The Otherworldly Magic Swordsman Who Disciplines the Hunter World Chapter 55

Something brushed lightly against his shoulder. After hesitating for a moment, Gong Siyoung moved his hand slightly. As he brushed away Julian’s arm that had been covering his eyes, his vision instantly brightened.

He wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed. Ten minutes? Or maybe fifteen? It wasn’t a long time, but it wasn’t exactly short either.

He had been speechless at the senseless demand to just lie down first. He could have simply pushed him away and gotten up, but because he couldn’t bring himself to do that, he had ended up lying there as if being tortured.

He blinked for a long while until his focus returned. The hospital room was silent, and the light from the ceiling lamp was bright.

Gong Siyoung rolled his eyes slightly to check on Julian, who was sitting in the chair.

“…Are you sleeping?”

The guardian’s bed was lower than expected, and Julian was sitting in the chair facing the bed. With his body hunched over and his arm extended, he looked uncomfortable to anyone’s eyes.

It must have been terribly uncomfortable for him too, yet he had stubbornly endured it to reach out and cover Siyoung’s eyes. Just how headstrong does a person have to be to do that?

“Can you actually fall asleep in that posture?”

As if answering the question, Julian’s head gave a drowsy nod. Siyoung thought he would snap out of it immediately, but instead, Julian’s head started to slide.

Startled, Gong Siyoung skillfully caught him with his hand just before he fell. Julian’s hand dropped limply downward.

He hurriedly caught the body that was tilting sideways. The soft head came to rest against his shoulder—thump. Gong Siyoung’s pupils shook minutely.

“Hey, come on… wake up. Who in the world sleeps like this in a chair?”

His backside, precariously perched on the chair, looked like it would collapse at any moment. He really had a strange talent.

Left with no choice, Siyoung pulled Julian into an embrace to let him lean his weight fully. He gripped Julian’s waist tightly so the body wouldn’t slide off.

He moved as cautiously as possible from his awkward position. By the time he managed to lay Julian down on the bed, beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.

“Mmm…”

Julian mumbled and tossed and turned. He groaned for a while as if something was uncomfortable.

After a moment’s hesitation, Gong Siyoung found a pillow and propped it under his head. Only then did the groaning stop.

“Always something…”

He tells me to stay and sleep, then falls asleep first? What am I supposed to do?

The way Julian always acted selfishly was absurd, but Siyoung found himself equally remarkable for getting caught up in it every single time. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Gong Siyoung rubbed his forehead.

He quietly observed Julian’s sleeping face. The closed eyelids, the elegantly straight bridge of the nose beneath them, the red lips—every part was perfect without a single flaw.

Facing that peacefully sleeping face, memories of that day inevitably resurfaced.

The time he ran and ran through the dungeon, carrying Julian on his back, not knowing if he would ever wake up again.

Every step felt like someone was strangling him, his breath catching in his throat. Perhaps that was what it felt like to roll through an endless mire.

Maybe he had already resigned himself back then. Had he not already experienced losing countless comrades in that exact way? Sacrifice, regret, parting, death—he was sick of such words by now.

Julian was the same. He sacrificed himself to protect his comrades and was left there alone.

The chances of survival were not high. Usually, people who collapsed unconscious in a dungeon never woke up again.

But Julian woke up. Siyoung had thought he might never see him again. He had resigned himself to the possibility of letting him go forever.

Nevertheless, Julian returned on his own two feet. Like a miracle, another opportunity had opened.

“I can’t stand to see you sacrifice yourself alone anymore.”

Gong Siyoung’s eyes shone with determination. The reason for this emotion didn’t matter. He simply didn’t want to live with regret.

This time, Gong Siyoung’s hand came to rest upon those closed eyelids. Along with the warm body heat, he felt the eyelashes tickling his palm.

As if possessed, he let his hand slide down slightly. The palm that had been covering the eyes brushed down the bridge of the nose and moved further down. His hand finally touched the edge of the lips.

“…What sacrifice?”

The lips moved without warning. In the sudden situation, Siyoung gasped—hic.

He hurriedly pulled his hand back. Julian’s eyes, which had been closed, were now shining clearly.

Julian sat up. Startled out of his wits, Gong Siyoung retreated quite a distance.

“You, you were awake?!”

“Uh-huh… I dozed off for a bit, but I wasn’t fully asleep. But it felt a bit awkward to say that…”

Julian answered awkwardly. From the moment he lay on the bed, his mind had actually been wide awake. However, given the situation, he couldn’t bring himself to let on.

Even without looking directly, he could clearly feel the atmosphere and the gaze. His mood grew increasingly strange under the eyes staring intently down at him. Julian, too, had been holding his breath at some point.

At first, he thought simply. Since Gong Siyoung seemed to be agonizing over something, he shouldn’t disturb him. Since it would be awkward to say he wasn’t sleeping yet, he should keep pretending to sleep. He couldn’t sleep because he had napped enough during the day to be sick of it, but he figured if he kept his eyes closed, who knew.

Then at some point, he felt an unexpected contact. When a soft, cautious touch reached his eyes, his heart thumped—thump, thump—against his will. It was his face being touched, but his chest felt ticklish. Just like that, the hand moved down bit by bit until it reached his lips.

He felt like things would get truly strange if he stayed like this. He didn’t know what “it” was, but the intuition was certain. If they didn’t stop here, both of them might end up in a lot of trouble. So, prepared to ruin the mood, he snapped his eyes open.

“But what sacrifice? Didn’t you say something about sacrifice earlier?”

He asked back with a shameless face. As he naturally shifted the topic, Gong Siyoung regained his composure as well. Straightening his posture, he subtly avoided Julian’s gaze. His slightly reddened cheeks were particularly noticeable.

“No, that, well… the, the dungeon! I was wondering how you got out of there by yourself. Back then, Hunter Woo Yujin was making a fuss saying you couldn’t get out alone, but you ended up escaping by yourself.”

He seemed to have blurted out whatever came to mind, but it was quite a sharp question.

He locked eyes with the defensive Gong Siyoung. For a moment, an awkward silence lingered. It was Julian who looked away first.

“Ah, then… Right, at that time… I just drove my sword in alone, figuring I’d try it before I died. My precious sword is a bit special.”

He hugged the pillow. Leaning on the soft texture helped calm his heart bit by bit.

Seriously, why am I like this? Even if he didn’t want to be conscious of it, the sensation of the touch that had narrowly brushed his lips moments ago kept coming back to him.

Did his fingertips touch? The harder he tried not to think about it, the more he thought only of that.

“I wasn’t going to talk about it, but I guess I have to if I want to explain. It even has a name. Igni.”

“What is an Igni?”

“My sword, I mean. It has a name, it can think, and it knows how to make judgments. So I guess Minos thought being stabbed by this guy was a homicide. Thanks to that, I was able to escape.”

Even while speaking, his attention was entirely on his lips. What’s with this guy, why are his lips so full?

“How does a sword think and judge? What, is there a soul or something in there?”

“I’m not supposed to say… you won’t spread rumors, will you?”

“Why would I spread rumors.”

Gong Siyoung frowned. His expression had returned to normal as he seemed to have calmed down. Julian smacked his lips with regret as he watched the redness fade from Siyoung’s cheeks.

Julian sat up on the bed. He picked up the sword he had leaned roughly against the wall and hugged it dearly. Gong Siyoung twitched an eyebrow as if he found it absurd.

“Then I’ll trust you and tell you. You won’t take my sword away, right? And you won’t curse at me?”

“Who do you take me for, a beggar? Why would I take your sword? And why would I curse?”

His lips get even redder when he gets angry. Julian let the completely irrelevant thought slide and nodded his head.

“A long time ago, I had a friend I really liked. Ignis. This is the sword he left behind.”

As if Julian’s precious sword, Igni, recognized its own name, mana fluttered—puff, puff—from it.

“He was truly something special. His goal in life was the eradication of monsters, you know? Usually, even if people decide on something like that, it’s rare for someone to actually put it into practice. But Ignis said he would really do it. That’s why he became a paladin.”

Igni was the sword Ignis had left behind. That was why Julian avoided calling Igni’s name as much as possible. Because he didn’t feel good when he thought of him.

No one intentionally poked at a wound that only brought pain. To Julian, Ignis was exactly that kind of wound.

“In the beginning, it was quite successful? He made a name for himself as a paladin, saved people, and went around killing monsters. People liked Ignis. …They used to like him.”

All those events had now become the past. The once-praised paladin had fallen, and now he was a being people even hesitated to mention.

By the time Julian realized that fact, there was nothing he could do to turn it back. Everything was a mess.

Everything he left behind was burned to ashes along with Ignis’s name. The only thing remaining was this one sword Julian possessed.

Julian kept his mouth shut to protect his friend’s keepsake. He didn’t care even if that meant deceiving the world.

“Ignis sold his soul to a demon and took the side of the monsters. He decided to betray everyone and become a monster.”