Leech
"What?"
Was that really the second skeleton soldier's spear, buried deep in the gaping maw of a Hydra shrieking with two arrows lodged in its eyes?
The spearhead had punched clean through the back of the Hydra's skull, and red blood came pouring out like a waterfall.
"No way... that actually works?"
The second one's final blow — seven stacks of stat transfer — had landed.
The Hydra slumped over. The second soldier shoved its head aside with his foot, pulled out his spear, spun it a couple of times in the air, and then—
Shwick.
Decisively severed its neck.
The fallen Hydra didn't even go through rigor mortis. A clean finish.
Goosebumps broke out all over my body.
"Incredible."
He wielded that spear like a ghost.
Then a possibility flashed through my mind.
"Your name is Changsik from now on!"
I blurted it out half-doubting it would work — and the Skeleton Star responded.
[The Skeleton Star highly praises Skeleton Soldier No. 2's performance.]
[The Skeleton Star recognizes the name 'Changsik' for Skeleton Soldier No. 2.]
"Nice!"
I'd hoped it might work — and it did.
[Skeleton Soldier No. 2 evolves into a Named Skeleton Soldier.]
[Named Skeleton Soldier <Changsik> has been granted the trait 'Spear Ghost'.]
['Spear Ghost' wields the spear like a demon. Spear attacks deal +50% damage, +25% attack speed.]
"Well done, Changsik."
Lee Doosik — as of today, officially graduated from F-class.
With my skill level reaching 6, the total number of skeleton soldiers I could summon had grown to five.
1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5
Looking at the pattern of the growing numbers, the multiplication principle behind my summons was now clearly the Fibonacci sequence.
I addressed the two new recruits that had just been born.
"From now on, your name is Chunsik. And you're Samsik."
?
The new recruits tilted their skulls in confusion, and the Skeleton Star said nothing at all.
The name I'd given Changsik on a whim had been recognized as a Named — but names assigned arbitrarily were not. Thinking maybe they simply didn't like the names, I tried Ha-jun, supposedly one of the most popular boys' names these days, then popular girls' names like Seo-a, Ha-yoon, and Ji-an — all met with stony silence.
"So the Skeleton Star has to be convinced before a name gets recognized as Named."
The names acknowledged so far were Hansik, Changsik, and Hodu. Every one of them had a story behind the name. The granted traits worked the same way — they weren't something that applied just because you slapped a label on at random.
The Skeleton Star had to be persuaded.
"Okay, understood."
That said, with the skeleton soldier count growing, I'd run into a new problem: MP.
Summoning a single skeleton soldier cost 50 MP — which meant I was running short on my total MP pool. That was exactly what had caused the close call a little while ago.
MP grew in proportion to mental strength, and my current Spirit stat was 26, giving me a max MP of 260. Watching the clock and doing the math, my MP recovery rate came out to about 2.6 per interval. Since I almost never fought personally, even applying the resting recovery rate meant roughly nine minutes of MP regeneration per summon. So there had been a reason the skill had no cooldown in the first place.
Summoning skeleton soldiers without limit was simply impossible in practice.
"So in the end, what matters most is MP recovery."
Of course, once I equipped the Throne of the Immortal King and the Ring of Fortune, the problem would be largely solved — my total mana pool would grow by 2,000, and along with a boost to my base Spirit stat, my mana recovery would increase fivefold.
But even that was just throwing a bandage on things. My skeleton multiplication principle was Fibonacci. One day I really might summon a hundred million skeleton soldiers.
Then again, a hundred million was easier said than done — even at one soldier per second, that would take a full 1,157 days, more than three years...
In the end, the only real solution was to acquire gear that gave me MP as inexhaustible as the ocean.
"Not gonna be easy."
The five skeleton soldiers were pawing through the headless Hydra's corpse. No mana stone or items had dropped, so it was pointless. It was common knowledge in the hunter world that Hydra byproducts were utterly worthless — even its fangs, supposedly the most useful part, were worse than the venom of an E-class Viper far weaker than the creature itself.
"Leave the corpse. Start training the new recruits."
Hodu, of course, was exempt from that duty. He sat down beside me, tail swaying, and licked my hand.
We'd leveled up the skill with a massive chunk of experience, but heading straight into another battle felt mentally risky. I closed my eyes and began sweeping the area within a one-kilometer radius through the Eye of Oculus.
The nearest Hydra from our position was in the swamp sixty meters to our flank. Next target found.
But this time there were two of them. We'd barely managed to take down one — a simultaneous engagement was out of the question. I needed a way to isolate and pick them off one at a time.
The farther out I searched, the denser the monsters became. Besides the Hydras, there were things called 'Mollox' — rotting treelike creatures draped in mud. Their byproducts were worthless too, and with their high natural regeneration, my skeletons' current damage output might struggle to put one down.
Because hunters so rarely raided this gate, the monster density was remarkably high. If the monster population inside kept growing like this until it overflowed, we'd be looking at a Monster Break...
That worried me a little.
Past the 500-meter mark — no exaggeration — the swamps were crawling with monsters like a Serengeti oasis at watering time. At 800 meters, I even spotted Kargos, the mid-boss tentacle monster, half-submerged in a leisurely bath, monopolizing its own private swamp.
"Whoa, Kargos... that thing is genuinely terrifying to look at."
But in one corner of Kargos's exclusive swamp, something was squirming.
"Hold on, what is that? Don't tell me — a person?"
Draped in a mud-caked tarp, but the thing underneath was unmistakably human.
Could it be an RV camper? High odds it was.
"Are they stranded?"
An RV could hold five to seven people, couldn't it? So it was possible someone had failed at a party hunt, gotten separated, and was now lost and stranded out here.
In that case, I'd have to help them, right?
But the figure kept doing something in the swamp, and Kargos didn't seem to register their existence at all. Curious, I brought the Eye of Oculus closer.
"What on earth are they doing?"
Looking closer, they were repeatedly sticking their own leg into the swamp and pulling it back out.
And they had a strong stomach, apparently. The swamp here was, to anyone's eyes, a foul place that belched gas — thoroughly unsanitary.
I observed their actions from even closer.
"Gah."
Something was clinging all over the leg they'd dipped into the swamp. Black and elongated. They scraped the things off with a dagger, then crushed each one to death with their fist.
"Leeches?"
Every leech burst, spilling blood. Once they'd killed them all, the person cut a wound into their own leg with the dagger and dunked it back into the swamp. When they pulled it out again, it was covered in leeches once more. Kill the leeches, cut a wound, repeat, repeat.
No, look — the world has every kind of lunatic, but still...
Dying of curiosity about what kind of person this could be, I pushed the Eye of Oculus in even closer to get a look at their face. A man. His face was smeared with mud, and he wore a twisted grin — a smile laced with pure madness.
But that face looked awfully familiar. And above all, there was a tripod planted on one side. With a camera mounted on it.
"A YouTuber? Wait. Is that... Louis?"
None other than BJ Louis of the YouTube channel F-Class Expedition — the guy who'd revealed all those handy barnacle-hunting tips.
"Wow... so it's not barnacles anymore, it's leeches?"
Barnacles, fine. But leeches? And while cutting open his own leg, no less. Honestly, it was mind-blowing. Or should I say ingenious? How did he even come up with this? How did he even think of coming here alone? Did his gallbladder swell up or what? Is he actually insane?
Completely unaware that the Eye of Oculus was watching, he dunked his leg back into the swamp. Considering this wasn't anywhere near the gate entrance — he was doing this in Kargos's own swamp — those leeches most likely only inhabited Kargos's waters. Like the barnacles that clung to Kalid's back.
As far as I knew, he had exactly one goal: to grow strong and become a hunter, even as an F-class.
"The experience must be pretty tasty, huh?"
His expression, flushed with euphoria, told the whole story. He was a real-deal F-class — a rank below even E-class me. Hunters Baek Jongdu and Ahn Sungjin only handed out F-class to awakeners with truly zero potential, advising them to forget about hunting and just live as ordinary civilians.
And yet his refusal to give up struck a chord somewhere deep in me. A genuine respect for the guy took root in my heart.
Not that I wanted to get tangled up with him. He's a lunatic, after all.
"Is he streaming?"
I tried pulling up his YouTube channel on my smartphone — but this was an avoided gate nobody wanted to visit. The carriers had never installed Ether Converters — wireless relays — inside it, so the internet barely worked. You could catch a faint signal if you pressed your phone right up against the gate entrance, but Louis was currently 800 meters from there.
So he wasn't streaming. He was recording.
"That's gonna blow up later."
Having seen it with my own eyes, that footage was good for at least a million views — no, it might hit ten million. It might even get so much buzz that NewQuiz comes calling for him.
"But how did he get that far in? Did he hire someone again?"
Word was that when BJ Louis filmed his barnacle-gathering content at Kalid's territory, he'd hired a single B-class hunter for a few hours. But that was Oryukdo Gate, where B-class hunters were a dime a dozen, and there weren't many monsters near Kalid anyway. This place, by contrast, was a gate hunters avoided, with dense monster populations to boot. One hunter wouldn't be able to pull it off, and since it was an avoided gate, the hiring fees would be steeper...
More than that — even though he'd been certified F-class, this guy had never revealed what ability he actually had. What if, it turned out, he had something amazing?
BJ Louis leaned toward the recording camera and whispered, oblivious to everything.
"You seeing this, bros? Absolute jackpot, straight up! Honestly, I regret wasting my time on barnacles all this while. These leech bastards — they die, and they die, and they keep dying. Kuhahaha, watashi ekusuberanto! The little ones give 1 XP, the big ones up to 3 XP. Sweet, right? Total jackpot, bros, total jackpot."
He slapped the leeches with his palm — pah, pah — popping them one by one.
"Who am I, you ask? Louis the Muscle Bird. My Strength stat is so high this stuff is candy to me. Where is this, you ask? Shh — that's for the next video. So smash that subscribe, like, and notification bell! Herabeobeo."
Then some instinct made Louis turn his head — and he nearly died of a heart attack.
An eyeball, floating in midair.
And it was staring right at him.
"...W-when the hell did that..."
A monster he'd never seen before. This was a D-class gate; the only thing here he could handle was leeches.
I'm screwed. Thoroughly, completely screwed.
"...Shit, shit, shit..."
Louis pulled the tarp over himself and flattened to the ground. But was it occupational habit, or professional pride? Even flat on his face, he stretched out a hand and grabbed the camera.
Selfie mode.
"Hey bros, so, uh. Looks like the F-Class Expedition ends here. Bros, some crazy eyeball-candy thing is chasing me. I'm scared out of my mind... Can you see it? Eek, it's still watching me. Everyone, there's a monster like this in the Changnyeong Upo Wetland Gate, bros... To all my subscribers who've loved the F-Class Expedition all this time — thank you. Hweooong..."
The floating eyeball-candy. He had no confidence he could outrun it. Louis squeezed his eyes shut, then yanked the tarp off his body.
"P-please just end it painlessly."
Nothing. It was gone.
He looked all around, but the eyeball that had been glaring at him was nowhere to be found.
"I-I'm alive?"
But it was too soon to relax. That thing might have marked him. Branded him, even. Some kind of Hellish Brand, or a curse. He half expected a one-eyed monster to come bursting out of the swamp at any moment.
"Ugh... let's get out of here."
Louis gathered his personal belongings, dunked the tarp in the swamp, pulled it out, and wrapped himself in it.
"Bros, Louis is calling it here for today. I'm too scared to ever come back to the Upo Wetland. Damn it. Please add the Upo Wetland Eyeball-Candy to the HuntThread Monster Encyclopedia. Where's even the main body? Damn it..."
Wrapped in his tarp, Louis crawled forward, inch by inch, on his belly.
"Eek. Hydras. Hydras. There are so damn many, bros. At this rate the Upo Wetland Gate is gonna hit Break status."
From the dizzying heights above, the Eye of Oculus looked down upon the ground. Having watched Louis's method of surviving out here, a shiver ran through me.
Smothered in that filth-ridden swamp guaranteed to cause every skin disease known to man, he crawled slowly between the monsters. He looked like a moving piece of the swamp itself.
"That guy is genuinely insane."
It was almost frightening. Had his gallbladder swollen up or something?
Respect. Absolute respect.
I vowed to leave a like on every single one of his videos once I got out of this gate. Though at that crawl speed, it would take him a geological age to exit...
"MP's fully charged, so let's get back to hunting. Hansik, do you have the new strategy ready?"
He raised his hands in a banzai!
The next target Hydras came with a complication: there were two of them huddled together. We'd have to separate them and lure each one in individually.
"Two of them, and you're telling me it's safe?"
Even at 97% earlier it had been borderline...
"I trust you. Let's do this, Hansik."
Still, with two more soldiers added, we were in better shape than before. Above all, Hansik is doing a banzai right now — that has to count for something.