Possessor #2 Just Wants to Fangirl Chapter 15

I was briefly speechless from being hit by the sudden question.

Was keeping me behind separately to ask this?

Did he throw the question after making me let my guard down with gifts and money?

Whatever his true intentions, Ha Seonwoo’s face remains warm and kind.

“You could’ve endangered not just yourself but the other kids too, right? Why did you suddenly leave the magic circle?”

The reason I left the magic circle is simple.

To kill a bug.

But can I freely tell him this?

Just as I was trying to organize my thoughts, I felt a chilling sensation on the back of my neck.

‘Skill activation again?’

If he’s using a skill in this situation, it would be lie detection.

Then I can’t lie.

If lying isn’t an option, I only have two choices left.

① Stay silent → My 7th bias character thinks I’m suspicious.

② Tell the truth → ???

‘Would I lose anything by telling the truth?’

Ha Seonwoo is a trustworthy character anyway.

If you divide the world into your side and my side, Ha Seonwoo definitely belongs to my side.

I mean, he’s the guy who gets assassinated by the mastermind.

Plus, Ha Seonwoo is tight-lipped.

Even in the original work, he only released his investigation results about the mastermind after his death.

‘The bug needs to be investigated anyway, right?’

I need to find out the identity of that suspicious bug.

In the original work, it was described as if the outbreak was the cause of the Awakening Test Disaster, but the real culprit was the bug.

I need to find out where this bug came from, but how am I supposed to investigate a bug that wasn’t described in the novel?

In that sense, Ha Seonwoo will be the best collaborator.

I mean, he’s a walking security agency.

Isn’t this actually a situation where I should be asking him for help?

‘Right, let’s outsource the bug investigation to Ha Seonwoo!’

Having decided that, I paused a bit longer.

“I don’t mind telling you, but I’m worried you’ll think I’m strange…”

“That won’t happen, so tell me.”

“Well, you see… there was a bug.”

“A bug… so you left the barrier because of that?”

Ha Seonwoo has a baffled face.

He seems to see me as a woman who stakes her life on pest extermination.

Yeah, no, it’s not that.

“The moment that bug approached the goblin restraint device, the device broke. It might be a coincidence, but I wondered if maybe the bug cast some strange magic…”

Ha Seonwoo’s eyes sharpen.

“Haha, that sounds ridiculous, right? There’s no way such a bug exists… Just pretend you didn’t hear it and forget about it!”

I finish with appropriate rambling.

I shut my mouth firmly and examined Ha Seonwoo’s face.

Ha Seonwoo withdrew his look-at-the-crazy-person gaze and fell into thought, chin in hand.

‘Now, what will you do?’

If he wants to investigate the bug, he’ll ask me additional questions here.

If he doesn’t want to get involved in such a troublesome matter, he’ll laugh it off and send me out.

I waited obediently for Ha Seonwoo to speak again.

“What did the bug look like?”

An additional question came.

He may not be conscious of it himself, but this means he’s accepted my outsourcing request.

“I couldn’t see it well, but it glowed like a firefly.”

“How big was it?”

“About this much?”

“When did you first see it?”

“30 minutes after the earthquake?”

“Did you see it before entering the test site?”

“No.”

“Did you see it while moving or in the waiting room?”

“No. Maybe it was already inside the cave?”

“Close your eyes and think carefully. You might have seen it unconsciously and passed over it.”

I feel a tingling sensation from the top of my head.

Like someone forcibly closed my eyelids, both my eyes shut on their own.

In the pitch-black darkness, what I experienced today began to replay.

‘Could this be… a hypnosis skill?’

Oh my, what’s this!

This is my first time with hypnosis!

This is totally real!

Like a movie, the waiting room scenery I was in today is vividly unfolding.

“While waiting in the waiting room, were there any strange students? People with their eyes closed or muttering to themselves alone?”

There are plenty of people with their eyes closed.

Ki Hyeonmin is also swaying back and forth with his eyes closed, and Gyeon Junhwi also has his eyes closed with a serious face, muttering something as if planning the outbreak.

My teammate No Jitae has his eyes closed and is shaking his legs, and another teammate Park Rahee has her eyes closed with her hands together praying…

I counted all those kids one by one.

“32 students with their eyes closed, 7 students muttering.”

“Can you tell me what those students looked like?”

I answered Ha Seonwoo’s questions as sincerely and wholeheartedly as possible.

I answered additional questions, and then answered the next additional questions too.

How much time passed like that?

“Now open your eyes.”

When I opened my eyes, the strange sensation at the top of my head and the vivid images disappeared.

It seems today’s hypnosis ends here.

It’s a shame, it was fun.

“Thank you, it helped a lot.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Can you keep today’s conversation a secret between us?”

“Yes.”

I felt the sensation of handcuffs being fastened on my heart again.

Sir, if you carelessly use skills at all times like this, will you have any mana left?

Ah, since you’re a genius, you probably have plenty.

“If you think of anything later, feel free to contact me anytime.”

〔User (Ha Seonwoo) is sending a friend request. Do you accept? Y/N〕

Is this Hunter DM?

Not even a guild account—a big shot like Ha Seonwoo is sending me a DM friend request from his personal account.

When I made surprised eyes, Ha Seonwoo smiled brightly.

“Contact me through this if you need to reach me. Even small matters are fine.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve prepared a vehicle outside, so take that.”

“Yes!”

I jumped up from my seat.

I got money, I got an item, I even got my bias character’s personal contact!

This time it’s really time to leave work!

* * *

After the students left, an employee dressed in a black suit opened the investigation room door.

“Vice Guild Master, your next schedule…”

“10 minutes.”

“Understood.”

The employee bowed politely and closed the door.

Left alone, Ha Seonwoo sat with his legs crossed and began chewing over the information he’d just obtained.

‘This doesn’t make sense.’

Despite a ranker accompanying them, as many as 6 casualties occurred. Against mere F-rank goblins.

According to the on-site investigation team, there were no abnormalities in the monster corpses that attacked the victims, and the safety devices were all functioning properly.

He requested additional tests, but it would take at least three days for results.

In the midst of that, he’d secured important testimony.

‘A phantom beast…’

If the student’s testimony is true, what infiltrated the test site is a type of phantom beast. A summoned creature or clone.

Phantom beasts usually take the form of beasts and deliver physical attacks.

He’s never heard of a bug-shaped phantom beast that uses magic, but…

The world is always changing.

There’s plenty of possibility that entities he doesn’t know about exist in reality.

At least, the witness wasn’t lying.

‘First I need to recover the phantom beast’s corpse.’

With just that, he could reveal the truth.

Perhaps he could even track down who sent the phantom beast.

There were other things to do as well.

‘Is there a rat?’

Ha Seonwoo had obtained information in advance that ‘something would happen’ at this awakening test.

So he’d prepared countermeasures accordingly, but someone bypassed them and persistently caused an incident.

There’s a possibility of someone within the guild colluding with the enemy.

That also needs to be confirmed.

The work increased, but at least there’s a starting point.

Without a witness, he wouldn’t have been able to grasp even a clue to the incident.

‘I was lucky.’

While organizing the situation, Ha Seonwoo unconsciously recalled the student he met last.

The student named Yeon Sora.

A student who awakened uncommonly destructive flame magic.

A student who bloomed area-of-effect/targeted-type skills simultaneously with awakening.

And a student who happened to discover the phantom beast…

‘Is this all coincidence?’

A laugh leaked out with a pfft.

As if it could be coincidence.

This is… talent.

The student named Yeon Sora seems to have an especially sensitive constitution to mana. That’s why she instinctively detected the phantom beast’s mana.

That level of sensitivity isn’t common, but there weren’t zero precedents either.

In any case, it’s definitely tremendous talent.

Perhaps aware of it herself, her expression looked rather arrogant.

“……”

Having finished thinking that far, Ha Seonwoo paused for a moment.

Because he remembered Yeon Sora’s reaction.

The moment he first activated his skill, she widened her eyes and looked at her teammates.

The timing of that gaze… bothered him.

Because it looked exactly like she’d detected Ha Seonwoo’s skill and was startled.

If she could detect the phantom beast’s mana, could she also detect an awakened one’s mana usage?

“Ha, what nonsense.”

Ha Seonwoo shook his head with a hollow laugh.

Detecting his skills—that can’t be possible.

There’s never been a single such case until now.

* * *

“You really want us to take this?”

“Yes. The Vice Guild Master specifically asked for this vehicle to be prepared just for Group 2 members.”

“Ooooh!”

The vehicle Phoenix Guild prepared is twice as long as a normal vehicle.

In other words, it’s a limousine.

I hopped and bounced as I threw myself into the long limousine.

“Wow! There’s even a refrigerator in here!”

“There’s popcorn too? Should we play a movie on the way?”

My teammates are excited looking at the limousine.

I want to make a fuss with them too, but,

“I’m going to lie down for a bit. Wake me when we arrive.”

“Okay, Sora, get plenty of rest.”

I lay down in the most secluded spot possible and closed my eyes.

Right, now isn’t the time to be touring the limousine.

Because I’ve just obtained tremendously important information.

‘The culprit is in here!’

Ha Seonwoo was suspicious of the students or rankers who entered the cave.

It seemed he thought someone who participated in the test transported the bug.

I don’t know why he thinks that, but if a genius says so, it must be so.

If I believe Ha Seonwoo’s deduction, it means someone I met today is the culprit.

‘Who is it?’

Assuming it’s not a suicide mission, the culprit is probably one of the survivors described in the novel.

I closed my eyes and tried to recall the early part of the novel with all my heart.

There are 9 awakening test survivors described in <On the Brink of Destruction>.

7 people who were at the outbreak scene (Gyeon Junhwi, Gyeon Junhwi’s 4 teammates, the ranker, Ki Hyeonmin).

And 2 people who were outside the scene (Yeom Juwan, plus one).

But here I can narrow the range a bit more.

Because there was Gyeon Junhwi’s inner monologue.

「If it proceeds like this, there will only be three survivors. We’re screwed.」

In a world where Gyeon Junhwi doesn’t possess, there were only 3 survivors.

Gyeon Junhwi’s team was annihilated.

Then what remains is Ki Hyeonmin, Yeom Juwan, plus one.

Since Ki Hyeonmin and Yeom Juwan can’t be the culprit, what remains is…

Plus one.

That person is the culprit.