The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 79

Have you found him!?

“No. Not here either.”

The data signal Changwoon had been transmitting had cut off completely.

His two guards went on immediate high alert, and even the people of Eight Outcasts Society and the Sword Pact were fully mobilized to search for his whereabouts, but the result was the same.

He had vanished without leaving a single trace in the city.

“This is my failure. I shouldn’t have let my guard down just because he said he was going to the main estate. In a way, it’s no different from having walked into the hands of enemies……!”

Mooyoung ground his teeth.

This was the first time Changwoon’s personal terminal had gone completely dead.

It was the latest encryption equipment capable of blocking any external hacking, designed so even the Administration couldn’t easily track it.

And yet for something to break through all of that security and cut the signal entirely….

“Enough. Now isn’t the time for self-reproach.”

Taewoong quietly steadied Mooyoung and looked around.

His eyes were already scanning the surroundings for traces.

“What we need right now is a lead.”

Saying that, Taewoong and Mooyoung moved toward the place where Changwoon’s signal had last been detected, a secluded alley in the upper tier.

The alley was quiet.

Upper tier of Hanseong, it may have been, but this area on the outskirts was a zone where darkness had settled thick.

The neon signs lighting the street flickered intermittently, and old posters and faded slogans cluttered the walls.

Mooyoung kept looking around restlessly.

“Something’s strange. There are a lot of surveillance devices around here, so if young master had been kidnapped, there would definitely have been a record.”

Taewoong examined the ground in silence.

And in that moment, his eyes stopped as if nailed to one object.

Slowly, carefully, he reached out and picked it up.

A bell.

Not an ordinary thing.

A bell with shamanistic meaning, the kind used by shamans in ritual ceremonies.

Taewoong’s expression darkened as he stared at it.

“They took young master Changwoon…?”

He shook the bell slowly in the dark.

A clear sound rang out, spreading a faint vibration through the air.

Taewoong slowly drew back the hand holding the bell and spoke.

“……Even if she is his maternal family, this is awfully sudden.”

Mooyoung looked at Taewoong with a bewildered expression.

Taewoong kept the bell in hand, swept the alley with a single look, and then spoke with resolve.

“The young master is safe.”

“Safe? What do you mean……?”

Mooyoung was still confused.

Changwoon’s signal had cut off.

The Eight Outcasts Society’s security network had been neutralized, and he had disappeared while evading even the surveillance devices.

Was this not an obvious emergency?

And yet Taewoong was saying Changwoon was safe.

It was words filled with certainty, as though he already knew.

“Follow me.”

Taewoong said simply.

“Where are you going?”

“I know the way.”

“Pardon? Pardon?”

Mooyoung was baffled, but sensed that Taewoong’s manner was far from ordinary and hurried to follow behind him.

They were heading somewhere, on Changwoon’s trail.

---

“M…. Mother?”

Even speaking it aloud, the word sat strangely on the tongue.

Each time my lips moved, there was a sensation as though the word didn’t belong to me.

A foreign word, as if I were saying it for the very first time in my life, rolling oddly in my mouth.

The only thing I knew about her was one thing: her name.

Not what she looked like, not what kind of person she was.

To me, the concept of ‘mother’ had been nothing more than a simple word, no, something even less than that.

And yet now, the woman standing before me was turning a gentle smile in my direction.

With a face far too vivid, carrying the feel of something alive.

“That’s right. It’s me, your mom.”

The woman spoke calmly.

As though she had known me for a very long time.

“It’s been a while since we met. Shall we hug?”

At those words, I flinched instinctively and stepped back.

That tone, coming out so naturally.

I should be keeping my guard up as I would with a stranger, yet every word she spoke felt uncannily familiar.

Was this person really my mother?

“Just now, that thing…….”

I recalled the grotesque entity that had tried to come at me until moments ago.

Tentacles and chitinous structures with no recognizable form. A bizarre manner of speech that couldn’t be expressed in human language.

That voice still lingered in my ears, and cold sweat ran down my spine at the memory.

“Ah, the terrifying-looking thing? That’s a ‘ghost.'”

“……A ghost?”

I frowned.

A ghost, in cerebral space.

What on earth did that mean?

“Ah right, saying it like that out of nowhere, you probably can’t make sense of it.”

My mother seemed she hadn’t anticipated my reaction; she smiled awkwardly and began to explain calmly.

“A shaman can gain enormous power by uploading their personality and mind into cerebral space.

But at the same time, a personality that has been endlessly altered for military purposes comes to reject reunification with its original body, and eventually goes completely mad.”

I listened to her in silence.

“Beings created as weapons by the Administration, yet unable to return to their original bodies. Trapped here, living viruses drifting through this ocean of data forever.”

“…….”

“That’s why I named them ‘ghosts.’…. Fitting, don’t you think?”

My mother smiled as though it were nothing.

‘Fitting. That?’

A short, involuntary laugh escaped me.

Describing something so horrific so naturally, that was almost cynical.

“By the way, must take after his father, not much warmth in him.”

Perhaps she meant to ease the tension somewhat.

She turned around and stretched both arms toward me.

“I’m the mother you’re meeting for the first time in your life. Won’t you let me hold you, or something?”

“……That’s a bit awkward, I’m afraid.”

I said immediately.

“My mother died biologically on the day I was born. The Royal Investigative Bureau handled the body themselves, so she wouldn’t have crossed into virtual space just before dying.”

“Oh?”

This reaction, hearing of her own death for the first time.

That alone was as good as a confirmation.

“The you here is an entity that was uploaded before that…. something like a copy of my mother, so to speak. You may hold some of my mother’s memories, but you and the mother I know are different people.”

“Wow, no warmth at all. You’re definitely my son.”

My mother shook her head as though she’d given up.

Then she forcibly grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet from where I sat by the lake.

The warmth felt through our clasped hands.

Even knowing this wasn’t reality. Even knowing it wasn’t my mother’s.

Still a warm hand.

“You’re tall like that man, at least, gangly like a beanpole, and thankfully the face takes after me. You had a lot of women around, didn’t you?”

“Not even close.”

“Ugh, an unfilial wretch.”

We went back and forth like that as she looked me over slowly, but I couldn’t laugh at her jokes.

Only a heavy feeling rose up to my throat, and I watched her in silence.

“The eyes are just a tiny bit disappointing, but I’ll let that slide as an imperfection in an otherwise fine thing….”

“All of it.”

And at last, the question that had risen to the very top of my throat came out of my mouth.

“All of it, was it according to your prophecy?”

My voice was trembling.

I stepped forward and looked at her again.

“That I lived and died like a piece of trash. And that I came back to life after dying and have been causing all this chaos. Was all of it according to your prophecy?! If so, was I, from the very beginning, an existence arranged to overturn Joseon? I…. I……!”

My voice grew increasingly agitated.

The moment the emotion swelling in my chest reached out like a sharp blade.

“That you were being used like a piece on a game board, according to my intentions. Is that what you want to ask?”

My mother’s calm, settled voice cut through the surging storm of emotion.

Ah, cutting in to say what I was about to say before I could.

Now that it’s happening to me, I find it far more infuriating than I expected.

“Haah, that’s why I said it was too early. Dragging the child all the way here regardless…….”

With that, as I stayed silent for a while without answering, my mother gave a light shrug.

“Why these women are always so impatient. Nothing has changed from then to now.”

She muttered quietly, then slowly took one step forward.

“Whatever else I may not know, let me be clear on this one thing.”

I stood frozen in place and met her gaze head-on.

“I didn’t know you’d come looking for me already. This wasn’t something I had planned.”

“Is that true?”

“Believe me. If I could have prophesied everything in the world from the start, do you think I’d have ended up as a scrap of data drifting through limbo? Not even getting treated like a mother by my only son?”

“…….”

She wasn’t wrong.

If one could perfectly carve out one’s fate with the power of foresight….

She would already have toppled the Administration and held the world in her hand.

But now she had been reduced to nothing more than a consciousness left behind in cerebral space.

In other words, she too was not a perfect seer.

My mother smiled bitterly watching that, then slowly placed her hand on my head.

“I understand the confusion, but at least I’m on your side. If you deny even that, your mother’s heart aches a little…. is there no way around it?”

“……Haah.”

A sigh came out on its own, at the absurdity.

Well, pouring out more emotion here would gain me nothing.

If anything, this situation was, from my standpoint, a fortunate development.

“I’ll believe you.”

I’d trust her for now.

Nothing to lose.

Once I’d made the decision, I immediately composed my expression and opened my mouth.

“Then I’ll ask directly. First question.”

“Oh, quick to recover. That’s identical to him.”

She must mean Kim Jungheon.

I brushed it off with a wry laugh and got to the point.

“Kim Jungheon has been inferring, based on your ability, that I possess knowledge of the future. Have you ever shown him your power?”

“Never!”

A firm answer.

My mother curled one corner of her mouth and followed with,

“He’s the husband I met after being half-sold into marriage. Why would I waste something like that on him?”

“I…. see.”

Short and concise. Simultaneously cutting.

The way she spoke, like looking at my own reflection, stirred a strange sense of familiarity.

I truly do take after my mother.

Setting that aside, I moved on to the next question.

“Then apart from that, how many people know of your existence and your power?”

“Excluding Kim Jungheon, maybe one. Someone you know well, too.”

“Someone I know well?”

“Yes. Our guard, Seo Taewoong. He probably knows.”

Taewoong knew?

This was new information.

I had known he had been with the family before I was born, but I never imagined he had been responsible for my mother’s protection as well.

‘Something to ask about when I get back.’

But I couldn’t stop there.

I continued asking.

“……I clearly experienced death, and then returned to the past. Is this your doing?”

My mother was silent for a moment, watching me.

In those eyes, unidentifiable emotions were mixed together.

“It’s similar to my ability, but a little different.”

She slowly took my hand as she spoke.

“As I said before, I can only see fragmentary glimpses. Returning entirely to the past…. I don’t know. It probably hasn’t happened in my lineage before either.”

“Good.”

Then Kim Jungheon wouldn’t know my ability precisely.

Fragmentary prophecy, abstract foresight.

With an ability of that level, he would be making guesses and continuing to try to pry into my inner workings.

In that case, there’s room on my side to strike back.

“Then lastly.”

I paused to collect myself, then asked her.

A small thing.

Yet perhaps the most important question.

“Am I…. making the right choice right now?”

I had thought this question wouldn’t be something she could easily answer.

But she seemed to think for a moment, and then slowly smiled.

“Instead of answering, I’ll give you a question in return.”

“What?”

What was this about.

Answering a question with a question, what was that supposed to accomplish?

Oh wait, this is my own manner of speaking.

Caught in that self-contradiction, my mother smiled slightly and asked.

“Comparing your last life to now, which do you think is better?”

“……!”

This was a question I could answer easily.

“……At the very least, now seems better than my last life.”

“Why?”

“Because dying once took away the fear of things. Charging headlong into whatever I feel like has been oddly satisfying.”

“Then that’s enough.”

She said with a smirk.

“To be a better today than yesterday. To be a better tomorrow than today. Living while praying for that, that’s what people do. Isn’t it?”

“…….”

“So don’t be afraid, and do as you please.”

She placed her hand on my head once more.

That virtual touch, made of binary and data, was gentle, and it held comfort.

“Because those seemingly insignificant choices tend to change more than you’d expect.”

At that moment.

The pure white landscape began to warp.

“Mother……!”

“It’s still dangerous to meet me. Kim Jungheon is keeping a constant watch on you too…. if the Royal Investigative Bureau finds me, that would be a serious problem.”

“……!”

“So let’s say today, we never met. Instead, though it might be a strange way to put it….”

Consciousness blurring.

Memories scattering.

Within it, my mother looked at me with a bittersweet smile.

“I’ll give you a gift.”

With those words.

My consciousness was breaking free entirely from the cerebral world.