I lay still, staring intently at the notification message.
I wondered if a new alert might appear.
How much time had passed? A few minutes, perhaps?
[The Young World Tree wishes for their safe arrival.]
Unfortunately, no other notification popped up.
Well, it made sense. The being who wasn’t human said they had discovered the World Tree from a far-off place.
They had mentioned that a long journey was just beginning, so there was probably nothing more to teach me for now.
Flutter…
I picked up the Event Dungeon Admission Ticket, which I had set down for a moment.
To enter, I grabbed the top of the ticket with both hands.
I was about to tear it in half when,
“Huh…?”
I heard a presence outside the door.
Step by careful step, someone was approaching quietly.
The sound of those footsteps made me think of Banum for an instant.
Did Crowd send another assassin?
But I shook my head.
Banum, who had been subdued by Saessaki, was an A-rank assassin.
It would make more sense for them to send an even higher-ranking assassin, but there’s no way they’d send someone who couldn’t even hide their presence like this.
More importantly, this place was protected by Dohee’s magic—those with impure intentions couldn’t even enter.
So instead, I thought of the children.
Those cold eyes of the kids who had stared at me in front of the orphanage.
“……”
Why had they come looking for me?
Curious, I set the admission ticket back down.
It seemed like this always happened whenever I tried to tear the ticket.
There was only one presence outside the door.
The doorknob slowly turned, and the door opened.
As I expected, it was a child who entered.
A boy who looked to be about ten years old.
In his hand, he held a kitchen knife.
It was clear he had come to harm me.
“……”
“……!”
Our eyes met as the boy quietly shut the door.
He stifled the scream rising in his throat.
He couldn’t stop himself from stepping back, and banged into the door with a thud.
“Hello?”
The boy didn’t respond to my cheerful greeting.
Instead, he pulled the kitchen knife from his clothes and pointed it at me.
His hand, gripping the knife, was trembling violently.
From his hand, I could feel fear and terror.
He’d come to kill me, even while holding on to such terror.
A little brat who seemed barely ten years old.
“If you don’t sleep at night, you won’t grow taller, you know?”
“Sh-shut up, you monster!”
“Hey, who are you calling a monster?”
I slowly sat up.
“I mean, I’m not exactly handsome, but I’m not ugly enough to be called a monster, right?”
Saying that, I reached out my arm.
I was trying to turn on the attic light.
That motion must have scared him; the boy took another step back.
But his back was already against the door, so he couldn’t go any further.
All he could do was extend his trembling hands with the knife in front of him.
What in the world had happened to this kid?
“…Are you hurt?”
When I turned on the light, I saw gauze wrapped around his neck.
The white gauze was stained dark red with blood, probably from his movements.
Looked like a pretty serious wound.
[The Young World Tree says it senses a faint disgusting aura from the child.]
“What?”
“…Hiiik?”
As I frowned, the boy made a strange noise and swallowed nervously.
A disgusting aura?
Did that mean this kid was connected to Crowd?
[The Young World Tree says it can’t sense the aura clearly, and suggests you get closer.]
“Ah, alright.”
I held my smartphone out toward the boy.
The boy seemed to think the smartphone was some kind of weapon, and recoiled in fear, “Eek!”
Even so, he stubbornly kept the kitchen knife pointed at me.
I thought about taking the weapon away—it was unpleasant to see a child holding something so dangerous—but…
If I did, it would probably only make him more afraid, so I let it be.
Right now, that knife was both a weapon and a protective charm for the boy.
[The Young World Tree now says the disgusting aura is definitely present.]
[It’s flowing through the child’s mana circuit, which is why it’s hard to sense, but it’s definitely there.]
“Don’t tell me this kid is a minion of the Demonic Clan?”
“……?”
The boy looked at me with a face full of confusion.
His trembling form was both pitiful and cute.
From his expression, I could tell he wasn’t anything like a minion of the Demonic Clan.
He probably didn’t even know what Crowd was.
So why did he have that aura clinging to him?
[The Young World Tree recommends removing the disgusting aura inside the child for his sake.]
I decided to follow Saessaki’s advice.
Having that kind of aura running through his mana circuit was definitely not a good thing.
I took out a pine needle from my inventory.
“……!”
The boy’s eyes grew wide.
He was shocked as a pine needle, bigger than his own body, appeared from my hand.
I held it out to him.
“Here.”
“What, is this?”
“Take it.”
“…Are you going to take my knife if I grab that?”
“What are you talking about?”
Maybe leaving the knife with him for comfort had made him misunderstand.
I lightly flicked the pine needle and bonked him on the head.
“Ow! You—!”
I snatched the kitchen knife from the boy’s hand as he flinched in pain.
And I pressed the pine needle into his hand instead.
He looked back and forth between the knife in my hand and the pine needle in his.
“I’m giving this to you for your own good, you know?”
“For me?”
“Yeah. Just wait a little. That—”
“Ah! Th-this…!”
Blue mana burst from the pine needle.
The World Tree’s mana slowly seeped into the boy’s body.
That mana would purify the filthy aura inside him.
The boy looked at me.
What was it? Why was he looking at me as if I’d betrayed him?
“You villain! I know what you’re up to! You’re going to turn me into a monster like they did!”
“What are you talking about, turn you into a monster?”
“I know everything! You people did that to my friends…!”
Suddenly, the boy closed and opened his eyes.
His gaze became dazed, as if he’d been drugged.
His legs buckled, and he slowly collapsed.
I reached out and caught him as he nearly fell.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“I-I can’t… This time, I have to protect the others…”
Even as he said that, the boy kept blinking, fighting to stay awake.
His head bobbed a few times, then eventually, he drifted into a deep sleep.
His anxious face was now perfectly peaceful.
[The Young World Tree says the child is merely sleeping.]
[Purifying the filthy aura took a heavy toll on his strength, so it forced him into rest mode.]
“Hm. Guess it can’t be helped.”
Cradling the child in my arms, I stood up.
I had planned to wait until morning, but after seeing this, that wouldn’t do.
I needed to go find the matron and hear what had happened to the children.
Putting the pine needle and ticket away into my inventory, I left the attic.
The matron was sitting alone in the office.
For a moment, I thought she was praying, but she wasn’t.
She was leaning back in her chair, lost in thought, staring vacantly at her desk.
She must have sensed my gaze, because she finally looked up.
“Douun?”
“What are you doing?”
“Shouldn’t you be asleep too, Woo-hyuk?”
As she rose from her seat, she noticed the boy in my arms and tilted her head in confusion.
She seemed unable to understand why I had this child with me.
To help her understand, I gave a brief summary of what had happened just now.
Of course, I left out the bit about the kitchen knife.
“I see… After what happened earlier, too… I’m really sorry.”
She apologized and held out her arms.
She wanted me to hand over the child in my arms.
But I didn’t hand him over right away.
“More importantly.”
“Hm?”
“I really have to hear it. What happened to this kid? He kept saying he had to protect the others.”
A child who should have been protected had picked up a weapon to protect other children.
It was admirable and praiseworthy, but also heartbreaking.
I was lucky the point of that knife had been aimed at me.
“……”
I pulled up a chair and sat across from the matron.
It was a sign I wasn’t backing down.
If I just left and something happened, I’d regret it forever.
The matron, who had been looking at me, began speaking cautiously.
“…Did you hear about the series of fires at orphanages recently?”
“Of course I heard… Wait, don’t tell me…?”
“That’s right. Woo-hyuk is the sole survivor of those orphanages.”
“The survivor of the fire?”
I looked down at the sleeping boy in my arms.
Something didn’t add up.
The child acted less like a fire survivor, and more like the survivor of a murder.
He’d even carried that filthy aura inside him.
He couldn’t just be the survivor of a fire.
“You’re right. The truth is, he’s the only survivor of a string of orphanage murders.”
The government had hidden the truth.
It was the work of Crowd, a global terrorist organization.
They probably didn’t want news about threats to public safety spreading.
The matron gently stroked the boy’s head as she spoke.
“…I think he was deeply traumatized. He said the culprit wasn’t human. He must have been so scared, the killer looked like a demon to him.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it.”
“Hmm…?”
Looked like a demon?
No, it must have truly been a demon.
Those minions of the Demonic Clan must have taken on that appearance.
What I couldn’t understand was why they would bother transforming just to attack an orphanage.
They’d only risk exposing their identity. Why go that far?
“In the form of a demon… they stabbed the children in the neck and killed them.”
“The neck?”
“Yes, right here, where the gauze is—oh my, when did it start bleeding again…?”
With that, the matron brought out a first aid kit.
She seemed intent on replacing the blood-soaked gauze with a fresh one.
She gently peeled away the gauze on the boy’s neck.
When she checked the wound,
“Oh?”
She tilted her head in confusion.
“It’s all healed? This wasn’t the sort of wound that would heal so quickly.”
The boy’s neck was smooth and unblemished.
It was thanks to the pine needle.
The World Tree’s energy inside the pine needle had completely healed his neck wound.
The matron widened her eyes and looked at me.
“How did you do this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t pretend! You didn’t feed him a Healing Potion, did you?”
“It’s not that.”
A Healing Potion?
I’d given him something even better.
“Really?”
“Yes, really. More importantly, if something like this happened, you should have told us right away.”
“I was going to, but…”
“……?”
The matron trailed off and looked at me quietly.
Ah, I see. It was because of me.
She probably thought our situation was unstable, too.
After all, I’d fought with that strange guy and even ended up in the hospital.
She probably didn’t want to burden us further while we were having a hard time.
“Anyway, if you keep trying to handle everything on your own—”
“Sister! Sister Claudia!”
Suddenly, a panicked voice rang out from outside the office.
The door slid open and a young nun came in, out of breath.
She was the nun I’d seen in front of the orphanage.
She was standing on the left, and her name was…
“What is it, Sister Viviana? You’ll wake the children.”
That’s right, that was her name.
The matron rose and walked to the door.
Unlike the calm matron, the young nun stamped her feet anxiously.
“Outside—outside, monsters have appeared!”
Monsters?
Why would monsters suddenly show up?
There were no Gates or Dungeons near Ark Orphanage.
Maybe a new Gate had spawned, but there hadn’t been any of the tremors that signaled one.
“Calm down, Sister Viviana.”
“But…!”
“This place is protected by the magic of the White Saintess. Monsters can’t possibly approach.”
“Ah, y-yes…!”
The young nun slowly nodded.
She seemed reassured by the mention of Dohee’s protective magic.
The matron suddenly grinned and looked at me.
Huh?
“And, here with us is ‘Moonlight Swordsman’ Baek Douun.”
“Th-that’s right!”
“Wait, what swordsman?”
“Oh my, you didn’t know?”
“……?”
“That’s the nickname you’ve been given. The Moonlight Swordsman.”
“I had no idea. I got a nickname like that?”
But why moonlight?
What connection do I have with the moonlight?
[The Young World Tree says it doesn’t like the name.]
[It insists that the caretaker is the World Tree’s caretaker and proper companion, with a worthy title.]
“Judging by your smile, you like it, don’t you?”
Just as the matron said, I couldn’t help but grin.
I had no idea why I’d gotten the title ‘Moonlight Swordsman,’
But, ‘Moonlight Swordsman.’
It’s a pretty cool nickname, isn’t it?
[The Young World Tree says once again that it really doesn’t like it!]
Sorry, Saessaki.
Let me enjoy this feeling, just for a bit.