rattle the whole frontline.
It wasn’t artillery. It was an explosion born of aura.
“…The battle’s over.”
The moment Yu Sang-hyeon realized that,
His adjutant, still staring at the tactical map, murmured blankly:
“The rift reaction at that coordinate has vanished completely.”
At those words, Yu Sang-hyeon strode outside,lifting the tent flap and gazing toward the rear defense line, where pillars of smoke curled upward into the afternoon sky.
Beyond the monsters’ line of defense, right where the infiltration squad had gone.
The core of the rift, and the battlefield where Arin had been deployed.
“Confirmed! The core-stone in the rift’s depth has been destroyed! The monster legion is retreating! We’ve won!”
“YAAAAAHHH—!”
As the radio operator shouted the report, cheers erupted from the exhausted soldiers still manning the defense line.
The storm clouds spawned by the rift finally began to part, revealing the pure, brilliant blue of the afternoon sky.
A sky so clear and endless—something that could never be seen over Hanseong.
The untouched beauty of the Northeastern Front.
“I told you to make her strong.”
Murmuring softly, Yu Sang-hyeon looked toward the horizon where Arin would be.
“So that no one could ever harm her again. And someday… so she could change her own world with her own hands.”
The storm clouds were gone.
Through the clear blue sky, a transport helicopter approached, its rotors slicing the air with rhythmic precision.
Feeling the faint, pulsing signature of Arin’s aura energy from within,
Yu Sang-hyeon thought to himself:
A twelve-year-old girl who could push back an entire front line.
A child forged by the brutality of the Northeastern Front, tempered by real battle and by his own training.
If she could absorb it all—
“It’ll be just as you said.”
The child Kim Chang-woon saved—
Would become the hero who would one day change Joseon.
---The End Of The Chapter---
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