Chapter 43
Chapter 43
[You have discovered a Hidden Dungeon.]
[This is a Trap Dungeon. Upon detection, you will immediately be transferred inside.]
[Recognized as an Easy Achievement.]
[You have received +5 bonus stat points.]
Hyunseok’s team was pulled into the dungeon, completely against their will. The moment they entered, Hyunseok instantly deployed his Battle Field. He had already finished analyzing the situation before they could even react.
So, once a Slayer discovers the dungeon, all other Slayers within the same field are forcibly transferred inside as well... regardless of intent.
That could be dangerous. If more dungeons like this appeared, then he couldn’t send Myunghoon to scout alone anymore.
Monsters are evolving... and even the dungeons themselves are changing.
Setting that aside, they needed to locate Myunghoon quickly. Jongwon also looked anxious, his face visibly tense.
But as if mocking their concern, Myunghoon suddenly waved his hand high. “Yo~!”
He looked completely different from the assistant Slayer beside him, while the man next to him was pale and near collapse, Myunghoon looked utterly calm.
“You’re a bit late, huh?”
“What the, are you okay?”
“You son of a—!”
Ha Jongwon yelled. Unlike the relatively composed Hyunseok and Myunghoon, Jongwon looked like he was about to burst into tears.
“You crazy bastard! You could’ve called to say you were alive!”
“Call? Inside a dungeon? Are you out of your damn mind? What’s wrong with you? Can’t you back off a little?”
Ha Jongwon, the top-tier Slayer in Korea, clung to Myunghoon, sniffling as he hugged him tight. The problem was, the Battle Field was still active, and Jongwon’s physical strength was so immense that even without malicious intent, Myunghoon’s H/P dropped slightly from the impact.
With a sigh, Pyeonghwa cast a healing spell to patch it up.
After that brief H/P mishap, Myunghoon started to explain.
“Well, I mean, there’s a safe zone here. I packed enough food and water. I figured you’d come find me eventually, so what was the rush? I just killed time repeating my Search skill practice.”
He really was a strange one. Trapped inside a dungeon for the first time, one he couldn’t even exit, and he had been relaxing, just training skills like it was nothing. Whether he was endlessly optimistic or just plain insane, Hyunseok couldn’t tell. Either way, Myunghoon really did seem unbothered.
Ha Jongwon snapped.
“Shut up, you damn Pinocchio. You weren’t whining or panicking at all, so admit it, you were scared shitless, weren’t you?”
Myunghoon froze mid-sentence, his calm face twitching.
“N-no way,” he said, voice trembling slightly.
Even he must’ve been nervous after all.
“The crybaby not crying for once, yeah, you were definitely scared.”
“I told you I wasn’t!”
Myunghoon’s voice rose defensively. Minseo and Pyeonghwa couldn’t help laughing a little at the ridiculous exchange.
The dungeon’s difficulty wasn’t particularly high. Sure, Hyunseok could just brute-force his way through traps, but the others couldn’t. Thankfully, they had two high-level Trappers who had mastered Advanced Search skills.
The Trappers carefully dismantled each trap, each disarm counted as a skill action and contributed to proficiency, and after about eight hours, the team cleared the dungeon.
The monsters that appeared were, as expected, Cyclopes and Trolls.
While fighting through the dungeon, Hyunseok confirmed his suspicion.
As I thought... that first Cyclops was abnormally strong.
Now the Cyclops they faced matched a proper Normal Mode level. The Inha Guild successfully cleared the dungeon and earned their Achievement rewards. The loot haul was huge: 100 Yellowstones and +5 bonus stat points.
For Lee Chaerim, adding the +15 stat bonus from the Turtle Monster brought her total gain to 20 stat points, just from spending one day alongside Hyunseok.
She thought to herself,
So this is why the top-ranked Slayers are all desperate to get on Hyunseok’s good side.
Rumors had been spreading among high-ranking Slayers, and now Chaerim understood why.
When they finally exited the dungeon, Korea was in an uproar.
But it wasn’t because of the Turtle Monster slaying, nor the eight-hour disappearance of a party that included a Platinum Slayer.
Hyunseok’s phone buzzed, it was Sunghyung.
—“Hyunseok.”
“Ah, yes. I was inside a dungeon, so I couldn’t pick up. Oh, and we rescued Myunghoon.”
Sunghyung made a short, impressed hum. “Hmm, I thought as much.” Then he continued,
—“You probably just came out, so you might not have heard yet... but did you get the news?”
“What news?”
—“About the rewards. The compensation issue. It’s blowing up, same as with the Cyclops, and now again with the Giant Turtle. The center of that storm, of course... is you.”
❋ ❋ ❋
The first person to raise the issue was Kim Yeonsu.
He was one of the three frontline team leaders who had met Hyunseok after the Cyclops raid, a Slayer Hyunseok had found interesting. Big, rough-looking, but with a strangely pure heart. The same man who had blushed and stammered, ‘My wife made me come…’
Despite that, he was undeniably talented, after all, being appointed a frontline team leader meant he was near top-tier in Korea.
Pure-hearted or not, Yeonsu was the kind of man who wouldn’t compromise when it mattered. And this time, he was firm.
“We didn’t slay the Cyclops. We merely pretended to while being protected by the Platinum Slayer. In truth, we were just in his way. All we did was survive under his protection.”
The top-tier Slayers already knew it, Hyunseok had carried the fight alone. They hadn’t contributed at all. If anything, Hyunseok had volunteered to protect the frontline team himself.
The resolve of the seventy-nine Slayers who had joined was admirable, and their courage genuine, but the results spoke for themselves.
“Even so, we received an Impossible Achievement score of thirty points each, and on top of that, we shamelessly split the Redstone reward evenly. That’s wrong. We should be paying the Platinum Slayer instead.”
His statement shook the Slayer community to its core.
For a while, people had been grumbling about the fairness of the “equal share” system in raids. Some guilds had already started dividing rewards based on contribution percentages rather than flat 1/N splits.
But Kim Yeonsu had brought the debate to the public.
He was already a nationally recognized defensive Slayer. When he openly called for change, the entire Slayer world erupted.
“Normal Dungeons already use a Party System that distributes Achievements and rewards based on contribution. We should do the same. At least in the case of the Cyclops, the Redstone belongs entirely to the Platinum Slayer. It’s not ours. Like I said, we owe him for saving our lives.”
His argument ignited public debate.
After all, Redstone wasn’t some cheap loot. The government’s initial valuation had been ₩10 billion, and its market price was still rising, already expected to exceed ₩15 billion.
That’s nearly ₩200 million per person. Even for rich people, ₩200 million wasn’t small change. Online articles exploded with heated comments:
“Differentiated rewards based on contribution make perfect sense.”
No one doubted the Platinum Slayer’s strength.
He had soloed an Impossible Cyclops raid, certified by the Japan Union. He had also defeated Ha Jongwon perfectly, and even Hyunseok’s duels against Slayers were clean sweeps.
In both monster raids and PvP combat, he was unparalleled. If not for him, the Cyclops raid would have ended like Japan’s, over 140 top-tier Slayers slaughtered.
Out of the 80 Slayers in that battle, about 70 agreed with Kim Yeonsu’s stance.
They all knew the Platinum Slayer’s value, and none wanted to make an enemy of him, not over a mere ₩200 million.
Sure, it wasn’t pocket change, but for top-class Slayers, it wasn’t worth tarnishing a relationship with Hyunseok.
[70+ Top-Ranked Slayers Support Kim Yeonsu’s Statement!]
[All Redstone Shares to Be Transferred to the Platinum Slayer!]
Hyunseok thought it over. ₩15 billion was a staggering amount to the average person, but to him? Not really. Just selling the Yellowstones he’d gotten from the latest dungeon would fetch ₩20 billion easily.
Should I just accept it?
After some thought, Hyunseok made his decision.
❋ ❋ ❋
The world buzzed with excitement, not only amazed by the Platinum Slayer’s achievements but also thrilled by his next move.
[Platinum Slayer Accepts the Slayers’ Offer!]
[70 Shares Transferred to the Platinum Slayer!]
[Platinum Slayer Announces He Will Donate All Proceeds to Society!]
[Warm Winds Sweep Across Korea’s Slayer Community!]
The Korean Union announced Hyunseok’s decision on his behalf.
Once the government finalized the Redstone’s price, he would receive the funds, but donate the entire amount.
Though exact details weren’t disclosed, part would go toward supporting Slayers, while the rest would aid orphanages and schools.
The story dominated social and economic news headlines.
[Leader of the Slayers — The 1/N Tradition Among Top-Tier Slayers Broken!]
[How Will Future Reward Systems Evolve?]
[Hanjin Corp Releases New Contribution-Tracking Device — Sells Out Instantly!]
Because of Hyunseok’s decision, a new wind swept through the Slayer world.
He hadn’t intended it, but the old equal-share model was being replaced, by a new era of contribution-based distribution.
Of course, debates still lingered over how exactly to measure “contribution,” but change was already in motion.
(End of Chapter 43)
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— Translated by Prime Works —