Blood Wolf (2)
“Yes, we definitely received a report and dispatched a team, but there was nothing there. We caught a glimpse of what might have been a red rift, but by the time we arrived, it had already closed. Naturally, there was no trace of any disaster-grade beast's presence either.”
The Danshim Guild.
And the Awakening Management Bureau.
Both of them were going out of their minds.
“Yes, I'll grant that. But that would mean somebody came and took it down in that tiny window of time. Does that make any sense to you? It took us five minutes from receiving the report to arriving on-site. Five. We were practically waiting right on its doorstep.”
A disaster-grade beast would most likely be an A-rank, and a boss-tier monster at that.
The apex of its species.
And someone had killed it within five minutes of its appearance?
Even an S-rank would struggle to pull that off.
But.
Nine out of the ten S-rank awakeners in South Korea belonged to the Big 5 guilds. The last one led a mid-tier guild as its Guild Master, and had always played by the unwritten rules.
“...Goddammit.”
Jung Jin-ha ground his teeth.
It came down to two possibilities. Either one of the current S-ranks was lying, or there was an S-rank awakener the government didn't know about.
Either way.
This opportunity had slipped through his fingers.
“Unfortunately, that's how it is this time. Please pass along our apologies to the other guilds as well. Since we failed to handle this beast, the rights to the next one are ours.”
An awkward voice came through the receiver.
Of course they were put on the spot. The Big 5 and the mid-tier guilds alike were all waiting with bated breath for exactly that kind of disaster-grade beast.
If anyone raised their voice, the Bureau had no leg to stand on. After all, it was Danshim that had let the beast get snatched out from under them.
“Ah, and one more thing.”
Jung Jin-ha's voice was low and strained, fury pressed down hard beneath every syllable.
“I expect the Bureau to find out exactly who pulled off this steal. If the core gets sold, there will be a trail. There always is.”
A week had passed, which meant it was time for her to earn her keep again.
Her role was simple: dungeon shuttle.
She opened the door, and that was it. Once they were inside? Seo Hwarang swept the place clean in the blink of an eye.
Anything worth skinning for materials got skinned, and every piece of miscellaneous loot went straight to Park Juhee.
“Hey!”
The moment they met, Yoo Seon-ah came running over, waving her hand in cheerful greeting. So she'd actually grown attached to him, it seemed. Getting a little happy to see him after just a week apart.
For the time being, they'd decided not to cross over to Etherion. They needed to build up proficiency here first, and rack up coins while they were at it.
Besides, Seo Hwarang wanted to watch Seona Couture grow as well. And for that? Time on Earth had to pass, at least to some degree.
Anyway.
Seo Hwarang called that taxi again. The one worth ten million won a week.
The old man wasn't bad, honestly. Hand him ten million won and he'd skip quitting time entirely, chauffeuring them wherever they needed without a single complaint.
Was that just how it worked? Whatever. Sure.
Sure enough, he showed up in under ten minutes flat.
“Sir! It hasn't even been that long and you're calling for me again! Thank you, truly!”
“Yep. This time we're running hard straight through the night. That all right with you?”
“Oh, perfectly fine, sir! If you want it, I'll pull an all-nighter! I even stocked up on glucose!”
“Perfect.”
Still, sir. Drowsy driving is bad.
“Yessir, hahaha! You! Must! Keep calling me from now on!”
Vroom!
And so they were on the move, riding in the back of the taxi.
“Hey, you hear the news?” Yoo Seon-ah asked.
“What news?”
“You know, sometimes I wonder about you... You read books like a maniac but you never check the news, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Tch. It happened near your place, actually. A disaster-grade beast showed up, and somebody took it out, just like that.”
“A disaster-grade beast?”
What was that? He'd never even seen the term in a book. Then again, hardly any books went deep on awakener matters to begin with.
“It's one of those things that shows up out of nowhere after the sky turns red, and it drops some pretty rare materials. So the famous guilds in the country pass it around among themselves, taking turns.”
“...?”
Oh.
The reddened sky.
And the Blood Wolf's core.
That was exactly what he'd just been through...
“But get this—it got cleared in under five minutes after it appeared. And nobody even knows who did it. Danshim Guild is absolutely furious, put out an official statement and everything, and all the other guilds are denying they had anything to do with it. There's no way anyone but an S-rank could kill it that fast. Even for an A-rank, it's basically a boss-tier monster.”
“...”
That wolf?
Really?
It felt incredibly easy, though...?
“Anyway, the big guilds have no reason to lie about this. The way I see it, it's one hundred percent a hidden master. Just look at you—you're crazy strong and nobody has a clue.”
Watching Yoo Seon-ah snicker to herself, a thin line of cold sweat slid down Seo Hwarang's temple.
They arrived at the C-rank dungeon, and he stepped out of the taxi.
“Noona.”
“Yeah?”
“Look at this.”
He pulled the Blood Wolf's core out of his inventory and held it up for her to see.
“What's that?”
“I think it's the disaster-grade beast core you were just talking about.”
“Huh?”
Yoo Seon-ah blinked for a moment.
What was he saying right now? Had she actually heard him correctly? She genuinely had to run it through her head one more time.
And then—
Her pupils blew wide open.
“Y-you—you—you, you absolute maniac...!”
The awakener the entire Danshim Guild was hunting for... was him?!
Seo Hwarang scratched his head.
“...I think we might be in a bit of trouble here, noona.”
“Hey, you lunatic!”
The moment they entered the dungeon, Yoo Seon-ah exploded.
“You said you were hiding your strength! What are you going to do if you go around killing things like that?! No, before that—did you seriously take that thing down in five minutes? You?”
“Not five minutes... more like thirty seconds?”
That was roughly how long it had taken. And that included the time spent running a few experiments along the way. If he'd just unleashed his magic from the start, it probably would have ended even faster.
“Thirty... seconds...?”
Yoo Seon-ah was dumbfounded.
Seriously, this guy!
Even the S-ranks couldn't manage that!
Once again she was reminded of just what an absurd monster Seo Hwarang was, and once again her head started to ache. Who was supposed to clean up after this?
Her. The frontwoman. Obviously her.
“What am I even supposed to say at this point? You're C-rank, so do I just tell everyone you reawakened straight into S-rank? S-rank means 7th Circle, you know that, right?”
“Can't we just play dumb?”
“You... Do you have any idea what that core is worth? We have to sell it.”
“How much is it worth?”
“I don't know the exact figure, but at minimum, hundreds of billions of won.”
“...I'm sorry, what?”
Seo Hwarang's mouth fell slightly open.
What?
The core of a trash mob?
“That core doesn't drop in dungeons. It only comes from monsters that appear out of those sudden rifts. It's used as a material for Epic-grade weapons, and lately as raw energy too. One of those things can power a city the size of Seoul for a full month without breaking a sweat—need I say more?”
Whoa.
Put that way, it actually sank in.
Suppose a typical major city consumed 4,000 GWh of electricity a month, and you priced that power conservatively at an average of 150 won per kWh.
Six hundred billion won.
Yeah. It really was worth at least that much.
Wait a second.
Then how much was an Epic item worth?
At the very least, it had to be in the trillions, right?
Suddenly the numbers plunged into a range where reality completely lost its grip.
But then again.
It made sense, actually. Like he'd noted before, Epic items weren't exactly common to begin with, and the US and China would be hoovering them up like mad to shore up their national power.
Hoo.
And his own Legendary items, then?
Truly priceless treasures—beyond any price tag that mere money could attach.
“Hey, honestly, we have to sell this one no matter what! Ha, if only Danshim weren't breathing down our necks... We'd file your S-rank paperwork and sell it on the spot.”
“They're breathing down our necks?”
“Yeah. They want to catch whoever stole it and teach them a lesson.”
“What steal? It dropped right in front of me while I was training.”
“You think they'd care about that?!”
“What about telling Juhee and selling it on the black market?”
“Something this valuable is beyond the black market too. Sure, the world's full of rich people, but billionaires who can actually put hundreds of billions in cash on the table are vanishingly rare. And pulling off the deal without getting noticed? Forget it.”
Well, fair point.
Even if you withdrew six hundred billion won in fifty-thousand-won bills, you'd practically need a whole sports field to lay all that cash out flat. Gold was no answer either—nowhere near that much gold circulated on the market through inventories, and no buyer would take on that kind of risk for a black-market purchase anyway.
Realistically, you'd have to sell it to a national government.
Hmmm.
What to do with this thing.
“Then let's just hold onto it for now.”
“That's probably for the best.”
“Yeah. If things get noisy, it's a headache for you and for Juhee both.”
He absolutely hated hassle. And if he just kept it around, an occasion to use it would surely present itself eventually.
“For now, let's grind this dungeon hard.”
Setting the core aside for the moment, they launched into serious coin farming.
At Coin Shop Tier 1, exactly two things remained on Seo Hwarang's wishlist.
First, the one sitting at the very top of the list.
A hundred-thousand-coin blueprint. He needed to get his hands on as many of these as possible to fill out Seona Couture's item catalog to bursting. It would raise his tailoring skill proficiency, too.
And then, the other one.
The Mini-Dragon.
Frankly, this was the one he was most curious about. Just how good did a thing have to be to justify spending five million coins?
The problem is.
Stacking coins was anything but easy.
Right now they were focusing exclusively on C-rank dungeons, and even at their fastest clear times, a run netted him a measly twenty coins. And even that only came through fifty percent of the time. He'd have to run a hundred dungeons just to average a thousand coins.
So what does that mean?
How many runs would that take?
In the end,
he'd have to move up to B-rank dungeons or higher. There was one way to do it: join a party, or raise Yoo Seon-ah's rank first.
But.
Bumping her rank right away carried its own burden. It had only been a few months since her reawakening registration—another reawakening, already? And this, for the woman about to be named one of the world's top ten foundation heads? That stretched credibility a bridge too far.
If she drew aggro, she'd draw far too much of it.
“Noona, how high can a C-rank go for dungeon participation?”
“...A C-rank can push into B-rank at most, and only if you manage to put together a really good party.”
B-rank.
Hmm. One person did spring to mind.
The White Tiger Guild's master.
No.
Rather than entangle himself with that man... there had to be a way to do this without borrowing anyone's strength...
Wait a second.
Come to think of it, there was no rule saying he had to do this in Korea, was there?
The world was wide.
And dungeons were countless.
Among them, there were surely places struggling because they had no awakened ones of their own—countries where dungeon breaks were happening far too often.
Ooh.
That was where he needed to start looking.