The Ruined World (3)
An ominous gray sky, riddled with cracks and fissures.
The only “sky” Ramyu had ever known from the day she was born until now was exactly that.
Since it had been that kind of world from the very beginning, it was only natural.
And it wasn’t a story limited only to her.
At a point where considerable time had passed since the world collapsed, only the elderly remained who still remembered the original clear blue sky.
But even in such a miserable state… Ramyu had liked looking at the sky.
Compared to herself, who did nothing but drag down her one and only family—her older brother—didn’t that lofty sky look incomparably vast, expansive, and free?
*‘Even that sky wasn’t something I could look at as I pleased. I got scolded so much by my brother because of that.’*
It was only natural, for if one gazed too long at the abyssal darkness flickering beyond the broken missing sections, one could be entranced by the void and driven mad.
She had obediently stopped looking at the sky, just as he’d told her to.
Unlike others, she instinctively knew that the abyss could not affect her in any way, but she simply didn’t want to worry her brother any longer.
*‘If only I weren’t here, my brother could have lived anywhere receiving good treatment.’*
Her older brother, Riang, was an incredible person.
Unlike his frail younger sister, his innate physical abilities were outstanding, and his instantaneous situational judgment and wit were beyond what anyone could match.
The proof of that was none other than herself.
In the harsh world where there was no one to rely on after their parents passed away.
Surviving for over ten years while protecting a newborn infant in a situation where tending to one’s own body was difficult was by no means an easy feat.
He who had accomplished that arduous task through sheer determination was not merely a brother to Ramyu.
To her, who had never even seen her parents’ faces, he was an existence greater than a parent.
That was her one and only blood relative, Riang.
Therefore.
Because of that.
She could not accept the fact that she was alive and well right now, looking up at that blue sky.
—“Ramyu—!!”
A memory of that final moment flashed through her mind.
The sky collapsing with an ominous roar.
The sight of her brother sprinting at full speed to tightly embrace her as she stood there in a daze, shocked by that terrible spectacle.
—“Ramyu, make sure you remember this one thing.”
Wrapped in his warm embrace, she quietly listened to his words.
She didn’t even have the strength left to open her mouth, overcome by an incomprehensible sense of loss.
—“No matter what anyone says, you are my little sister.”
That was why she couldn’t ask.
What those words had meant.
Immediately after, Riang unfastened the necklace hanging from his own neck and put it on Ramyu.
One of their parents’ mementos that the two of them had each worn separately.
The other half of the heart-shaped ornament that had been divided in two.
—“I love you, my sister.”
From within those sturdy arms.
In the end, the sky she loved collapsed—
Gurgle—
A loud sound echoed throughout the room.
“Ah.”
Ramyu, who had been blankly looking up at the blue sky beyond the window, finally came to her senses and rubbed the corners of her eyes with her sleeve.
Then she wrapped her hands around her stomach and let out a small sigh.
It hadn’t even been a few hours since she ate, yet extreme hunger was once again surging in.
*‘It wasn’t normally this bad.’*
This was all because the food in this world was too delicious.
After subsisting on rough roots and tree bark, soft and nutrient-rich food had entered her body, so now her whole body ferociously demanded new nutrients at every opportunity.
*‘Such a feast was a first. Even the rat meat we only ate on special occasions couldn’t compare…’*
She gulped down the drool trickling from the corner of her mouth and shook her head.
No matter how delicious the food was, she couldn’t just trust people carelessly.
That was the number one, ironclad rule for survival.
*‘He doesn’t seem like a bad person, but…’*
She knew full well that it was absurd to act difficult now after eating so much to her heart’s content, but she couldn’t help the values she had lived with her entire life.
Because of that, she had always eaten secretly like a stray cat and locked herself in her room.
Even now, several days after coming here.
Click—
Ramyu quietly opened the door and poked her head out.
Then after looking around here and there, she carefully descended to the kitchen on the first floor, muffling her footsteps.
*‘It smells delicious.’*
The man who introduced himself as Hun had considerately set out meals whenever it was time to eat and deliberately left his seat.
As if telling her not to mind him and to eat comfortably.
Despite feeling grateful and sorry toward him, she ultimately couldn’t summon the courage to approach him.
In a way, it was only natural.
Though she was trying her best not to show it, she had just lost her older brother, her only family.
Whether due to the environment she grew up in or her innate disposition, her grief wasn’t so severe that she couldn’t carry on daily life, but the empty void that had settled in one corner of her heart was unavoidable.
*‘…Hoo. Still, I can’t stay like this forever. Today I’ll definitely try to talk to him properly.’*
To move forward, she had to take a step ahead somehow.
Her brother, who had worried about her until the very last moment, would surely wish for that even more.
With firm determination, she cautiously entered the kitchen.
“Eh?”
And there.
She ended up making eye contact head-on with a being she had never even imagined before.
[Kyoo?]
On the dining table set with various foods.
An unknown creature with a sleek, glossy body curled up, tilting its small head.
Ramyu’s roundly widened eyes and Hwiryeong’s bright, sparkling eyes collided in the air.
***
Hun, who had also taken charge of external audits for subsidiaries such as Howard Industries and Lunatic Entertainment.
*‘It’s a success.’*
Having briefly stepped away for work, he opened the front door and stepped inside the house, nodding in satisfaction.
“It’s warm… Smooth…”
[Kyururu—!]
“Heehee, that tickles!”
Bright laughter of a child was flowing from inside the house.
He had called Hwiryeong separately and asked a favor just in case, and it seemed things had gone exactly as planned.
*‘As expected, Hwiryeong’s cuteness is world-class. To think it’d melt that wary, cat-like girl in a single blow.’*
Even though several days had passed since bringing her from the Cosias dimension, opening Ramyu’s guard had not been easy, no doubt because she had lived in such an atrocious environment.
They had somehow managed to exchange introductions, but that was the extent of the progress.
From his position wanting closer conversation and cooperation, it was inevitably frustrating.
*‘Though I fully understand that feeling.’*
From the other party’s perspective, it was a situation where the world she had lived in had suddenly been turned upside down, so it would be stranger if she weren’t wary.
But just because he understood didn’t mean he could afford to waste time indefinitely.
So he had looked at parenting communities and video sites trying to figure out how to get close to the child, but that hadn’t been much help either.
*‘Because Ramyu’s circumstances are different from ordinary children.’*
The sole survivor from a ruined dimension.
That was a variable so unique it could be called unprecedented, going beyond simply being special.
It was only natural that solutions based on ordinary children wouldn’t work on such a child.
What came to mind then was the Yellow Dragon, Hwiryeong.
The correlation between animals and children’s emotions was already a well-known fact.
Whether the Yellow Dragon should be considered an animal was ambiguous, but that wasn’t what mattered now.
Having experienced Hwiryeong’s loveliness firsthand, he didn’t hesitate and immediately launched the plan…
“It’s so pretty… Ah! Where are you going?”
[Kyahng!]
He was now facing results beyond what he had expected.
Hwiryeong flew across the living room, wrapping around Hun’s neck as he stepped inside and poking its head out toward his shoulder.
Ramyu, who had run after it, belatedly discovered that he had returned home and fidgeted nervously while watching his reaction.
*‘If it were before, she would have run away immediately. The effect is certainly solid.’*
He flashed a faint smile while stroking the protruding blunt horn-like lump on its head with one hand.
[Kkyahng!]
Its small body continuously squirmed as if proud, knowing it was being praised.
And it didn’t take long for Hwiryeong’s assistance to bear fruit.
***
Hun’s skill, 「Mental Resonance」, was an incredibly useful psychic ability.
Starting from so-called telepathy transferring thoughts to others, it extended to psychometry reading residual thoughts left on objects, mind-reading, brainwashing, and other expansions.
Additionally, it could be used to inject common knowledge into those who lacked understanding of this world.
*‘My proficiency is still insufficient, so the amount of information I can transfer without side effects isn’t that great… but even this is plenty.’*
Teaching her how to use the shower or shampoo one by one was work.
Until now she had maintained cleanliness using magical tools with cleansing abilities, but he couldn’t rely on those forever.
*‘For language, which contains a large amount of information, I can use the interpreter magical tool I gave Andrew.’*
And one more thing.
The fact that 「Mental Resonance」 allowed real-time sharing of scenes the other person recalled was also a huge advantage.
Because information inevitably became distorted in the process of being conveyed to others.
You couldn’t just use Hans’s black magic everywhere, given its extreme side effects from forcibly reading brains.
Beep-beep— Beep—
“That will be 257,000 won.”
“Here you go.”
Hun, having finished shopping at a large mart near his home, came out onto the street and cracked his neck this way and that.
He had prepared various things before moving in, but actually trying to live with a child, there were far more necessities than expected.
*‘It might be fine for now… but continuing to take care of everything by myself might be difficult going forward.’*
And since she was a girl, there would be parts he needed to pay separate attention to.
But how could he delicately handle such matters when he had never even had a proper relationship, let alone raised a child?
*‘Well, I’ll think about that gradually from now on.’*
Hun fell into thought, recalling the conversation he’d had with Ramyu before coming out to shop.
He had come out shopping precisely because recalling her past had sunk her into melancholy, giving her time to collect herself with Hwiryeong, who was in charge of mental care.
*‘The final moment of the Cosias dimension.’*
Thanks to using 「Mental Resonance」 with her consent, he had obtained more vivid information.
What kind of environment she had lived in, what incidents had occurred, and in what form the world’s end had arrived.
And among those, there was one topic that particularly caught his interest…
*‘Their parents’ memento.’*
It was about the memento from her parents that she had held until the very end, and which she had received from her brother.
A pretty necklace divided in two from the center, forming a perfect heart shape when joined together.
Once combined, a single phrase was engraved on the back.
Though Ramyu and Riang couldn’t read it.
“They said it’s in the language used in their homeland, but it’s completely different from what I learned from my brother… It’s definitely a foreign language, but I don’t really know exactly which country’s…”
Surprisingly, Ramyu was an intellectual who had learned to read even in that hell.
Though it was because her body had been too weak to do anything else, that alone was remarkable in a world headed toward ruin.
Having received her permission, Hun personally checked the phrase on the memento.
There was no language he couldn’t read, as he possessed 「Xenoglossy」.
And as he had expected, he could read the sentence engraved on the necklace.
*‘The problem is…’*
That it was text he could read even without 「Xenoglossy」—text he already knew.
-May our love last forever
The meaning was “May our love last forever.”
A phrase perfectly suited for a heart-shaped necklace.
*‘So they were Earthlings?’*
And from what he had heard, both of them seemed to be Awakened from Earth who had ended up settling completely in another world.
Could that really be mere coincidence?
‘…When I get back, I’ll have to hear the details.’
Just as he continued walking, lost in thought—
His senses, far beyond those of an ordinary person, picked up a small disturbance.
In a deserted alley some distance away from the street he was on, a sexual crime was being committed against a woman.
‘He’s got guts. Daring to pull that kind of thing in Seoul.’
Hun frowned slightly and glanced in that direction.
It wasn’t something that would end just because the culprit wasn’t caught in the act.
After all, the vigilantes who guarded Korea’s shadows would never miss even the smallest clue, tracking him to the end and making an example of him.
‘Ultimate-class, is he? From the looks of it, he hasn’t been back long and hasn’t grasped the situation properly…’
But the power he possessed was absolutely not to be underestimated.
It was only because Hun had played in much bigger waters and his standards had risen endlessly; Ultimate-class was still a position one could hold one’s head high anywhere.
After all, it was a realm that could be equated to Sword Masters, archmages, and masters of the Transformation Realm.
‘Good timing. There was something I wanted to test.’
Of course, strength was always relative.
Hun’s eyes gleamed as he extended 「Telepathy」 in that direction.
Given the opponent’s level, a firm mental barrier blocked his path, but with the aid of mental-type skills such as 「Great Mind」, he somehow managed to make contact with the other party’s thoughts.
[“Who dares!”]
Through that connection, the other party’s thoughts were transmitted to him.
As if he had noticed someone trying to invade his mind, emotions thick with displeasure and killing intent surged up.
Hun had made contact with the opponent’s mind, but with such a shallow depth, there wasn’t much he could do.
At most, he could read a tiny fraction of the surface consciousness that happened to pass by for an instant.
Even that connection began to fade as the wary opponent started drawing up his energy.
At this rate, the connection would be severed entirely, or the villain who had traced his location would come charging in at any moment.
‘That much time is enough.’
But Hun merely let out a faint laugh.
Once contact was made, it was over.
He immediately opened his own mind wide and let what was inside flow backward out of it.
[“Ghk! What is thi—?!”]
Now that their thoughts were connected, an Ultimate-class mental barrier meant nothing.
As though a massive road roller had crushed a toy castle beneath it, the opponent’s mental world was devastated in an instant.
“…This is pretty good.”
With a soft whistle, Hun’s eyes sparkled.
He confirmed that the opponent, who had been frantically rushing toward him after locating him, had collapsed limply, drooling with unfocused eyes, and then severed the connection.
‘Well now, I wasn’t expecting much from this avatar in terms of combat power.’
It hadn’t even been long since it was created, yet it was already capable of incapacitating an Ultimate-class opponent.
On top of that, unlike his other avatars, whose maintenance burden grew heavier as their realm rose, Hun could instead turn that immense load into a weapon.
Like dumping all the nuclear waste produced in the process of nuclear power generation directly onto the enemy camp.
‘This will become a stronger weapon than I expected. If I develop 「Telepathy」 further from here and become able to connect stably even to far stronger opponents…’
Hun nodded with a meaningful smile and slowly resumed walking.
As the saying went, the best way to develop an ability was to use it often.
And so, in Seoul, where villains already found it stiflingly difficult to operate, an unknown nightmare called the “Mind Breaker” was born.