## Chapter 113 – Everyone Has a Hidden Side (1)
The “disguise” I mentioned to Eve was not something grand but rather meant to act like an ordinary human woman and continue moving with me.
Our objective is not to consume the Earth but to strengthen the main force in REDRIUM with the information we gather here.
To do that, we need to produce results in the Guardian Alliance and gain a high status. That way, it will be easier to access the various information we desire.
So, being a completely ordinary person won’t work either. Otherwise, we won’t be able to obtain any information.
The problem is that becoming too famous doesn’t appeal to me either.
“What are they doing right now?”
“…Leave it to me. Can you just stay still? For our safe disguise. Please.”
I swallowed hard as I watched the soldiers approaching us.
Eve is absolutely not friendly toward humans. Rather, she is hostile. And this stance will not change now that we are one.
It’s understandable, as there’s no need for her to be friendly to begin with.
Now that we are united, I can see it more clearly. Eve’s and the Legion’s innate nature is to devour everything, absorb it, and fill the void with their own cells, rather than coexist with other biological groups.
“Are you alright, Hunter? Who is this person…?”
“Uh, my colleague. An acquaintance.”
I tried to deny it to the commanding officer who ran over while hiding Eve behind me.
As soon as the high-ranking demon—the command entity—died, the demon tribe closed the gate and retreated. Now, all we have to do is navigate this situation well.
“I’ve never seen this face before. You seem very skilled… Moreover, are you a student by any chance?”
“No. That’s…”
Unfortunately, this captain was quite curious. I broke into a sweat as I made excuses.
At least it was fortunate that the current situation allowed for plausible lies.
“I’m putting you in a difficult position. I guess I’ll have to kill them all after all.”
“Uh, is something bothering you…? You’re staring at me intensely…”
However, my attempts to pacify the situation had limits.
“Y-yes! It seems there is indeed something uncomfortable, so I will go have a look!”
Knowing that the words about killing were serious, I hurriedly interrupted and, holding Eve’s hand, rushed back to the vehicle.
“I saw everything. You fought well.”
Kang Do-yeon scoffed at my slumped figure in the driver’s seat.
“Listen carefully, Eve. Please act like an ordinary human. Otherwise, our disguise will be blown.”
“I’m not ignorant about humans.”
Barely catching my breath, I turned to the back seat, but Eve, crossing her arms, looked rather sulky.
“The species characteristics of humans are flexibility and diversity. You acknowledge that, right? No other species we have possesses as much diversity as humans.”
Eve’s words struck a nerve. I acknowledged that as well.
Demons are demon-like, fairies are fairy-like, and dragon species are dragon-like.
But humans are different. Earthlings, the Alliance, the Mage Academy, even those who had bombed the Legion’s nest.
Humans are truly divided into countless forms, cultures, characteristics, habits, inclinations, and ideologies.
“Ordinary humans? It’s too ambiguous to specify.”
“I misspoke. I meant to say to behave like an ordinary Earthling, no, a Korean. But… you probably don’t have any concept of an ordinary Korean.”
I gave up persuading Eve right there. After all, in a battle of wits, I was bound to lose.
“Then at the very least, please listen to me. That’s the way for all of us.”
“That’s not difficult.”
Fortunately, Eve nodded in agreement with my alternative plan. Her identity had grown too powerful. Convincing and coaxing her was the only solution.
“Do we not have to clean up afterward?”
“Our mission is to fight. That’s the only thing.”
I finally started the car. Emerging from the chaotic inner sanctum, the vehicle sped along a quiet road.
Since the full-scale war with the demon realm began, society had changed drastically compared to before.
People often reflected on the time when hunters, gates, and monsters first appeared.
“Now, it has become an unimportant story, but we’ve come to know why, ten years ago, the gates between Earth and the demon realm were connected.”
“…Is that really true?”
The history between Earth and the demon realm. Eve seemed completely uninterested, but Kang Do-yeon showed great interest.
“First of all, the gates that were continuously opening weren’t gates that were deliberately opened.”
“Earth and the demon realm are strongly connected. Stronger than the tenuous connection with REDRIUM. They could open gates at any moment.”
But the discussion of gates piqued Eve’s interest too. As she had just said, the two worlds are connected.
And it was recently revealed that the connection of space, which we had thought was opened by the demons, was in fact a kind of natural phenomenon. Until we learned actual gate-related magic through players, we had simply crossed over by walking.
All of this information had emerged from the analysis of the data brought back by the research team I had sent first that day, which sparked the study of demon realm history.
“The reason the two worlds are connected this way is related to the demon realm alliance, which has now become our enemy.”
“What? The hero? The goddess?!”
“Their internal conflict has impacted our world. The rest is simply a story from a completely different realm. It’s not important; just an incredibly old tale.”
I shared the information I knew through the collective consciousness. Getting used to it was quite convenient.
“However, what I want to say is this. How do you think we ended up in such a situation? The sudden revelation of the world’s secrets, the demons forming an alliance, and waging war against them.”
“Game, and interaction through the game.”
Eve answered immediately, but honestly, there was no need for a question. We all shared the same thought.
“We just need to sit back and take in what comes our way.”
No matter how I thought about it, it was a good plan. The Legion would get stronger by naturally absorbing knowledge and power in this battlefield of gigantic forces.
I glanced at Eve in the rearview mirror. Naturally, our eyes met.
What I hoped for one more thing was that through this process, Eve would change her values a little.
So she could find another happiness in a life filled only with struggles and gluttony.
—
“Do you feel anything? Like, it’s beautiful or something.”
On a late afternoon as the sun set, I headed to the rooftop of the apartment. There stood Eve.
I didn’t insist on introducing Eve to my mother. Eve had no feelings for my mother at all.
Although she understood the parent-child relationship in her head, she couldn’t empathize emotionally at all.
At that moment, Eve turned her body away from the city bathed in golden light without saying a word.
“Kang Do-yeon was very sad.”
“…For good reason.”
I frowned and lowered my head.
Naturally, when my mother saw her daughter, whom she thought was dead, return alive, she was astonished and cried, hugging her tightly.
There was no room for doubt. Even if she had doubts, I doubt she would have considered them.
When the daughter officially declared dead came back to life, which parent would doubt first?
However, it was now impossible for our family of three to return to a normal routine.
Neither my sister nor I… were humans anymore.
“Human emotions are indeed inefficient. Especially the emotion of sadness, which gnaws away at one’s will and lowers combat spirit.”
“You’ve learned that emotion too.”
“I’m different.”
Eve smiled with her eyes narrowed. It was a somewhat creepy smile. It was the demeanor of a being that could manipulate emotions as needed.
“Well, considering that I heard a reprimand from you and was shaken up drastically just this morning.”
“You’re right. That was my only weakness.”
Seeing her so self-satisfied, I casually pointed it out, and Eve directed her hand at me.
“But now it’s not.”
Then she laughed and directed that hand toward her chest.
I closed my mouth. It was true. Eve had succeeded in removing her only weakness, the fragile player.
In the fact that we cannot be separated, she also found emotional stability.
“A vast world.”
Eve pointed to the city laid out before us with that hand.
“Countless lives.”
Then her eyes gleamed.
I understood what Eve was trying to say. It was resonating within the collective consciousness.
“Nothing matters. What’s important is how strong we can become by using those things.”
That madness was real. A calamity I could not dare to handle.
I discarded all notions of changing Eve with ideas about the beauty of the world or anything like that.
To Eve, beauty was ultimately something she needed to possess, and peace could only be possible after she had taken everything.
So… I forced myself to swallow the words that her current demeanor resembled a typical teenage delusion.
“Think about what we need most urgently.”
“The answer has already come up. Information about them, and specimens we can devour and utilize.”
Eve answered immediately.
She began to talk about the issue at hand. I shared the information I knew.
“Although it’s not certain, I heard that the Alliance has other hostile forces. The Rebel Alliance is one of them. It’s assumed that the equipment, which looked somewhat outdated, used by the Nol was belonging to the Rebel Alliance.”
“…If Kobold and Nol players are linked through units, then it’s logically possible. But we cannot definitively identify it yet.”
“We could obtain that information as we raise our status further.”
Embarrassingly, my position within the Guardian Alliance, which focused on rigorous skills and results, was still effectively at the bottom. Due to events within the allied forces, I was perhaps a bit famous, but still a lowly status.
“What about the specimens to consume?”
“I don’t want to say much about that, so why don’t you decide.”
I opened my phone and showed Eve a site where data was neatly organized.
It wasn’t anything impressive; it was just an internet site accessible to the public.
The materials organized and uploaded there dealt with the creatures of the demon realm. Of course, there was a lot of information that we didn’t have.
“Useful, right?”
“…”
There was no response. Eve spent several minutes absorbing all the information from the site, which ranked among the top 20 with the highest traffic in the current world.
It felt like I had returned to the past.
I struggled to gather materials and deliver them to Eve, and she was reminiscent of that elusive group finding efficient countermeasures.
