Chapter 260 - Talk to me straight (1)
Benjamin Goat.
Twenty-seven years old and 190 cm tall, he was one of the Ten Stars (SS-rank), who were considered the strongest amongst humanity.
During his middle school years, Goat had taken an aptitude test. The test revealed that he had S-rank aptitudes toward both the Taurus temple and the Leo temple.
For some odd reason, the young man had fallen for the Sagittarius temple, for which he had an aptitude of D rank. He had ignored the love calls from the Taurus and Leo and joined the last rank temple.
When Goat joined the Sagittarius temple, he had been the luggage guy that did odd jobs. He was a fanboy of Hugo. He still remembered Hugo and Lee Jaewon having questioning looks in their eyes, wondering what he was doing there.
Anyway, Goat was considered Hugo’s right arm. Learning his archery techniques directly under Lee Jaewon, Goat had risen to the SS rank. He had joined the ranks of those considered world-class.
Moreover, he continued to receive numerous love calls, yet he was happy spending time with Hugo, whom he respected. Recently, he was happy being reunited with Lee Jaewon.
Every day was happy for the young man, yet one incident almost gave him a mental breakdown.
[Congratulations, Benjamin Goat (SS)! You have automatically been designated as the Zodiac Saint of the Sagittarius temple.]
“Ahhhk!! Saint-nim!!” Goat suddenly had a meltdown. He wondered if he had heard wrong when the voice coming from his badge gave the notification.
He grabbed the crow Construct, who was in charge of giving out the notification, and asked it to repeat those words.
[Congratulations! You have been designated as the new Zodiac Saint of the Sagittarius temple!!]
“No. This can’t be!”
In the end, he kept calling Hugo, yet Hugo didn’t pick up. It worsened his meltdown. He had tried to contact Hugo several hundred times when the call finally got through.
- Ahhk! What!? I’m the replacement Zodiac Saint?
Usually, a Zodiac Saint was replaced for one reason.
However, Hugo had thankfully picked up his phone, indicating that he was unharmed. Nevertheless, he also seemed to be having a severe mental breakdown.
Goat kept the line open to hear a more detailed story. He kept asking for Hugo, but…
“S-Saint-nim? Can you hear me? Ah, ah? Hello? I don’t think he hung up on me.”
It seemed the phone had been passed on to someone else.
Goat heard a familiar voice.
- Hello?
He flinched. “Lee Gun-nim!!”
- Well, it turned out like this. You’re in charge of the Sagittarius temple for now.
“Lee Gun-nim??! What do you mean, that’s how it turned out? Please give me an explanation….!”
- It doesn’t change the fact that the Sagittarius temple is still an affiliate under me. That’s why you should take good care of it. You guys are very useful to me. If you bring down the temple, you’re dead.
“Lee Gun-nim?!”
- I’ll give you a mission. Taeksoo was firm in keeping the temple small. But he’s no longer the Zodiac Saint of that place, so you can tell him to piss off. I need you to add at least a thousand disciples. I need them.
“What?!”
- Mmm! I want you to roughly have 900 S-ranks and 100 A-ranks.
Goat almost fainted. “That isn’t possible, Lee Gun-nim. Please return our Saint-nim…!”
- A thousand. I said it.
Click!
Goat despaired when the call was ruthlessly ended.
“Ben.”
Goat shook when he heard a cold voice from behind him.
“According to how you reacted, Saint-nim seems to be unharmed. What happened?”
Goat was in the holy ground of the Sagittarius temple. When he heard Lee Jaewon’s question, he started sweating.
Jaewon’s voice sounded gentle, but it wasn’t the case. His eyes were scary, as if to say how dare you become the Zodiac Saint of the Sagittarius temple.
Goat felt like someone who had been promoted instead of his superior. “I-It seems Saint-nim was in trouble. In the process of getting saved, he was temporarily transferred, and I got automatically designated as the Zodiac Saint—”
“Oh! Congratulations! So I should now call you Saint-nim?”
Goat found himself more frightened. “No! This seat should be occupied by Hyung-nim!”
“No, no! You are a Ten Star for a reason. Your abilities are better than mine.”
“What? No! Not at all!!!” Goat was mainly a power user. In terms of offensive power, he was the best in the Sagittarius temple. However, Hugo and Lee Jaewon were overwhelmingly better than him when it came to accuracy.
In particular, Lee Jaewon was the best in terms of dodging and infiltration. He was Hugo’s right-hand man and advisor.
“I’m not suited to be in the front. It isn’t an easy seat to fill.”
Goat let out a sigh, as if he had the same opinion.
In truth, occupying the seat of the Zodiac Saint wasn’t easy.
Goat would have to go out into the world as the face of his temple. His personal life would be on display. Then, he would have to fight territorial wars to maintain the power balance between the temples.
He would have to manage the disciples and Constructs of the temple and take commissions. At the same time, he would have to please his precocious Zodiac as a servant. He would have so many things to do that twenty-four hours wouldn’t be enough.
Moreover, the Sagittarius temple had a low number of disciples, so Hugo used to do 90% of all the work.
‘We can never do what he does.’
If framed that way, wasn’t this good for Hugo?
‘It’s like going from a job that requires pulling all-nighters to a job that is cushy.’
“Anyway, it wouldn’t matter if Hugo-nim likes it there. Since I know his personality, he would hate being under Lee Gun-nim….”
“Ah! Do not worry about that! Lee Gun-nim said he’ll return Hugo-nim,” Goat clarified.
“What? Really?”
“Yes! Lee Gun-nim said that when Hugo-nim’s faith toward the Sagittarius temple exceeds that toward the Serpent Bearer temple, he’ll return everything to normal… Hyung-nim? Why are you making that face?”
In a rarity, Lee Jaewon had a detached expression. “We’ll have to give up on that idea.”
“W-What?”
“Hahh! He won’t be able to achieve it in this lifetime. I’ll have to prepare myself to move to the Serpent Bearer too.”
“Hyung-nim?!”
“I’m joking.”
The look in Lee Jaewon’s eyes changed. “It’s odd that Lee Gun-nim took Saint-nim. Moreover, our Zodiac let Saint-nim go without making a big deal about it.”
“He’s fickle.”
The look in Lee Jaewon’s eyes turned serious. “I don’t think this is about him being fickle.”
“What?”
“You saw it too, right? That vision…”
“Ah! Yes. I don’t know what that vision is about… I’m sure…!”
“There is something to it.”
* * *
Around that time, in the Nameless Land.
“Good! It’s going down! It’s going down!”
Hugo cheered as he looked into a hand mirror. He held the mirror in one hand and his phone in the other.
The phone’s display showed an article and a picture. It was after Lee Gun had returned. The picture showed Lee Gun kicking him. To be precise, it was when Yooha had said she would marry her uncle. Back then, Hugo had charged Lee Gun in anger and received a beating.
Naturally, when Hugo thought about that incident, bad memories surfaced in his mind. Since he didn’t want to take the chance of remembering good memories, he had decided to use visual aids.
Moreover, the picture wasn’t the only thing that he had prepared.
“That is…”
Yes, Hugo had gathered everything related to Lee Gun causing havoc in the past. Those tools seemed to have some effect.
[Serpent Bearer Faith: 480%]
“Good! It fell by 20%! I’ll have it down in no time! Next, I’ll read the abusive texts that I received from Gun twenty years ago!”
This left Kevin dumbfounded. However, the reason for that reaction wasn’t Hugo’s desire to lower the faith. “Why do you still have text messages from twenty years ago?”
“Good! It fell again! I’ll look at the scrapbook that I made a long time ago! These are all articles about Gun causing trouble!!”
Again, why did he have those items? That wasn’t all.
‘In the first place, can he even drop his faith with things like that?’
On the other hand, the tenacious Hugo summoned a bag.
[Gemini temple’s rental skill “Select item summon” has been used.]
“That damn bastard. Yes, this is the ticket. I remember it. He didn’t even give me travel money. He let me traverse Europe with just this ticket and told me to acquire ingredients for him.”
Hugo took out the items in the bag, one by one.
It seemed he was dead set on disparaging Lee Gun despite the embarrassment to himself. “Yes, I remember this. He left a can of ham with me, so the monsters chased after me.
“Ah! I remember this sculpture! When I asked him for a monthly salary, he told me to be satisfied with this! When I said I’m going on a date, he gave me a smelly scarf that made my date run away!”
Kevin was speechless. It was for no other reason. “That nerd… He collected a lot of things.”
Normally, one threw away items that elicited ill feelings.
Now, it made sense why Yang Wei had raided Hugo’s house first when making the Lee Gun Museum.
Anyway, disparaging Lee Gun seemed to be proving effective.
[Serpent Bearer Faith 400%]
“Good!! It went down a lot! I can do this!”
Lee Gun clicked his tongue as he watched all of this. “Taeksoo.”
“What! Don’t talk to me! I’m busy! Do you really think I’ll enter a temple where my children are my superiors?”
“Don’t overdo it too much. It’s hard for me to watch you struggle so much.”
“You’re so fake. Don’t do it. Do you really think I’ll fall for it? It is useless….”
[Serpent Bearer Faith: 500%]
“Fuck $*($*!!”
Kevin feigned a laugh. He had no idea what they were trying to do.
Well, it didn’t matter, since something more preposterous than Hugo was in front of his eyes. It was the sight of two people sticking to Lee Gun like koalas.
“Uncle!”
When Lee Gun called for them, the Chun siblings had come at once.
Thanks to Sagittarius, Lee Gun had learned the Zodiac Saint Summon skill, so calling them had become easy for him.
On the other hand, the siblings were seeing Lee Gun for the first time after he had become a god.
“Kuh-huhk. I can’t look at his face.”
“What the hell! What is this amazing smell?”
The Chun siblings swooned as soon as they saw Lee Gun.
Lee Gun had become more handsome after awakening, and the fanboy and the fangirl naturally noticed this. Then there were the desperate texts that Goat had sent them.
However, the sibling Zodiac Saints were too busy smelling their uncle.
Unable to watch this anymore, Kevin said, “Since your Zodiac Saints are here, you should talk. You said you have something to say.”
“!”
“It must have something to do with the vision we saw earlier, right?”
“!”
The eyes of Hugo, who had been trying to place a curse on Lee Gun, widened when he heard Kevin’s words.
The eyes of the Chun siblings, who were sniffing Lee Gun as they stuck to him, also changed.
“What? The Virgo Saint saw it too?”
“Yes, I saw it.”
Chun Sungjae glared at him. “Wow! You should pay up! How dare you steal a glance into such personal history?!”
“I didn’t steal a glance at it!! Anyway, you showed it to me, right? Are you playing a prank on me, Lee Gun?”
Lee Gun snorted as if Kevin was speaking nonsense. “It isn't a joke. The chair showed the vision to me.”
“!”
“Then, it showed that to my affiliates.”
The content of the visions was simple.
“One showed Uncle from 20 years ago….”
“The other one….”
Hailey ground her teeth when she thought about the other vision.
“I now understand why the Zodiacs had annihilated the Secretaries.”
“That’s right. It probably is related to why the Zodiacs tried to kill Uncle….”
Yes, they had seen the past of not only Lee Gun but also the Zodiacs.
- Did you hear about it? The owner of the thirteenth Seat of power lost his mind!
- What? Really?
- It’s a certainty since the Constructs spoke about it.
The vision seemed to show the Divine world. The Divine world was burning, and several familiar faces had made an appearance. They were the current twelve Zodiacs.
The vision had shown them murdering the man that Hugo thought was similar to Lee Gun. Of course, the man looked completely different from Lee Gun and was probably the original owner of the thirteenth Seat of power.
Before dying, however, the thirteenth had mumbled something to the woman who had come to kill him.
The woman had flinched at the words. However, the reaction lasted only a moment.
Kwah-jeek!!
The last remaining thirteenth had died at that woman’s hands. That woman was one of the twelve Zodiacs that they knew about.
Lee Gun and his affiliate disciples had all seen that face.
