The Returner

Chapter 34: I will protect my own home (4)

Jung Beom-Hyuk was a proud member of the Defcom.

Currently, the Defcom was being seen as the true elites of Korean defense forces that possessed even higher prestige than that of the Special Forces.

It was an organisation where even the most talented, hand-picked soldiers from the entire military system had to go through another round of stricter and far more vigorous testing first before given the right to join.

The honour of being a member of the Defcom, not to mention the salary and the benefits that were unimaginable for a regular soldier, those were great. Amazing, in fact.

On top of this, members of the Defcom were seen by the opposite sex as the most ideal marriage partner as well, due to them earning lots of money, many of them dying early, as well as the generous pension packages sweetening the deal even further. It was a great job, indeed.

Oh, with the exception of dying easily on the job, of course.

That was why Jung Beom-Hyuk took pride in his status as a member of the Defcom.

And then, there were those gazes of admiration when he put on the uniform and stood in public. Unless one had experienced it firsthand, one would never be able to understand just how powerful the emotions could get when receiving such adulations.

Such admiration coming from other people, and the pride of working in a military outfit that was, without a doubt, the most advanced and fair in South Korea, made life for Jung Beom-Hyuk very pleasant, indeed.

However...

A new order issued earlier today... that made things a bit weird for him.

After the Gate of the previous incident closed up, the role of the Defcom had changed to searching for and killing the remnant monsters they might have missed the first time, as well as restricting access to the affected area to the general public.

So, a part of the team was patrolling the inner area, while the rest stayed out by the perimeters and stopped unauthorised people from entering the mission area.

Well, that much wasn’t the weird part.

“Why aren’t we supposed to restrict access from this side, I wonder?”

Jung Beom-Hyuk’s mission was to restrict access from the perimeter.

However, didn’t that mean he was supposed to block off all the roads leading into the inner mission area?

Until today, that was the kind of roles he had been given. But today... today’s mission was strange, to say the least.

One particular area. No, to be exact, to prohibit approach within the radius of 300 metres from a certain apartment complex.

If he considered the fact that an order like this had never been issued until now, he couldn’t help but wonder about the oddity of it all.

‘Could there be a monster living in that apartment?’

Soon enough, though – Jung Beom-Hyuk got to learn the reason for his orders. Whether that was a fortunate thing or not.... well.

A young man was walking out from the said apartment.

That sight of him sporting a worn-out tracksuit pulled up at the collars while dragging an equally-old pair of slippers and a crooked cigarette stuck to his lips, he was the perfect example of the typical neighbourhood bum.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk.’

Jung Beom-Hyuk was reminded of the crisis his beloved country was going through at the moment, not to mention the oft-mentioned “lack of young people willing to join the workforce”, when looking at the sloppy appearance of this bum.

Sure, you could say that this guy was a salaryman who had simply switched to a more comfortable clothing after he got home from a long day at work.

However, that would not explain the messy, unkempt and unwashed hair of his, dancing around in the breeze like that.

Besides, every single bum in history of mankind all emitted a certain unmistakable vibe from them. From Jung Beom-Hyuk’s point of view, this youth was a very high-level bum for sure. Probably at a stage boss level, too.

Well, with just one look, Jung Beom-Hyuk could personally feel the overwhelming aura of ‘I shall never work in my entire life, even if I starve to death’ coming off from the youth.

“Just what is happening to this world...” (Jung Beom-Hyuk)

Jung Beom-Hyuk clicked his tongue.

However, the bum suddenly began approaching Jung Beom-Hyuk.

“Mmm?”

The bum walked in an unhappy manner and then stared at Jung Beom-Hyuk with equally unhappy eyes, before opening his mouth.

“Hey, ahjussi.”

“Yes?”

Even though he was an inexcusable piece-of-sh*t bum, Jung Beom-Hyuk still maintained decorum since he was talking to a civilian.

“You got a light?” (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

“A light?”

“I forgot to bring my lighter with me when I got chased out of the house, you see.” (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

Jung Beom-Hyuk’s expression crumpled.

Couldn’t this fool see what he was doing right now?

Was this fool really asking a soldier decked out from head to toe in weapons and armour, for a lighter?!

‘This son of a...!’ (Jung Beom-Hyuk)

Jung Beom-Hyuk knew that it would not be possible to use the law, but he still decided to teach this young man a lesson or two. Well, it was rather disrespectful too, for a younger-looking person to demand a light from an older person, so there was his justification!

“What the, are you insa...” (Jung Beom-Hyuk)

It was then.

Suddenly, a hand shot out from his behind. The hand proceeded to cover Jung Beom-Hyuk’s mouth real tight, and then, the shocked soldier was dragged away, kicking and resisting.

“Eup!! Eup, eup!! Euuppphhh!!”

Jung Beom-Hyuk resisted fiercely, but the strength restraining him was as strong as a vice grip and it didn’t permit him to break free.

And as he got dragged away, Jung Beom-Hyuk could see a man wearing a slick black suit personally deliver a lit cigarette to Yi Ji-Hyuk’s lips.

‘What the hell is this? Who are these people?!’ (Jung Beom-Hyuk)

Suddenly, someone whispered into Jung Beom-Hyuk’s ears.

“We’re from the KSF. Didn’t you hear the new safety protocol, you f*cker? Who’s your officer in charge?”

‘Oh, god. I’m screwed.’ (Jung Beom-Hyuk)

Poor Jung Beom-Hyuk had no clue about the cause nor the reason, yet he already knew what would happen to him later on.

*

“Where are you taking that ahjussi away to?” (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

“He’s going away to a very remote place.”

“Oh.....” (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

“Well, then.”

“Uh, thanks for the lighter.” (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

Yi Ji-Hyuk shoved the received lighter into his pocket. When he took a look around, those men in black suits had already disappeared from the sight.

“Well, it’s convenient, I guess.” (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

It was a wee bit irritating too, but he found it a bit too much work to catch and raise his voice at them every single time as well. Besides, he wondered whether they deserved such treatment or not, when they were so considerate enough to deliver some smokes and a lighter, just like now...

No, wait, besides all that!!

Wasn’t this just too much?!

“Come on, now! I didn’t say anything wrong, did I? Who in their right minds would kidnap or harm that girl?! I mean, she’s fierce enough to kick a bull in the ballsack, even!” (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

Mom’s love was a blindingly powerful thing.

Her love was so ‘blindingly’ powerful that she sometimes couldn’t differentiate between the wrongdoer and the victim.

Honestly, was Ye-Won a girl who’d get bullied by others?

Instead, she’d make sure to bully others properly and thoroughly.

Seriously, wasn’t she a kind of person that, a human being with a working, sane, and cool head would quickly go down a different street as soon as spotting her 30 metres away? They probably wouldn’t give a rat’s a*s whether they were heading down the wrong way, either!

And to say, something might have happened to a girl like that?

And to say, mom was worried about her?

Why dontcha worry about the world peace, instead?! (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

“Uh-whew.”

Now, how should he go about searching for this girl?

Just how could he locate that rotten child in this big world?!

Yi Ji-Hyuk pulled out his phone and called his mom.

“Mom.”

– “What?”

“Mom, honestly, aren’t you overreacting a little bit here? Can’t I just go back home and wait for...”

– “If you don’t return in a pair, your torso will not remain a single piece but will instead become a pair, got that?”

“That won’t do. Okay, so, I will return. After finding her. Don’t you worry, mom.”

After hanging up, Yi Ji-Hyuk fell into a pit of despair.

Why?!?!

Just why me?!?!

What happened to the untouchable dignity of Berafe’s Bringer of Apocalypse?!

Why doesn’t it work on mom?!

Haven’t I enslaved countless monsters with nothing but simple gazes? Didn’t I control an army of demons with a flick of my hand?

Right now, it’s a total reverse of things – she has enslaved me with nothing but her gaze, and is ordering me around like a dog, with a flick of her hand! (Yi Ji-Hyuk’s inner monologue)

“Uh-whew.”

Oh well, what could he do? She was his mom, after all.

“And just where is this rotten girl right now, wasting my time like this?!”

His rage was trying to find a new target to vent out, after getting thoroughly defeated by his mom’s powerful will.

However, even if he wanted to vent, he had to find his sister first.

Okay, let’s see now.

Okay, so...

I can’t use Detect, huh... (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

He still had a little Mana left, but the Detect spell allowed him to scan and find individual Mana signatures, which meant that it was pointless to cast the spell on the denizens of this particular district, since they possessed not one iota of Mana in the first place.

“What am I supposed to do here...?”

Meandering around like this, he suddenly began recalling the first few days of him arriving on Berafe.

Even then, he was utterly lost, just like now.

As his luck would have it, he arrived in the middle of a dense forest. Which meant that he got mauled by monsters almost three, four times a day.

That fear he felt when he found himself about to be attacked by a monster for the very first time.

That pain he felt when sharp fangs tore into his flesh and ripped off chunks of his body.

However... no matter how much was eaten, his flesh regenerated. And no matter how much of him was eaten, he didn’t ‘decrease’, so in the end, even the monsters with full bellies let him escape with dazed expressions.

“...And then, I became a bento...”

If he started counting the number of monsters which had happily filled up their bellies thanks to his sacrifice – before he made his escape from the forest – then that would easily exceed past 100.

Hell, one or two smart SOBs even followed him around and took a bite out of him whenever they got hungry.

And when this whole thing became a daily routine of sorts, he even ended up punching a certain mannerless b*stard that took two bites instead of one....

Well, he wasn’t going to die anyway, so what was there to be scared of?

Wait a minute...

This... Isn’t this a really heartbreaking story, now that I think about it?

It’s not like, oh, it’s a bit of a joke, I’m having a laugh, after doing it for so long?

Anyways...

He finally escaped from that forest after suffering so much, only to run into yet another whirlwind of chaos.

He sought out a settlement with people in it, but...

He couldn’t communicate. His skin tone was different. Hell, he even looked different from everyone there.

To the village folk, he was a human who didn’t look like one, and as soon as he encountered them, well, he got dragged away by the patrolling soldiers. And then...

“Huh. Wait a sec. Gotta wipe my tears away first...”

Yi Ji-Hyuk gently wiped the tears pooling on the edges of his eyes.

The motherf*cking Berafe.

All those isekai stories of MCs landing in another worlds and experiencing joyful adventures were nothing more than dog sh*t. It took over a hundred years before Yi Ji-Hyuk could more or less adapt to the ways of that side and start living like a normal person.

More importantly, if it weren’t for his undying body of his, the Yi Ji-Hyuk of today wouldn’t even be here, standing around and looking for his sister. He’d be long, long dead by now.

If he counted the number of grievous bodily injuries he had suffered in the first hundred years, the ones that would’ve proved fatal to regular people, then most likely, the number would have easily shot past 500.

“I should really write a web novel about this and make some money off it...”

But, then again, people might say my story lacks realism and start talking sh*t about it. Even though it’s all real! Che!

Yi Ji-Hyuk shook his head to chase the unpleasant memories of Berafe out of his mind.

Didn’t matter how deep he dug through, he couldn’t remember one good thing about that place.

“Wait, I shouldn’t even be digging through my memories, and instead locate that rotten girl first.”

Yi Ji-Hyuk stood up from his spot and leisurely took a step forward.

He had no choice but to search for her blindly and without a plan.

If he looked for her from the sky, it might be easier, but then again, it’d also prove easy for other people to spot him up there. And his current Mana wasn’t really enough to cast an Invisibility spell, too...

Once more, he came to “appreciate” how inconvenient it was without sufficient Mana supporting him.

Now that he thought about it, if he didn’t get into that ‘Contract’ back then, it might have taken ten thousand years for him to escape from Berafe. No, wait – more likely, he couldn’t even be able to escape in the first place.

Well, the truth was, he couldn’t gather Mana on his own, so if the Contract didn’t supply him with endless Mana, he wouldn’t able to become a sorcerer at all.

Yi Ji-Hyuk sucked on his cigarette and continued to trudge forward.

He knew it was pretty stupid to search without a plan in mind. He needed to narrow down the search perimeter.

If she was any ol’ regular hooligan, she’d find a way to infiltrate past the bouncers of a bar or a nightclub and drink herself to a stupor at this late hour, but seeing that she had never come home smelling of alcohol, that avenue of investigation seemed no good.

Well, she could have gone to a friend’s place that didn’t have any adult’s presence and play till she dropped, but since he did not know any of her friends, that one was also no good.

So, the remaining one with the highest percentage of likelihood would be...

Although cheap, cliched and definitely low-rent, could she be squatting in some dark, dank and smelly corner of a public park or behind bleachers with her gang, chain smoking and knocking off shots of soju?

Eiii, she’s still my little sister. There’s no way, she’s got her pride to consider.... Seriously, there’s no way she’d do that. I mean, she’s.... (Yi Ji-Hyuk’s inner monologue)

“....Stop!”

Huhuhuh...

It must be a weird coincidence to hear a familiar voice while walking past a park, right?

It can’t be her, right? (Yi Ji-Hyuk’s inner monologue)

“.....is it.”

...But, it is her.

It is, without a doubt, 100% her.

It is, without a doubt, her irritated voice, always shouting at me to come and eat dinner. (Yi Ji-Hyuk’s inner monologue)

Yi Ji-Hyuk let out a long, long groan.

He was suddenly overcome with sorrow after realising that this girl was fooling around in such a crass fashion, not even taking into consideration her position as his little sister.

Seriously now, it’s the education!! It seemed that she might need a proper education before it’s too late!!

Yi Ji-Hyuk’s eyes sharpened like a knife as he headed towards the direction of the voice.

Soon enough, he spotted a group of people in the distance.

“Mm?”

Eh? Maybe the situation’s not what I thought?

I thought she might have been squatting on the ground, knocking off soju shots and eating chips and sh*t, but, what the... (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

It seemed that the situation was a bit more serious than his initial thoughts suggested.

A group of a few well-built b*stards were surrounding a single person. The scene was straight out of the bullying/ripping-pocket-money-off textbook, actually.

And the person surrounded by the group was...

A blonde?

A hotdang, honest-to-god blondie?!

‘Ye-Won?’

Well, now. Wasn’t that a scene of several people surrounding a blonde child to bully her?

Plus, the girls in front of that blondie were even lightly knocking her around, too.

‘What the, these a*sholes dare to lay a hand on my sister?!’ (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

Flames erupted out from Yi Ji-Hyuk’s eyes.

My little sister!

My “more precious than gold” sister!!

No, wait, I mean, my gold-haired little sister!!

My little Ye-Won, who always said she’d get married to her big brother when she grew up!! My little, kind-hearted Ye-Won!!

My little Ye-Won, who has seemingly lost her dang mind as if she was the one to experience the tragedy of an another world!!

I always wondered how a person could change that much – and now I know the reason!!

Anyone would’ve changed after getting bullied like that!!

This foolish little girl!!

If she had mentioned this to me, this Oppa would’ve brought down that dang school in three seconds flat!!

No wait, now’s not the time for this!! (Yi Ji-Hyuk’s inner monologue)

“Ye-Won-ah!!”

Hang in there, Ye-Won!! Oppa’s coming!

Yi Ji-Hyuk pounced forward with enough strength to almost ruin the concrete below his feet.

And he could see the vague outlines of the b*stards much more clearly now.

“What the hell!! What is this?!”

When they saw a person dash towards them at a frightening speed, they obviously fell into a panicked state and started shouting out while pointing their fingers at him.

Grit!

Yi Ji-Hyuk gritted his teeth.

When he got closer, he could see more clearly what was going on.

He saw a blonde girl with tearful and puffed-up eyes. He saw a bunch of b*stards decked out in black school uniforms behind her. Then, in front of the crying girl, a group of deliquent, punk-a*s b*tches busy bullying her and slapping her cheeks!!

Those no good lowlifes would dare!!!

How audacious!! Just who the hell did they think they were, to mess around with this person?!?!

Yi Ji-Hyuk reached out and grabbed the hair of the boss girl of the bullying group, his hand containing all of his anger and resentment.

And then, he shouted out at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking apart from that very resentment, fury and.... even despair.

“What the f*ck!! Hey, you crazy b*tch!! Why must you be the one to bully others, ah?! Why isn’t it the other way around????” (Yi Ji-Hyuk)

< 34. I will protect my own home -4 > Fin.