The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 78

“……Where is this?”

Opening my eyes, the surroundings were unfamiliar.

A pavilion floating in the middle of a lake.

Gentle ripples caught the sunlight and sparkled, and the pavilion was as still as an island adrift alone in this world.

A space where even the air seemed to float.

Looking down at my body, I was clothed in a hanbok embroidered with elaborate patterns.

Not the practical clothes I usually wore, but a formal attire that felt like something worn for a ritual.

And on top of that….

“What’s this now.”

Before me sat a table covered in colorful refreshments and sweets.

Seated across from me was a familiar face.

The shaman called ‘Eldest Sister,’ the one who had guided me into this world.

“You’ve woken.”

She looked at me steadily, then opened her mouth without any ceremony.

“Welcome to the cerebral world. A new world we found, after losing our place in reality.”

Before her words had even finished, wind came blowing from somewhere distant.

The wind trembled finely as it brushed against the pavilion’s pillars, and the surface of the lake swayed lightly.

And above it, countless streams of light began to drift.

Data streams.

Proof that this place was not reality, but a space of pure information.

“……Plugging a wire into someone’s neck without any warning.”

“It’s an initiation all of us shamans go through. You got burned hard once, so it’ll be much easier from here on.”

“‘Much easier,’ my foot.”

Grumbling, I looked around.

Blue sky, jade-green lake, a gentle breeze.

Everything visible and felt was unreal.

Artificial, yet beautiful. Unnatural, yet strangely comfortable.

This was the cerebral world.

Not built of binary code, but an ocean of data that the human mind directly sees and feels.

“Neither Kim Jungheon nor the Administration’s watchers can intrude here. It’s the perfect place for secret conversation.”

With that, the shaman slowly took another sip of tea.

Her manner suggested that even asking whether this place was real or virtual was beside the point.

“Do you know what kind of beings we shamans are?”

“Roughly.”

I nodded slowly and recalled what I knew.

“A special agency that once operated under the Royal Investigative Bureau, the ‘Seongsucho.’ The agents who worked there…. agents of the Administration.”

A faint smile appeared at the shaman’s lips.

“Being of Andong Kim blood has its uses. Saves me the effort of explaining.”

She set down her teacup with a graceful gesture and continued.

“In Joseon, rather than developing AI, the technology of cerebral digitization, transferring human consciousness into virtual space, was born first. The aristocrats of Joseon, who prized materialism, regarded cerebral digitization with contempt, but at the same time…. they put this technology to very convenient use.”

I listened to her quietly.

A history I already knew.

Yet the shaman continued speaking as though she meant to make me recall it piece by piece.

“Those of us who underwent cerebral digitization became capable of uploading our personalities into virtual space. Hacking, information warfare, cipher-breaking, data manipulation…. tasks that would take an ordinary person months, we could dispatch in seconds.”

“…….”

“The Administration called those of us ‘shamans,’ and established an agency called the ‘Seongsucho’ to manage us.”

Seongsucho.

A covert organization that operated under the Administration’s strict control, and at the same time an asymmetric force that overwhelmed the two outside powers of Japan and the Central Plains.

……No.

More precisely, that was how it had been in the past.

“And so we became slaves of the Administration.”

She said it calmly.

It was a tone less of declaration than of confirming an old fact.

“From the moment part of our brains were replaced with machinery for cerebral digitization, the aristocrats no longer regarded us as people. To them we were useful tools and weapons, and our minds were altered, edited, and deleted under the pretext of military security.”

“…….”

“And so we fled from that hell on our own two feet.”

The shaman’s voice wavered briefly.

Not from emotion, but the wavering of someone recalling a past that has long since passed.

“The number of us shamans, which once reached several thousand, has been reduced to this. But we survived.”

Royal Investigative Bureau’s highest-tier agents who had fled the Administration and gone into hiding deep within Hanseong.

They established their base somewhere no one knew, and worked in the shadows.

These were the shamans.

She smiled faintly and spoke in a cool voice.

“Now we connect our minds to this server and immerse ourselves in the ocean of data, living our lives.

The countless pieces of data, information, and cryptocurrency drifting through the wireless networks…. we move those from beneath the surface to sustain this community.”

“And with that funding you hollowed out the middle tier and built a data server of this scale?”

“That’s right.”

I looked over at the shamans with weary eyes.

The cerebral digitization technology developed under the Administration’s initiative was currently banned from research and use.

The reason was simple.

The former agents of Seongsucho.

On the day they escaped, they destroyed all the foundational technical data related to cerebral digitization.

The Administration scrambled to attempt technological recovery, but the estimated time to complete restoration was a minimum of twenty years.

Thanks to that, now, the only ones capable of moving through cerebral space in Joseon were these people.

“We roam here, in this ocean of data, recording vast quantities of information, while Hahoe records what they see and hear in the real world.”

She snapped her fingers, and the streams of data drifting through the sky quietly settled once more.

“And the one who oversees the cooperation between both groups, as representative of us shamans, is me.”

She took a sip of tea, then slowly opened her mouth.

“I am the Great Shaman, ‘Mishil.'”

Crackle. Zzzt.

The red mask the shaman wore slowly shifted and changed, revealing her true face beneath.

The sight of someone who had replaced half her head with machinery in order to connect her mind to the data server.

She looked less like a person and more like a well-crafted wooden marionette.

“……Well, that’s enough of an introduction.”

It would have been reasonable to be startled, but I didn’t particularly care.

I waved a hand and tilted the teacup set before me.

“You said something before bringing me here, didn’t you? That we were going to meet my mother. Where and how do we do that?”

“She will come when the time is right. So don’t worry.”

The shaman wearing the Halmi mask spoke gently.

A strangely flat, toneless voice.

It sounded less like a human being and more like a wave emitted by a collection of data.

……Wait.

Was her voice and manner of speaking always like this?

Just as I was beginning to think something was off about the Halmi mask facing me, she rose from her seat and began slowly approaching.

“Let’s have a riddle. What is a shaman, at its core?”

“What?”

Before I could even reply, the Halmi mask started speaking on her own.

“A shaman is fundamentally a sorcerer. A fortune-teller, one to each village…. one who knows the future, prophesies it, and brings people’s hearts together.”

She spoke, and as I watched her, the Halmi mask continued.

“Your mother, Han Changhwa, was exactly that.”

A short sentence.

But the weight of it was heavy.

“It was thanks to her that the shamans were able to escape the Administration’s grasp. That with such insufficient strength at the time, they could shake off the Royal Investigative Bureau’s pursuit, was because of Han Changhwa. Because of her prophecy.”

“……What?”

The moment those words ended, a cold sensation ran down my spine.

“Prophecy?”

What was this about?

My mother had the ability of foresight?

“And now, here you stand.”

Before I had time to collect my thoughts, the Halmi mask thrust her face forward abruptly.

“The power of Han Changhwa, the blood of Han Changhwa, and the prophecy of Han Changhwa! You, who inherited all of that genetic information and data!”

“…….”

I was searching for something to say, but I could not look away from her.

“So you are the one who can do it.”

Great Shaman Mishil said quietly.

“Han Changhwa, adrift somewhere in this vast ocean of data…. that woman’s cerebral personality.”

She took one slow step closer.

I stepped back on instinct.

“The compass capable of summoning her, is you!”

At that moment, every sense stopped.

“So come with us.”

“…….”

“Together, let’s find your mother, Han Changhwa!”

I pressed my lips shut.

Countless thoughts tangled together in my head.

Things that hadn’t existed in my knowledge from my past life were detonating one after another.

My mind could barely keep up with the situation.

But I forced myself to sort through the information.

My mother was a shaman, and she had used her gift of prophecy to save them.

After that, for some reason, she had married Kim Jungheon of Andong Kim, and bore me.

Then I was found to be unable to awaken phase power, lived as the family’s waste, and died miserably, only to wake up and find myself returned to the past.

In other words, this regression I had experienced was likely the result of my mother’s power manifesting.

A shocking truth.

But the shocking thing to dwell on right now wasn’t that.

My mother was alive.

Somewhere in this ocean of data.

‘No. Stop. Get a grip.’

With so much information crashing in at once, my mind was growing muddled.

But I couldn’t afford to make a wrong judgment here.

Even as these shocking truths were being laid out one after another, I had to pull out whatever these people were ultimately hiding.

No, more precisely.

What the one standing before me, wearing the ‘Halmi mask,’ wanted.

I narrowed my eyes and opened my mouth.

“Before entering this cerebral world, you clearly said something to me.”

The Halmi mask nodded.

“Let’s go find your mother, Han Changhwa. I said something along those lines…….”

“Find? What do you mean find. You never said anything like that.”

I looked at her squarely and spoke.

“‘If you keep speaking down to me next time, I’ll kill you.’ That’s what you said. Wasn’t it?”

At that moment, the Halmi mask’s movement stopped dead.

I let out a quiet breath.

“But you’re not killing me? Not only that, you’ve forgotten what was said right before coming here?”

“That’s…….”

“And something has been off since a while ago.”

I looked at the ‘Halmi mask’ standing there with a hand on my shoulder, and spoke.

“In reality, you referred to my mother as ‘Changhwa.’ Or ‘our Changhwa.'”

“…….”

“But just now…. haven’t you been calling her ‘Han Changhwa,’ ‘that woman,’ this whole time?”

The shamans are people still being pursued by the Royal Investigative Bureau even now.

This is not a situation where there is room to play word games.

Then there was only one conclusion.

“You are not the person I was speaking with until just a moment ago, and far from being my ally. No…. I’m not even sure you’re human. This is a world made of data. So let me ask….”

I spoke in a near-whisper.

“……What exactly are you?”

A moment. Silence.

And then.

“A ghost.”

“……What?”

Crackle. Zzzzzt.

With those inexplicable words, the tranquil surroundings warped as though cracking apart.

The lake around the pavilion wasn’t rippling so much as evaporating unnaturally, as if data were colliding. The shimmer of the water distorted, and what had been a calm surface flickered like static rather than waves.

The scent of chrysanthemum that had drifted through the air suddenly turned into the rot of decaying earth, and the refreshments and teacups on the pavilion table blurred and collapsed, unable to hold their shape.

There was not a breath of wind, yet the entire space shook as if about to cave in.

[Variable error. Unable to extract sufficient information from target’s…. reaction. Crackle. Switching to code 01-77288…. response mode chan… ge.]

With an eerie noise, the Halmi mask stood frozen, stiff as a broken puppet, staring vacantly and repeating itself.

No, it could no longer be called the Halmi mask.

A crude imitation of the Halmi mask’s voice and appearance.

Something else entirely.

‘What is this…?’

At that moment, the Halmi mask’s face began to distort.

“Heh, hehheh…! Heheheheh……!”

The corners of its mouth tore open grotesquely into a grin, and dark liquid oozed from the gap. At the same time, in the place where eyes should have been, countless tentacles and sharp chitinous structures pushed their way out.

“Howdidyouknowhowdidyoufigureitoutthisisn’tsupposedtohappenthis’sstrangeIhateithate’snotgoodsoannoyingaaaaaaaaa!”

“What the hell?!”

Noise utterly unlike anything human flooded the space.

Piercing metallic sounds rang out.

The thing that had been the Halmi mask split apart, and a grotesque shape revealed itself.

It looked like a specter of data drifting through the cerebral space.

It was mimicking a human form, but everywhere it was lurching and contorted as though distorted by data errors.

Yet the most twisted thing it produced was not its appearance.

“Advising?Proposing?Requ-esting?host?organism?accesscode77-22361brain!ourinformation?existswithininfoinfoinfodatabasenotnottototallycontainedwithinthisthisprogramandthisconstitutesacriticalcritcritcriticalinformationdddddrop”

Words.

Language strung together with not even a minimum of cause and effect, let alone logic.

Like a keyboard with a broken input device, the thing in the shape of the Halmi mask before me began endlessly stringing together meaningless words.

“thiscontradictsthespiritemotionfeelingsofthegreatjapankoreanchinafederalkingdomrepublicrevolutionaryassemblytherefore?promptlyyieldforthehypophy?sealcapsulahindbrain?thefoundationofsaidopenthenhead?handoverrthebrain?becomepartoftheprogramcomeherebebecomeonewithusTEOGETHER” (+) ^[1] TLN: WE WILL DEVOUR THE VERY GODS. sorry

KABOOM!

The thing that had been the Halmi mask seized with convulsions like a robot that had lost control.

The countless metal spines embedded where its eyes should have been shot out all at once, shattering the pavilion and the table without a trace.

“A peaceful sanctuary, my foot, this is just a living hell!”

“KIAAAAAAAAA!”

A horrific shape fit only for a third-rate horror film was closing in to swallow me.

But this was not reality.

An isolated space with no bow to draw on, no Mooyoung or Taewoong to call upon.

Taking on that enormous monster, over three meters tall, was impossible.

‘Somehow, I need to somehow sever the connection……!

That was the thought I was biting down on as the monster closed in to arm’s reach.’

“Object 3-7797. Lock coordinates to current position.”

“Grk?!”

Unfamiliar.

Yet simultaneously, a voice strangely familiar reached me.

And the next moment.

“You, you, YOUUUUU!”

“Initiating separation procedure.”

Fwhooom!

A beam of light shot in from one side and scattered the monster’s form into dust.

The lake, as quiet as it had been at the start, as though everything that had just happened were an illusion.

Knowing this wasn’t reality, my breath still rushed all the way up to my throat.

What.

What just happened?

“I can’t live like this. I told her it was too soon, and she wouldn’t listen…. and she very nearly got you killed?”

In an instant, the space before me changed.

A pure white space with no background at all.

In the middle of it, someone was walking toward me.

Black hair and amethyst eyes.

A woman who had the same things I had, approaching.

“You…. are?”

Unfamiliar.

Yet something in my chest ached.

That person, surely….?

“Yes. You’re right.”

She smiled and spoke.

She lowered herself, looking softly down at me.

“Nice to meet you. My son.”

A woman holding out her hand with a languid smile.

My mother, whose name was all I had ever known. Han Changhwa.

• 1. TLN: WE WILL DEVOUR THE VERY GODS. sorry