Chapter 24
The World Tree sapling sensed a filthy gaze.
The sapling is transmitting the soil around it to protect Manager Baek Do-woon.
No way! Absolutely not!
The memory of what had happened at Hongyureung Gate flashed through my mind.
The humiliating, deeply regrettable memory of having to become a human dirt fountain.
Waving the smartphone in my right hand, I prayed hard for it not to send the soil.
Maybe that worked.
The sapling is puzzled.
It wasn't you who was puzzled. It was me.
The hunters staring at me did have rather grim eyes.
Still, I wasn't sure that meant I had to feel so polluted I should have dirt sent over.
What kind of soil was the sapling even sending me?
It was soil steeped in the mana of the World Tree, so sacred and potent it could purify hundreds of skeletons all at once.
What would happen if I blasted something like that out of the Hunter Association lobby like a fountain?
People would immediately ask where I got such a precious thing, and I could already imagine them urging me to turn it into some huge business venture.
No matter how it went, I’d be hounded to death. Just thinking about it made me shudder.
No, actually, before that they’d definitely chew me out for throwing dirt around in the first place.
The sapling respects the manager's intent and transmits the surrounding soil to the mailbox.
It also still senses that filthy gaze and recommends using it sparingly when necessary.
Thank goodness.
The sapling had listened to me, even while sounding confused.
Rather than sending it straight to the screen, it had transmitted the soil to the mailbox instead.
My smartphone gave a brief vibration to let me know the soil had arrived.
In any case, it had tried to send the soil because it was worried about me, and that made me grateful.
I grinned and patted the sapling.
By which I meant I tapped furiously at the smartphone screen.
Apparently it liked Warm Touch, because the sapling’s leaves trembled faintly.
Still, to think I could even talk with this little sprout now...
...
As soon as I went up to the second floor and stopped there, fiddling with my smartphone game, maybe it looked strange.
The hunters shot me glances as if they’d just seen some oddball.
But they quickly lost interest and looked away.
They all got back to their own work, burying their heads in their computer monitors and searching for quests.
I did the same, sitting down in front of a computer, logging into the Hunter Association site, and searching for quests of my own.
Connection from the Hunter Association IP confirmed.
Quest list is being opened.
To open the quest window, you had to do it from the Hunter Association itself.
Apparently that was because identity verification had to be certain.
People had argued that if everything was being done on a computer anyway, why not let them do it from home or on a smartphone, but all such suggestions were rejected.
There had been hunters who forged their ranks, took quests, and then failed them.
Honestly, the damage caused by people being diligent about the wrong things was no joke.
Hello, D-rank Hunter Baek Do-woon.
Warning! Your current quest eligibility is restricted.
You cannot accept quests above D-rank. Only quests from F-rank to E-rank are available to you.
Since I'd already heard the explanation before, I closed the warning window as soon as it appeared.
A list of various quests spread across the screen.
F-rank to E-rank Quests (Total: 353)
Namsan Gate troll hide gathering (E-rank) / (0/1)
'Muju Ant Cave Dungeon' extermination (E-rank) / (Current members 3/5)
'Songpa Baekje Tomb Gate' skeleton extermination (E-rank) / (0/1)
'Sanbangsan Gate' herb gathering (E-rank) / (0/1)
'Chiaksan Gate' white-spined lizard venom gathering (E-rank) / (0/2)
······.
As you'd expect from Association quests, they were all tedious jobs like gathering and extermination.
Because of that, nobody rushed to take a quest even when the headcount limit was only one.
I understood why.
Gathering was pure luck.
If you got the client’s desired high-quality materials quickly, you could finish in an hour. But if they didn’t show up, you had to keep hunting and dismantling for days until they did.
Extermination was similar, in the sense that you never knew when it would end.
Since the point was to wipe out the monsters inside a gate before a break occurred, you had to hunt anywhere from at least a hundred to as many as a thousand creatures.
And if it was hard, you couldn’t just give up on the quest easily.
If you abandoned it, your Hunter evaluation would be stamped with the ugly label quest abandonment.
For that reason, hunters all tried to snag quests that looked even a little easier than the rest.
That was probably why their expressions had been so sour when I’d arrived.
They didn’t want competition.
“Sanbangsan... no, maybe Muju would be better?”
Of course, I was worrying for a completely different reason than they were.
The whole point of taking a quest was to enjoy freedom until Thursday, when my equipment would be finished.
As far as wasting time went, it didn’t really matter which one I chose.
The first thing I considered was how far away from Seoul I could get.
I had to avoid Seoul, where Tae-cheon was, and anywhere he could reach easily.
If I went by distance alone, Sanbangsan on Jeju Island was the best fit, but because there was an airport, it was easy to get there. No need to think further; it was out.
In that sense, Muju Ant Cave Dungeon looked pretty good.
It was far from Seoul, and there were no flights or trains that made it easy to get there quickly.
And since there were no failed hunters or victims on record, it probably wasn’t that difficult.
The problem was that the ant cave was the nest of giant ants, so the number of monsters to exterminate was very high, and I’d need one more person besides me.
'Muju Ant Cave Dungeon' extermination (E-rank) / (Current members 3/5)
I hit refresh, but the member count was still the same.
Hmm. Should I give up on Muju Ant Cave?
While I was debating, I checked to see whether there were any other good quests.
Nope.
Nope.
Not that one either...
Since nothing looked exactly right, I spun the mouse wheel faster.
And naturally, that led me to do something else entirely.
I started browsing quests out of curiosity, just to see what was out there.
Before long, I was even looking at A+ rank quests I couldn’t possibly accept.
Obtain the Drake's Heart (A+ rank) / (???)
Exploration of the untouched Ulleungdo gate (A+ rank) / (???)
Udamhwa gathering at Hongyureung Gate (A+ rank) / (???)
........
“Oh? There's Udamhwa too?”
The moment a familiar word appeared, my hand on the mouse moved at once.
When I clicked it, a warning popped up: Warning! This is an A+ rank quest. You cannot accept it!
I clicked again, but all that appeared was the warning; I still couldn’t open the details.
I’d wanted even the most basic information, but apparently that wasn’t allowed either.
Clicking my tongue at the disappointment, I was about to keep browsing when four men came up and stopped in front of me.
The man with drooping eyelids and snake eyes spoke first.
“Excuse me.”
“...?”
“We came to propose a party quest.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I can only take quests up to E-rank.”
“Perfect. What we’re proposing is an E-rank quest.”
Oh?
Four men here to propose a party quest...
No way.
“By any chance, would you be interested in clearing the Muju Ant Cave Dungeon with us?”
My suspicion turned out to be right.
The ant cave quest was the one with three people waiting earlier.
The young man standing a little apart in the back was probably the fourth person who’d just joined.
There was a clear age gap too. The three men seemed to be in the same group, while the young man looked like he didn’t know them at all.
He looked about ten years younger, too.
“Since it’s dungeon extermination, there’s no need for you to worry too much.”
Then the man with snake eyes launched into a boastful speech about themselves.
To summarize his long-winded bragging: they were C-rank hunters, veterans who had been cleaning out the ant cave dungeon flawlessly for two years without a single victim, and the three of them could handle the extermination just fine, so if I joined now, I’d essentially be clearing the quest for free.
Just when I’d already been leaning toward Muju Ant Cave Dungeon, too.
That problem of needing one more person was solved, and if they were C-rank hunters, an E-rank dungeon was surely something they could wipe out without trouble.
“If you think it’s too far away, you don’t need to worry about that either.”
“Worry about what?”
Hm?
Since I didn’t immediately accept their proposal, they seemed to misunderstand something.
The farther away it was, the better.
That would only make it take Tae-cheon longer to find me.
Still, since they seemed intent on explaining, I figured I’d hear them out.
“There’s a warp gate connected straight to the front of Muju Ant Cave.”
“Huh? A warp gate? Why would something that precious be in a place like an ant cave?”
“Because of the ants’ nature. If they’re left alone, they keep multiplying endlessly. If we don’t keep exterminating them, the dungeon’s range will just keep expanding.”
A dungeon was a place where the environment had changed into something like a gate after a gate break.
Gate mana had spread, making it impossible for ordinary people to survive there, and instead the monsters that had lived in the gate had become the masters of the land.
Even if you killed every last one of them, the land didn’t return to the way it had been.
The gate had stolen the ground from the world.
And that wasn’t the end of it.
Just like a gate break, dungeons expanded when mana accumulated.
To prevent that, the only option was to periodically clear out the monsters.
In other words, Muju Ant Cave Dungeon, with its queen ant that laid hundreds of eggs at once, was a special management zone that needed frequent cleaning.
That was probably why the Association had installed a warp gate so people from all over the country could receive and come for requests there.
“It’s quest-only, so we can leave right now.”
“Quest-only...?”
That phrase sank deep into my ear.
I could use the quest-only warp gate to leave Seoul right this instant and head straight to the ant cave, but Tae-cheon couldn’t.
Why?
Because he wouldn’t be able to use the warp gate.
What's more, as the master of a guild, he couldn’t keep stepping away from his post for long.
There wasn’t a better quest for me than this.
“Sounds good. I’ll join.”
“Oh! Excellent choice!”
When I nodded and gave my agreement, all three men broke into smiles at once.
The young man in back also offered a faint smile and bowed politely.
I found the Muju Ant Cave Dungeon extermination quest on the monitor and clicked it.
Immediately, the faces of the four men in front of me appeared as waiting members.
Just as they’d said, the three men were eight-year veterans at C-rank, and the young man was a first-year hunter who had only just reached E-rank.
He was probably joining because he’d heard he could complete the quest for free.
Maybe he also wanted to build connections with C-rank hunters.
After pressing the accept button, I clicked print.
The quest participation form came out of the printer beside the computer.
“Shall we head out right away?”
“Yes, let’s.”
As I picked up the printed quest form, the snake-eyed man asked me as if he were in a hurry about something.
Well, I wanted to get out of Seoul as fast as possible too, so I went along with him.
But the sapling in my right hand didn’t seem to like that at all.
The World Tree sapling is extremely displeased with the gazes of the three human men.
The manager should throw the soil in the mailbox at those human men.
The sapling strongly recommends throwing the soil.
So because it disliked the look in their eyes, it wanted me to throw dirt at them...
Don't just throw dirt at people for no reason, sapling. That would get me in trouble.
Still, I’ll think about it for now.