Night | Cha Hae-in looked out of her apartment building, towards the bustling city beneath.
Seoul, being the biggest city in Korea, never slept, and that would sometimes give her a strange comfort whenever she would look out of her window.
Though, this night, that was not enough.
She felt heat rising to her cheeks when she recalled the day’s events.
That day had been the first time she had met Si-woo properly.
She covered her face with her hands when she recalled how comfortable she had gotten with him in just a few hours.
She jumped on her bed, face first, and buried her face under her pillow at the memories.
How close she had been with him when they discussed strategy.
She had even teased him at the time.
She muffled a scream into her pillow at that.
Even before that, he had occupied her mind during the break.
Not that she usually rested during breaks.
She had made a habit of silently protecting the excavation teams during their mining process, only sitting down for the last fifteen minutes once most of the team was out of the dungeon.
‘Had he gotten any rest?
‘she thought.
She had smelled monster blood on him after his return.
‘He must have been hunting monsters during the break,’ she sighed as she thought.
Her gaze turned back to her window, towards the full moon in the night sky as she fell asleep at last.
The next day wasn’t busy for her.
It was mostly guild work, as her guild master made sure to keep at least a day’s gap between A-rank raids for her and the team.
She found herself checking her phone periodically throughout the day.
Someone had made a fan account for Si-woo on social media where they would re-upload his sightings.
She saw his picture with a hunting party who had raided a C-rank gate the day of her A-rank raid.
A redhead man was holding the phone as Si-woo stood behind him with his tongue out and the rest of the party beside him.
The next post was another similar image, this time with a party raiding a B-rank gate.
‘So he cleared a B-rank and a C-rank gate during the break hours.’ she deduced in her mind.
There were more pictures that followed after that.
The internet was scary when people set their minds on a person.
Even after their raid, he had been appearing in different gates of all ranks from B to E.
There were posts of him all throughout the night, and fresh updates were being made every two to three hours even now.
‘Does he have a private plane or something?’ she wondered.
The photos were not just taken in Seoul, and not just in Gyeonggi Province either.
His most recent spotting was in North Gyeongsang according to the latest post, and according to a post from five hours ago, he was in North Chungcheong at that time.
| Back to Si-woo | He stood in a field in North Chungcheong with two fingers raised in front of him.
He flicked them up, and about a hundred obsidian wolves in front of him were engulfed by a torrent of flames for a brief moment before the fire died down.
What was left of them were completely preserved bodies, looking as if the wolves were just sleeping instead of dead.
With their deaths, the gate shimmering in front of him snapped closed.
“I guess the boss was among them as well,” he muttered.
He looked back when he noticed a line of Association cars skid to a stop behind him.
Association personnel and hunters poured out of the vehicles.
“Don’t worry guys, the dungeon break is taken care of,” Si-woo spoke to the man he assumed was the highest rank among them.
“H-hunter Kang,” the Association hunter muttered before straightening up.
“Did you put those wolves to sleep using magic, sir?” Si-woo shook his head.
“They are dead.
I will leave the aftermath to you.” He gestured to the wolves dismissively.
“Yes, sir.
I will call for a collection team immediately,” the man answered.
“Rest assured, your share of the profits will be in your account as soon as possible.” “Yeah, that.
Just use the money to help the people who were affected because of the dungeon break,” Si-woo shrugged, patting the man’s shoulder before flickering away.
He knew the man would not skim the money.
Incurring an S-rank’s ire for a bit of money was not the smartest of ideas.
He looked up to see it was evening already when he arrived at the airfield where his company chopper was waiting for him.
“Where to, Hunter Kang?” a well-dressed man from his company asked.
“Seoul,” Si-woo said, exhaling a breath as he sat in his seat.
The next moment, they were airborne.
It was after 10 PM when he arrived back home and found Jin-ah watching television.
“Where’s grandpa?” he asked as soon as he stepped inside.
“He is asleep, and there is Bulgogi and Kimchi in the fridge.
Want me to heat it up for you?” she asked back.
Si-woo responded with a shake of his head.
“Did you eat?” “No.
You did promise me we would be having dinner together,” Jin-ah mentioned.
Si-woo nodded.
That was the reason he had returned for the night after all.
He was planning to leave for more hunting after dinner.
Si-woo heated up the food while Jin-ah set the table, helping him bring everything out once it was done.
Jin-woo arrived at that moment as well.
The promise was between him, Jin-ah, and Jin-woo after all, and the three of them had a habit of fulfilling their promises to each other.
“You’ve been popping up all over social media.
Do you not even rest now?” Jin-ah asked.
“I rest on the way,” Si-woo answered with a mouthful of food.
“Ugh,” Jin-ah made a disgusted sound, grimacing.
Seeing that, Si-woo did his duty by opening his mouth to show the food as he chewed, turning his face straight toward her.
“I hate you,” she muttered, turning her attention back to her plate and refusing to look up, while Si-woo and Jin-woo exchanged amused glances.
“How was your day?” Si-woo asked Jin-woo.
“You remember the party of four you met that day when I entered the E-rank gate?” Jin-woo asked, purposely not mentioning his stay in the hospital in front of Jin-ah.
Si-woo answered with a nod.
“I went into a D-rank gate with them,” Jin-woo answered.
“They added a healer to their party as well.
Nice guy.” He added before Si-woo could ask.
Jin-woo and Si-woo cleaned the utensils after eating.
Jin-ah offered to help, but they declined, telling her they needed the plates to stay intact if they wanted to eat off them again.
She huffed and stomped her feet at their reasoning before walking over to her apartment to go to sleep in her room.
She was looking at her phone in bed when the door to her room opened and Si-woo entered.
“Don’t you have school tomorrow?” “I was just about to go to sleep.” He sat down beside her on the mattress.
“Are people really bothering you because of me?” Si-woo asked when she put her phone down and turned her attention to him.
“Not really.
I don’t mind when my friends ask me questions.
Though there were some reporters that tried to talk to me after school, but some men in suits told them to leave,” she explained.
“Hm.
I’ll thank Jinchul for that.” Si-woo muttered to himself.
“You can handle all this, right?” Jin-ah asked.
“Hm.
Yes, I haven’t really struggled with any magic beasts yet.” Si-woo shrugged, and he wasn’t lying either.
He reached out and caressed her cheek lightly in a rare moment of direct affection.
Then, he snatched her phone out of her grasp, placing it on a table far away from her bed before he left the room.
He divided his consciousness, leaving half of it in the real world while the other half entered his spiritual realm.
There, he saw the first egg had cracks running all over it, though it had not yet fully hatched.
The other eggs were showing minute cracks as well.
It seemed his first familiar still needed a little bit of time to hatch fully.
Around the eggs was a new sight.
The Ifrits and the flame giant boss, whom he had started calling Surtur, were tending to the egg diligently.
Surtur knelt down in front of him as soon as he noticed his presence, and the Ifrits tried to imitate the gesture, though without legs it wasn’t really possible for them.
“At ease,” he told them with a wave of his hand as he observed the little fire spirits dancing around him.
With Surtur inside his spiritual realm, he needed nothing more than a gesture and the flame giant would engulf any fire-type magic beast in his flames, turning their souls into newborn fire spirits.
That was exactly what he had done to the obsidian wolves and a lot of the fire-type magic beasts he had met over the previous twenty-four hours.
He raised his hand and opened his palm.
A little spirit jumped onto his hand the next instant.
He could feel a very weak will radiating from the spirit, which made sense given it was born just hours ago.
“I wonder…” he muttered to himself as he recalled the specific mechanics of how the Eternal Sleep disease worked, remembering a certain scene from an anime he had watched in his previous life called Tensura.
‘I’ll try it out when Jin-woo gets his system.’ he concluded, shifting his consciousness entirely back to his body.
He was up in the skies again, a fresh report of an active dungeon break displaying on his screen.
A smile crossed his face when his phone buzzed with a message notification.
@Chahaein: We have another raid tomorrow.
I look forward to working with you again.
“Me as well, Hae-in,” he whispered, looking down as the bustling lights of Seoul began moving farther away beneath him.