While Park Jaerim and Seok Kiwoo felt no different than usual, Team 1 was not like that.
They radiated an edge as sharp as a starving beast, making one hesitate to approach them.
Swallowing hard, the espers put on forced, nonchalant faces and started walking again.
Then Park Jaerim, as if waiting for it, walked right up to them and began explaining the situation up to that point.
Kang Taewon glared with murderous intent at the back of Park Jaerim’s head as he picked and chose only the details that could reasonably satisfy the espers while omitting what needed to be hidden.
He knew that with so many eyes watching he shouldn’t show it, but his body simply refused to be controlled.
“…Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Kang Taewon’s gaze, venting his rage through curses, drifted toward Go Yeonwoo in Seok Kiwoo’s arms.
The fact that those closed eyelids weren’t looking at him made him unbearably angry.
Even though Go Yeonwoo couldn’t open his eyes because he had passed out, Kang Taewon couldn’t even process a simple thought like that.
To Kang Taewon, consumed entirely by fury, it looked as though Go Yeonwoo was closing his eyes to reject him.
“A bitching whore, how dare you…”
Someone crept hesitantly over to the side of Kang Taewon, who was muttering ominously.
It was none other than Kim Sungchan, who had been reading the room nervously this whole time.
When the entire Team 1 had vanished along with a sandstorm right in the middle of monsters pouring out like crazy from above, Kim Sungchan had already figured it out.
He knew that Team 1’s bastards had found out a clue regarding the missing Go Yeonwoo and deliberately summoned a sandstorm.
Having kept watch on them all along, there was no way he couldn’t know.
In truth, Kim Sungchan was extremely worried about Go Yeonwoo, too.
Didn’t Go Yeonwoo, whose physical condition was bad, end up disappearing with Seok Kiwoo and Park Jaerim—the exact two people he needed to be most wary of?
If by some bad luck a boss monster appeared wherever he had been dragged off to, those bastards might figure out that Go Yeonwoo was a high-tier guide.
Though, in the first place, this whole mess had happened because those bastards kept paying attention to Go Yeonwoo and then approached him.
Caught up in worry and anxiety, Kim Sungchan had happened to discover an underground entrance at the moment when the monsters pouring down started to dwindle and were almost cleared out.
That was the reason the rest of the esper group had been able to reach this place.
Before reaching this spot, Kim Sungchan had been trapped in all sorts of thoughts while passing through the tunnel.
While worrying about what would happen if Park Jaerim and Seok Kiwoo found out Go Yeonwoo’s true identity, other thoughts crowded in and made his head a mess.
The conversation he had had with Go Yeonwoo before parting ways kept nagging at him.
At the time, due to the circumstances, he had just let it go, but the words Go Yeonwoo had spoken lingered in his mind, floating around persistently.
The comment about how he had continuously worn a suppression device for a long time bothered him strangely.
It was possible they had kept it on him ever since Team 1 took him in, but somehow it didn’t feel like that.
It felt more like he was talking about an event from a much more distant past.
“What the fuck. Did you come here because you wanted your neck cleanly sliced off, you asshole?”
Kang Taewon glared fiercely upon seeing Kim Sungchan lingering near him.
Flinching with a yelp, Kim Sungchan looked around.
He could see Shin Heeseung smashing a pillar while out of his mind, Lee Dohoon smiling yet looking like his arms would fly off if he was touched, and Han Jihyeok exuding a chilling aura.
Still, thinking Han Jihyeok was relatively better, Kim Sungchan swallowed hard and took a step forward.
“Uhm, Han Jihyeok.”
At Kim Sungchan’s call, Han Jihyeok’s chilling gaze turned toward him.
Flinching involuntarily, Kim Sungchan debated whether he should just keep quiet, but with a “fuck it” attitude, he opened his mouth.
He figured if he didn’t ask now, it would bother him the whole time and he wouldn’t be able to do anything.
“I, well, there’s something I want to ask you.”
Looking straight at Han Jihyeok, who stared at him without a word, Kim Sungchan soon spoke in as low a voice as possible.
“Yeo… No, I mean the flying squirrel. About that suppression device, did he keep wearing it before, too?”
“What are you talking about?”
“When I briefly went to check on his condition back when he was in the forest, he said something like that.”
Stopping his words for a moment, Kim Sungchan looked around.
The other espers were listening to Park Jaerim’s explanation and paying no attention this way.
Instead, the gazes of Kang Taewon, Lee Dohoon, and Seok Kiwoo—who was holding Go Yeonwoo in his arms—all converged entirely on Kim Sungchan.
From the looks of how they were acting, Park Jaerim and Seok Kiwoo seemed to have figured out Go Yeonwoo’s identity anyway, so he figured it wouldn’t hurt to just say it.
Making up his mind, Kim Sungchan finally opened his mouth.
“He said he was so used to wearing the suppression device because he’d had it on for a long time since before, so he—gck!”
Before Kim Sungchan could even finish his words, he was grabbed by the collar by Kang Taewon.
Kang Taewon glared fiercely at the choking Kim Sungchan.
“You, what did you just say. Fuck, what did you just say!”
“Ghk-h, let go of this for a sec and talk, gck!”
“Tell me. Before I rip your mouth apart.”
“I-I’m just saying what I heard, so let go of this, ck!”
Kang Taewon, gripping the collar of Kim Sungchan even tighter as he twisted his body and spilled the truth, clenched his teeth.
He already knew the fact that Go Yeonwoo had offered his body to Koo Hyukjun.
However, he still didn’t know in what exact way he had offered it.
He had interrogated Go Yeonwoo about it a few times, but no matter how much he tormented him, he just kept his lips tightly sealed.
Lee Dohoon had begun a more detailed investigation.
Yet the investigation kept slowing down, and the process of finding clues was much harder than expected.
It was as if information was being completely controlled by someone.
Normally, the investigation should have already been finished by now.
Lee Dohoon’s information network was broader and faster than one could imagine.
And yet, anything related to Go Yeonwoo came up with strangely nothing at all.
That part didn’t make any sense to him.
It felt as though it was being controlled by a much higher authority.
In other words, there was a high possibility that the government had intervened.
If Go Yeonwoo was inevitably related to Koo Hyukjun, it was obvious he would be connected to the government side as well.
Wasn’t Koo Hyukjun, the center director, practically a running dog for the government agency anyway?
