Chapter 05
“It wasn’t a dream.”
What I had seen while half-asleep had been reality, not a dream.
Before reaching level 100, it was true that leveling felt relatively easy.
However, they say that it takes an ordinary Hunter at least three years to go from level 1 to 100 unless they follow an elite course.
That’s because it is practically impossible to solo monsters capable of providing large amounts of experience.
Before going to sleep.
I had reminded Rakis once again of the location of the open dungeon we’d visited earlier.
I had even given him my debit card and told him to take a taxi if he had trouble finding it while going back and forth.
But since I hadn’t received any notification about card usage, it seemed he had stubbornly walked there and back.
Just then.
I heard some commotion coming from deeper inside the living room, so I poked my head out to take a look.
Rustle. Rustle.
Rakis, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, was sweating profusely as he mopped the floor with a wet cloth.
“Master, you’re awake? I couldn’t bring myself to wear your clothes without permission, so I provided for myself nearby!”
“You idiot… You look like a beggar.”
There was no doubt he’d rummaged through the used-clothing collection box near my house.
His clothes were torn here and there, and his appearance wasn’t exactly pleasant.
I wasn’t planning to make him wear armor all the time, so perhaps I’d become too obsessed with simply putting him to work.
I took some clothes out of my closet and handed them to him.
“Wear these. They’re among my top three favorite clothes, but I think they’ll look good on you.”
“Pardon? Am I allowed to wear them?”
“Think of them as a gift specially bestowed upon you by your master.”
“Wow…! Really? I, Rakis, will treasure and protect this gift with my life until the day I die!”
“I’ll buy you another pair if they get torn. So stop making such a fuss and just wear them.”
Did I make a mistake by saying they were among my three favorite clothes?
Rakis was deeply moved.
He hugged the clothes and pants as though they were sacred treasures and looked so happy that I felt like he might actually faint if I gave him a truly important gift.
He changed clothes quickly.
Perhaps because we were the same height, the length wasn’t a problem.
There was the fact that he was much more muscular than me, but my clothes were generally quite stretchy.
Since they were clothes I mostly wore at home, I had bought plenty of stretchy ones because they were comfortable.
They suited him well.
“Rakis. By the way.”
“Yes!”
“You said you were a senior knight of the Arslan Empire Special Forces. Do you really do chores like this yourself?”
“Pardon? There is no task our Special Forces cannot accomplish!”
“That’s not what I mean. I didn’t even tell you to mop the floor.”
“It is a subordinate’s first duty to anticipate their master’s wishes! Therefore, it is simply something I should naturally do!”
“Was the house that dirty?”
“…Ah! No, it wasn’t!”
Honestly, it had been dirty.
Since I lived alone, I’d always thought it was enough to clean everything at once every now and then.
Even I thought the living room was dirty, so someone who had served in an imperial order of knights might have found it irritating.
Of course.
There was no way the place where elite knights were trained could be dirty and unhygienic.
Unless they were unusually obsessive about cleanliness.
“What about food?”
“I ate! There was plenty to eat in the dungeon! I actually had fewer concerns about food than I did during my days in the Special Forces!”
“You… ate monsters?”
“Yes! Their meat was much better than the monsters of the Arslan Empire, and there was no gamey smell either! I procured the fire myself!”
What a thoughtful summoned beast.
He had even taken care of his meals outside and returned, saving me the cost of feeding him.
I didn’t think there was anything else I needed to take care of.
“…Hmm.”
I could see various minor spoils, starting with dimensional stones, piled up in front of the entrance.
Spoils that had accumulated while I was simply sleeping.
After reaching level 60.
The maximum number of items I could appraise per day had increased to six.
I planned to use all of those opportunities immediately.
I had plenty of loot to appraise, after all.
“Then.”
Before beginning the appraisals in earnest.
I first checked the messages I’d overlooked amid the chaos right after waking up.
I deleted useless advertising messages.
I skimmed through the messages that didn’t require replies and moved on.
Then I noticed that I had received a message from an older brother I’d gotten close to through the game.
[Little brother! When are you going to appraise my stuff?]
He was the only person I’d met through the game that I’d truly opened up to and remained close with.
I figured I’d reply after finishing all my appraisals.
‘I know he’s a Hunter too.’
I didn’t need to mention anything about being an Appraiser or having a summoned beast.
Maybe I could casually ask him about Hunters.
He had become a Hunter much earlier than me, after all, so he might be able to give me some useful advice. He was also a thoughtful person.
Of course, I had to appraise things first.
There was a lottery ticket right in front of me. There was no way I could resist scratching it.
However.
Grrrrrrr.
I was extremely hungry.
I should eat first.
Sadang Station’s Blue Third Tower stood in front of Exit 13.
It was a 25-story building owned by the Blue Guild, one of the Top 5 guilds in Seoul.
The First Tower was at Gangnam Station and served as the headquarters, while this building was considered a branch.
On the sixth basement floor of the Blue Third Tower.
In a place where even the air felt damp, a man and woman with similar features were together.
“Oppa. How long are you going to keep hiding your identity? Isn’t it annoying? It also limits your range of activity.”
A man was sprawled out on a sofa, repeatedly tossing a baseball into the air and catching it.
The person speaking to him was Jin Se-hee, whom I had previously seen at the open dungeon before abandoning her pursuit of my summoned beast.
The man was her biological older brother, Jin Se-hyeok.
“Who knows? I find this much more comfortable. I’m sick of paparazzi following me around and reporting things like which coffee shop a certain-ranked guild member went to today.”
“That’s just what happens when you’re famous!”
“So you enjoy that stuff for me. I heard the nail art shop you go to is booked for a whole month.”
“Well, yeah.”
“I’m not the type who enjoys attention like you or our eldest brother. Besides, our first brother is already doing a good job as the guild master and public face of the guild.”
Jin Se-hyeok shrugged.
His extremely pale skin clearly revealed a lifestyle accustomed to staying indoors.
“You’re probably the first Hunter in history to be over level 700 while only your family knows about it. And what’s this game? Why play such a boring game?”
Jin Se-hee grumbled as she looked at the game displayed on the monitor.
The world and challenges of Hunters were far more exciting than a game, yet Jin Se-hyeok particularly enjoyed this one.
Unlike Jin Se-hyeok, whose face was completely absorbed in the game, Jin Se-hee looked bored.
At level 700, he was one of the strongest Hunters in all of South Korea.
He was strong enough to easily take the number-one position in most guilds.
That was why, if he only stepped into the public eye, he could probably attract every trend and all kinds of attention!
But seeing him constantly holed up in a room like this was frustrating.
Then.
Jin Se-hyeok suddenly asked Jin Se-hee, who wouldn’t have come without a reason.
“But why did you come?”
“Oh, right. Something strange happened yesterday. No, actually, something scary happened.”
“What?”
“I went to Kakuar Ruins, and a One-Hit Killer title appeared for killing the Orc King.”
“You can’t kill the Orc King in one hit either, can you? Its skin is unusually tough, so you’d normally need to hit it several times.”
“Exactly! Since it happened nearby, I tried to track down who did it, and it turned out the Orc King had been killed by a summoned beast.”
“Then I guess its summoner killed it.”
“Come on! Do you think I’d be surprised by something like that? What shocked me was… there wasn’t a summoner anywhere near that blonde summoned beast.”
“Couldn’t he have been hiding somewhere?”
“It was at the point where the canyon opened into the plains, and there wasn’t a single person around.”
“Hmm…”
“That wasn’t all. It even detected me while I was hiding and warned me not to follow it!”
“What? That’s possible?”
Jin Se-hee’s specialty, Absolute Stealth, was so refined that even Jin Se-hyeok, an expert himself, couldn’t accurately pinpoint her location.
If a summoned beast had detected Absolute Stealth, then the skill of the summoner controlling it was obvious without even seeing them.
“It seemed like… a game?”
“If it could detect your Absolute Stealth, even a Hunter who had maximized their senses would have to be at least level 700.”
“Exactly. I backed off because I thought I’d get myself into trouble by following it. That’s the first time I’ve ever had my stealth detected so completely. Honestly… it was a little scary.”
“Interesting. Who could it be?”
Who could be a summoner with senses sharp enough to detect Absolute Stealth?
At least among the well-known summoner Hunters in Korea, there probably wasn’t anyone like that.
As far as Jin Se-hyeok was concerned, all of them had too many weaknesses. There was no way they could possess such meticulous senses.
He hadn’t been particularly interested in the outside world.
But Jin Se-hee’s story sparked his curiosity for the first time in a long while.
A summoner who had raised a summoned beast powerful enough to kill an Orc King in one hit.
And furthermore, a summoner who had immediately seen through even Absolute Stealth, something that was difficult even for him to detect.
Who was he?
“Se-hee, that blonde summoned beast you saw. Do you know exactly what he looked like?”
His younger sister was far more meticulous than he was when evaluating other people.
A summoned beast that had made that sister nervous and frightened.
And the summoner who had been controlling it with such ease.
He suddenly wanted to meet that person.
At the same time.
“What is this dish called?”
“Bibimbap.”
“You put everything in and mix it, so it’s called bibimbap?”
“That’s right.”
“Please teach me the recipe! From now on, I shall mix it myself and serve it directly to you, Master!”
“Forget that. You’ve finished eating, so go wash the dishes over there. I’ll be doing some appraisals.”
“Yes, understood!”
We had just finished eating bibimbap.
It was quite the strange sight to see a high-level knight capable of slicing through rock walls with aura wearing an apron and preparing to wash dishes.
The contrast was so extreme every time I saw it that I couldn’t help laughing.
I decided to check the dimensional stones first.
There were twenty-two 6th-grade dimensional stones.
Each one was traded for 100 million won.
That meant I could go to the market right now and immediately add 2.2 billion won to my balance.
‘My summoned beast made 2.2 billion won while I was sleeping.’
No matter how I thought about it, it didn’t feel real.
The dimensional stones were only the beginning.
There was the axe I’d postponed appraising yesterday.
On top of that, there were two 9th-grade summoned beast cards Rakis had brought back from the dungeon. Naturally, their options weren’t very good.
Next.
‘One 8th-grade pair of shoes worth 100 million won. One bracelet worth 10 million won.’
That left a total of five items to appraise.
Assuming I sold everything.
Rakis had brought back 2.3 billion won worth of items while I was sleeping.
At this point, I wondered if I should actually be serving Rakis as my master instead…
If I really started putting Rakis to work, he would probably bring back far more than this.
‘The axe is a dud.’
When I picked up the axe, it didn’t shine.
That meant there was no hidden option that could be added through appraisal, so there was no reason to waste an opportunity on it.
I set it aside, intending to give it to Rakis as a secondary weapon, and picked up the pair of shoes next to it.
‘It’s shining!’
The reaction was completely different from the axe.
It meant there was a hidden option.
These 8th-grade shoes had +20 Agility as their option. That was the average stat boost for an 8th-grade item.
I immediately proceeded with the appraisal.
[Appraisal complete!]
[You have discovered a hidden option and unlocked the power of the shoes anew!]
Papapapapat…!
I watched as the number 20 attached to the stat option began rapidly counting upward.
The number shot upward so abruptly that it looked like a spring suddenly bouncing into the air.
At the same time.
“7… 6…!”
The item’s grade began changing as well.
Whenever the grade number decreased by one.
The price increased tenfold in reverse.
And yet the item’s value had already increased a hundredfold in the blink of an eye.
