The Gate's Aftermath
The gate that had appeared was a D-rank one, just as expected. The terrain inside was a small cave system. The monsters that spawned were orcs. There was no confirmed information on a boss monster, but the general consensus was that it would be something like an orc chieftain leading the pack. In small gates like this, monsters above the chieftain level rarely appeared.
“Looking at the scale, this should be nothing. We might even get off work early today?”
“Jia, you can’t let your guard down.”
No matter how common orcs were in a D-rank gate, staying alert was one of the basic rules. The inside of a gate was an entirely different space from the world we lived in. If something went wrong, you couldn’t expect help from anyone.
“Ah, there’s one over there.”
Orcs generally didn’t move in packs. Their intelligence wasn’t particularly high either, so hunting them wasn’t that difficult. This seemed perfectly manageable.
“Since there’s only one, would it be okay if I try taking it down first?”
My hands were still trembling. But I couldn’t just stand by and watch the others hunt. If that had been my plan, I wouldn’t have come in the first place.
“Alright. I’ll pull aggro, so you handle the attack.”
When Chaseok-hyung looked my way as if asking if I was ready, I nodded.
“Uraaaah—!”
The cave had the disadvantage of being damp and narrow, which made movement uncomfortable. But it also had the advantage of letting you pull a monster’s aggro with just a small provocation like this.
After silently thanking Chaseok-hyung for making sure the aggro didn’t spread to distant monsters, I struck.
Thud—!
I slammed the orc’s head straight into the cave floor. The ground was made of hard stone, and green blood splattered everywhere.
“That should’ve killed it, right?”
Still tense, I poked the orc a few times, but it didn’t move at all. Good.
“Whoa, Han Junho! Nice work!”
“Did you see that? He was seriously fast.”
“I saw it too, Heeyeon. Did you cast a Haste buff on him or something?”
“No, not at all! He was completely unbuffed!”
It hadn’t actually been that fast…
“Wait, Heeyeon, you can cast buffs too?”
“Huh? Of course. How else do you think I survive with just healing?”
…Usually, healers did just fine with healing alone. But there were rare healers who could also use buffs. A few of the healers in the Onhwa Guild had been like that. I just hadn’t expected to see it here too.
“Just how talented is this raid party, exactly?”
They really had gathered an incredible group of people.
“Anyway, Oppa, you look completely relaxed now?”
Jiyu, who had been quietly watching from behind, spoke with a smile. Huh… she was right. I had been incredibly tense just moments ago, but the monster had gone down so easily that the tension had completely vanished, leaving me feeling almost empty.
“Then let’s keep going like this. Party leader, shall we continue?”
When Chaseok-hyung, our tank, spoke up, we started advancing again. Whenever two or three orcs appeared at once, I would coordinate with Jiyu or Jia-noona to take them down. But for the single orcs that popped out, Chaseok-hyung would pull aggro while I finished them off. That became our pattern.
“Hmm, looks like we’ve cleared them all?”
The area had fallen completely silent. We circled the area several times for the mining team that would come in later, but there were no monsters left. The only one remaining was probably the boss monster waiting inside the boss room.
“Then let’s send the mining team in first to clean up, and we’ll finish off the boss afterward.”
Once Jiyu gave the order, everyone headed outside with bright expressions. We hadn’t been inside the gate for that long, but stepping out into the sunlight felt incredibly refreshing…
“Hey, you fucking bastards…! You pieces of shit, I’m gonna kill all of you…!”
…Or not.
“How dare you bastards abandon me?”
Come to think of it, it was about time he came to his senses. Kim Pilseok appeared with a massive lump on his head, his face and voice immediately grating on my nerves. Ugh, he looked even more disgusting than the orcs. Not to mention, pointing a weapon at people outside a gate was a serious crime. Unless there was a monster wave, using weapons was strictly prohibited.
Yet this crazy bastard was…
“Hand over Shin Jiyu right now. Or I’ll really stab all of you to death.”
He was thrusting his spear at us as we emerged from the gate, threatening us. Looking around, I saw several on-site staff members already sprawled on the ground, apparently injured while trying to stop him.
“Assault, plus unauthorized entry into a gate zone.”
The area within one kilometer of an active gate was off-limits to anyone except the guild or raid party that had claimed it, along with authorized reporters, until the raid was completed. We had already sent Kim Pilseok a dismissal notice via text before we left, so we could also charge him with trespassing in a restricted gate area.
“Give me Shin Jiyu right now, you fucking bastards!”
While I was considering how to deal with this raving lunatic…
“Yes, were you looking for me?”
Jiyu, who had been standing behind us, slowly stepped forward.
“Yes, were you looking for me?”
Unlike her usual bright demeanor, Jiyu wore a hardened expression as she slowly walked forward. Kim Pilseok sneered.
“Yeah, you. You fucking bitch, do you even know how much effort I put into you?”
If his greasy attempts to seduce people with that disgusting tone counted as “effort,” then yes, Kim Pilseok’s actions definitely fell into that category.
“Jiyu, wait…”
“Hey, you son of a bitch! Are you ignoring me?! Huh?! Don’t move, fuck! I’ll kill all of you bastards!”
When Junho tried to step forward to stop Jiyu, Kim Pilseok wasn’t about to let that happen. He pointed his spear at one of the fallen staff members on the ground, clearly out of his mind. He had never been sane, but now his eyes were completely gone.
“Oppa, it’s okay. I’ll handle this.”
Jiyu frowned at the sight, then whispered to Junho before stepping forward.
“So what exactly do you want?”
A cold voice slipped from Jiyu’s lips without her realizing it. If he had only threatened them, it might have been tolerable. After all, they were fellow hunters. But the on-site staff were different. Treating ordinary people who weren’t even hunters like this was completely unforgivable.
“What do I want? Huh? I want to go to a motel with this oppa and—”
The moment Jiyu stepped forward, Kim Pilseok’s face twisted into a perverted grin. He pulled his spear away from the staff member. That was his fatal mistake.
Junho, who had been quietly watching from behind, shot forward and smashed his fist into Kim Pilseok’s head.
“Ugh, aaack?!”
“Kugh…!”
Of course, Junho’s arm got cut by the spear in the process, but Kim Pilseok…
“Squeee—!”
He let out a sound like a pig getting slaughtered and collapsed face-first onto the ground.
“Kyaaa! Oppa…!”
Whether Kim Pilseok had fainted or not didn’t matter.
“Junho!”
“Han Junho…!”
Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Junho’s bleeding arm.
“H-Heeyeon-unni…! Quick, heal…! Heal him…!”
Heeyeon, who had been bored all day thinking there would be nothing to do in a D-rank gate, had not expected to use her healing like this. Of course she knew that the safest and best situation was one where she didn’t have to step in.
“He’s actually crazy. Why would he charge in like that?”
Heeyeon, looking just as flustered as Jiyu, quickly approached and began healing the wound on his arm.
“Whoa, that’s amazing. First time getting healed.”
Hunters who entered gates rarely had the chance to receive healing. Valuable manpower like healers wasn’t usually wasted on civilians. So this was completely new to Junho, and his fascinated reaction was understandable…
“Is that something to be happy about right now, you idiot?!”
Jiyu’s anger reaching its peak as she smacked him on the back wasn’t an unreasonable reaction either.
“Ow, ow…! It hurts, it hurts…! Forget my arm, I think I need healing where Jiyu hit me…!”
“Sorry, but I’m not wasting mana on that.”
After being coldly rejected by Heeyeon, Junho made a dejected face.
While everyone was enjoying this strangely warm atmosphere, there was one person watching Junho from behind with a look of utter disgust.
‘Is that guy out of his mind…?’
It was Jia. She lowered her trembling hands and pressed the stop recording button on her camera.
‘That bastard… He saw me recording and deliberately charged in, didn’t he?’
Jia had already spotted Kim Pilseok standing there the moment they exited the gate. She had secretly started recording without anyone noticing. No one else had realized it, but Junho was different. He had looked straight at the phone she was holding for recording before rushing at Kim Pilseok.
“Noona, did you get that footage well?”
After finishing his healing from Heeyeon, Junho walked over to Jia with a casual expression and asked.
“Hey, what were you going to do if you got stabbed badly? What then?”
Jia looked extremely angry. Junho scratched his head with an awkward smile.
“Uh, I didn’t think he could actually do that much. He didn’t look like he had the guts for it.”
Junho was quite good at reading people. From everything he had seen of Kim Pilseok so far, he had realized the man didn’t have the nerve to actually kill someone. But to everyone else, it had looked like an incredibly reckless move.
“Sigh… You really… You deserve to get beaten up! Huh?! If something happened to you, don’t you think about how Jiyu would feel?!”
She put him in a headlock and shouted, but since Jia was also relieved that Junho was safe, she decided to stop there.
Soon after, people from the Hunter Association arrived.
“Hunter from the Association, Gang Jeongu. I received the report and came immediately. Where is the perpetrator…”
Gang Jeongu, the Association hunter, looked at the perpetrator sprawled on the ground, thought for a moment, then signaled to the people following behind him.
“Drag him away for now.”
““Yes, sir!””