CHAPTER 108 - Mistilteinn (Part 1)

"Mm? Did you get another training sword?"

On his way to the dorms, Kim Hajin found Cristopher, who was currently coming from one of the main administrative buildings in Cube.

"Yeah, I need to start working out with it."

"I didn't know you knew how to use two swords. Is it even practical?" Kim Hajin asked with a frown while they both walked to the dorms. "I mean, I know we're in a fantasy world and all that, but still..."

"With the right technique, it is possible to use two swords." Cristopher shrugged. "It also depends highly on the type of sword, and you need a lot of practice, but yeah, it's possible."

"Didn't know that." Hajin nodded.

"It's normal to doubt it. Handling two swords isn't precisely recommended, and you need a good sense of your surrounding space, as well as your own movement, or it can even be dangerous."

"I can see how it would be dangerous..." Hajin answered with an awkward smile.

"Yeah, I got a few cuts myself while training my dual-wielding style for the first time, and I can sense everything around me."

"..." Hajin nodded. "By the way. This sudden interest of yours to train harder… Is it because of Lilith?"

"Mm?" Cristopher looked up. "Yeah. Can't say it isn't. After all, I have a debt to collect from her."

"..." Hajin looked down, before sighing. "After all you said, you still had feelings for her, huh?"

"..." Cristopher didn't answer, as they just walked towards the dorm silently for a moment.

After a couple of minutes, Cristopher finally talked.

"I did." He sighed. "I may be an asshole, yes. But that doesn't mean I can't have feelings. So yes, I did have feelings for her."

"..." Hajin nodded.

"Though, it's not to the point of what you're imagining." Cristopher chuckled for a moment, before shrugging. "What I told her was true, after all. I couldn't love her, and I won't love anyone for the foreseeable future. At least, that's what I think right now."

"But then-" Hajin started to talk with a frown but was interrupted.

"She was a great friend. And I have a debt with her. A debt that must be paid with blood. Doesn't matter if it's Lilith's blood or my own." Cristopher said, stopping his walk before turning to look at Hajin. "And that's all that I'm going to say on the matter. Got it?"

"..." Lookin at his eyes, which somehow made him get a chill on his back, he nodded.

"Oh well, let's just end this weird conversation and go to the dorm to prepare." Cristopher shrugged before he continued to walk towards the dorm.

"Prepare…?" Tilting his head, Hajin asked while walking behind him.

"Yes. You're coming to train with us, right?" Cristopher lifted an eyebrow. "With me, Rachel and Olivia."

"Oh, right." Hajin nodded. "Sure, why not."

"Excellent. I actually have a few things that could work- *Ah-choo*" Cristopher sneezed. "Huh? That's weird. Why would I sneeze all of a sudden?" He said while rubbing his chin.

"..." Hajin looked at him for a moment before answering. "Maybe someone's talking about you?"

"You think? It may be Olivia, she sure is insulting me or something. Oh well, I'll just make her suff- I mean, I'll help her train a lot today." He nodded.

"..." Hajin only sighed, while praying for Olivia's future safety in his mind.

***

Meanwhile, inside the girls' dorms.

"Are you sure of what you're telling me?" Yoo Yeonha said with a frown.

"Y-Yes..." Paula nodded.

"..." Hazuki only averted her eyes while drinking the orange juice that Yoo Yeonha offered them.

"Do you have any proof of that?" Yoo Yeonha asked again, leaning on her arms over the table while looking directly towards Paula's eyes.

"N-No…" Paula answered, averting her eyes for a moment. "But we saw it! In Argentine! He was with the little girl, and when Hazuki went to say hi the child said that she was his daughter."

At Paula's words, Hazuki choked on her juice.

"..." Yoo Yeonha quickly turned to Hazuki. "Is that true?"

"..." Hazuki looked down.

"Hazuki."

"Y-Yes..." At Yeonha's narrowed eyes, she didn't have any other option than to answer.

"..." Nodding, Yoo Yeonha started to deeply think about what she just heard.

Cristopher was seen with a little girl in Argentine, and when Hazuki went to talk to him, confusing her with his little sister, the child actually corrected her saying he was her father.

{It just doesn't make sense! He's not even 18! And he has a daughter that is around 4 years old!? He had to conceive her when he was barely thirteen! And who the hell is the child's mother!?}

Thoughts came and went, while she clutched her head because of the slight migraine the uncontrollable thoughts gave her.

After sighing and breathing deeply to calm herself, she finally looked at Hazuki once again.

"Could you please describe her appearance, Hazuki-ssi?" Yoo Yeonha asked with a smile, a smile that seemed terrifying to the poor Hazuki.

"S-She was small like I said, she probably had three or four years at most." Hazuki gulped hard. "She was really cute, like a little elf, her eyes were of deep blue color, her nose like a small button. Honestly… She barely resembled him. If it wasn't for..."

"Mm?" Yoo Yeonha lifted her eyebrow. "If it wasn't for… What?"

"For her hair..." Hazuki let out a sigh. "Her hair was slightly weird, it started with a dark blond on the roots and degraded the more it flowed down, until… Until midway, where her hair turned into a platinum-white color… Just like..."

"Just like his hair..." Yoo Yeonha's mouth was slightly open. With a dumbfounded look on her face.

"Y-Yes… Just like his hair… He's the only one that I've seen with hair like that… Well, except for his d-d-daughter... "

{Just what in the world happened in his past for him to have a daughter at this age… Should I try to ask my uncle to look into him…? No. I won't depend on that old man again. I'll wait for my Shadows to look into his past. I may find something there that helps me explain where this child suddenly appeared from. But… I may have to talk to him directly...}

With a sigh, Yoo Yeonha decided to forget the last part of her plan. Talking to him was a risk she wasn't prepared to take. Not only because of his dangerous and unapproachable personality but because she didn't want to do something that would anger him, preventing him from wanting to come to Essence of the Strait in the future.

"Who else knows about this?" Yoo Yeonha asked the two girls in front of her.

"Just Paula, Mei Ling, and Gabrielle..." Hazuki said.

"Well… I may have told a friend of mine..." Paula said while scratching the back of her head.

"..." Yoo Yeonha frowned at Paula's words.

"*Sigh...* Maybe there are more people that know..." Hazuki slapped her own face. "I told them not to say a word about it… But they didn't listen, apparently..."

"You guys better call those girls. Tell them that no one else can know about this. No one." Yoo Yeonha said with a stern tone, before looking directly at Paula. "Tell them that I will find out if they said something, and that there will be consequences."

"Y-Yes..." Paula nodded with fearful eyes.

"You can go." Yoo Yeonha said, before taking a sip from her orange juice. "And remember, no one else can know about this. Do you hear me?"

"Yes..." Both Paula and Hazuki nodded before leaving the room.

"*Sigh...* Just what the hell is happening here..." Yoo Yeonha sighed, before going to her laptop and taking notes of what she just heard. Especially about the little girl's appearance. "Maybe if I give this to them… I may find out more about her… No. I better proceed with caution."

Leaning back on her chair, she started to think about the possible explanations. Before she started to blush at the implications of having a child at such a young age.

"He's unbelievable..." She muttered for herself before something came to her mind. "Wait… Blue eyes… Blonde hair… Like a little elf..."

She suddenly stood up, throwing the chair behind her.

"Impossible!" With her hands clutching her head, her thoughts started to flow uncontrollably. "Isn't that like a small version of Rachel…?"

For her, it made sense. Cristopher and Rachel were close to each other. He was even close to the Head Butler of the English Royal Court. There was a really small chance for that to be possible.

"But… WHEN!? It's not possible for them to know each other before they got to Cube, so there's no way for them to have a 4 years old child. And Rachel's p-p-pregnancy isn't a topic that can be hidden at this age where communication has reached a new era."

Even if the child had an incredible high resemblance between them, there's no way for that to be true.

"Unless the Queen had an illegal adventure-" She started to mutter, before widening her eyes and slapping herself.

{Calm down Yoo Yeonha! THAT'S EVEN LESS POSSIBLE!}

Huffing and breathing hard, Yoo Yeonha tried to calm her mind. It wasn't after a few minutes that she finally calmed down.

"*Sigh...* For the moment… I think it's best if I just wait for my Shadows to look into his past. At least, I need to contain this information to keep it from leaking to other people. It's better if no one else knows about it."

With that last thought, Yoo Yeonha started to work on her usual stuff.

***

Wednesday came before anyone could finally adapt to the start of the new semester.

"Attention!" Kim Soohyuk loudly shouted, pulling every cadet's attention to himself. "You will need to form teams of five."

While the chief instructor spoke, everyone started to make their own calculations in their head. Looking for cadets to form their team.

The Team Challenge it's a group project where cadets must form teams to go through some task that will impact their notes at the end of the semester.

It lasted until the midterms, and there were challenges like conquering miniature towers, capturing artifacts in emulated scrambles, or even going on team-building trips.

"Get into teams that meet the requirement and submit a team member list by the end of next Wednesday. If you don't have a team by that time, I will place you in teams myself." Kim Soohyuk spoke.

The teams made for the Team Challenge have some requirements.

They had to be composed of either one one-digit ranked cadet, one two-digits ranked cadet, two three-digit ranked cadets, and one low-ranked magician; or two two-digit ranked cadets, two three-digit ranked cadets, and one upper-ranked magician.

Everyone was currently considering their options, and Hajin wasn't any different from them.

Looking around, he couldn't find anyone to team up with, except for maybe the guy that was making weird draws on his notebook.

"Hey. Should we team up?" Kim Hajin asked Cristopher, who didn't even look up at him.

"Nah, go team up with Rachel." He answered back shortly, focused on finishing his draw, which was basically some kind of weird building.

"Huh? Why? Don't you need a team?"

"Mm? Not really. I'll just see where Kim Soohyuk will put me in. I don't really care what team I end up with."

"Then why don't you team up with me? You're a single-digit and I'm a double-digit ranked cadet."

"Yeah, no. Just go and team up with Rachel." Cristopher said, before turning up to look at Hajin with a serious face, pointing his pen to him. "And while you're at it. Drag Olivia with you."

"*Sigh...* Right, whatever." Rolling his eyes, Hajin just looked for Rachel, who was frowning, thinking hard about something.

He quickly turned on his smartwatch and texted her.

[Kim Hajin: Hey, want to team up with me and Olivia? We just need two more.]

Noticing her smartwatch's vibration, she turned it on, but before she could read the text, someone else came to talk to her.

"Would you like to team up?"

It was Tomer, who was standing right in front of her, talking out loud and making everyone around look at her for her bold approach.

"*Tch...*" Hajin could hear someone clicking his tongue right beside him.

Looking at Cristopher who was frowning, he asked in a whisper.

"Are you angry at her for asking Rachel to team up?"

"No." He answered and focused back on his drawing, before stopping for a moment. "But you better take care of Rachel. I don't think that girl is up to something good."

"..." Hajin just looked at him before sighing. "You may be right about that."

Tomer was part of Wicked, which was like a Djinn Mercenary organization. Meaning that they took money to do any kind of job.

{There's a chance of this being some kind of job that Lancaster requested from Wicked. And they sent Tomer to do it. But… What's exactly her mission...} Hajin thought for a moment, looking at both Rachel and Tomer.

"I'll think about it." Rachel answered after thinking for some time. "There's still a lot of time left."

"..." Nodding, Tomer went back to her seat, and Rachel finally looked at her smartwatch.

Widening her eyes, she looked towards Hajin and slightly smiled, before frowning and replying.

[Rachel: Aren't you going to team up with master?]

"..." Shaking his head, Hajin answered back.

[Kim Hajin: No, the guy said he's going to wait for Kim Soohyuk to put him into a random team. So? What do you say?]

Reading the message, an awkward smile appeared on Rachel's face, who turned to look at the drawing Cristopher.

[Rachel: He surely has a reason… And yes, let's team-up. We just need another three-digit ranked cadet and a low-rank magician.]

[Kim Hajin: Great.]

At that moment, Olivia walked towards Cristopher.

"Hey, let's-" She started to speak, but before she could finish, Cristopher interrupted.

"No. You'll be on Hajin's team." He didn't even look up as he kept drawing his strange building.

"Wha…!? Why!?" She shouted as she leaned on his desk.

"..." Looking up at her, he just stared directly at her eyes with a completely neutral expression. "Do you have a problem with what I said, Olivia?"

"..." She flinched, remembering last night's training. "N-No… No problem… I'll team up with him..." She stood back, looking for Hajin.

"H-Hey teammate! Haha..." She smiled awkwardly at Hajin, while the latter felt pity for her.

"Nice." Cristopher went back to drawing. "Everything's set then."

The entire classroom glanced at the ridiculous scene that just transpired, some cadets tried to hold their laughs, while others simply gave an awkward smile at the poor Olivia.

Rachel was part of the group that was giving an awkward smile at Olivia, and even some pity, as she knew just what kind of training she had to go through last night for no apparent reason.

Time passed, and the end of the morning announcement came. Just as everyone was leaving the classroom to go to classes, a few cadets got close to Kim Hajin.

"Hajin!" First was a girl who he hadn't talked to before. "Where are you going?"

The girl clung to him while smiling.

"What…?" Hajin just stood there dumbfounded.

"Well, you see~ I was wondering if there was-" The girl tried to speak, but was quickly interrupted by someone else.

"Hajin!" Jin Hoseung, who he teamed up with the previous semester alongside Yoo Yeonha, got close to him. "I got tickets to go to the French Artifact Museum. Apparently, Napoleon's rifle will be on display tomorrow..."

"Hey! Hajin!"

More cadets got close to him, some of them even giving him some gifts, while he tried to look for a way to go out.

It was then that he heard someone mockingly laughing at him.

"Wow, so famous, aren't you?" With a smirk, Cristopher passed by him, raising his hand to say goodbye. "See you in class, dude. Don't let fame get to your head."

"W-Wait!" He tried to go out but was stopped by another couple of cadets, who tried to bribe him with more gifts.

He finally left the classroom, with the gifts, of course, to go to classes.

***

After classes ended. Both Cristopher and Hajin walked towards the dorms, in order to prepare to go training once again.

"Say, did you decide with what fan you will team up? It seems that there are a lot, huh." Cristopher smirked at Hajin.

"Ha, ha. So funny." Hajin said before sighing. "I'll let Rachel decide."

"As you wish. Just be on alert for that girl, Jamer or Tomer, or whatever she decided to call herself." Cristopher said while stretching. "I have a bad feeling about her."

"Sure, I'll take care of her." Hajin said with a shrug. "By the way. The time's coming."

"Mm? Time for what?" Cristopher frowned.

"Kim Suho should be preparing right now to conquer that dungeon where he will get his weapon."

"Oh? That one with Mistilteinn as a reward?"

"Wasn't it called Misteltein?"

"It's the same. Things like that have different names and pronunciations." Cristopher rolled his eyes. "But that's not the point here, what I want to know is why are you bringing that up?"

"Oh, right." Hajin nodded. "I'm planning on going with him."

"Reason being…?"

"Well, for starters. He may not be able to defeat the dungeon right now."

"He did in your novel, though?"

"Yes, but right now, I'm not sure he's going to be able to do so. This world isn't exactly like my novel..."

"Mm… If you say so." Cristopher shrugged, before frowning for a moment. "Though, you may be right. My assimilation to this world may have affected that dungeon too. But I'm not sure about it. Probably not, as my assimilation isn't that high yet and I usually have to enter the dungeon for it to be affected."

"Please stop… I'm getting the chills just imagining that dungeon evolving into something weird..." Hajin said while putting a hand on his chest and letting out a deep sigh. "The other reason being, that I have the Butterfly Seedling Dust with me. It is the key to awaken Misteltein's power."

"Mm… Oh, right. That dust you gave me last time, huh."

"Yeah, that one. Have you used it already?"

"Not really. I have to think about how to use it."

"Oh well. You'll surely find some way to use it. Now, the last reason is..." Hajin pointed one finger up. "That I may get some nice reward from that dungeon."

"Is that so?" Cristopher crossed his arms and tilted his head. "Oh well, you're goddamn lucky. So I don't doubt it. Just let me know if you get something good."

"Sure." Hajin nodded.

Once inside the dorms, while Cristopher prepared, Hajin stopped for a moment to think about Tomer, now that Evandel was staying for a couple of days in Cristopher's room.

He was sure that there was a way for him to appease her and to bring her to the good guys' side.

{The key lies with her father. If I can find him and help her uncover the truth behind her mother's death, she may get out of Wicked's organization.}

"*Sigh...* The thing is that the Book of Truth doesn't give me a clue as to where he is… Wait!" He suddenly sat straight on the couch. "I know someone that can find him!"

Opening the Book of Truth he looked for Kim Chundong's only connection with a character of the book, Kim Hosup. In the original novel, he was an informant that had the appearance of a piglet, and that would work for Yoo Yeonha's Falling Blossom in the future. His Gift was related to computers and made him a fearful informant capable of researching any kind of information or background.

While he could contact Yoo Jinhyuk to look for her father, Yeonha's uncle's wasn't only costly, but he also restricted the distance of his search to the Korean Peninsula to maximize the power of his ability.

{But Kim Hosup is a really trustworthy informant, as long as he has a good computer, his ability will produce amazing results.}

"Urgh..." After 30% of his Stigma was immediately consumed, I got the number of Kim Hosup, Kim Chundong's old friend. "Damn… Is this book too costly? Or maybe my two streaks of Stigma were too little? *Sigh...*"

After putting his number on my smartwatch, the song of the three little piglets started to sound.

"Why this ringtone..." Kim Hajin frowned, but after a couple of seconds, Kim Hosup answered.

[Hello?]

His voice was deep, unlike what Hajin remembers from the ceremony day at the Agent Military Academy.

{That's totally unexpected...}

"Hey, Hosup... It's Hajin. How have you been?"

[Oh~ Hajin-chan~ It's been a while~]

{That was… Weird...} Hajin thought at the quick change of tone of Hosup.

[What's up?]

"Um.. Hosup?"

[Uuun~?]

"What have you been doing lately?"

[Me~?]

{Does he have to drag the end of his words…? *Sigh...*}

He was quite a strange character. Being an otaku with a bad outer appearance, he was constantly mistreated by his co-workers. It wouldn't be until 7 years in the future when Yoo Yeonha would find him and hire him for Falling Blossom.

[I'm doing… Okay. Why did you call me?]

His previous cheerful personality now out of the call, Hajin knew that he was being currently mistreated in his workplace.

"Nothing much. Just… I'm wondering if you can help me find a person?"

[A person?]

"Yeah, I'll send you a supercomputer as a payment."

[Supercomputer~? But isn't Hajin-chan poor~?]

"I have a lot of money now. I'll be able to send it to you this week. So, can you do it?"

[...]

[If you have a little bit of his background information, it should be possible~]

"Perfect, I'll send it to you immediately."

After that, I immediately sent Fermin Jesus information to him, with the new name he took after plastic surgery.

"Alright, I just sent it. Also, Chundong... I mean, Hosup."

[Hm?]

"If you're going to quit your job..." Hajin thought for a moment, before finally deciding. "There's a new information Guild called Falling Blossom. You should join it. They only care about your ability, so they'll treat you well."

There's no reason to advance the plot. Kim Hosup wasn't a bad character, and he may become a great strength for Yoo Yeonha the sooner he's discovered.