Howling Wolves' Canyon (4)
"Looks like there really isn't anything here," Minjae said, letting out a faint sigh as he scanned the desolate crags.
"Seems that way," Uncle replied, leaning on his spear. "If nothing's turned up after scouring the place this thoroughly, there's probably nothing to find."
Regrettably, our search for a hidden piece in this gate had yielded no results. We had inspected the cliffside where we first arrived, of course, and combed through a wide expanse of the surrounding terrain, but my spatial sense failed to pick up the slightest anomaly.
While we hadn't turned over every single pebble in the canyon, we had explored more than enough. To be safe, Uncle had even mounted Yongyong and surveyed the canyon from the sky, scouring every nook and cranny from above, yet nothing caught his eye. Dragging the bound werewolf along on a leash had grown rather tedious as well.
"Hey, Hyung," Minjae called out, turning to me.
"What?"
"Just out of curiosity... you didn't deliberately overlook it, did you?"
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
"Well, remember earlier when I said you'd find a hidden piece no matter what? And Noona called you a hidden piece addict, too."
Minjae narrowed his eyes at me with a faintly suspicious look, though his face betrayed an unmistakable smirk.
"Busted," I quipped with a dry shrug. "Think of it as therapy for your addiction."
"That therapy feels downright painful, you know! It feels like being robbed of something that was rightfully ours."
Uncle chuckled at Minjae's cheeky grin and poked him sharply in the ribs with a thick finger.
"Look at how spoiled this brat's gotten, eh? I remember when you discovered your first hidden piece, you were jumping around like a kid in a candy shop."
"Come on, was I the only one? Besides, Hyung-nim, that was back when I was young and naive."
"Young and naive? Boy, how long ago do you think that was?"
"Heheh. It's all thanks to Hye-hyung, honestly."
As Minjae bantered back and forth, Lee Shinhee chimed in with an amused smile.
"Minjae isn't entirely wrong, you know. Thanks to Han Hye, we've encountered hidden pieces in almost every gate we've entered. We've simply grown spoiled by it."
"Et tu, Shinhee-ssi?" I protested playfully. "Haven't you ever heard the saying, 'Don't lose sight of what's precious just because you've grown accustomed to it'?"
Both Lee Shinhee and Minjae burst out laughing.
"This won't do," I said, putting on a stern face. "Bearing the heavy weight of my responsibility as guild leader, I'm officially excluding Minjae from the loot distribution the next time we find a hidden piece. It's tough love for the sake of your recovery, so endure it with grace."
"H-Hyung! That's blatant abuse of power!"
Watching Minjae squirm was simply too satisfying to pass up. He had practically begged for it by teasing me first, so my conscience was crystal clear.
The brief squabble concluded with Minjae solemnly pledging never to get cocky again. That was more like it.
"Great work, everyone. We've already gathered all the magic stones, so let's finish off this last bastard and get out of here."
Gate 'Howling Wolves' Canyon' has been subjugated.
Experience points acquired.
Level has increased.
A single level was all I gained from this raid, but I felt no disappointment. I had watched Uncle take a massive leap in his combat mastery with my own eyes, and the same went for Lee Shinhee. Personal progression was essential, of course, but the growth of my guild members carried equal weight—especially Uncle's. Setting aside the matter of his safety, having stronger companions meant I could unleash my own abilities on the front lines without looking over my shoulder.
Skills: Subspace (S-rank) Lv 4, Incineration (S-rank) Lv 2, Leap (A-rank) Lv 4, Fire Resistance (A-rank) Lv 7...
This time, I invested points into Mentality, which had lagged noticeably behind the others. Now that I had hit Level 36, bringing my primary attributes into closer equilibrium felt like the smart move. Starting from B-rank gates, monsters capable of inflicting mental attacks and psychological debuffs became far more common.
To be fair, my current resilience was already formidable. During the Outbreak Gate incident, while other hunters stood frozen in terror before the ogre, barely able to flee, I had stepped forward and fought it head-on without flinching.
That was only possible because my Mentality stat provided a solid baseline.
The same held true when conversing with ancient deities or beings like Hwarba. Even within a level-appropriate gate, Chunbae had warned that an Awakener lacking sufficient mental fortitude could black out simply from the presence of such entities. While my Mana stat remained extraordinarily inflated, that discrepancy made sense when factoring in the sheer consumption required by an S-rank skill like Incineration. For the foreseeable future, maintaining a steady balance among my other attributes while letting Mana sit high seemed ideal.
"Whew. He'll do fine, won't he?"
As I pondered my stats, Uncle rubbed his palms together anxiously, pacing in place.
"Don't worry too much, Uncle," I offered gently.
Even as I said it, I understood his fretfulness completely. A knot of nervous tension twisted in my own gut, too. Today marked the very first day that Minseok had entered a gate.
Arranging it had taken considerably longer than originally planned, and the reason was obvious: finding people who were both utterly trustworthy and tight-lipped was an excruciating ordeal.
On top of that, the party entering with Minseok had to be low-level Awakeners themselves.
If he had awakened an ordinary rare class, things might have been simpler. But as a Craftsman, the Hunter Association had to enforce airtight security around him. After days of vetting candidates without finding a suitable low-level squad, the Association had settled on an alternative approach.
Unable to procure completely reliable hunters in the Level 1 to 5 bracket, Iron Wall Guild had agreed to power-level Minseok directly. Entering a gate alongside hunters vastly higher in level caused a severe penalty to experience gains, but the yield wasn't zero. A trickle of experience was still experience.
"Wait, if that's the plan, we could just carry him ourselves," I had suggested when they first pitched the idea. But Seo Woong had politely asked us to place our faith in the Association.
Naturally, it was also for our benefit.
In essence, they would handle the tedious grind so we could devote our full attention to rapid growth. While the Iron Wall members assigned to help him were undeniably elite talents themselves, the Association clearly held our squad in even higher regard.
Besides, this arrangement wasn't meant to last forever. They would only carry him up to Level 6, after which he would be paired with peers of equal level.
Once past that threshold, his leveling pace would surge. Security wouldn't be compromised, either.
They had ordered Iron Wall's escorts to level him up without disclosing his identity or class, leaving nothing to chance. Uncle and I weren't even standing out in the open near the gate entrance; we had concealed ourselves nearby, monitoring from a discreet distance. The escort party likely assumed he was simply the heir to some influential figure with a rare class—hardly suspecting he was the world's first Craftsman.
Still, no matter how foolproof the precautions seemed, worry gnawed at our chests. He was Uncle's flesh and blood, and to me, he was practically a nephew. And because this method relied on sheer repetition to offset the penalty, they planned to clear eight gates in a single day.
"Dad! Hyung! I leveled up!"
Minseok's cheerful voice shattered our anxiety as he emerged unscathed from the gate's shimmering barrier, a broad grin plastered across his face.
"Was it tough?" Uncle asked, rushing over to inspect him from head to toe.
"Nope! I just stood back while they obliterated everything in seconds!"
That made sense. With high-tier hunters steamrolling gates designed for Levels 1 through 5, the monsters wouldn't last more than a few heartbeats. Clearing eight nearby low-tier gates had taken less than two hours. Factoring in transit time between locations, it was practically an assembly line.
"Still, that's surprisingly fast," I remarked.
It would take time before Minseok could level up enough to wield his crafting skills properly, but the same held true for me as I prepared to resist the encroaching Erosion of Mana. Despite the media spotlight and global fanfare, I was still only Level 36.
"The growth of a Craftsman requires patience. You are progressing splendidly, Master Han Hye. The foundation you build is sound."
Chunbae was right. Steady and secure was the way forward. Not just for myself, but alongside everyone walking beside me.
Following our expedition to Howling Wolves' Canyon, Uncle spent several days engrossed in solitary spear training. Although his spearmanship skill had leaped forward during that transcendent trance against the werewolf pack, he confessed he hadn't fully assimilated the breakthrough into his muscle memory. Breaking through a bottleneck was one thing; wielding that enlightenment effortlessly at will was another entirely. He wanted to internalize the techniques before sparring with me again.
Which makes complete sense.
In the meantime, we tackled two additional gates. Instead of popular resource dungeons, we selected straightforward combat gates focused entirely on extermination. Part of it was accommodating Uncle's training rhythm, but it was also because there were no high-profile gates worth expending our precious priority passes on at the moment.
Level has increased.
I gained another level across those runs, but neither gate yielded a hidden piece or a breakthrough in skill levels. Encountering three consecutive gates devoid of hidden features felt slightly jarring. To ordinary hunters, that was simply everyday reality, but for someone gifted with spatial awareness, finding nothing felt like an anomaly.
Still, the streak clarified an important truth.
Not every gate contains a hidden piece after all.
Perhaps they only spawn in dungeons above a certain difficulty threshold, or under highly specific environmental conditions.
Even though I had only gained a single level, those two raids proved remarkably beneficial. What Uncle had said about breaking past limits without fully owning the technique applied directly to me as well.
I didn't fully understand my own limits either.
Looking back, my swordsmanship skill levels had risen most frequently during sparring sessions with Sang-yeop-ssi or Shin Chang. In contrast, running through actual gates without relying on overwhelming stats to crush monsters—forcing myself to execute pure, refined swordcraft—offered immense value. Even without a formal level increase in my swordsmanship skill, repeating the exact forms under live combat conditions polished my execution. The fusion of Cresea Swordsmanship and Fighting Rooster flowed with noticeably greater fluidness and precision.
It was surprisingly exhausting, though.
Truth be told, stripping away raw stats and magical firepower to face ferocious beasts purely with steel and footwork felt more grueling than clearing high-difficulty gates. I possessed far greater strength and speed than the monsters, yet limiting myself to blade craft alone turned every exchange into an exacting puzzle. It was closer to rigorous review than new discovery, but the payoff left me deeply satisfied.
"You have consolidated your internal foundation at an opportune time. Grounding yourself in this manner provides the springboard for your future leaps."
Chunbae offered uncharacteristic praise.
Really?
"Affirmative. When Awakeners hit an impassable wall later in their journey, the cause is frequently a trivial oversight in their fundamentals. You have preemptively fortified those cracks."
Given that I had always recognized the importance of solid fundamentals, hearing Chunbae confirm it felt reassuring. With Kim Hancheol scheduled to join our vanguard soon, the timing couldn't have been better.
I allocated one point each into Strength, Agility, and Mentality, bringing every primary attribute aside from Mana to an even 44. Having 44 across the board felt superstitiously ominous, tempting me to bump everything to 45, but I held back.
I need to keep reserves for emergencies.
Unlike our usual high-stakes outings, the last three gate raids had been remarkably tranquil, without a single hidden piece in sight. But didn't people always say it was calmest right before the storm? Having survived my fair share of unexpected chaos, a faint unease lingered in the back of my mind. We intended to cash in our priority passes for upcoming high-tier gates soon, and there was no telling what absurdity might unfold. Holding points in reserve was simply good sense.
However...
Before diving into our next gate, a matter of paramount importance demanded our immediate attention.
"All right, everything's set up!" Uncle called out, wiping his hands on an apron with a look of supreme pride.
"Whew, I can't wait," I murmured, my mouth already watering.
Today was the fateful day we selected the official beef distributor for the grand opening of Yongyong Beef Restaurant.