Savers (1)
Halfway up the mountain, the air was thick with the crisp scent of grass.
Grind—
A woman ground her teeth, chewing hard at her lip. The bitter tang of blood flooded her mouth, but pain was the last thing on her mind.
So this is where you've been.
Every scrap of her attention belonged to a single man.
A deceptively youthful face. And in stark contrast to it, jet-black armor and a greatsword with a living eyeball set into the blade.
That man was a piece of her past. She had believed him a comrade—a brother-in-arms she could trust with her life.
But on that day, it had all come crashing down.
Ting—
Hero Kim Hooyoung, Rank 51, has been murdered by Hero Do Minjun.
Ranks are being recalculated.
Ting—
Hero Do Minjun's Karma Value has reached the critical threshold.
Hero Do Minjun has been marked Wanted.
Do Minjun had murdered their guild master and made off with every item the man owned.
The woman and her guildmates had hunted him down, gritting their teeth the whole way. And then they had found him.
The outcome was butchery.
More than seventy percent of the guild's fighting strength, wiped out.
Do Minjun, gorging himself on the master's items, had swelled into a monster with his eyes on the top ten.
"Killing you like this would be a waste. Next time, come back and actually try to kill me."
For no reason but his own amusement, Do Minjun had spared her life.
Grind—
She was furious. She was poisoned with hatred.
I will kill him.
Four years, every one of them spent for revenge alone.
Punishing effort had carried her ranking to 42nd, her PvP honed until she could honestly claim a place among the ten finest duelists alive.
Her preparations were as close to perfect as they could get.
But Do Minjun had vanished, and no one could find him again.
Only rumors drifted back—that a Corrupted Hero bent on dragging Elid into ruin was hunting heroes one by one.
And then the bastard had sprung out of a place she'd never thought to look.
She wanted to tear him apart this very second.
Not yet.
The woman crushed the feeling down with a clenched fist.
Where did he nest? How much power did he truly command? She needed certainty.
Four years ago, she had lost everything to an act ruled by nothing but emotion. The same mistake could never happen twice.
And so, as the woman smothered her killing intent and watched Do Minjun—
Stir—
Do Minjun swept his sword through empty air, and trailing black smoke, a man who looked anything but friendly crumpled to his knees.
Demonic Sword: Gigantes...
A technique their master had often used.
The smoke told friend from foe, and anyone it marked as an enemy lost so much strength that even the will to resist drained away.
The woman's brow knotted, and she chewed her lip raw.
Because she knew exactly what Do Minjun meant to do to that man.
Dissect him, alive.
"Minjun, stop. Please... it's all my fault."
"Please... spare me..."
In the past, under the pretext of confiscating items, Do Minjun had subjected his will-broken guildmates to unspeakable torture.
That fucking lunatic.
And right on cue—
Shing—
Do Minjun drew a dagger made for dissection and started toward the man lying crumpled and pitiful on the ground.
The scene before her bled into that day four years ago.
The fury she had kept leashed came boiling up.
Hold it in. One more time. This is the last.
She had already stood by and watched rookie heroes be violated.
One more victim, she told herself, was something she could stomach a while longer.
"Minseo... help me..."
"Please... stop. Just kill me..."
The faces of comrades who had shared her life rose before her eyes.
Grind—
What am I waiting for...?
Hadn't every drop of effort been for this day alone? What was there left to verify, like some gutless cripple? Was she scared she'd lose?
Krrk—
At some point, a massive bow had appeared in the woman's hand.
Vmmm—
She drew the string, and an enormous mass of magi gathered at its center.
There's time enough.
Fwoosh—
Her pupils contracted to pinpoints, locking onto Do Minjun.
Her vision magnified until he might as well have been standing ten meters away.
"..."
Do Minjun's lips moved—a sneering taunt for the man—and he drove the dagger down.
The first thing to come apart would be the skin.
From the face all the way to the soles of the feet. Do Minjun was going to dissect every inch of that man's body.
As sorry as she felt for the man about to be tortured, he wasn't going to die.
Grind—
Because before that could happen, this arrow would skewer that bastard's head clean through.
The immense magi condensed and compressed along the woman's bowstring—fwoosh—it hadn't even finished gathering when, vmmm—its power surged to a level that threatened to tear the atmosphere itself apart. And in that exact instant—
BOOM—
With the sudden crack of something bursting, splat—blood came gushing from the spot where Do Minjun had been standing.
What—?!
At the incomprehensible sight, the woman canceled the skill she'd been channeling and poured her every sense into her eyes.
Do Minjun was gone.
Nothing remained but fragments of shattered items and mounds of meat.
Before her questions could even take shape—
Ting—
A message unfolded before the woman.
Bounty target threatening Elid: Do Minjun has died.
Ting—
Corrupted Hero Do Minjun has been eliminated.
Distributing rewards.
⚡ EXP acquired: 80,000,000
🪙 Runes acquired: 1,200,000
Your Karma Value has increased by 150.
Additional reward granted for eliminating a high-tier bounty target.
The corner of Woobin's mouth curled upward as the rewards rolled in one after another.
This was beyond anything he'd imagined.
EXP and gold to rival the Iron Golem, a field boss.
There were a few regrets, though.
Ting—
Of everything the bastard had been wearing, the Demonic Sword was the only item left in one piece.
If he'd settled for taking just the head, he could have walked away with the Dark Fairy armor set as well. But there had been no room for finesse.
If Fist Strike had connected even slightly off, the one lying there as a corpse would have been Woobin.
"He was even more of a lunatic than I thought."
Just how many atrocities does a man have to commit before his bounty swells that large?
His level had to be 180 at the very least, and the number of people he'd murdered had likely climbed into the hundreds.
And a monster like that had been reduced to hunting rookies.
Worth it, huh.
An additional 160,000,000 EXP acquired through the 18th Batch Privilege.
An additional 2,400,000 runes acquired through the 18th Batch Privilege.
Woobin had no choice but to concede the point. A rookie hero's potential outstripped even a middling field boss.
Ting—
Level: 103 → 125(+22)
Woobin checked his new level.
A full twenty-two levels, gained in a single stroke—the kind of climb an ordinary hero would need a year of grinding to barely manage.
And the runes that came pouring in were just as absurd.
3.6 million runes was enough to kit himself out with an S-rank mount on the spot, wasn't it?
"Wh-what the hell. Is this for real? The boss is dead?"
As Woobin tallied his rewards, one of Do Minjun's underlings staggered backward, his face drained white with terror.
"Eep!"
At Woobin's glance, the man jolted as though he'd seen a ghost.
To that man, Do Minjun hadn't been a person. He'd been a god walking.
Judging by the bounty, Do Minjun's authority had outweighed the count of any respectable kingdom. And that existence had just burst like a soap bubble in a single hit.
So what did that make the thing standing here now?
"Uwaaah!!!"
The thought of fighting wouldn't even form in the man's head.
And sure enough—
He bolted without so much as a glance over his shoulder.
Woobin briefly weighed a chase, then looked away.
That man's strength wasn't so far removed from his own.
The bastard was fully geared, while everything Woobin owned amounted to the Demonic Sword and two suits of armor on their last legs.
Woobin wrote him off without ceremony, and was just turning back to the rest of his rewards when—
Whoosh— Thwack—
A wet, sickening crunch of splitting flesh.
"Gwaaah!!!"
The fleeing man's abdomen was skewered straight through.
A moment later, a figure stood before Woobin.
A ponytail bound tight, a suit clinging to every line of her body. But it was the enormous bow in her hand that truly seized Woobin's gaze.
The woman dropped to her knees, clutching a fistful of Do Minjun's mangled flesh.
"He's really dead?"
She chewed at her lip, her face contorting.
Another one of Do Minjun's people?
Woobin checked the air above the woman's head. No red name—the penalty brand of a Corrupted Hero. Which meant she was an ordinary hero.
"He can't die like this. Do you have any idea how long I've been searching for him? He can't die like this!!!"
CRUNCH!
Wailing, the woman smashed her fist down on the pulpy remains. Guts burst. Bone splintered. At the hideous sight, Woobin was certain.
So it was a grudge.
He could feel the rage rolling off her. Desperate. Grief-stricken.
With hands slathered in blood and viscera, the woman wiped her tears away. Blood ran in streaks down her beautiful face.
Only one emotion was left written on it.
Emptiness.
Because she hadn't been the one to take her revenge? Or because his end had come too gently?
It wasn't that Woobin couldn't understand.
If the bastards who had betrayed him had died an end that painless, Woobin would have felt just as hollow.
I need more strength.
Seeing her, Woobin made his vow.
Even setting aside Fist Strike, his instant-kill trump card, he needed the power to grind those bastards into the dirt.
He refused to ever feel what that woman was feeling.
Ting—
[ Do Minjun ]
Woobin's gaze swung to Do Minjun's corpse.
Loot from a slain hero went to whoever moved first. That was the rule.
Which meant if he didn't claim it fast, the woman could strip it before he got there.
Woobin surged upright and plunged his hand into the items Do Minjun had dropped.
Ting—
Before he could even inspect them—
"Hoo..."
The woman's breathing seemed to steady—and then her lightless eyes snapped onto Woobin.
"Who are you."
A question honed to a blade's edge.
Less resentment in it than pure, bristling wariness.
What was he supposed to say to that?
Hmm...
Just as Woobin hesitated over his answer—
"Senior! Found him! What did I tell you? I said I sensed a massive surge of magi, didn't I!"
A bell-clear voice rang out, and a man stepped into view.
"..."
But the man's arrival wasn't what mattered.
Savers...
A cape rippled at the man's back. The shield emblem stitched into it was one Woobin knew all too well.
The guild he had once belonged to. The organization of trash who had tossed him aside like gum chewed down to nothing.
And now a member of that very guild had appeared, right before his eyes.