For the Sake of Solidarity (3)
The gate had been closed successfully. The moment we stepped outside, the sea passage that had opened on the Suyeong River would shut itself automatically, and the risk of some vicious monster rampaging through human society would drop sharply. In other words, we had saved the world again today. It sounded grand, but it was true. At the very least, the safety of Busan’s citizens had been secured.
“Guys! Let’s grab the loot!”
Mun Dal-su called out with a grin. Anyone who survived a life-and-death struggle had earned the right to be rewarded for it.
“I’ll start dismantling the monster.”
“Ugh. Man, this thing stinks something awful.”
If you deacetylated the chitinous shell of the Pin Scorpion, you could extract a distinctive kind of chitosan. It was what people called Pin Chitosan. Because it efficiently absorbed heavy metals, it sped up detoxification, and it was also used in all kinds of medicines after being mixed into potions.
It even had effects on skin care, too. Major cosmetic companies were obsessed with getting their hands on Pin Scorpion shells, and thanks to the law of supply and demand, the corpses of Pin Scorpions fetched an absurd price.
“Team Leader Mun, let’s have a beef dinner tonight.”
“Hell yeah! I’m in a good mood! All right! Deal!”
Humming voices drifted in from all around. It wasn’t just the Pin Scorpion, either. The black water pooled in the oasis was also raw material for developing new kinds of industrial material.
“Whoa. There’s quite a lot of this stuff.”
One of the expandable drums the team had brought in was already full.
“Should we call support?”
“Tell the combat unit outside to come in.”
“Yes, sir!”
Everyone was busy working when someone collapsed onto a rock, panting hard.
“Hah—huff.”
Jang Na-ik’s face was pale. If you poured out all your mana in a short span of time, this was what happened: total exhaustion. It was even worse for a beginner who wasn’t used to handling mana in the first place.
Mun Dal-su, mindful of the youngest member of the team who had helped make the raid possible, ordered him to rest for five minutes. Then he walked over and spoke to him.
“You okay?”
“Ah, yes! Hunter Choi.”
“Sit still.”
He stopped Jang Na-ik, who had started to get up at once out of sheer habit and discipline. Then he patted the boy’s stiff, frozen shoulder.
“You did good. You saved the team.”
“Thank you. It was all thanks to you, Hunter Choi. More than anything else...”
His voice trembled. A moment later his face crumpled, and tears the size of chicken droppings began to spill down his cheeks.
“To think I was actually useful to the team. I’m so moved.”
Jang Na-ik had always been shunted aside wherever he went, expelled from other guilds after one mistake after another until he had grown used to being treated like dead weight.
“I used to think I was useless, like I didn’t amount to anything.”
But this time, he had been properly recognized as a member of the Dio Guild.
“It still feels like a dream. Hunter Choi, you’re really amazing. How did you know I’d be able to bring out this kind of potential?”
Honestly, it had been half a gamble. An E-class hunter with neither experience nor skill. I had handed him the decisive role of saving the team.
It wasn’t some reckless, half-baked tactic. There was enough there to justify taking the shot. There were three reasons. First, the location had water and sand. Second, we had secured a telekinetic talent. And last, we had shared information about the Pin Scorpion’s weakness.
Limited resources, unusual abilities, and even strategic coaching. Because all of those elements had come together, Jang Na-ik had managed to push past his limits.
You could call it luck. If the same situation happened again, could he produce the same result? Probably not. Luck didn’t show up every time. If I wanted to raise the odds of something like heaven-sent fortune happening again, then I had to be blunt about reality.
“Jang Na-ik.”
“Yes.”
“You’re still damn weak.”
“......”
Jang Na-ik dropped his head.
“I know that already.”
The reason I’d said it so directly wasn’t to bully him or crush his spirit.
“But...”
Jang Na-ik slowly lifted his eyes.
“You can get stronger from here.”
“......How do I do that?”
“Come with me.”
I led Jang Na-ik somewhere else. Between the oasis, where palm trees grew thick and wild, stood a single massive boulder. At first glance it looked like nothing special, just another rock in the desert. But if you thought about it for a second, it raised a question. Desert terrain, shaped by deposition and erosion, didn’t make it easy for boulders like this to exist at all.
“Do you know what this is?”
“Well... no.”
Jang Na-ik tilted his head.
“It’s a Golem Statue.”
“This is?”
A Golem Statue was an artificial structure made by chiseling a rock into the shape of a human face. When exploring dungeons, you sometimes came across them. Some people claimed golems had made them, others blamed aliens, and some even said dwarves had been messing around. There were plenty of theories, but nothing had ever been proven for certain.
Jang Na-ik ran his hand over the stone.
“It just looks like an ordinary rock.”
That was only natural. Its true form still hadn’t been revealed.
“Move aside.”
I grabbed the rock with both hands.
“Hup!”
I put all my strength into it and pulled with everything I had, but the rock didn’t budge an inch.
Damn it. How deep is this thing buried? No helping it now.
I summoned the blue window and activated Purchase.
Judgment of the Superhuman activated.
I borrowed a hero’s strength and hauled the statue out.
“Graaah!”
Sand poured down from the base in a cascade. I laid the giant stone on its side. A line of text appeared beside my balance.
One million won had been shaved off, but with how expensive the newer skills had become lately, this barely felt like a loss. Hero inflation, huh? Maybe the price of whatever abilities came next would keep climbing too.
“......Wow.”
What had been exposed above the sand was just the tip of the iceberg. The whole body buried beneath the ground was far larger. If I had to compare it to something, it was roughly seven or eight times the size of my own body.
“What is that? It’s a Golem Statue.”
“How in the world did you pull that out?”
“Hunter Choi’s strength is something else...”
I turned to Mun Dal-su.
“Team Leader Mun. Let’s haul this out too.”
“Mm. Moving it would probably kill half the guys.”
Then he shrugged.
“Fine. We’ll move it last.”
There were people who specialized in collecting Golem Statues. Most of them lived in huge mansions, where they displayed the statues in their gardens or inside their homes as a show of wealth. They were especially popular with overseas celebrities. The larger a Golem Statue was, the more expensive it became, and they sold for anywhere from a hundred million won to several billion.
This one should fetch at least five billion.
The place where I’d pulled the statue free was now a gaping hole, a pit so deep it looked like some kind of trap had been dug there.
“Jang Na-ik, get in here.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to bury you in there.”
“......You’re serious?”
“Just kidding.”
Jang Na-ik let out a long, drawn-out sigh.
“Hah. Hunter Choi, your face is always the same, so I can never tell where you’re joking and where you’re serious.”
“I was serious.”
“W-What?!”
I grabbed him by the nape and jumped down into the pit. I landed lightly on the dirt floor, but Jang Na-ik, dragged along with me, lost his balance and toppled over.
“Ow......”
He clutched his butt and rolled around on the ground while I pressed my hand to the wall and forced mana into it.
“Hunter Choi! What are you doing right now?!”
Jang Na-ik shot to his feet.
“That prank went way too fa—”
He couldn’t finish the sentence. That was because he had come face-to-face with the secret hidden inside the deep pit.
A round blue pattern appeared on the wall.
“T-This is... a Magic Circle?”
A mystery so powerful it could defy the laws of physics. Whoever obtained one could wield marvelous power for the rest of their life without needing separate mana.
Magic Circles usually appeared in places beyond the reach of human hands deep within dungeons—down in the abyss beneath the sea, in the depths of volcanoes that spit out lava, or in the celestial lands floating above the clouds.
And here it was, beneath a Golem Statue set in the middle of an oasis.
I pointed at the pattern.
“This is Blessing of Effort. You’ve heard of it, right?”
“......Yes. This is my first time seeing one in person, though.”
It was a miraculous relic that could multiply the results of training dozens or even hundreds of times over.
“Put your palm on it.”
“Me? But...”
“It’s fine.”
Once a Magic Circle was absorbed, it could not be retrieved. I already possessed Blessing of Effort. Having another Magic Circle with the same effect wouldn’t double anything.
“It’s a gift for the youngest guy on our team.”
Jang Na-ik instinctively looked around. Magic Circles were priceless, rare relics.
“Can I really have it?”
“Yeah. But there’s one condition.”
I met his eyes.
“Work yourself to the bone. Make sure you get stronger.”
I wasn’t giving him a Magic Circle for free out of some soft-hearted pity. If we were going to wipe out the Dirty Kraken, teamwork was everything. If even one person lagged behind, we’d never become a single unit.
For solidarity. For the growth of a hunter with potential. This isn’t charity. It’s an investment.
Jang Na-ik nodded, as if he had made up his mind at last, and locked eyes with me.
“Understood, Hunter Choi.”
Then he reached out. The circle’s energy was drawn into Jang Na-ik’s body.
“Kgh!”
With a final, strangled cry, Jang Na-ik convulsed, his eyes rolling back as he collapsed. I had nothing to do but watch for a while. Then, after a long moment of groaning, he came to.
I held out a hand and helped him to his feet.
“How is it?”
Jang Na-ik panted and flexed his hands open and shut over and over again.
“......It feels like I was reborn.”
I knew that sensation. The feeling of life surging up, of mana swelling violently through your body—I’d experienced it myself before.
I gave his back a firm slap.
“Feels incredible, right?”
“......Yes.”
That finished my part. The rest was up to the one who had seized the opportunity.
“Go up and help the others.”
“What about you, Hunter Choi?”
“I’ve still got something to do down here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jang Na-ik climbed back up the wall. I was left alone at the bottom of the pit. The sun hanging overhead was hidden by the clouds, and the cramped space turned dark in an instant. Above me, I could hear Jang Na-ik and the others talking and laughing.
I quietly turned away and rested my hand against the wall, letting mana flow out of me. This time, a round green pattern surfaced. It was the same emerald glow I had seen in the oasis before the Pin Scorpion had appeared.
In ten years’ time, scholars would discover that, in an unusually rare case, two Magic Circles had appeared beneath the Golem Statue. After Blessing of Effort, the second relic was Whisper of the Stars.
It was a fateful gift that allowed its user to secretly communicate with all living things on a planet, including Earth. In other words, it even allowed limited communication with the creatures living beneath the sea.
Was it a coincidence that, after acquiring Poseidon’s power, I had also ended up with a Magic Circle tied to the sea?
No. I had focused every scrap of my attention on dealing with the Dirty Kraken, and because of that, a monster related to the ocean gate had appeared—and naturally, I had ended up obtaining an ability connected to the deep sea.
Everything happened for a reason.
I reached out and drew in the emerald energy.
“Ugh.”
A strange sensation spread through my entire body, traveling up my spine. Soon I steadied my breathing and accepted Whisper of the Stars into myself.
“Hunter Choi, what are you doing down there? Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Mun Dal-su called to me from above.
“I’m coming up.”
The moment I grabbed the wall, one thing bothered me.
Murder: 0/100
The system had set that as my mission. I still hadn’t completed it. I had one week left.
For a fleeting moment, a horrifying scene flashed through my head. What if I started killing people indiscriminately right now? No, even if I only targeted the ones who deserved it, it wouldn’t be hard to kill a hundred people. I had more than enough power to do it.
But the plan doesn’t change. I was a hero. Not a murderer. I didn’t want to slaughter people for profit without some legitimate cause. If it clashed with my principles, I would never compromise.
I steadied my heart and climbed back up the wall.