Was Happy Being a Despised F-Rank Healer, You Know? - Chapter 133

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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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16. Strange Omens (10)

The Yoo Clan was ruled by Yu Wan-yeong, a middle-aged woman who, by her rank, still had many years ahead of her.
She wore her hair in a topknot and dressed in a pastel-toned, refined hanbok, its embroidered pattern carrying something faintly unsettling.
From a distance, it resembled a paradise flower, but up close, it was a crane drenched in blood.
The red bird was this family’s symbol.
Upon becoming clan leader, one chose a bird to represent oneself and embroidered it onto one’s robes as though that bird had bathed in blood.
That Yu Wan-yeong’s symbol was a crane owed purely to her resemblance to the bird’s appearance—not to any similarity in temperament.
Of course.
No normal crane would wade through human blood with such leisure.
“Tedious.”
“Shall I kindle a fire?”
“Mm. Never mind. I’ve no appetite for wine today.”
Yu Wan-yeong gestured with a graceful smile, and several presences that had seemed less than living dissolved from the surroundings.
“……Time crawls so slowly.”
It seemed to be because Yu Hee was absent.
She had hoped to witness that serene expression crumple into despair with her own eyes.
Yu Wan-yeong stood by a window where warm sunlight streamed in, gazing down at the Grand Garden sprawling magnificently around the Yu Clan Ancestral House.
That place, where all manner of poisonous plants bloomed in brilliant harmony, was the family’s symbol—a space where all the clan’s covert affairs transpired.
The vista visible through just one window was already staggering; the Yoo Clan had such splendor arrayed in all directions.
And now, in the Northern Garden where Yu Wan-yeong was looking, ‘that child’ had become the heir.
‘Absurd, isn’t it. For one with such a tepid nature to become heir to this place.’
An assassin must harbor no emotional turbulence.
This was entirely different from merely being slow to anger.
Yu Wan-yeong’s daughter, Yu Hee, was a child born with little emotional fluctuation, yet that was not a fitting quality for an assassin’s craft.
‘An assassin without cruelty cannot rule other assassins.’
Cruelty was necessary.
One had to know how to wield it, even if only for show.
Yet Yu Hee was excessively fastidious, prone to excessive melancholy, and consequently lacked fervor even in retaliation.
Her daughter could not grasp that this family could not be maintained by such soft-hearted nature, no matter how many times she was told.
‘So I must demonstrate it.’
She anticipated that assassinations beginning around age five would be easily overcome.
The child’s physical abilities were extraordinary from birth.
Among Awakeners—the common and the extraordinary alike—Yu Hee shone with dazzling brilliance.
With any weapon in hand, she grew proficient in an instant; her mana manipulation was near A-rank from the start.
If one found a flaw amid all these merits, it was only that her mana reserves were strangely sparse…….
She had believed that would be overcome through growth.
But the result proved different.
With skill awakening came the revelation of Yu Hee’s rank: C-grade.
Merely on par with a somewhat talented Academy student.
Coming when her melancholic and unmotivated nature already cast doubt on her fitness as heir, the result was fatal.
So she had summoned her separately and pressed her on the matter.
Yu Wan-yeong herself found it convenient that Yu Hee would become heir; since Yu Hee was born of her legitimate husband rather than a concubine, she could minimize discord if she merely showed ambition.
‘Moreover, her mission success rate was one hundred percent.’
All missions assigned by the Yoo Clan were given at a level marginally higher than the executor’s ability.
It was a method to keep clan members from stagnating, to ensure they grew. And if they died in the process, it was not a tragic death—merely proof that their growth had stopped.
Still, for underage members, missions were calibrated to their level.
Even accounting for that, her record was remarkable.
Which made it all the more unfortunate.
But Yu Hee remained unchanged.

“What would you have me do, Mother?”
“The fact that you must ask already shows the problem—how can you not see it?”

When asked how many people she had killed that month, Yu Hee’s count of completed missions came out. She had killed not a single soul beyond those she was meant to.
An assassin without murderous intent.
Should one call it perfect?
No, that is not perfection.
That is merely the perfection of a tool.
One cannot place a tool at the head of anything.
What’s more, she offered no apology for her meager rank! The child seemed to harbor no dissatisfaction with it whatsoever.
It was then that Yu Wan-yeong abandoned her expectations of Yu Hee.
After that, she stripped all the privileges unique to the heir from Yu Hee—though she did not strip the title itself.
The intent was perfectly clear.
Yu Hee’s purpose within the clan had now changed.
The next heir would be decided by how thoroughly that perfect tool could be broken.
Contemplating her daughter—like a rose bearing no venom but only pitiful thorns, exhaling delicate floral fragrance despite being an assassin—Yu Wan-yeong’s lips curled upward.
“Surely you must pay the price for disappointing me, don’t you agree, my daughter?”
The Red Poison-fed Orchid, which had rested demurely in its vase, crumbled in the clan leader’s grasp.
Red radiance swirled around her hand and seeped into her skin.
A moment later, a faint smile flickered across Yu Wan-yeong’s lips.
A pleasant thought had just occurred to her.
“Yes, there’s no reason I couldn’t watch directly, is there? Wouldn’t you agree, Yu Hee?”
Affection and murderous intent were woven together in her gentle voice.
Soon after, Yu Wan-yeong let out a delighted laugh.
Watching something cherished crumble into despair and death would be a thrill rarely savored.
“Do your best to struggle this time, won’t you.”

***

The ‘Assassin Attack’ arc was one of the small incidents tucked between major events.
Yet this incident would serve as the catalyst for a mid-story arc where the Yoo Clan’s true nature—that it was a family of assassins—would be publicly revealed to the masses.
Though Hunters may have known of Yu Hee’s clan, that mid-story event would expose both the existence of the assassin family and its heir to civilians as well.
‘The identities of those killed in this assassin attack arc will all be revealed around then.’
Yu Hee was popular, so she maintained a fair number of surface friendships.
That meant many would die.
‘Will there be as many targets this time as in the original?’
If the Yoo Clan leader personally involved herself in target selection for her own entertainment, there was a chance that people would die who, in the original, had merely exchanged a smile and greeting with Yu Hee.
“Sigh.”
Moreover, I recalled that someone from Class 8 died in this incident.
Who was the one with the Gap-viewing Skill?
‘……Ah, Tak Jeong-eun.’
I hadn’t had much personal conversation with her, but whenever our eyes met, she always gave me a favorable look.
The type who speaks with her eyes, you might say…….
In the original, Tak Jeong-eun was the one person with whom Yu Hee got along outside of the Yuhan Seong Party members.
One might mistakenly think her strong given that she survived until this point, but she had survived by using her Gap-viewing Skill solely for escape, which meant her confidence always ran thin.
Yu Hee had comforted her with an angelic smile given impartially to all, and that was the narrative between the two of them…….
‘Was Yu Hee close with Jeong-eun?’
Jeong-eun herself had grown in a way entirely different from her gloomy appearance in the original.
I’d never seen her look up to Yu Hee anymore.
Perhaps it was this rank-obsessed world; Jeong-eun becoming B-grade had changed many things about her.
So she wouldn’t become a target this time.
‘If anyone becomes a target, it would be us, wouldn’t it?’
Me included.
The Yuhan Seong Party was targeted in the original too, so that would naturally happen.
After talking with the others, I returned to the Manufacturing Room and worked my hands while thinking.
‘Maybe it would be better to draw all the attention our way instead.’
But I couldn’t decide easily.
My friends are now what matters most to me.
Yet that doesn’t mean I can let other students become playthings for a madwoman’s amusement.
……Actually, the answer was clear.
I was only hesitating because by my friends’ standards, it would count as ‘causing trouble.’
Still, that method would be the most stable, wouldn’t it?
The moment I thought that, Erich spoke up.
[Why are you making a potion that induces a comatose state?]
I couldn’t hide that I’d been caught and rolled my eyes.

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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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