The Former Empress Roughly Hides Her Abilities - Chapter 501

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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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Yeo Joo Saves the World
Part 3, Episode 105

“Ah, I can finally breathe. I thought I was going to starve to death.”
Shin Se Hee, having polished off four patient meals all by herself, drained a full glass of water with satisfaction before speaking.
Then she glanced at Seo Yu Baek and made an embarrassed face.
“Oh, I shouldn’t use the word ‘dying’ in a hospital, should I? I apologize, sir.”
“……That’s fine. How about you, Shin Se Hee? You seem to be doing well.”
Seo Yu Baek examined the empty bowls, smiled faintly, and asked.
“I’m perfectly fine. So fine it’s actually irritating.”
With that answer, Shin Se Hee sprang from the bed and moved to the sofa where I and the others were sitting.
Right next to me.
She leaned her face in so close I couldn’t help but think ‘huh?’ as she spoke.
“Thank you, Yeo Joo the healer.”
“Don’t mention it. I’m just glad I could help.”
Ugh, this is awkward.
I edged backward a few centimeters and laughed.
But it turned out to be a feint—a distraction tactic.
Or more precisely, a misdirection.
While I was distracted by how uncomfortably close her face was, her hand suddenly grabbed mine again.
Ding—

《 ♥ 52 》

“Not only do you have a kind heart, but how can your hand be so warm? It would be stranger if someone didn’t recover with a hand like this.”
I’d forgotten for a moment, having been away for so long, just how shocking it was to see her again.
When Shin Se Hee liked something, she was utterly unburdened by hesitation.
“Guild Master Kang Han really ought to treat Yeo Joo the healer well. Such a precious person in the Justice Guild—what fortune.”
“No matter how much you flatter her, there’s no chance Yeo Joo will ever go to the Muwoon Guild,” Kang Han replied.
Shin Se Hee scoffed at his answer.
“I don’t even have a place in the Muwoon Guild. Why would I take Yeo Joo the healer there?”
“What are you talking about?”
Shin Tae Muk’s expression hardened immediately.
“Why wouldn’t you have a place in the Muwoon Guild? I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure, but if everyone just knew you came back safely, they’d…….”
“They’d what? You probably all thought it was for the best that I, who lost out in the succession struggle, am shut away at home.”
As sharp words flew back and forth, I quietly withdrew my hand from her grasp.
Fight all you want—just not with me involved.
Fortunately, Shin Se Hee was too caught up in the argument with Shin Tae Muk to notice.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the guild master’s seat is yours whenever you want it. My feelings haven’t changed.”
“Are you joking right now?”
Shin Se Hee flared up at Shin Tae Muk’s words.
“Do you think the Muwoon Guild master’s seat is something you can just hand over to whoever you please like that?!”
“Why are you a stranger? We’re cousins, even if not by blood.”
“What? If we weren’t cousins, you never would have let me get dragged into the succession fight in the first place!”
This was definitely starting to sound like a family dispute.
Shin Se Hee threw herself at the argument with wild abandon while Shin Tae Muk, composed but somehow all the more infuriating for it, refused to back down.
“Okay, never mind! Do you know where that bastard Shin Tae Jung is right now?”
This was my opening.
I caught the thread of conversation as it swung closer to the heart of the matter.
“Shin Tae Jung—he was the one who brainwashed and imprisoned Hunter Shin Se Hee, yes?”
“That’s right, that snake-eyed bastard.”
“Snake-eyed?”
“When he uses his Brainwashing Skill, his pupils widen unnaturally. It’s creepy as hell.”
“Do you remember everything that happened while you were imprisoned?”
“……Mostly. There are some fuzzy spots in the middle, but……”
Luck, it seemed, was still on my side.
I took Shin Se Hee’s hand again and spoke.
“I hate to ask someone fresh from recovery, but could you tell us what happened?”

* * *

“So, to lay it out from the beginning: after the Guild Cup ended, Hunter Shin Se Hee stayed home for a while, then Shin Tae Jung suddenly showed up. She couldn’t just turn him away, so she let him in, and that’s when he hit her with his Brainwashing Skill and dragged her off somewhere. When the brainwashing didn’t hold stable, Shin Tae Jung used some kind of drug and broke her leg. Is that right?”
Hearing myself say it aloud, it hit me all at once.
Just how horrific what Shin Se Hee had endured truly was.
“Hunter Shin Se Hee?”
“Ah, I’m sorry.”
Shin Se Hee’s expression had gone blank.
After going through something like that, there were bound to be aftereffects……
“Guild Master Kang Han, about the Justice Project—can’t you do a second re-awakening?”
While she was confined, I’d told her about a few things she’d missed, including the recently announced Justice Project.
“The trigger is the trauma from your first awakening. Whether even one re-awakening is possible is uncertain.”
“But Guild Master Kang Han has done it multiple times. I only need two.”
“Why do you keep fixating on two?”
At Shin Tae Muk’s question, Shin Se Hee answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Because then I’ll be SS-Rank, and then I can kill that bastard Shin Tae Jung.”
Was it a lingering effect?
It had to be a lingering effect.
The Shin Se Hee I’d cared for back in the Sejonmak wasn’t the type to charge in this thoughtlessly, was she?
“You need to fix that fiery temper of yours.”
“Yeah, I’ll fix it. After I kill Shin Tae Jung.”
Maybe she was someone I could better appreciate from a distance.
I pulled out the note that Seo Yu Baek had given me and set it on the table to wrap up the conversation.
“What’s this?”
“It was in Shin Se Hee’s pocket, apparently. An address of an old abandoned building in Yeongdeungpo…….”
“Oh, that!”
Shin Se Hee slapped her knee and spoke up.
“That bastard Cult Leader shoved it in there!”
“……The Apocalypse Cult’s Cult Leader? Bishop Yi?”
“I don’t know his name. There’s this scrawny guy.”
“Scrawny…… that sounds about right. But Bishop Yi gave that note to Hunter Shin Se Hee?”
“It wasn’t just the note. The Cult Leader was also the one who let me escape.”
Bishop Yi had freed Shin Se Hee after Shin Tae Jung had gone to such lengths to capture her?
Why would he do that?
Questions piled upon questions.
“But that person—he’s only called the Cult Leader in name. The real power behind it is Shin Tae Jung.”
“He doesn’t have support from within the organization……”
That made some sense, at least.
I paused to think, then asked Shin Se Hee.
“Do you remember anything about where you were being held? The scenery, anything like that?”
“Scenery? I was just tied up in a storage warehouse.”
Crack.
At the sound of something breaking, I turned to see that the armrest of the chair Shin Tae Muk had been leaning on was completely shattered.
“I’ll take full responsibility and compensate you, Director Seo.”
It’s hard to maintain composure after destroying a perfectly good armrest.
“What about outside the warehouse? Was it extremely cold, or underground, or anything like that?”
“Whenever the warehouse door opened, I could sometimes see something if there was some kind of medicinal smell drifting in. But it was just ordinary rural scenery—surrounded by high mountains.”
That was enough.
I pulled out my phone and searched for the Gate occurrence records publicly listed on the Awakeners Association website.
There it was.
“Association President, there was a C-Rank Gate that opened at this shopping complex from the address about nine years ago.”
“……A common Forest Dungeon, then.”
Association President Ji Jung Hwi frowned as if reading between the lines.
“I did find it strange. Every time I encountered Shin Tae Jung, his Darkness Addiction Rate was incredibly high, but he wasn’t actively clearing the Dungeon enough for the addiction rate to spike like that.”
I already knew the Apocalypse Cult was using Dungeons as hideouts.
That’s why I’d reported the illegal Gate occupation to Shane, but all I got back was that they “couldn’t intervene.”
I couldn’t search through every Gate that had ever opened in history, so I’d let it drop.
I could conduct a search with the Association President’s support, but I was afraid the Apocalypse Cult might flee deeper into hiding if I revealed what we knew.
I tapped the address Bishop Yi had sent with my fingertip and spoke.
“What if a Gate that supposedly closed after a normal clear actually stayed open and has been maintained this whole time?”
Yeongdeungpo, a rough neighborhood sparse in people, and a Gate that by records should have already vanished.
“It would be a perfect hideout.”
“And I think the Apocalypse Cult’s Cult Leader sent some kind of SOS signal for a reason—asking us to get him out of that hideout.”
We might come up empty or walk into a trap after all this movement, but the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.
This could be our chance to finally wipe out the Apocalypse Cult after so many failures.
“Shall we go smoke out that rat’s nest?”

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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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