This morning began peacefully, with the chirping of birds.
Hae-jin woke up early and prepared to head out.
But he was not alone.
“Guard, are you ready?”
“Woof!”
“Listen carefully. Just do what we practiced. You have a good nose, so all you need to do is pick up the scent of monsters. If one really does show up, warn me. Got it?”
As though he truly understood, Guard gave a small nod.
Was it because he was not an ordinary dog, but one tamed through a Hunter's Trait?
He certainly listened extremely well to his owner, Hae-jin.
“My trusty ride starts up just fine too. Okay.”
There was one more thing that made today special.
A large ATV stood in front of the main gate of The Forest Lodge.
Hae-jin had picked it up cheaply secondhand yesterday.
There were plenty of high-end models available, but he had deliberately chosen a budget model with the largest cargo rack.
The reason was simple.
He intended to use it more for transporting things than merely riding around.
“Cargo check complete. Then shall we get going?”
All sorts of miscellaneous items had been loaded onto the ATV's cargo rack.
There were everything from large sheets of plywood to boxes packed full of tools.
VROOM-!
After putting Guard in a helmet made specifically for dogs and getting him aboard, Hae-jin sped off down the country road.
There was a particular experiment he desperately wanted to try, which was why he had gone through so much preparation today.
'An Ownerless Building lets me claim its Ownership immediately. If I make proper use of this ridiculous system, I might actually be able to create a whole new economy for myself, right?'
As time passed after his awakening, Hae-jin had gradually deepened his understanding of his God Landlord abilities.
This time, he planned to test one of their applications.
The rural road had gone completely unmaintained, with grass growing thickly all over it.
Entrusting himself to the rattling ATV, Hae-jin continued onward at a steady pace until he had traveled quite a distance.
His destination was an empty plot about two kilometers away from the village.
It was nothing more than flat land thick with brush and surrounded by rice paddies, without anything particularly noteworthy about it.
However, it was perfect for what Hae-jin had in mind.
“Hmm... I don't see any monsters around. Guard, what do you think?”
“Woof!”
“No monsters? Good. Then let's do it here. Guard, keep watch for me. This is important, so you can't make any mistakes, all right? Got it?”
After putting Guard on guard duty, Hae-jin began the real work.
“Heave-ho!”
Grunting with effort, he unloaded everything he had packed onto the cargo rack.
He laid out the dozens of plywood sheets he had brought and started hammering nails into them.
BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-!
The weather was cool, but the exertion soon left beads of sweat forming over the bridge of his nose.
It was an unexpected session of carpentry.
He joined the sheets of plywood together to create a floor, then connected more pieces above it, gradually forming a large rectangular structure.
'For now, let's just aim to make it look as much like a house as possible.'
That was right.
What Hae-jin was building in the middle of this empty field was none other than a house.
He had practically no experience, so he nearly smashed his finger with the hammer once and even nicked himself while sawing.
There had been more than a few complications along the way.
After repeatedly traveling back and forth between the lodge and the empty lot to transport materials, however—
By the time the morning sun had begun sinking toward the horizon, Hae-jin had finally succeeded.
“If I nail this part down, I'm finished!”
He had completed the entire thing on his own, without anyone else's help.
It was a temporary plywood structure measuring roughly 6.6 square meters.
Even in the eyes of its creator, Lee Hae-jin, its shabby appearance looked less like a house where a person would live and more like a doghouse for Guard.
Still, it was better than nothing.
Its appearance did not matter.
When it came down to it, this was still a building, was it not?
That was enough.
'Whew... This is where it really matters. Will the house I built actually be registered...?'
With his heart pounding, Hae-jin attempted to register the building.
What if it failed?
Then all the backbreaking labor he had put in throughout the entire day would have been for nothing.
It would have been miserable dog work.
No, Guard work.
'Please, please, please recognize it...'
Hae-jin stepped inside the temporary structure, clutched his pounding chest, and registered the building.
And at that moment—
-DING!
[You have entered an Ownerless Building!]
[Would you like to acquire this property?]
“Aaaaah! It worked!”
Had the system's DING! ever sounded this wonderful before?
As Hae-jin roared in delight, Guard joined in with an AROOOOO- of his own.
Hae-jin had wondered whether it would work, and sure enough, it had.
It had been a close call, but apparently the structure had successfully qualified as a building.
Without wasting another moment, he immediately chose to acquire it.
-You have acquired a new property!
-The list of available properties has been updated!
“Ahhh, nice. Expansion successful!”
He was genuinely so happy that he could not stop himself from grinning.
It was the moment his hypothesis became certainty.
'I don't have to scrape together money to buy abandoned buildings anymore, and I don't have to keep wandering around looking for empty houses. I can just build a temporary structure wherever I need one!'
It was a method he had only dared to imagine until now.
He could establish temporary structures one after another like expansion bases in a strategy game.
If he kept repeating this process, he could create an almost unlimited number of bases from which he could use his Skills anywhere he wanted.
Of course, for now, that only applied to Demonic Zones, where land prices effectively did not exist.
'If I tried this in a city, forget real estate—the police would come tear it down. Still, this is more than enough. Now I can go looking for the monsters myself!'
Even amid his elation, there was one disappointing limitation.
For the time being, he could not make the house any larger than this.
Building this one 6.6-square-meter temporary structure had already required more than ten round trips to the lodge.
On top of that, it was not as if he could camp overnight inside this structure, so he still had to use the ATV for transportation.
This was about the largest doorway he could manage if he wanted to use the 'Go Home' Skill while bringing the ATV through with him.
'Still, I can just earn more money and get a bigger house later. Or I can commit myself to building a larger temporary structure. As long as I can make money, they are all problems I can solve.'
All the monsters in the surrounding area had already been wiped out.
For now, the most important thing was that he had established an expansion base in another area with an absolute safe zone guaranteed.
'It might be small and precious right now, but just you wait. My ambitions are only going to get grander and grander!'
Perhaps the satisfaction of his hard work tasted a little too sweet.
Hae-jin even began admiring himself.
Guard stared blankly at his owner for a moment before sticking out his tongue and turning his head away.
Once he had established a base, what was he supposed to do next?
Hunt, obviously.
“Hmm-hmm~”
The method itself was no different from before.
After bringing over the grill he had used at the lodge, Hae-jin once again began grilling meat in the yard of the temporary structure.
Perhaps coming this far had indeed been worthwhile.
“WOOF! GRRR... WOOF WOOF!”
“Oh, Guard. Did something show up? Can you smell something?”
“WHIMPER!”
It had not been long since the scent of grilled meat began spreading when Guard started barking.
The dog, who had been sitting quietly, suddenly sprang to his feet.
He sniffed the air repeatedly, then stared intently toward one section of the brush, keeping his guard up.
Hae-jin assumed it would be another Garbage Dog.
After all, the only monsters he had seen anywhere around here so far had been Garbage Dogs.
He picked up his Long Spear and waited for the monster to appear.
Then—
“H-Huh? What is that?!”
The bushes rustled, and an unfamiliar hulking figure emerged.
It was not a Garbage Dog.
It was another animal-type monster, but its presence was so oppressive that it made a Garbage Dog look like nothing more than a minor nuisance.
It was an enormous lizard more than two meters long.
Its entire body was covered in gleaming silver scales, while dangerous-looking saliva dripped from the tongue flicking between its jaws.
Hae-jin knew the monster's name.
“A Basilisk... Still, it isn't an adult. Is it a juvenile?”
It was one of the Named Monsters officially recognized by the Hunter Association with the title of 'Boss.'
It was such a powerful and durable monster that a Garbage Dog looked like mere fodder by comparison.
“I heard even Hunters around Level 10 usually form parties of five to raid these things. Even if it's only a juvenile, did something this strong really have to show up right from the start?”
He might possess an invincibility Skill, but the appearance of a monster far stronger than he had imagined still intimidated him a little.
Perhaps it had fully caught the scent of the meat.
The juvenile Basilisk hissed continuously as it began rapidly crawling toward Hae-jin on all fours.
Of course—
THUD!
It slammed its head straight into the invisible barrier directly in front of the grill piled high with meat.
-SKREEE?!
Apparently startled by the invisible wall, the Basilisk let out a horrible shriek and hesitated.
Then, as if refusing to give up, it began repeatedly throwing its body against the barrier.
THUD- THUD-!
As long as the Safe Property Skill guaranteed their protection, Hae-jin and Guard were, quite literally, invincible while inside the property.
However, perhaps it was because the Basilisk carried the classification of a Boss monster.
Or perhaps it was because this was merely a makeshift structure cobbled together from plywood instead of a proper house.
“It's shaking... Damn it. This makes me a little nervous.”
“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!”
Every time the monster rammed its head into the barrier, the temporary structure around Hae-jin shook as though an earthquake had struck.
It did not seem likely to collapse immediately, but the sheer difference in strength was obvious.
“You think I'm going to lose? What can you even do from over there anyway?!”
Grinding his teeth, Hae-jin thrust his spear forward.
But—
CLANG-!
“Urgh?!”
A completely different sensation from when he had fought the Garbage Dogs traveled through his fingers and up both arms.
Rather than piercing into the monster, the spear simply bounced away.
'What the hell is this? Is this thing even alive? It feels like I just stabbed a rock...'
He had driven his spear forward, but it did not feel as though he had inflicted so much as a scratch.
There were said to be two things that made Basilisks particularly dangerous.
The first was their uniquely aggressive and tenacious disposition.
Once they marked something as prey, they would keep coming after it again and again until they finally caught it.
And the second was their silver scales.
Each one was only about as thin as a thumbnail, yet their hardness was said to easily surpass that of diamond.
And there were thousands of those scales.
They covered the Basilisk's entire massive body.
Hae-jin had let his guard down a little because it was only a juvenile rather than a fully grown adult, but its Defense was still far too high.
'I heard those scales make them worth an absolute fortune if you can kill one, and sellers can practically name their price... But how am I supposed to kill this lizard-shaped pile of money?'
If he could kill it, he would hit a massive jackpot.
Right now, however, it might as well have been an immovable mountain.
Was there some kind of solution?
“Whew...”
Hae-jin let out a quiet sigh as he desperately racked his brain.