Bullet Hell
Sshwock—!
With a sound like air tearing apart, the thick neck of a massive C-rank Orc Warrior split clean open.
Thud.
The headless body of the Orc Warrior hit the ground a heartbeat later.
...Huh? What is this?
It was at that very moment that an earthquake rippled through Choi Seoyeon's eyes.
Dazed, she looked down at her own hand. She had used her skill just like always, yet the movement that came out was completely unlike anything before.
The chat window was in just as much of an uproar. It had been a single sword strike, but the result was nothing short of astonishing.
Orc Warriors, the mainstay monsters of the C-rank Gate Choi Seoyeon had entered, were not opponents one could take down easily. In the first place, even being a C-rank hunter capable of hunting Orc Warriors was treated as serious combat power in the real world. And even those C-rank hunters didn't find it easy to fell an Orc Warrior in a single strike.
Of course, the one most flustered by all of this was Seoyeon herself. The effects of the elixir her uncle had fed her, the corrective power of the Blood Infant Sword, and the payoff of her earlier training had all combined — but Seoyeon herself had no idea.
"See that? You saw that, right, Dad?!"
Even so, she turned her head to look at her father and said just that, thanks to her simple, cheerful nature — a case of a good thing simply being a good thing. And both of Seoyeon's eyes were shining brighter than ever.
"Huh? Really? We're number one right now?"
Either way, her skills seemed to hold up even in a C-rank Gate she'd secretly worried about, and on top of that, she'd just heard unbelievable news. First place in live viewers.
For Seoyeon — a bottom-tier streamer among bottom-tier streamers — it was something she could hardly believe. She knew it wasn't thanks to her, but because of her dad, yet that hardly mattered to her right now. The recognition of the crowd, the certainty that she had grown stronger, and above all the fact that her father was watching her every moment — all of it was flooding her with a rush she had never once felt before.
But.
"..."
Behind her, watching his daughter's display, Choi Taemin's insides were burning pitch black.
It was true that Seoyeon's skill was exceptional, just as Jaeseong had said. Her sword strikes were so clean that it made him wonder why she'd ever been running D-rank Gates in the first place.
The problem was that the girl beheading Orc Warriors with that bright, innocent face was his own daughter.
She's only eighteen.
No matter that the enemy was a monster, from a father's perspective there was nothing welcome about his still-so-young daughter growing accustomed to slaughter. His head understood that the world had changed, that his daughter growing strong was not a sad thing but something to embrace — yet Choi Taemin's face simply would not relax.
"Oh. There's another one over there."
"Seoyeon. Careful. Don't let your guard down."
Hiding his conflicted feelings, Choi Taemin forced a stern voice as he warned his daughter. Naturally, an already-thrilled Seoyeon wasn't about to really listen.
"Got it! C-ranks are nothing, huh? Now then, shall we grab the loot?"
Humming to herself, Seoyeon rifled through the head of the Orc Warrior she'd just felled. A moment later, a bluish magic stone smeared with green blood rose into her hand.
"Oh! Another one dropped!"
Beaming with excitement, Seoyeon held the magic stone up to the camera to show it off. A single C-rank magic stone would fetch several million won — an unthinkable sum for the Seoyeon of the past.
That was the moment the mood of the chat began to shift ever so subtly.
The moment someone raised that accusation, the chat spiraled into chaos. Most of the people watching had to be hunters or people deeply invested in hunter affairs, and seven consecutive magic stone drops in a C-rank Gate was clearly beyond common sense.
Ugh. Stupid, stupid — I got way too carried away.
Checking the chat's reaction too late, Seoyeon winced. The obvious reason magic stones kept spilling from her kills was the title she'd gained from slaying the Golden Goblin. There was no particular reason to hide it, she thought, but it wasn't exactly something to flaunt, either.
The title Golden Hunter grants insane Metallic Luck at all times.
"Ah, ahaha! Guess my luck's just good today, huh? Did I burn through my whole year's allotment of luck in one day?"
Seoyeon hurriedly strung together excuses for the camera. The problem was that her acting was painfully, obviously awkward.
Thanks to that, some remarkably sharp guesses were starting to surface in the chat.
"O-oh, that's it for today's stream!"
Panicking outright, Seoyeon cut the broadcast on the spot. The problem was that her timing came a tiny bit too late.
**
Vwoom—!
It was shortly after Seoyeon had ended her stream that the flow of mana filling the interior of the C-rank Gate began to warp.
"Huh?"
Seoyeon tilted her head, staring at a sliding door that had suddenly appeared in midair. It was a structure that, until just moments ago, had definitely not been there.
Creeeak.
The instant the door of the structure opened—
"Fall back."
Choi Taemin, the first to sense the danger, moved like lightning and planted himself in front of Seoyeon. His instincts as an Awakened had warned him that the aura emanating from the door was anything but ordinary.
Needless to say, before being trapped in the Yeouido Gate, Choi Taemin had conquered countless Gates. But in all that experience, nothing like this had ever happened.
Grrrrind—.
The instant the old wooden door suspended in midair opened with a groan of friction—
What stepped out was not a monster.
It was a young man, standing with a crooked slouch, dressed in a baggy slacker jacket covered in flashy designs, a lollipop stick jutting from his mouth.
"Mitsuketa."
What came out of the man's mouth was not Korean, but Japanese.
Then, after crunching down the lollipop in a single bite, the man turned a bright smile on Seoyeon.
"Chotto matte." — hold on. Ah, you can understand me now, right? But why'd you cut the stream so suddenly? I almost couldn't find you."
The man in the jacket addressed Seoyeon in a lazy, insolent tone.
"Wh-who are you?"
Seoyeon asked, staring at him in shock. Something was undeniably strange — the shape of the man's lips didn't match the sound reaching her ears.
"Rascal1. Ring a bell?"
"Sorry? Oh."
"Yeah. That Rascal1 who was in your stream back then—"
"Don't tell me — this is about getting banned?"
At Seoyeon's words, the man's expression twisted beautifully.
"No, you little—. You think it's about that? Obviously it's about the Golden Goblin."
"What?"
"Don't play dumb. From what I saw, you're the one who killed the Golden Goblin, right? You know how this works. When someone who's received the title effect dies, the monster regenerates."
"...Oh."
"So if you'd just let me go when I told you to, we wouldn't be standing face to face like this. Which means — take care of yourself now, kid."
Snap.
The moment the man flicked his fingers, Choi Taemin, who had been quietly watching him, moved. He drew his sword and swung in a flash, and a moment later a small explosion burst in empty air.
"Kyaaah!"
Seoyeon screamed and collapsed to the ground at the sudden blast, unable to help herself.
"Seoyeon. You okay?"
"Huh? Ah, yeah."
"Stay behind me."
Sword held at an angle, Choi Taemin positioned himself between Seoyeon and the unknown man as she sat sprawled on the ground. Having confirmed she wasn't hurt, he fixed the man with an ice-cold glare.
A spatial-type, is it?
The instant the man had snapped his fingers, a fist-sized mana bullet had suddenly erupted behind Seoyeon's back. If not for Choi Taemin's special skill that manipulated time, it would have been a sneak attack he'd have taken dead on.
"Oh! You blocked that? What the hell is this guy, anyway? Hm? Why do strong people keep crawling out of the woodwork around here?"
The man muttered it with a face utterly devoid of tension — as if the attack just now had been nothing more than a greeting.
"...I don't know what you're after, but as long as you've laid a hand on my daughter, you'd best give up on going home in one piece."
Pointing his blade at the man, Choi Taemin delivered the warning in a frigid voice.
"Ooooh. Very cool, old man. But you see, I don't have a hobby of fighting guys your age."
The man retreated, still in that playful tone — and at the same moment, strange motes of light began to form all around Seoyeon.
Choi Taemin had little trouble deducing that they were something similar to the explosive charge he'd just swatted away. And that the man was fixating not on him, but on his daughter alone.
"Ahahaha. Dodge them if you can. Not one bastard has ever survived my bullet-hell game."
The instant the man's mad cry rang out, the things that had taken position around Seoyeon began to move.
Skill Eternal Moment is activating.
Choi Taemin instinctively slowed time, and at once his eyes swept over everything scattered around Seoyeon.
Dozens of sources of light.
Each and every one of them, he was certain, would trigger an explosion just like the last one. The thought alone was enough to make his stomach sink.
Amid it all, it was rather endearing to see Seoyeon gripping a dagger as well — but that wouldn't do her any good in the immediate moment.
Still, even in the thick of it, Choi Taemin's mind raced. There was no such thing in this world as a skill without a weakness.
Take himself: he possessed the absurdly overpowered ability to control the flow of time, yet it came with the flaw of being bound by that very time.
Come to think of it — the brightness of the lights is slightly different.
Choi Taemin confirmed it: every one of the lights floating around his daughter glowed at a different intensity. It was a difference so subtle that had he not possessed the power to slow time without limit, he might never have noticed it at all.
Without a moment's deliberation, Choi Taemin swung his sword at the brightest light.
He saw the glow flicker and die — but there was no time whatsoever to check the result. The instant one vanished, another light flared even brighter.
And each time Choi Taemin's blade passed through a light, those lights belatedly began to detonate in midair. The inside of the Gate was swallowed by acrid thunderclaps and plumes of dust.
"Tsk tsk, that's just brute force — wait. Huh?"
When the dust settled and he took in the scene, a baffled sound slipped from the man's mouth.
Where dozens of mana bullets had detonated, Choi Taemin and Choi Seoyeon stood utterly unharmed. There wasn't so much as a fleck of soot on the hem of Seoyeon's clothes.
"No way — is this a bug? This doesn't make sense. How did you block ALL of them?"
The man muttered in disbelief. His opponent had come through his own signature move — the one no one had ever survived — without a scratch, yet there was no fear on his face at all.
"...Is that everything you've got?"
Choi Taemin asked, keeping his sword leveled at the man. He had a rough idea of the man's ability now. A long-range dealer, unlike himself — but while he could summon dozens of mana bullets at once, only a single explosion went off at any given moment. That, it seemed, was his flaw.
"No way. That can't be. I've only just cleared Stage One, so where would he— huh?"
The instant the man, who had been laughing breezily at Choi Taemin's question, froze—
"...And what is THIS now?"
Only then did the man discover a single red talisman stuck to his own body, and he scrunched up his face.