The Tone-Deaf Healer Kills with a Song - Chapter 102
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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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Tone-Deaf Healer Kills with Song – Episode 102
“….”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s nothing….”
A sudden chill crept over me. It was probably just my imagination, but even though I knew there was nothing over there, my gaze kept drifting toward the Ragnarok Remnants.
There’s a saying that people can sense malice.
Whether someone likes you or dislikes you, whether they find a situation uncomfortable or not—you can instinctively feel such things.
That’s exactly what I was experiencing right now.
A strange sense of ill intent emanated from that direction. There’s no way I could possess the ability to perceive a situation at that distance, yet that’s what my instincts were telling me.
I blinked and shook my head.
“Liri, do you feel anything strange?”
“Hm?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by feeling something….”
Liri’s gaze, too, was fixed on that direction.
“Whenever a Gate appeared back then, there was always residual mana or divine power from the Awakened who died there. I don’t think we can sense anything particularly special beyond that.”
“Mana and divine power?”
“Along with those who awakened but died meaninglessly, there were also Staff Members who perished while trying to protect them.”
“I see….”
“So we can’t sense anything particularly special from there. Did you perhaps sense something, Ye-ah?”
“Yes, something like unpleasant mana….”
The word ‘malice’ was too vague.
When I rephrased it as simply unpleasant mana, Liri nodded as if that made sense.
“Since Ye-ah recently accumulated mana along with studying it, you can sense such things more keenly now. Is it uncomfortable enough to affect your body?”
“No, it’s not that severe.”
“If it’s not that bad, there’s not much to worry about.”
This was less a concern and more that distinctly Korean feeling of unease, but I didn’t bother voicing it aloud.
It was actually more comforting to dismiss it as my own overthinking.
After all, suddenly sensing such a desolate feeling from that place only conjured up ghost stories in my mind.
Jung Hwan-jae, who had almost no mana to begin with, wore a puzzled expression as if he felt nothing at all.
So mana was truly necessary to perceive such sensations.
“Lucy, you don’t feel anything?”
“Well, me? Actually, I’m the type who senses deaths from that place more acutely than Liri does.”
That surprised me.
Hadn’t Liri said she was stronger than Lucy?
Yet when it came to sensing death, Lucy was more sensitive than Liri.
It seemed to be related to his true identity, as he offered no further explanation.
When the Staff Members, who usually shared most things willingly, fell silent, it was a truth I could never uncover no matter what I did. Having already grasped this fact, I gave up asking further questions.
“Then finding Kim Kyung-hoon’s location should be our top priority now. I think we could locate him without much difficulty using a tracker.”
Jung Hwan-jae opened his mouth, subtly changing the subject.
Right. This wasn’t the time to dwell on the unease I was feeling. Somewhere out there, Staff Members and Hunters might be dying even now.
I had to stop this before even one more person died.
This wasn’t some kind of ranger ability or anything.
“But can’t the Staff Members check among themselves who died and when?”
“It’s difficult. It’s like information disappearing into the vast internet.”
“It’s the same as you not being able to immediately know when some nameless Hunter dies somewhere.”
Come to think of it, there were probably far more Staff Members than Awakeners on Earth, so it would be remarkable if we could keep track of every single one.
Since Baldur itself wasn’t structured with a president or anything like that.
If anything, it was everyone fending for themselves—there was no way to know who died where.
So we’d have to search on foot.
“If we use a tracking skill to search, wouldn’t we need a Hunter stronger than Kim Kyung-hoon? No, wait—stronger than So Yi-yoon? There are probably a lot of hidden skills out there.”
I was probably thinking of the same person as Jung Hwan-jae.
Someone stronger than So Yi-yoon who possessed the skill to find his traces.
And in a situation like this, someone who could cooperate better than anyone else. In Hanttae, there was only one such person, wasn’t there?
* * *
“This seems too harsh for a twenty-three-year-old.”
Upon hearing the enormous task suddenly thrust upon him, Sung Ji-wook said just that one thing.
Currently twenty-three, he’d Awakened before even becoming a high school student.
Sung Mi-ju was three years older than me, making her twenty-seven this year.
No matter how strong a Hunter was, they had to take on rough work, so retirement came early in this profession.
Even without going into Dungeons to suffer, there were many ways to earn money after retirement, so they didn’t want to work in the field.
Most became board members giving advice to the Guild Master, joined the Hunter Association, or leisurely became Hunter Academy directors.
Especially Hanttae, which had to clear difficult Dungeons, had a noticeably younger average age because of this.
Sung Ji-wook made a strange groaning sound and held his head, muttering in a small voice.
“What will you do if I say I don’t want to do this, Guild Master?”
“If you say no, there’s nothing I can do… Though I do think it’s problematic to ask someone in their twenties to do something this harsh.”
Jung Hwan-jae, twenty-seven. Surprisingly, still in his twenties.
“If Ji-wook really doesn’t want to, there’s no way around it. As you say, it’s too harsh a task for a twenty-three-year-old…”
Yeom Ye-ah, twenty-four. Also in her twenties.
When the two twenty-somethings nodded with dejected faces as if they understood, Sung Ji-wook let out an anguished cry.
To be honest, I deliberately said those things to prick his conscience a little.
But I wouldn’t do that to someone who wasn’t kind. This was only possible because Sung Ji-wook was a good person.
“But I don’t know if it’ll succeed. I already used up all the traces I had from when I was tracking Ye-ah, so now I need to find someone with fresh traces.”
“That… was it like a consumable?”
So Yi-yoon’s traces that remained on my body were consumables?
As I touched my neck with an expression of disbelief, a fleeting look of pity crossed Sung Ji-wook’s face.
I hoped it was just my imagination.
“It’s evidence, basically. Since I used it as material for casting the tracking skill, I can’t find it on you anymore. And even back then, we didn’t find him—we found his subordinates.”
Sung Ji-wook shook his head, saying that unless the traces were exceptionally strong, it wouldn’t be easy to catch him.
Ranked fourteenth globally, he doesn’t speak empty words. If there’s something he can do, he pushes himself to an excessive degree.
So Yi-yoon is a meticulous person. The fact that only Hwa-jon knew he’d changed his name to Kim Kyung-hoon speaks volumes.
Why hadn’t that person mentioned being So Yi-yoon?
He said only those who came separately would know, and that he had no intention of making it official knowledge.
The image of Hwa-jon muttering that he didn’t want to get entangled remained vivid in my mind.
He understood it instinctively—he couldn’t afford to become entangled with Kim Kyung-hoon.
If he hadn’t maintained that image of distance from everyone and lived as a solitary figure, he would have certainly moved against Hwa-jon first.
A person disadvantaged in all information and reality—someone who wouldn’t be targeted. It wasn’t intentional on his part, but it was undeniably a wise choice.
Had I not happened to learn Kim Kyung-hoon’s real name from him back then, I would still know nothing.
We never intended to include Hwa-jon in our plans to capture So Yi-yoon.
But he was from the same high school.
Isn’t it strange that only Hwa-jon knows his name? There must surely be former classmates and teachers from school who would know.
I snapped back to attention, my head spinning.
“Is there perhaps a skill that erases memories?”
“I don’t have one.”
“No, I mean does one exist?”
“It probably does exist?”
Apparently there are things like memory-manipulation skills that supposedly help people forget the pain of heartbreak.
“There really are some absurdly trivial skills out there.”
“But why are you asking about that?”
Jung Hwan-jae, who had been listening to Sung Ji-wook and my conversation until then, brought the topic back into focus.
“I’m not certain, but… what if Hunter So Yi-yoon has a skill that erases memories?”
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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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