Chapter 117

“W-What should we do? We cannot possibly hide this…”

“Release a statement,” Shin-hoo ordered coldly. “Conceal everything regarding the syndicate, and only announce Kwon Haeju’s death. As for the cause… we won’t be able to hide it forever. Wait until the public’s initial shock dies down, then leak that it was a simple suicide. Feeding them a plausible truth will reduce the number of conspiracy theorists trying to dig deeper.”

Shin-hoo ruthlessly categorized the facts, sorting what could be publicly disclosed from what must remain buried. It was the absolute best damage control he could orchestrate under the circumstances.

Even if Kwon Haeju was technically a retired Hunter, his sudden death would still trigger a massive geopolitical shockwave.

Massaging his aching temples, Shin-hoo coldly calculated the political gains and losses within the complex societal web.

In truth, the public’s interest in Kwon Haeju faded rather quickly. A dead man was just a dead man. Shin-hoo had no time to waste mourning a pathetic hypocrite who had ultimately slit his own throat because he was too weak to overcome his sentimental attachments. He had far too many actual crises demanding his immediate attention.

“My head is splitting,” Shin-hoo groaned.

The syndicate that Haeju had single-handedly slaughtered held many dark secrets. First and foremost, Shin-hoo needed to identify their hidden benefactors. He also needed to thoroughly analyze the research data acquired from the destroyed facility to understand exactly what those maniacs had been plotting, all while systematically hunting down any remaining stragglers.

Well, objectively speaking, perhaps this was a stroke of luck.

It was a devastating shame to lose a nuclear asset like Kwon Haeju’s combat abilities, but if sacrificing one retired Hunter permanently solved this massive headache, the situation wasn’t entirely terr—

“Hm?”

Shin-hoo froze.

As if struck by a sudden realization, he slowly turned his head to look at the glass wall of the office. His reflection stared back at him. He locked eyes with an older, much colder man than the one he remembered being.

This was him in his forties. But currently, Nam Shin-hoo was…

“Is something wrong, sir?” the Association President asked nervously.

“No, wait. Something is wrong.”

His vision suddenly warped. His mind churned, the chaotic jumble of thoughts feeling as thick and murky as wet mud.

Why didn’t I realize this sooner? Why did I never once think this was strange until now?

Shin-hoo was acutely aware that the situation he was currently experiencing was a dream. This had happened before—it was the phenomenon of his past life’s memories replaying themselves as vivid nightmares.

Therefore, the scene unfolding before his eyes was an echo of a life he had already lived; these were events that had actually occurred in the previous timeline. And yet…

Shin-hoo opened his mouth. Defying the established sequence of the memory, the Shin-hoo inside the dream spoke up.

“Why… why have I never remembered this until now?”

“Pardon?”

The voice that slipped past his lips belonged to his younger self.

His current consciousness had violently overlaid itself upon his past memories. Like a lucid dream, the body of the forty-something Shin-hoo moved according to his present will, and the thoughts of the regressed Shin-hoo were spoken aloud.

“This… this is wrong. This is completely different from my memories.”

There were far too many glaring inconsistencies. Agonizing over the gruesome scene he had just witnessed through the CCTV footage, Shin-hoo clutched his head in his hands.

In his previous life, Kwon Haeju had definitely committed suicide. And Shin-hoo had received that tragic news through an official Hunter Association report. Or, at least, that was what he had firmly remembered.

But what if that wasn’t the truth?

It felt as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to the back of his skull. The sheer, overwhelming shock of the revelation made his vision black out.

“Ugh…”

Only then did Shin-hoo finally recognize the source of the nauseating dread swelling in his gut.

A massive, terrifying distortion existed within his own memories—one he hadn’t noticed until this very moment.

***

Shin-hoo snapped his eyes open.

Rubbing his dry, gritty eyes, his vision slowly cleared, revealing a bedroom bathed in brilliant sunlight. Judging by the angle of the rays, it was already late morning.

He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths, pressing his fingers against his wrist to monitor his stubbornly racing pulse.

What the hell was that dream?

It had been so incredibly vivid that he could barely distinguish where the nightmare ended and reality began. The psychological shock he had experienced within the dream continued to violently rattle his waking mind.

Shin-hoo forced himself to calmly organize his tangled thoughts. Step by step, he dragged out every single memory he possessed and laid them out chronologically. Even as he did so, his stomach churned with unrelenting nausea.

In his previous life, Kwon Haeju had retired after a catastrophic failure during a massive dungeon subjugation. Taking the surviving guild members and their families with him, Haeju had relocated to a small, remote island belonging to an allied nation. He had claimed he wanted to quietly live out his remaining years in peace. Then, one day, he committed suicide. Quietly, and entirely alone.

“Haa…”

This was where the glaring discrepancy began.

Until this morning, Shin-hoo had genuinely believed he had learned of Haeju’s death and its cause through a standardized Association report. He had easily accepted the narrative that Haeju’s suicide was simply the tragic, impulsive decision of a broken Hunter who had lost his final sanctuary.

But that makes absolutely no sense.

The past version of Nam Shin-hoo would have never accepted such a flimsy explanation so easily. He would have never believed that a man of Kwon Haeju’s indomitable caliber would simply slit his own throat out of sheer loneliness without a specific, devastating catalyst.

This unnatural acceptance had persisted even after his regression. Despite recalling the fact of Haeju’s suicide countless times, Shin-hoo had never once questioned the underlying reason for it.

It was as if a mental block had been intentionally placed over that specific memory.

The tips of Shin-hoo’s fingers trembled faintly.

The eyes of the Kwon Haeju staring into the CCTV camera had been entirely devoid of life, as dull and inanimate as cold stones. They were the eyes of a man who had been violently stripped of every last shred of hope and willpower.

And then, those final, silent words Haeju had mouthed to the camera.

‘I am so tired.’

Haeju had lost the vast majority of his guild due to his own critical mistake. To protect the fragile few who remained, he had built a secluded nest and hidden them away from the world. Yet, even those survivors had been dragged into a syndicate’s crosshairs because of their association with him, ultimately leading to their complete annihilation.

It was the final, agonizing testament of a man who had lost every single person precious to him because of his own existence. How could Shin-hoo have possibly forgotten such a raw, desperately tragic final testament? It was an image burned so deeply into his soul.

“Are you awake?”

Haeju, who had apparently stepped out of the room for a moment, walked back in. The bright, gentle smile gracing his features sharply overlapped with the pale, blood-soaked face from the CCTV footage. The contrast was so severe that they hardly seemed like the same person.

“You must have been incredibly exhausted,” Haeju noted fondly. “It is already past eleven.”

“…”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. I suppose the banquet took more out of me than I anticipated. I just… can’t seem to shake off the fatigue.”

“Hmm…”

Was this profound physical lethargy a side effect of that horrifying dream? A psychological shock severe enough to uproot his entire sense of reality wasn’t something he could easily brush off. He felt as if he were sinking into a treacherous mire, completely unsure of where his fabricated memories ended and the truth began.

However, he absolutely could not let Haeju catch on to his inner turmoil.

Shin-hoo firmly shook his head, attempting to dispel the lingering shadows. He rolled his stiff shoulders and swung his heavy legs over the edge of the bed. But something felt genuinely off. It was far too profound a physical exhaustion to blame entirely on a bad dream.

A deep, throbbing ache radiated through his muscles with every minor movement.

Am I seriously this sore just from attending a banquet?

That excuse held no water, considering Shin-hoo had effortlessly navigated dozens of high-stakes galas in his life. The true culprit behind his intense muscle aches and dry, gritty eyes was undoubtedly a completely different, far more strenuous activity.

Even after his consciousness had delightfully short-circuited the previous night, he vaguely recalled the sensation of Haeju’s hands continuing to grope and mold his pliant body in his sleep…

Now that he looked closer, Haeju was practically glowing. He looked incredibly satisfied, observing Shin-hoo’s wobbly, exhausted state with poorly concealed pride.

Shin-hoo narrowed his eyes.

“…You look awfully proud of yourself.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you mean.”

Like hell you don’t. The man looked like he had the word ‘bliss’ tattooed across his forehead.

Massaging his aching lower back, Shin-hoo slowly forced himself to stand. Thanks to Haeju’s shamelessly smug face, the paralyzing shock scrambling his brain began to recede. Seeing Haeju look so radiantly happy helped clear the dark, suffocating fog the nightmare had left behind.

Right. Let’s just calm down and organize this logically. Nothing has happened yet.

It was simply a matter of a few memories shifting to reveal the truth. It certainly wasn’t a trivial issue, but Shin-hoo ruthlessly forced himself to compartmentalize the panic. If he didn’t, he felt he might truly shatter under the weight of it all.

He repeatedly anchored himself to one absolute truth: In this lifetime, I still have the chance to change the future.

Taking a long, slow breath to quell his roiling stomach, his mind finally cleared.

Yes. The reality he was currently navigating had already diverged significantly from his past memories. Since so many variables had already shifted, he simply needed to adapt and respond to these new developments as they arose. Rather than blindly relying on his fractured memories and growing complacent, he would accept this terrifying revelation as a stark warning to stay vigilant.

It’s fine. We still have time…

Furthermore, the crucial intelligence regarding the syndicate that had kidnapped Haeju remained intact within Shin-hoo’s mind.

That specific syndicate was the very cancer that had hollowed out the European Union—once an absolute powerhouse in the Hunter world—from the inside out. They were a secret society that had originated in China, a nation that had completely closed its borders to the outside world long ago.

They operated under a myriad of aliases. Whenever they crossed a national border, they cloaked themselves in a new identity to obscure their true nature. Because their organizational structure was entirely decentralized, comprised of isolated, unconnected nodes, uncovering their actual name had taken an agonizingly long time. But in the end, Shin-hoo had succeeded in unearthing it.

‘The Cradle of Genesis.’

That was the true culprit responsible for driving the Kwon Haeju of his past life to suicide.

***

The global Hunter community could be broadly divided into four major geopolitical factions.

The first was the United States, the undisputed pioneer and frontrunner. The second was the European Union, which had once fiercely competed with the US as its sole, legitimate rival.

The third faction was China, an aggressively expansionist power attempting to swallow Southeast Asia whole to forge a monolithic Hunter ecosystem under its absolute control. Finally, the fourth faction was comprised of the individual, independent nations that had chosen solitary survival over joining any major coalition.

South Korea belonged to the fourth faction.

Historically, this fourth group had been heavily criticized as a collection of stubborn, archaic nations clinging to obsolete pride, utterly failing to ride the transformative wave that followed the Hunters’ emergence. Of course, that narrative had changed entirely now that South Korea was widely considered a superior power to the United States.

Regardless of the shifting global hierarchy, the most critical detail was the faction Nam Shin-hoo had never once paid attention to until now. The third faction: China.