Ch.104. Free Trade Zone (2)

Perhaps their first meeting was an ill-fated encounter.

The high-ranking Grand Duchess of the Northern Kingdom of Slavia. And during her second year, Yuri Tarkovskaya, the snow woman of Aince who never lost her first-place student rank.

There was one student who handed Yuri her first defeat. Lee Minsu. A bottom-ranked student whose name she had never even heard before.

This Minsu defeated her with a flame magic called “Phoenix’s Flame Scales.” At that time, Yuri couldn’t sleep peacefully for several nights due to the humiliation she had never experienced before.

But ironically, that humiliation sparked her interest in Minsu. And that was unexpected.

Back then, Yuri had absolutely no interest in men. No, they were rather objects of avoidance.

Andrei Tarkovsky. Because of Andrei, the Grand Duke of the Kingdom of Slavia and her biological father, Yuri harbored a deep distrust of men.

‘But… why… did it happen?’

Of course, it wasn’t romantic interest. She simply wanted to return the humiliation she suffered to that man, Minsu, several times over.

However, what began as an ill-fated encounter gradually transformed into a meaningful connection over time.

Yuri had many peers around her, but in reality, she had no one she could call a friend.

It wasn’t that Yuri didn’t want to make friends, but as a perfectionist with high pride, she never revealed her inner self to students from other countries.

Perhaps she was a bit lonely in this foreign land of Korea.

‘Other students… always saw me only that way.’

What the surrounding students expected of her was a near-perfect, cold, and arrogant snow woman. She couldn’t become friends with such students.

She knew they were chasing after her superior background and her image as the top student rather than Yuri Tarkovskaya as a person. So she couldn’t be honest with them.

‘Friend… Yes. Minsu and I at that time…’

But Minsu was different. Because of that ill-fated encounter and humiliation, they ended up getting involved with each other many times at Aince.

Whether Yuri picked fights with him to wash away her humiliation, or he happened to approach her first to talk, the two naturally began to spend more time together.

Though she couldn’t readily declare him a friend, as they frequently encountered each other, they somehow became what could be called peers.

And during the winter break of their second year, the distance between them suddenly changed. Because Yuri’s feelings began to stir.

Special advance training. Many things happened with Minsu during that training.

If the two had headed toward an ordinary future, these would have been moments they could call precious memories. Unforgettable moments for a lifetime.

And by that point, Yuri was clearly conscious of Minsu. With feelings that could never be described as those of an ordinary friend. Something more.

But Yuri was inexperienced then. The same would be true now. Feelings for someone of the opposite sex, the feeling of liking someone, was more challenging for her than the difficult exams at Aince.

And through the relationship between her father Andrei and her mother, she had thought since childhood that affection between men and women was nothing but an illusion.

Even though she was always looking for him inside, she couldn’t readily acknowledge those feelings.

‘And then that graduation ceremony… the tragedy of Aince…’

As her feelings grew, the graduation ceremony approached. Yuri was anxious at that time. After graduation, she had to return to her homeland, the Kingdom of Slavia.

And she was designated to join the Duke’s knights, her father’s Snow Knights. Since the pureblooded Snow Knights would never accept anyone who wasn’t Slavian.

That meant she would never see Minsu again.

‘That… I didn’t want that.’

As regretful as it was, Yuri still didn’t understand her feelings for Minsu until then.

No, in fact, she knew, but she didn’t know what to do about them.

While she was wavering, Minsu told her that he had something to tell her after the graduation ceremony.

Of course, Yuri understood what that meant, but even until the graduation ceremony, she postponed defining her feelings.

Even thinking about Minsu’s feelings.

And soon after, the graduation ceremony finally approached. That incident, the tragedy of Aince Academy.

***

Suspicious Mind Creates Ghosts (疑心暗鬼).

An Eastern proverb meaning that a suspicious mind can create ghosts where none exist. But among hunters, the villain with the same name is more famous than the proverb.

Suspicious Mind, an S-class villain from the Red Lake and a mental manipulation ability user.

And hunters who know Suspicious Mind well say that “Clear-Minded Ghost” (疑心明鬼) would be a more fitting name for that villain.

As that saying suggests, there was a reason Suspicious Mind was an S-class villain.

Typically, mental manipulation villains interfere with the target’s mind, stirring up all kinds of doubts and confusion by disrupting their hearts and emotions.

But Suspicious Mind was different.

This villain’s ability strictly interferes only with the target’s reason. It strengthens their rationality while dimming their sensibility and emotions.

So on the day of the 19th class’s graduation ceremony.

Due to the Red Lake’s scheme, Aince’s students were isolated inside a barrier similar to a dungeon and attacked by monsters.

For the first two days, under the leadership of the third-year S-class and the student council, they calmly repelled the attack without falling into panic.

Of course, it was all according to Suspicious Mind’s plan. The naturally excellent S-class and student council members maintained their composure. They soon began to make rational judgments about the attack.

‘And… the conclusion that there was a villain’s collaborator among the students…’

Because otherwise, it would be impossible to create a pseudo-dungeon and a wide-area barrier covering Aince Academy.

In reality, there were internal collaborators. Villains from the Red Lake disguised as students. And they carried out subtle manipulations among the students.

Lies become more powerful when mixed with a bit of truth. And the students, thinking only with imperfect reason, concluded that the false information was correct.

The most suspicious student at Aince Academy: Lee Minsu.

He was clearly a bottom-ranked student in his first year, but by the time of graduation in his third year, he had reached the top ranks even within the S-class—an unreasonable existence.

‘An awakened one… an ability user cannot grow with effort alone.’

And he had always been that way. As if he knew what would happen in the future. As if he had seen all the answer sheets in advance, he always acted ahead of others.

Naturally, Minsu was named as the most likely internal collaborator.

However, that fact alone wasn’t enough to definitively label him as an internal collaborator. The problem was the manipulated information spread by Suspicious Mind. The students’ imperfect reason began to mix with that information.

Finally, their collective reason reached a conclusion.

– Student Council President, how about confining Minsu for two days?

If Minsu was really a collaborator, he was too dangerous, already being among the top ranks of the third-year students. They couldn’t leave a suspicious student alone.

Especially Yuri, as the student council president, had the authority to execute this decision. And the beginning of the tragedy was that Yuri was already contaminated by Suspicious Mind’s mental manipulation.

Suspicious Mind’s ability is more effective on rational people. No, much more so on people like Yuri who have believed themselves to be rational.

– Minsu said he had something to tell me after the graduation ceremony.

Clearly when she heard those words, Yuri had expectations. She thought there might be a confession from him.

At that moment, her contaminated reason drew a different conclusion.

– Yes. Something seemed off. He was a Red Lake collaborator all along. He was trying to confess his crime to me, the student council president.

If her emotions had preceded her reason, even if Minsu had been a Red Lake collaborator, she would have desperately denied it here.

Yuri couldn’t do that.

And the fact that he had been particularly friendly to her—what if there was some other ulterior motive? That suspicion was enough to corroborate the conclusion drawn solely by reason.

Yuri, who had excluded all emotions, didn’t trust men anyway.

– I will confine Minsu in the Eternal Barrier for two days from now.

Yuri’s ice magic was already perfected by graduation. The inescapable prison, the Eternal Barrier. She restrained Minsu with her ice-sealing magic.

And because of those two days he was confined, they missed the golden time to prevent the tragedy of Aince.

‘If I… if I had trusted Minsu until the end…’

She was the student council president. And in that situation, isolated from instructors and faculty, she was the only one who could give orders to the students.

But Yuri couldn’t do that. She was completely different from those three people. Those who didn’t fall for Suspicious Mind’s mental manipulation: Kwon Siwoo, Chae Mina, and Sung Arin.

Only those three from the student council opposed the students’ conclusion.

Even after the tragedy of Aince ended, Yuri, who continued to investigate the incident, now knows.

The reason those three opposed: they had absolute faith in Minsu.

Because of that solid trust, Suspicious Mind’s mental manipulation didn’t work on them. The trust of those three was an emotion much stronger than reason.

But Yuri’s fragile emotions couldn’t trust Minsu until the end. Yuri was clearly different from them.

That conclusion remained as a terrible regret for Yuri.

The reason why Yuri, an ice mage who shouldn’t feel cold, still feels a terrible chill in her heart as if her heart is freezing.

Since two years ago when Minsu defeated Suspicious Mind and fell unconscious. The chill she began to feel right after that, until now.

And for the past two years, whenever Yuri thought of Minsu, her emotions always preceded her cold reason by far.

“Guild Master? Guild Master. We’ve arrived.”

At that moment. Beyond that freezing daydream. A man’s voice that always felt warm.

Began to be heard again.

***

Yuri had been asleep for quite a long time.

Even that defenseless sleeping figure still looked like the Yuri from back then. Resisting the urge to stare, I focused on driving.

I hadn’t done much manual driving, but I had practiced desperately for this job, so it wasn’t difficult.

And to avoid being conscious of Yuri, I thought about the tragedy of Aince, about Suspicious Mind from that time.

The difference from the original work. Clearly, in the original graduation ceremony, a villain attack was planned. But it wasn’t an S-class villain.

‘Originally, Siwoo would have easily stopped it.’

Part 1 and Part 2 of ArcaHunter. The protagonist, Kwon Siwoo, who grew through his life at Aince Academy.

It was an episode he would have handled without much difficulty, cooperating with his S-class peers and the student council.

But with the appearance of Suspicious Mind, it became completely different from the original story. Suspicious Mind had infiltrated Aince even before graduation and prepared for the tragedy of the ceremony.

With that advance preparation and special mental manipulation ability, Aince Academy became that villain’s slaughter playground.

In the end, I somehow managed to take him down, but the damage was too great. The fact that I could defeat him was thanks to Siwoo and Mina sacrificing themselves.

‘Damn it!’

I suppressed the memory of that time, the emotions rising again. Instead, more calmly, I recalled what Suspicious Mind had said to me.

– To think there are two talents who could become vessels for the Red Lake. Haa… all this troublesome preliminary work was worth it.

Vessel. Clearly a word that appears in the original work.

In the original, the Red Lake is the main villain. Although they fully appear in Part 3 after Siwoo’s graduation, they continue to be intertwined with the hunter guild Siwoo created in that Part 3.

The word “vessel” mentioned in Part 3. But I don’t know exactly what it is. The original ArcaHunter was discontinued in Part 3.

And now that Siwoo is dead, the story of ArcaHunter has lost its direction.

But it’s true that like the conquest of the AA-class dungeon, Spirit Manitor, Yuri, Soso, and Flame have been doing what Siwoo should have done—another major character from the original work.

‘Then, I must help Flame in what he’s trying to do, by any means necessary.’

Being alone with Yuri now, numerous emotions from the past arise. And mild panic begins to rear its head again.

I calmed my mind. I had to get used to it. To wash away all my sins. And my remaining time had to be given to the rightful characters in this novel. To major characters like Yuri or Soso.

That’s why I took the job as Flame’s operator.

By then, we had arrived at our destination. I woke up the sleeping Yuri.

“Guild Master? Guild Master. We’ve arrived.”

“…Mmm? You’re right. I must have fallen asleep for a moment. Let’s get out here then.”

I had parked in a shabby open space. Right in front of us was the Free Trade District. A slum with old, dirty buildings packed tightly together.

“Do you know the way around here?”

“Team Leader Seo sent me directions on my phone.”

Her expression seemed dreamy, as if the lingering effects of sleep remained. To help wake her up, I asked playfully:

“By the way, Guild Master, why did you come all the way here? Wouldn’t another place be much better for a trading market? I don’t think this is a place for people from an association-certified guild like ours to visit. It’s beneath your dignity.”

“No. I must stop by here. I came all the way here personally to buy something for Minsu.”

At Yuri’s answer, I was momentarily speechless.