Returnee's S-Rank Management Guide

Fragments of the Past (4)

At the sight of Ivan melting into the darkness, Shin Ah-yeon tensed her body.

'He's not the kind of person who would bother using something that doesn't even work.'

Shin Ah-yeon couldn't acknowledge Ivan's existence.

He was someone who had walked a path completely opposite to the mages she pictured in her mind.

A murderer who had killed countless people.

However, she did admit his skills.

Ivan, who had lived for a long time and accumulated experiences incomparable to hers, would never recklessly use magic.

"......!!"

Just then, a pitch-black hand suddenly shot out from the darkness.

"What is this?!"

Shin Ah-yeon instinctively layered several shields, but the black hand passed right through them as if they didn't exist, brushing past Shin Ah-yeon's body.

Had she not twisted her body reflexively, it would have struck her directly.

'That wasn't magic. No, it wasn't even made of magic power in the first place.'

Suddenly, Shin Ah-yeon thought of dark magic.

The magic of demons that Park Jung-woo had been teaching Hwang Yeon-ji.

That dark magic required not just simple magic power, but also demonic energy, a power possessed only by demons.

"You can't block mental magic with a shield that defends against the physical, can you?"

Ivan's voice, tinged with laughter, echoed from somewhere in the darkness.

Mental magic—of course, Shin Ah-yeon was unfamiliar with this kind of magic.

"For your first encounter with this magic, avoiding it was admirable, but it seems you only barely dodged it."

Step, step.

With those words, Ivan revealed himself.

'Why is he revealing himself?'

As if he had read Shin Ah-yeon's question, Ivan chuckled low.

"Are you curious why I've shown myself?"

"Well, you kept attacking in such a cowardly way from the shadows."

"Oh my, you're quite angry. But from my perspective, I'd say I was actually going easy on you."

She wanted to say, "Bullshit," but Ivan's magical abilities surely weren't this trivial.

In other words, the reason he wasn't on the offensive was likely at the behest of the so-called 'client'.

"This 'Doll Maker', as I said before, can grant the ability to wield illusion magic and mental magic."

"......"

"Especially this mental magic—it's quite a nasty one. Even a light graze on your arm, Ah-yeon-ssi, is enough to trigger the spell."

What? Shin Ah-yeon hurriedly looked down at her arm.

She hadn't noticed any pain, but just as Ivan said, there was a black scar on her arm.

"What is this now?"

She tried to restore herself with magic power, but the black scar did not disappear.

Instead, something dark oozed from the scar and began to be sucked into the black gem embedded in the glove on Ivan's hand.

"The mental magic triggered by this is very simple. It agitates and amplifies emotions like trauma that everyone has, breaking their mind. And... if you add some illusion magic, you can use it like this."

Snap!

With a flick of Ivan's finger, the darkness encasing them vanished and the scenery changed.

Yellow linoleum floors and torn white wallpaper.

It was the scene of a very old house.

"Wh-what is this?"

"The scenery has changed. Is this... an illusion, too?"

As the scenery suddenly changed, the hiding Hunters looked around in a daze.

No one could make sense of what this dilapidated setting was supposed to mean.

Why had Ivan suddenly used an illusion to create such a scene?

"...... You."

The only one who understood the meaning of this scene was Shin Ah-yeon.

She knew what it meant to agitate emotions such as trauma, as Ivan had said.

She could also guess what he was trying to do with illusion magic.

"So, you realized right away? This is your inner landscape, Ah-yeon-ssi. As I said, it's one of those memories that left a deep wound—a trauma."

Ivan said this with a smile, but he felt something was off.

'Why is she okay?'

It wasn't the first time he had used the mental magic imbued in this 'Doll Maker'.

Before meeting Shin Ah-yeon, he had already experimented with several Hunters he'd encountered.

Ivan wasn't foolish enough to waste something untested on an opponent like Shin Ah-yeon.

'Anyone hit by this becomes engulfed in the darkness seeping from the scar, and soon their mind collapses.'

This scene was merely an extension of that.

Normally, as soon as this view appeared, Shin Ah-yeon's mind should have begun to crumble.

But the Shin Ah-yeon glaring at him showed not the slightest sign of it.

'Is it different for S-rank Hunters? Fascinating.'

Anyway, now that she'd been hit by the magic, he could trigger it consecutively as many times as he wanted.

To be precise, it was more of a 'curse' than a magic spell.

As with all curses, if not broken, it would continue to eat away at the body.

If it were the 'other world,' a way to dispel it would have existed, but in the modern era, there was no such thing.

「Grandma, don't die!!」

Just then, a little child's wailing was heard.

A young girl, shaking the body of an old woman lying on the floor, crying.

'... Annoying.'

In the illusion Ivan created, Shin Ah-yeon's face contorted with sudden irritation.

She longed to give Ivan a piece of her mind, but her magic wouldn't move as easily as usual.

Maybe it was the influence of the spell currently at work.

'Seeing as he's not doing anything else with his hands either, it looks like he can't take other actions while the magic is active.'

That was a relief.

If Ivan had attacked now, while she couldn't use her magic properly, she would have been in serious trouble.

'... Grandma.'

The scene around her was an illusion created based on Shin Ah-yeon's memories.

Back when Shin Ah-yeon was young, the event where her grandmother—who had taught her magic—suddenly collapsed and passed away.

The cause was simple cardiac arrest, but for young Shin Ah-yeon, it had been traumatic.

"All right. Next."

But, apparently thinking that memory didn't have much effect on Shin Ah-yeon, Ivan snapped his fingers again. Once more, the scenery changed.

He dug through Shin Ah-yeon's memories, bringing out her wounds one by one and displaying them as scenes.

'Why?'

Still, Shin Ah-yeon's expression was indifferent.

Her brow was furrowed in irritation, but she showed no sign of impending mental collapse; it was just mounting annoyance.

She looked entirely different from the other Hunters who, when struck by this magic, had collapsed like soulless dolls.

'Is this not enough? Do I have to dig up even deeper trauma?'

It was a situation Ivan simply could not understand.

No matter how much of a genius Shin Ah-yeon was, there was no rule saying she'd have a strong mind.

If anything, geniuses were often mentally fragile.

But Shin Ah-yeon, right now, was at a level that couldn't be described as merely resilient.

From the start, it seemed this curse wasn't working on her at all.

'That can't be.'

Even Ivan himself had never been able to overcome this curse.

Surely there was a reason.

Thinking this, Ivan dug as deep as he could into the innermost layers of Shin Ah-yeon's mind.

'Is this it?'

Finally, Ivan found a pitch-black emotion buried deep inside her mind.

This had to be her greatest trauma.

「Just ten more pulls.」

"......?"

But the scene that changed now was odd.

Up until now, at least, the scenes seemed sufficiently traumatic, but this time, all he saw was Shin Ah-yeon lying on her bed, using her phone.

"W-wait."

However, Shin Ah-yeon's reaction now was the most intense he'd seen yet.

Her face turned pale, and her pupils trembled noticeably.

「Shit! Why won't it come out? Just ten more, just ten more pulls...」

Only then did Ivan understand what Shin Ah-yeon in the scene was muttering.

'No way, that smartphone game...'

Ivan tried to keep up with the times.

He knew how predatory in-game purchases had become in smartphone games lately.

What Shin Ah-yeon was saying was what's known as 'gacha'—the act of wasting money on randomized draws.

In the scene, Shin Ah-yeon kept repeating "ten more pulls" as she threw money away.

By the time the amount she'd spent had exceeded 50 million won,

The phone slipped from Shin Ah-yeon's hand.

Of course it did.

She'd spent 50 million won but was no better off than a free-to-play player.

"......"

With that, the scene cut off abruptly.

Ivan was at a loss for words, making no attempt to look for another of Shin Ah-yeon's traumas.

In truth, he was deeply troubled as to how to proceed.

"You... Actually, never mind."

Ivan's demeanor expressed that he had a lot to say but wouldn't say it.

At that, Shin Ah-yeon felt a crack in her mental composure for the first time in a while.

She was even afraid to turn around.

She couldn't bear to imagine what kind of looks the other Hunters—who had just seen all her memories—would be giving her.

"You fucker, you damn bastard!!"

Until now, Shin Ah-yeon had managed to watch her words in front of others, but this time, she couldn't hold it in.

Welling anger surged through her, and Shin Ah-yeon could no longer control her emotions.

She wanted nothing more than to land a blow on Ivan somehow.

At that moment, Shin Ah-yeon's movements stopped dead.

"Hmm?"

When Shin Ah-yeon fell silent after her string of coarse curses, Ivan looked at her curiously.

Her head was bowed, so he couldn't see her face, but it was clear her condition was strange.

"Hold on."

Ivan fiddled with his glove to probe once more into the depths of Shin Ah-yeon's mind.

Right then, he felt something he hadn't sensed before.

'Of course, there's no way that last thing was the deepest trauma!'

What he'd just hit was simply a mistaken assumption.

Her deepest trauma, hidden in the very core of her mind.

The earlier one was just a smokescreen created to conceal it.

But what was so terrible that it had been hidden away so securely?

Ivan was honestly curious.

Any normal Hunter would have had their mind shattered several times by now.

And yet, Shin Ah-yeon remained intact, surely for a reason.

Bzzt, bzzzt!

Suddenly, the surrounding scenery flickered as if engulfed by static.

And then, like closing a puzzle, the scenery began to shift and break into pieces.

"...... What's that?"

A monochrome space came into view.

As if looking through a shattered mirror, the empty void was crumbling.

Everything Ivan saw was in black and white.

This wasn't simply an issue with Shin Ah-yeon's memory.

It was a situation where the space itself was being destroyed, and the very laws composing the world were collapsing.

Ivan knew of only one phenomenon like this.

"Rift."

A phenomenon that occurs when a gate opens inside a dungeon.

A disaster where two space-devouring phenomena overlap and spread.

Ivan had seen it only once in his life.

A dungeon that opened at the Grand Canyon in the U. S. was swallowed up by a rift, which devoured everything in a radius of hundreds of kilometers.

There was no explosion, not even a sound.

The moment the rift shattered, those hundreds of kilometers simply vanished into thin air.

Ivan was the only survivor.

Because, the instant he discovered the rift, he'd run without looking back.

And exactly one hour later, the Grand Canyon disappeared from the map.

"So, it really... was like that."

He had thought it a disaster that no human could ever prevent.

His conclusion was that it would take dozens of great mages like himself to barely seal a rift before it burst.

But what was he looking at right now?

「Hold on—just a little longer. You're okay, you can survive! I... I'll close it, somehow!」

Shin Ah-yeon, holding her staff, reached out toward the rift and shouted.

Even as she stood on ground that could be sucked in at any moment, she was worrying about someone else.

'Who else is here?'

Ivan hastily swept his gaze over the collapsing ground.

Now he saw, beneath the rock she was watching over, a man clinging desperately to the earth.

He was pressed flat against the ground, clutching a boulder in anguish.

'... Who is that?'

Ivan did not know Park Jung-woo.

There was no way that someone who didn't even know every S-rank Hunter would know a mere manager.

To him, Park Jung-woo was just an ordinary person inexplicably standing before a rift.

-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
Ah-yeon unable to save Jung-woo from the rift 3 years ago being her most traumatic experience is surprising.
Also, I loled when one of her supposedly traumatic event is losing a lot of money in a gacha game.
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