The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 80

When I opened my eyes, I was still seated in the middle of the data center.

My vision swam. My chest was beating fast, and a headache rang through my skull. My fingertips tingled. It felt like the shock of returning to reality was spreading through my nerves.

Looking around, the shamans were watching me in silence. Their eyes held a faint mix of tension and anticipation.

“How was it?”

The first to speak was the Halmi mask.

Her voice was calm, but carried a subtle expectation.

I let out a hollow laugh.

“How was what. I spent the whole time battered by some strange virus and that was it. Didn’t even catch a glimpse of my mother’s face.”

“Is that so?”

Cold news delivered, but the shamans didn’t look particularly disappointed.

A plain reaction, as though they had known it would come to this.

I pushed myself up and tried to trace back my memories.

The things I had seen and heard in the cerebral space felt like they were dimly fading from my mind.

But even so, one certainty remained clearly behind.

“Then that’s enough.”

The shamans wore relieved expressions, as though they had finished everything they needed to do.

As I watched them with sharp eyes, in that very moment.

Thud!

With a heavy sound, someone kicked the door open and came in.

Taewoong, and Mooyoung.

But Mooyoung, the moment he stepped inside, stared at the enormous data servers with an expression of shock.

“This rivals the Administration’s own database. How is something like this in the middle of the middle tier……!”

Right, anyone coming in here would have that reaction.

A data server this size, right in the heart of the middle tier.

It was a situation no different from planting a nuclear bomb in the middle of a marketplace.

But Taewoong’s reaction was different.

He looked at me and the shamans in the center of the room, then muttered with a grave expression.

“As I thought. So it was you people.”

In the meantime, Mooyoung collected himself, and his gaze snapped straight toward me.

“Young master!”

Seeing me slumped on the floor, Mooyoung’s face flared.

The phase power wrapping his body vibrated faintly in that moment.

“It’s fine, Mooyoung. Put the sword away.”

I immediately raised a hand to stop him.

“But young master……!”

“I know you’re angry I followed a stranger, but let’s cool off first. If these people were really kidnappers or sent by a power clan, would my head still be sitting on my neck? It’d probably be blinking from inside some analysis device by now.”

At those words, Mooyoung ground his teeth, but seeing my firm expression, he finally sheathed the hwando.

Took ten years off my life.

I’d nearly gotten my mother’s friends killed.

Only then did I turn to face Great Shaman Mishil, who had been watching me.

“From your expressions, it looks like you accomplished everything you brought me here for.”

When my tone shifted, Great Shaman Mishil’s expression stiffened slightly.

Why the surprise.

Watching her like that, Mishil slowly asked.

“Don’t tell me you remember……?”

As I thought. She noticed.

All the more reason to keep formal speech then.

I paused to collect myself, glanced around at the surrounding shamans, and then.

“Did I meet my mother?”

The moment those words left my mouth, every shaman’s face went rigid in an instant.

‘Got them.’

I didn’t miss their subtle reactions.

Those unable to answer rashly.

Those avoiding eye contact.

Those awkwardly clenching their hands.

“……You caught on impressively.”

In the middle of those thoughts, the Halmi mask opened her mouth.

All that business with cerebral worlds and virtual personalities, yet the psychological game is so clumsy.

I smiled faintly and said.

“The biggest clue is inside my own head.”

I tapped my temple a couple of times lightly.

“I encountered a ‘ghost’ in the cerebral world. But from the start, I had absolutely no idea what a ‘ghost’ was or what kind of entity it might be.”

But I know now.

From the moment I had gone into and come back out of the cerebral space, knowledge and information I had never possessed was remaining in my head.

Foreign memories, yet those alone I could recall with vivid clarity.

‘Living viruses drifting through cerebral space.’

‘The electronic warfare weapons the Administration created, the shamans.’

‘And the result of those shamans, altered for military purposes, going mad in the ocean of data.’

‘Monsters that hunger for information and data.’

The memory of having entered the cerebral world had cleanly disappeared, but the knowledge I had heard there remained intact.

Which meant.

“Someone artificially altered my memories.”

Only my voice rang through the quiet space.

A sensation now far too familiar. The hollowness of a portion of memory having been torn away. But fragments lodged somewhere were moving me without my knowing.

The shamans watched me without a word.

It wasn’t that remarkable.

Deductive reasoning that Royal Investigative Bureau agents learn as a basic skill, I had merely followed along clumsily.

When I fell silent, the shamans offered no particular denial. Meaning my inference was correct.

“For instance, I likely met my mother in the cerebral world and finished telling her everything I had to say. I’ve forgotten it, but she may have gleaned some information. I can even guess the reason for erasing my memories to some degree.”

The longer the tail, the easier it is to catch. But what I’d been building wasn’t just a tail.

I’d probably be dragged in by the Royal Investigative Bureau for questioning before long.

If the memory of Han Changhwa, my mother, remained in me until then?

Not just I, but the shamans, and my mother still remaining in the cerebral space, would all be in danger.

‘I can only guess at what my mother was aiming for, but…. it’s not as though there’s nothing I can surmise.’

Finished with that thought, I slowly rose to my feet.

Having been sitting for so long, a light dizziness washed over me, but I steadied myself and stood.

‘In the end, all I got from being dragged to this gloomy place was guesswork and questions.’

Still. It wasn’t bad.

I had at least gained the one fact of having met my mother.

I’d have to be satisfied with that for now.

Thinking that, just as I moved to turn away.

“From what I’ve heard, it seems you have a major undertaking ahead.”

A low voice from behind.

The owner of that voice was the Halmi mask, still with her identity unknown.

“A major undertaking?”

I turned my gaze, and the Halmi mask stepped forward.

“That you will depart for Japan, and enter the succession competition for Andong Kim clan head.”

“……!”

My expression stiffened without my meaning it to.

Mooyoung and Taewoong, startled, looked my way.

“Young master, is that true?”

Mooyoung asked in an urgent voice, and Taewoong watched me with narrowed eyes.

I gave a reluctant nod.

‘Things being what they are, no real reason to hide it.’

But how did she know?

I’d never let it past my lips.

I looked around at the shamans.

The eyes watching me held certainty.

“……It seems that while adjusting things inside my head, you took some information as well.”

I said with a bitter smile.

“This is making me feel very much like I’ve come out the worse.”

At that, the Halmi mask spoke with amusement in her voice.

“There’s no need to think of it as a loss. We may actually be of help.”

“What do you mean?”

I asked offhandedly, starting to turn away again.

At that, the Halmi mask stepped forward.

“To help you with that matter, your mother left a request.”

“……My mother did?”

I stopped.

The Halmi mask stood before me and held out a small data chip.

A chip with a faint reddish tint, roughly the size of one finger joint.

I slowly took it. But something felt off.

“This…… there’s no access terminal.”

I turned the chip over and examined it, but there was no terminal anywhere.

“Just think of it as a talisman and keep it with you.”

“A talisman?”

This is a talisman?

I looked at the chip with a puzzled expression.

“Yes. It will definitely be of use.”

I’d take it since it was being given, but it left me uneasy.

A talisman written by a shaman.

Would carrying this around bring down an ancestral spirit to come to my aid?

But pressing further here was pointless.

I tucked the chip inside my clothing and replied.

“All right. I’ll accept it.”

“And one more thing.”

The Halmi mask stepped back as she spoke.

I looked up.

“In the organization you built, Eight Outcasts Society, is there a place for us?”

I stared at the Halmi mask blankly for a moment.

Before her words were even finished, the shamans quietly rose and turned to watch me.

All with the same expression.

Wearing a smile of uncertain meaning.

I looked them over quietly.

Eight Outcasts Society.

The organization I had built, prepared to shake Joseon to its foundations.

If I were to include the shamans within it?

I smiled with quiet satisfaction and spoke slowly.

“You are welcome at any time.”

An unexpected development.

But as a result, I had just obtained the most formidable electronic warfare unit in all of Joseon.

What greater gain could there be.

---

“I never imagined we would meet again in a place like this.”

After Changwoon and Mooyoung had departed for their base, Taewoong stood outside the building for a long while, unable to leave.

The darkness surrounding the data center, and within it the faint glow of billboard lights drifting through. The mechanical sounds echoing from far away, and the murmur of people.

But Taewoong stood quietly with all that noise as his backdrop.

As though submerged in a memory from long ago.

Into the space beside him, someone slowly approached.

Quiet footsteps.

It was the woman called ‘Eldest Sister’ among the shamans, the Halmi mask.

A short pipe with a faint red tint in her mouth, she stopped and looked down at Taewoong.

“Seo Taewoong.”

“It has been a long time.”

“Indeed. You’d have preferred not to meet again, I imagine.”

“…….”

Short, spare words.

But within them, an indelible past had seeped through.

Taewoong quietly drew a breath.

Even so, each of the Halmi mask’s words drove deep into his bones.

She slowly packed tobacco leaves into the pipe.

She lit it lightly, and smoke began to rise.

Taewoong watched the smoke without moving.

It looked like fragments of scattered memory.

“Had I known it would come to this, I should have brought you along when I came to fetch Changwoon.”

The Halmi mask said leisurely, exhaling smoke.

“Shouldn’t you at least greet the one you served?”

Taewoong’s body trembled faintly.

But he did not turn his head in the end.

“No. I…….”

He couldn’t finish the words for a moment.

Only his fingertips flinched slightly.

“Have no right to?”

The Halmi mask said the words in his place.

Taewoong said nothing.

But his fist could be seen clenching tight.

As though trying to swallow down the memory of that day once more.

“Are you still carrying that day with you?”

That question pierced his chest like a sharp blade.

He bit his lip.

That day.

The one he had failed to protect.

The person who had slipped from his hands and never come back.

“It was my mistake. My failure.”

He said quietly.

“It cannot be undone, and cannot be forgiven.”

He said it with finality, but the Halmi mask’s expression did not change.

She turned the pipe slowly and took one step toward him.

“Do you truly know it wasn’t your fault?”

Taewoong flinched.

But said nothing in the end.

He knew.

But he could not accept it.

The weight of responsibility and guilt was carved too deep, and even knowing it was not the truth, he could not deny it.

The Halmi mask let out a sigh.

And slowly straightened herself and spoke.

“We’re eating from the same pot now, so let me say just this.”

Her voice was calm, but somewhere in it lay a deep affection.

“Changhwa does not resent you.”

At those words, Taewoong’s eyes wavered.

“So…. it’s time for you to stand up too.”

With those last words, the Halmi mask slowly turned.

Leaving red-tinged smoke behind her, her silhouette gradually disappeared into the dark.

But Taewoong remained standing where he was.

Cigarette smoke drifting through the darkness of the street.

Until every last wisp of it had vanished,

he did not move a single step.