Yoon Jeha’s eyes shook at the sight of J lying there unconscious.
She rose to her feet and, as if entranced, walked toward him. As she repeatedly checked J’s face in Ryu Sunghyun’s arms, Kwon Taehyuk asked,
“Is he your younger sibling?”
Only after a long moment did Yoon Jeha finally answer in a suppressed voice.
“...Probably.”
There was more confusion on Yoon Jeha’s face than joy at finding her sibling.
Her eyes tightening, Yoon Jeha spoke again.
“When I first arrived at this church... he was waiting for me.”
“Who do you mean? Surely not that man?”
Kwon Taehyuk asked, gesturing toward J with his eyes, and Yoon Jeha nodded.
“I kept my promise with Cha Seohu and didn’t approach the church. I was going to keep my distance and watch. But this child came to find me first. As if he already knew I was coming.”
At those words, Kwon Taehyuk’s and Ryu Sunghyun’s expressions hardened.
It had been Cha Sahyeon who gave them the church’s address. The moment Yoon Jeha got the address, she left right away, while they themselves had headed to Circle Guild, so there had been no time for the information to leak.
That meant there were only two possible conclusions.
One was that the Cult Leader had been certain Yoon Jeha would come here and had sent J.
And the even worse possibility was that Cha Sahyeon might have betrayed them.
The former was more likely, but they could not completely dismiss the latter either. Just like J, Cha Sahyeon might also have been forced into betrayal against his will by some unknown power.
Swallowing his complicated emotions, Kwon Taehyuk spoke calmly.
“Understood. Let’s move for now. We still need to keep searching for Hunter Cha Seohu.”
“We need to find Cha Seohu?”
At Yoon Jeha’s frown, Ryu Sunghyun answered in his place.
“We came here to help Hunter Cha Seohu. That man calling himself the Cult Leader threatened him. He used your life, Hunter Yoon Jeha. Hunter Cha Seohu didn’t refuse.”
“What?”
Yoon Jeha asked back, looking like she could not make sense of it.
“You’re saying Cha Seohu came here alone because of me?”
“Yes.”
At the firm answer, Yoon Jeha’s expression turned complicated. The fact that Cha Seohu had entered a cult den alone in order to save her unsettled her.
“If we’re done talking, can we go? We didn’t come all the way here for tea time.”
Eun Woojeong, who had been standing there with his arms crossed and watching at an angle, cut in irritably.
Yoon Jeha glared at him for a moment, then nodded without another word.
If Cha Seohu really had come all this way alone because of her, then he was clearly in serious danger.
“All right. But I’ll take care of this child.”
“...He may attack once he wakes up. Are you sure that’s all right?”
“I don’t care.”
Taking J from them, Yoon Jeha slung him over her back.
Once the situation had been settled, Kwon Taehyuk gave a short nod.
“Let’s go.”
Golden light swallowed everything.
As the intense radiance made him reflexively shut his eyes, Cha Seohu began to hear a strange sound by his ear.
Ssssss!
Something was burning.
Then the sound grew louder and louder. Beyond his closed eyelids, countless things were burning away in the light.
“Aaaaagh!”
Boom—along with the thunderous crash of tentacles slamming into the floor, a scream rang out. The noise was coming from where the Cult Leader was.
“What, my—my body...!”
The Cult Leader shouted in confusion. Thud, thud—his massive tentacles flailed and struck the floor over and over in frantic struggle.
How many minutes passed?
The light, so intense it hurt even through his closed eyes, gradually began to fade.
Slowly opening his eyes, Cha Seohu stared in a daze at the greenhouse, which now looked unmistakably different.
The flowers that had filled the greenhouse, the countless blossoms that had been in full bloom, were all gone.
All that remained in the greenhouse now was the huge black tree growing at its center. Even that tree seemed to have taken damage from the light; more than half its lush leaves had fallen, and cracks ran through it in several places, bleeding black sap.
“Ah, ah...!”
Like Cha Seohu, the Cult Leader had also come out of the light and was now looking directly at the state of the greenhouse with trembling eyes.
His body was in no better shape. The huge, solid tentacles had melted under the light into a sludgy liquid, and the massive lump of flesh attached beneath his upper body was riddled with holes and had shrunk dramatically.
Black smoke carrying a vile stench rose from the melted flesh.
“No, the tree...!”
Even so, the Cult Leader’s gaze was fixed only on the tree. In despair, he flailed both arms.
But the mound of flesh, now half melted away, no longer moved. In the end, it spat out the Cult Leader’s body, which had been protruding from it like a growth.
The Cult Leader’s lower body, freed from the flesh, was not human legs. The same black tentacles visible before were attached below him in place of legs, like an octopus’s limbs. They were smaller than when they had attacked Cha Seohu, though.
At the sight of the Cult Leader dragging himself toward the tree with those wet, slithering tentacles, Cha Seohu also tried to force his slumped body upright.
“Urgh...!”
The horrific pain spreading from his shoulder instantly made his knees buckle.
Cha Seohu lowered his head. The sword he had stabbed into his own left shoulder was still lodged there.
“Hah, ngh...!”
Panting, he gripped the hilt. He deliberately kept his eyes fixed on the Cult Leader, who was crawling toward the tree.
In a situation with no proper way to treat the wound, pulling a weapon out of one’s body was practically suicide. But he could not just stand there and watch with a sword still embedded in his shoulder.
He still did not fully understand what had happened, but one thing was certain: Chronos had used the opportunity Cha Seohu gave him to deal a devastating blow to the Cult Leader.
He had to move somehow and finish this. Just as he gritted his teeth and tried to yank the sword free—
—I have to go now.
Chronos’s voice rang inside his head.
Startled, Cha Seohu hurriedly looked up, but he could not see Chronos standing in the laboratory because of the thick black smoke rising between them.
Chronos’s voice continued to echo only in his mind.
—I took care of the flowers, but the tree will take time. Still, the light definitely seeped in. Into that tree.
Chronos’s voice was gradually fading.
—So endure it. Just a little longer. No matter what method you have to use.
With that, a brief flash of gold flickered beyond the smoke and vanished. Chronos’s voice could no longer be heard.
“What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time?”
Muttering with bleak resignation, Cha Seohu tightened his grip on the hilt.
Then he bit his lip and pulled it out in one motion.
An intense pain, like flesh being seared by fire, spread through him, and red blood burst from the hole it had pierced.
Cha Seohu’s face went even whiter in an instant. The arm on the pierced side trembled violently and would not move.
“Hah, huff...!”
Breathing hard, he forced himself to his feet with difficulty, using the sword for support. Dizzy spells washed over him again and again, blurring his vision.
Even so, Cha Seohu put strength into his legs and ran.
The Cult Leader, who had been crawling toward the tree, belatedly noticed Cha Seohu’s presence and widened his eyes.
The tentacles of his lower body writhed in an attempt to counterattack, but they were smaller now, and their movements were slow. As the sharp blade sliced through them, the severed pieces pattered onto the floor. This time, they did not regenerate or reattach.
“Don’t interfere!”
The Cult Leader shouted harshly, all the ease and gentle composure he had shown until now nowhere to be found.
His widened eyes gleamed like a starving beast’s, and black blood vessels began popping out all across his face. Distorting his face grotesquely, the Cult Leader lunged at Cha Seohu.
“Yeah, this is more like it!”
Face to face with the Cult Leader’s true nature at last, Cha Seohu smiled in mockery. The two of them tangled together and rolled across the black earth.
“This way!”
Running at the front, Kwon Taehyuk threw open a yellow door.
Without hesitation, the group hurled themselves into the pitch-black darkness beyond it. They opened their eyes after feeling something similar to what they had experienced when entering an unidentified Rift.
A vast temple appeared, so high and wide that the ceiling was nowhere in sight.
Swallowing dryly, Kwon Taehyuk gripped his blade and looked around.
Then—
“Aaaah...!”
“It’s disappearing!”
“No, please!”
“Cult Leader! Cult Leader!”
The inside of the temple was filled with screams and sobbing.
Stone dust rained down from the ceiling, and the floor shook violently like an earthquake. The believers who had been quietly praying in the darkness were now running around inside the temple in utter panic.
“What the hell is this...”
Ryu Sunghyun muttered, then quickly realized that the believers were all rushing in the same direction.
Ryu Sunghyun’s eyes met Kwon Taehyuk’s. Kwon Taehyuk seemed to have reached the same conclusion, because he gave a silent nod.
“If Hunter Cha Seohu made it this far, then this must be connected to whatever is happening right now.”
“We have to go.”
The group sped up and moved into the darkness where the believers were running and wailing.

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