Chapter 128

Of course. How could a higher-tier title than “Soft Focus” be normal? Having received kisses from over a hundred fairies probably increased his luck, but the side effects were quite significant. While some people might be envious, for Jun-sang, it was nothing more than a headache.

In any case, Jun-sang and Henes, along with the fairy knight Mia-ra, hid behind a rock on a small path where intruders often appeared. “Are you sure they come here?” Jun-sang asked Mia-ra again after a considerable amount of time had passed without a sign of anyone. Mia-ra, as if she had been waiting for the question, quickly replied, “Yes, they came yesterday, and the day before yesterday too.”

“Hmm…” If they came every day, he thought there might be a village or a base camp nearby.

“Soft Breeze, Southern Wind.” Jun-sang summoned two Wind Elementals, which are invisible to the human eye, and sent them out to scout the area. A short time later, the spirits reported that a group of people was entering the forest. It was impossible to determine the exact number of people through the spirits, but knowing their general location was enough.

Jun-sang said to Mia-ra, who was secretly watching him from his shoulder, “I’ve found the intruders. I’m going to move, so hold on tight.”

“Yes!”

After hearing Mia-ra’s reply, Jun-sang nodded at Henes, who was getting on the Crimson Wolf, and carefully headed toward the intruders, cutting through the forest. Thanks to the quick detection by the Wind Elementals, the intruders were still on the outskirts of the forest.

“Is there really a Spirit Gate?”

“The boss said there is. I’m just going with it.”

Jun-sang saw a group of mercenaries in shabby clothes grumbling as they entered the forest. If they weren’t carrying weapons on their backs, they would have looked more like a band of beggars than mercenaries. Jun-sang used his Insight skill to check all the mercenaries, but most of them were just mediocre. After all, if they were truly skilled, they wouldn’t be loitering in such a remote forest while the continent was in chaos.

While looking at the mercenaries, Jun-sang noticed a cart being pulled by a horse. No… more accurately, it looked more like the type of cage used to transport criminals in historical dramas. As he looked closer, he saw a small child crouching inside.

“Are those them?”

“Yes, those are them. They come up this path, dig around until evening, and then go back.”

“I see.” Jun-sang nodded, then slowly stood up and said again, “Stay here. I’ll go chase them away and be right back.”

“Yes!”

“Be safe.”

After hearing Mia-ra and Henes’s replies, Jun-sang immediately used Phase Shift and instantly appeared in front of the mercenaries.

“Whoa!”

“What, what is it!”

The mercenaries, who had been grumbling and moving along the path, were startled when Jun-sang suddenly appeared in front of them. Since he had literally popped out of the shadows of the forest, they couldn’t help but be flustered.

“Who are you!”

The mercenary at the front grabbed his sword and shield and shouted bravely, but instead of answering, Jun-sang simultaneously activated Gaze of Fear, Evil Eye, and Mad Dog’s Dignity.

“Gasp!” The mercenaries gasped in unison. They might have been able to overlook his unusual appearance and clothes, and they could have just told themselves that they had imagined him appearing out of the darkness. However, the crimson glare pouring from Jun-sang’s eyes was not an illusion. It felt as if all the blood in their bodies was draining down their veins and out of their toes. They were mercenaries who had survived countless battlefields, relying on their swords, but it was precisely because they were such people that they were better able to recognize the danger in the light pouring from Jun-sang’s eyes and the energy radiating from his body.

“D-damn it.” He wasn’t an opponent they could defeat with brute force. He wasn’t an opponent they could overwhelm with numbers. So what was left? The only option was to run. The mercenary who had been at the front, shouting at Jun-sang with his sword and shield drawn, made that decision and ran without looking back. When their leader ran away without a word, the others naturally followed suit.

“A-aah!”

“Damn it! I knew this would happen!”

The other mercenaries cursed and quickly started running, not wanting to be left behind. Jun-sang deactivated all his status-effect-inducing abilities only after every single mercenary had fled.

Mia-ra, who had been watching all this from behind the rock, flew over and praised Jun-sang. “Wow! That was amazing! To drive out those humans in an instant!”

But Jun-sang shook his head. “They’re not completely gone.”

“Huh?”

“They’ll probably gather more people and come back.”

“Ah… that makes sense.”

Just by looking at the fact that the quest information hadn’t updated, he could easily tell that scaring them away once wasn’t enough.

As Henes also dismounted from the wolf and came down from the rock, Jun-sang approached the cage-like cart the mercenaries had been pulling. A gust of wind suddenly burst from the cage, trying to push Jun-sang back. Mia-ra, who was sitting on his shoulder, reacted before Jun-sang did.

“A Wind Elemental?”

Jun-sang nodded at Mia-ra’s words. “Looks like it.” Although the power was weak, the unnatural movement of the wind was definitely that of a Wind Elemental. The problem was that the power was weaker than even the lowest-grade Common spirit Jun-sang had, making it difficult to be a threat to an adult male. It was nowhere near enough power to push back someone like Jun-sang. The Wind Elemental blew again as Jun-sang approached, but it was still useless.

Jun-sang looked at the child huddled inside the cage. The child seemed to be only six or seven years old. Jun-sang frowned at the sight of the child, barely covered by rags and covered in filth.

“Grrr…” The child, still crouched in the cage, growled at him.

“…” Jun-sang frowned again at the sight. It was a reaction that was hard to see as normal for a human. The first word that came to mind was wolf-child. The most famous example is the protagonist of Kipling’s novel, but it’s said that there have been about 30 real-life cases since the 1300s.

While he was looking at the child with a somewhat complicated expression, Mia-ra, who was sitting on his shoulder, suddenly spoke up.

“Hmm… it seems to be a descendant of a Spirit User.”

“A Spirit User?” Jun-sang asked, and Mia-ra quickly nodded. “It’s an old story, but when the Gate was open, the spirits’ power was stronger than it is now… and people who wanted to communicate with those spirits built a village and lived nearby.”

“Are you saying this child is a descendant of theirs?”

“Probably.”

Mia-ra answered, then tilted her head and added, “But if they were able to use spirits from birth without being taught by anyone… there’s a possibility that they’re a half-breed with a fairy.”

For a moment, both Jun-sang and Henes were surprised.

“What… did you just say?” Henes quickly asked again, and Mia-ra’s eyes widened. “Huh? What is it?” Henes quickly glanced at Jun-sang’s expression and then cautiously asked Mia-ra, “You said… a half-breed of a fairy and a human.”

Mia-ra finally seemed to understand and nodded, then also glanced at Jun-sang as she replied, “When the Gate was open, humans could also travel to the Fairy and Spirit Realms. It’s impossible here, but I’ve heard that in the Fairy Realm, it was possible for humans and fairies to fall in love and have children.”

“Such…” Jun-sang had a bad feeling, but he shook his head to dismiss the thought.

“Ahem… then why did the mercenaries have this child?” Mia-ra, who had been twisting her body in embarrassment after talking, immediately answered Jun-sang’s question. “Maybe they thought that since fairy blood flows through them, the Spirit Gate might react to them?”

“I see…” It was a plausible theory. Regardless of the chances of success, if there was no other key, it was a method worth trying.

Jun-sang approached the cage and easily broke the crudely made wooden bars. The child, who had been crouching in the corner and growling at Jun-sang, was startled and fell silent. They had realized the power of their opponent after seeing the cage that they couldn’t even move get dismantled more easily than breaking a reed leaf.

“He’s not a fool.” Jun-sang said as he completely broke the cage, then stepped back and said, “Go wherever you want to go.”

“…” The child, for some reason, could understand Jun-sang’s words, unlike the other humans. Although their suspicion hadn’t completely disappeared, the child cautiously came out of the cage that had been confining them. They then quickly tried to run into the forest, but then… they saw the large red wolf that Henes was riding.

“Grrr!”

The child was so happy that they ran up to the red wolf and hugged it tightly.

“…” The sight somehow made Jun-sang think of Seo Yoo-mi. He also realized that Seo Yoo-mi, who used to pounce on the Crimson Wolf and even gave it the name “Jjong,” hadn’t once asked him to summon the wolf during the past few days they had spent together.

While Jun-sang was thinking this, the child kept showing their excitement by rubbing their body against the Crimson Wolf. The Crimson Wolf seemed less than thrilled, but since neither Jun-sang nor Henes said anything, it let the child’s actions be.

In fact, stories about wild children like this were not unheard of in Henes’s world. Of course, most people would likely have dismissed such a child as being possessed by a demon rather than acknowledging their existence rationally, but Henes, being a well-educated young woman from a good family in her world, had heard of such cases.

“It looks like they were raised among red wolves.” Henes said to Jun-sang, and the child nodded wildly at her words.

“Do you… understand what I’m saying?” Again, the child nodded wildly to express their understanding. Henes confirmed this and said to Jun-sang, “It seems this child… might have learned to speak before.”

But Jun-sang shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Huh?”

“Have you forgotten? You and I can communicate with beings from other worlds without any help.”

“Ah…” Jun-sang had gained that ability when he became a returnee, and although Henes didn’t have that ability originally, the communication problem was solved when she became his pet. But for whatever reason, for the child, being able to understand someone’s words was a mystical experience they were having for the first time in their life.

Henes squatted down to the child’s eye level and asked them various questions. Where they were born, how they grew up, and why they were in this state. Perhaps it was her natural friendliness, or perhaps it was the Soft Focus effect she had received from the numerous kisses from the fairies, but the child used gestures and hand movements to earnestly answer her questions. The content wasn’t particularly special. As they had already guessed, the child had been raised among the red wolves and was then captured by the mercenaries while on a hunt. They were so far from their original forest that they didn’t know the way back.

“What should we do?” Henes asked, but Jun-sang didn’t have a good solution either. After all, they were foreigners who had to leave as soon as the quest was over.

“For now… let’s check the mercenaries’ base.”

“Okay.”

They began to move toward the place where they had first spotted the mercenaries. Henes chose to put the child on the back of the red wolf and ride the Ghost Steed with Jun-sang. Soon, they arrived at the place where the spirits had first detected the mercenaries. Jun-sang had intended to track their footprints and scent from there to find their base, but there was no need. The mercenaries who had fled were now returning with their entire group.

When people who had been scared away by a single glance from Jun-sang came back, it was because they had something they trusted. It could be their numbers, or it could be a strong and skilled individual among them. But no matter what it was, it was an annoyance for Jun-sang. At least if they were zombies, he could get a seed from them at a low probability. The only things he could get from these beggar-like mercenaries were their crudely made weapons and a small amount of money.

Jun-sang helped Henes off the Ghost Steed and said, “Henes.”

“Yes.”

“Hide somewhere with the child.”

“Okay. Don’t worry.”

Henes quickly went to the red wolf, took the child, and disappeared into the bushes. After confirming that they were hidden, Jun-sang started walking toward the mercenaries approaching the forest. When Jun-sang appeared, the mercenaries stopped and raised their weapons. There were about a hundred of them. It was a number that would normally be difficult for one person to handle, but unfortunately, Jun-sang was a being who transcended such norms.

As Jun-sang approached, a particularly large man among the mercenaries stepped forward and shouted, “Who are you! How dare you…” The man, who had a physique similar to Yoon Seong-ryeol’s, was about to shout the name of his mercenary group and his own name.

However, “Gasp!” Jun-sang’s actions were faster than his words. The man suddenly felt his body being pulled and quickly regained his posture.

“Tsk…” Jun-sang clicked his tongue. His attempt to instantly pull the man, who seemed to be the leader, with psychokinesis and restrain him had failed. Was his psychokinesis not strong enough? Or was the man’s body heavier than he thought? When Jun-sang frowned at the thought, the man, seeing this, erased his nervous expression and shouted loudly, “Don’t be scared! He’s a fraud using cheap tricks! Attack and crush him in one go!”

At that, the mercenaries, with their shields raised, charged at Jun-sang. Jun-sang chuckled to himself at the sight. “A fraud, huh…” He then looked at the Elemental Dragon on his shoulder and said again, “That wouldn’t be so bad.” He had been planning to test his powers at some point anyway, so this was a good opportunity. It was, however, a very unfortunate event for the mercenaries who would become his test subjects.