Rewards Pour Down
What on earth did he do in Murim to become like... that?
Choi Seoyeon couldn't help but think it as she clutched the Golden Goblin by the scruff and stared at her uncle standing before her.
She'd known her uncle was special.
No matter how much Murim-born returnees got looked down on by the other returnees, that was only ever a comparison when the other side was a returnee.
And she'd even understood that her uncle was something special even among those Murim returnees.
If he weren't, he wouldn't have carried around that Doraemon's-pocket-like pouch of his, or given her the sword he had.
But the more she learned, the more she experienced, the more new sides of him kept spilling out.
He'd whisper into people's heads without a sound, and just moments ago, he'd flown straight up into the air as if climbing invisible stairs.
The chat window before Choi Seoyeon's eyes was scrolling upward at a frankly breakneck pace.
Her regular viewers could be counted on one hand, but suddenly people had started flooding in.
And that was probably because word had gotten out that a Golden Goblin had appeared on her stream.
How any of them had found out was a mystery, but everyone pouring in was talking about nothing but the Golden Goblin dangling from her uncle's hand.
That was right.
Something neither Choi Seoyeon nor Lee Jaeseong knew: until this very moment, no one in the world had ever caught a Golden Goblin. Lee Jaeseong was the first.
Seoyeon had no idea what to do with the suddenly swollen chat window.
Viewers had never reacted this sharply before, and she couldn't follow the conversation at all with all this talk of titles and money flying around.
"Sorry, everyone. That's it for today's stream."
Spooked, Seoyeon said her piece and shut the broadcast down on the spot.
"Oh? So killing it gives a title?"
The problem was, her uncle — who'd been quietly watching the chat scroll by — was now eyeing her and the Golden Goblin in her grip with a look of keen interest.
"Kiiieeeek—!"
"Stay still, you little bastard. You're blinding me."
Watching her uncle smack the Golden Goblin upside the head, Seoyeon could only manage an awkward smile.
The broadcast has ended.
"Ah."
A luxury penthouse in Gangnam, Seoul.
Seo Jinwoo, slumped on the living room sofa with a tablet in hand, let out a groan full of disappointment.
Choi Seoyeon's stream — his one and only source of joy — had ended without warning.
Still, it didn't leave him in a bad mood.
Seoyeon, who'd done nothing but suffer for so long, seemed to have found a good uncle.
A remarkably capable one, at that.
Could he be a returnee, like me?
The question drifted through Jinwoo's mind unbidden.
The way he'd just appeared out of nowhere, and the fact that a non-ranker could demonstrate that kind of power — there was no explanation other than a returnee.
"I'm glad. He seems like a good person, anyway."
Jinwoo murmured as he set the tablet down.
And with the Golden Goblin caught on top of everything, Seoyeon wouldn't have to struggle for a while yet. That alone was enough to make him smile.
It was at that exact moment that the living room door was flung open.
"Hey, you little bastard. Why are you still here?"
"...Oh, hyung. You're back early."
The sharp voice lashing into Jinwoo belonged to none other than his older brother — Seo Jintae, Guildmaster of Hyunmu Guild, the power that ruled Gangnam.
Scowling at the tablet in front of Jinwoo, he strode over and slapped his brother across the face.
"Didn't I tell you to stop fucking watching that trash of a stream? You've got a gate raid the day after tomorrow, you're not practicing, and instead you're sitting here watching that girl's broadcast like you've got nothing better to do?"
"...Hyung. I'm, I'm still not fully recovered."
"Spare me. Hey, does anyone really think your body's so broken it hurts to run around? Jinwoo. Seo Jinwoo. Get your head on straight, come on. If I just push a little harder, I promised you could have anything you want, right? And with the goal right in front of us, why are you acting this lazy? You're pissing me off."
Swallowing hard, Jinwoo stared at his brother as he lectured him, gently rubbing his slapped cheek.
"...I'm sorry. Hyung."
Jinwoo slowly bowed his head toward Seo Jintae.
It wasn't that he had nothing to say back — but his brother wouldn't be acting like this if he wanted to, either.
Come to think of it, he had been caught slacking off at a critical moment, so it was understandable that his brother would be angry.
"Jinwoo, I'm sorry I hit you. But you know how it is. Running a guild is no joke. I guess the stress has been building up."
"I-it's fine. I understand. Hyung."
"Good. Besides, it doesn't even hurt when I hit you, so we're fine, right?"
Seo Jintae smiled as he said it to his brother.
True, no matter how specialized Jinwoo was in defense, getting hit still hurt like it would for anyone.
Of course, his heart ached far worse than his slapped cheek — but he nodded at his brother with a smile all the same.
"Right. I understand."
"Good. Then grab your gear and get down to the training room. If you don't produce results in this raid, hyung's really going to lose it."
At Seo Jintae's barked order, Jinwoo nodded quickly.
Just then, his eyes caught the tablet he'd set down on the sofa.
Seoyeon. Just wait a little longer. When things get better, I'll buy you something really delicious.
With that resolution, Jinwoo headed to his room — never once dreaming of how thoroughly his brother was using and milking him.
"...You want me to kill it?"
Seoyeon was looking at me with a bewildered expression.
To me it was the obvious thing, but to her it seemed genuinely incomprehensible.
"Yep. You do it."
"Why? You're the one who caught it."
"I was reading the chat earlier. Apparently if you kill this thing, you get a title."
"Yeah, I read that too, but I don't even know what a title is."
I gave her an odd look at that.
When I thought about it, it made sense.
The way people were offering money to keep anyone else from getting that title said it wasn't something you could just pick up easily — and it was only natural it had nothing to do with a girl who ran nothing but D-rank gates.
Granted, I didn't exactly know what a title was either.
But experience with a fair number of games was enough to tell me that a title was, at minimum, a good thing to have.
"You're too weak, so you should get something like this, at least."
"Excuse me?"
"Honestly, I'm strong enough without any of that stuff."
Seoyeon glared at my face, pride wounded, then turned her glare on the Golden Goblin thrashing in my grip.
Even in that short span, I could see the goblin's expression flicker through a whole range of changes, and reading its thoughts wasn't difficult.
A flash of wounded pride, then a surge of longing to grow stronger, then a flicker of hesitation — am I really allowed to have this?
"Won't you regret it later?"
"I've only ever regretted one thing in my life. Not coming home early that day."
At my answer, Seoyeon pressed her lips together and gave a firm nod.
"Could you do it quickly, then? This thing is blinding me, and I don't want to hold it any longer than I have to."
"Kiiieeeek—!"
As if sensing it had come to its place of death, the Golden Goblin shrieked at the top of its lungs.
Seoyeon moved in that instant.
Jeokah in hand, she drove her blade toward the Golden Goblin's heart exactly as I had taught her.
Weight rooted in her toes, shoulders relaxed — a flawless single stroke.
The blade sank into the Golden Goblin's heart without meeting even a whisper of resistance.
The moment it did, the goblin's body began to scatter into motes of golden light.
And where it had stood, a single golden magic stone and the bag the creature had always carried dropped softly to the ground.
"Uncle."
Seoyeon called out to me, eyes wide with astonishment.
When I looked over, she spoke with a face bright with excitement.
"It says I got a title. Golden Hunter."
"...Is that a good thing?"
I tilted my head as I asked.
I understood vaguely that a title was better than nothing, but I had no idea in what way it was actually beneficial.
"...I'm not really sure either."
"What?"
"It says it comes with insane wealth luck?"
Wealth luck.
I nodded slowly at Seoyeon's words.
It did seem like an ability that suited the Golden Goblin, after all.
"No, this doesn't make any sense?"
Choi Seoyeon was still muttering in disbelief.
The reward for slaying the Golden Goblin had certainly been enormous.
The bag the creature had carried around turned out to be the Infinite Expanding Subspace Pouch, a legendary-grade item that worked much like the bundle her uncle had brought back from Murim.
Naturally, the item went to Choi Seoyeon.
Her uncle had said he already had something similar and had no need for it.
On top of that, the golden magic stone was an Emblem Stone — a special consumable that expanded an Awakened one's rank.
It wasn't an item that was impossible to obtain, but sold at auction it fetched a price that could buy two or three apartments in Gangnam — one of the most expensive items in existence.
Its nickname said it all: the Stone of Reversing Your Life.
Seoyeon had, of course, intended to sell it at auction, but her uncle had heard the explanation and force-fed the thing to her before she could object.
How much money would that thing have sold for... seriously.
Of course, that wasn't the only reason she was stunned.
"How does every single one drop a magic stone?"
It had started when Seoyeon insisted on dismantling the goblins around them.
The count of goblins she'd killed on her own over the day was already approaching triple digits, and she had no intention of leaving those corpses behind.
The magic stones from the heads of dungeon monsters were how hunters earned their living, after all.
Granted, the item and Emblem Stone from the Golden Goblin had already earned them more than enough money — but there was no reason to abandon perfectly good money lying on the ground.
The problem was that every goblin Seoyeon dismantled had a magic stone in its skull.
Kill ten goblins, and maybe three of them would carry a magic stone — that was the average.
But every last one of the goblins Seoyeon had killed today, all ten out of ten, had carried one.
"Oh, there's another one. What is this? There's no way this is actually possible."
When yet another goblin's head yielded a magic stone, Seoyeon muttered it with something approaching fear on her face.
"That's wealth luck for you."
"What even is wealth luck?"
At her words, her uncle snorted and made a circle with his fingers.
"Money luck. The kind of luck that makes the things you love come to you."
That same moment.
A shabby old apartment in Guro.
Kang Iseol, Guildmaster of White Night, was on the verge of tears.
She knew the crimson pressing in all around her was a hallucination.
But knowing it didn't change the fact that she couldn't move a single muscle.
Please. Please, someone, anyone.
Rooted in place, she prayed silently.
Truthfully, the hallucination itself was more or less bearable.
The sinister energy radiating around her suited her occupational traits surprisingly well.
The problem was that her sense of time had stopped working entirely.
She had no idea how long she'd been trapped in the hallucination, let alone when it would end.
Taut nerves left her body refusing to obey, and while her muscles wouldn't move, every sensation in her body had been magnified to a merciless degree.
And the strange, unmistakable sensation welling up from her lower abdomen was now breaking sweat out across Kang Iseol's face.
Not once in her life had she ever let her composure slip in front of others — but in this moment, she'd have thrown away her noble pride without a second thought.
No... if it comes to that here, I'd rather just die.
Yes.
Kang Iseol — the most popular female Awakened in South Korea, Guildmaster of White Night — was, at this very moment, straining against an overwhelming urge to relieve herself.