"......"

"Hmm? What?"

"…Oppa, you bastard…"

"Yeah."

"What’s that?"

At Chara's question, her older brother, Cha Eun-hyuk, tilted his head.

"...A jewel?"

"I mean, I can tell it’s a jewel. But how did you get it?"

"Ah, well…"

"Oppa."

It seemed like he was preparing some kind of excuse, but Chara wasn’t a fan of long-winded explanations.

"Look at this."

"...It’s a jewel."

"I got it as a gift from some humanoid monster."

"......"

The eldest son, Cha Eun-hyuk, silently rubbed his forehead, and the youngest, Cha Isol, dropped his spoon.

Cha Eun-hyuk let out a long, deep sigh and spoke.

"...I’m sorry for trying to brush it off with lies, and let’s just talk about it properly, step by step, without any bullshit."

It had been two days before the youngest’s initiation ceremony.

"Ah, so…"

The eldest son of the Cha family, Cha Eun-hyuk, nodded.

"That was the insurance payout money you mentioned."

"Yeah, it’s like a compensation from the Collector’s Guild."

"Thanks to that, I could buy the youngest’s priest’s robe, but why are you telling me this now?"

"Fuck, I wasn’t planning to say anything…"

"Don’t you trust us that much?"

"What the hell? I’d bruise regular people if I just tapped them."

Chara grumbled, her usual sensitivity showing. She wasn’t particularly angry or upset, but her cautious, cat-like behavior was a habit. She didn’t realize it, but it was just how she acted.

At least since it was family, she relaxed a little and continued.

"I wasn’t planning on saying anything. The youngest’s job has been activated, but it’s uncertain when they'll be chosen, you know, a non-combatant… like an office job, not fieldwork… that kind of thing. Oppa, you’re a complete civilian."

"That’s true."

"It seemed like the Collector’s Guild didn’t want anything about it to be leaked. I blabbed like this, but honestly, it feels like a really important secret."

"Didn’t they at least have a non-disclosure agreement?"

"That part was weird. I wish they’d kept it a secret, but anyway, it’s eventually going to get out. If you really can’t keep it in, you can tell me... something like that? Big companies work more loosely than you’d think."

"What are you even saying?"

Cha Eun-hyuk pressed his throbbing temple.

"So, when you saw me with that... that jewel, you decided to speak?"

"They say there’s only one jewel with such a structure. So what does that mean? It means you’ve already met that monster, doesn’t it? Once that happens, is there even a point in hiding it?"

"The youngest is listening too."

"So should I just exclude them? Hey, why make them feel left out?"

"No, that’s not what I meant…"

Cha Eun-hyuk nodded.

"Isol."

"Yeah, hyung."

"Don’t talk about this anywhere, got it?"

"I’m good at that."

"I’m already worried about how well you’re handling things, but anyway, good job. If we mess up, hyung and noona might get captured by a big guild in Seoul and become test subjects."

"Then I won’t say anything more!"

"Good job."

The youngest, with his cheerful thumbs-up, and the older brother praising him made Chara reflect on her life for a moment. What karmic debt had they paid in their past lives to gather such idiots?

‘I need to protect them.’

Chara, not knowing that her whole family viewed each other as protectors, mumbled while stirring her rice.

"This doesn’t taste right…"

"You got dragged by a monster and ate a seven-course meal, and now your taste buds are all spoiled. Look at how our youngest eats without being picky. How cute."

"I’m fucking upset. When have I ever been picky? And by the way, he’s also my youngest, you know? Why am I not cute, huh? I’ve been going around getting insurance money."

"It helped with living expenses, but you should’ve realized that my self-loathing grew with it. I’d rather starve than live off your insurance money."

"You dumbass, are you going to make the youngest starve? If you live that nicely, does money just fall from the sky? Are grandpa’s lottery numbers going to drop from the afterlife?"

"What are you talking about? How full of yourself are you?"

The Cha family had always been gullible. There wasn’t really a situation where they could compare who was better.

Cha Eun-hyuk and Chara worried about their youngest, Cha Isol, getting scammed, but Chara was slightly better off, and Eun-hyuk was a bit better than that, so it was a matter of the shortest of the tall trees.

"You threw away the scarf the youngest knitted for you last time, didn’t you?"

"Fuck, were you just going to watch me freeze to death without doing anything? Are you some kind of psychopath?!"

"Then why not just go penguin style and huddle together, huh, Chara Hunter? That would’ve been much more economical!"

"What the hell, it’s a stranger, why would I huddle with them? Shut the hell up with that shit!"

"Yeah, you gave that scarf to a complete stranger, right?!"

Looking at the two families, the youngest, Cha Isol, was happily eating the rice he hadn’t had in a long time.

"This is really delicious."

"Hyung made it."

"I made the broth."

"Yeah, it’s so good! It’s amazing!"

The pure smile of the youngest raising both thumbs gave the two older brothers energy, and they stopped their meaningless fight.

"Our youngest won’t be seeing us once he goes to the dorm, huh?"

"It’ll be hard."

"Isol, don’t you already miss noona’s face?"

"I’m looking at it right now, noona."

"Ugh, you’re impossible."

Cha Eun-hyuk scolded his sibling.

"Don’t curse at the youngest."

"When he enters the dorm, I’ll be the youngest."

"Did meeting that monster cause a hole in your head? The second child will always be second, and the youngest will always be the youngest…"

"Let’s fight."

In the midst of the chaotic mess, the youngest, Cha Isol, just kept eating his rice.

"Hehe."

The rice, which he hadn’t had in a while, was really good. The monster that his sister met seemed to be a very kind monster.

"……."

Cha Eun-hyuk, who had stepped outside for a moment, fell deep in thought.

‘…The person I saw that day was a monster?’

It had been odd from the start.

‘I thought it was some kind of monster when I met them early in the morning.’

The dark, empty dawn. A man wrapped in a pitch-black cloak didn’t look human at all.

‘He had the same aura as those ghostly beings I could only see, so I assumed he was one of them.’

But he wasn’t just visible to Eun-hyuk. He was visible to other people too. He was overly blunt, but that was just his personal trait, and the sense of alienness he felt was just the holy energy of a devout follower, or so he thought.

"……."

But what if he was just a humanoid monster?

"...But that doesn’t make sense, does it?"

Something felt off.

‘I’ve seen monsters before.’

In the world, there were monsters that you could only see by entering dungeons, but there were also monsters that could be found simply by existing on Earth. Even if those monsters were weak enough to be caught by regular people, their savagery never changed.

Cha Eun-hyuk wasn’t a hunter, but he had hunted monsters, so he could tell that the energy emanating from the black cloak was different from that of a typical monster.

‘That wasn’t the energy of a monster.’

Cha Eun-hyuk, sitting in the yard, looked up at the dim sky.

"……."

A large, black serpent-like creature slithered through the dark clouds above. It had human limbs, and it moved slowly, enormous in size.

"...That was probably one of those kinds."

He couldn’t figure out the identity of the man in the black cloak.

‘Objectively speaking, it would make sense to say he’s a humanoid monster. He said he had a personal dungeon. But the energy itself is strange… it’s too much to call it a /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ monster of that kind...’

He acted like a human.

"Feels like a mishmash of everything."

It seemed like a monster, but also a monster I could only see, and a little human too. Since so many different traits were mixed together, it actually felt more natural.

It was like the black cloak itself felt like the origin of everything.

"...This is nonsense…."

If he was the origin from which monsters, beasts, and humans were derived, then that would be like a god.

‘No, even gods can’t do that.’

It was an unrealistic thought.

‘When I asked about the youngest, I found out that gods aren’t as omnipotent as they seem…’

Cha Eun-hyuk thought to himself.

‘In that sense, the man in the black cloak I and Chara saw might be a higher existence than the gods that priests worship.’

But.

"……."

As he thought about it.

"Ugh…"

The holy energy he had felt last time was affecting him again.

Even though he wasn’t a hunter, Cha Eun-hyuk had enough experience to recognize the holy energy of a god. That was definitely divine energy.

It was different from the energy he had felt from the man in the black cloak.

"...Considering how warm it felt, it must’ve been related to the sun or fire…."

There was a temple of the sun nearby, so he thought it was a follower of the sun. He doubted it was possible for someone to have both the job of a tamer and a priest, so it seemed like a devout follower who gained holy power.

But if the other party wasn’t a follower or a human, then what was that energy?

"Divine energy…"

Could a mere monster hold that?

"……."

The more he thought about it, the more Cha Eun-hyuk felt it wasn’t something he could solve.

"…It’s certain now, though. He’s not a simple monster. The Collector even confirmed that he’s not human."

A monster that could wield divine energy couldn’t just be called a monster anymore.

‘If I had to choose the most understandable option, it would just be the kind of monsters I’m used to seeing.’

Cha Eun-hyuk knew a lot about monsters and humans at a reasonable level, but when it came to ‘beasts,’ he knew little. Maybe among them, there was a monster that could use divine energy.

‘I’ve never seen one before.’

A monster with such a gentlemanly attitude. Even if it were a humanoid monster, it had picked up his lost sibling, fed them, and sent them back home, so it was quite a kind opponent.

‘But if I think like this, it might be a higher existence than the gods of Earth. The man in the black cloak had divine energy, but the gods couldn’t hold the energy of the black cloak…’

His thoughts came to a sudden stop. He didn’t want to drain his energy for nothing.

"...There’s nothing more I can figure out by thinking about the identity."

Cha Eun-hyuk just thought about the future.

"Chara said she even went to that person’s dungeon."

Chara openly treated the man in the black cloak as a monster, but for some reason, Cha Eun-hyuk referred to him as a ‘person.’ This was something Cha Eun-hyuk wasn’t even aware of.

"Does that mean we might meet again one day?"

Cha Eun-hyuk had invited him to the initiation ceremony. Now that the youngest’s ceremony had been decided, it was likely they would meet again.

‘I think he’ll probably come. He seemed pretty interested.’

Now that the misunderstanding of him being a follower of the sun had been cleared, he was someone who wielded holy power related to the sun. They would definitely meet at the ceremony.

"...I hope I didn’t invite a dangerous person..."

After spending the night pondering, the next morning came.

"......"

"......"

Cha Eun-hyuk briefly felt dizzy.

"...Hello."

"Yes, hello."

For the first time, the whole Cha family had come to Seoul together, and they came face-to-face with none other than Gio.

The strange man in the pitch-black cloak.

"It’s been a while."

A calm greeting.

‘I thought the chances were high, but I didn’t expect to meet him this quickly.’

The black cloak still carried that odd atmosphere. It wasn’t for nothing that Cha Eun-hyuk had thought from their first meeting, ‘This isn’t human.’

Meanwhile, the man with white hair standing next to the black cloak also greeted them.

"Good to see you again. Looks like the whole family came up?"

"What, do you and Yoo Seong-Woon know each other?"

"We met sometimes while buying fish-shaped bread."

"Ah, fish-shaped bread..."

Chara nodded, then looked at the man in the black cloak with a curious expression.

"......"

"Is there a problem?"

"...I’ll buy you fish-shaped bread later."

Cha Eun-hyuk thought, 'Has our little pig lost her mind?' Offering fish-shaped bread to such an intimidating opponent. Of course, the black cloak had bought fish-shaped bread from Eun-hyuk before, but that was probably part of socializing...

But surprisingly, the black cloak accepted it.

"I don’t know why, but thank you."

"Uh… yeah."

Does he like fish-shaped bread?

‘...He’s surprisingly simple, huh?’

With that kind of atmosphere?

‘He looks like he’s about to drag a sinner to the gallows to judge them.’

The black cloak exuded a notable aura. Because of his black cloak, he resembled a malevolent spirit or death god.

He wasn’t human, and his ghostly presence was eerie, cold, and hollow, yet at the same time, he looked like an exquisitely crafted ornament, evoking both beauty and an unsettling grotesqueness.

It wasn’t just Eun-hyuk who felt this way.

"......"

Looking around, Cha Eun-hyuk noticed that the people heading to work occasionally glanced at the black cloak.

"Don’t pay too much attention to it."

"Ah, okay."

"He always has that kind of atmosphere."

"I see."

At Yoo Seong-Woon’s words, Cha Eun-hyuk felt a strange unease.

‘It’s the youngest’s initiation ceremony.’

Will this go well...?