The Player Who Stands Above All

Chapter 106

"Hmm... it's a little different from what I thought, but this isn't bad either. I like it because it has its own charm."

"What, did you think we were going to some fancy restaurant?"

At Cheon Yuhwa's words, Lee Shin readily nodded his head.

"Yeah, in my head, the staple food of the rich was wine and steak. So I thought you were going to some fancy restaurant."

"I want to say that's a biased view... but it's not entirely wrong either."

Cheon Yuhwa said, and moved the fork in her hand.

"Well, it's not a fancy restaurant, but isn't it pretty good? Jae-hyun's cooking skills are probably better than most restaurant chefs."

"Ah, I wasn't saying the food wasn't good. I was just saying this situation was unexpected."

He was sincere.

The surrounding scenery wasn't bad, and the taste of the meat was excellent.

The chef, Kim Jae-hyun, who was silently grilling the meat and bringing a few pieces to his own mouth.

The landlord, Lee Shin, who had lent the place, his own backyard.

The sponsor, Cheon Yuhwa, who had brought the ingredients for the food and the barbecue tools.

The small barbecue party, created by the combination of the three's abilities, was quite excellent.

It was just that he hadn't expected to suddenly have a barbecue party in the yard.

Nyam-

Lee Shin picked up the meat that Kim Jae-hyun was moving with his aura with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth.

The moist juices overflowed, and he automatically thought of alcohol.

And it seemed to be the same for Cheon Yuhwa.

"Beer is enough to drink, right?"

"Is it for players?"

"Of course."

Tok-

The two simply toasted and drank their beer.

The cool carbonation unique to beer flowed down their throats, washing away the slight greasy taste of the meat.

"This is a hundred times better housewarming gift than a bunch of toilet paper rolls."

"Toilet paper rolls are the standard for housewarming gifts."

Cheon Yuhwa said as she ate a piece of meat.

"What I'm giving you now is a bribe. If everything you said on the phone is true, I thought I should at least show this minimum level of sincerity."

Cheon Yuhwa said, and pointed at the extra-large tent that was covering the dungeon with her finger.

"And fortunately, my efforts were not in vain."

Chuckle-

At Cheon Yuhwa's blatant words, Lee Shin smiled lightly.

"I'll leave the trade with the orcs to you. I've already talked to them to some extent, so the rest will probably be simple."

"Hmm... well, is there anything you want from our side?"

"No, not really. But please be careful because of the location. I'll probably be using that dungeon a lot in the future, and I don't want you to ruin the image and cause any damage."

"Don't worry about that part."

Cheon Yuhwa simply dismissed Lee Shin's worries.

"I also want to avoid any friction with the other races. If you've been inside a World Dungeon, you've probably seen it too. How strong the clan master's power is."

"Hmm~"

Lee Shin made an incomprehensible humming sound and then simply nodded his head.

"It's a relief if you know."

The two talked about various things while eating meat and drinking alcohol.

Fortunately, since there was a common topic, the flow of the conversation was not broken.

Dungeons, monsters, and players.

They were all topics that could lead to a lot of talk.

"Come to think of it, it feels like it's been a long time since we've met. What have you been up to? You even appointed a deputy guild master?"

"I had some business abroad. I had people to meet, so I just had a simple chat and came back."

"Guys like Yeonhwa or Baek Hyun-woo?"

At Lee Shin's direct question, Cheon Yuhwa readily nodded her head.

She had no intention of hiding it in the first place.

At Cheon Yuhwa's answer, Lee Shin smiled lightly.

"I wonder how well they'll fight. Introduce me to them later if you get the chance."

"Sure, if I get the chance."

"That means you have no intention of letting me meet them, right?"

"Yeah."

Cheon Yuhwa said, and after taking a sip of beer, she put an unwrapped candy in her mouth.

Lee Shin looked at Cheon Yuhwa, who was eating candy after beer, with a strange expression.

It was an ordinary time, if you could call it that.

A light meal, a simple conversation, a relaxed atmosphere.

"Ah, right. Come to think of it, there was something I wanted to ask you."

In the midst of that, Lee Shin lightly opened his mouth.

"...What is it?"

At that, Cheon Yuhwa felt a strange sense of anxiety.

It was a reaction close to a conditioned reflex.

Because the Lee Shin in Cheon Yuhwa's memory was a human who would break that comfortable atmosphere as if it were nothing when they were having a conversation in such a relaxed atmosphere.

At that, Cheon Yuhwa prepared herself mentally and looked at Lee Shin.

Nevertheless, the moment she heard Lee Shin's one sentence, she was flustered.

"You, are you by any chance a regressor from the future?"

"..."

"Or do you have a precognitive ability that allows you to know information about the future?"

At the same time as Lee Shin's words ended, the place where the three were became so silent that not even the sound of a small bird could be heard.

A silent stillness enveloped them, as if to say that there was no one but them in this place.

In that stillness, Lee Shin looked at Cheon Yuhwa with a spinning smile.

"...What are you talking about?"

Looking at Lee Shin's appearance, Cheon Yuhwa opened her mouth nonchalantly.

Cheon Yuhwa clearly showed that she was flustered.

But that agitation was small, and Cheon Yuhwa did not hide her flustered face.

On the contrary, she boldly revealed that emotion and covered it with new emotions such as surprise, absurdity, and disbelief.

Since it was impossible to control the emotion that had already been revealed, she mixed other things on top of it to make it blurry.

"A regressor and a prophet... did you hear something?"

Cheon Yuhwa said, and looked at Lee Shin with eyes that showed a slight curiosity.

"Ah, it's nothing much, but I just thought you were a little strange from the first time I saw you."

Lee Shin took a sip of beer and said in a playful tone as if he were telling a joke.

The silent stillness disappeared, and the ordinary atmosphere of a moment ago spread around.

But in that atmosphere, a single thread of tension, like a snake crawling through the undergrowth, was crawling.

"As you know, my personality is a little peculiar, right?"

"It's not a little, it's very peculiar."

"Ahaha! Right?"

Lee Shin said, and smiled with a spinning smile.

Lee Shin's eyes, looking at Cheon Yuhwa, were curved as if he were watching a cute trick.

But Cheon Yuhwa didn't even blink an eye.

Because she knew very well that Lee Shin threw bait in this way.

"But you acted as if you knew me well from the first time we met, right? That was strange, and so was the way you handled me as if you were used to it."

Cheon Yuhwa, acting as if she were just listening, quietly looked at Lee Shin.

"Well, at that time, I just dismissed it as a fun incident and let it go, but after that, I started to see some strange things."

[Wonderland], as soon as it appeared, backed by the Samcheon Group, showed off its overwhelming financial power and invested a huge amount of money in the market called the dungeon.

A highly speculative investment, as if they knew that the market called the dungeon would explode.

As a result, Cheon Yuhwa succeeded, and people who saw that just repeated things like 'she's good at business like her parents' or 'the guild master has a good eye', but to Lee Shin, something was a little strange.

Of course, it was natural to make high-risk, high-return investments when doing business.

But no businessman, when they have a sufficient backup, makes an all-in investment that bets everything they have.

Unless they are sure that the future they are thinking of will definitely come.

"So I thought. Then maybe you have some kind of conviction about the dungeon."

"Well, that could be."

Even at Cheon Yuhwa's dry tone, Lee Shin was not daunted.

"The next strange thing was... these people."

Lee Shin manipulated the structure of his vocal cords with his internal energy.

Ventriloquism.

The voice that was changed through it was a voice familiar to everyone present.

-I came because the guild master scouted me. He also helped me.

-Me too, I was in a bit of a difficult situation because of money, but he came and helped me, so I joined the guild.

-Hahaha, it's similar for me too.

-Me too.

-Me too.

The voices of the team leaders who were not present flowed from Lee Shin's throat.

"How did you scout these people?"

"With money."

At Cheon Yuhwa's words, Lee Shin chuckled.

"That's not it. I'm asking how you managed to pick out only the people who were in a tight spot because they had no money from among all those rankers."

When Cheon Yuhwa didn't answer, Lee Shin shrugged his shoulders as if he had expected it and continued.

"Hmm... anyway, around this time, various assumptions started to pop up in my head."

Once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is inevitable.

Lee Shin's instinct kept telling him that there was something in the events that were happening, and Lee Shin moved in the direction his instinct was pointing.

"And it was also strange that you left the guild to him and went. It doesn't make sense for a guild master to go on an overseas trip and be away for so long at a time when you can push forward like this."

A deputy guild master is just a deputy guild master.

A situation without a head is bound to create some kind of friction.

But there was no friction at all.

At that, Lee Shin thought.

If the head had told them what would happen in the future and suggested a way to deal with it before disappearing, wouldn't it be strange for things to run smoothly?

"So the conclusion I came to was the assumption that you are a future prophet or a regressor."

"...I'm so dumbfounded I can't even speak."

"Well, I also thought it was going too much into fantasy, but... it's also funny to be picky about such things in a world that has already changed like this."

Lee Shin closed his mouth after saying that, and Cheon Yuhwa looked at him for a moment before asking.

"You, you know that all of that is just a delusion that happened in your head, right?"

"Yeah, it's all just an assumption made in my head."

Lee Shin readily nodded his head with an embarrassed face.

"Even if what I just said is true, you wouldn't have handled things so clumsily as to leave behind evidence to prove these things."

Lee Shin shook his head with an exaggerated sigh as if he were disappointed.

"Just in case, I called Hyun-woo and tried to coax him to see if he knew anything, but he didn't give me any useful information either."

'Of course. I made sure to tell him to be careful with his words.'

But Cheon Yuhwa did not let her guard down until the very end.

Because the smile had not yet disappeared from Lee Shin's lips.

"So while you were gone, I went to the guild master's office from time to time and did some work."

"What?"

Swoosh-

Lee Shin, who had made a sudden bombshell declaration, a round object like a coin popped out of his pocket.

"I asked Joker to specially make a listening device and installed it in the guild master's office. So I'm asking, how did you guys know that the other race would appear this time?"

"?!"

At Lee Shin's words, Kim Jae-hyun, who had been quiet until now, was surprised at the fact that all his words and actions had been recorded and instinctively raised his head towards the two.

But Kim Jae-hyun saw Lee Shin's eyes, which were curved in a crescent, and Cheon Yuhwa's furrowed brow.

At that moment, Kim Jae-hyun realized that he had made a mistake.

He had been tricked by Lee Shin.

The fact that he had raised the atmosphere by listing various facts at the beginning.

The fact that he had relaxed the atmosphere by smiling in the middle.

Even the fact that he was holding that piece of iron in his hand were all stepping stones for this moment.

"Haa."

Cheon Yuhwa, who had reached the same conclusion as Kim Jae-hyun, let out a soft sigh.

'Even though he was talking to me, he was actually checking on Jae-hyun with his senses. Since Jae-hyun was in a position where he could hear the conversation but was a step back, he was off guard, and the moment those words came out, he reacted without even realizing it.'

It was too late to realize Lee Shin's thoughts.

Well, even if she had realized it, there was probably nothing she could have done.

No matter what she did, it would have only resulted in hardening Lee Shin's mind.

At that, Cheon Yuhwa, while soothing her heart that had been stung by Lee Shin's blow, opened her mouth.

"Yes, that's right."

At Cheon Yuhwa's affirmation, Kim Jae-hyun, who was grilling meat next to her, was even more surprised.

"I don't know the reason either, but one day I found myself back in the past."

Cheon Yuhwa looked at Lee Shin and calmly revealed that she was a regressor.

(End of Chapter)