Succubus Kim Rina
Soyeon pulled three needles from her chest.
Each one was roughly the length of a forearm and wickedly sharp. The needles rose and hovered above her palm, buoyed by telekinesis.
“Don’t tell me those are made of mithril?”
“That’s right, Uncle Garam. Cost me a fortune.”
Garam’s expression stiffened.
Soyeon had decided “Mister” felt too cold, so she’d settled on “Uncle.” With a full fifteen-year gap between them, the word wasn’t exactly strange—though the one on the receiving end was clearly seething.
“…Look, drop the ‘Uncle,’ okay? Just call me Senior. That’d be better.”
“Tch. Fine. I liked Uncle, though… Okay, I’ll call you something else. Ga.ram.op.pa.”
Garam’s face lit up instantly.
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
I want someone to call me oppa too…
I grumbled about it internally, but kept my mouth shut. What good would saying it out loud do? I’d only get an earful.
“Now watch the power of these mithril needles I spent a fortune on.”
Soyeon thrust her hand forward, and the needles shot ahead.
Whoosh.
Their targets were three goblins standing far off—one with a bow, two with daggers. The same composition as the ones I’d taken down earlier.
The goblins reacted even slower than they had to my Mini Fireball.
“Kiiing?”
By the time a goblin realized something was flying at it and turned its head, the needle had already punched clean through its throat.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
The attack didn’t stop at one hit. After piercing the neck, each needle drove through the abdomen as well. The final strike went straight through an eye.
“Kieeek!”
The goblins shrieked and thrashed before finally bleeding out.
“Haa… Heh heh heh. How’s that!”
Soyeon recalled the needles and crowed triumphantly as she stowed them away.
Clap, clap, clap.
Garam applauded her, and his praise was generous.
“Outstanding. First time I’ve seen an F-class Keeper pull something like that off.”
“Right? I’ve been practicing like crazy.”
It showed. I never expected her to move three needles at that kind of speed. It had been a little under two months since I’d last seen her, and in that time Soyeon’s skill had grown almost unrecognizable.
I’d been carving out time to memorize runes myself, but her passion was just as fierce.
Garam kept talking about her abilities.
“You made the needles out of mithril so the telekinesis would conduct better, right?”
“Yes! I saw it on The Gate—they said it works great. So I bit the bullet and bought them.”
“Good call. But wouldn’t using just one needle be faster and stronger?”
“Ah, it didn’t get as fast as I thought it would. So I trained by increasing the number instead.”
You could feel how much thought Soyeon had put into it. But effort without a proper teacher tends to drift in odd directions.
“That method isn’t bad. But if you’re dodging the skull because you can’t crack a goblin’s head and settling for piercing the neck and gut, you’ll never beat higher-tier monsters.”
“…You already knew everything.”
That was exactly why I’d called both Garam and Soyeon here today—so she could grow faster, and in a better direction.
“So for the next few days, let’s train you to move a single needle even faster. At least fast enough to shatter a goblin skull. A Goblin Shaman’s would be even better.”
“Yes, Oppa!”
You could feel how happy she was. She understood just how huge a boost it was to have a B-class Keeper set her growth path. At this rate, she’d hit C-class in no time.
According to Soyeon, her potential was B-class or higher, so C-class should come quickly. I needed to step it up too.
“Shall we split up around here?”
“Huh? Already?”
My words put a slight pout on Soyeon’s face.
“The day’s almost over, and we need some results to show for it. Keep working hard and meet us back at base camp.”
“Pfft… Fine, Senior.”
Soyeon and I would train in two separate teams. Naturally, she would work with Garam while I trained with my two lovely Otherworlders.
Soyeon never took her eyes off me until the very end.
Ah, this too is all because I’m just that amazing.
Stomp.
“Aaagh!”
Keira had stepped on my foot.
“…What was that for?”
“You were thinking something weird, weren’t you?”
“N-no, I wasn’t?”
How did she know? Terrifying—a woman’s intuition.
Whump.
This time it was Elena. She slipped straight into my arms.
“Is it okay if I stay like this for a bit?”
“Huh? Ah, sure.”
I’d worked hard to keep things low-key while Soyeon was around, so this much should be fine. Still… would we actually get any training done like this?
I needn’t have worried about the training.
Keira drove me like a demon.
“Faster. That slow and you’ll never use it in a real fight.”
“You need to complete every rune within half a second. And that’s me being generous.”
“Prepare the next spell too. You think there’s only one enemy? Get your head in the game!”
She was a tiger of a teacher. The constant mana expenditure made my head throb again. Without Elena’s devoted nursing, I probably would have bolted this time too.
By “devoted nursing,” of course, I mean letting me bury my face in her chest—armor off, naturally.
“(…Does it feel good?)”
“Yes, Elena. It really feels like I’ve gone to heaven.”
Elena’s chest was currently the largest among the women around me. The shape was the prettiest too. Burying my face in that softness and breathing in her sweet scent… it felt like my soul was being healed.
This was why so many articles claimed that looking at a woman’s breasts extended your lifespan. They said the only way to recover spent mana was time, but from where I was sitting, this method worked way faster. Not just my imagination—it was real.
Ding.
An alarm shattered the peace, and the tiger teacher’s scolding came down at once.
“All right, break’s over. We’re going again. This time it’s Magic Missile.”
“…Yes, ma’am!”
Chest, chest, chest… The word kept circling my head, but I scrambled to my feet. When I was receiving Elena’s devoted care, I never crossed Keira. If I did, the lust monster would explode with desire, and then training would be the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The three Magic Missiles I fired struck three trees dead-on.
“Well done.”
Even I had to admit I’d done well. Compared to three days ago, everything had improved—spell completion speed, the missiles’ velocity, accuracy, and power. So this was the effect of intensive training.
Elena had stuck right beside me for focused drills back in Seoul too, but mixing in real combat made my skills shoot up even faster.
“Today’s the last day, right?”
“Yeah. We’re heading back today.”
“(That’s a shame. The Gate is so full of nature—I like it here.)”
“Do you really? There’s something you can only do once we leave the Gate, you know?”
“(Huh? What? Ah… don’t tease me.)”
Elena’s face went bright red. How was I supposed to resist teasing her when she reacted like that?
I was grinning without meaning to when a chilly voice brushed my ear.
“…Could you focus a little?”
“…Yes, ma’am!”
My mistake. To keep this harem running, I really had to be on top of my game. When Keira got like that, Elena froze up too.
“Garam said this morning we should take down a Shaman for the finale.”
“Did he? That sounds good. Doing the same thing over and over gets boring.”
“Exactly. So let’s head back. Training’s over for today.”
Keira’s voice still had an edge. I needed to smooth that out somehow.
“Already?”
“Yeah. Happy about it?”
“No—I’m disappointed. You taught me so well, Keira. I learned a ton.”
“…It’s obvious. Stop it.”
Right. Of course it was obvious. But Keira was being obvious too. Her voice had softened just a little.
“Okay!”
Her reaction wasn’t as big as Elena’s, but Keira was cute in her own way. Ah, this was why I liked both of them.
We headed for the goblin settlement. Most of the goblins we met along the way were handled by Soyeon and me.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh.
Soyeon’s needles sliced through the air. They’d gotten so fast they were hard to track with the naked eye. Cracking a goblin skull was trivial now. Only three days, but the results were clear.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
I could fire Magic Missiles freely now too—calmly, precisely.
Once we reached the settlement, Keira stepped forward first and cast a spell.
“One hundred and two goblins. Nothing unusual nearby. But the Shaman will have sensed our position from the magic I just used.”
Keira’s casting was always fast. I hadn’t really noticed before, but after getting a little more familiar with magic myself, I could feel it. That was the power of an Affinity stat of nine. Affinity helped you move mana faster.
“(I’ll take the front.)”
Elena strolled out as casually as if she were going for a walk in the hills behind her house—straight toward the front of the goblins’ crude fortifications.
“Kiik!”
“Kiik kiik!”
The goblins spotted her almost immediately and swarmed onto the barricade. Crude bows and arrows trained on her. She didn’t stop, and neither did they.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh.
Dozens of arrows flew. Crude or not, getting hit would still hurt. But what if they never landed?
Hummm.
Blue light poured from Elena’s shield and wrapped around her.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
The arrows bounced off the shield and the blue light, clattering to the ground. Elena took no damage at all. She kept walking, steady as ever.
“Kikik!”
The goblins loosed arrow after arrow, but the result never changed. Elena reached the barricade without a scratch.
Shiiing.
At last she drew her sword.
Trau Falga. The thirteenth blade of Lu.
She blocked the arrows raining down on her head with her shield while angling her sword slightly and sweeping it sideways.
Grrrnnnk.
The barricade was crude, but it had been built by driving whole logs into the ground. A frontal assault would probably just chew up the surface. Elena’s sword, however, sheared through the logs in a single stroke and sent the entire barricade sliding inward.
Boom.
The sliding wall toppled completely inside. All that remained in front of Elena was a knee-high remnant of the fortification.
“Kiiiik!”
Dozens of furious goblins charged her. She blocked and deflected with shield and sword. She didn’t even launch separate attacks, yet the goblins died one by one all the same. The astonishing part was that she never moved a single step from the spot where she’d first planted her feet.
“…Obvious as it is, she doesn’t need any help at all.”
“I know. S-class, after all.”
“Still, I’m going to stretch my legs a bit. I’m getting restless.”
Garam shot forward. His sword was every bit as fast, precise, and beautiful as Elena’s. No living goblin remained on the path he walked. A hundred goblins vanished in moments.
At the end, just as Keira’s magic had indicated, a Goblin Shaman appeared.
“Kiruk, kiruk!”
This one cast a Weakness curse—draining strength and focus. If it hit me, I’d be completely immobilized for the duration of the spell. But no second-rate magic was going to work on the thirteenth sword of Lu. Elena stood firm, as always.
“Kiruk kiruk!”
While the Shaman pointed at Elena in shock, a mithril needle streaked toward its temple. The needle punched through at full speed and burst out the other side.
Psssssh.
The Shaman collapsed, spraying blood. Soyeon let out a cheer.
“I did it! I pierced a Goblin Shaman’s skull!”
That had been her goal—the one she’d set for this Gate expedition. Just a small step for a Keeper who hadn’t even reached D-class yet, but those small victories would pile up and forge her into a great and powerful Keeper.
“Congratulations. Stack a little more real combat and you’ll hit D-class in no time.”
Garam said it. It would take time for Soyeon to actually possess D-class stats, but she could become a D-class Keeper long before that. Stats were only a benchmark. A D-class Keeper was someone who could hunt D-class monsters and survive adequately in a Gate classified as D-class. Garam had just evaluated her as having D-class skill.
“All right—let’s go find some Magic Stones for that combat record.”
Having to dig through a hundred goblin corpses made me sigh, but the price was hard to ignore, so I started looking. Keira stopped me.
“Magic.”
“Huh? You can do that with magic?”
Instead of answering, she cast. There was no visible effect, but she pointed at several corpses. Fresh, warm Magic Stones came out of those goblins.
“This is revolutionary.”
Garam sounded like he couldn’t believe it. According to Keira, the spell worked on living monsters too. That really would be a revolution. We found seven Magic Stones in total this time. If you only had to kill seven instead of a hundred, that was a genuine labor revolution.
There was no special trick to making money. Just bring Keira into a Gate. And not only Keira—Elena said she could roughly sense them as well. Bring Elena into a Gate and she’d farm Magic Stones on her own. Talk about making money without lifting a finger.
“(I found this too.)”
Elena brought over a ring. She said the Goblin Shaman had been wearing it.
“(It’s an artifact.)”
When Elena slipped it on, the ring shrank to fit her finger perfectly.
“Whoa…”
It was the first artifact I’d ever discovered.