Chapter 219 - Witchy Study-III

Seoyeon wondered how and what they should do to contact the hunters. Seeing that the Associates were heavily guarded as secret and were not known to humans, she doubted it would be easy to meet the hunters. To mention, she recalled Jung Hwa telling her how Hunters hated him for violent reasons.

"How could we contact the hunters?" questioned Seoyeon to Jung Hwa. Inside the room, he was with the most knowledge and authority to find and talk with the hunters. If the specialized group was more secluded, it would be harder to find them.

Min Beomgyu was also curious. He could tell Jung Hwa was prideful and news of him battering the Hunters that came on his path one sidedly was also known to both Associates and Hunters. It was surprising if he had someone he knows there when he was treated like a rabid dog. 

"I have my ways. Some people who I know well," saying this, Jung Hwa's eyes stopped at Seoyeon and he smiled meaningfully without Seoyeon noticing who the person he knows was. "Moving on, have you conjured ways to find what type of witch Seoyeon is?" The question was directed to Min Beomgyu who gave a prompt nod.

"I did. The best that I could is differentiating between a dark or white witch as I have not discovered other type of witches yet, but if Miss Seoyeon failed the test of the white and dark witch, we could safely secure that she belongs to other types of witches and we could move to find her power to pinpoint which color of witch she is."

That sounds like an easy plan but not when put to practice, thought Seoyeon to herself. "What should I do?" As Jung Hwa didn't stop her, it meant that she could continue doing what the white witch offered.

"I would need your blood on this vessel," Min Beomgyu pulled a wooden bowl to the table before taking a full bottle of water with a liquid that was clear in color. When the liquid was moved to the bowl, Seoyeon saw the liquid to be thick and bubbles of water appeared inside the bowl. "Here," the white witch gave a small dagger that was the size of a kitchen knife that was used to cut fruits.

He didn't forget to bring a book beside him as if this was a ritual that reminded Seoyeon it was. This would be her first time seeing a witch performing ritual and it would be for her. 

To lessen the tense situation in the room that Min Beomgyu could take after seeing  Seoyeon's expression where he felt that the fellow witch was reluctant as if afraid to know what type of witch she belongs to, he began to explain, "Most of the time witches are categorized as evil but in truth, in the past, there had been records of them using their blessed power to protect, help, and heal people."

"The white witch and the rest of the colored witches you mean?" inquired Seoyeon. 

"Yes except the dark witch. I think there was a book about the dark witches and there it said they live separately from others in a very secluded place where they kept themselves around a man eating forest," said Min Beomgyu, and hearing this, Seoyeon looked at Jung Hwa. Their eyes met and she noticed the book said by Min Beomgyu was the same book she had been reading with Jung Hwa. In the book, Jung Hwa said that the author was trying to allude some secrets in subtle methods. 

"But they were told to be extinct," Jung Hwa said. He knew after talking with the fortune teller the dark witch turn to be extinct because of the catalyst who now posses Seoyeon's body. 

"Like the rest of the colored witches," continued Min Beomgyu, "No one knows whether it was true or not. The past was not written well and no person could live for more than four hundred years which limits our knowledge of dark witches and other colored witches."

"I remembered reading this somewhere," said Jung Hwa to gain the eyes of the two people who were in the room. "In the past, there are humans with powers that could not be explained. These people were named by others with different words. Some call them magicians, but as the holders of power in the past were mostly women they were soon to be called 'witches'." 

Min Beomgyu agreed to Jung Hwa's words with a thoughtful nod. It was not often that people would study witches and the likes as they were written as extinct. Min Beomgyu had agreed to work hand in hand with Jung Hwa in exchange for his protection, but truthfully he doesn't mind working in the case of witches with Seoyeon and Jung Hwa as it helped him gain more facts about witches.

"Some of them were gifted with the power of seeing the future or the past, others I learned was the power of moving things without lifting them physically, and one power that I was amazed at is where they could see the current events from a great distance. Other powers are yet to be found or discovered but the power is no less strong." 

Seoyeon watched the white witch explained about the powers with a zealous expression on his face, seeming to be excited. Even though Jung Hwa said the white witch agreed to help her for his survival, she could only see the man as being overexcited to have friends with who he could talk about witches. 

Jung Hwa hummed, feeling interested in the useful powers.  Although the power was not as effective as his own, it was quite useful at times. "Seoyeon had also been dreaming of some oddly pragmatic dream of the past. Just like one power that you stated earlier." 

Min Beomgyu leaned forward to the table, over to Seoyeon with a glimmering glitter on his eyes like a child who had just been told they would be receiving a toy. This reaction of Min Beomgyu confirmed Seoyeon that the man was more interested in knowledge than other things.

With a brow lifted, Jung Hwa raised his feet under the table after seeing the white witch's posture where the man almost leaned on the table to lean his half upper body. His feet arrived on Min Beomgyu's knees, and with a light push, the man's body fell behind. Min Beomgyu gave Jung Hwa a surprised look to understand what he did and leaned back to take a better posture of sitting.

Clearing his throat twice, Min Beomgyu the turn at Seoyeon, "Can I ask what kind of dream it was about?" 

"It was a dream about the past. I don't remember it clear as it was about two or three days ago. In the dream, I was in a forest. There were people dressed in cloaks searching for a buried coffin," Seoyeon spoke slowly while remembering if she can recount any other details, "I heard one of them saying that they had taken their instruction from the queen."

"That is an odd dream. We don't have a queen in this time of period," said Min Beomgyu with his head cocked to the side in a puzzle. 

Seoyeon agreed with Min Beomgyu's as she had the same penny of thought. 

"I also think I dreamt of the past, but I can't tell whose past it belongs to," saying this Seoyeon turn to look at Jung Hwa for their eyes to meet. He hadn't been looking away from her. Leaning back on his chair, Jung Hwa found a better position for him to admire Seoyeon's profile.

Meeting her eyes, he pulled a smile and chuckled when Seoyeon quickly look away as if embarrassed.

"Can I assume Mister Jung was not yet born when the country was ruled by a monarch?" Min Beomgyu inquired.

"I was not." Jung Hwa replied, and he was the one to ask next, "When she woke up, her feet were filled with blisters as if she was walking barefooted around the forest. Can a person enter a dream but feel the pain they experience in their dream?"

"No, a pragmatic dream can not transport the body of the dreamer to the dream, as their consciousness separated from their body to dream; physically their body is present in the real world so if they received wounds in their dream, it should not affect their real body." 

"But I felt that I was there." As much as it sounded impossible, that was what Seoyeon felt, and she trusts her inner feeling. "I don't know how to describe this, but it feels to me that I was there, physically." 

Jung Hwa said from beside her, "If you were gone from your room, I would be the first one to know your disappearance. Your heartbeat stayed the same in your room, which means your body is present in the room."

Seoyeon pulled her brows in concentration. How could she be wounded if it was a dream? She thought at first the wounds came as a side effect of her dream too realistic, but as only her consciousness travel to the dream, Min Beomgyu claimed that it was impossible.

After some thought, Min Beomgyu said, "Could it be that your dream was not a pragmatic dream but a lucid dream?"