Chapter 192
Agael, a manager of the Pentagram department of the Celestial Corporation.
She was biting her nails nervously in the room of the administrator.
It had been several days since Shamath volunteered to take care of the job.
She had agreed to his request, which was more like a demand, and even used the Twilight Curtain clan to help him.
‘What’s going on? Why is it so quiet? He was annoying to be around, but he was good at getting things done. But why is there no news from him?’
Agael wanted to check on him, but she couldn’t.
She was trapped in a small cage.
It was a precaution that Shamath took in case she did something stupid.
Agael bit her lip as she looked at the cold curve of the silver cage that confined her.
‘Damn it! Why did he leave me here if he was going to make me wait like this!’
A sudden anxious thought crossed her mind.
What if Shamath failed? What if he got into some trouble and couldn’t come back?
Agael shivered at the thought of having to stay in this cage forever.
Clang.
Then something surprising happened.
The silver cage disappeared with a flash of light.
Agael opened her eyes wide and fluttered her fairy wings.
The cage that had oppressed her was really gone. Without a trace.
Agael regained her physical freedom.
But her face turned pale with dismay.
‘He failed!’
She trembled with fear.
‘He failed! That stupid snake bastard failed! Otherwise, this cage wouldn’t have disappeared! I don’t know what happened to him, but he failed!’
The cage that held Agael was an object that contained the power of Shamath’s library. Because she had given him some of the authority of the library, Agael became his collateral and couldn’t escape from his grasp.
The end of that meant one of two things.
Either Shamath suddenly went crazy and gave her back her original authority.
Or he lost his authority due to some incident.
Agael thought it had to be the latter.
‘I’m screwed. I’m totally screwed. I wouldn’t have known if it was just me, but even Shamath failed!’
Agael knew how vicious Shamath was.
When he said he would handle the job, she felt annoyed but also relieved.
She thought that this time, he would finally get rid of the thorn in her side named Kang Yu-hyun.
But Shamath, who had gone silent and then lost his library authority, proved that he had been outsmarted instead.
“Seragan!!!”
“Did you call me, Agael-nim?”
She called for her subordinate whom she hadn’t seen since Shamath came.
Seragan appeared right away. Agael didn’t even look at him and shouted.
“What’s going on here? Report the situation!”
She needed to know what had happened outside while she was locked up.
Seragan hesitated at Agael’s order.
He wasn’t unaware of what Shamath was doing.
Rather, he knew very well.
That’s why he hesitated.
He wasn’t sure if it was okay to tell her this.
“That, that is…”
“Are you not going to speak?!”
“That, that’s because…”
[You still have a loud voice.]
Agael and Seragan froze at the same time.
Shiver!
The moment they heard that voice, they felt as if death had brushed past their necks mockingly.
Seragan and Agael both touched their necks with their hands to make sure they were intact.
Cold sweat ran down their foreheads.
They felt a chill just by hearing the voice.
A chill of death that they couldn’t escape even with Genesis’s protection.
“Who, who are you?!”
“…”
Seragan shouted at the unidentified intruder, while Agael closed her mouth.
She rubbed her arms and shivered. Seragan rushed over to her.
“Are, are you okay, Agael-nim?”
“He, he came.”
“What? Who came?”
“He, he did… He came!”
Agael screamed hysterically.
Seragan felt both puzzled and alarmed as he belatedly noticed the anomaly in Agael’s administrator room.
‘Why is it dark?’
Usually, the administrator’s room is pure white and very bright.
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Agael had added some personal decorations to suit her taste, so it was filled with cute colors everywhere.
Bright lights and adorable patterns.
They all matched the fairy-like appearance that Agael preferred.
But one corner of the administrator’s room was dark.
As if someone had painted it with black ink.
“What, what is that?!”
Sera also noticed the darkness that was crouching in the corner of the room.
‘How did I not notice that? No, when did it get here?’
There was no sign of its appearance.
Even after it showed up, she couldn’t sense its presence until it spoke. S
era swallowed hard.
Agael, who always made her afraid, was trembling pitifully.
[Long time no see, Agael.]
The voice was painful to hear, like scraping metal on her ears.
It sounded like someone who was drowning in water, or someone whose throat was cracked like a parched field.
The darkness that was smoldering began to move.
“Oh, oh, long time no see.”
Agael tried to smile, but she couldn’t because of the fear that was engraved in her bones.
Her face was a mix of wanting to cry and forcing a smile, making her look ridiculous.
“Chief.”
“…!”
At the word ‘chief’, Sera’s eyes widened as if they were about to tear.
There was only one person that Agael called ‘chief’.
One of the eight protagonists of the Eight Departments of Demonization, who only had eight members in the Demonization Department.
The chief of the Pentagram Department and Agael’s most feared boss.
[Agael. You look well.]
“Th-thank you, thank you. Chief.”
[Yes. My loyal subordinate Agael.]
“Yes, yes chief.”
[What do you think I came here for?]
“…!”
Agael looked like she was about to burst into tears.
The darkness that had reached her front started to stretch out one or two tentacles.
“Eek!”
Agael stiffened at the sight.
The black tentacles touched the various parts of the room where Agael had placed her offerings.
One of them came close to Agael’s nose and brushed her cheek.
The chilling darkness stuck to her cheek and then melted away like snow.
[Why do you think I came here at this busy time, squeezing out my precious time?]
‘Ah, ahhhh!!’
Agael screamed silently.
‘You know everything! You came here knowing everything!’
Agael had a feeling that today was the day she would die. But at the same time, she opened her mouth and gave an answer to the question.
It was a habit that she had ingrained by repeating it for a long time.
“You came here to check on the failure of Shamath’s mission!”
Agael said it and thought it was brilliant.
She didn’t know what Shamath had done, but he must have messed up big time.
She could tell by Sera’s reaction.
Agael gambled on it. She tried to pass off all her faults to Shamath.
[Yes.]
And it worked.
[Shamath did something very serious with some kind of conspiracy with the spirits.]
‘Shamath you bastard! What did you do!’
Agael cursed Shamath who wasn’t here and saw an opportunity.
[But, Agael. You’ve used up quite a lot of our department’s ‘words’ that we secretly raised on Earth recently.]
“Gulp.”
Agael hiccupped.
The chief knew everything from the start.
He knew her shallow excuses that she came up with in her head.
Agael felt the ground collapsing under her feet.
The chief knew everything. It was over now.
[Are you afraid of death?]
Nod nod.
[Then you should know this.]
The tentacles made of darkness began to return to the center as if they were sucked in.
[The truly frightening thing is living without even being given a chance to succeed.]
The dense energy that filled the room flowed out like a low tide.
Agael felt her breath return and wondered why instead of feeling relieved.
“Ch-chief?”
[I failed, but it was a very small thing compared to your position. But Shamath is different. He made a huge mistake. Too big for me to ignore. But I can’t afford to lose you too, can I?]
“Th-that means…”𝘯𝙤𝑣𝙚𝘭𝔟Ꭵ𝓃.𝖓𝚎𝙩
[I’ll let your failure slide this time. But remember, there won’t be a next time.]
At the chief’s words, Agael wanted to cry but held it back.
Sera, who had been watching the horrifying scene next to her, also sighed inwardly with relief.
[But why are you relieved?]
“Huh?”
Sera felt something wrong when she met the blue eyes that emerged from the darkness.
Crash!
A giant tentacle burst out of the darkness and wrapped around Seragan’s body with a clatter.
“Aaaah! Wait, wait! Why, why are you doing this!”
[You are useless to our department if you can’t properly assist my subordinate. I forgave Agael, not you, didn’t I?]
“But, but…! Agael! Agael, please save me! Agael! Didn’t I do everything you told me to do! Aaah! Agaeel!!”
[You’re noisy.]
Squish. Squirt! Crack!
“Aaaaaaaaah!!!”
The pressure crushed and shattered his bones and flesh in an instant.
Seragan cried and begged, but Agael couldn’t help him.
Agael knew that Seragan had done nothing wrong.
Even knowing that, he had no choice but to tremble and bow his head, desperately turning away.
Squelch! Squeak! Splash!
Red blood and torn flesh scattered with a horrible sound.
They soon disappeared without a trace, turning into white fragments of text.
The text that composed Seragan’s existence was sucked into the darkness.
Agael could only stare at the scene without breathing.
[Remember. Agael. Remember for sure.]
The chief smiled.
His blue eyes curved like crescents, proving it.
[There won’t be a next time.]
***
“Sister.”
In the management office, the masked stranger called out to the black iron knight Hwang Se-eun.
“So… how was it? He was…”
“Hmm.”
Hwang Se-eun was still wearing her armor, but she had taken off her helmet that covered her entire face.
She tidied up her hair that had a faint blue tint, and recalled the man she had seen today.
A man who didn’t feel out of place as a teller, and who was surprisingly human-like.
“He was… fine, I guess. Yeah.”
And he was also a man who felt strangely familiar, to an odd degree.
He was definitely meeting her for the first time, but it felt like they had known each other for a long time. Why was that?
“Really…?”
The stranger asked.
She knew that Hwang Se-eun was very stiff and formal, and polite to those who deserved it. But in fact, that was very limited.
Hwang Se-eun didn’t say anything to anyone who had even a slight hostility or ill will towards her.
Hwang Se-eun was someone who could feel that.
It was an impossible act for anyone to shake hands and talk with Yu-hyun, let alone shake hands with him. She usually didn’t even get close to others.
“He didn’t feel hostile to me. Rather, he felt strangely friendly. There’s nothing wrong with getting along well with him.”
“That’s good…”
“Bangsang, you already felt that too, didn’t you?”
Nod.
The stranger nodded her head. The reason why they could work as collectors without talking properly or hiding their appearance was because their sense and gaze of others were different from others.
The stranger was glad that Hwang Se-eun evaluated Yu-hyun favorably.
It meant that she could see his cute owl, Baekhyo, again.
But there was something that Hwang Se-eun didn’t tell her.
‘He didn’t have any ill thoughts towards me, that’s true. And he felt friendly to me too.’
Hwang Se-eun felt something more strange than that.
That she had to hold his hand no matter what.
That he was someone who should never be turned into an enemy.
That kind of certainty.
