“Well, look at you. Must be nice.”
I slowly opened my eyes to a familiar face.
“Did you come here for a picnic? Who sleeps in the middle of a Gate?”
I must have dozed off. I shamelessly denied it.
“I wasn’t sleeping. Who says I was?”
“Wipe the drool off your mouth before you start lying.”
“Tch.”
“Oh, you little—”
He shook a fist at me, but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. I rubbed my stiff neck.
“Ugh, I’m tired.”
“Did you meet a woman yesterday? Why are you nodding off like a sick chicken even in the middle of a raid?”
“When would I have time to meet a woman? You know my situation.”
“True enough.”
We’d been through thick and thin together for five years, ever since our first battle. He knew me as well as I knew him.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“What do you think? Money.”
“Money? Don’t tell me you’re moonlighting.”
His voice dropped. I looked past his shoulder at the team members resting nearby and nodded.
“Well, well. This bastard gets a little experience under his belt and starts lining his pockets on the side. And you call yourself the vice team leader.”
“Raids have been scarce lately, and I’m strapped. Really strapped. You’ve done it yourself, hyung1, so don’t give me that.”
Hunters with professional licenses were legally barred from taking second jobs. A D-rank Hunter probably wouldn’t have to live like this, but F-ranks like us had no choice. The Guild knew how things were, so they looked the other way even when they found out.
“True, but… be careful. If someone files a complaint with the Management Agency, you’ll have a real mess on your hands.”
“It’s a trustworthy place. They pay cash the same day, so there’s no problem. You think I’d risk it otherwise?”
“Really?”
Judging by his expression, he was tempted.
“Do you need money too, hyung1?”
“I’ve got three kids. I need an oil well to spring up in my yard.”
Misery filled his eyes as the words poured out. I’d already heard this routine dozens of times. After railing against the hardships of raising children, the rising price of formula, and the shamelessness of merchants, he patted me on the shoulder.
“Don’t get married.”
“I won’t.”
More precisely, I couldn’t.
I had no woman and no money. My goal in life was to buy a house in a safe zone within five years, so deep down, I envied him.
A spouse I loved. Children. A happy family.
I had no idea when I’d ever have something like that.
“Marriage is a swamp.”
For all his talk, he was famous for being a devoted husband and a good father. I knew he sometimes took out his family photos and smiled fondly at them.
“It sucks your whole life in. By the time you come to your senses, you’re buried up to your chest and can barely breathe.”
“…”
Maybe I’d had the wrong idea about him.
“So don’t spend all your time working. Take breaks. Dating, hobbies—stuff like that’s good for you.”
“I don’t know. I still need the money.”
I scratched my head as I answered. He gave me a concerned look.
“I saw you sleeping earlier. You were drenched in cold sweat. Keep that up and you’ll drop dead from overwork.”
“Was I?”
Now that he mentioned it, my back was damp with cold sweat. I must have had a bad dream….
Can’t remember.
Probably just some stupid dream anyway.
A Gate.
These days, Gates provided a living for Hunters like me, but their true purpose was to serve as invasion routes for the armies of the Demon Realm.
When Demon King Asmodeus fell, his mighty army was routed with him. But even decades later, the Gates remained.
“Defensive formation!”
At his command, three Hunters carrying enormous tower shields blocked the path ahead. In a narrow cave, that alone was enough to stop most attacks.
Clang! Clang-clang!
“Giiiiik!”
Some twenty goblins hurled poison needles, axes, and spears, but every last one bounced off those big, beautiful tower shields.
“Archers!”
The tanks blocked every attack from the front while the archers rained arrows from the rear. As we pressed forward and took down nearly half of them, the goblins let out panicked shrieks.
“Gyaaaah!”
“Kieek!”
He gave the next order at exactly the right moment.
“Attack formation!”
The tanks dropped their tower shields and burst forward at the same time. I was faster.
“Hah!”
I swept the iron spear through a wide arc. Green blood burst into the air, and the front rank collapsed. I plunged into the gap, stabbing and slashing at everything within reach, and their formation crumbled.
“Charge!”
The damage dealers and tanks piled in. In moments, the goblin pack had become a heap of corpses.
“Pretty easy today, huh?”
“Honestly, the vice team leader did half the work. He was flying around out there. When did he get that good…? Shh. The Team Leader’s pissed.”
The team members chatting among themselves fell silent the moment he appeared.
“Hey, Jin Taekyung!”
That made me jump.
I’d been staring into space, lost in thought, and jerked in surprise.
“What?”
“Who told you to go off on your own? Are you a tank? Did you forget the attack order? And you still call yourself the vice team leader?”
“That’s not—”
“If you’re going to pull this kind of shit, transfer teams. You’re putting everyone else in danger.”
I looked at his grim face and sighed.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. They just… suddenly didn’t seem like a big deal. I must have lost it for a second.”
It was a strange feeling. The instant I saw the goblin pack, I thought I could wipe them all out by myself.
No, it hadn’t been a thought.
It had been certainty.
“You…”
He swallowed whatever he had been about to say. We’d had each other’s backs for five years, and this was the first time I’d ever done anything so reckless.
“Don’t do it again. If something’s bothering you, tell me.”
He patted my shoulder and walked away. As I watched him go, something in my chest throbbed.
Should I see a doctor?
But it wasn’t long before I stopped thinking about the pain altogether.
“Magic Gem!”
“Got one here!”
“Another!”
“It dropped! It dropped! It dropped!”
“Mom! Hayeon!”
Ah, that last shout was mine.
His face was flushed with excitement too as he muttered, “What the hell is all this…?”
Twenty Magic Gems of various sizes lay neatly arranged on the ground.
Magic Gems. They looked like red pebbles, but they were known as the flower of the Gate. These concentrations of magical power found inside monsters were a form of higher-dimensional energy—and the most valuable of all monster byproducts.
“At this rate, each one’s got to be worth over a million won.2”
That came from the Team Leader, an E-rank Hunter who had survived ten years in this business. Everyone’s eyes went glassy at the intoxicating sight.
“Is it normally like this?”
At the new recruit’s question, everyone shook their heads emphatically.
“Absolutely not.”
An F-rank Gate yielded one or two on average. Even with incredible luck, you wouldn’t find five.
I was busy doing the math.
Twenty million won3 from the Magic Gems alone, another five million won4 for the byproducts and Equipment. Add all the various allowances and…
Fuck. How much is all this?
It was the biggest jackpot I’d hit since becoming a Hunter.
And the raid wasn’t even over yet.
“How far have we come?”
“We’re almost there. Turn right and the boss zone is just ahead.”
The words boss zone made everyone’s eyes light up.
It went without saying, but a boss zone contained a boss. The boss monster was the strongest monster in the Gate—and the one with the most expensive byproducts, Equipment, and Magic Gems.
What if we take down the boss monster too?
It would be a literal jackpot. The opportunity of a lifetime for an F-rank Hunter.
Everyone was beaming at the thought when he spoke.
“Wait. Let me think.”
What the hell was he saying?
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. Every monster we’ve encountered has been an ordinary goblin, but we’ve found this many Magic Gems? Something’s wrong.”
He sighed. His face was still flushed with excitement, but now uncertainty clouded it.
“I know how you feel. I do… but we’ve already made a fortune. Let’s be satisfied with this and turn back.”
Satisfied?
Now? After coming this far, he wanted to turn back?
I looked at the other team members. Some of them had fought alongside me for two or three years. Others were new.
Every one of them wore the same expression I did.
“I’m against—”
My breath caught.
Damn it. The chest pain again.
I tried to continue, but no sound came out. Now my ears had started ringing too.
What is this?
The pain and the ringing grew worse. I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath.
Someone. Please, help me.
I grabbed someone’s pant leg and clung to it.
It was him. The man who had looked after me like a brother—and like a father—for the past five years.
Hyung.1 Please save me.
He looked down at me without emotion.
“Me? After you ran away and left everyone behind?”
What?
“I wanted to live too.”
I forgot the pain and stared up at him. His clothes and skin melted away, exposing bone.
Everyone but me had become skeletons, sprawled across the ground.
Ah. That’s right.
They had all died.
That day two years ago. In the boss zone I had insisted we enter, every one of them had died.
I was the only one who survived.
I floundered, drowning in the memories.
The ominous darkness hanging over the boss zone. The foul stench. The damp floor. That thing’s enormous wings.
Bodies ripped to pieces in midair.
Terrified screams.
People running for their lives.
You fucking bastard!
But even the Skill I poured everything into wasn’t enough to kill it. As I waited for death, he hauled me to my feet.
“Taekyung!”
“Hyung,1 I’m sorry. It was all my fault.”
If it hadn’t been for me—if I hadn’t gotten greedy—everyone could have survived.
They could have gone home to their families.
As I sobbed like a child, he forced himself to smile.
“How is that your fault? Look at this kid. Now you’re even trying to play Team Leader.”
The massive body drifted through the cave. Stalactites rained down, and the last member of the team let out a death cry. In the darkness, its red eyes turned toward us.
“That arrogant bastard. Taekyung, go on ahead.”
“Hyung.1 Cheonsu hyung!”
My chest hurt.
Pain surged through me, fierce enough to blot out my vision. It felt as though I had swallowed lava, as though everything inside me was burning away.
The ringing in my ears became a monster’s roar.
Kyaaaaau!
“Hyung1—!”
I woke with a scream.
But I wasn’t inside a Gate. There were no monsters and no team members.
Someone rose from beside the window, where sunlight streamed into the room.
“Were you dreaming about my lord? He’ll be pleased when I tell him.”
Coldness dripped from his face.
Wipeng, Jin Wikyung’s right-hand man.
The sight of him drove home the fact that I was still inside the game.
“Are you all right?”
“No. It was a nightmare.”
“Then I’ll leave that part out when I tell him.”
“Suit yourself.”
My entire body was drenched in sweat. Through the gaps between the bandages wrapped tightly around me, I could see skin crusted with scabs.
“How long was I out?”
“You were unconscious for five days. Your condition was so critical that the Medicine King Hall Master concluded you wouldn’t last the day.”
“Really?”
“Yes. When my lord heard, he flew into a rage. If I hadn’t stopped him, he would have beaten the Medicine King Hall Master to death.”
“Ah.”
I remembered the old man from the meeting a few days ago—the one who had threatened to drive a giant needle into the White Tiger Hall Leader’s anus.
So he’d practically been praying for me to die.
“Did anything else happen?”
“A great deal. Among it all, there is good news and even better news. Which would you like to hear first?”
“The good news.”
“First, the reconnaissance squad and the survivors of the Sakju Branch returned safely. Two of them suffered fairly serious injuries, but neither is in danger of dying.”
Survivors.
The word made my heart drop.
Number Seven.
I remembered his face as he gasped out his final breath, one dagger lodged in his throat and another between his brows.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty.
Far too young to die.
“Are you thinking about the dead?”
“The body—did they recover the body?”
“We recovered and buried him properly. He was an orphan with no family in the world, so there were no relatives to notify.”
“…”
“May I say something?”
Wipeng didn’t wait for my answer. He took a step toward me and continued.
“Third Young Master, do not turn your subordinate’s death into a dog’s death.”
“What does that…”
“Martial artists are not beings meant to be protected. They are people who fight their enemies and prove themselves. He died facing an enemy too strong to do anything about, but that was not mere death—it was death in battle.”
The notion that dying on a battlefield somehow made it an honorable death was the biggest load of bullshit I had ever heard.
There was no such thing as an honorable death.
Even now, I could vividly hear the screams of my comrades who had died two years ago. I could still see Number Seven’s wide-open eyes as he breathed his last.
“The fact that he’s dead hasn’t changed.”
“I have seen people obsess over facts that can never be changed. I won’t name anyone.”
“…”
“Do you regret it?”
“Of course.”
“Then live enough for him as well.”
Wipeng continued in a gentler voice than I had ever heard from him.
“I am not telling you to forget the dead. Bury them in your heart and carve them into your mind. Use that regret as your foothold, then soar to the place they dreamed of reaching. That is the path you must walk, Young Master.”
The path I must walk…
Just hearing those words made something in my chest lurch. I turned them over for a while, then let out a sudden laugh.
“Damn. I’ll break a leg before I get there.”
“It will take a lifetime.”
“If I devote my whole life to it, will I make it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know where my own path will end, so how could I know yours?”
“What’s waiting at the end of your path, Great Hero Wipeng?”
“The greatest under heaven.”
A joke?
No. Wipeng was more serious and resolute than I had ever seen him.
“That’s a hard one.”
“Because it is a dream.”
He was right. Dreams were always difficult to achieve.
All the more so when you carried the dreams of those you had lost.
“Great Hero Wipeng. May I ask you one thing?”
“Anything.”
“That guy. What was his name?”
“His name was…”
The moment Wipeng’s lips parted, a cold winter wind rattled the window.
Whoooosh.
Beyond the chill howl of the wind, I heard Number Seven’s name.
“That’s a great name.”
“I heard he chose it himself. His dream was every bit as grand.”
“What was it?”
“To become the greatest of all time.”
“…”
“You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“Tell me about it. That’s ridiculous.”
A laugh escaped me. Only then did I feel the weight in my heart lift.
It was all thanks to Wipeng.
“You’re finally back to your old self.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Wipeng tipped his head and spoke.
“Now, there is still the even better news.”
Ah. Right.
Good news and even better news.
I waited eagerly to hear what he would say next.
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