Copying Runes to Become the World's Strongest - Chapter 22

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 22
“If you were going to meet Go Hyeonjun, you should have told me first.”
Baek Jegeon, who had set out for Gwanghwamun the moment he took Baek Jejung’s call.
He had planned to meet Hyeonjun in person soon anyway, to talk over a rather confidential contract.
‘I was going to set up a separate appointment later. Perfect timing.’
And he had no work to do today.
A free schedule like this was a rare thing.
‘Heaven handed me the perfect timing.’
Everything was falling neatly into place.
Baek Jegeon was pleased.
“Do I really have to bring you along, too?”
Baek Jehyeok, sitting in the passenger seat.
“He had finished a raid, stopped by the guild for a moment, and got caught on the way out.”
“When an older brother goes somewhere, the younger brother tags along. That’s how it works.”
“Wouldn’t Jejung be thrilled to have someone show up out of nowhere while he’s meeting an acquaintance?”
“If you’d done what I told you when I told you, would we even be in this mess?”
“……”
“Honestly, your mouth really does run on its own.”
Jehyeok had been dragging his feet endlessly, even after being told to go through Jejung and arrange a meeting.
Once Jegeon drove the point home, Jehyeok had nothing left to say.
“Hmph. But you’ve got a point. Barging in unannounced would be a bit awkward.”
“Exactly. If it were me, I’d be getting a knuckle sandwich by now.”
“You think Jejung is anything like you?”
“Jejung will slap my left cheek, and Hyeonjun will slap my right. I’ll go for the philtrum. What about you, sir? Where would you like to hit?”
The driver, gripping the wheel, could only offer an awkward smile in response to Jehyeok’s question.
“What’s the point of talking to you? Don’t go distracting the man who’s working.”
“Come on, Hyung. Be honest, this is a bit much, isn’t it?”
Jehyeok flapped the copy of the contract he’d been reading the whole time.
Its lines of tightly packed writing.
There was hardly a clause in it that would benefit the guild.
“No matter how much talent someone sees in him, who on earth would offer an F-Rank Hunter a deal like this? That’s not being thorough, that’s just being a sucker.”
“You never know.”
“Do you really think so?”
Baek Jegeon pressed his lips shut.
“He had too little evidence to argue back with.”
Silence fell over the car once more.
The vehicle glided smoothly down the road.
Jehyeok crumpled the contract copy, then, apparently bored with the silence, switched on the radio.
-A place where songs and stories soothe your weary shoulders. Afternoon Friend, two o’clock tea time. Hello, everyone. This is the DJ……
The radio broadcast drifted out.
Turning down the volume, Jehyeok leaned back in his seat again and gazed out the window at the passing scenery with a faintly sullen look.
-Today……
The DJ’s words, which had been flowing along, suddenly stopped.
Small voices murmured back and forth, as if discussing something.
“What?”
Jehyeok adjusted the volume.
The radio was fine.
It was a broadcast accident.
-We apologize, listeners. There was a brief disturbance.
The DJ’s tone, which had been soaked in sentiment just moments before, had changed completely.
-We interrupt with a breaking news report. Around 1:58 p.m., a large explosion occurred near the Jongno-gu Office Annex.
Jehyeok jolted upright and cranked the volume to the maximum.
The DJ’s voice, swollen to enormous size, filled the car, but no one challenged it.
-The exact scale of damage has not yet been confirmed, and the cause of the explosion remains unidentified. It may not be a simple accident but a terror attack by a Villain, so anyone nearby should evacuate quickly, and those planning to travel along Saemunan-ro should take a detour. Once again, we report that just a moment ago……
Jehyeok whipped his head around to look behind him.
The brothers’ gazes crossed.
***
Baek Jejung could not make sense of the situation he found himself in.
The world had gone dark in an instant.
All he could hear was a ringing in his ears.
‘W-what?’
A faint voice reached his ears through the ringing.
The whine in his head slowly faded, and the voice grew clearer.
“Are you okay?”
It was Hyeonjun’s voice.
Baek Jejung tried to speak, but a sudden wave of pain seized him.
“Gah… ugh…”
“You’re not badly hurt.”
A searing heat prickled across his skin.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Baek Jejung forced out a few words.
“What on earth happened?”
“There was an explosion somewhere. This restaurant got caught up in it.”
“An explosion?”
“Yeah. The blast brought the ceiling down.”
“No way…”
Hyeonjun pushed himself up with effort.
The top of the round table that had been shielding his back.
The heavy chunks of concrete that had fallen onto it came crashing down onto the floor.
‘Totally wrecked.’
The impact had been so violent that the tabletop itself had split into pieces among the debris.
If that had hit Baek Jejung’s head instead, what would have happened?
‘He’d have been badly hurt. Or dead.’
Hyeonjun reached a hand out to the fallen Baek Jejung.
“Can you get up?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Baek Jejung struggled to lift himself up.
It was too dark around them, so he pulled out his phone and turned on the light.
Only then did the restaurant come into view.
The luxurious interior had vanished without a trace.
In its place lay nothing but a mess, as if a war had just broken out.
Baek Jejung stood there, mouth agape, stunned.
‘Good grief. How am I even in one piece?’
He wasn’t entirely unscathed, but looking at the damage the blast had caused, it felt wrong to say he’d been hurt.
“If you’re fine, let’s head out.”
“Oh, right.”
As he moved to follow, Baek Jejung noticed a layer of dust blanketing Hyeonjun’s back.
“Hyung, there’s dust all over your back…”
In that instant, something clicked in Baek Jejung’s mind.
Why was he unharmed?
And why was Hyeonjun’s back covered in dust?
Now he thought he understood.
‘No way…’
His gaze drifted up toward the ceiling.
A gaping hole in the ceiling.
Various fixtures, like pipes and ducts, were exposed.
Directly beneath it sat the chair he had been occupying just moments ago, smashed to pieces.
Concrete rubble was piled thick all around the chair.
“…”
Baek Jejung had pieced together the whole situation.
Fighting back the surge rising in his chest, he managed to speak.
“Hyung. Why would you do something so dangerous?”
“I used the table as a shield.”
“That’s not the point…”
“As long as you’re okay.”
Hyeonjun answered as if it were nothing.
Baek Jejung was left speechless.
Not once, but twice.
He owed his life to him, not once but two times over.
No words of gratitude or material repayment could ever express or settle a debt of that magnitude, and yet he had already been given that gift twice.
“Let’s get out of here first.”
“⋯⋯Understood.”
Baek Jejung sniffled and followed Hyeonjun.
The restaurant was utterly devastated.
The ceiling and walls had caved in, and all sorts of fixtures and furnishings lay scattered everywhere.
Perhaps it was a mercy, but no other casualties were in sight.
“Wait a second.”
Hyeonjun, who had been moving forward, came to a sudden halt.
“What is it?”
Baek Jejung tilted his head.
Hyeonjun raised a finger and held it to his lips.
“Shh.”
Baek Jejung snapped his mouth shut.
He regulated his breathing as much as he could, trying to keep even his breaths quiet.
That was when it happened.
“Kwahahaha! Looks like it really blew up good!”
The restaurant was located in the basement of some building.
A voice echoed through that underground space.
A presence could be felt nearby.
It seemed to draw closer, then faded away again.
Once the footsteps had grown faint, Hyeonjun murmured in a low voice.
“Can you get internet on your phone?”
Baek Jejung checked his screen.
Not only was there no Wi-Fi, there wasn’t even a data signal icon.
“I can’t get any signal either.”
“This looks like a terrorist attack to me.”
“N-no way…!”
The explosion was far too large to be a simple accident.
A figure presumed to be a Villain had appeared.
Communication devices had gone dead, and at the worst possible moment.
Every piece of evidence pointed to that conclusion.
“The terrorist is probably nearby, so let’s avoid him as much as possible and slip out quietly.”
Every part of Hyeonjun wanted to beat that Villain to death.
But with no information whatsoever about the enemy, he couldn’t rush in recklessly.
‘If I’m careless, I’ll die.’
So unless something unavoidable happened, not running into him was the best course.
Hyeonjun set his sights on one goal alone: escape.
“Lower the Light brightness.”
Worried the Villain might spot them, he dimmed the brightness of his phone’s flashlight even further.
Now it could barely illuminate the space right in front of them.
Hyeonjun beckoned Baek Jejung to follow, then lowered his body and moved on again.
That was how the two of them made it out of the restaurant unharmed.
Still, they had only cleared the first hurdle.
Ahead of them lay a corridor that was just as wrecked as the restaurant had been.
“Where do we go from here?”
Hyeonjun had never set foot in this building before.
Baek Jejung glanced around with a troubled expression and then hung his head.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been here much either, so I don’t really know.”
“Then let’s start by looking for the emergency exit signs.”
Hyeonjun stepped carefully over the debris.
Fortunately, it wasn’t long before they spotted the green glow of an emergency exit.
“Found it.”
“Thank goodness.”
The two of them let out a breath of relief.
They had been anxiously bracing for a run-in with the Villain the whole time.
“The path’s intact too. We’re lucky.”
Unlike the other corridors, the route to the emergency exit was relatively clean.
They had worried it might be blocked by rubble, but thankfully that didn’t happen.
The two of them hurried across the corridor and reached the emergency exit.
“Eek!”
Just then, a scream rang out from the far end of the corridor.
Hyeonjun turned back toward it, the stairwell door still cracked open under his hand.
Baek Jejung’s gaze drifted into the darkness of the corridor as well.
“H-hyung. I think that guy ran into a villain.”
“Yeah.”
Hyeonjun stared down the corridor for a moment, weighing it, before he finally spoke.
“Let’s just go. If we’re careless, we’ll die.”
He had to judge this coldly.
Misplaced pity or a sense of justice would only add to the number of victims.
“…Understood.”
Hearing Hyeonjun say it, Baek Jejung had no choice but to take his heavy steps forward.
Baek Jejung went through first.
Then came the moment Hyeonjun was about to follow.
-Mom!
A voice rang out, echoing down the corridor.
This time it was the cry of a rather young boy.
Hyeonjun’s leg froze midair, as if something had caught it.
-Let go! Let go of me! Stop grabbing my mom’s hair!
-Hahahahaha!
That laughter he’d heard earlier rolled through the basement once more.
Hyeonjun stood rooted in place, staring into the corridor.
There was nothing to see but an endless, thick darkness, yet in his mind he could picture a small boy trying to save his mother.
It didn’t feel like someone else’s problem to Hyeonjun.
‘…No. I can’t.’
Hyeonjun had too many things he had to protect.
Especially now, when he had only just grabbed hold of a lead on his mother’s illness.
Now that there was hope she could be cured, he couldn’t throw his life away for some stranger.
‘Let’s just go.’
Hyeonjun tried to force his feet to move.
But unlike his mind, his body stayed fixed toward the corridor.
A future that had not yet been decided unfolded in his head.
A mother and a boy, both dead at the hands of a villain.
Or a boy whose mother had been killed by a villain.
Nothing had been decided yet, but one of the two would become the ending.
He didn’t like either one.
Enough to want to change that ending, even knowing how dangerous it was.
“…Hyung?”
“Go on ahead.”
Baek Jejung caught on to his resolve and grabbed Hyeonjun’s arm.
“It’s dangerous.”
“I know. But I think I’d regret it if I didn’t go.”
If he walked away now, he had a feeling today would stay with him for the rest of his life.
“I want to come with you too, but… I’d only get in the way.”
“Go up and bring back another Hunter. We need people like that too.”
Baek Jejung nodded with a resolute look and dashed up the stairwell.
Hyeonjun ran back down the corridor he had just come through.
Before long, the small sound of a boy crying began to reach him.
Thwack!
A sound of something being struck came with it.
Hyeonjun hid at the corner and cautiously poked his head out.
A small-framed boy was sitting on the floor, and in front of him stood a woman with her collar gripped in someone’s fist.
“Why’d it suddenly get so quiet? That’s no fun.”
A man who looked to be quite a bit older.
He was big, his hair a tangled, unkempt mess like a dog’s coat.
In his hand, he held a woman who was covered in blood.
‘That bastard.’
Hyeonjun barely kept his body under control, the urge to lunge out already surging through him.
‘Stay calm.’
He had no idea how strong the opponent was.
He had to buy time, keeping his distance as much as possible.
Then either the Awakened Police or a Hunter would come here.
“I don’t need to hold out for long.”
This is Jongno, the heart of Seoul.
It’s an area where support could come pouring in from anywhere.
A terror attack of this scale would have Hunters arriving from all over by now.
Even if communications had gone dead, that wouldn’t be much of a problem.
‘If I use Agility, my highest Stat, and stall for time until someone comes to help…’
Hyeonjun’s thoughts came to a halt.
That was because a message had surfaced in his field of vision while he was fixed on the Villain.
[There is a target you can Discern.]

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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