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Join the Server“You can’t just charge in after I’ve had a taste.”
He replied nonchalantly, then handed the pinecone to Cha Min-hyuk. Why give me this? Cha Min-hyuk took it bewildered, examined it, then tossed it over his shoulder. As Kim Seok-ho stomped on it, the evil spirit hiding inside the pinecone fizzled out.
“Is it because you want to see his past life? You seemed unable to see it earlier.”
“That too.”
Contact. A word used in many ways. For most humans, Ahn Dae-young could see their sins and even their past lives just by looking into their eyes. It was one of his abilities as the son of Yeomra.
But for someone like Jeong Eun-gyu, who was utterly clean, he had to attempt contact to see. The easiest method was contact of intent. In the language of the living world, it was called ‘mixing bodies’ or ‘sharing a bed’. In English, s*x.
Jeong Eun-gyu had no time to spare. He was a human with a set time in this world. Now that his senses had sharpened, simply sending him back was impossible. So despite knowing the timing was premature, Ahn Dae-young attempted contact. The result? If before it was a blank page… now it was like a few strokes of ink.
It wasn’t perfect contact, so he couldn’t see clearly. But he did figure out one thing: if Ahn Dae-young didn’t step in, Jeong Eun-gyu would surely be devoured by someone. Surely. That’s why he deliberately smeared his semen all over. No matter how much of a deposed prince he was, no ghost in this world would dare challenge Ahn Dae-young.
Carrying a heavy-looking backpack on one shoulder yet walking swiftly, Kim Seok-ho sidled up to Ahn Dae-young and whispered at a decibel inaudible to Cha Min-hyuk.
“It’s about the professor. If he goes to work reeking of your scent, rumors will spread wide. The reapers will notice and immediately run to Yeomra. You know how loose their lips are.”
“So what?”
“Then if He descends like last time, you might get utterly destroyed.”
“He won’t.”
“You shouldn’t be so sure… Boss, that mouth of yours is really a problem…”
As Kim Seok-ho, incongruously anxious for his size, fussed, Cha Min-hyuk approached and stepped in front of them, drawing his sword. A fierce blue killing aura erupted from the blade. Floating above it were flames of a lighter blue, and there were quite a number of them.
When Kim Seok-ho pulled out packaged acorn jelly from his backpack, the lights blocked by Cha Min-hyuk’s sword buzzed with noise, ranging from low grumbles to ear-splitting high tones. These were the dokkaebi of this mountain, and to pass through their territory, one had to offer some kind of bribe.
Originally, dokkaebi belonged to the underworld, but after a revolt, they became the only beings able to freely travel between the upper and lower realms. They could enter hell or heaven as they pleased, so they could not be handled carelessly.
“Hey, you lot, scram and call Choryang.”
“Is this guy crazy? Shoving a sword in our faces! With your rotten faces, you underworld bastards!”
The lights flashed, and dokkaebi standing on one leg appeared. They were so noisy that Ahn Dae-young’s brow furrowed deeply. Who was calling whose face rotten?
“Here, have these. You’re fifty-six people, right? I wrapped them one by one. Please eat and put the trash in this backpack.”
Kim Seok-ho, armed with his trademark kindness, offered the acorn jelly. The dokkaebi rushed over with a clatter, each grabbing one and chewing noisily. The smacking sound was even more annoying than their chatter. Ahn Dae-young’s short patience was wearing thin.
“Seok-ho. Next time, poison the jelly. Let these bastards eat it all and drop dead.”
At his irritated voice, the dokkaebi all fell silent at once. Only the gulping sounds of swallowing jelly echoed. Though they had been acting wildly since signing the freedom treaty, in front of higher beings, their priority was survival. And Ahn Dae-young was truly the type to poison the jelly.
“Call Choryang before I set this mountain on fire.”
“I’m here, lol.”
With a self-made ‘pop’ sound, Choryang suddenly appeared behind Ahn Dae-young. Unlike the others, he had a human form. And a rather handsome one at that.
“Young Prince has such a temper, no manners, no etiquette, and such bad luck!”
All the way to the dokkaebi fortress, Choryang grumbled. He was quite displeased at having to complete an errand that was a request in name but a threat in nature within two days. Cha Min-hyuk, walking beside Choryang who took huge strides that made the mountain shake, replied in a teasing tone.
“Outside, if you call him ‘Prince’ in front of the boss, you might die, so you’d better shut your mouth.”
“Ehe! Go ahead and kill me! Try it! Do you think I’m afraid of death?!”
“f*ck, you’re loud.”
At that single word, his mouth snapped shut. Choryang wasn’t afraid of death, but he was afraid of a cursing Ahn Dae-young. Yet he continued grumbling.
“Why did that guy come back covered in human scent? He’ll get caught by Yeomra. Get caught and this time get banished not to this world but to heaven! He’ll cry like a baby in Mary’s arms!”
Swoosh. A sword was drawn from Cha Min-hyuk’s scabbard.
“Huh?”
Bewildered because the sword was drawn without any sound, Cha Min-hyuk quickly stepped back as soon as he saw Ahn Dae-young holding his own sword. Choryang, feeling the blade at his uvula, pouted his lips.
“A jokeless, damned prince. Even after becoming human, you act like this, so not one of the ten underworld kings calls for you.”
“I don’t have time. Hand over what you brought.”
“You really have a temper, no manners, no etique— Uwaaack!”
Deep in the mountain, there was a dokkaebi fortress. Before the dokkaebi gathered, it was a shaman shrine. It was the only shrine on Muguang Mountain, and the shaman who tended it died long ago. Though it was a ruined shrine, it couldn’t just be torn down, so they planted thick, uneven bushes around it.
The dokkaebi who set up the large fortress earned free land by diligently caring for Muguang Mountain. If they didn’t tend to it, the mountain would lose its energy and collapse. That the lost Muguang Mountain could maintain its splendor was entirely thanks to the dokkaebi.
Choryang was the leader among them. Perhaps because of that, his audacity knew no bounds. He knew that Ahn Dae-young would usually let things slide, even if he really got angry he might break the freedom treaty and kill him.
“Young Prince. Let’s sleep together just once. I’ll eat you up deliciously.”
Moreover, he constantly coveted the aura of the underworld prince.
Ahn Dae-young adjusted his grip on the lightly held sword for striking and aimed it. Then, pulling a long face, Choryang backed off and soon brought back an item wrapped in a dragon cloth. Cha Min-hyuk, who received the sword back from Ahn Dae-young and sheathed it, widened his eyes.
“Wow. You really did it in under two days.”
“The Samdocheon cruise ship was fully booked, so I swam across, and then that gatekeeper bastard tried to stick his trident right in my neck. So what do you think I said? ‘How dare you, to this body that the Young Prince deeply trusts!'”
“And then?”
“He said this was only for the dead and told me to go through another gate, so I eventually came back. Hmph.”
Ignoring whatever was being said, Ahn Dae-young tossed aside the dragon cloth, revealing a dark red scabbard. Unlike Cha Min-hyuk’s, its handle gave a stinging sensation as if evil spirits were biting into the palm. Three characters forged from the blood of ghosts he had dealt with as a martial artist stood out on the handle.
Yeongcheonwang. The name he would have become the eleventh king of hell if he hadn’t been banished to this world. Since being banished in a human body, the blade’s condition had deteriorated for various reasons, so he had entrusted it to Choryang for repairs. Because he couldn’t go to hell in this body.
It had been a long time since he last held it. He hadn’t needed to use it in the meantime—nothing big enough to draw the sword had occurred.
“Choryang. Do a job for me.”
“A job? What kind of job? What job would make the Prince directly speak to me with a kind tone but not a kind expression?”
“Watch over one person for a few days.”
Kim Seok-ho, who had been feeding a plump baby dokkaebi newly out of the cradle, exclaimed in shock and stared at Ahn Dae-young. Choryang’s blue eyes tilted.
“Watch over a person? What does that mean?”
“Don’t play tricks. Watch him literally.”
“Is my ear blocked? Or has the Prince finally gone mad?”
He dug at his ear as if he misheard. And rightly so. There was no need to specifically ask Choryang when he had Cha Min-hyuk and Kim Seok-ho. Besides, dokkaebi were full of mischief and malice, so they were poor value. Yet despite that, why bring it up?
“You don’t mean Professor Jeong, do you? What makes you trust Choryang with him?”
“I can hear you, you damn strategist who has pawned everything, even your liver and gallbladder, to the Young Prince.”
“Professor Jeong Eun-gyu from Seyeon Hospital’s Neurosurgery. Starting tomorrow, from nine in the morning until he gets off work. Seok-ho will handle the payment.”
“Ehh?”
As the unthinkable became reality, a taken-aback Kim Seok-ho and Cha Min-hyuk, who had been peering at Ahn Dae-young’s sword, flinched and looked up with ambiguous expressions.
“Don’t let even a single ant touch him.”
He drove the point home with an indifferent expression. A promise made to a dokkaebi could never be broken. Knowing that, Ahn Dae-young still stamped his seal. The expressions of his two subordinates became quite peculiar.
They could roughly guess the reason. They themselves were from the underworld, but dokkaebi were beings that neither above nor below could recklessly touch. Already, the strong marking would prevent stray spirits from clinging, but if a dokkaebi also stuck around as a bodyguard, chattering away…
Cha Min-hyuk and Kim Seok-ho exchanged glances. They shared the same opinion. Ah, soon things were going to go to shit big time.
“Are you the protagonist that reeks of scent? Now that I smell it again, it’s a delicious scent.”
Without answering, he turned and went back down the path they came up. Choryang almost rolled to stand beside Ahn Dae-young.
“If you eat him, you won’t die a nice death.”
“Tsk.”
Looking very disappointed, then suddenly getting angry and starting a long rant before getting cursed out by Ahn Dae-young, Choryang sulked and turned back into a blue flame. Even as he floated around, his chatter never ended.
“Do you think the professor can endure that?”
After a long silence, Cha Min-hyuk finally replied to Kim Seok-ho’s serious concern.
“My vote is he’ll go f*cking crazy.”
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