Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 667

◈ 667. Where Did Rembrary Go?

Woo Sungwoo, puzzled by his younger brother’s sudden words, asked,

“What are you talking about?”

Woo Yeonwoo raised his voice in excitement.

“This dish! It wasn’t empty when I gave it to Rembrary! There was cake in it! But now it’s empty, right?”

However, Hwasa intervened with a skeptical expression.

“Didn’t someone just pick up an empty dish lying around? Other people live here too, you know.”

Woo Yeonwoo, who had run over in joy, became irritated when no one acknowledged what he had discovered, and he bared his teeth.

“Rembrary took the cake and the plate and disappeared! But only the empty dish came back. So, Rembrary obviously ate it and left only the dish. If someone else had picked it up, they would have put the dish in the kitchen, not on my bedside table! It’s not even my personal dish, just one of the dishes in the kitchen, right?”

Listening to him, it sounded plausible. Hwasa, Daeju, Woo Sungwoo, and Shin Joowoon exchanged glances, belatedly considering the possibility.

Daeju leaned against the bookshelf and muttered.

“But why did he leave without seeing any of us… Could something bad have happened?”

Hwasa looked at the shiny plate and mumbled sullenly.

“He seemed to have eaten well enough for that to be the case.”

He had only said it to reassure himself, but the gazes that poured in were so fierce that Hwasa changed his words, mumbling.

“No… he seems alive… and well.”

Watching him, Shin Joowoon suddenly grabbed his car keys.

Hwasa flinched, thinking Shin Joowoon would throw the car keys at him, but Shin Joowoon was already running out of the house with the keys.

“Where are you going?”

Woo Yeonwoo asked urgently, but he was already too far away to hear the answer.

At his sudden action, the group looked at each other.

“Does the High Priest have any idea where he went?”
Daeju muttered, and Woo Sungwoo shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

Woo Yeonwoo stared gloomily at the empty dish and muttered.

“He could have left a note when he left.”

Hwasa raised his eyebrows. It seemed he was the only one curious about whose car keys Shin Joowoon had taken.

* * *

The place Shin Joowoon headed to in a hurry was the Demon Realm.

‘His clothes were said to have been dyed black.’

Shin Joowoon recalled Woo Sungwoo’s prophecy of the Black Priest and the story of the black eyes that Woo Yeonwoo had seen.

Simply because he decided to take on this case himself, his clothes wouldn’t change color.

Perhaps Rembrary had drunk the elixir of Binak, which he said he would drink later, right now.

‘If he drinks that elixir and sides with the Demon King, now would be the perfect time.’

In a situation where Rembrary is recognized as the main culprit who brought the Others [beings from other dimensions], what would people think if he abandoned his original side and sided with the Demon King as soon as he became disadvantaged?

That wouldn’t suddenly make people welcome the Others with open arms, but at least the direction of the arrows would be towards Rembrary and the demons, wouldn’t it?

Shin Joowoon guessed that Rembrary had acted with such calculations in mind and cursed inwardly.

‘That’s why saints are…’

In the past and now, he could not agree with the idea that saints are altruistic.

How could those who hurt the people around them to protect many people be called altruistic? He didn’t want to agree.

In any case, if Rembrary had become a Black Priest, he would want to save the Demon King, so he would have gone to the Demon King. He was likely to be near the Demon Realm.

Shin Joowoon, having arrived at his destination and stopped abruptly, hurriedly opened the car door and got out.

The car door slammed loudly behind him because he closed it too hard, but he had no time to check.

“!”

However, even he, who had rushed out so urgently, had to stop all his actions.

The place that was once the Demon Realm was completely different from before.

‘This is?’

Shin Joowoon frowned.

The high barrier was covered with thorny roses. There wasn’t even a small gap.

‘What happened?’

Shin Joowoon approached and pulled on a thornless vine.

Then, the thorns next to it slid over and pricked his finger. It was as if they had a will and were attacking the intruder.

Shin Joowoon let go of the vine.

He had only been pricked slightly, but blood was flowing from his hand.

He watched the blood that had fallen from his hand seep into the accumulated snow, then looked again at the Demon Realm covered in roses.

‘When I was driving here, it looked like an ordinary wall. What did they do?’

After thinking for a moment, Shin Joowoon tried to cover the roses with ice.

The roses froze well. But since everything was covered with roses, freezing them only completed a stronger ice rose wall.

He tried to break the wall with the ice, but it was no use. Only the ice broke. The roses remained fixed in place.

‘I see. These aren’t ordinary roses. Is this the seal that Piggy was talking about? Is the Demon King trapped like this inside?’

This time, Shin Joowoon added a thin layer of ice to the roses and shook them by the stems.

Again, it was no use. No matter how hard he shook, the tangled rose vines would not break. They just shook together as a whole.

‘If it’s an anomaly, I should ask someone strange. Sagamjae might know something.’

In the end, Shin Joowoon decided to ask for help from the most unrealistic being he knew and lowered his hand.

However, as he turned around, the moment he saw the car parked next to his and the person getting out of it, Sagamjae’s existence completely disappeared from Shin Joowoon’s mind.

The person who got out of the car was the deputy director of Mirage [a powerful organization].

‘Why is he here?’ Shin Joowoon’s eyes narrowed at the appearance of an unexpected person.

When their eyes met, the deputy director raised both hands halfway as if to signal that he hadn’t come to fight, and approached.

It was completely different from the way he had been wary of Shin Joowoon and Rembrary before.

He didn’t know why he was acting like that, but just because someone who had been an enemy all along suddenly acted like that didn’t mean he would suddenly feel good, so Shin Joowoon asked coldly.

“What’s going on?”

Despite the cold response, the deputy director apologized as soon as he arrived.

“I’m sorry. I misunderstood.”

At his submissive attitude, one of Shin Joowoon’s eyebrows rose.

“Misunderstood?”

The deputy director lowered his eyes.

“…I know it will sound shameless.”

“Misunderstood?”

“…I thought Rembrary was trying to put everything on Lumena and only take care of his own image. I realized it wasn’t true when I saw him covering up what the director did.”

“I see. Your goal was to ruin Rembrary’s image. Did you get what you wanted now? So, you came because you feel relieved?”

“That’s not it… I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry to me for?”

Shin Joowoon said with a smile at the deputy director’s words, who kept apologizing as soon as he arrived.

However, as soon as he finished speaking, Shin Joowoon’s fist struck the deputy director’s face.

“!”

Those who came with the deputy director saw it and tried to get out of the car, but the deputy director raised his hand to stop them.

It seemed that he really came to apologize.

The Mirage hunters hesitated but followed the deputy director’s instructions. They closed the car doors and got back inside.

Shin Joowoon took out a handkerchief and wiped his fist, asking for understanding in a public tone.

“Rembrary isn’t the type to punch you even if he saw you. I got angry for him. I apologized for him too, so it’s okay, right?”

Instead of falling for the twisted sarcasm, the deputy director glanced at the rose-covered barrier and answered.

“We have an Awakened [person with supernatural abilities] who sees the past.”

“…”

“I came to this area earlier and looked around. That friend said he saw something strange then.”

“Something strange?”

“Before this place was covered in roses, he said that several people who looked like people were pushed out of the Demon Realm.”

Shin Joowoon looked at the rose vines and turned his head towards the deputy director.

“Pushed out?”

“Yes. As if they were being forcibly pushed out from the inside.”

“Among them, perhaps-”

“No. Rembrary wasn’t there. I would have recognized him immediately if he was.”

The deputy director, who glanced at Shin Joowoon, added.

“I heard that Rembrary seems to be missing. I will help you find him.”

“Okay.”

Shin Joowoon didn’t want to associate with the deputy director.

However, Mirage’s ability to handle information was definitely great.

The story that Rembrary was missing was not a public story. It wasn’t even a confirmed story.

His group was just starting to worry about Rembrary’s condition and looking for him. But the deputy director already knew the news.

Even if he didn’t know anything else, Mirage was definitely surprisingly good at information.

Now that he couldn’t find Rembrary’s whereabouts, he had to borrow the power of that damn group if it would help.

“If you find any information, contact me.”

Shin Joowoon said that and turned around.

The deputy director would find Rembrary on his own. He seemed to be already specialized in information, so he didn’t need to get involved one by one.

What he needed to pay attention to was…

‘Sagamjae.’

Shin Joowoon, who had briefly forgotten about Sagamjae due to the appearance of the Mirage deputy director, got into the car and immediately called Sagamjae.

In less than a few seconds, the other party answered the phone right away.

-Yes.

Since it was a situation where every minute was precious, Shin Joowoon started the car and immediately asked the main point.

“Sagamjae. I want to meet you now about Rembrary. I’ll go there. Where are you?”

-The Underworld.

* * *

“Come here?”

-Can I go there?

“Why are you trying to come already… come in a few decades.”

Sagamjae thought Shin Joowoon was about to say something more, so he said, “I’ll hang up,” and hung up the phone.

Using a cell phone while going back and forth between the Underworld drains the battery quickly.

It seemed that Shin Joowoon had called urgently about Rembrary.

Either way, that was the topic he was just about to look into, so he couldn’t answer yet. So, he had no choice but to hang up.

“Did you finish the call?”

Sajikjae asked from the side.

“Yeah.”

“You should have explained it well before hanging up.”

“I hate that human.”

“That’s true.”

Sagamjae carefully turned off the phone’s power and started walking down the road to the Underworld again with Sajikjae.

“I’m going this way.”

Then, Sajikjae went to the side in the middle, and Sagamjae waved his hand and went to his destination alone.

The grim reapers lined up near Yeomra’s office glanced at Sagamjae as he passed them.

Sagamjae greeted only a few colleagues with a nod and headed straight to Yeomra without standing in line.

He had hung up the phone right away to Shin Joowoon, but Sagamjae also knew that the matter about Rembrary was urgent.

He had received a lot of help from Rembrary, so he wanted to help with this matter quickly.

“Your Majesty. It’s Gamjae.”

However, Sagamjae, who had approached near Yeomra, lost his quickness from before.

Sagamjae widened his eyes as he discovered the unexpected person next to Yeomra.