S-Rank Healer Gets Kidnapped First Chapter 24

A week of grueling training had finally passed.

But that was only the beginning. Now it was my turn to personally experience the hell that Na Ye-ri had described throughout the entire week.

Clang!

“Faster.”

“It’s impossible to increase the speed any further from here—ah!”

Even as I spoke, attacks came flying at me one after another, forcing me to hurriedly activate my shield.

“Hey! Are you out of your mind?”

“You can do it.”

I quietly bit my lip at those words, which seemed to raise my blood pressure just by hearing them.

I was annoyed, but I had no argument against him.

The training had been conducted in exactly the same way from the very beginning until now, and just as he said, I could do it.

“One more time.”

Clang!

“I think you can make it a little faster.”

Clang!

I had repeatedly activated and canceled my shield so many times that I had lost count.

It wasn’t something that required much physical movement, but mentally, it was exhausting. I had reached the point where I almost resented the shield for not even developing a single crack.

“You did well making it sturdier, but you’re taking too long to activate it because you’re concentrating so hard.”

I wanted to snap back and ask what exactly he expected me to do, but I swallowed my irritation.

When I thought about it, all of this training was for my sake. Considering that I was receiving personal training from an S-rank Hunter, petty complaints were a luxury I couldn’t afford.

There was definitely a noticeable difference between Na Ye-ri’s attacks and Cha Seo-hae’s.

Na Ye-ri’s attacks felt heavy and blunt when they collided with my shield, whereas Cha Seohae’s felt precise and swift.

I had become accustomed to a tanker’s speed, so blocking attacks from a dealer who was seriously coming at me was difficult.

“Ah!”

A projectile grazed the outside of my right arm.

I grabbed the spot with my other hand as a stinging pain spread through it.

That was my sixth injury.

Cha Seohae noticed me clutching my arm and approached.

“Are you hurt?”

“……”

“You can heal yourself, right?”

That was also the sixth time I’d heard him say that.

“Yeah.”

My entire body was sore, but it wasn’t enough to make me stop training.

What puzzled me was something else.

Getting minor injuries during training was natural, but Cha Seohae came over to check on me every single time I got hurt.

“You can just leave me to handle it. You don’t have to keep coming over.”

Of course, walking over from the other side wouldn’t tire a Hunter out.

But he had a mountain of things to do, and I didn’t want our training time to be prolonged because he was wasting time on things like this.

Cha Seohae flinched slightly at my words before speaking in a subdued voice.

“…It doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

The hesitation in his voice seemed suspicious.

Instead of pressing him, I watched him carefully from the corner of my eye while treating my wound.

Sure enough, when he noticed my curiosity, Cha Seohae slowly began to speak.

“Actually, the Association’s movements have been suspicious lately.”

I stared at him in surprise at the sudden mention of the Association.

“Hm?”

“I don’t know exactly what they’re planning yet. But considering what Do Ju-yeon did, things are too quiet. He even held a press conference as an A-rank Healer, yet there hasn’t been any public activity since then.”

After hearing the details, I could understand why Cha Seohae found the Association’s behavior suspicious.

“We’ll keep an eye on you from nearby, but try not to go anywhere alone. If you absolutely have to go out, take Na Ye-ri or Han Seong-woo with you.”

“Uh…”

“I can go with you too.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I merely nodded slightly instead of answering.

“I’m sorry it’s such a broad precaution. We’re still keeping watch, but we haven’t detected any unusual movements from the First Team.”

He looked unusually troubled, almost like someone who had encountered a difficult problem.

“It’s fine. It’s not like being on the First Team means they have their own private entrance and exit. If you keep watching them, you’ll eventually figure something out. More importantly, why are you suddenly telling me this…?”

“You were upset.”

“Hm?”

“…Weren’t you?”

“Oh. So you’ve been looking at me that way?”

I teased him lightly, and Cha Seohae fell silent.

“I did wonder why you were acting like that.”

“I was worried.”

“……”

“Thinking about it, I realized I never properly explained the purpose of your training.”

Cha Seohae continued.

“At the very least, you should know why you’re being put through such intense training. You might feel less wronged that way. We started your training in a hurry because we didn’t know how the Association would respond, so I failed to explain it.”

For a moment, I was startled when he said he was worried. But when I realized he meant he was worried that I might be exhausted from the training, I relaxed.

However, that relief didn’t last long.

As I mulled over his words, something began to bother me.

So was he coming over every time not only to check my injuries, but also to see whether I was holding up mentally?

I couldn’t believe Cha Seohae had been paying such close attention to me. Suddenly, he felt strangely unfamiliar.

He should’ve just stopped me and told me sooner.

For some reason, I felt embarrassed and couldn’t bring myself to look up.

I’d been too busy trying to keep myself mentally composed through the grueling training.

Belatedly, I began to worry that I might have been too cold toward him without realizing it.

Maybe I’ve been too exhausted.

That was probably it. It was like fighting through a second round without any break.

“All right. Break time is over.”

“…What?”

Break time?

When has he ever given me a break? No, more importantly, why was he acting as though he’d generously granted me one when I hadn’t even asked for it?

I asked incredulously.

“You didn’t activate your shield, no attacks were flying at you, and you got to catch your breath. If that isn’t a break, then what is?”

“No, but I never asked for—”

“You had the look of someone who was about to rebel by refusing to activate their shield if I didn’t give you one.”

Did I?

I hurriedly rubbed the space between my brows.

Cha Seohae burst out laughing at the sight.

“If this were before, I wouldn’t have been able to train at this intensity because I would’ve been too tired. But these days, thanks to a certain Healer, I sleep well and wake up refreshed.”

“Are you trying to claim that I’m the reason you’re able to increase the intensity of my training?”

“Not really. Just keep it in mind.”

Watching his irritatingly casual smile, I made a mental note.

Next time, I should reduce the amount of healing I give him.

 

***

 

After Cha Seohae warned me to be wary of the Association, I followed his advice as much as possible.

I avoided going outside whenever possible, and aside from when I was healing, I didn’t meet anyone other than the three executives and Childeuk.

On top of that, it seemed Cha Seohae had issued additional instructions concerning my safety, because Childeuk stuck to my side like an extra limb and helped me with everything.

Even Cha Seohae couldn’t possibly tell me to be any more careful than this. My days continued in complete safety, without a single opening.

Honestly, even I hadn’t expected to be able to live this quietly.

It would’ve been difficult if not for Na Ye-ri.

“I finally found the weakness of God’s Blessing! It’s weak against poison that spreads through the air and illusions that manipulate the mind! It can’t reflect those at all!”

After countless experiments, Na Ye-ri had finally discovered a weakness in God’s Blessing.

She then kept me occupied for quite some time while she tried to figure out how to compensate for that weakness.

I didn’t mind.

It was something I should’ve done myself, and she had done it for me instead. If anything, I should have been grateful.

“So it’s weak against things other than physical attacks…”

The words slipped out like a whisper, sounding more like a sigh.

I brushed my fallen hair back and lifted my head.

There was no such thing as perfect defense.

All you could do was prepare for as many possibilities as possible. Even then, there would always be some kind of opening left somewhere.

“But feeling disappointed… I guess I’ve gotten used to this peaceful daily life without realizing it. Or maybe I’ve become a little too full of myself.”

Ever since I’d learned that God’s Blessing had a weakness, my strength seemed to drain away several times a day.

I knew I should just brush it off, but it wasn’t easy.

Becoming S-rank had practically meant throwing away my sense of security.

Just when I was regretting whether I had been too eager to flaunt my S-rank privilege to the Association—

“Wait. Isn’t it enough if the enemy doesn’t discover the weakness?”

A thought suddenly flashed through my mind, and my eyes lit up.

Even though I thought it was overly simple, there was no strategy more certain than this for securing victory.

Besides, when I had been depressed after learning that God’s Blessing had a weakness, hadn’t Na Ye-ri and Han Seong-woo said something similar?

“Everyone has weaknesses. Even the Association President probably has one. Hunters are ultimately superpowered people who emerged because of dungeons and monster outbreaks. If such people were far superior to dungeons and monsters? If they became impossible to compare with? Then I wouldn’t be able to rest easy, knowing that an even greater danger would eventually emerge. I’m glad we’re not perfect.”

“Since when did you start saying such smart things?”

“…Come at me, Han Seong-woo.”

“Ah, anyway, it’s precisely because we realized there are no perfect privileges in this world that we were able to find your weakness, hostage. So you just need to think about finding the Association President’s weakness instead.”

“Stop changing the subject and come at me!”

Na Ye-ri had said that my shield could withstand poison and illusions.

In the process of repeatedly honing her shield, she had unknowingly trained her mental fortitude as well, eventually becoming capable of resisting even poison and illusions.

If I could overcome the weakness through sheer effort, then it wasn’t much of a weakness.

I could work on it diligently too.

It’s just annoying that I don’t know how long that will take.

Na Ye-ri was obsessed with shields.

I didn’t even need to see it to know how insanely much she’d trained.

Besides, there was no way the Association would fight fair.

On the surface, they pretended to be righteous, hiding behind the justification of protecting the nation. But in reality, when it came to winning or losing, the Association was the most underhanded and ruthless organization of all.

They would have anticipated something like this as well.

The moment a battle began, they would try to find my weakness.

“I’ll have to be careful if I end up clearing a dungeon with the Association’s team.”

With that thought, I finished organizing my thoughts, idly swinging my feet in Cha Seohae’s office while he was away.

I was currently on the 44th floor, watching television.

Watching the news had become a new hobby since I could no longer go outside. It was my way of keeping up with what was happening in the outside world.

Today, however, I’d missed most of the earlier news because I’d been distracted by other thoughts.

—This is the site of a dungeon that suddenly appeared near Seongsu Station at around 1 a.m. yesterday.

A dungeon appeared.

I focused on the information appearing on the TV, partly to clear my head.

—Thanks to the Association’s swift response, there were no fatalities, but because the area was densely populated, there were a large number of injured civilians.

The news continued while showing the collapsed buildings nearby.

The Association.

Even though I wanted to ignore it, my body still reacted to the word.

I sighed in frustration and looked at the screen.

“Let’s just see which team it was.”

—The dungeon was classified as B-rank, the same rank as the dungeon that recently appeared near the Baekyang Guild.

“B-rank? I didn’t see an emergency alert.”

I took my phone out of my pocket.

“…Oh. It was here?”

I must have been so busy training lately that I’d ignored the notification without even checking it.

“What a waste. A B-rank dungeon is definitely a rank I could’ve gone out to deal with. Why didn’t anyone go?”

There were so many things I was curious about, but there was no one around to answer me.

It was the time for Na Ye-ri and Han Seong-woo’s joint training, so even Cha Seohae was away.

—The Association team dispatched to the scene belonged to the First Team. Hunters Kang Si-hyeon and Jang Jeong-in quickly completed the dungeon clear.

“Hm?”

Kang Si-hyeon and Jang Jeong-in.

They were faces I hadn’t seen in a long time since leaving the Association.

I wanted to change the channel, but forced myself to keep watching.

—The two Hunters happened to be in the area when the dungeon appeared. Although they had not received a dispatch order, they voluntarily took action for the safety of the nation. That concludes—

“Happened to be?”

Has the Association ever done anything by coincidence?

The suspicious choice of words made my eyes narrow instinctively.

I opened the map app on my phone and compared the distance between the dungeon and the Association with the distance between the dungeon and Baekyang Headquarters.

“Hah. Coincidence, my ass.”

The result showed that the dungeon was much closer to Baekyang Guild.

The Association absolutely despised the Baekyang Guild.

There was no way the Association President’s handpicked First Team had simply wandered over near the guild headquarters for fun.

Nor were they close enough, given their business relationship, to hang out alone together until one in the morning.

“The Association is suspicious.”

Cha Seohae’s words suddenly came back to me.

Thanks to his warning beforehand, I was able to notice that something was wrong much more quickly.

“First of all, it’s now a confirmed fact that the First Team has been assigned to follow me.”

Now that they’d been caught lurking around me, they might change their members.

“I was hoping they’d send the Second Team if they were going to follow me. I guess they wouldn’t do that against Baekyang.”

The entire First Team consisted of S-rank Hunters.

First was the team leader, Do Ju-yeon.

He was an S-rank Tanker and Commander known by virtually every citizen of South Korea.

Because he was often seen using copied abilities in battle, many people thought that copying was his specialty. But in reality, copying wasn’t Do Ju-yeon’s main ability.

He could copy abilities because of his S-rank privilege, ‘Leadership.’

It was a privilege based on the ability to understand every ability and deploy people in the most appropriate positions.

Second was Kang Si-hyeon, an S-rank Dealer and Illusionist.

Third was Jang Jeong-in, an S-rank Dealer and Archer.

Fourth was Go Woo-ri, an S-rank Dealer and Telekinetic.

And finally, Park Ji-won, an A-rank Healer and Saint.

Although there was one Tanker and one Healer, the overall composition of the team was heavily specialized toward offense.

“They haven’t even figured out my weakness yet. What timing.”

Everything seemed to be falling into place like the gears of a machine, leaving me uneasy.

I was sighing over the frustrating situation when—

Click.

“…Yeonhee.”