The Cement Box Opens
The cement box swung open.
As soon as the king pried open the lid, a torrent of gray cement blasted out like water from a firefighter’s hose. The king stumbled backward, nearly falling on his ass, but quickly regained his footing, eyes blazing as he roared.
He immediately began hosing down the largest approaching scarab beetle—its face, antennae, forelegs, joints, and wings—with wild, reckless sprays of cement.
Damn it. He couldn’t speak, so this was how frustrating it felt.
Still, from the king’s perspective, it made perfect sense. No one in their right mind would want to fire a thousand-gold strategic weapon straight at their own castle walls.
Only after the archmage started chattering nonstop beside him did the king finally snap out of it. He began running around, frantically pouring cement into every crack he could find.
The cement hardened between the stones at an astonishing speed, heating up as it set and turning rock-solid in moments.
“It really is amazing every single time I see it.”
Without something like this, the city would have been abandoned ages ago.
Thanks to the sticky cement, the massive Scarab Champion was left flailing in confusion—right before it took a direct hit from the archmage’s spell.
Combining cement with a petrification spell produced incredible results.
The beetle monster’s eight eyes rolled wildly in panic.
-----!
The king opened his mouth wide as if shouting something, and the soldiers—now fully pumped up—unleashed a storm of arrows and magic. They efficiently wiped out the incoming swarm of monsters.
The knights charged in with spears, stabbing wildly at the giant beetle’s eyes.
Once all eight eyeballs had burst, the life drained from the scarab’s body.
Boss monster defeated!
Created Scarab Champion
Due to the Life Link (Lv.1) effect, you have acquired some of the boss monster’s traits!
— Tough Hide 0.00001%
— Toxicity 0.00001%
— Insect Mentality 0.00001%
— Trace amount of experience gained!
What the hell? How many decimal places is that? It doesn’t even feel like I got anything.
Still, the suffocating pressure in his chest slowly eased, replaced by a refreshing wave of relief. It felt like he’d been drowning in alcohol for days and finally downed a bowl of ice-cold hangover soup—the electrifying rush of it all.
It felt good enough to actually speak. Leaning back in the driver’s seat and staring up at the night sky, Kim Hwang-je took a long, deep breath.
Stage 1 of the Dark Rift successfully defended!
Congratulations! Thanks to your resourcefulness, hard work, and—most importantly—our magnificent guidance, the crisis has been resolved. You are no doubt bowing deeply in reverence to us right now, but please refrain from excessive formalities in the future. Also, remember to include proper payment.
…What the hell is this thing even saying?
The quest completion window, completely unaware of Kim Hwang-je’s thoughts, continued to chatter away enthusiastically.
71:59:59 remaining until Stage 2 of the Dark Rift.
The next attack is scheduled to arrive in 72 hours. Protect these poor citizens and enjoy your well-earned rewards!
Stage 1 Rewards
▷ Skill ‘Resident Summon’ unlocked
Only 30 minutes per day! Receive help from the finest individuals this world has to offer!
Summonable Individuals:
▷ Illiterate Mage
▷ Sassy Gangster
▷ Dim-eyed Hunter
▷ Thick-fingered Thief
▷ Dirty Cook
Kim Hwang-je stared silently at the explanation window. It almost looked like he was trying to win a staring contest with it.
Still, the skill had definitely been unlocked. On top of that, the countdown to the next invasion was now floating prominently beside his head, and he couldn’t even disable it.
In a way, that was probably for the best. If he turned it off and ended up dying without realizing what was happening, the regret would have been unbearable.
He finally pulled himself together and checked the time. It was 4:30 in the morning. After running around like a madman for an hour and a half, he finally felt like he could breathe again.
When the mixer truck returned to the site, Park was waiting with a bright smile.
“You little rascal, did you sort it out? Your face looks a lot better. Why aren’t you getting down?”
He looked up at the high driver’s seat of the mixer truck.
“Mister. Do you have a plastic bag? Or a sack, anything I can put stuff in?”
Park frowned.
“Don’t tell me you brought back monster corpses or something in the mixer.”
“No, that’s not it. Just hurry up and give me a bag or something.”
Park scratched his head, then handed over a large black plastic bag.
“Who the hell keeps bags at a construction site, you idiot? This is all we’ve got—staff supplies. Use this.”
It was a 50-liter black garbage bag. Normally used for waste disposal, but it would do just fine.
After all, as long as no one could see inside, it didn’t matter.
Kim Hwang-je rummaged through every corner of the driver’s seat and passenger seat, shaking out every last gold coin until the bag was full. He tied the opening tightly.
The more he thought about it, the funnier it got.
It actually all fit in here?
Well, each gold coin weighed about five grams. A thousand of them only came to five kilograms.
He discreetly called a taxi on the app and slipped one extra gold coin into Park’s hand without anyone noticing. But Park pushed it back.
“Thanks for trusting me, mister.”
“What are you on about, kid? We’re past that. I’m too lazy to convert these coins into cash myself, so just wire the money to my account later.”
“I’ll contact you soon!”
When the taxi arrived nearby, Kim Hwang-je hurriedly climbed down from the mixer truck, carefully avoiding prying eyes, and got into the cab.
The driver glanced at the large black plastic bag a few times but didn’t ask what was inside.
“Haaaaaaa.”
By the time he got home, he was drenched in sweat. Kim Hwang-je washed it all off in his tiny bathroom.
When was the last time he’d properly turned on the heater in the middle of winter? He’d been too busy trying to save money.
Thanks to those damn sea monster bastards, ocean trade was a nightmare. Importing gas or oil had become incredibly difficult. The knight order did their best, riding barges and whaling ships to clear out the threats, but the reality wasn’t kind enough for an ordinary citizen like Kim Hwang-je to enjoy endless hot water.
“Ughhh, I’m dying.”
Still, he took a long, hot shower, put on clean clothes, and ordered the most expensive meal available. The late-night delivery place was ridiculously overpriced. But with a mountain of gold coins waiting, who cared?
Soon, a private feast for one was laid out in the early morning hours. Braised pig’s feet and spicy chicken stew—after adding the late-night surcharge, the total easily surpassed a hundred thousand won.
But the meal he ate while using World Observation tasted unbelievably good.
In the footage, people were working together with great effort. The king was still diligently pouring the slowly leaking cement into every crack. The mage had scooped some of the cement into a transparent potion bottle.
The soldiers were busy dismembering and cleaning up the corpses of the dead monsters. Watching them, Kim Hwang-je’s eyes widened.
“Monster corpses. Money.”
Upon closer inspection, these were monsters he already knew about. Although he spent his days doing manual labor, he still paid attention to stories about knights and hunters he saw on TV or in magazines.
He’d heard that if you killed a giant monster and sold its body parts, you could make a fortune.
Wait a second… weren’t these incredibly strong creatures? That scarab… he was sure he’d seen it somewhere before. As he tore into a pig’s foot and spooned spicy chicken broth into his mouth, a thought suddenly struck him.
“Internet… right, the internet.”
Kim Hwang-je hurriedly opened his browser and went to TerraWiki. Inside the massive user-edited database, he found the section dedicated to monsters.
Monster
1. Overview
Mysterious, unidentified lifeforms. Believed to have appeared on this land due to dimensional imbalance (1)...
He scrolled down until he found the [Details] tab. Inside were absurdly detailed tables compiled by obsessive biologists.
The endless classifications—phylum, class, order, family, genus, species—made his head spin.
But after some determined digging, he finally found the scarab that had charged the castle walls earlier.
This was it. This was the one.
Kim Hwang-je stared intently at its appearance. Eight ferocious eyes, metallic wings that looked forged from steel, jewel-like joints and claws. Every inch of its body screamed siege-weapon-level monstrosity.
According to TerraWiki:
The disaster-grade monster defeated by the Iron Blood Knights’ newly appointed vice-captain, Sepia, alongside her knight order. The footage from that battle became the foundation for the overwhelming popularity of the “Beautiful Girl Invincible Swordswoman” Arun Sepia. (Warning: Calling her that nickname to her face may result in a lawsuit or a knuckle sandwich—proceed with caution.) It was the first monster-hunting video on Duetube to surpass 300 million views.
First discovered in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. Believed to have either escaped from the unburned White Ant Empire or been exiled during a royal power struggle.
At the time, the Appalachian region was a severely contaminated zone, making direct approach impossible. It survived satellite observation and a Tomahawk missile barrage from the Third Fleet, earning it the disaster-grade title.
Gulp.
A disaster-grade title was official government certification that the creature could not be handled with “conventional firepower.” Naturally, it was a blow to any nation’s pride.
The fact that even the United States, after deploying the Pacific Third Fleet and firing over a thousand Tomahawk missiles, had declared “bombardment is ineffective” meant that no conventional weapon short of tactical nuclear warheads could defeat it.
From that point on, any war against such creatures became nothing more than [containment] or [suppression], no matter how many missiles, bullets, or shells were used. Only knights, hunters, and their skills could achieve actual [extermination]. In the end, this monster too had met its end at the hands of hunters.
After receiving a tracking-and-extermination request from the U.S. government, the Iron Blood Knights pursued it for three years. After two defeats, they finally succeeded with the help of Sepia. During the operation, 378 civilians inside the quarantine zone and two abandoned small cities were completely wiped out.
For some reason, the entry on the Created Scarab Champion was almost entirely filled with stories about the beautiful swordswoman named Sepia.
Maybe it was because she seemed like a being from a heavenly realm far beyond ordinary people—something to admire from afar.
Her long, pale cream-colored hair and slightly haughty cat-like eyes, combined with her mastery of six swords, were undeniably beautiful.
But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
Today, Kim Hwang-je had clearly witnessed the king and the archmage inside the castle walls finally killing that enormous monster using nothing but concrete.
He knew perfectly well that concrete shouldn’t have been able to kill it. But the description for the Tribute Trade skill had said this:
Even concrete became stronger?
To confirm whether this incredible news was real or just a dream, Kim Hwang-je went to wash his face with cold water again.
Splash. Slap.
It was real.
Eventually, when Kim Hwang-je lay down in bed, the World Observation window was still open on his right side.
In the footage, the knights were dragging the boss monster’s corpse into the royal castle.
He’d have to check whether that could be sold too.
And then sleep finally claimed him.