[Absorbing a Blood Point Stone can create a new sub-skill or raise the level of an existing sub-skill.]
[There is currently no skill that can be created with a lower-tier Blood Point Stone.]
Garam looked back and forth between the message window that had caught his eye and the thing called a Blood Point Stone in his hand.
Blood Point Stone. The name alone gave the feeling that it had something to do with Vampirs.
"Let me try absorbing it for now."
He used Absorb on the Blood Point Stone the way he did on monsters' blood.
[Absorbing the lowest-tier Blood Point Stone.]
'The other sub-skills have already grown enough.'
But there was one exception.
There was a skill that had never grown even once so far.
Regeneration.
He hadn't used Regeneration often until now, so it was only natural that it hadn't grown.
'Then I'll strengthen Regeneration.'
With Regeneration, he could reduce the rebound from True Progenitor Form at least a little.
For now, it was the optimal choice.
[The lowest-tier Blood Point Stone is used.]
[Regeneration (C): Lv1 is strengthened to Regeneration (C): Lv3.]
Whether it was his imagination or not, his body felt healthier.
"Let me test it out."
[Sub-skill: Regeneration is used.]
Regeneration activated along with the sensation of blood being consumed.
Along with the wounds scattered over his body from fighting the Kobold King,
the weakness caused by True Progenitor Form also began to ease, if only a little.
The time it took for his body to become completely clean was about three minutes.
It was certainly a regenerative power an ordinary person couldn't imagine, but
"It's still awkward to use in the middle of combat."
Garam's expression wasn't pleased.
One minute for a scratch on his body to disappear.
At that rate it was about the same as a lowest-tier potion.
It would be good as first aid once a fight was over, of course,
but in a battle where lives hung in the balance, one minute was far too long.
And there was the penalty of consuming blood.
"Well, setting that aside. Do you know anything about this Blood Point Stone?"
He turned to Carmilla, wondering whether she might know something, but
[I don't know... what is this thing? It's scary.]
Carmilla seemed not to know either.
To get his hands on yet another Vampir-related item in a gate he'd entered today.
An item not even Carmilla knew about, at that.
At this point he wondered whether something really was going on, but
"Help... me."
a voice from far off kept Garam's thoughts from going any further.
The chair the Kobold King had been sitting on.
At the voice coming from the small cave behind it, Garam slowly approached the cave.
There were people inside the cave.
A man, roughly bound with coarse rope and left there.
[Huh? Isn't this the guy from before?]
GLEAM-
"It is."
The person held captive in the cave was the bald man he'd seen in front of the gate earlier.
Not only him; the other bald companions he'd called his party members were bound up tight alongside him.
'A group taste for being tied up with rope inside gates... surely not.'
Then had the Kobolds outside tied them up?
"Wh-who... no, that isn't what matters. What happened to the Kobold pack outside?"
Perhaps because of the mask, the bald man didn't recognize him.
There was no need to go out of his way to reveal his identity, so Garam kept the mask on and continued the conversation.
"I killed them all. More to the point, how did all of you end up captured here?"
"Kobold packs attacked us. One pack or so would have been fine, but at least three packs came at us together......."
Garam gave a small nod at his words.
The bald man and his party members were about C-Grade hunters.
There was no way a C-Grade hunter party couldn't clear out a single Kobold pack.
"Then could you untie me?"
"Ah, I'll have you free in a moment."
While he was untying the man's ropes, the man spoke again.
"Did you happen to see a bag around here? I'm certain the Kobolds took our porter bag."
A bag?
He hadn't seen one.
'Though I wouldn't say so even if I had.'
Hunting as a full party, their takings would be fairly decent.
'I'll untie them all and then go looking.'
They say do a good deed and rice cakes appear even while you sleep.
He'd done a good deed and free money had appeared.
[No, stealing someone else's bag isn't a good deed to begin with—]
'Let's not worry about trivial details like that.'
Untying people was a good deed, after all.
'That aside, Kobolds abducting people and taking their mana stones.'
It wasn't something you saw from ordinary monsters.
Monsters killed hunters, sure, but he'd never heard of them abducting people or stealing mana stones like this.
In eight years as a porter it was the first time he'd heard of such a thing.
'Is it connected to this Blood Point Stone?'
While he pondered it, Garam finished untying all the ropes of the bald party.
Freed from their bonds, they gave Garam their thanks and moved off.
They seemed to want out of this gate as fast as possible.
Having been abducted by monsters, a rare experience in its own way, it wasn't hard to understand.
Watching the bald party gradually recede, Garam slipped out of the cave with a sly smile.
"Now then, let's do some item farming."
With excited steps, Garam began searching for the mana stones the bald party had left behind.
***
"Today's earnings are pretty sweet."
He'd been in the gate only about four hours, and he'd earned something like ten million won.
Money that normally would have taken a month of getting abducted along the way and working at a level where labor law had been thrown to the dogs, earned in a mere four hours.
"This is why people become hunters."
Granted, that was the total from the Kobold pack, the Kobold King, and the mana stones the bald party had left behind.
Even accounting for that, it was a sum unimaginable in his porter days.
And if his Grade rose on top of that?
The money he could earn would clearly increase astronomically.
'So raising my Grade is what matters after all.'
[Right, so use the True Progenitor's power more freely and let's prepare for the coming revolution.]
She must have spooked herself even as she said it, because Carmilla put some distance between herself and Garam.
She seemed to think she'd be flicked away again.
But Garam, in a good mood from earning a pile of money, just smiled and passed her by.
"She's not wrong."
What he'd gained in the gate today wasn't only money.
The Blood Point Stone, and the strengthening of Regeneration.
He'd judged it a skill with no practical use in combat, but this skill had an unexpected benefit.
"The more I heal my body with Regeneration, the thicker my blood gets."
According to Carmilla, his human blood was gradually turning into proper Vampir blood.
It was an ominous thing to hear, but his fuel efficiency had certainly improved.
Though all it amounted to was going from walking like a snail to walking at a normal pace.
Keep using Regeneration and he would surely see a clear effect.
"But deliberately getting myself hurt is a bit much."
[Endure that much, I'm telling you. You think you'll make S-Grade with a mindset like that? Hyah!]
Carmilla sat on top of Garam's head and kept bringing her little hands down on it.
It didn't hurt at all, more like being tickled by down feathers.
"Come to think of it, Carmilla, do you really not know about the Blood Point Stone?"
The mysterious gem he'd seen in the gate, the Blood Point Stone.
Even if you looked at it while turning somersaults it seemed like an item connected to Vampirs, yet Carmilla said she didn't know.
[I really don't. If I had to put it into words, it feels similar to Vampir blood but subtly different. Like something's been mixed into it, I suppose.]
Carmilla answered while sprawled out flat on Garam's head.
She didn't seem to be lying.
"Even you, the one who made me the True Progenitor, don't know it, and yet absorbing it strengthens powers related to the True Progenitor."
Beyond questionable, into outright suspicious.
"Should I ask Hae-rang about this?"
Hae-rang, being Holy Knights, might know something, but he couldn't just ask blindly either.
However you looked at it, the Blood Point Stone was an item connected to Vampirs.
"And I already absorbed the one I got."
He would ask if he found another Blood Point Stone.
Garam sighed and started walking again.
"Then shall I head back to the Hunter Market?"
[There? Why again?]
"Why else."
To buy medicine.
Now that he'd earned some money, stocking up on medicine to keep on hand would clearly be useful.
And while he was there this time, he'd buy a weapon too.
Garam tossed the wallet in his hand and caught it again.
His wallet was thick enough that it felt heavy.
For having cleaned out just one gate, the reward had been quite generous.
***
-Big brother, you sent me new medicine just yesterday.
Ha-yeon's voice came through the phone.
Her voice was trembling with unease.
-You're not overdoing it just because you've become a hunter, are you?
"You worry mountains' worth. Hey, I'm the True Progenitor. Turns out a little effort and the money just comes."
That wasn't a lie.
He really had used just a little of the True Progenitor's power and wiped out the Kobolds and the Kobold King with them.
With that he'd earned money, bought medicine, and even bought himself a weapon.
And he still had money left over.
-Then that's good, but...
Even so, Ha-yeon trailed off as though something didn't sit right.
"What, is there something bothering you?"
-Well, I heard it from a professor, but apparently disappearances inside gates have been increasing quickly lately. So just in case.
At the word disappearances, Garam's body stiffened.
The Kobold packs he'd seen in the gate earlier, and the bald party they had abducted.
When his thoughts reached that far, Garam shook his head and stopped thinking about it.
'Surely not. Monsters suddenly abducting people en masse.'
Even so, Garam found himself speaking again.
"Ha-yeon. Look into the locations of the gates where those disappearances happened."
-Hm? I can do that, but... you're not planning to do anything strange, are you?
Even though she was on the other end of the phone, he had the illusion of seeing her sharp glare.
Knowing she couldn't see it, Garam shook his head anyway and spoke to Ha-yeon on the other end of the line.
"Of course not. I just want to be careful around those places."
-Fine, all right. I'll look into it and get back to you. Be careful.
"Yeah, you too. I sent the medicine, so if anything feels off, just take it right away."
Ha-yeon laughed softly and hung up.
The room fell quiet.
[So what are we doing now?]
Carmilla, drifting through the air like a cloud, kicked her legs in boredom.
[There's nothing to do in this house, nothing at all. At least turn on the TV!]
"That costs electricity."
It came included with the place's basic options, so it was there, but the times he'd turned it on could be counted on his fingers.
He begrudged the electricity bill enough that he barely even turned the light on in the room; how could a TV be justified?
[You lunatic. You earned ten million won today. You spent some of it, sure, but isn't begrudging an electricity bill like this too pathetic?]
"You think so?"
Just as Carmilla said, doing nothing but scrimping was a foolish thing to keep up now.
Until now he had lived meeting only the bare minimum needed to survive.
From now on, if not the maximum, he could live enjoying enough.
[Right, right. So I'm turning on the TV.]
Carmilla hauled over a remote twice the size of her own body and turned the TV on.
The sound of the TV filled the room.
And within it,
-Recently there was an incident in which a certain hunter went missing inside a gate.
news with familiar content came through.