Nymphs and Dark Ha Ildo # 2
This was a T-Rank Rift.
A calamity left behind in the modern age—and, at the same time, a chance to strike it rich beyond imagining.
This particular rift, T-771, swarmed with giant knights wielding massive flaming swords, and its danger level burned so fierce that only S-Rank Awakeners were permitted to set foot inside.
Grooooooar—!
A giant of flame brought its five-meter blade down in a crushing arc.
"Hey! Seo Yerim! Watch out! Ice barrier—now!"
Shunk—!
Cha Yura thrust out her hand, and a towering wall of thick ice erupted from the ground.
The barrier was as solid as reinforced steel, and it stopped the giant knight's sword cold—but the full force of the impact slammed straight through into Seo Yerim behind it.
KWAAANG—!
"Kgh—!?"
Seo Yerim was thrown violently backward.
Sprawled on the ground, her palms scraped raw and skin abraded, she was furious—and that fury instantly became an unbearable blaze.
"One mind, one purpose—! Superheated Hell!"
Fwaaaaaaah—.
White light erupted around Seo Yerim's body.
The flame giants were minions of Muspelheim, the Land of Flames.
To them, ordinary fire was nothing more than added strength—.
But Seo Yerim's flames had grown far stronger through everything she'd endured of late, surpassing red, blazing through blue, and now burning close to pure white.
"Y-you're telling me I, the very embodiment of flame, would burn to death in fire? What kind of idiocy is—aaagh—. Surtr—. Your knight Kenazyom is the one who… vanishes first…."
Fwaaaaaaarugh—!
The Flame Knight, the boss of the rift, ultimately crumbled into the flames and was reduced to drifting ash.
Only then did Seo Yerim finally let out the breath she'd been holding—hoo—.
"Throwing your weight around over nothing!"
"Hey! You alright?"
Cha Yura hurried over to her.
Seo Yerim's custom-made suit was melting away under the searing heat, and the shockwave from the giant's sword had struck her directly—several of her ribs on one side felt as if they'd cracked.
"Damn it—. And we've still got two more T-Rank rifts to clear—."
Clicking her tongue through the pain, Seo Yerim spat out her frustration.
While Cha Yura and Seo Yerim had been away attending a Telos executive meeting—disguised, technically, as vacation—T-Rank rifts had piled up across Korea, and clearing them was, as ever, the two women's responsibility.
Sssss—.
Cha Yura pressed her cool hands against Seo Yerim's suit, soothing and cooling the injured area like a compress.
"How about it? Should I take the next rift alone? You'd be better off getting treatment."
"No. The condition of the T-Rank rifts has been strange lately. The bosses keep getting stronger. What if you go alone and get hurt even worse?"
"Well, fair point. Though whining over injuries like these means you can't do an Awakener's job in the first place."
After that, the two of them cleared every last one of the backlog of T-Rank rifts.
Cha Yura and Seo Yerim both took wounds and wear—but that kind of thing never made the papers.
S-Rank Awakeners were humanity's hope, its guiding light.
Because if they so much as wavered, the peace that countless sacrifices had painstakingly rebuilt would begin to crumble.
"People only see our glamorous side. Do you think anyone appreciates that we're breaking our backs like this?"
Cha Yura was the President's daughter.
As someone who stood above others, she had accepted the crushing weight of duty that came with the position—but even so, sometimes her spirits simply sagged.
Seo Yerim spoke up for her.
"It's not like we do this for praise in the first place, is it? Cha Yura, if you're going to talk that weak, you might as well quit."
"Excuse me? You're the one who should quit! You're ranked below me! And of course, don't actually quit! Korea only has two S-Rank Awakeners—if you retire, I'm the one who suffers!"
Once upon a time, there had been the option of borrowing an S-Rank Awakener from abroad, the way they'd brought in Desperado—Cassie—.
But that created international debts.
If it were at all possible, Cha Yura hoped for another S-Rank Awakener to be born right here in Korea.
"Even with that rotten personality of his, Lee Jeonghun's skills were the real deal. Ugh, damn it. That's an unpleasant thought."
Shwip—.
Cha Yura pulled out a candy made by the nymphs and popped it into her mouth.
Sssssss—.
She could feel her body recovering.
There was a reason the two of them could keep bearing a workload meant for three, and it owed a great deal to the help they'd received from the nymphs.
Cha Yura and Seo Yerim rose to their feet once more.
After tidying their faces and hair, they stepped out of the rift and waved brightly toward the camera flashes of the reporters who had been waiting outside.
Pop! Pop-pop-pop—!
Amid that dazzling glare, Seo Yerim thought to herself.
There's no telling how much longer we can hold out like this. Ha Ildo, you lazy slug. Quit slacking off down there and climb back up already, you hear me?
Drurrrk, drurrrk—.
Oinoi shook the piggy bank up and down, this way and that.
"The pig has grown heavy with mystic donation coins piled up in abundance…! This Oinoi is forever grateful to the mystic donation coins…!"
Bow, bow—.
Oinoi bowed her head in every direction.
According to Oinoi, mystic coins appeared of their own accord under the bed, beneath the refrigerator, and in all sorts of other places.
I never actually witnessed it myself, but Oinoi didn't seem like the type to lie about it.
If it were true, it would be remarkable in any number of ways.
"This Oinoi…! Dreams of saving up coins diligently to build a swimming pool in the yard…! Dreams of bringing lots and lots of nymphs and splashing around to her heart's content…!"
Oinoi wanted to gather coins earnestly for the sake of that dream.
I'd promised to cheer her on, but I figured I couldn't just sit on my hands either.
"Guess I'll check the news."
T-Rank Rifts Obliterated One and All!
With the S-Rank re-evaluation just around the corner, attention turns to shifting rankings among Korea's S-Rankers—.
The news was full of stories about how Seo Yerim and Cha Yura had crushed every last T-Rank rift.
Someday I want to make the papers like that too—thinking that, just in case, I searched my own name on social media.
And—.
For the first time in ages, my name was sitting right up in the most-recommended posts?
Heart pounding, I clicked the thread.
Seems like Ha Ildo's about to climb to S-Rank?
I think the government should spare no expense supporting him.
Also the dog-squirrel is so cute and the new tiger owl is insane whoa
My name was apparently starting to get famous again, quietly but surely.
In particular, this user going by SupportiveWife—Keongkeongi had been posting about me once a day, like clockwork.
A dog-squirrel lover, maybe?
Or perhaps a fan who'd fallen for my exploits.
Shwip—.
I tapped at the keyboard and left a comment.
Replies came flooding in.
I went through them hammering the upvote button on every single one.
Truly satisfying.
It felt like one more step closer to my dream of becoming the greatest S-Rank Awakener.
Teel-talk!
Just then, my phone rang.
"Oh."
Was the hacking of the bag seized from Ki Seung-jae nearly finished?
I trembled in more ways than one.
No doubt something like a colossal secret weapon would be inside.
Shwip—.
I stepped out into the yard.
━Hoo, hoo—.
━Hoouu, hoouu—.
At the sound of fluttering wings, I turned my head to see tiger owls perched in the trees here and there, calling out to one another.
"They are the flock that follows Kalinoi, the Prime Tiger Owl…! Smaller than Kalinoi, to be sure, but every last one of them a splendid tiger owl…!"
The tiger owls were indeed smaller than Kalinoi.
Only a bit larger than an ordinary owl.
But they were magnificently sturdy creatures, and each individual was said to possess physical abilities rivaling a C-Rank monster or better.
"Mr. Ildo! How do you go about taming a tiger owl?"
"You got close with Kalinoi the tiger owl, didn't you? Share your secrets with us!"
Word of the tiger owls had clearly spread—Primeval Village was still bustling with visitors.
Thanks to all these people flocking in to catch themselves an animal, a café had opened in the village, and even a chain shop selling thirty-one flavors of ice cream had set up stakes.
"What matters is the heart. Tiger owls are fiercely wary, so they don't open up easily. But once you've earned their trust, they say they'll lay down their lives for a companion."
━Hoo, hoo…!
Kalinoi pitter-pattered in circles around me—tatatatat—.
She nuzzled my face and body with her feathers and beak, and the onlookers marveled, murmuring things like Truly the Ha Ildo of dog-squirrels… and Can we put this on MeTube?
Hanging out with them would have been nice, but soon Lee Jina's battered old truck came rolling up looking for me—.
And I followed her toward the gangs of Macheon City.
"These guys call themselves Net Speeders. They deal exclusively in IT goods and do hacking and stuff like that. Look at 'em—all gloomy-looking like they've done nothing but hammer on keyboards their whole lives? Their hideout's a PC bang."
Lee Jina snickered—heh heh—at the hooded men and women.
True to form for a social butterfly like Lee Jina, an IT-specialist gang apparently looked unbearably dreary to her.
One of the hoodie-wearing gang members approached me.
"Mr. Ildo, I presume? I'm the hacker Gong Dae-nam."
"So your family name is Gong, and your given name is Dae-nam?"
"Yes."
"I see."
"Anyway, nice to meet you. The security lock on the item you entrusted to us is about ninety-seven percent unlocked. It should come fully undone within the hour. Actually, there's something we'd like to show you first."
Shwip—.
I followed the gang members inside the PC bang.
There sat something like a glass fish tank, and inside it a pitch-black rat was growling—grrrrl—.
"That rat… is it the one from the video? The one that died and came back to life?"
"That's the one. It got engulfed by a parasitic organism and came out stronger for it. It used to be a perfectly ordinary rat, but now it reacts to mana just like a dog-squirrel. The black parts—those are the parasite."
An organism that could lift an ordinary rat to a mana awakening on par with a dog-squirrel.
I thought it was an extraordinary creature.
"It responds to emotion and mana. And it seems to draw out the host's aggression especially strongly, boosting combat capability across the board. At least, that's what the data shows."
"Where did you get a thing like this?"
I asked.
And Gong Dae-nam's face darkened as he answered in a shivery voice.
"We extracted intel discovered on the Deep-Deep-Web—deeper than the deep web… ahem. The mega-corps are involved, so I can't go into detail, but—anyway, if you use this creature right, you could become something incredible. What do you say?"
What do I say?
"Do you think it could be tamed?"
At Gong Dae-nam's question, I looked at the rat in the tank.
At that moment, Kwang-kwangi, perched on my shoulder, let out a glaring, unmistakable warning—━Grrrrl…!—radiating pure wariness.
And that was when it happened.
Splat—!
CRAAASH—!
The black mass clinging to the rat surged upward like some jelly monster, punched straight through the glass, and launched itself at my body!
"Uwaaagh!"