Chapter 55

The Painter Who Draws Dungeons — Episode 55

At Cha Ara’s question, her older brother, Cha Eunhyuk, tilted his head.

“...A jewel?”

“No, I can tell it’s a jewel just by looking at it too.

I’m asking how you ended up getting it.”

“Ah, that...”

“Oppa.”

Seeing as she was getting ready to make some excuse, Cha Ara didn’t like things dragging on.

“Look at this.”

“...It’s a jewel.”

“An inhuman-type monster gave it to me as a gift.”

“...”

The eldest, Cha Eunhyuk, silently pressed his forehead, and the youngest, Cha Isol, dropped his spoon.

Letting out a big, deep sigh, Cha Eunhyuk said,

“...Sorry for trying to brush it off with a lie, and let’s talk this through step by step, no bullshit.”

It happened two days before the youngest’s initiation ceremony.

* * *

“Ah, so...”

The eldest of the Cha family, Cha Eunhyuk, nodded.

“So that’s what you got while talking about insurance money and all that.”

“Yeah, it was money the collectors’ guild gave me as a kind of compensation for damages.”

“Thanks to that we can buy the youngest’s priest robes, but why are you saying this now?”

“Because I wasn’t planning to say it, for fuck’s sake...”

“You don’t trust us that much?”

“What are you talking about, you’re ordinary people who bruise if I poke you.”

Cha Ara grumbled irritably out of habit.

It wasn’t that she was angry or hurt—if there was something you could call her habit, it was that she acted like a wary wildcat by nature.

She herself wasn’t aware of it.

Still, since it was family, with a somewhat softened expression, Cha Ara continued.

“I wasn’t going to tell you.

The youngest had a profession manifest, but you don’t know when he’ll be chosen, and, that, he’s a noncombatant... not field work, office work... that kind of feeling, right.

And you’re a complete civilian, Oppa.”

“That’s true.”

“And it seemed like the collectors’ guild wanted me to keep it quiet as much as possible too.

I’m talking without thinking like this, but honestly, it felt like a huge classified secret.”

“For something like that, doesn’t it feel like you didn’t even sign an NDA?”

“That part was kind of weird.

Like, they’d prefer you not to tell, but it’s something that’ll spread eventually anyway, so if your mouth itches, go on, try saying it somewhere... that kind of feeling?

Even big corporations run more roughly than you’d think.”

“What are you talking about.”

Cha Eunhyuk pressed down on his throbbing temple.

“And in the middle of all that, you told me because you saw that I had... that jewel?”

“They said there’s only one jewel in the world with that kind of crystal structure.

So what do you think that means—doesn’t it mean you’ve already met that monster too.

If that’s the case, I figured there’s no point hiding it, so I spit it out.”

“The youngest is listening too.”

“So you want to leave just him out?

Hey, why are you doing that—he’d be hurt.”

“No, that’s not what I meant...”

Cha Eunhyuk, about to say something, soon nodded.

“Isol.”

“Yeah, hyung.”

“You can’t go around telling people this kind of thing, okay?”

“I’m good at that.”

“It makes me worry if you’re already good at this kind of thing, but anyway, good job.

If something goes wrong, it feels like you and your sister could get hauled off to some big guild in Seoul and end up living as test subjects.”

“Then I won’t tell anyone even more!”

“Good boy.”

Watching the youngest cheerfully give a thumbs-up and the brother praising him for it, Cha Ara reflected on her life for a moment.

What kind of karma did we rack up in a past life to end up gathering only dumbasses like these.

‘I have to protect them.’

Not knowing that everyone in the family sees each other as someone to protect, Cha Ara stirred her white rice and muttered.

“Ah, it’s not this taste...”

“You said you got dragged off by a monster and ate a seven-dish table setting, and now all you did was raise your palate.

Look at our youngest—how commendable, eating well without picky eating.”

“It’s fucking unfair.

When did I ever have picky eating?

And he’s my youngest too, you know?

Why am I not commendable—when I rolled around and got insurance money?”

“It helped the household, but you should have noticed my self-loathing would grow just as much.

I’d rather barely get by than live off your insurance money.”

“You sucker bastard, you gonna starve the youngest?

If you live that kindly, does money fall from the sky?

Does Grandpa, who went down the road to the afterlife, reveal the lotto numbers to you?”

“Like you’re so great, talking shit.”

The Cha family had been suckers for generations.

It wasn’t a situation where you could say who was better.

Cha Eunhyuk and Cha Ara worried whether the youngest, Cha Isol, might get scammed somewhere, but Cha Ara was only a little better than that, and Cha Eunhyuk was only slightly better than that—it was all measuring acorn heights.

“You also said you threw the scarf the youngest knitted you to some total stranger last time.”

“Then they were going to freeze to death—am I just supposed to watch?!

Are you a fucking psychopath?!”

“Then you should have just huddled like penguins without spending money, Hunter Cha Ara!

That would’ve been way more economical!”

“Total stranger—why would I do some creepy huddling, stop saying dogshit!”

“Yeah, and you gave the scarf the youngest knitted to that total stranger, right?!”

Watching the two of them, the youngest, Cha Isol, simply ate his long-awaited white rice deliciously.

“This is really tasty.”

“Hyung made that.”

“I steeped the vegetable stock.”

“Yeah, it’s delicious!

It’s amazing!”

At the youngest’s pure 모습, giving double thumbs-up, the two heads of the household gained strength and could stop their meaningless fight.

“When the youngest goes into the dorm, will we not be able to see his face?”

“It’ll be hard.”

“Cha Isol, aren’t you already going to miss your noona’s face?”

“I’m looking at you right now, noona.”

“For fuck’s sake, I can’t talk to you.”

Cha Eunhyuk scolded his sibling.

“Don’t curse at the youngest.”

“When the youngest goes into the dorm, I’ll be the youngest.”

“You met a monster and got a hole in your head?

Second is second forever, and youngest is youngest forever...”

“Fight me.”

In the mess that came crashing in, the youngest, Cha Isol, just kept eating.

“Hehe.”

The white rice he was eating for the first time in a long while was very tasty.

The monster his noona said she met seemed to be a very kind monster.

* * *

“...”

Stepping outside for a moment, Cha Eunhyuk fell into thought.

‘...That person I saw that day was a monster?’

It had been strange from the start.

‘Yeah, even when I met him at dawn, I thought he was a... kind of monster.’

In a dark dawn with no one around.

A man wrapped head to toe in a pitch-black cloak did not look human at all.

‘He had an atmosphere similar to those ghostlike things only I can see, so I figured he was one of that kind.’

But he was visible not only to Cha Eunhyuk, but to other people’s eyes as well.

He was excessively blunt, but that was a personal trait, and he’d thought the sense of wrongness he felt was just the holy power of a devout believer.

“...”

But what if he was simply an inhuman-type monster?

“...That still doesn’t make sense, does it?”

Something was off.

‘Even I have seen monsters.’

In the world, there were not only monsters you could see only by entering dungeons, but also monsters you could encounter just by staying on Earth.

Even if they were weak enough to be caught by ordinary people, their brutality didn’t change.

Cha Eunhyuk wasn’t a hunter, but he had hunted monsters before, and because of that, he could tell that the aura you feel from them and the aura of the black cloak were different.

‘That wasn’t a monster’s aura.’

Sitting in the yard, Cha Eunhyuk looked up at the dusky sky.

“...”

He could see something like a big black snake writhing beyond the clouds.

It had human hands and feet, and it was slow and huge.

“...He was definitely one of those.”

He couldn’t figure out the black cloak’s true nature.

‘If you look at it objectively, it’s true that calling him an inhuman-type monster fits.

They said he even has his own personal dungeon.

But the aura itself is strange, and calling him that kind of monster... it’s... too...’

He acted like a person.

“It feels like they took all sorts of things and mixed them together.”

He felt like a monster, like one of the ‘things’ only he could see, and a little like a human too.

With so many traits felt together, it paradoxically felt more natural.

As if that black cloak were the origin of everything.

“...What nonsense...”

If you called him the origin that derived monsters, ‘things,’ and humans, that was no different from a god.

‘No, even a god would find that hard.’

It was an absurd thought.

‘Looking into things here and there because of the youngest, it seems even those so-called gods aren’t really that omnipotent...’

Cha Eunhyuk thought to himself.

‘In that sense, should I say that black cloak we saw is an existence of a higher class than the gods the priests serve?’

But.

“...”

When he thought that.

“Uuumm...”

The holy power he’d felt last time started to bother him.

Even if he was an ordinary person, could Cha Eunhyuk, who had plenty of experience with this and that, fail to distinguish a god’s holy power?

That was definitely a god’s aura.

Something different from the aura he’d felt from the black cloak.

“...If I think about how warm it was, it must have been related to the sun or fire...”

Because there was a Temple of the Sun nearby, he’d thought he was surely a believer of the sun god.

There was no way someone could have the tamer profession and also have priest as a second profession, so he’d figured he was a devout believer and had gained holy power.

But if he wasn’t a believer, and not human either, then what was that aura from back then?

“A god’s aura...”

There was no way a mere monster could hold it.

“...”

The more he thought, the more it felt like it wasn’t a topic Cha Eunhyuk himself should be worrying about.

“...At least it’s certain he isn’t a simple monster.

The collectors also said they could only be sure he isn’t human.”

A monster that can handle a god’s aura can no longer be called a monster.

‘If I pick the side that makes the most sense, are those ‘things’ I normally see the only option?’

Compared to monsters and humans, which he knew plenty about within the bounds of common sense, he knew little about those ‘things.’

Maybe among them, there could be a ‘thing’ that can use a god’s aura.

‘Even though I’ve never seen one even once.’

A ‘thing’ with that gentlemanly attitude.

Even if it was an inhuman-type monster, it had personally picked up his sister lost and abandoned and even fed her and sent her home, so it was an extremely favorable counterpart.

‘But if I think like this, it could be an existence above even Earth’s gods.

That black cloak held a god’s aura, but a god couldn’t hold the black cloak’s aura...’

The thought that had continued that far snapped off with a thud.

He didn’t want to waste energy.

“...I won’t be able to find out anything by thinking more about its identity.”

Instead, Cha Eunhyuk pictured the future.

“Cha Ara said she even went to his dungeon.”

Cha Ara was openly treating the black-cloaked man as a monster, but for some reason, Cha Eunhyuk was referring to him as a “person.”

Cha Eunhyuk himself didn’t realize it.

“Then does that mean we could run into him again someday?”

For now, Cha Eunhyuk had even invited him to the initiation ceremony.

With the youngest’s initiation ceremony decided, the probability of meeting again was high.

‘He seemed quite interested, so it doesn’t seem like he won’t come.’

Now the misunderstanding that he was a believer of the sun god was gone, but in any case, he was someone who handled holy power close to the sun.

They would surely meet at the initiation ceremony.

“...I hope I didn’t invite something too dangerous.”

After spending the night only worrying, the next morning.

“...”

“...”

Cha Eunhyuk’s mind spun for a moment.

“...Hello.”

“Yes, hello.”

For the first time, the whole Cha family came up to Seoul together, and they met none other than Gio.

That strange man wrapped in a pitch-black cloak.

“Long time no see.”

It was a calm greeting.

‘Even if I thought the odds were high, I didn’t think we’d meet again this fast.’

The black cloak he met again still carried that strange atmosphere.

There was a reason Cha Eunhyuk had thought from the very first meeting, ‘This isn’t human.’

In the meantime, the white-haired man beside the black cloak greeted them too.

“Nice to see you again.

Looks like your whole family came up together?”

“What, you knew Yoo Sungwoon and Oppa?”

“We run into each other sometimes while I’m buying bungeoppang.”

“Ah, bungeoppang...”

Nodding, Cha Ara then looked at the black cloak with subtle eyes.

“...”

“Is there a problem?”

“...I’ll buy you bungeoppang later too.”

Cha Eunhyuk finally thought their flower-pig had lost it.

To openly say she’d gift bungeoppang to someone that imposing—sure, the black cloak had bought bungeoppang from Cha Eunhyuk before too, but that must have been part of social experience...

But unexpectedly, the black cloak accepted it obediently.

“I don’t know why, but thank you.”

“Th... yes.”

He likes bungeoppang?

‘...Is he more down-to-earth than I thought...?’

With that kind of atmosphere?

‘He looks like he’s about to place a sinner on the scaffold and pass judgment.’

The black cloak was an existence that wore conspicuous air.

Maybe because of the pitch-black cloak, he looked like an evil spirit or a grim reaper.

That much, he was not human, but resembled a ghost—ominous, chilly, hollow, and though he looked beautiful like a finely crafted ornament, at the same time he gave off a bizarre, queasy feeling.

It wasn’t only Cha Eunhyuk.

“...”

Looking around, he could see the eyes of people going to work occasionally sticking to the black cloak.

“Don’t pay it too much mind.”

“...Ah, yes.”

“He always has an atmosphere like that.”

“I see.”

At Yoo Sungwoon’s words, Cha Eunhyuk felt a strange unease.

‘It’s the youngest’s initiation ceremony.’

This can end well, right...?

Fantasy, modern,