The Chick Class Hunter is Being Filial

“That damn brat keeps using that squiggly language... Better dead than whining. Now that’s a Korean proverb.”
The kid’s nonchalant attitude was getting ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) on his nerves. So what, he thought he wasn’t part of the trash?

Even without showing an ounce of power, the difference in class was always this obvious. Miserably so.
But listen, kid. No matter how much of a monster you are, there’s something you missed, you little shit.
There were over a hundred mannequins he’d planted across the resort. That meant Serhi couldn’t possibly inspect every one of them.

Naohyeong had taken advantage of that gap and embedded one of them with his own eye.
He couldn’t fully control it, but he’d implanted a suggestion—just enough to take commands. That alone was enough.
Judging by how the kid was just calmly gaming, he clearly hadn’t caught on yet.

Wonder if he knows that the darkest place is under the lamp.
If he found a decent item while the chaos was going on, that alone would be a huge gain.
He’d already set the mannequin to track down high-grade items.

Whether it was an auction item, or something belonging to one of the many Hunters gathered here—anything would do. As long as it could strengthen him, whatever it was—
I’ll kill that blond bastard.
He couldn’t forget the look on his face—like he’d caught a rat. Had there ever been a more humiliating moment since his reawakening?

One day, I’m going to show that little bastard what real discipline looks like.
If today went well, maybe he’d finally get the chance to teach that brat a proper adult’s lesson.
At that moment, one of the mannequins stopped walking near the group causing a commotion.

It hovered briefly in front of a small child as if checking something, then turned and walked toward a quiet terrace.
Soon, a voice came through his earpiece from the mannequin.
— Unmeasurable item detected.

Naohyeong glanced at Serhi cautiously while switching to the mannequin’s view. What the mannequin had seen was a platinum-haired little girl.
 
****
The special lenses in Serhi’s mannequin were Gnosis-made products designed specifically to detect items.

And just a moment ago, something strange had entered its vision.
If it were a high-grade item, it would naturally be found among the top-tier Hunters, so it had been moving toward the areas with the highest mana concentration.
That’s when it saw the child, cradled in an old man’s arms.

And that—was inside the child’s bag.
An item for which no information was returned, despite the lenses being linked to a database of nearly every known item in existence.
They couldn’t identify it, but it was significant enough to be reported.

The mannequin slipped out to the terrace to contact its owner.
“Unmeasurable item detected.”
And just as it waited for a response—

A sudden haze of smoke obscured its vision.
“…?”
A man had appeared on the terrace that was previously empty.

He was standing with one hand in his pocket, puffing on a cigarette. When he exhaled, smoke curled into the air, thick and swirling.
His movements were slow, unbothered. The tailored suit flowed with his body like water.
Danger signals fired. To him, the man looked like a beast dressed in a suit.

The man let out a low chuckle. Beneath those cold, sunken black eyes, a single tear mole drew the mannequin’s attention for an instant.
“Surprised, huh?”
“Wh-when did you—”

Leaning back against the terrace railing, the man smiled gently as he looked at the mannequin’s tense face.
“That thing—who’s on the other end?”
He tapped his ear lightly, pointing at the earpiece.

“Can’t be the event staff, that’s for sure.”
“…”
“You’re taking a while to answer.”

The man pulled his hand out of his pocket and checked his watch.
When the mannequin noticed the glove on his left hand, it bit its lip, a nightmare flashing in its circuits.
Its entire body locked up, frozen like it was caught in his gaze.

The man took a step forward, cigarette still pinched between two long fingers, and calmly placed his palm on the mannequin’s head.
Thud!
The mannequin crumpled to the floor on the spot.

Jurim turned its body over with his foot and tilted his head.
No matter how thoroughly he checked inside the skull, it was completely hollow.
“Hm…”

A mannequin that looked this human.
Jurim, visibly intrigued, picked up the earpiece. If he couldn’t find any traces from the mannequin itself, maybe he could track the owner through the connection.
But on the other end of the earpiece, there was only silence. The connection had likely been cut the moment the mannequin was destroyed.

When Jurim clenched his fist, the earpiece crumbled to dust and scattered into the air.
Unmeasurable item, huh…
The last place the mannequin had looked—was right where Hyeonak’s raid team and Guru were standing.

Jurim had just been lost in thought for a moment.
A notification popped up on the watch strapped to his wrist.
[Gidan: Hyung, when are you getting here?]
[Gidan: Guru’s here too?]

It was a message from Gidan.
The first message from Gidan had come two hours earlier.
He said something was off about this resort. That no matter how you looked at it, there were clearly non-human things crawling all over the place—but the other team members didn’t seem to notice anything.

Normally, Jurim would’ve ignored it. But the fact that even upper-rankers couldn’t sense it left him no choice but to move.
And once he saw it himself, it all made sense.
With craftsmanship like this, it was no wonder people weren’t picking up on it.

At this level, they’re basically human.
They even mimicked emotions. Mannequins that moved and behaved just like people.
Gidan and he only picked up on it because they had heightened senses—that must be why they even noticed something was off at all.

Jurim had been observing the mannequins in a cloaked state, wondering what their objective was—perhaps they were after the Malikian residue?
But I didn’t expect Guru to be here…
Thinking of that troublemaker, the corner of Jurim’s lips curled faintly.

She said she was going to hang out with friends, and she showed up at the auction house. Not just that—she’d come with his father.
Seriously, like father like daughter—she knew exactly how to hit where it hurt the most.
Jurim took a drag from his cigarette.

With the smoke, Suhyeong’s words—spoken in Jurim’s defense to Gu Shinhoo—dissipated from his ears.
He chuckled to himself as he recalled the mudskipper.
Jurim’s gaze flicked toward Suhyeong.

Suhyeong was holding the child’s hand, walking toward the opposite terrace where there were fewer people.
Jurim slowly began to follow in the direction they’d gone.
The moment he stepped into the banquet hall, eyes immediately locked onto him.

“Jurim hyung!”
“Guildmaster-nim!”
The raid team was the first to approach, and murmurs swelled louder as more people spotted him.

Gu Shinhoo stared at Jurim, wide-eyed, and sucked in a breath.
“…Guildmaster On Jurim.”
Jurim raised the corner of his lips smoothly and replied with a warmth he rarely used.

“Yeah, Shinhoo.”
Gu Shinhoo’s face hardened in an instant.
A few members of the raid team let out muffled laughs.

Gu Shinhoo stepped in close and whispered through gritted teeth.
“Guildmaster On, what kind of table manners is this disrespect supposed to be?”
He wasn’t wrong—they had seven years between them. Even if they’d been close (which they weren’t), that kind of rudeness wasn’t something he could let slide.

But Jurim also leaned down and murmured by his ear.
“Shinhoo. Say whatever you want behind my back, I don’t care. But in front of my daughter, keep your damn manners. You wouldn’t want to see me lose mine in front of your daughter, would you?”
Instead of saying, aren’t you already being rude enough right now, Gu Shinhoo simply wet his lips.

He’d gotten overheated and crossed the line—he could admit that much. But Jurim’s response was far from what he expected.
That’s not like him. Even bringing a child along wasn’t like the Jurim he knew. But this… this was more than that.
“You’re… serious?”

He was asking if Jurim had really formed an attachment to the kid he’d adopted. Jurim let out a laugh, like the question was genuinely amusing.
“Right? On Jurim, head over heels for his daughter? Who knows what I might do next just to make my daughter feel a little proud. I can’t even tell myself.”
With the tone of a kind warning disguised as advice, Jurim turned and patted Gu Hwiyeon on the head. Then he clapped a hand on Gu Shinhoo’s shoulder, whose face was twisting up.

“Well then, Shinhoo. I’m a little busy right now. Let’s talk some other time.”
With that, Jurim headed out toward the terrace where Suhyeong and Guru had slipped away.