Chapter 10: Red horned demon.

Arena continued to chatter as they walked towards the old building.

“Where did you learn swordsmanship?”

“I learned it here.”

“Before that?”

“I didn’t really learn it.”

Chayeon casually ignored Arena, who sent a glare with strangely glowing eyes, making an odd ‘eugh’ sound.

“When did you start meeting Teacher Seohee?”

“I’ve known her for about half a year… but I mean we met as acquaintances, it’s not the kind of relationship you’re thinking of.”

Again, he casually ignored her snorting scoff and resentful glare.

“Why are you cross-dressing?”

“It’s not cross-dressing, it’s just– Haa. Why do I have to explain this?” It was pointless explaining to someone who wouldn’t listen anyway. With that thought, Chayeon abandoned the explanation.

“So, it really is Teacher Seohee’s type…?”

“Whatever. Think what you want.”

Chayeon, who had been shaking his head, suddenly remembered something and asked Arena, “Do you know anything about spirits that talk?”

“Spirits that talk? All spirits can talk, can’t they? When they explain what kind of supernatural power they’re giving you at first.”

“No, not like that. I mean, having conversations together.”

“Talking with a spirit? What a stupid thing to say.”

He felt his pride prickled at being called stupid by the most scatterbrained girl he knew.

While they were talking about this and that, the two arrived in front of the old building.

Untended, weeds grew haphazardly, and the equally untended building exuded an eerie atmosphere.

“This is the old building? I’ve never been here before.” Arena approached the main gate with curious eyes, peering inside. The interior of the building, with no lights, was dark even during the summer day.

Chayeon left Arena alone and looked around outside. Despite being late for the appointed time due to the argument with Arena, Seohee was nowhere to be seen.

‘What’s going on?’

Seohee, who had the ability to teleport, should have been able to arrive on time as long as she knew about the appointment.

‘Did she forget?’

The work of a teacher here seemed busier than he thought. Yesterday, he’d heard that she had urgent work to finish by midnight, so it was plausible that she’d been overwhelmed with work and forgotten the appointment.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you going in?” Arena, who had finished exploring the entrance, had come up behind Chayeon and asked.

“The place we’re supposed to meet is outside.”

“I see.” Arena’s expression was somewhat dejected.

Did she want to go inside? Why?

Staring at Arena, wondering why, he thought he knew. She’d been peeking inside since earlier – was she feeling adventurous? Compared to the main building, the old building had a more impressive and antique atmosphere.

Wanting to explore an impressive old building – she was just a child.

“Go ahead and go in.”

Arena, who had been constantly chattering since they met, was uncharacteristically silent. Chayeon looked at her questioningly, and Arena suddenly snapped. “I-It’s not because I’m scared or anything!?”

She was apparently afraid to go in alone. She was a girl who was troublesome in every way.

Chayeon clicked his tongue inwardly. ‘If it’s the teacher, she’ll figure it out soon enough with telepathy or something, even if I’m not there. She seemed to be able to send telepathic messages too.’

As Chayeon headed silently towards the door, Arena’s expression brightened.

“What, do you want to go in because it’s an atmospheric building? You’re such a child. I can’t help it, I’ll go with you!”

Should he beat her up? Gravely considering the thought, Chayeon entered the building.

A little before Chayeon arrived at the old building, Seohee had been glued to her seat in her office since morning. With most of the teachers out, she had a mountain of work to do.

‘I have to go see Chayeon soon too.’

The appointed time was fast approaching. Seohee, who could arrive in front of the old building in less than a second if she wanted to, decided to do as much work as possible before then. All sorts of documents and pens floating in the office, and several laptops with keys being pressed randomly, began to move even faster.

Tap, tap.

Telekinesis, one of Seohee’s abilities, was convenient for this kind of thing. It wouldn’t have been possible with just telekinesis, but it synergized with Seohee’s multitasking abilities, making her work efficiency unparalleled.

Although that ability ultimately resulted in her being assigned twice the amount of work as other teachers.

Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!

As she was speeding up towards the end, the call bell suddenly rang. Each of the teachers’ offices had one installed.

Seohee ignored it and focused on her work.

Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!

But even as time passed, the call bell continued to ring shrilly.

‘Why isn’t anyone answering it? I’m busy.’ Annoyed, she frowned, but then remembered that most of the teachers were out of the academy.

Responding to the call bell was inevitably her responsibility.

“Haa.”

Letting out a sigh filled with pent-up stress, Seohee checked the call bell.

It was from ‘Jindalmok.’

Looking down from the sky, the academy grounds had the shape of a person surrounded by forests and mountains. The place that was publicly known as a cult was the head, and the rest of the body was inside it.

The ‘real academy,’ connected to the head to the lower neck, had a building that acted as a gate – this was the place called Jindalmok.

That was also the place Chayeon had passed through on his first day, risking his life.

What was going on? Had another suspicious person appeared?

Yeonju was good at working hard, but she was too suspicious. Seohee, thinking it was nothing again, casually looked at Jindalmok with clairvoyance.

The pens and laptops that had been moving busily all stopped at once. It was because Seohee’s thoughts had stopped.

Inside Jindalmok, what she saw was filled with blood.

Seohee immediately teleported to Jindalmok.

Space distorted, and the scenery of the office changed to antique walls covered in blood.

The stench stung her nose.

Seeing it in person, the situation was more serious than what she’d seen with clairvoyance.

Corpses were scattered on the floor, and gushing blood had soaked the walls, the ceiling, and everywhere else.

Some of the people guarding Jindalmok were Ineungnyeokja and some weren’t, but even if they weren’t, they weren’t non-combatants. Mercenaries, retired soldiers, current bodyguards – people from various backgrounds had their own roles at Jindalmok or outside it.

Those people were all rolling on the floor in terrible states.

“Ugh…aagh…”

In the suffocating air, Seohee heard a faint sound and turned her head.

There was someone alive.

Getting closer, Seohee realized that she knew her.

It was Seo Yeonju.

Her sharply creased hanbok was crumpled, and her neat hair was disheveled. In a terrible state, blood was constantly flowing from a hole in the middle of her stomach.

Bloodstains that seemed to have been made by dragging her were connected from over there.

It seemed that she was the one who had pressed the call bell. She must have crawled across the floor with a hole in her abdomen to press the bell.

“Yeonju-ssi, are you okay?” Seohee quickly checked Yeonju’s injuries. A large hole was in her stomach.

The fact that she was still alive was a miracle.

“Haa…aagh…aah…uhh…”

With a face difficult to look at, soaked in blood and tears, she was desperately trying to convey something, but the words coming out of her mouth were just scattered, incoherent mumbling.

Only then did Seohee realize where the blood covering Yeonju’s face had come from.

Her tongue had been cut off.

A large amount of blood was leaking from her mouth and dripping down.

“Aah…uhh…”

Life gradually drained from Yeonju’s eyes as she desperately tried to say something.

Her body, which had been getting colder, finally lost strength and collapsed.

They weren’t close, but she was still a coworker she often talked to.

In life, Yeonju had been terrified of Seohee, so she didn’t know her well, but Seohee had thought highly of Yeonju.

Seohee quietly closed Yeonju’s eyes.

“Stubborn survival skills, befitting a bug? But oh well? It seems like you had something you wanted to say, but you mumbled and died? Ahahaha.”

A high-pitched, shrill voice came from beside Seohee, who was sitting down.

Seohee, already aware that someone besides herself was there, didn’t panic and slowly raised her head to look over.

In the dark place dotted with red, hair with the same color as fireflies in the deep sea fluttered.

In contrast, her eyes burned like a furnace.

Both ears were pointed, like elves or fairies from Western legends.

A tall woman, over 170cm, was looking at Seohee.

“Who are you.” Seohee asked in a calm voice.

But even without hearing it, she could already guess from her appearance alone.

A demon – and a fairly high-ranking one at that.

“Hmm, you seem to be higher in the hierarchy than the trash scattered on the floor?” The woman licked her lips, her eyes gleaming. “You look fresh. You’d be delicious.”

As if responding to her words, the light of her fluttering hair became even stronger.

It was like fireflies shining in the dark.

Seeing that color, Seohee became sure of who her opponent was.

“Ouroboros.”

“Oh? You know my name?”

Ouroboros, classified as a Level 2 Threat, a “snake that devours its own tail.”

When Seohee said that name, the demon, Uroboros, seemed momentarily surprised. Soon, she giggled in an exaggerated way, as if clapping for a child’s trick.

“Amazing! Amazing! None of the maggots here knew it. So fresh ingredients have different background knowledge? I’ll give you a praise sticker! Yay!”

As soon as those words ended, something long flew from the darkness towards Seohee’s body. However, just before it touched her body, it crashed into an invisible wall with a shh sound and stuck to the ceiling.

“Oh? You don’t like my praise stamp?”

What had flown was hair. The hair stuck to the ceiling was illuminating the surroundings like a lamp.

“Are you alone?”

“Hmm, I wonder~?”

Shh, shh, shh, shh. Sharp strands of hair, flying menacingly from the darkness, were successively deflected before Seohee.

Immediately afterwards, something huge, different from the hair, fell from above Seohee’s head.

Kwang-

Instinctively knowing that it would be hard to block, Seohee teleported backwards in an instant.

Where she had been standing, a pure white tail wriggled, having smashed the floor. The tail was connected to Ouroboros’s buttocks.

“I prepared a prettier stamp, but it seems you don’t like this either?” Seohee said, blocking Ouroboros’s mental manipulation as she subtly approached.

“You’re bold, aren’t you? To invade Jindal alone, of all places.”

“Don’t put on airs, pretty mackerel~” Uroboros giggled. “It’s just a nest full of baby birds right now, isn’t it?”

Seohee quietly bit her lip. As she said, most of the teachers at Jindal were currently absent, to capture the Level 1 Threat demon Basilisk, which had appeared in and was approaching the Gangwon Sea.

The problem was, how did this demon know that fact? It was unprecedented for two high-ranking demons, not low-level ones, to appear on the same day.

“I’ll tell you because I feel sorry for you, but I didn’t come alone, you know?” At those words, Seohee quickly used clairvoyance and telepathy to extensively search the surroundings.

But the only demon caught on her radar was the Ouroboros in front of her. There were three possibilities:

She was lying.

There was a demon with such excellent camouflage abilities that it couldn’t be detected even by Seohee.

Or, they had already entered the academy.

The first and third were the most likely.

She wanted to search a wider area, but it was too dangerous in the current state of confrontation.

First, eliminate the enemy in front of her.

Then, search for whether there were any remaining demons.

Having decided on a course of action, Seohee straightened her back. Seohee’s blue eyes flashed, and a massive pressure crushed Uroboros.

“Oh?” The heavy atmospheric pressure pressing down from all around startled Uroboros, who stepped back.

“Bug, you’re stronger than I thought? I’m starting to look forward to your taste even more!” Seeing Uroboros staring at her with an expression filled with anticipation and glee, Seohee said coldly, “You’ve been calling us bugs and things since earlier, it’s a little unpleasant. Do you know why we sent most of our Ineungnyeokja outside without any special defenses?”

Seeing Uroboros staring at her with a puzzled expression as she suddenly spouted words like a waterfall, Seohee stretched her arm forward. She increased the pressure to the maximum without saying a word.