The Emerald River Hunt

The farther we pushed upstream, the clearer the murky river became. What had looked like a slurry of every filthy thing imaginable began to gleam with the luminous beauty of a watercolor landscape. An emerald river, true to the dungeon's name, unfurled before us.

We could not simply stand there and admire the view, however. Clearer water meant we had reached monster territory. We pressed forward with our guard raised even higher. And as if determined not to disappoint us, a sharp, nerve-grating howl rang out from up ahead.

"Grrrrrrngh!"

What kind of monster was it? I focused my gaze toward the front. Yeonji, who was taking point, turned toward the sound and raised both arms into a defensive ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stance. From the riverside undergrowth, a massive wolf-shaped monster burst forth.

Its entire body was sheathed in gray fur, and it stretched well over two meters from snout to tail. Its eyes rolled with the same rabid madness as a dog in the throes of hydrophobia, and it bared its fangs as it slowly closed the distance.

I had no idea whose house had raised this particular mutt, but the pressure rolling off it was no joke. This was the first monster we had encountered in a real dungeon. I swallowed hard.

"It's a Gray Wolf."

Yeonji, still at the front, had already identified it.

Gray Wolves were something like cousins to the Dire Wolf. Quadrupedal beast-type monsters, and fairly common ones at that. Common or not, there was not a scrap of them you could afford to throw away — bone, hide, meat, even the organs — which made them extremely profitable. They outclassed Dire Wolves in combat power, and their agility in particular was a cut above.

"Looks like there's only one. I'll tank it."

"Good. Don't overdo it. Stay calm."

"Yeah. Leave it to me!"

Yeonji charged forward to meet the Gray Wolf head-on. Not being particularly intelligent, the Gray Wolf saw her rushing it, let out a savage snarl, bared its teeth, and charged right back.

I had heard that smarter monsters would sometimes ignore the tank entirely and go straight for the damage dealers or the healer. Of course, pulling aggro back in those situations was part of a tank's job.

"Kiiiieeeek!"

Jaws yawning wide, the Gray Wolf closed on Yeonji with a burst of speed that put the Dire Wolf from the Dungeon Hunter exam to shame. For Yeonji, however — a Rank 9 hunter who had already cleared several dungeons — the attack was hardly a threat.

She crossed her arms in an X, then kicked off the ground and charged. Her body was a living battering ram. The Gray Wolf, which had so boldly tried to match her in a contest of strength, took her shove full-on and went flying. Yeonji had won the clash of force.

"Kigigigiing~!"

The thing let out a whimper like a mutt that had just been cracked with a club. It was already down, and our damage dealer had not even lifted a finger. This had to be a weak specimen even among Gray Wolves. Lucky for us.

"Sujin!"

"On it!"

Sujin loosed a Water Arrow at the downed Gray Wolf. Four watery shafts streaked toward it at once. The range was a little long, so only two connected, but that was more than enough. The Gray Wolf's foreleg and belly hide punched through, and blood poured out in sheets.

"Kyaaaaeeeng!"

Yeonji did not waste the opening. She closed in. Tank or not, her offensive power was hardly so anemic that she could not finish a dying monster. She laced her fingers together and hoisted them high above her head.

"Iron Hammer!"

In that instant, her clasped hands turned a dull gray, taking on the shape of a massive iron mallet — just as the technique's name suggested. The hammer dropped straight onto the whimpering, bleeding Gray Wolf's skull.

A wet, sickening crunch.

The skull burst apart completely. Blood and chunks of flesh sprayed, and Yeonji's clothes ended up looking like those of a serial killer who had just finished disposing of a body. There was no question the Gray Wolf was dead. Its body twitched and flailed for a brief moment, then went limp.

"It's dead."

As if this sort of thing were already second nature, Yeonji rose from her crouch without a fuss. She pulled a tissue from her pack and gave her clothes a rough wipe-down. Special tissues, the kind that actually took blood off. A Dungeon Hunter essential. Bloodbaths were extremely common in dungeons.

"All right. Shall we butcher it, then?"

Unlike back at the academy, we now had to sell this monster's byproducts. That was the whole point of being a Dungeon Hunter. Hauling the carcass out whole would have been ideal, but that was not realistic, so butchering a kill on the spot was standard practice.

If you left a monster unbutchered, the corpse would vanish on its own after a while. The time it took varied by monster, and by dungeon. Some people said the dungeon absorbed them. Monsters respawned in dungeons, and they disappeared like this too. According to dungeon scholars, anything absorbed this way was reconstituted by the dungeon's power and summoned again. Whether that was actually true, I had no idea.

We had been given a very abbreviated lesson in monster butchery at the academy. Of course, that alone was useless. There were an absurd number of monster species, and the valuable byproducts differed for each one, so butchery was purely a product of experience.

I started in the way I had been taught. The flensing dagger was wickedly sharp, and I used it to peel the hide first, trying as hard as I could not to damage it. By the time I had the whole thing off, it already looked like a filthy, tattered rag.

At this rate, we would not even get half its proper value. Monster butchery was one of a Dungeon Hunter's essential skills.

"Damn. This isn't easy."

But this was how you learned. I handed the next stage off to Sujin. She turned out to have surprisingly deft hands, separating bone from meat in no time. A dungeon hunter family, through and through. She must have inherited the talent from her parents.

Yeonji took the flensing dagger last. With more experience than either of us, she separated the meat from the organs without breaking a sweat. According to her, butchery was the kind of work your hands picked up surprisingly fast.

The Gray Wolf had weighed about a hundred kilograms in total. Every part of it fetched a decent price, so if we had the capacity we would have taken it all — but with a three-person party, space was tight. We decided to keep only the most expensive byproducts.

I discarded the hide I had ruined without a second thought. The meat would have sold reasonably well, but the bones and organs were worth far more, so those were all we took. The organs went into treated leather pouches packed with preservative. The bones we scrubbed hard in the river water and stacked on top of our packs like firewood on a back-carrier. I could have stashed them in my inventory, but I still had not told Yeonji about my hidden abilities, so we packed them the ordinary way.

I would tell her eventually. For now, though, we needed to focus on the dungeon run, and there was no reason to hit her with another shock.

"This is weird, though. My body feels so much lighter than usual. And my techniques hit harder too…"

Yeonji said ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it as she stood up, the work finished. That was definitely the Power of Sex at work. On top of that, she had received the first-time bonus, so her stats must have skyrocketed.

"That's all thanks to Master fucking you so well."

I pointed at myself with my thumb as I said it, but she just snorted, taking it as a joke. I wasn't joking.

In any case, we packed up the Gray Wolf's byproducts and pushed on. A little farther along, we found traces of another party's hunt. Same as us — they had discarded all the meat and taken only the bones and organs.

Dire Wolf meat was famous for its flavor, and Gray Wolf was no different. It cost far more than hanwoo beef; I had never even tasted it. Once we wrapped up this expedition, maybe we could have Gray Wolf for the team dinner.

"Nngh… what a waste."

Yeonji was looking at the Gray Wolf meat left lying on the ground, thinking along the same lines I was. Expensive as it was, it still could not match the bones or the organs. The inevitable result of picking and choosing.

The farther we pushed upstream, the more monsters we ran into. The most common were Gray Wolves, but White Raccoons and goblins started turning up one after another as well. Of those, the most irritating by far were the goblins. One ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the dungeon's classic small fry, goblins were also the monster Dungeon Hunters most preferred to avoid.

The reason was simple: goblin byproducts were worth absolutely nothing. They were the antithesis of the Gray Wolf, whose bones, hide, and organs were all packed with value. No profit, and yet they lived in packs, which made a bad encounter genuinely dangerous. Every group we had met so far moved in units of at least five. Their tactics were primitive, but they had tactics, and a moment's carelessness could leave you badly hurt.

We slaughtered every goblin we came across. Even a beginner Dungeon Hunter would not lose to goblins so long as they kept their head.

"Whew. Should we take a break here for a bit?"

The goblin hunting had slowed our pace. We had not reached our planned spot, but forcing the tempo in a dungeon was dangerous. We decided to rest.

A large willow happened to be nearby. We sat in its shade and shrugged off our packs. This was not a dungeon Safe Area, but the terrain here was open enough that, with a proper watch, we could afford to sit down like this.

"Let's check the byproducts."

What we had farmed so far came to two Gray Wolves' worth and four White Raccoons' worth. I ran the numbers in my head. Roughly eight million won. If we turned around from here and picked up one more Gray Wolf on the way back, that would put us around ten million.

More goblins had shown up than expected, so it was less than I had hoped — but it was not bad. Considering this was my and Sujin's first real combat, it was actually a solid result.

"Are we heading back from here today?"

"Yeah. We've still got tomorrow and the day after, so there's no point pushing it. Looks like the other parties are still in the middle of their hunts."

The parties that had entered ahead of us still seemed to be hunting deeper in. They had more people than we did, so they would be able to haul out a larger volume of byproducts. Of course, once you split it n-ways later, the average take would not differ that much.

Once we had recovered our stamina, we turned around and headed out of the dungeon. Along the way we crossed paths with a party going in. Unfortunately, we did not run into another Gray Wolf.

The moment we passed the dungeon's boundary stone, a murky fog filled our vision. We pushed through it toward the wholesalers who bought byproducts.

These wholesalers were the NPCs you could always count on finding at a dungeon entrance. Some belonged to major conglomerates; others were small companies or independent operators. The instant they spotted us carrying byproducts, they launched into a noisy round of hawking.

"Gray Wolf byproducts? Sejin Logistics will buy them at a premium."

"Sell to us at Ilseong Logistics. We'll give you a better rate than anyone else."

"Hey, handsome. Sell it to us~"

This was another battlefield entirely.

"Sejin Logistics. That's the company you used to work for, Sujin."

"Yeah. Monster byproduct distribution was our company's main business, so of course they'd be here."

We were still complete greenhorns who did not know how things worked around here, so trusting a conglomerate seemed like the safer bet. We might take a small loss, but at least they would not slap us with some unscrupulous price-gouging.

We sold the byproducts to Sejin Logistics. The total came to 8.8 million won. Not a bad price. Split three ways, that was a daily wage of nearly three million won each. Of course, in the Dungeon Hunter industry, that was a pittance. We were just getting started, though, so it could not be helped.

"Let's head back to the hotel."

We needed a proper rest for tomorrow. We boarded the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shuttle bound for the hotel. First things first — I wanted a shower, to get this awful blood smell off me.