Ch.41Ways to Make the Princess Happy?

The first ones to be surprised were my parents.

“She said you could just leave?!”

“Is… is that true…?”

“Yes.”

Both of them seemed unable to believe that I had been separated from Princess Kurumi.

“Well, I thought he’d at least fool around a bit before coming back…”

“What are you saying in front of the child?!”

WHACK!

After making that slip of the tongue, Uncle Seokgyu’s skull was dented by Auntie Rolling’s knuckle punch, and he passed out.

The next ones to show surprised reactions were the three guards responsible for the mansion’s security.

“I thought you were just going home… but you basically got fired?”

“Haha. I guess so…”

Mr. Joo Sangho clicked his tongue in disappointment on my behalf.

“Did something bad happen between you and the Princess?”

“I don’t know…”

Ms. Cheran thoughtfully pondered the cause with me.

But there was no need to find the cause.

“Hmm…”

“Sophia…?”

Finally, Sophia.

I definitely thought she would jump up and down laughing with joy, but surprisingly, she had a serious expression.

“A Beast Hunter distancing herself from Shinwoo…? Is that even possible…?”

“Sophia, are you okay?”

“Huh? Oh! Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit concerned…”

“Really?”

Anyway, after saying goodbye to those three people again, I reminded myself that my original job was a Hunter Meister.

So I headed to the workshop to cool my head and sweat it out with hammering and tempering metal.

“Hello?”

“……”

It was my second day since leaving the mansion.

I stopped by the Hunter Association branch where my workshop was located.

“Could we talk for a moment, Shinwoo?”

As if she had been waiting for me, Branch Director Lee Jin-ah made eye contact with me at the workshop entrance.

I knew very well what was hidden behind that smiling mask.

An untrustworthy person.

To me, who had been through life-or-death battles with her, Jin-ah was such a person, and naturally, I wanted to ignore her and just walk past.

But the problem was her position.

“Let’s go to my office. Right now.”

Jin-ah said with a smile on her lips, and as a mere Hunter Meister, I had no choice but to follow the Branch Director’s orders.

That’s how I set foot for the first time on the top floor of the Korean Hunter Association branch, designed to look spacious and open.

‘This place is the same in both the game and reality.’

“Would you like something to drink? Tea, coffee, or even alcohol is fine.”

“Ah… I’ll pass on the alcohol. I only drink once a week.”

“Oh, really? That’s quite disciplined. I like that.”

Jin-ah handed me an Oronamin C, which is good for hangovers, as I sat down.

‘I didn’t drink yesterday, but the day before…’

I wondered if there might be poison in it.

I thought about it for a moment.

But unless I was in my kaijufied state, there was no reason for her to try to poison human Han Shinwoo, so…

Gulp, gulp.

“…You drink it without any suspicion.”

“Well, you’re my mom’s friend, so why would you give me something harmful?”

“Hehe. I suppose that’s true.”

Wanting to hear what she had to say and leave quickly, I downed the Oronamin C in one go.

Then Branch Director Jin-ah, smiling, began to speak.

“Then I’ll start.”

“Yes.”

I wondered if she was going to hold me responsible for being kicked out by Princess Kurumi.

I perked up my ears without much thought, ready to be scolded, but…

“Princess Kurumi is going to die soon.”

“……What?”

Suddenly I heard something completely unexpected.

“Who… who’s going to kill her…?”

“Princess Kurumi. And she’s not going to be murdered by someone. …Oh, or is she? Is that right?”

“Is it an attack?! Another attack…!”

I jumped up from my seat, ready to rush back to Princess Kurumi’s mansion immediately.

But then I heard her next words from behind me.

“It’s not an attack, it’s a ‘curse’.”

A curse.

Among the many status ailments in the Hunter’s Blood world, it was known as the most powerful debuff.

“A curse…?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“So, someone has placed a curse on Princess Kurumi?”

“Yes. To be precise, since birth.”

“Since birth…?”

Seeing my confused face, Branch Director Jin-ah smiled briefly before revealing the terrible truth.

“Yes. Princess Kitsune Kurumi’s true identity is that of an illegitimate daughter raised by the Kitsune family, not to be discarded, but to receive a curse.”

Born to receive a curse?

An illegitimate daughter?

This was all new TMI that even I, a veteran player of the original game, had never heard before.

What the hell was all this nonsense?

As I was gaping, not knowing where to begin…

“The Kitsune family has carried on the bloodline of Beast Hunters for generations. You already know this, right?”

Branch Director Jin-ah started drinking an espresso with five sugar cubes added to it.

When I nodded, she continued with a smile.

“The monsters they’ve commanded throughout their family history were all extraordinary enough to leave their names in Japanese history.”

Slurp.

“Especially the four monsters called the Four Divine Beasts used by direct descendants are all terrifying creatures classified as danger level A.”

Slurp.

“…So what does that have to do with the curse engraved on Princess Kurumi’s body?”

The greatness of the Kitsune family and the curse supposedly engraved in Princess Kurumi’s body.

From what I’d heard so far, there seemed to be no connection.

But then the Branch Director said:

“Amaterasu.”

“…!!”

The moment I heard that monster’s name, I instinctively shut my mouth.

‘Why suddenly mention Amaterasu here?’

Amaterasu.

Also known as the Abyssal Giant.

In the original Hunter’s Blood, it was one of the late-game bosses that players could only encounter if they took the Japan route.

If you fought it, win or lose, it would definitely submerge the entire Japanese archipelago under the sea—one of the worst monsters.

At the same time, it was one of the few monsters that even I, who had beaten the final boss, had given up on defeating when I first bought the game.

“Amaterasu, considered the strongest and worst monster in Japanese history. And the people who succeeded in sealing it and were recognized as one of the World’s 10 Great Families were the Kitsune family from 2,200 years ago.”

I never dreamed that the direct descendants of the Kitsune family, whom I couldn’t even meet in the Japan route despite promises of future DLC, had such a secret.

…But so what?

“Are you saying this is related to the curse inside Princess Kurumi’s body?”

“Yes, very much so.”

A princess born under a curse from her family.

The worst monster that the family supposedly sealed 2,200 years ago.

Finally, the reason why all four of the Four Divine Beasts, which should have gone to direct descendants, were inside the illegitimate Princess Kurumi, including the fox.

It was very simple.

“The Kitsune family calls it ‘sealing,’ but that’s actually half right and half wrong.”

“Then what is it…?”

“Amaterasu wasn’t sealed by the Kitsune family. More precisely, it ‘allowed’ itself to be sealed.”

“It allowed itself to be sealed…?”

I tilted my head at Branch Director Jin-ah’s words.

“Why?”

“It’s simple. Because they made a contract.”

“A contract?”

“Yes. A contract.”

The family with the highest purity of spiritual power in Japan at that time.

Amaterasu made a contract to quietly stay inside the body of the sacrifice, on the condition that it would be allowed to feed on their descendants for generations.

And it made an additional contract with the four monsters called the Four Divine Beasts to share some of its power with them while they stayed inside the sacrifice’s body together.

“Wait. Then…”

“Yes. What Amaterasu eats here is the ‘lifespan’ of the human who becomes the sacrifice.”

“Lifespan…?”

“In exchange for that lifespan, it doesn’t go berserk and even shares some power with the family’s hereditary monsters. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“Then Princess Kurumi is…”

“She’s the intermediary for that contract, what you might call… an energy storage? That’s what you could call her.”

When Princess Kurumi, who has devoted her entire lifespan, dies, Amaterasu returns to the underground of the Kitsune family to await the next sacrifice.

And the Four Divine Beasts, which emerge from the dead princess’s body strengthened by Amaterasu’s energy, are then each commanded by pure-blooded direct descendants, not illegitimate children—that’s the family tradition.

In other words, Princess Kurumi was a disposable card from the beginning.

“This is insane…!”

A person who never even appeared in the original game.

I had once visited the mansion hoping to see her if I took the Japan route, but the family members I managed to speak with seemed unaware of the Kitsune daughter who had gone to Korea.

So at first, I thought it was just a marketing tactic to sell future DLC.

But that wasn’t it.

By that point, Princess Kurumi had already fulfilled her role as a sacrifice and was no longer of this world.

“Is, is there no way to do something about this?”

“About the curse, you mean?”

“Yes! The curse! If it’s a curse, there must be a way to break it…”

Curse, evaluated as the worst status ailment in Hunter’s Blood.

Once afflicted, it was immune to any recovery potion, and to break it, you had to fulfill certain conditions specific to the curse.

And if those conditions could be met…

“The moment the conditions are met, a curse removes all the debuffs as if they never happened!”

Princess Kurumi’s lifespan would return to normal.

And as I was speaking, I quickly realized the method to break Amaterasu’s curse, which had been doing the same thing for 2,200 years.

The conditions for breaking curses cast by powerful beings are usually the same.

“The way to break Amaterasu’s curse is…”

“You’re smart.”

“To defeat Amaterasu itself, the one who cast the curse.”

“Yes. But it’s a monster among monsters that no one in the Kitsune family’s history has dared to command.”

“……”

“So, considering that method impossible, the reason I told you about this is simply to ask you to make her remaining life as happy as possible…”

As I was seriously considering the situation, Branch Director Jin-ah was about to get to her real point.

However, our conversation ended there.

Ring ring ring.

“Ah, excuse me for a moment.”

A phone rang in Branch Director Jin-ah’s pocket.

And as she answered it…

“Director! We have an emergency!!”

A voice echoed throughout the office.

The voice unmistakably belonged to Mr. Joo Sangho.

And Sangho’s next words:

“The, the Princess has disappeared!!”

Upon hearing that Princess Kurumi had vanished from the mansion, both Branch Director Jin-ah’s face and mine froze.