Chapter 15: Hello, it’s been a while? (1)

Hearing a terrifying voice, Yang Wei immediately shivered.

‘This voice…’

The voice sounded muffled as if the speaker had a mask on. Yang Wei quickly turned his head, but he didn’t see anyone. The only things in his vision were the crumbling ceiling and the revolting sight of concrete squashing mannequins. The fire had left the crushed and broken mannequins charred black, and the overall atmosphere was creepy.

‘Shit! Did I hear wrong?’ Cold sweat ran down Yang Wei’s face. Even though he was surrounded by fire, he felt cold. ‘Yes! There’s no way it’s him!’

He had probably misheard things. That voice couldn’t exist in this world anymore.

Lee Gun always used to wear a mask, so his voice sounded a bit muffled. Although his pronunciation was precise, that voice had always grated on Yang Wei’s nerves. It was deep, powerful, and forceful.

‘Shit! This worsened my mood.’ In the past, Yang Wei hated hearing that voice, and now, he hated it even more. 

Right now, the voice he had heard was like a child’s laughter in an abandoned building. It was beyond creepy. Yang Wei blamed his skittishness on the media, which had been going overdrive since the previous day. ‘They made a big issue out of nothing. They prematurely announced Lee Gun’s return!’

Yang Wei thought that this was the reason he had become paranoid and heard the voice of a ghost. In the end, it didn’t matter. “I have to quickly get out of this awful place.” Just when Yang Wei intended to move—

“Hey!”

“Ahhhk!” Yang Wei screamed as a shadow suddenly approached him. In that split second, he thought he had seen Lee Gun’s mask. However, when he realized that someone had thrown a mannequin with a similar-looking mask toward him, he yelled, “Who’s doing this!”

Someone was trying to harm him. It was probably Korea’s Lee Gun fanatics.

‘If it isn’t them…’  After kicking away the creepy mannequin, Yang Wei climbed over the display stand in his way.

However, what he saw left him surprised. ‘What the hell? Why is he here?’ Yang Wei’s face hardened at the sight of a familiar face. ‘Isn’t he supposed to be in England?’

The person Yang Wei had encountered inside the store was none other than the Archer, Hugo Otis. Yang Wei’s nerves were on the edge, so he ground his teeth. Hugo’s appearance in Korea explained a lot of things.

‘Did he kill the Spider Queen that appeared inside this place?’

The other members of the twelve Zodiacs couldn’t kill the Spider Queen, so Yang Wei had no idea how Hugo had done it. However, only one explanation could come out of this chain of events. The events surrounding the Devil’s Tower, the disappearance of the constructs, and Lee Gun’s voice that he had heard earlier, all of them made sense now.

‘I get it!’ It was all Hugo. He had the motivation to do this. Around twenty years ago, Hugo had severed all connections with the rest of the twelve Zodiacs. He blamed them for Lee Gun’s death. 

Hugo’s appearance made Yang Wei shudder, but also gave him peace of mind at the same time. All the events that had occurred after the fall of the Devil’s Tower were not orchestrated by Lee Gun; it was someone else. This thought gave him comfort. ‘Yes! There’s no way Lee Gun is alive…’

“Isn’t it quite the view?”

“?!” Yang Wei collapsed on top of the display stand. He had once again heard the voice that he thought was an auditory hallucination. Moreover, the voice seemed to come from near him! He gulped.

‘Behind me!’ As he sat, his hands started to shake. He was so afraid that he couldn’t even turn his head. Yang Wei was sure of it now; it wasn’t an auditory hallucination.

“What’s wrong? You look unwell.”

“?!” Yang Wei whipped his head around, but he fell off the display stand.

Kwahng!

As he trembled, his gaze fell at the figure in front of him, a man covered in spider blood. This man had worn a familiar mask that Yang Wei couldn’t forget even if he wanted to.

“Hello, asshat. It’s been a while,” the man spoke in a tone familiar to him.

* * *

“Get out of the way! It’s dangerous here!”

“All injured people should come this way!”

Chun Sungjae couldn’t look away from the sinkhole. The disciples of the Aries and the Gemini were busily moving in the background. They had been trying to seal away the building from the outside world, but they had stopped long ago when they realized the spiders had been killed. Of course, it didn’t help them since they were preoccupied with something else.

“What? We still don’t know who killed it?”

“There were no witnesses?” 

They had caused a big fuss because a Spider Queen had appeared within a sinkhole. However, they had found it with its stomach split open. Its body had been so mangled that they almost felt bad for it.

“Look at how its joints were snapped… I never knew that this could be possible.”

“Then there is the knife work…”

“Anyway, it’s certainly the one we failed to kill in Manchuria!”

“Shh!”

“Who killed this red zone rank monster!”

As the only witness to the deed, Chun Sungjae was in a state of shock. Of course, he hadn’t seen it clearly. The Spider Queen thrashed a lot inside the sinkhole, so he had been unable to make out a lot of what had happened. The only thing he was sure of was that Lee Gun had killed it. It was the only possibility since Lee Gun was the only one present in the sinkhole. The Spider Queen’s scream had been reverberating within the black poisonous gas.

‘Hey! Stop moving! I have to open up your stomach!’

The only other sound had been Lee Gun’s annoyed voice. In the end, an incredible amount of energy had surged toward the sky, destroying the building’s ceiling. Then, Lee Gun had made himself scarce, leaving behind a Spider Queen with a hole in its stomach.

When the people outside had seen the monster left behind in the sinkhole, it caused a buzz. The general of the Gemini temple, who had remained outside, was also shocked. He was about to interrogate Chun Sungjae about it when someone butted in.

“Chun Sungjae!”

“!”

The Archer had appeared at the place.

Hugo Otis’s appearance caused a commotion. This man was dressed in a suit, and he looked to be in his late-thirties or early-forties at the most. Overall, he looked like a very neat and sharp Caucasian. Everyone in the world knew what the Archer looked like. Of course, his appearance was the only information they had about him. He asked, “Chun Sungjae, why are you here?”

“That’s what I should be asking you. Why are you here?”

“What? Is that what you should be saying to your dad?” 

“!” When the crowd realized that the two bickering men were father and son, Chun Sungjae scowled. He hated people finding out about his relationship with the Archer. However, Hugo didn’t care about that as he sighed. His children had left home saying they wanted to see Lee Gun-nim, and that had caused him a lot of headaches. However, it wasn’t important right now.

‘That Spider Queen…’ Hugo was sure of it now. He had seen the Spider Queen’s miserable state. Although he didn’t have definite proof, he knew that only one person in the world was capable of doing something so bizarre. “Did you see who killed it?”

Chun Sungjae frowned a bit. When he walked away, Hugo sighed once again. His son hadn’t even bothered to acknowledge him. It made him wonder who Sungjae had taken after. He was about to say something to Sungjae, but someone quickly grabbed his arm.

“Please don’t scold Sungjae, Ajussi! I saw it! I saw who killed the spider!” Chun Sungjae’s friend, Hahn Jimin, grabbed Hugo’s arm. 

Hugo asked, “What did he look like? Did he look like a fifty-year-old man? No, he might look much older than that.”

“Uh! It was a handsome hyung. He looked a year or two older than us.”

An odd look appeared on Hugo’s face. ‘One or two years older? Handsome? Maybe, it’s not Gun?’ 

“That hyung wrote something on the floor before he left. I don’t know what it means.”

Hugo quickly jumped into the sinkhole. Many people were gazing at the choice of words written there. 

“Uh…! Archer…!”

Hugo froze when he saw the writing. ‘That bastard… No way!’ His face turned pale as he quickly turned his head. That rare expression on his face puzzled everyone.

“Uh? What’s wrong?”

“Is the Sheep Saint here?”

“Ah! He said he would be coming. I’m not sure if he has arrived—”

As soon as the man’s voice fell, the terrifying sound of an explosion rang out.

Kwahng!

Hugo’s mouth fell open. It was a terrifying message.

* * *

“This is nuts.” These were the first words Yang Wei spoke after meeting the man. 

The man wearing the familiar mask laughed with his eyes. “You’re too much. You met your dear comrade after twenty years, and you don’t even greet him!”

‘Dear comrade, my ass!’

Kwahng!

Yang Wei unconsciously retreated, but he bumped into the display stand. The man in front of him walked forward with the burning flames as his background. ‘This guy!’

In his right hand was a blade that he had used to kill the spider queen. His left hand held an item that he had extracted from the monster’s stomach. Finally, Lee Gun took off his mask and stood in front of Yang Wei. Seeing that face, Yang Wei became deflated. It was to be expected.

‘What the hell? He isn’t Lee Gun.’ Yang Wei had seen the man from a distance. The mask and the fire had obscured his vision enough to misidentify the other man as Lee Gun. The man’s gait, body, and attitude felt familiar, but…

‘It’s not him.’ He looked completely different than Lee Gun. This man had great posture, and he was taller than the real Lee Gun. There were no horrible burn marks on his face, and his hair was longer as well. Above all else…

‘He’s too young.’ Even if Yang Wei decided to use generous words, the person in front of him looked like a teenager who had just come into manhood. It wasn’t Lee Gun. Therefore, Yang Wei covered his face as he laughed out loud. “What the hell? I got frightened for no reason.”

Yang Wei had been on edge since the previous day, and this finally made him mistake someone for Lee Gun. Soon, he looked at the leather mask hanging around Lee Gun’s neck. “Huh. That’s well made. It seems the fake mask comes with a voice changer that makes you sound like Lee Gun. I don’t know which Saint gave you that to pull a prank on me, but I’ll be sure to pay back… Uh?”

Kwahng!

“?” Yang Wei became frightened when a blade was embedded right next to his face. 

Lee Gun laughed in front of Yang Wei as if he wanted this ‘saint’ to stop spouting nonsense. “What? You think I’m a wannabe?”

“…?!” Yang Wei’s heart almost stopped for a moment. ‘This voice…’

The man in front of him had spoken just a few words, but his voice was deep and clear. Yang Wei was in disbelief as he slowly looked at the mask again.

‘…!’ When he confirmed that the mask was still around the man’s neck, Yang Wei froze. 

As if give Yang Wei another confirmation, Lee Gun took off his mask as he spoke, “Was that enough of a reunion, asshat?”

“…!”

His blade instantly flew toward Yang Wei.

Shweek!

Yang Wei became frightened when the blade flashed in front of his eyes. He tried to instinctively dodge, but…

“Ahhhk!” A scream escaped his lips. He felt a burning pain. The muscles in his legs were severed, and his body shook. ‘Shit. I thought I dodged it!’ The man in front of him made sure he couldn’t move. 

Lee Gun grinned like a Chesire cat as he flicked the blood off his blade. “Where do you think you’re going, bitch? I have a lot of questions for you. I’ll be disappointed if you try to run away.”

Yang Wei let out a string of curses when he heard Lee Gun’s words.

‘… You crazy bastard!’ He was sure of it. ‘This villainous expression and the rude way of speaking… It’s him!’ 

Yang Wei was sure of it. This man was one of the thirteen original beings who had awakened twenty years ago! He was the freak!