024 – Meeting an Old Acquaintance Again # 2
"Wow, incredible. A squirrel this tiny taking down a lizard the size of a truck in one blow! How is that even possible?"
Team Leader Jo Jang-hee skinned the Nidhoggr lizard's hide with deft strokes of her knife, peeling it away in smooth strips. Even as she processed the dead monster's carcass, she seemed unable to quite believe what had happened.
Seol Myeong-hoon supplied the explanation.
"Look here. See how the rib is broken and pierced straight into the heart? The Nidhoggr's hide is tougher and more durable than any other part of its body, so it has all sorts of uses."
Bringing down a monster with blades or bullets inevitably meant the harvested materials came out in poor condition — that was the trade-off.
But Keongkeongi's Squirrel Dive carried no such worry, and it left us with hides of remarkably fine quality.
After all, they say suits made from processed Nidhoggr lizard leather perform quite well.
If I remembered right, they were supposed to block attacks from most C-rank monsters.
Just as I was musing on the old truth that armor matters every bit as much as weapons, the harvesting was finished. Perhaps because these were seasoned C-rank professionals, the whole process took less than ten minutes.
━Keong-keong…!
Having just felled a gigantic lizard, the dog-squirrel Keongkeongi was scampering around the valley with more energy than seemed possible.
Watching him roam the rough slopes, the steep banks, and the thickets like he owned the place, it was obvious: a squirrel was, at heart, still a squirrel.
━Pyoing, pyoing…!
Then Keongkeongi made a strange sound from within the brush. It was like a baby bird chirping. This from the dog-squirrel who barked like a hound?
Wondering what was going on, I pushed through the undergrowth and found him circling round and round the base of a tree where yellow-glowing mushrooms were sprouting.
The team leader's face lit up at the sight.
"Oh…! Those are Glowing Mushrooms…! Eating one increases your mana consumption, but it boosts your skill's destructive power by the same margin…! They can even be processed into medicine…!"
We set aside the hunt for the Rift Core for a moment and picked the mushrooms. And it struck me — this was exactly what Oinoi had meant when she called Keongkeongi a guide of the forest.
Keongkeongi's true value lay not in combat, but in being a resident of the woods.
Thanks to him, each of us walked away with an armful of mushrooms.
A fungus that raised mana consumption but amplified skill power, hm.
Sssssss—.
Then the sky above the valley tilted sharply, and night fell.
I was still blinking at how the bright world had plunged into pitch blackness when the team leader kindly explained.
"From C-rank rifts on up, there are a lot of variables. Shifting weather and shifting time are exactly that sort of thing. Myeong-hoon, Jina — what do you say we set up a quick base camp and watch the situation?"
Night in a rift.
Night was generally a dangerous time.
First of all, you couldn't see anything.
Some hunters operated expensive gear like night-vision optics, but that wasn't our party today.
We agreed to build a base nearby and rest until the sun rose again.
Seol Myeong-hoon, fiddling with a metering device called an Entropy Gauge, adjusted his glasses and spoke.
"I've taken a rough measurement of the entropy index. The sun should rise again in about two hours."
What on earth was entropy, anyway?
I'd worked as an awakener for years, and I still never really understood what that word meant. Of course, my own job was clear enough.
"Keongkeongi, is there anywhere nearby we could use as a base camp? Somewhere safe, I mean. If there is, lead the way."
I asked the dog-squirrel directly.
Watching this, the team leader wondered aloud, "Does he actually understand you when you talk like that?"
Frankly, I was curious too.
Would the dog-squirrel Keongkeongi really grasp what I was saying?
━Keong-keong…!
Keongkeongi zipped off somewhere in a blur.
Sure enough, he soon discovered a cave carved into the base of a cliff near the valley. It gave off no presence of any living thing, so we decided to rest inside.
While Seol Myeong-hoon and Jo Jang-hee blockaded the entrance with a barricade and the delinquent girl built a campfire, I pulled expensive peanuts out of my pouch for Keongkeongi.
"Good work."
━Keong-keong…!
Very good, in fact.
Fwoosh—.
The fire inside the cave was pleasantly warm.
Then everyone took some time to check over the weapons and equipment they'd brought.
It struck me as exactly like the maintenance scene in a fantasy tale. You know, the one where a party of heroes gathers around the campfire, tending their gear and resting.
Seeing my own life mirror that image — even now, after all my years as an awakener — made my heart flutter a little, like a small romance I'd never quite outgrown.
Equipment maintenance time.
I gave Keongkeongi's fur, legs, and tail a careful inspection.
That had been an impact strong enough to kill a lizard the size of a bear in a single strike. It wouldn't have been strange at all for a little dog-squirrel like Keongkeongi to have taken damage from the recoil.
But Keongkeongi was completely unscathed.
"Fascinating. He's a dog-squirrel, you said? Where did you get him? Inside a rift? How do you raise one? What do you feed him?"
Team Leader Jo Jang-hee showed enormous interest in Keongkeongi. Fair enough — he was an animal that could guide you through a rift and serve as a living weapon against monsters.
Even I would have been curious enough to pepper him with questions.
"I just met him on the street. I feed him nuts like peanuts, but honestly that's more of a treat thing — he forages all sorts of stuff outside and brings it back himself. He's very independent."
The truth was, I had never tamed Keongkeongi.
He simply chose to live alongside me.
Same with the emperor ant Angangi — rather than feeling like they'd become my possessions, it felt more like they'd just moved in and become part of the household.
Yeah — kind of like how Oinoi was, as if I were temporarily fostering them?
I held a peanut out to Jo Jang-hee.
"Want to try giving him one?"
"May I really?"
Shoop—.
Jo Jang-hee took the peanut in her hand.
Sure enough, Keongkeongi climbed onto her palm, snatched the peanut with practiced ease, and slid smoothly back down to the ground. At that moment, the delinquent girl flinched and shuddered.
When I turned to look, she whipped her gaze away as if nothing had happened.
"Jina, want to pet Keongkeongi too?"
I asked.
The delinquent girl Lee Jina shivered from head to toe — then finally held out her palm. Was that her way of asking for a peanut?
I placed one on her open hand.
When Lee Jina waved the peanut back and forth, Keongkeongi scampered up her knee, stuffed the peanut into his cheek pouch, and began exploring her with obvious curiosity — climbing over her shoulder, her neck, her arms.
━Keong-keong…!
He burrowed his head into her suit pocket, scrambled up onto her head and slid down her back in one smooth glide — behavior I'd never quite seen from him before.
Besides me, wasn't this the first person Keongkeongi had ever taken to like that?
Was this delinquent Lee Jina, of all people, some kind of dog-squirrel-friendly human?
She looked exactly like the neighborhood unnie who used to shake me down for lunch money back in elementary school.
Those were genuinely terrifying days.
Throwing an arm around my shoulder, pretending to be my friend, dragging me into a corner and going through my pockets. When she swiped the 10,000-won gift certificate I'd been saving to buy game items, I was so upset I couldn't sleep.
I never walked down that alley again, just to avoid running into her.
Anyway.
While we rested like that, light began filtering in from outside the cave before I knew it.
About an hour into our maintenance break, morning had arrived again.
Seol Myeong-hoon, who'd been examining the entropy gauge from every angle, spoke up.
"It appears this rift cycles between night and day on the hour. In an hour, night will fall again — so this time, let's find the rift core fast, destroy or extract it, and get out."
Sound thinking.
From then on, we combed the valley up and down.
━Snuup, snrip, snuruuup.
When another Nidhoggr lizard appeared partway up the valley, Jo Jang-hee shouted.
"Ildo, stay back this time! We have a job to do too, you know!"
Fair enough.
They quickly fell into formation and engaged the lizard.
"Jina takes the left! I'll take the right, and Myeong-hoon, support us from range!"
Vrrrrmm—.
Mana flooding into hyper-vibration blades, the team leader and the delinquent girl blitzed toward the giant lizard. When their blades flashed toward its forelegs, the creature reeled in agony—
━Snrip, snrim! Snul…!
Then Seol Myeong-hoon, his rifle loaded and ready, pulled the trigger.
KWAAANG—!
It sounded like a cannon going off right beside us.
The enormous recoil made the whole area ring like a bell.
While my ears were still muffled, the Nidhoggr lizard — a bullet punched through its skull — slumped limply to the ground.
So this was the textbook way C-rankers hunted monsters.
A good field lesson.
I spoke up.
"Great work, everyone. I'll handle the harvesting. Could I borrow a knife? I haven't picked up a C-rank harvesting knife yet."
"Then use mine. It's a Single-molecule Blade. It's pricey, but the performance is excellent — in the long run it minimizes material damage during harvesting, which works out to a net financial gain of—"
Shaaak—!
Taking the single-molecule dagger from Seol Myeong-hoon, I sliced into the Nidhoggr lizard's hide. It was my first time skinning a Nidhoggr, but it was easier than I'd expected.
Watching me work, Team Leader Jo Jang-hee gave an admiring whistle.
"Are you sure this is your first time harvesting a Nidhoggr? Your technique for separating hide from flesh is excellent. Most people absolutely hate doing it."
Praised for my harvesting skills, of all things.
Did they have any idea how many years of experience I had?
Even with a monster I'd never seen before, I could handle it in my sleep.
Just as I was puffing up with pride, someone tapped me on the back.
It was the delinquent girl, Lee Jina.
"Ten years of experience really doesn't go to waste, huh. Guess you've still got the skills that made you famous back in the day."
I froze.
Someone knew I was a ten-year veteran — and that I'd once been famous?
Seol Myeong-hoon adjusted his glasses.
"Jina, you know Ildo?"
"Know him? Of course I know him. This guy used to be famous. It'd be weirder not to know him. He was on TV all the time. They even hung a banner praising him in our neighborhood. This guy's a first-generation student."
She even knew about the banner in my neighborhood?
My mother hung that banner.
Somehow my face flushed with embarrassment.
Then Jo Jang-hee, who seemed like the warm, mothering type, said, "Wow, a first-generation? You must have been through so much," and gave me a slow once-over, head to toe.
Chatty Seol Myeong-hoon added his two cents.
"I heard most first-generations have already retired. I watched a science-channel MeTube video about the history of rifts recently — apparently back then there was no mana equipment at all, and they went into rifts practically barehanded?"
He was right.
Most of the first-generations who'd started alongside me had retired.
The reasons varied from person to person.
Then Jo Jang-hee studied my arm with a peculiar intensity. When a question mark floated onto my face, she mumbled awkwardly, "Oh, no — I just wondered if you might be wearing some kind of advanced prosthetic—"
First-generations strapping mechanical prosthetics onto their arms and legs had been a common sight, after all.
Fortunately, my limbs were all original.
Anyway.
That's how we found the heart of the rift.
With Keongkeongi's help we located it quickly — it turned out to be a staff someone had jammed into the ground and left behind. It didn't seem to have any particular power, and the moment we pulled it free, it dissolved smoothly into powder.
RUMBLE—!
Before long, a sound like thunder rolled through the rift.
It meant the rift had begun to close.
We followed the route Seol Myeong-hoon had marked in advance, made our way back to the entrance, and escaped without incident.
Five in the afternoon.
According to Jo Jang-hee, four hours total — an exceptionally fast rift clear.
We all got out of Seol Myeong-hoon's car together at the station where we'd originally met up.
"Dog-squirrels really are the best. I'd love to adopt one myself. If you ever find more of them, please tell me! Take care, Keongkeongi!"
"Ildo, it was an honor to meet you. If it's no imposition, I'd love to hear stories about the first-generation hunters someday. Are you by any chance acquainted with Kang Cheolmin, the 'Iron Arm'…?"
Jo Jang-hee and Seol Myeong-hoon each offered their goodbyes.
Which left only the delinquent girl.
Her hair dyed a bright yellow, she stared at me and narrowed her sharp eyes.
"Are you going to keep pretending you don't know me, or do you seriously not remember? Am I invisible to you?"
What was she talking about?
Did I know her?
Someone with a presence this intense — if I'd ever met her, there was no way I'd have forgotten.
As I was puzzling over it, the messages that had been stuck came flooding in all at once, reception restored.
Amid the barrage of vibrations, I checked my phone and found something worth paying attention to.
Lee Jeonghun.
What possible reason could one of the busiest men in Korea have for waiting outside my apartment for me?
Clearly I needed to hurry home.
I was calculating how long the trip back would take and starting to panic when the delinquent girl pulled a pink helmet out of her gear bag.
"Got somewhere to be? I'll give you a ride. Get on the back — my bike's right over there."
Shoop—.
With that, she pointed at a bike parked in the shared lot.
Red and white — it looked exactly like the delivery bikes Chinese restaurants' drivers used to ride, and it was absolutely ancient.
Would it even run?
Shoop—.
The delinquent girl swung onto the bike with practiced ease.
Then she jerked her chin at me.
"What are you doing? Get on. I told you to."
Come to think of it, this was the first time in my life I'd ever ridden on the back of a motorcycle at my age.
No — come to think of it, I'd never even ridden a motorcycle, period.
"If you don't get on, I'm leaving without you. Didn't you say it was urgent?"
Throwing caution to the wind, I climbed on behind her and gripped the delinquent girl's waist hard! Maybe because her suit fit like a second skin, there wasn't an ounce of extra flesh — just a slim, slender waist.
The scent of bubblegum suddenly washed over me, stirring at the edge of memory — and then, with a roar, the bike tore through the cold wind.