Flex
The second plastic bin on my belt was packed solid with ramen.
Every variety under the sun had been crammed into that one oversized crate.
"What is this, a ramen-hoarding operation?"
Kim Sujeong asked it with a look of pure disbelief, which told me exactly how it looked from the outside.
Cup ramen ate too much space, so I only slipped in a few of those and stuffed the rest to bursting with packet ramen. The third bin took shelf-stable instant rice, an assortment of hams, and kimchi.
I could step back out once every six days anyway, but if I was going, I might as well stock up properly the first time. Then I wouldn't have to repack like this on every crossing — just grab whatever I actually needed.
Slots two and three filled up with food that way, and into slot four went two vacuum-sealed mattresses, tucked inside their own bin.
I'd meant to bring only one, but Sujeong had said she was coming along to try the place out, so I grabbed a second. There was room to spare besides. I could have used the bed already sitting in the hut, but if a mattress was left over I could just leave it there. It would come in handy eventually.
Slot five swallowed every kind of household supply. First among them, and most important, the burner. I couldn't very well strike a fire from scratch every time I wanted to cook, so I packed two or three burners with room to spare, and a generous haul of gas canisters along with them.
Electricity would have been far more convenient, but to use power I'd need to farm resources up through B-rank, maybe even A-rank. That still looked like a long way off. For the sake of convenience, I also loaded up on disposable goods.
Back in reality, single-use junk is an environmental menace — used once, miserable to dispose of, and it won't even rot if you bury it. In a rift dimension, I could burn as much of it as I pleased.
"...It'll be fine, right?"
As long as I wasn't the one breathing the smoke.
This was supposed to be a top-tier dimension, after all. Surely torching a few disposables wouldn't punch a hole in the ozone or wreck the ecosystem. It was my dimension alone, anyway. So what if the environment took a little damage? To ruin a place that vast all by myself, I'd have to live not a hundred years, but ten million.
Once all of that was packed, slots six and seven still had space left.
"Hmm. What else should I bring?"
There was no shortage of options. I could always pack more food. What I was actually agonizing over was a question of romance — the small pleasures.
"I ought to plan for when I get bored out there, shouldn't I?"
Just in case, I'd already bought a tablet, backup batteries, a game console, and stacks of novels and manga.
The funny part was how absurd it sounded. I'd be busy exploring a rift dimension, and here I was packing books because I might get bored? I'd doubted the whole idea even as I did it. But once I got there, finished the actual work, and ended up with an awkward pocket of leftover time, the only things left would be cooking in the hut, staring blankly into a single small fire while the world went dark far too fast, and then sleeping.
I could just turn in early and get back to work, sure. This wasn't a game, though. A few days of that, and the comedown might hit me hard.
So I'd packed them. I at least had to take them with me.
I threw in board games, too. Sooner or later I was going to build the place up into a perfect mansion, the way my old Suhyun World had been, so stashing things ahead of time couldn't hurt. I also grabbed several bright lanterns for the hut.
To finish, slot seven took the clothes I'd wear out there, and whatever space remained went to meal kits — simple things I could throw together into a proper meal. Ruru would probably love those.
"Whew. That's everything."
A few more odds and ends drifted through my head, but nothing that felt truly necessary. I'd already told Sujeong to pack whatever she wanted, so she'd probably handle her own share.
She didn't even know where we were going, and still she'd lit up like this was a vacation, drained her bank account dry, and bought a backpack with three inventory slots. Last I saw, she was stuffing it full of clothes with deadly focus.
I was thinking of this as a test.
She'd obviously never farmed a day in her life, and it didn't suit her, but if she could manage the farm's miscellaneous chores, I could lay down a simple framework for the fields and spend far more of my time exploring with a clear head.
Of course, the plan wasn't without its worries.
Even if Sujeong played the NPC role I needed to perfection, it would mean constantly running into each other on the farm. Could we really handle that?
Even a mother and daughter only share a house when the child is little and there's no other choice. If they can get by without seeing each other, that's the better arrangement.
Whatever. In the real world she was useful for plenty of things, driving included.
More than anything, the single biggest annoyance of those seven days on the farm had been cooking every single meal myself. Even with food on hand, making the same things over and over — grilling this, reheating that — got unbearably tedious.
So that was Sujeong's role.
"You're on cooking duty."
"...Cooking? Well, yeah! I'll do it!"
A live-in cook.
"We're leaving tomorrow. I've got one last stop today, so drive."
With every other preparation finished, I headed out for the final round of shopping.
I hadn't earned this money just to stack it up and stare at it.
There was a reason I hadn't waited to restore the village and then traded my Recovery Herbs and the other lucky drops to the NPCs for Farm currency. As I judged it now, turning cash into the exact items I wanted — here on an Earth that had been running dungeons for ten years — was faster and more efficient than anything I could buy with Farm.
The best the village NPCs could sell me at the moment would top out around D-rank or C-rank, and even those prices wouldn't be gentle.
The Farming World was, literally, a world built around farming. What the NPCs sold were items someone had farmed from somewhere else, and at the pace of an unexplored level 0 to 1 biome, laying eyes on a high-grade item was close to impossible.
Earth was a different story. S-rank and SS-rank hunters had already been hunting and leveling for quite a long time. Dungeons of A-rank and above were a recent thing, but they were being cleared, and S-rank items were beginning to surface, one by one, around the world.
SS-rank still hadn't appeared, but rumors were everywhere that an S-rank dungeon might be fully conquered before long. For getting items, this side was simply more convenient.
The three hundred million won in my account was ammunition for exactly that.
"Oppa. This place is stupid expensive."
"I know."
A hunter has a few ways to buy gear.
The most common, and the most mainstream, is a direct trade between hunters. You make contact through the Hunter Association's verified site, inspect the item, and close the deal for an agreed sum with an Association staffer sitting in.
Both sides are identity-verified, and a lot of what's sold is gear hunters have actually used, so you can get your hands on genuinely useful items. The catch is that you have to involve Association staff, and a fee gets tacked on, so only hunters who want a safe transaction bother with it.
Next is another kind of private deal, this one in a market that's a little more dangerous. Think of it like those secondhand-trading apps that used to be everywhere. Scams are common, crime is common, and nobody recommends it if you can help it.
Then there's buying through a distributor of hunter goods, the way my dad's company works, or buying at auction. Along with trades between individual hunters, this is what ordinary hunters use most.
Checking listings one by one on the Association site is fine, but companies that have already locked down large inventories get those goods gathered and posted on the same site as vendor stock. You can browse and buy the way you'd shop.
From a buyer's side, individual or company hardly matters — if you want a particular option, you pick it. Dealing with a vendor is often faster and easier than a private sale, so plenty of people go that route on purpose.
Auctions, I'd already been through.
Last, and not exactly a crowd favorite, though the demand is real: goods from the luxury halls.
Luxury hall might sound odd, but there are shops that specialize in buying up hunter items of high rank, or with especially good effects, and reselling them with a premium slapped on. The unit prices are high and the customer base is thin, so you need serious capital to run one. Some of them used to operate ordinary department stores, then converted the entire building into a hunter luxury hall and committed fully to a high-end strategy.
Quietly, the sales are quite good, and so is the volume of trade.
My dad's company chasing quality pieces for auction comes from the same instinct. Sell good items, and hunters with money — high-rank hunters — start showing up regularly. Word spreads among hunters on its own, and a reputation settles in: this department store is the upscale one.
It was famous enough that I'd genuinely considered selling my gloves and dagger here.
My reason for walking into a place like that was obvious.
"We're buying here?"
"If I'm spending around three hundred million, this is where you come."
"Are you insane? All of it?"
"I'll just make more."
No matter that I held an SSS+ Rank ability, using it bare was swinging a dull blade. Items were what put an edge on it — and gave it wings.
"Welcome."
Even the staff greeting us were pretty enough, and proportioned well enough, that I wanted to ask whether they were celebrities. The kind of smile that puts you in a good mood all by itself.
"How may I help you?"
I told her what I needed.
"Show me one mana-related item, or two. Something in the range of three hundred million won."