Rune Stone (1)
Huff… huff…
It felt exactly like the time he had spent all day pounding Briana back home. An exhaustion so crushing it made movement impossible slammed into Park Jihun. Less time had passed than that previous marathon, but taking on three women at once meant zero rest and far more physical exertion.
On top of that, the sheer thrill of an unprecedented four-way with his perverted junior and the monster girls had pushed his excitement to levels he had never reached before. The number and volume of his climaxes had skyrocketed as a result.
“Haa… haa…”
“Kihi…”
“Kyaa-rung…”
After the storm of their four-way, the women were sprawled across the same damp mossy floor. It was slightly wet and cool, but since it wasn’t bare dirt, their bodies stayed relatively clean and the softness looked genuinely comfortable.
“……”
Park Jihun had wrung out every last drop of lust from every cell in his body. He lay there in a daze, staring up at the ceiling formed by the massive trees that filled the wetland, lost in thought. With his sexual urges completely satisfied, images of female bodies and lewd situations no longer surfaced. Instead, the battle from earlier replayed in his mind.
That was a pretty disappointing fight.
His battle with Kar had been completely different from the ones against goblins, Briana, or the regular silver wolves. In previous fights, the stun and intimidation effects, combined with his overwhelmingly superior stats, had been more than enough. But against an opponent like Kar—who moved with genuine skill and whose stun and intimidation effects wore off quickly or barely worked at all—those tactics would no longer cut it.
I need to stop relying purely on raw specs and brute force.
He had survived this time thanks to Briana, but there would surely come a day when she couldn’t help him. And if he eventually entered C-rank gates or higher, even Shin Jiyeon might not be able to bail him out if he got into real trouble.
I need to develop my combat technique.
Unfortunately, Park Jihun had no martial arts or technique-related skills. He would have to learn swordsmanship or hand-to-hand combat the old-fashioned way.
Should I sign up for a dojo or something?
While he was thinking that, another thought suddenly hit him.
Shin Jiyeon. The creampie.
“J-Jiyeon!”
Realizing that was actually the most urgent matter, he shot upright and called out to her.
“Y-yes, Sunbae.”
She was still lying down, her waist trembling from how hard she had been fucked. Thick white semen continued to drip steadily from between her legs.
“This might sound ridiculous to say now, but… was it okay that I… came inside…?”
“Pardon?”
Shin Jiyeon stared at his awkward expression for a moment, then let out a small laugh.
“It’s fine, Sunbae. I’ve been taking birth control pills because of my gate schedule.”
Luckily, she was like most female hunters who used oral contraceptives to regulate their cycles.
“R-really? Whew…”
Park Jihun let out a sigh of relief. At that, Shin Jiyeon’s cheeks flushed slightly as she turned her head away.
“…But if it’s with you, Sunbae… getting pregnant might be okay too?”
She murmured the words so quietly he almost missed them.
“……”
A junior who wasn’t even married to him—hell, they weren’t even officially dating yet—had just given him permission to impregnate her. She had a perfect body with massive breasts and a goddess-tier face, plus a perverted kink that she only showed him. She only allowed sex with him. Yet instead of getting jealous when he fucked other monster girls, she actively encouraged and cheered him on. This impossibly perfect woman had just declared she was fine with bearing his child.
I’m hard again.
He had been certain he had emptied every last spoonful of lust, but apparently not. His cock was already rising rigidly at the thought of fucking her until she got pregnant. The contrast between her shameless, perverted demeanor during sex and this shy, fidgeting side of her created an overwhelming sense of cuteness that hit him like a truck.
Fuck. I want to marry her.
He genuinely felt like rushing to file the marriage papers right then and there. They could clear gates together as a couple, have harem sex with monster girls, mix it up with Jiyeon, summon all his familiars for insane orgies…
What the hell is that? Some kind of paradise?
While he was lost in that daydream, Shin Jiyeon suddenly spoke up, clearly flustered by his blank stare.
“A-anyway! Why isn’t the gate closing?!”
“…Yeah. Why isn’t it?”
Her clumsy subject change successfully pulled Park Jihun’s attention. In truth, he had been wondering about it even before they started their four-way. He had subjugated the boss, Kar. That should have destroyed the gate’s core. It should have been cleared and closed. Yet several hours had passed since Kar’s submission and no notification about the gate being cleared or closing had appeared.
The same was true for Shin Jiyeon. Something was clearly wrong.
“Maybe there’s another core?”
It was a reasonable suspicion. Sometimes the gate’s core wasn’t the boss but something else entirely, allowing the gate to remain open. It was rare, but it happened. In those cases, the boss was treated more like a ‘guardian,’ while the real core usually came with a hidden boss or an incredibly powerful reward.
Things like a mysterious stone that massively boosted stats, or a Rune Stone that could instantly grant a skill—something normally only obtainable upon awakening.
Stat-boosting stones were valuable, but Rune Stones traded for astronomical prices. After all, skills were nearly impossible to obtain except during awakening, and the effects they provided far surpassed anything a simple stat increase could offer. Naturally, a Rune Stone that granted such a skill would command a price to match.
If one appeared, it was basically winning the lottery. No—thinking about the payout, it was more like winning ten or twenty lotteries at once.
“It’s possible. But since it hasn’t shown up even after all this time, I doubt it’s a hidden boss.”
At that exact moment, both Shin Jiyeon’s and Park Jihun’s eyes lit up.
If it wasn’t a hidden boss, then it had to be a powerful reward… which meant either a mysterious stone or a Rune Stone.
“Wow, that explains it. I thought something felt off,” Shin Jiyeon said, as if she had expected this all along.
“It was a perfectly normal E-rank dungeon with ordinary monsters. So why was the boss an evolved humanoid upper-tier monster? That always seemed strange to me.”
Now that she mentioned it, it really was odd. Unlike Briana’s gate, this one hadn’t shown any special characteristics. The idea of a perfectly humanized beastkin appearing in an E-rank dungeon was absurd. And she had been quite strong, too.
“It looks like the hidden reward inside influenced the dungeon’s structure.”
Kar had probably started as an ordinary wolf leader. But once the hidden reward spawned and became the gate’s core, its influence must have triggered her evolution.
“I see… But then where is the reward?”
Park Jihun nodded in understanding and asked Shin Jiyeon the most important question.
“Hmm… I’m not entirely sure about the exact location. Cases like this aren’t that common, and I never really looked into it deeply.”
“Hmm…”
Shin Jiyeon shrugged helplessly. Park Jihun fell back into thought. Having a reward was meaningless if they couldn’t find it.
Do we have to search the entire map…?
He was considering that it might take a long time but that there was no other choice when—
“Kyao! Tipube!”
Kar, who had been listening to their conversation, suddenly waved at Park Jihun as if she had remembered something.
“Huh? What is it?”
She struggled to her feet on shaky legs, then crawled on all fours toward the massive tree cave where she had first appeared. Once there, she pointed inside and kept repeating, “Tipube! Tipube!”
“Do you think the gate’s core is inside there?”
“Seems like it.”
Kar nodded vigorously at their exchange, clearly understanding what they were saying.
“Let’s go!”
“Y-yes!”
Park Jihun and Shin Jiyeon forced their trembling bodies upright and headed for the tree cave. They really were hunters—their recovery speed was impressive. In that short time, they had recovered enough to walk normally. Shin Jiyeon, being B-rank, was even able to jog ahead.
“Sunbae! Hurry up! We need to see what it is right away!”
She had already reached the entrance of the tree cave and was waving him over with sparkling eyes. No matter how fundamentally perverted he was, he was still a hunter at heart. She looked incredibly excited to discover what kind of powerful hidden reward awaited them.
What could it be? A Rune Stone? A stat booster? Damn… this is insane.
Park Jihun was just as thrilled. A rookie hunter who had only entered a gate twice. The first time, it was a special case where the boss had absorbed all the mana. The second time, it was a hidden-reward map with an incredible prize. Just how lucky could one person be?
And both bosses had been beautiful girls of different races.
It feels like the entire world’s luck is concentrated on me.
He was almost worried that an equal amount of terrible misfortune might be coming to balance things out. Of course, he pushed that anxious thought aside and instead fell into happy contemplation.
Should I use it myself? Or sell it?
Any reward obtained inside a gate belonged to Park Jihun. That had been the private agreement they made when forming a party with Shin Jiyeon. Of course, she wouldn’t suddenly demand half of an expensive reward now.
Since it was his, he could use it or sell it. If he sold it, the guild contract meant he would have to give them twenty percent, but even after that, tens or even hundreds of billions of won could come pouring in. Enough money to live without financial worry for the rest of his life.
But Park Jihun hesitated. Should he really sell something like this immediately?
Honestly, I’m not exactly short on money right now.
Every gate run earned him over ten million won for F-rank and over twenty million for E-rank. On top of that, he had received five hundred million as a signing bonus with Another Guild and another billion from advertising contracts. If he still claimed to be short on cash after all that, he would need his head examined.
That left the option of saving it for the future.
Even if it’s a stat stone, that’s fine. But if it’s a Rune Stone… honestly, I’d be crazy not to use it.
A single skill. If it was a genuinely useful one, its future value could easily surpass tens or hundreds of billions. Especially since Park Jihun’s stats kept rising and he would eventually be able to challenge S-rank gates. Depending on the skill, its worth could reach thousands of billions.
“……”
After thinking for a moment, Park Jihun decided.
I’ll decide after I see what the reward actually is.
First he needed to find out what was inside the tree cave.