Guru checked the photo.
Why did Grandpa keep asking about things like this?
“It wooks coow!”
On Suhyeong
"Alright. I’ll take care of this too. What should we call it?"
“Uuummm...”
Guru furrowed her brows, trying to come up with a cool name.
In a dark, spacious room of a mansion—
A boy was deep into a game when he paused to type something on his phone, which he had tilted to the side.
[Guild]BaldMage: u lil sh1thead this game is legit fckin trash lmao
[Guild]OppaGuru: lol ty
[Guild]OppaGuru: game’s all about reflexes bro git gud
[Guild]BaldMage: it’s just team diff fckin garbage game lol
[Guild]BaldMage: invite me, let’s queue ranked
[Guild]OppaGuru: nah gotta log outta this guild
[Guild]BaldMage: why leave the guild?
[Guild]OppaGuru: not this guild
[Guild]OppaGuru: the real-life guild lolol
[Guild]OppaGuru: gotta go to work
[Guild]OppaGuru: plus gotta play with my Guru too >_<
[Guild]BaldMage: what the hell is a real-life guild lmao quit bullshittin
[Guild]OppaGuru: nope ur just dumb lol
[Guild]OppaGuru: Hyeonak’s busy savin’ the world ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و
[Guild]BaldMage: Hyeonak?
[Guild]OppaGuru: yuh they’re kinda famous tbh
[Guild]BaldMage: if ur really from Hyeonak I’m Gnosis u dumbass
[Guild]OppaGuru: don’t believe me? come to the Hyeonak HQ then
[Guild]BaldMage: yeah okay sure not happening
[Guild]OppaGuru: scared?
[Guild]OppaGuru: oh shoot time’s up
[Guild]OppaGuru: yo
[Guild]OppaGuru: I’m out
[Guild]OppaGuru: byeeee
As OppaGuru logged off, BaldMage clicked his tongue and closed the game.
It had barely been a year since he came to Korea.
He’d started gaming as a way to learn practical Korean, but honestly? It hadn’t been the most effective method.
All he really learned were:
– Colorful phrases about how dogshit the game was,
– The polite way to ask about someone’s parents,
– And a wide, versatile array of Korean curse words.
The only thing that really stuck—aside from all those juicy sibilant swears—was the friendship he’d built with this guy named OppaGuru.
Any fondness he had for the game was thanks to him.
Without him, it all felt kind of... empty.
If real friendships could exist over a LAN cable, then OppaGuru was probably the closest thing he had to a true friend.
A breath of a chuckle slipped from the boy’s lips as he thought of him.
“Hyeonak, my ass.”
As he turned around, the mannequins—heads bowed until now—lifted their faces all at once.
Over fifty mannequins stood side by side, lined up in perfect rows.
Each one had a different appearance, but outwardly, they were indistinguishable from real humans.
No sunlight touched the large, dim room.
And the eerie sight of these human-like mannequins standing shoulder to shoulder sent chills down the spine.
Yet even in front of such an unsettling scene, the boy remained expressionless. Arms crossed, he tilted his head slightly to one side—
“I am Gnosis, though.”
—and the mannequins tilted their heads in perfect sync with him.
Beneath soft brown hair, his heterochromatic eyes—one blue, one amber—glinted with an eerie light.
Just then—
“Aaaaugh! Son of a bitch!”
A man’s scream echoed from beyond the door.
Got caught again. That dumbass.
The boy grumbled internally and started heading down the stairs at a lazy pace.
In a sunlit parlor, Naohyeong sat alone in a recliner, clutching his face and breathing heavily through gritted teeth.
He must’ve really lost it this time.
As Serhi stepped into the room, his expression twisted in annoyance at the sight.
"Let me guess—blondie again?"
Ash-blond hair and downturned green eyes. Must’ve been the Gnosis Hunter.
"That bastard!!"
There really is something weirdly satisfying about swearing in Korean, Serhi thought, casually picking at his ear.
“How the hell does he keep finding us?”
Naohyeong gnawed at his nails, clearly rattled.
“He’s just better than you.”
Serhi shrugged, pretending not to care—but truthfully, he was wondering the same thing.
Naohyeong’s ability let him implant his own eyes (and thus, his power) into another person, sharing their vision and subtly brainwashing them.
While fine control was difficult, if he gave a clear objective, they would carry it out without anyone suspecting a thing.
Just like a parasite-infected mantis drawn to water, it was subtle enough that even the victim never noticed.
And yet, the Gnosis Hunter kept exposing them. Every single time.
Naohyeong glared at Serhi with deadly eyes.
But Serhi just crossed his arms and shrugged.
You’d think he’d get it by now.
In this world, power is everything.
That blonde monster who had followed Gnosis all the way to Korea had shaken the country to its core by instantly shooting up to second place in the Hunter rankings.
All thanks to that damn Gnosis hunting spree, probably.
Serhi had only joined Gnosis near the end of their last operation, so he didn’t know exactly how many of them that guy had killed—
But one thing was certain:
He hated anything and everything related to Gnosis.
And he had the power to back that up.
Not just anyone could go up against him.
Serhi had never met him face-to-face—he was still adjusting to life in Korea.
But Naohyeong, who had joined from Korea, had run into him several times.
And every single time, he’d been defeated.
And with each loss, he seemed to lose a bit more of his sanity.
“That bastard... I surpassed my limits. I transcended my rank...!”
The truth was, Naohyeong had been a C-Rank Hunter in Korea.
Respected among civilians, sure, but to actual Hunters? He was just average.
By a stroke of luck, he made it into a major guild.
But for someone like him, being the tail of the dragon only made things worse.
Naohyeong wanted to be special.
That was when he met her.
“You can be special. You want that, don’t you?”
Of course I did!
And so, he took Gnosis’s hand.
How exactly it happened, he couldn’t even explain.
But what he knew for sure was that she had forcibly reawakened him.
Breaking free from the tight confines of his original limits—it was exhilarating.
His stats skyrocketed.
His skills became more powerful.
He even gained entirely new ones.
But it wasn’t long before he slammed into a bigger wall.
To move Malikian, he had planted eyes in the Hunter Management Bureau.
But the Gnosis Hunter kept butchering them, one by one.
Losing those eyes was agonizing.
Every time he ran into that man, Naohyeong was left in a crumpled, miserable heap.
“...W-What about Teacher?”
If Teacher gave him power just once more, things could change.
Then he might be able to surpass that bastard.
But Serhi just slowly shook his head.
“She’s busy. She doesn’t have time to babysit you again.”
And this little punk keeps talking down to me, too.
Serhi didn’t know his exact age, but he figured the kid was around sixteen or seventeen.
Foreigners are supposed to look older, right? {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} What if he’s even younger than I thought?
How much longer did he have to keep taking orders from some brat acting like he was the boss?
What the hell am I doing, playing nanny for this damn kid?
Still, Serhi only glanced at the time on his phone, chewing gum lazily.
“Focus on getting ready for the auction. Not much time left.”
Don’t get distracted with dumb shit before the item’s secured.
He warned him with a look, and Naohyeong shot him a glare in return.
Serhi blew a bubble and smirked.
“What? You mad, bro?”
“I told you to quit saying weird shit like that. ‘You mad, bro?’ Seriously? To an adult?”
[“Boomer.”]
The boy spit out the word in his native language and turned away with a cold expression.
“Hey, that’s an insult, isn’t it? Huh?! You little—!”
Attendees for the auction had started arriving at the resort one by one.
Since it was a gathering of the wealthy elite, the organizers had set up a special VIP team to greet and track guests from the lobby onward.
“Chairman On, welcome.”
A VIP team staff member bowed politely, greeting the group accompanying Chairman On.
But when they saw the partner standing next to On Suhyeong, their eyes widened in surprise.
A child?
Platinum-blond hair that could almost pass for beige, and soft coral-colored eyes.
The child, who looked mixed-race, had enormous eyes that looked ready to fall out of her face—
Her tiny features were so finely carved and compact, it was like someone had poured their heart into sculpting the perfect doll.

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