Stone-Plate Grilled Black Minotaur Short Plate, Part 3
Minotaurs. They were famous monsters, known to everyone from the Hunter Association to the general public.
Even before the Great Rift, they frequently appeared in folklore, mythology, and various subcultures and games, so there was hardly anyone who didn't know of them.
Generally, the standard Minotaur was known to be a B-grade monster.
Though they were bipedal, incredibly strong beastmen with the heads of bulls, their horns, bones, and even their muscles and meat sold for high prices. Not only did they taste excellent, but they were also rumored to be highly effective for stamina and vigor, making them immensely popular.
In fact, Minotaur meat was the very first dungeon monster meat to be officially approved for human consumption.
It was said, only half-jokingly, that the reason B-grade hunters and above enjoyed such immense wealth was because they hunted Minotaurs.
While it was partly a joke, there was a grain of truth to it; Minotaur meat was actively supplied to modern hunter society as a highly sought-after luxury food.
Naturally, as a monster's rank increased, the mana embedded within its flesh grew stronger, and its taste became incomparably better.
When comprehensively judged by its intramuscular fat, meat color, fat color, texture, and maturity, the meat of a B-grade Minotaur possessed a quality equivalent to 1+ grade beef.
The meat of rare A-grade Minotaurs, or variants like the Minocentaur, boasted an even higher quality.
And the Black Minotaur was an S-grade dungeon boss.
The nightmare of the dungeons, the incarnation of destruction itself, the thresher of A-grade hunters.
It was the most frequently appearing monster among S-grade dungeon bosses. Because it could inhabit almost any environment—forests, grasslands, deserts, and highlands, excluding only snowfields—it was the S-grade monster a hunter was most likely to encounter first.
As the most common S-grade monster, it also claimed a significant share of the emergency dispatches for S-grade hunters.
Furthermore, the Black Minotaur possessed a level of strength that defied comparison to ordinary Minotaurs.
While people joked that A-grade hunters hunted Minotaurs when they needed money, here, the opposite was true: the Black Minotaur would split the heads of A-grade hunters and use them as decorations for its cave.
In terms of sheer size, a Black Minotaur was three times larger than a standard Minotaur.
It was practically a walking building. Yet, its charge speed had been clocked at up to 180 kilometers per hour. Not only did it achieve impossible speeds with that massive bulk, but its physical strength—highly compressed with mana and muscle—could shatter the ground with a single punch. If you were even grazed by a Black Minotaur's charge, your allies would have to pray just to find your corpse.
Although cooperative raid manuals for multiple A-grade hunters to avoid frontal clashes and use long-range bombardment had been widely distributed, to put it simply, even S-grade hunters—who existed in the realm beyond humanity—found it difficult to face a Black Minotaur one-on-one depending on the circumstances.
As a side note, the quality of Black Minotaur meat, which only a select few wealthy individuals and S-grade hunters had ever tasted, was said to transcend the 1++ grade.
"Hehe..."
Shiver!
Never in her wildest dreams did Yeonhwa think she would live to see the day she would be grilling Black Minotaur meat.
Sizzle, sizzle...
"..."
Sizzle, pop... sizzle, sizzle... glistening with juice...
For the record, the cut she was grilling was the short plate.
The short plate refers to the muscle covering the cartilage from the 7th to the 13th ribs of a cow, excluding the brisket. To put it simply, it was the belly meat.
Also known as beef belly, this cut featured alternating layers of fat and lean meat, boasting a gorgeous marbling. Although the grain of the meat was thick and coarse, it possessed the richest, most flavorful juices of any beef cut.
Of course, the physical structure of a cow and a Black Minotaur were quite different... but since she had sliced it from the lower belly beneath the ribs, it was close enough to short plate.
But why the short plate, you ask?
Because a blood-drenched, white-haired woman had already torn apart and devoured all the other parts, leaving this as the only intact section.
And it wasn't just the woman. The horrific, tooth-filled tentacles sprouting from her back had also savagely ripped into the Black Minotaur, leaving virtually no other part of the carcass unscathed.
'But why am I suddenly grilling meat...?'
Yeonhwa couldn't understand why she had lost her mind enough to tell a blood-soaked woman, who was eating a Black Minotaur alive, to grill it instead.
Was it because the scene was so surreal that her brain had simply short-circuited?
Yes, that had to be it... It had to be.
The ridiculous words had slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Right, Grandmother always said that if you want to win over a stranger, you should feed them grilled meat...
So this was just to win her over...
"...Hehe, smells... so good..."
No, putting all that aside... what on earth was this woman?
Yeonhwa broke out in a cold sweat as she watched the white-haired woman stare with a bright, innocent smile at the meat grilling on the cleanly wiped stone plate.
The woman seemed to have empty thoughts, but Yeonhwa's mind was racing.
What was that ferocity she had displayed earlier?
Was that S-grade dungeon boss, the Black Minotaur, screaming and running for its life because of this woman?
Even her grandmother, Yeon Seo, a living legend, would only be able to win a one-on-one fight against a Black Minotaur with considerable effort.
Yet, the Black Minotaur was a monster with high self-esteem, rationality, and intelligence.
It was not a creature that would turn its back and flee even when fighting Yeon Seo. Even against opponents stronger than itself, the Black Minotaur was known to fight to the death, roaring defiantly.
For such a beast to flee in sheer, mindless terror was a sight that neither Yeonhwa nor any other hunter had ever witnessed—or could even begin to imagine.
'Who on earth is she...? A returnee?'
Yeonhwa carefully observed the white-haired woman, who was still covered in blood from head to toe, savoring the aroma of the grilling Black Minotaur meat.
She was quite tall.
Probably in her mid-to-late 170s.
She was a full head taller than Yeonhwa. Her hair, though discolored by the blood, was actually a shimmering, well-maintained silver upon closer inspection.
Though it was hard to tell through the layers of blood, she had a remarkably bright smile. Even a brief glance told Yeonhwa that she was an exceptional beauty. If her face were just a little cleaner, she would easily win anyone's favor with her looks.
'Her muscles... outwardly, she doesn't look like she has the kind of musculature that possesses monstrous strength. But she slammed a Black Minotaur into the ground with one hand... Is she the type who reinforces her strength with mana or something? Or is it just pure physical power?'
Though she had fine, subtle muscles, her overall physique was elegant, slender, and beautifully proportioned.
And her chest was, compared to Yeonhwa's... well, to be perfectly honest, it was incredibly large.
It was the first time Yeonhwa had ever seen breasts that massive in her life.
Yet, it was fascinating how those enormous assets didn't sag at all and held a perfect shape.
She didn't seem like a registered hunter.
She wasn't some foreign hunter or a hidden hermit, and if a new S-grade hunter had appeared, there was no way Yeonhwa wouldn't know about it.
Yeonhwa idolized her grandmother, Yeon Seo, the world's first S-grade hunter.
In her quest to grow stronger, she had studied the combat styles and training methods of countless S-grade hunters. Consequently, Yeonhwa knew the faces of almost every S-grade hunter, not just in Korea, but across the entire globe.
Yet, she had never seen this woman before.
"Um..."
"Y-Yes?!"
Lost in thought, Yeonhwa flinched violently.
Because of her sudden movement, the stone plate she was using to grill the meat wobbled.
"Ah...!"
As the plate threatened to tip over, Yeonhwa hastily tried to catch it using her ice magic.
Even if the fire went out, she had to save the meat!
Grab.
"...A-Ah, what are you doing?! Why are you grabbing that with your bare hands?!"
"It's okay. It's not hot."
Yeonhwa shrieked in horror as the woman grabbed the stone plate—which had been heating over a blazing fire until a second ago—with her bare hands.
Even while holding a stone plate in direct contact with the flames, the woman's expression remained perfectly serene.
'She's not just strong; her heat resistance and durability must be off the charts too...'
"Be careful."
"Y-Yes..."
With a soft smile, the woman casually set the stone plate back in place and sat down, pulling her knees to her chest.
"...What's your name?"
"..."
Usually, when a hunter reached A-grade, they were granted an official Hunter Name.
From F-grade to B-grade, the numbers were vast, and anyone could reach those ranks with enough time and experience.
However, the difficulty of promoting to A-grade was on a completely different level.
Achieving A-grade was proof of immense talent, often described as the first step toward the S-grade—the realm beyond humanity.
Thus, starting from A-grade, hunters were given official titles by the state, along with numerous privileges.
Although Yeonhwa had only recently reached A-grade and didn't have an official title yet, she spoke the name she had been planning to use.
"Icicle... Icicle Nine. My real name is Yeonhwa. Please call me Yeonhwa."
"........?"
At those words, the white-haired woman tilted her head.
She seemed to fall into deep thought.
".....So, Binggu... right?"
"......."
Yeonhwa's brow furrowed instantly.
"I said it's not!"
Sizzle, sizzle...
"Binggu, it's going to burn..."
"I told you, I'm not Binggu... Ah, eek?! The Black Minotaur meat!"
There were unconfirmed rumors that eating Black Minotaur meat provided recovery effects and permanent increases to mana and strength, so even Yeonhwa knew how precious this meat was.
Though she had charred it slightly, she managed to save the meat from being completely ruined.
While the highly concentrated protein and fat would look like a delicacy even to an ordinary person, to a hunter, the mana-infused meat of a Black Minotaur would offer the ultimate culinary experience.
"Hehehe... It looks so good..."
Looking at the woman drooling as she stared intently at the meat, Yeonhwa felt an almost unimaginable level of hunger and greed radiating from her.
"Y-You can eat first."
Despite the drool pooling at the corner of her mouth, the woman seemed to retain enough rationality to ask for Yeonhwa's permission first.
Covered in blood and drooling, she looked like a character straight out of a horror movie, but strangely, Yeonhwa found herself no longer fearing her.
As the woman reached out to grab the meat directly from the hot stone plate again, Yeonhwa quickly offered her a pair of chopsticks made of ice.
"Ah, thank you..."
"You know how to use chopsticks, right?"
"Y-Yeah... I think...?"
"Of course..."
Since Yeonhwa had reinforced their durability, they wouldn't melt or break at least until the meal was finished.
Even if they did, she could always make more.
'Is she... a returnee?'
Watching the woman handle the chopsticks as if she hadn't used them in an eternity, Yeonhwa became increasingly convinced that she was a returnee.
Yeonhwa watched her eat the sizzling beef from the stone plate with the ice chopsticks, a look of pure bliss on her face.
Returnees.
Most of the people who went missing during the Great Rift were eventually presumed dead, and in some cases, their bodies or fragments of them were recovered.
However, a select few who had vanished without a trace occasionally returned to the modern world, defying the laws of time and space.
The first returnee appeared just ten days after the Great Rift began.
Yet, he claimed to have lived for twenty years in a world of swords, magic, dark arts, and machinery powered by steam and mana.
His name was Yujin, the very first returnee, and he was still active as an S-class hunter.
Another returnee came back after ten years, but claimed to have only spent about a month in the other world.
The worlds they fell into varied wildly, and sometimes multiple people were pulled into the same world.
Some returned from completely different fantasy worlds ruled by dragons and demons, while others claimed to have visited worlds with scientific technology far more advanced than our own.
Conversely, some survivors had been dropped into harsh, primordial environments. It seemed returnees could fall into any conceivable parallel universe.
The time they spent there and the experiences they accumulated differed greatly from person to person, and sometimes, even their physical bodies were completely altered.
Initially, hunter associations and governments worldwide welcomed returnees.
They brought back new powers and knowledge previously unknown to this world, making the lives of citizens safer and more prosperous while advancing the technology and strength of hunters.
In fact, many of the tools and systems used by the Hunter Association today—including the hunter-support AI drone assisting Yeonhwa—were created using the knowledge and technology of returnees. Thanks to these otherworldly techniques and powers, the hunter mortality rate, which had hovered near 40 percent in the 2030s, had dropped to under 1 percent today.
However, a certain incident occurred.
In China, there was a female returnee.
She claimed to have lived in a horrific apocalypse, compared to which the post-Great Rift modern society looked like heaven.
She referred to herself as a prophet, a saint.
True to her title, she possessed incredible healing abilities and party-support skills.
Since hunter abilities were fundamentally self-reliant and highly dependent on individual combat prowess, support and healing-type hunters were extremely rare.
Consequently, she was highly welcomed not just in China, but in other nations as well.
However, one day, the Chinese police arrested her.
The official reason was that she was a subversive element threatening the social order.
In reality, she had used all her earnings and achievements to aid Chinese laborers, the poor, and the destitute. She lived an incredibly frugal life herself, and her popularity soared both inside and outside of China.
Since China maintained an authoritarian regime centered around its leader even after the Great Rift, the saint's existence must have displeased the high-ranking officials of the Communist Party.
Believing that resisting would only drag innocent people into a conflict and cost lives, the saint went quietly when arrested. After that, no one saw her for a very long time.
The incident caused a massive uproar, drawing condemnation from both inside and outside China. However, foreign nations did little more than issue statements of protest for a few months, and no significant action was taken regarding her whereabouts.
Then, a year after her arrest, a laborer working in a massive landfill discovered the saint's corpse.
To be precise, it wasn't her body, but her brooch and clothing.
The saint's clothes and brooch were imbued with powerful blessings, making them nearly impossible to destroy.
But the fact that her clothing had been discarded in a landfill ignited the fury of governments and, most of all, returnees worldwide.
Rumors and conspiracy theories ran rampant, including allegations that the Chinese government, coveting her ability to heal and buff multiple hunters, had kidnapped her for research to mass-produce her powers like commercial goods.
The Saint Incident caused the resentment of returnees to boil over. Some, provoked by the event, went so far as to form their own organizations and declare their independence from state control.
Following these events, public opinion on returnees became divided.
To a humanity shaken by the Great Rift, they were a beacon of hope alongside hunters, but due to certain extreme cases, they were also viewed as individuals possessing power that could threaten mankind.
Furthermore, the Saint Incident taught governments that excessive pressure on returnees could trigger severe backlash, as seen with the rise of independent returnee organizations.
As a result, strict protocols for handling returnees were distributed to all government departments.
This was true not only in Korea but across the globe. Following the Saint Incident, even China kept a low profile publicly and restructured its management of returnees.
And this woman, who was presumably a returnee...
After clumsily holding the chopsticks, she seemed to recall how to use them. She turned them around in her hand a few times before picking up a piece of meat.
"...Um, are you... a returnee?"
"A returnee?"
"Do you know about the Great Rift?"
"No, I don't."
'A returnee. Yes, she must be a returnee,' Yeonhwa thought.
Since she didn't even know the term "Great Rift," she must have gone missing during the First Great Rift.
"It's... delicious..."
Unlike Yeonhwa, whose mind was spinning with endless calculations, Sia was simply wearing a blissful smile, completely absorbed in savoring the delicious meat.
As the rich juices burst forth, melting in her mouth in a way that raw meat never could, Sia suddenly felt her eyes well up with tears.
"It's so good..."
'I wish Menelapie could have eaten this too. And Theresa... Theresa, too... If only we could have all eaten this together...'
Seeing her suddenly shed tears, Yeonhwa said in surprise, "There's—there's plenty more, so please don't cry."
"Y-Yeah. Thank you... You should eat too."
"Ah, yes."
Sniff, hic... Still, she wasn't eating alone, so it was okay.
This Binggu... no, Yeonhwa, was definitely a good kid. Anyone who grilled beef for you couldn't possibly be a bad person...
For a while, the only sounds were the crackling of the campfire and the sizzling of the meat on the stone plate.
The two spent the time in silence, eagerly devouring the meat.
Eating food infused with such a high concentration of mana, like Black Minotaur meat, indeed seemed to soothe the pain in Yeonhwa's right hand.
Yeonhwa tried to gently move her broken right hand, but realized it was still in no condition for combat.
"Your hand..."
"Yes?"
Suddenly, a chill ran down Yeonhwa's spine.
The sensation of being stared at by a predator wasn't an illusion. A pair of beast-like golden eyes was staring intently at her broken right hand.
'They say beasts always view the injured as prey...!'
The horrific tentacles sprouting from the silver-haired woman's back were still writhing, tearing at the Minotaur carcass. Yeonhwa couldn't help but worry that this returnee might turn on her and eat her if things went south.
After all, there were returnees who had come back from worlds where cannibalism was practiced, so it wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility.
"Give me your hand."
"...Pardon?!"
"Trust me."
"........"
Yet, looking into those beast-like golden eyes, Yeonhwa felt an inexplicable sense of humanity and kindness.
She couldn't understand why she felt such an indescribable emotion.
Before she knew it, Yeonhwa extended her right hand, which she had frozen with ice to numb the pain, toward the woman.
Miracle: Greater Healing
"Huh?!"
In less than a second, a pure white, formless energy enveloped her right hand. The ice she had used to keep her bones in place melted away instantly, and her shattered hand was restored to perfect condition.
This woman possessed healing abilities—the rarest of all powers among hunters and returnees alike!
'Not only did she slaughter a Black Minotaur with her bare hands... but she also has healing magic...'
"Um, I haven't... *gulp*... introduced myself yet."
Having finished the healing, the woman spoke as she casually stuffed another piece of Black Minotaur short plate into her mouth.
"My name is Sia. I'm... twenty-one years old, as of 2024."
"...Ah... Then, should I call you Sia-eonni?"
"Sure. Whatever you're comfortable with."
Once again, the two ate in silence.
The portion of Black Minotaur short plate was massive. The two lost track of time, silently grilling and eating.
"Binggu."
"I'm Yeonhwa, not Binggu... *Sigh*, yes?"
"Your hand must have hurt a lot."
"......"
"Did you come here all by yourself?"
It did hurt.
Of course it hurt.
She thought she was going to die.
She had been so terrified.
Those words welled up to her throat, but Yeonhwa merely bit her lower lip.
"You did well. I'm proud of you."
"...!"
Hearing those words from someone she had just met, Yeonhwa felt a sudden, inexplicable warmth prick behind her eyes.
Why?
Was it because Sia had saved her life when she was in mortal danger?
Or was she overlapping Sia with her late sister, Yeon A, who had saved her long ago?
She didn't know.
Even now, Yeonhwa couldn't explain the emotion.
"You did so well."
"......"
Naturally, Yeonhwa didn't cry.
She was too old for that.
Yeonhwa hadn't cried once since her older sister, Yeon A, sacrificed herself to save her.
Yet, she couldn't bring herself to say anything to Sia, who was patting her shoulder like she would a young child.
Unable to even swallow the meat in her mouth, she could only chew slowly, locking eyes with the blood-covered Sia, who was smiling warmly at her.
"...Thank you."
"Sure. This time, I'll try grilling. Let's tear off another cut and eat."
The day the Dungeon Overbreak occurred.
For the first time since her sister's death, Yeonhwa, who had closed her heart to everyone, formed her very first bond with a returnee.