The Saint Wants to Rest - vanish into fiction

Choi Jae-heon had been Choi Ian’s family for a very long time. How much agony must he have gone through before deciding to give that up and confess his feelings? It couldn’t have been a common resolve, so seeing him back down so easily made things feel a bit frustrating.

“But the one Ian wants isn’t me.”

“Are you seriously saying that if you can’t be lovers, you’ll stay together forever as family? Is that it?”

“If only my heart were that simple, how great would that be.”

In reality, he harbored much darker, more insidious intentions. However, he couldn’t tell Hong Seo-yun everything exactly as it was. He didn’t want to reveal that he was a crazy bastard with no hope. Therefore, without further explanation, he picked up another bottle of alcohol.

“Hey, hey! I brought it for you to drink, but drink in moderation! You know the situation right now isn’t good.”

Halfway through, Hong Seo-yun stopped Choi Jae-heon. So, this time, Jae-heon silently chewed on the dried snacks instead.

Hong Seo-yun suppressed a sigh while looking at his friend. The world doesn’t always turn the way one wants it to. Just as that thought crossed his mind, he suddenly felt a strange sensation.

Something was watching them.

Normally, Choi Jae-heon would have noticed first, but since his condition was a mess, he seemed unaware. Hong Seo-yun stood up and scanned the surroundings.

“Who’s there?”

Though he asked casually, his body was already tense. He had entered a combat stance. Sensing this, Choi Jae-heon also raised his head and looked toward the same spot as Hong Seo-yun.

“Ah, I’ve been caught.”

Kim Min-cheol, who had been hiding in the basement peeking at Stigma’s Choi Jae-heon, curled his lips into a smirk. As expected, it was impossible to deceive an S-grade Awakener for long with his power alone. Even if the man wasn’t on Vermouth’s level, he seemed to possess strength comparable to one of Vermouth’s subordinate Holy Knights.

“But there is a decisive difference.”

Among Earthlings, those with divine power were extremely rare, and even they were not strong. This was because it wasn’t a world where a god descended to help humans. Thanks to that, Kim Min-cheol was able to hide his presence before his exact location was discovered. They realized someone was watching from nearby, but it wouldn’t be easy to know the specific spot. Above all, would they even imagine that someone had sneaked inside!

Kim Min-cheol hummed as he jumped down from the pile of boxes where he had been sitting. There is no Saint at the Stigma headquarters right now. However, the Saint’s precious family is here, making it a suitable place to carry out the next operation. To this end, he had recently made secret contact with another demon.

In the hand he pulled from his pocket, he held a crimson crystal. This crystal, created by gathering the agony of countless lives, was a primary material for opening a spontaneous Gate.

“Shall we move to the next stage?”

Kim Min-cheol drew a circle with his own blood in the space cleared by pushing boxes aside. Inside the dark red circle drawn in a round shape, a spell written in a wicked language was placed. When he threw the crystal in his hand with all his might into the circle and broke it, the curses and spells contained within flowed out.

“Oooooh!”

The Gate, which had been painstakingly created and selected, opens. It is what people on Earth commonly call an S-grade Gate. In reality, however, it should be considered a much higher difficulty. The things filling it would not be ordinary monsters, but demons.

Traps that take loved ones hostage are cliché, but they work well on humans. Since the opponent is the Saint, it will surely work. Kim Min-cheol exited the basement while watching the Gate increase in volume with an eerie sound. At that same moment, the Gate expanded as if exploding, swallowing the Stigma Guild whole.

“It’s a Gate! A Gate has opened!”

The screams of terrified people could be heard, and those wandering the night streets began to flee.

“Aaaah!”

“Please save me!”

This news would soon spread to the world. Just how fast would the Saint rush here? The demon wearing Kim Min-cheol’s skin smirked as he looked up at the Gate.

I had been dozing. I felt like I had a foreboding dream, but I couldn’t remember it. It was an unpleasant feeling, as if someone had forcibly woken me up.

Ian got out of bed and came out to the living room. He instinctively looked at the entryway, but the familiar shoes were not there.

“He hasn’t come back yet.”

After whispering softly, he turned on the TV in the living room. Since he couldn’t sleep, he planned to watch something.

[Breaking news! Another spontaneous Gate has recently opened in Seoul.]

Again? While focusing on the news with that thought, the location shown on the screen looked familiar. He had only properly visited when he went to sign his guild contract, but he remembered it clearly.

The place where the Gate had opened was the location of the Stigma Guild.