Si-woo walked out of his apartment with a smile and took out his phone to check for any dungeon breaks that might be happening in the country.
His attention, however, was quickly caught by a reply from Hae-in to his previous message.
@haein: I hope everything is okay.
@siwoo: Yeah, I’ll just be visiting someone tomorrow morning.
Did you have fun with Jin-ah?
@haein: Hm.
It was fun.
Si-woo tilted his head at her short reply.
@siwoo: Is everything okay?
@haein: Yes.
Where are you?
@siwoo: Near my apartment.
I was just heading out.
@haein: Can you wait for a few minutes?
I just wanted to say good night in person.
Si-woo scratched his cheek at the message.
‘How cute can she be?’ he thought before crouching low.
For the first time, he focused his full concentration on enhancing his speed and agility with his Touki, leaping clean off the building he was currently standing on.
There was no loud sound of the wind breaking, nor was there a single crack left on the rooftop.
The dense magic surrounding his body was actively mitigating the laws of physics that typically came into play when someone moved as fast as Si-woo was moving at the moment.
He channeled wind and fire magic through his hands to maintain his trajectory, reaching Hae-in’s apartment building in just half a minute.
It had only taken him that long because he had to continuously use magic to turn at such high speeds so as not to cause damage to the city below.
| With Hae-in | Hae-in sat on her bed and blushed at the message she had sent, which quickly turned into a small frown when she received no reply over the next ten seconds.
‘Was I being too clingy?’ she thought.
“Why did I type that?
We haven’t known each other for very long.
He must be thinking I’m a total nuisance,” she whispered to herself with a soft sigh, chewing on her lower lip.
Her gaze remained fixed on her phone screen.
She shook her head and started typing out an apology message.
She was just about to hit send when a new message from Si-woo popped up.
@siwoo: What floor do you live on?
Her heart skipped a beat.
She had mentioned which apartment building she lived in during a past conversation, though he had never asked for her specific floor number.
‘He is outside?’ she wondered, rushing to her balcony and looking down toward the street.
In her haste, she had completely forgotten to reply to him.
She lifted her phone to finally type the floor number when another message arrived.
@siwoo: Nevermind.
Her heart skipped a beat again, though not in a good way this time.
‘I took too long.
He must have thought I changed my mind.’ Thoughts like that swirled rapidly in her head until a very familiar scent reached her nose.
She turned her head to the side and saw Si-woo landing gracefully right onto her balcony.
“You came,” the words escaped her mouth in pure shock.
“You called,” Si-woo said, acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
She squealed in joy before leaping straight into his arms, all of her inhibitions completely vanishing for the moment.
“Someone’s happy to see me,” he teased.
She answered by getting up on her tiptoes and planting her lips firmly on his.
She snaked her arms tightly around his neck, feeling his strong arms wrap securely around her waist to support her.
She took her time, swirling her tongue with his until she felt entirely breathless.
He pulled back after some time, much to her reluctance.
However, a bright smile graced her face the next instant.
She held onto his arms as she invited him inside her apartment through the open balcony doors.
She guided him straight to the couch, sitting him down.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.
He answered with a simple shake of his head.
She nodded and went to the kitchen, returning with a spread of Tofu Stew and Japchae.
“I’ll order something for myself, you don’t have t—” Si-woo started, but she cut him off firmly.
“I ordered this meal for two so I could have some in the morning as well,” she shushed him, serving the food for the both of them.
She glanced over at Si-woo and saw him smiling tenderly at her, which gave her the confidence to continue.
She sat down right beside him once the spread was laid out in front of them.
They spent the next half hour eating slowly and feeding each other, and the fifteen minutes after that were spent with her resting comfortably in his arms.
Sleep was just about to take her when he nudged her gently, picking her up in his arms to carry her toward her bedroom.
He placed her down on her bed gently, giving her a brief kiss before starting to walk away.
It took a massive amount of self-control for her to stop herself from reaching out to pull him back.
‘It is important work he is leaving to do.’ she told herself.
She placed her outstretched hand back onto the mattress, turning away from the window he had just exited from.
| With Si-woo | Si-woo’s steps felt light as he walked along the roof of Hae-in’s apartment building.
“For real this time,” he muttered to himself, taking out his phone to search for any new gates that might have opened nearby or a recent dungeon break in Korea.
He found a report made only minutes ago regarding an active dungeon break in South Gyeongsang.
It was an A-rank gate.
A frown appeared on his face, and he immediately made an urgent phone call.
“Set a course to South Gyeongsang, fast.
And just take off, I’ll hop in along the way.” Si-woo hung up the phone after relaying his direct orders.
| Gimhae, South Gyeongsang | The streets of Gimhae were completely closed off to the general public as a team of A-rank hunters did their best to combat the threat constantly exiting the swirling portal in front of them.
“We need more fire mages, even if they are lower rank!” an A-rank tank shouted at the top of his lungs while association workers scrambled to fulfill the order.
They were currently fighting a large group of trolls.
These were A-rank, mindless beasts that weren’t necessarily impossible to subdue for high-ranking hunters, but they were a hassle to kill because of their rapid regeneration.
“Fire and acid!
Those are the only things that can keep these fuckers down!” the same man shouted again.
The association members got the message clearly.
There were mages available with acid-type spells, so they quickly widened their requests to include them as well.
“Oh, I wish regular acid actually worked on them,” an association worker growled in frustration, but he flinched when a roar emerged from the gate.
“Get the civilians out of here!
The boss is emerging!” the tank roared again.
An oppressive aura permeated through the city streets as an earth wyvern emerged from the portal, letting out a heavy roar that weakened the legs of the less experienced hunters nearby.
“The earth wyvern would have been bad enough,” a female hunter growled when she observed the troll tamer sitting directly on top of the wyvern.
Troll tamers possessed the unique ability to tame monsters, and on top of that, they could permanently increase the regeneration capacity of the monsters they had tamed.
“Fuck you, God!” the female hunter roared to the skies, and not even the most religious person in the world would have chided her for her choice of words at that moment.
“Huh?” She cocked her head when she noticed a helicopter moving rapidly toward their position.
It flew directly above their location but did not slow down, acting as if it were simply passing by.
However, she could see a clear silhouette had jumped from the helicopter and was falling straight toward the ground.
She used a skill to enhance her eyesight, only to lock eyes with a pair of intense, slitted golden eyes just before a massive impact reverberated through the battlefield.
A sharp screech followed as the wyvern thrashed around wildly, blood spraying from the stump where its severed limb used to be.
In her reverie, she hadn’t noticed the troll standing right in front of her, ready to swing a halberd directly at her face.
It was too late for her to react, and despair began to kick in right before another loud sound reverberated through the battlefield and the troll in front of her was cleanly cut in half.
When the two sides parted, the golden eyes were revealed to her from behind the falling corpse.
He gave her a brief nod and cut down several more trolls, making the immediate battlefield far more stable before turning his attention back to the troll tamer and the wyvern.
The beast had already regenerated its severed limb by now and was readying its poison breath to hurl straight at him.
She turned her head back up to the sky.
“My bad,” she apologized to God before getting right back to the fighting.
Si-woo jumped up high and landed directly on top of the wyvern’s head, clamping its large mouth shut and stopping it from discharging its venomous breath.
He used wind magic with his hands to create enough force to hold it down.
In one smooth motion, he slashed upward, cutting the troll tamer in half before turning his sword again to cut off another limb from the wyvern.
‘Holy fuck, they have good regeneration.’ Si-woo thought as the wyvern and the troll tamer began regenerating right in front of his eyes.
As he fought the creatures, the things he had learned from the high orcs came back to his mind.
Troll tamers were born with the rare ability to form taming talismans, and once a bond was formed with the talisman, it would never work for another person.
Additionally, for some reason, the talisman only worked if it was made with troll blood and crafted by a troll tamer’s own hand.
“You are gonna make me a whole lot of these talismans,” Si-woo grinned.
He turned into a blur.
While fighting the troll and the wyvern simultaneously, he also started carving pieces of the wyvern’s bones from the limbs he had chopped off.
He carved the bones into precise circular shapes.
The next instant, his eyes glowed and the ground cracked as Si-woo cut off all of the wyvern’s limbs in one smooth motion.
“This’ll keep that thing down for the moment,” he muttered, walking directly toward the regenerating troll tamer.
He knew that because the wyvern was actively connected to the troll, it did not feel pain from being cut, just like standard trolls.
He made a deep cut across the troll’s chest as thick blood spurted from the wound.
He grabbed the troll’s own hand, dipping its fingers directly into its own blood, and started carving a runic symbol onto the bones he had prepared previously.
“Fucking keep your fingers straight.” he muttered in frustration, dipping the troll’s fingers into the blood again as if the digit were a quill and the pool of blood were an inkpot.
It took him half a minute to successfully carve the rune onto the almost twenty pieces of bone he had prepared.
“Now for the last part,” he said in a sing-song voice, dipping all the newly formed talismans directly into a pool of the wyvern’s blood.
The talismans glowed in a soft light as they absorbed the magic from the fresh blood.
Si-woo cut off the newly regenerated limb of the wyvern once again, causing more blood to spurt over the talismans resting on the ground.
He had no further use for the troll tamer anymore, so he picked the beast up by the neck and deposited it right in front of an A-rank fire mage.
No words were exchanged as the mage immediately used a concentrated fire spell on the dismembered troll.
More mages joined in, ranging from A-rank to C-rank, using every fire spell they possessed on the creature.
Meanwhile, Si-woo kept the other trolls and the limb-deficient wyvern in check.
After the troll tamer was dead, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the trolls were reduced to nothing but a bunch of charred, lifeless corpses.