After Ten Millennia in Hell

He had a puzzled expression as he gave Cha Yeon-Joo the memory card.

\'It seems like there\'s definitely something hidden in the video.\'

No matter how much he thought about it, Yeon-Joo wouldn\'t be saying all this over a porn video.

After receiving the memory card, she seemed to think of something.

She said slowly, "Now that it\'s come to this, we should watch it together. You\'ll have to know about it sooner or later anyway."

\'No, I already know about that kind of stuff,\' Kang-Woo thought.

He became sure that there was something hidden in the video, but he couldn\'t help but feel weird about it.

"Hwa-Yeon, how is your agent?" Yeon-Joo asked.

"He\'s dead,” Baek Hwa-Yeon answered with a grim expression after searching through the corpses.

She approached Kang-Woo and spoke in a low voice, "Could I... ask you what happened here?"

"I\'m not sure what\'s going on either," Kang-Woo said.

He sighed and told her what had happened starting from the moment he met the young man who had given him the memory card.

"They attacked you the moment you received the memory card?"

"Yes."

"... I guess you really were just caught up in it by coincidence."

Hwa-Yeon swept her disheveled silver hair up as if she had a headache.

"That aside, I\'d also like to know. What is going on?" Kang-Woo asked.

"I\'ll explain everything after we watch the video," Hwa-Yeon remarked.

"Oh, right. About that vi—"

Before Kang-Woo could finish the sentence, a moan rang throughout the alley. Yeon-Joo had placed the memory card in her phone and pressed play just a moment ago.

"Wh-What the...?" Yeon-Joo said with her face looking as red as her hair.

Hwa-Yeon approached her and carefully examined the video.

"It\'s a fake video. We cannot look at the real content in the video without the video decryption device that we have at headquarters," Hwa-Yeon said.

"But why use a video like this as a fake?!" Yeon-Joo shouted.

Hwa-Yeon calmly answered, "Isn\'t it a good fake because it\'s this kind of video? We recommend our agents use adult videos. Agent Kang Dong-Hun just did as he had learned."

"N-No, wait. That means..." Yeon-Joo said, turning her head toward Kang-Woo. "Y-You saw this video earlier, didn\'t you?"

"Yeah," Kang-Woo replied.

"Then why didn\'t you tell me?!"

"You said you needed to use it right now..."

"Use for what?!" Yeon-Joo let out another shout while blushing even more.

After realizing the truth about the video, Kang-Woo smirked and remarked, "I happened to be curious about that myself."

"Y-You damn..."

Yeon-Joo trembled in humiliation. However, she couldn\'t say anything because she was the one who had taken the memory card from him as fast as she could.

"So, what\'s going on? What\'s so important about that video?"

"Sigh..."

Yeon-Joo was about to say something else, but she sighed and explained the situation to Kang-Woo, clearing up his confusion.

"So, you had arranged to meet up with an agent who had infiltrated the Demon Cult, but it went wrong?"

"Yeah. After we received his SOS signal, we looked all over for him, but we couldn\'t find him. This was the place of the last signal."

"Hmm. That means there\'s information about the Demon Cult in that memory card."

Kang-Woo finally understood why those men had suddenly tried to kill him and why Yeon-Joo had said that there was important information in that video.

\'So, that\'s why there weren\'t many members of the Hwarang Corps guarding the Gate today.\'

The rendezvous point was near Hwaseo Station where the 1st Squadron had been stationed, there was a high chance that they had been dispatched as reinforcements.

"Yeah. S-So, it wasn\'t about porn! Understood?!" Yeon-Joo shouted while grabbing Kang-Woo\'s collar.

It seemed like she was still embarrassed.

“Okay, I get it. Calm down," Kang-Woo replied.

Echidna approached Yeon-Joo and pulled her away from Kang-Woo.

"Don\'t treat Kang-Woo like that," Echidna said.

She looked warily at Yeon-Joo while hugging Kang-Woo\'s waist.

Yeon-Joo asked, "This kid is…?"

"She\'s the summoned beast I told you about before," Kang-Woo answered.

"Oh, she\'s the dragon?"

Yeon-Joo scanned Echidna with great interest. She only looked like a little girl who was as pretty as a doll rather than a dragon.

"Are you sure she\'s your summoned beast? You didn\'t do anything weird to her, did you?" Yeon-Joo questioned.

"What kind of human garbage do you think I am?"

"Ah... Well, I guess you wouldn\'t go that far," Yeon-Joo commented with a nod. "You\'re a different kind of human garbage, after all."

"... Is that a compliment or an insult?" Kang-Woo while looking at her in disbelief.

Echidna glared at Yeon-Joo and demanded, "Take that back."

"Guh..."

"Kang-Woo isn\'t garbage. He\'s very important to me."

"U-Uhhh..."

"If you don\'t take that back, I won\'t stand for it," Echidna said while letting out demonic energy.

After hearing the words that the doll-like girl said, Yeon-Joo seemed troubled and scratched the back of her head.

She yielded and replied, "Fine. I\'ll take it back."

"Good."

Echidna stopped exuding demonic energy and buried her head into Kang-Woo. Kang-Woo patted Echidna, who was rubbing her cheeks against him.

Yeon-Joo stared at the absurd scene and forced a laugh.

"What sort of trick did you pull?" she asked.

"Something called popularity and thoughtfulness," Kang-Woo answered.

"Bullshit," Yeon-Joo said, feeling fed up.

Then Hwa-Yeon, who had been cleaning up the surroundings, approached Yeon-Joo and Kang-Woo.

She said, "Let\'s go to the headquarters right away. It\'s the only place we can decrypt this video."

"Okay. Kang-Woo, you\'re coming too, right?" Yeon-Joo asked.

"Well, since things have turned out like this, it would be weird for me not to," Kang-Woo replied.

He shrugged and followed Hwa-Yeon and Yeon-Joo.

* * *

The Hwarang Corps\' headquarters wasn\'t that far from that alleyway where they had been just before. The building that Hwa-Yeon led Yeon-Joo and Kang-Woo to looked rather plain, unlike the imposing Player Management Office.

"Captain Baek Hwa-Yeon!"

As Hwa-Yeon entered the building, members of the Hwarang Corps came running to greet her.

She nodded with a grim expression on her face and said, "Agent Kang Dong-Hun is dead. I\'ll contact his family, so prepare their compensation."

"Ah..."

"He\'s a national hero. Take care of his family with respect."

"Yes, ma\'am!"

Hwa-Yeon looked around and asked, "Where is Captain Jang Hyun-Jae?"

"He\'s been dispatched to Japan for the SS-rank Gate investigation."

"Hmm..."

Jang Hyun-Jae was Hwa-Yeon\'s superior, the captain of the 1st Squadron as well as the highest authority in the Hwarang Corps. There was no Player stronger than him in Korea aside from Baek Kang-Hyun.

\'If only the captain were here...\'

Hwa-Yeon sighed. She thought that if Hyun-Jae had been here, Agent Kang Dong-Hun might not have died on duty.

"I\'m going to the investigation room. Bring in the video decryption device," she said.

"Yes, ma\'am!"

Hwa-Yeon went to the investigation room with Kang-Woo and Yeon-Joo.

After they put the video on the memory card through the decryption device, they played the original video. It displayed a room with a dark background. The first person they saw was an unidentifiable person wearing a red demon mask.

\'A red demon mask.\'

Kang-Woo\'s eyes lit up. He remembered what Jo Deok-Hyun had told him.

\'He may be the one evangelizing people into the Demon Cult.\'

Kang-Woo kept watching the video attentively.

[Your Eminence.]

[Speak.]

A man had entered the dark room and kneeled before the first man who, from the way he was addressed, seemed to be a cardinal.

The kneeling man had a geometrical tattoo on his face. He respectfully bowed his head at the feet of the mask-wearing cardinal.

Then he said with a trembling voice, [The preparations for the summoning are almost ready.]

[How long will it take?]

[Four weeks... Three if we\'re lucky.]

[Three weeks…] the red-masked man muttered and then nodded, seemingly with satisfaction. [Faster than I\'d expected. Did you receive support?]

[Yes. As expected from a major guild, the sacrifices that they offered us were Players with B-rank Traits or higher.]

[Good.]

[Hehehe. Soon, our dreams will come true.]

[We have only taken the first step. We still have long before we achieve our true goal.]

[But if we manage to succeed, the cult may provide us with greater supp—]

[Enough,] the red-masked man said, interrupting the other man.

A terrifying gaze peered through the red mask at the kneeling man.

The red-masked man continued, [Spare your words until the summoning preparations are complete.]

[Yes, your Eminence!] replied the man with his head on the floor.

The video ended there.

"..."

There was a heavy silence in the room. Hwa-Yeon and Yeon-Joo stared stiffly at the projection screen where the video had been playing.

"Hmm," Kang-Woo murmured with a frown.

He organized the information he\'d gathered from the video in his mind.

\'Cardinal, summoning, and a major guild.\'

There were three key pieces of information in the video. The first was that since the man in the red mask was a cardinal, there had to be people ranked above him in the cult. The second was that they were making preparations to summon something to Earth. The third was that a major guild was supporting the cult.

"The only move we can take at the moment is to investigate this major guild, I guess," Kang-Woo concluded.

"Huh?" Hwa-Yeon uttered while looking at Kang-Woo in surprise. She asked, "What makes you say that?"

"Now that they\'ve learned of the existence of a spy in their cult, they\'ll probably do their best to hide as much information about the summoning as possible. We currently have no way to find more information about the cult, so all we can do is to investigate which major guild is supporting them."

"What!" Hwa-Yeon exclaimed in surprise. She was in disbelief that he had made this deduction in such a short time. "Did you work in a field related to this in the past?"

Besides people who worked as a strategist or an analyst, there weren\'t many capable of making such an analysis so quickly.

"No, he\'s just... this kind of guy," Yeon-Joo remarked.

She looked at him like she was sick of being shocked. After all, Kang-Woo was someone who had realized her intentions from the first moment she\'d approached him.

Acknowledging Kang-Woo\'s capability, Yeon-Joo asked him, "So, what do you think we should do?"

"Well, there\'s only one thing we can do now," Kang-Woo said in a low voice. "The Hanul, Red Rose, Onnuri, Mir, and Angel Wings Guilds… Except for your guild, Red Rose, one of the other four guilds is likely connected to the Demon Cult."

"I know that too, but there\'s no way we can find out which one it is."

The five great guilds were so powerful that not even the government could recklessly lay a finger on them. Investigating them wouldn\'t be easy.

"There is one way."

"What way…?”

"We need to..."

A smile appeared on Kang-Woo\'s face.