Chapter 858: No. 1 (2)

Looking back, Geum Jangmi thought that something seemed strange since the morning.

For some reason, Geum Dallae, who always finished getting ready before her and sat at the breakfast table, had not come to the breakfast table that day.

Curious about what she was doing, when she went to her room to wake her up after the meal, she should have realized something was strange from the moment she witnessed the clothes she was already wearing carelessly thrown on the bed and traces that she had left.

“What the heck? This bitch, did she really leave without even telling me? She’s out of her mind?”

However, not knowing how Sung Taekyung’s ‘Summoning’ worked, Geum Jangmi could only think that Geum Dallae had carelessly tossed her clothes aside and gone to work before her.

And what surged in her mind was a slight anger. No matter how urgent it was, leaving the house first without reporting to her was an unforgivable offense.

As soon as she got into the car heading to the Foundation, Geum Jangmi muttered, thinking in her head that she would start with Geum Dallae’s punishment.

“Dallae seemed to particularly like electric shock pain. If I make her tingle for about 5 minutes, she’ll run around like she’s having a seizure, and she won’t do this kind of insolent act again, right?”

She muttered without even caring whether the driver in the front seat heard. For her, she had enough confidence.

Anyone who revealed things that happened within the Geumhyang Group externally met a bad end, without exception.

If not for ‘that incident’, also called Geumhyang’s dirty secret, even Geum Nari, who was closest to being the successor candidate, has now become a fugitive, so even a mere driver could not escape that unwritten rule.

Especially since Geum Jangmi awakened ‘Phantom Pain’ and Geum Dallae awakened ‘Fruit of Oblivion’, this tendency to keep secrets could only have intensified.

Geum Jangmi, who makes others open their mouths, and Geum Dallae, who makes others shut their mouths – Geumhyang, possessing both, had no hesitation in using that power in nefarious ways.

Until it was revealed that there was one problem with Geum Dallae’s awakened ability.

“Sigh, what a fucking idiot. If only that damn memory capacity wasn’t there, I wouldn’t be going through this trouble.”

Geum Dallae’s awakened ability called ‘Fruit of Oblivion’ was not an awakened ability that could be used freely without limits like Geum Jangmi’s. Strictly speaking, Geum Jangmi’s Phantom Pain also wasn’t without limitations, but at least it was much freer compared to Geum Dallae’s memory erasure and storage ability.

Realizing there was a capacity in her younger sister’s memory erasure ability was only a matter of a few years ago. And she had been using memory erasure arbitrarily for quite a long time before that, so the capacity of the memories she had stored had already reached its limit.

There were broadly two ways for Geum Dallae to clear the memories stored in her awakened ability again. One is returning the stored memories to the original owner, and the other is the owner of those memories dying.

Simply deleting stored memories or transferring them to someone else was something Geum Dallae’s awakened ability couldn’t do. Even after deliberately feeding her Phantom Pain and yelling at her to try somehow, seeing that it didn’t work, it probably couldn’t be done.

In the end, they had to use one of the two methods mentioned above, which was also why Geum Jangmi and Geum Dallae held onto Geum Nari.

Since they were young, Geum Jangmi and Geum Dallae had played pranks of feeding her Phantom Pain and erasing memories as a pastime, either as subjects to practice their awakened abilities, or because she was a younger sister who didn’t listen properly and was rebellious, or just because they wanted to see her suffering face.

In other words, it also meant that Geum Nari occupied a significant portion of the memory capacity Geum Dallae had stored. The number of times Geum Jangmi had fed Geum Nari Phantom Pain was far greater than Geum Nari herself imagined, and it had been carried out much earlier than she thought.

If they had returned the memories Geum Dallae had stored to Geum Nari right after securing her and secured the memory capacity first, they wouldn’t be so frustrated now. They missed the chance in the process of preceding the ‘training’ to use her as a subordinate, leading to this outcome.

“Fucking bitch. Next time, as soon as I secure her, I should just kill her immediately.”

Anyway, even if the target to return the memories to disappears, the memory capacity being emptied is the same.

Normally, Geum Jangmi and Geum Dallae lacked combat ability against monsters, so she intended to thoroughly train her sister who had returned after a long time and make her her subordinate.

Like her twin sister Geum Dallae, who had already lost the will to resist her Phantom Pain and started to follow her around like one body.

She had intended to teach her that making her lose hope and follow her, even if it took nearly a year, was the easiest path, but Geum Nari escaped from the locked room in less than a week, leaving only Geum Dallae’s memory storage ability, which still had defects.

I don’t know how she escaped from that locked room. However, only the record remained that a single butler, whose face was not recognized on the hallway surveillance camera, loitered around the place where Geum Nari was imprisoned.

“No wonder that Do Yehee woman was suspicious. To outsiders, I thought she was mortal enemies with her own sister, but it was all an act, wasn’t it?”

After killing Geum Nari, I will never let those women off either. That Do Sihee woman, who flauntingly took Geum Nari around by her side for several years, and that Do Yehee woman, who took the one she secured with such effort and ran away with her again.

“And that fucking bastard. That guy will never die peacefully.”

Because Do Sihee was by his side, the insignificant Union Hunter Kim Sungchul was acting all high and mighty.

The background check on him had already been completely finished. It turned out the name Kim Sungchul he showed me that day was a pseudonym, and his true identity was the male Hunter Sung Taekyung, famous in the world.

I don’t know how that Do Sihee woman ended up dating that male Hunter. They say they participated together in the subjugation battle in the abandoned village, perhaps their eyes met then?

Anyway, even if I don’t care about the other Dokyung sisters, I will tear that Sung Taekyung guy to shreds somehow.

‘And after that, get rid of that traitorous bitch Geum Nari, and then…’

Geum Jangmi muttered, organizing the targets she would take revenge on one by one in her mind, but unfortunately, her wishes would not come true.

Just an hour later, Geum Jangmi had already been dragged into the space where her sister had been captured.

“I didn’t know this would turn out to be so easy.”

After securing Bitch No. 1, following Bitch No. 2, was a vague feeling.

The information obtained from No. 2 to kidnap No. 1 was simple: information regarding which dungeons No. 1 mainly entered when doing ‘solo play’.

When I learned that dungeon was connected to the Hunters’ Autonomous Union’s dungeon inside, I truly cheered inwardly.

「B-rank Dungeon. Forest of Specters. Area A」

A dungeon where most monsters were only Ghost-type, and even then, inhabited only by specters that physical attacks were impossible against.

When tackling dungeons solo, Geum Jangmi reportedly always used this dungeon. Because her Phantom Pain seemed to work effectively even against Ghost-type monsters.

Rather, solo play was impossible for Geum Jangmi’s ability other than killing specters with no means of physical attack, so effectively, from No. 1’s perspective, this dungeon was the only option she could enter alone.

Therefore, waiting inside the dungeon for Geum Jangmi to enter and snatching her momentarily was not that difficult.

Of course, people would normally find it suspicious if a man loitered near the Foundation’s warp gate, but because the monsters there were only vulnerable to mental and holy attacks, the Forest of Specters was an unpopular dungeon in the first place.

In other words, even with a warp gate leading to Belle’s dungeon laid out right next to it, and waiting for the Foundation’s warp gate to activate, no one would find it suspicious.

To prevent unnecessarily involving Geum Jangmi and myself if she disappeared inside the dungeon, deliberately entering through the Union’s gate instead of the Foundation’s was also part of the plan. This way, even if she suddenly disappeared inside the dungeon, it would be difficult to track the culprit.

Anyway, with human capabilities, it was impossible to search all areas within the dungeon one by one. In the end, only the main routes that hunters mainly use would be superficially checked, and finally, it would have to be processed as ‘death within the dungeon’ or ‘disappearance within the dungeon’.

“Well, still, moving the location would be better.”

Even though it was an unpopular dungeon, it wasn’t completely deserted.

In the process of properly teaching Geum Jangmi a lesson, as it could take days, weeks, or months, a personal space was needed for now, with a warp gate installed at home, allowing free movement in and out.

After roughly submitting just a few B-rank monster cores, proof of having hunted diligently, at the Union counter, I headed home again at a slightly faster pace.

For days on end, indeed, there was no place like home to use the warp gate frequently without worrying about being noticed.