Translator: Min999, Editor: Spade
Proofreader: Sapphire
The meeting went on for more than two hours.
Yisun, who was still in a daze after finding out that he had to restore the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, barely uttered a single word throughout the whole thing. No matter how much his S-class hidden ability allowed him to restore anything after only seeing a restoration map, the Seven Wonders were called so for a reason.
It was precisely because people didn’t know how they were built in ancient times that the expression “wonder” was added, so he was surprised that they held such great expectations for him… Not only Sa Hyeon, but everyone in the conference room seemed to believe that Yisun, who had suddenly become the backbone of Chord, would be able to do it.
As if that matter was already settled, the meeting topic naturally moved on to post-restoration plans, with complete disregard for Yisun’s reaction.
“If the path is properly organized, it will be much easier to face the monsters, so let’s plan our strategy while looking at the internal blueprint.”
“It would also be more advantageous if we were to prepare an ambush. If the passageway collapsed, not only would the available paths for movement be very limited, they would also be lined with traps. The analysis shows that once the path is restored, we would also be able to avoid the traps.”
Everyone nodded, discussing the direction from which the monsters might appear while looking at the aerial blueprint of the the Babylon gardens. Yisun, however, only blinked his eyes sluggishly and opened his mouth with difficulty.
The Chord team in the conference room seemed very familiar with this kind of conversation, so it felt a bit difficult for him as an outsider to speak up, but he really had to point out his concerns in the current conversation.
“Do you guys really believe that I could go into an S-class dungeon and successfully restore that building? It would be too risky to make a plan based on an uncertain restoration…”
“Of course you‘ll be able to restore it, Restorer-nim! Don’t you have that hidden skill? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon is one the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and although no one knows how exactly it was built in ancient times, most of it has been analyzed in our modern times. There’s even a kindly made 3D video. Hunter Jian, you have that video, right?” Ki Joohyuk asked excitedly, and Shin Jian nodded, saying that they had even prepared a documentary video that detailed the construction process. Yisun felt slightly overwhelmed by the fact that he had to actually study that video on his own.
“I remember hearing that Restorer Jung Yisun had once restored a national cultural asset that had been destroyed in a fire? It’s basically the same premise. It’s just that that was a building from 600 years ago, and this one is from 3,000 years ago… But we do have the means to restore both.”
“I watched the video at that time too. It was really amazing.”
The Hunters sitting across from Sa Hyeon spoke. The video was eventually deleted due the restrictions from the Awakeners’ Management Headquartes, who limited access to Hunters only, in consideration of the burden he would have to bear if the video were to spread. As a result, although Yisun’s hidden ability was not widely known to the public, Hunters who were interested still knew about it.
Yisun felt a little more burdened by the fact that the people singing him praises were mostly S and A class Hunters. He felt more unfamiliar and worried rather than happy when faced with their eyes full of complete trust. Since he had only worked in the Honshin Guild for the past four years, he had never heard anyone compliment his abilities except for his friends.
Even if he chose to ignore the unfamiliar experience, there was still the problem with his own condition. Ever since that day, he had never been able to use his abilities fully, and sometimes even if he restored only 30%, he would start feeling dizzy. He didn’t know whether restoring his friends has caused him to feel a subconscious aversion to his abilities… No, that was most definitely the case.
But Sa Hyeon wanted 100% from him. He’d promised to use his Nullification on one of his friends for each time they successfully cleared one of the six dungeons. Even though using his ability still terrifies him, he can only use it properly to send his friends off peacefully.
Yisun remained silent, and Sa Hyeon, who had been watching him quietly, called him with a smile.
“Yisun-ssi, Don’t worry.”
“…Yes?”
“I’ll make it work if I have to.”
Regrettably, his words only served to fuel the unease and worries he’s been harboring.
* * *
The early spring sun slowly disappeared in the horizon.
Yisun couldn’t help but feel quite surprised about his day as he watched the sunset colors bleed into the sky.
When he rode Sa Hyeon’s car to work in the morning, he was prepared for the worst, thinking he would be assigned some sort of shady task… After all, Sa Hyeon has pressured him so strongly, and used all kinds of methods to get him to work together, so it was only natural for him to be suspicious of his intentions.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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However, it seemed that Yisun can only get even more confused.
“It’s time to get off work.”
When it was time to leave work, Sa Hyeon came into the office and knocked on the table. Only then did the focused Yisun raise his head from the screen and notice his arrival. Sa Hyeon smiled at the sight of Yisun who was leaning on the chair, quickly straightening up.
“Take a break if you’re tired. Forcing yourself to work while you’re sleepy would only decrease your efficiency.”
His tone was quite gentle, making Yisun feel even more puzzled about his actions. Suddenly, he remembered Sa Hyeon saying he was ‘good at taking care of people’… but then it was also him who used the word ‘coercion’ to forcibly drag him around…
However, Sa Hyeon didn’t seem to care about Yisun’s lack of response and just turned to leave wordlessly. Not only did he open the door for him, he also gestured for him to go ahead first, and even pressed the elevator button for him.
“So, after you’ve taken a look, do you think you’ll be able to do it?”
“They’re all huge structures, so I don’t think I’ll be able to restore them all at once. I’ll have to restore them little by little…”
“That’s fine too. You were all worried about it, yet you still came up with a method like this, Yisun-ssi.”
Inside the elevator, Sa Hyeon grinned slyly at Yisun. Seeing that smile, Yisun felt conflicted. Even though they were alone and without any other secretaries present, he only talked about the raid.
Was Sa Hyeon really a good Hunter who cared for the country and its people? Surprisingly?
Did he step up to resolve the raid, which could have caused disaster for the country, even though the process was a bit, no, extremely risky? According to what Yisun heard from the Chord team members he’d met today, it had been a long time since Sa Hyeon scouted anyone himself.
Over the past week, Sa Hyeon had been consistently seeking to obtain his S-class restoration ability. And in today’s meeting, he announced that this ability would be used inside a linked dungeon. It was a strategy to resolve an S-class dungeon that could potentially wipe out an entire city, and maybe even the whole country if something went wrong. Furthermore, it was a situation that even involved the Hunters’ Association.
Yisun tried to blame his thoughts on sleep deprivation, but the information he heard about the raid kept swirling in his head. Yisun looked suspiciously at Sa Hyeon who opened the car door for him.
“Go to the hospital.”
Sa Hyeon naturally asked the driver to go to the hospital. He didn’t even need to tell him the name of the hospital, the chauffeur who started driving had probably already been to the hospital before. Although Yisun couldn’t for the life of him figure out Hyeon’s intentions, he sat still.
When they had been on the road for about 30 minutes, Yisun’s pupils slightly widened as he gradually caught sight of the hospital outside the car window. It was Hanbaek, the largest and best hospital in Korea. And it had been the place where HN’s Guild leader had been hospitalized for four years now.
“… Are we here to see the Guild leader?”
“Oh? Did you look into me, Yisun-ssi?”
While researching this morning, Yisun had also read a few articles about Sa Hyeon. He and Sa Yoonkang were half-brothers, they were both sons of the HN Guild leader, and so their visits to the hospital where the leader of the guild was hospitalized were often covered in news. Journalists often described it as a fierce battle between the two brothers competing for the next HN Guild leader position.
“If you already know, it makes asking you for this little favor easier.”
A smile played at the corners of his mouth, and Yisun was stumped. Why did he bring him along to visit his father at the hospital? What kind of ‘favor’ would he need… Yisun had too many questions to ask, but he kept his mouth shut as he watched the gleeful expression on Sa Hyeon’s face. Strangely enough, every time Sa Hyeon smiled like that, he would feel a grim sense of foreboding.
Finally, all of Yisun’s silent queries were answered when they arrived at the hospital room.
“Actually, the Guild leader already died a few days ago.” Sa Hyeon said, looking straight into Yisun’s bewildered gaze.
“So I would like for you to use your restoration ability.”
Yisun blinked slowly, unable to comprehend the words he’d heard just now. He started to slowly piece together the situation.
First, he went to Hanbaek hospital with Sa Hyeon. The VIP room was located in an isolated hospital annex, but as soon as they went in, someone who appeared to be the doctor in charge rushed towards Sa Hyeon in tears, trying to tell him something like, “The vice Guild leader keeps…” However, when Sa Hyeon saw him, all he had to do was smile for the person to quietly step back.
Afterwards, they entered the hospital room, where the Guild leader was lying on the bed, unmoving as a corpse. Although his pale skin and purplish lips looked familiar, Yisun still believed he was alive and receiving intensive long-term treatment. But suddenly, Sa Hyeon smiled and told him that the Guild leader had died.
He couldn’t believe the situation and reflexively thought Sa Hyeon was playing a prank on him. However, their relationship was not one where they would exchange friendly jokes or pranks with each other. Finally, Yisun spoke up hesitantly.
“If I restore him… he’ll be in the same condition as my friends.”
“Yes. I’m only asking you to restore him, not to revive him? I just need his heart to start beating again. If he were to actually live, I might just get annoyed enough to send him back to the afterlife.”
For a moment, he had the feeling that Sa Hyeon lost his mind while pretending to be a filial son, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Sa Hyeon looked at the corpse with slightly narrowed eyes and approached the bed.
“Actually, I’ve been looking into Yisun-ssi for the whole past month. At that time, the doctor had said that the Guild leader wouldn’t last for a month. But I needed someone to keep his heart beating until I finished all the preparations.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to find some other Restorer to do the job?”
“Well, I did experiment with the help of an A-class Restorer once before. Although he could get him to move his body… he couldn’t restore his heart.”
Yisun didn’t ask for further details about the “experiment” he mentioned, and Sa Hyeon seemingly had no intention to delve into it either as he moved on.
“What I wanted was not for the Guild leader to wake up, but to get his heart beating again, so I thought I needed to find an S-class. However I was uncertain about whether it was possible to restore a corpse’s heart, and so it was at most a fifty-fifty chance gamble …”
Hyeon smiled as his gaze stayed locked on Yisun. As he stared back, Yisun realized that the reason Sa Hyeon dared to break into his apartment was to examine the condition of his friends.
Later, Sa Hyeon said that the Guild leader had died a week ago and that he was currently keeping the situation under wraps. Considering all these facts, Yisun could more or less guess what the vice Guild leader had called Sa Hyeon in the morning about. It was most likely that Sa Hyeon prevented him from visiting by buying off the person in charge. In addition, one week ago was precisely the time when he had first met Sa Hyeon, and it was also the maximum period for his restoration abilities to work.
“So, the real intention behind making me sign a contract was restoring the Guild leader’s heart all along… Was the raid just a cover-up?”
“I wouldn’t say that. After all, both of them are reasons, and both of them are relevant.”
As it seemed that the story was a bit long, Sa Hyeon suggested they take a seat first, but Yisun didn’t feel like sitting down near a corpse. And so, Sa Hyeon sat nonchalantly on the chair next to the Guild leader’s corpse and began to speak.
“Four years ago, I read the contents of the Guild leader’s will. He stated clearly that once he died, the HN Guild would be handed over to his son Sa Yoonkang…but I have no intention of handing the guild over to that bastard.”
Yisun was aware that Sa Yoonkang was 7 years older than Hyeon, but he still listened quietly.
“That’s why I will grow Chord’s reputation, So that If ever Sa Yoonkang were to become the next Guild leader, everyone would be doubtful and suspicious. Of course, killing him would be the easiest option, but that’s too simple, and I’m not that crass now, am I?”
“… Uh, is that so…”
“Yes. I want Sa Yoonkang live, only for him to suffer miserably and pathetically. I’ve prepared a carefully made stage to personally let him know that no matter how hard he tries, he could never win against me. It’s obvious even on the surface, so I don’t understand why he keeps trying so hard to deny reality.”
Suddenly, Yisun was reminded that the HN Guild had announced the formation of Chord four years ago. At that time, when the Guild leader collapsed and was admitted to the hospital, it was the vice Guild leader Sa Yoonkang who took over the authority as the Guild leader. Chord was created after that, and there were quite a few stories circulating about it.
It was difficult to believe that Sa Yoonkang created this special elite team because of his ingenuity. In fact, it was said that Sa Yoonkang had seized and monopolized all of the executive positions in the guild, including Sa Hyeon’s own position at the time. After that, he tried to isolate Sa Hyeon by deliberately not assigning him to any dungeons, but when Sa Hyeon tried to leave HN Guild altogether, he’d hastily created a special elite team for him.
However, the special elite team initially only had a single member: Sa Hyeon. And the current core members of the elite team were actually people he went around and scouted personally. At the time, Yisun was in the midst of working hard to repay debts, and so he didn’t have the luxury to follow whatever drama was happening inside the HN Guild.
Even when Chord was formed, the feud between the two was common knowledge among those interested in Hunters. Hyeon had awakened as an S-class at the early age of 8, while Yoonkang’s ability didn’t manifest until he was 20 years old. Although 20 is not a particularly late age for Awakening, it was already rumored that the HN Guild leader had been testing Sa Yoonkang’s awakening since he was young.
However, at 20, Sa Yoonkang was revealed to have A-class healing abilities. Being an A-class Healer was clearly an incredible feat, but for someone aspiring to become the next HN Guild leader to be a non-combat type A-class Hunter, it felt somewhat disappointing. The current Guild leader was S-class, and for the next one to be an A-class who couldn’t even take charge inside a dungeon would be a downgrade.
And so, Sa Yoonkang had, from a young age, lived his whole life being compared to his half-brother, and that ultimately led to…
“Basically, he’s just got a bad case of an inferiority complex, that Sa Yoonkang.”
With his legs crossed, Sa Hyeon chuckled leisurely. Perhaps he recalled a funny event involving Sa Yoonkang, he briefly lowered his head and let out a laugh, then relaxed and spoke while placing his clasped hands on his knees. Though a very gentle smile spread across his face, his next words were anything but.
“I’ve been thinking about getting rid of this annoying bastard for a while now… and the best way to completely push someone with an incurable inferiority complex into despair, is to defeat them in that same field they’ve been working on so desperately.”
“Ah, yeah… ”
“So I’ve been quietly raising Chord, when it just so happens that this raid appeared. Not only are the dungeons S-class, it’s also called ‘The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.'”
At that point, finally Jung Yisun understood. Sa Hyeon has been waiting for a long time for an opportunity to completely defeat Sa Yoonkang. He named the special elite team that Sa Yoonkang had thrown together “Chord” and scouted Hunters to finally make it a representative team of the HN Guild.
Even now, there are many people harboring doubts towards Sa Yoonkang becoming the next Guild leader. However, what Sa Hyeon was aiming for was a blow that was more powerful than a long public opinion battle. And that was the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World raid that had just appeared.
Even the Hunters’ Association was surprised and recommended to delay the announcement of the linked dungeon, and Sa Hyeon saw that as an opportunity.
“… Once you’ve completely cleared the raid, you’re planning to kill the Guild leader and reveal his will.”
“Yes, that’s right. It seems that Yisun-ssi is quite clever, it makes talking easier.”
Sa Hyeon raised his eyebrows and smiled. An S-class linked dungeon has never appeared anywhere else in the world. So if Chord cleared all of the raids successfully, their fame would go beyond Korea and their reputation would spread globally. And when the will of the HN Guild leader was revealed, it was certain that everyone would raise suspicion and opposition.
Satisfied with the ending to the script he carefully wrote, Sa Hyeon got up from his seat and approached Yisun, who was still standing far away from the bed.
“So now, can I ask you to use your restoration abilities on the corpse?”
“… Are you asking me for a favor? Or are you forcing me to do this?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure. That would depend on you.”
“Then I don’t want either of them. Rather than something like that…”
Yisun’s pale brown eyes stared straight into Sa Hyeon’s own black eyes.
“Let’s make a deal. I’ll be using my abilities for two things: the raids and restoring the Guild leader’s corpse… I also know one of your weaknesses…”
Yisun spoke until the end, all the while hoping that his voice would not tremble. When he saw Sa Hyeon’s dark eyes looking down at him with a hint of surprise, his hands started to tremble as memories from last night came back to mind. He clenched his fists tightly and hid his hands behind his back. And Sa Hyeon, who was watching all of this, smiled. It seemed as if the situation was quite amusing for him.
“What is it that you want, Yisun-ssi?”
Yisun finally got the answer he was hoping for, but before he could manage to utter a single word, Sa Hyeon reached out towards him. A soothing hand gently touched his shoulder. It was a comforting gesture, as if he were coaxing a frightened small animal.
“… You don’t need to be so nervous. I told you when I first scouted you, I would give you anything you want.”
While ignoring the shiver running down his spine at Sa Hyeon’s affectionate smile, Yisun spoke:
“… The Nullification ability you’d promised to use on my friends… Please grant me one more chance to use it whenever I’d like to. … There’s something I need it for.”
With no intention of elaborating any further, Yisun decided to stay quiet after stating his request. Sa Hyeon looked at him with a curious expression and then nodded understandingly. In fact, there were plenty of ways for Sa Hyeon to refuse the “deal” that Yisun proposed, but he didn’t bother mentioning them. Seeing Yisun trying to hide his trembling despite it being evident was somewhat amusing, and it was Sa Hyeon’s own way of showing kindness. It was almost like a truce.
And only after receiving such affirmation from Sa Hyeon did Yisun silently grab the arm of the corpse. The feeling of holding the cold, stiff, and bony limb, the texture of which resembled dry withered wood, was unpleasant yet familiar. He never thought there would be a day where he would use his restoration on a corpse once again…
Suddenly, feelings of disgust and self-loathing started climbing up along his throat, but Yisun quickly suppressed the emotions. He briefly apologized to the deceased Guild leader in his mind before focusing on his deal with Sa Hyeon and closed his eyes.
The quiet hospital room was soon filled with the echoing beep sounds of an electrocardiogram.
Thank you for the update translator… thing are getting juicy 🫢🫢🫣❤️
Thank you for reading~~!💞
Thank you for the chapter! It’s nice to see the story to progress~
Also, we finally got to know the some of the Chord’s members! ! >.<
Thank you for readiiing! <3 and yess they’re all(?) lovely people ;-;
So here is the suspended sword. Nice twisty plot, hahahaha! Ty for the update 🤣❤️
Tyyy for reading ~~<3 ! Hyeon is so manipulative he even got me fooled for a sec 🤕
Thanks for the chapter 🌹
Thank you for reading~~ <3
Thanks for translation! I came here from the comics and to be honest, hyeon is so much creepier there.
Thank you for reading~ 💞🌸 And yess manhwa Hyeon definitely got extra hate and extra misunderstandings lmaoo
thanku for this translation! hyeon asking yisun to do the one specific thing he has trauma with… 😐😐😐