"So this is the First Meeting Room?"
A meeting room inside the Association building.
Normally this building was used by Association staff, so ordinary hunters couldn't enter,
but that didn't apply to him, holder of a Holy Knights member card.
"I think this is the place."
CREAK.
When he opened the door of the meeting room and stepped in, people who appeared to be knights of the order were already waiting inside.
Identical white uniforms, as if to prove they were all one body.
He must have been the last to arrive, because the eyes of everyone inside turned to Garam at once.
[Hoo.]
Carmilla hid behind Garam's back and sighed.
'What, are you nervous?'
[Yes! Scared out of my mind!]
This time Carmilla admitted it cleanly, without a shred of a lie.
And it was the same for Garam.
The knights he could sense here were B-Grade at minimum.
And even those B-Grades all had ability rivaling A-Grade.
However thoroughly Carmilla's concealment fooled even Hae-rang, being nervous was a separate matter.
"Mr. Garam's here too. Then shall we begin the briefing?"
When Hae-rang, seated at the head of the table, waved a greeting, the knights began to grow noisy.
"So that's the one who joined recently......."
"They say he fought two Vampirs at once."
"And in the entrance exam he even killed a lowest-tier Vampir himself, apparently."
"For all that, he looks awfully weak."
Among them, the number sending him a friendly look, Hae-rang aside, was zero.
The closest thing to friendly was Jin-seong, who maintained perfect indifference.
The rest were all suspicion, nothing more.
[You're wildly popular.]
'It's popularity of a sort, I suppose.'
Not the kind of popularity he'd wanted.
CLAP!
Then the sound of Hae-rang's clap rang out through the meeting room.
Mana pure enough to dominate the room with a single clap.
[Urgh. This human's energy is insane.]
That power was strong enough to affect even Carmilla in her concealment state.
"All right. Then let me explain why I called you all here today."
BEEP.
When Garam pressed the remote, the screen behind him came on.
The words written there were familiar to Garam as well.
The Serial Hunter Disappearances.
It was the case Garam had been paying attention to for days.
Put another way, it was a case that had grown serious enough to reach the news in a matter of days.
[Hmm, so Earth's Holy Knights handle cases like this too?]
"Excuse me. Team Leader. I understand this case is being investigated separately by the Association. Do we need to step in as well?"
[Guess not.]
A black-haired woman raised her hand and rose from her seat.
As though speaking for her, the other knights were looking at Hae-rang questioningly as well.
"Haah. Right. I was wondering when that would come up. Se-yeong. You lot have no interest in anything but Vampirs, isn't that it?"
Hae-rang gave a short laugh and pulled something from inside her coat and tossed it.
THUD, roll, roll
"Even so, once you see this you won't be able to help taking an interest."
'Is that—?'
What had been tossed onto the table was a red, glowing gem.
A Blood Point Stone.
As if to prove Hae-rang's words, the moment the Blood Point Stone landed on the table, an uproar broke out among the knights on a scale entirely unlike the attention that had been aimed at Garam earlier.
"This item, I can feel the energy of a Vampir from it."
"That's right. Se-yeong. Now do you see why we said we'd intervene in this case?"
Hae-rang sighed as she spoke, apparently used to this sort of thing, and the woman called Se-yeong nodded and sat back down.
"Anyway, apparently monsters with this item, this Blood Point Stone, embedded in their bodies have been appearing in the gates where hunters have gone missing."
At Hae-rang's next words, the knights couldn't take their eyes off the Blood Point Stone.
"It looks like nothing but a red mana stone."
"And there's nothing strange about the energy I'm sensing, either."
Words like that spread among the knights.
"You won't be saying that once you see one actually used. When I killed the monster that had absorbed this, the scent of blood nearly bent my nose out of shape."
Even at Hae-rang's words, the knights only kept staring hard at the Blood Point Stone.
Unless a Blood Point Stone was used directly, or unless you were a fellow Vampir, the energy you sensed from it seemed to be much like an ordinary mana stone's.
Rather like the relationship between hunters and Vampirs.
Garam already knew about Blood Point Stones, so he deliberately didn't go closer.
'Strange how looking at a Blood Point Stone makes me hungry.'
Just catching the smell from a distance was enough to create the illusion of a feast laid out in front of him.
If it was like this from the smell alone, there was no need to look right at it and stir up trouble—
"Mr. Garam, come over and take a look too."
"Yes, ma'am."
You can't defy the paymaster.
With no choice, he wedged himself in among the knights to look at the Blood Point Stone, and he could feel their stares grow that much sharper.
Were they hoping to sense something from close up?
'Not that I'm anything but an ordinary D-Grade hunter right now.'
Without True Progenitor Form, he was simply a D-Grade hunter.
There was no way they could sense the True Progenitor's power that even Hae-rang hadn't sensed.
Garam calmed himself and looked at the Blood Point Stone.
THUMP!
"Hup!"
Hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry.
A violent urge rang through his head.
It was on a completely different level from when he'd seen the lowest-tier Blood Point Stone he'd obtained after felling the Kobold King.
Had he ever felt thirst like this in his life?
A thirst like finding an oasis in the desert crashed over him.
'I have to hold it together.'
Show anything strange here and he'd be exterminated on the spot.
He had far too much left to do to die here.
"Urgh! Hoo."
"What's wrong? Mr. Garam, are you all right?"
When he suddenly clutched his chest and doubled over, Hae-rang came closer.
But he could hardly go wild here.
Garam barely managed to calm his overheated head and straightened up.
"I'm fine. A foul energy hit me all of a sudden and it startled me, I think."
"Phew, what a relief. I thought something serious had happened."
"By the way, where did you find that Blood Point Stone?"
It was far smaller than the one he had absorbed, no bigger than a fingernail, yet the power contained inside it was of an entirely different order.
If the Blood Point Stone he had absorbed was a mere AA battery, that thing held an entire generator inside it.
"That? I got it off a monster in an A-Grade gate I went into."
'Mid-tier Blood Point Stone at minimum. Maybe high-tier.'
Hae-rang, having confirmed Garam was all right, patted his back in relief, but the other knights seemed to think differently.
If their earlier looks had stopped at suspicion, this time blatant disappointment washed over him.
"What, he makes that much fuss over energy this weak?"
"A bit of a letdown. Heh heh."
Two of them had been speaking especially loudly on purpose since earlier.
One was a fine-featured young man, and the other was a rough-looking bald.......
[Oh, hell, another bald one.]
'Ahem. Let's let that one slide.'
Garam shook his head, finally clearing it, and turned to look at them, but they only sneered at him and shrugged.
"Hey. Kim Tae-hyeon, Shin Seo-jun. Both of you be quiet. You know he's on the same team now."
Only after Hae-rang's low, sinking rebuke did they finally turn away.
"Anyway, I've gone on a while, but the reason I called you here today is simple. I'll assign each of you a gate, and there you'll recover Blood Point Stones and investigate the connection to the abduction cases."
"Understood, Team Leader!"
"Good, good. The gates each of you is taking are written in these documents, so pick yours up on your way. Dismissed."
Beside where Hae-rang pointed, after she'd collected the Blood Point Stone, sat documents with each of their names on them.
One by one they took the document with their name and left, and Garam picked up his as well.
The gates written on it numbered a good dozen or more at a glance.
An overwhelmingly larger number than the other knights had.
At Hae-rang pressing her palms together and apologizing, Garam nodded without much thought.
"And sorry. The truth is you're the only one I can put into low-Grade gates like these right now, so you'll have to go in alone."
Hae-rang sounded quite apologetic, but Garam didn't particularly mind.
The difficulty of clearing a high-Grade gate versus a low-Grade gate was the difference between sky and earth.
Since the other knights were going into high-Grade gates, having the low-Grade gates pile onto him was only natural in a way.
And being alone was more convenient for using the True Progenitor's power.
"Also, a bonus will be paid per gate in the form of a commission. One hundred million won per trace found. Blood Point Stones included. Mana stones obtained there are handled separately."
Insane.
Was this the dignity of a state institution?
With money like that, how much of a bonus was one run through a gate?
"I'll do it. Please let me do it."
He grabbed Hae-rang's hand with trembling hands and nodded fiercely.
You'd be a lunatic not to take that.
"S-sure. Do your best, Mr. Garam. Ah, and if you find traces in other low-Grade gates on your own, I'll count those too."
Sweet deal.
Presumably she was making that offer because there was nobody to send to low-Grade gates.
The Holy Knights' manpower shortage was unexpectedly a sweet deal.
'I should call Ha-yeon later and ask again.'
Surely she'd found out about at least a few of the gates where hunters had gone missing.
"For now, I'll also mark the locations we've identified and send them to you."
That was even better.
Garam was smiling at the unexpected pile of money and about to leave the meeting room when,
"Hey. Hold on a second."
if only those people from earlier hadn't blocked his way.
"Is there something you want from me?"
Blocking Garam's path were the ones who had been sneering at him moments ago.
They were still standing in his way, snickering.
Their behavior was like schoolyard bullies tormenting a classmate.
He'd assumed that being the Holy Knights, the people here would have some guaranteed level of character.
In the end, this place seemed no different from anywhere else people lived.
"Hey. For someone supposedly in the same Holy Knights, why are you so feeble?"
The two of them looked at the gates assigned to Garam and giggled, apparently not having heard what he and Hae-rang had just discussed.
"Team Leader, come to think of it, isn't there still one gate that hasn't been assigned?"
"Wait, that gate is—!"
Hae-rang hurried to cover Kim Tae-hyeon's mouth, but
"The Deep Crystal Cave."
Kim Tae-hyeon's tongue was just slightly faster.
"As far as I know, nobody's been decided for that one yet."
The Deep Crystal Cave.
A C-Grade dungeon.
A C-Grade gate so difficult it could be called the top even compared with other C-Grade gates.
Hae-rang clearly knew this too, and strode toward Kim Tae-hyeon, but
GRAB.
"That's far enough."
Someone had moved before Hae-rang.
"Lee Jin-seong?"
"I've been watching for a while, but there's a limit to how ugly you should let yourself get. Isn't this going too far even for you?"
Lee Jin-seong had appeared at some point and caught Kim Tae-hyeon's wrist.
Kim Tae-hyeon hurried to pull his wrist free, but it didn't budge.
The arm Jin-seong held didn't move an inch.
"Let go, would you? Are you saying you want to go a round or what?"
"Then stop this disgraceful business. Do you honestly think it makes sense to send a D-Grade hunter who Awakened a few days ago into a C-Grade gate, and the Deep Crystal Cave at that?"
SMACK!
Apparently not brought to his senses even by Jin-seong's words, Kim Tae-hyeon wrenched his arm free using mana and shouted roughly.
"Ha! Well said. Can't we ask a D-Grade who Awakened a few days ago to at least prove his ability?"
"You bastard......."
Just before their quarrel could escalate in earnest, "I'll do it. That gate, the Deep Crystal Cave."
Garam stepped forward.
From the moment Kim Tae-hyeon first put the offer to him, he'd had no particular intention of refusing.
'The monster that appears in the Deep Crystal Cave was the Bat-Man, wasn't it.'
A remote corner of the Deep Crystal Cave.
That was the habitat of the C-Grade boss monster, the Bat-Man.
The Bat-Man found there was treated as the strongest monster among C-Grades.
Power of a different order from other C-Grade boss monsters.
Kim Tae-hyeon was surely counting on exactly that in pushing this gate onto him.
'Kill every monster in there and how much money is that?'
But it wasn't as though Garam had no plan of his own.
The Bat-Man also wasn't a monster that moved in packs like Kobolds.
'A C-Grade boss monster is no problem at all for me.'
Hadn't he already experienced power on a wholly different scale?
Thanks to the Kobold King with the Blood Point Stone in it.
That Kobold King had been anything but an ordinary C-Grade boss monster.
At any rate, Garam was confident he could pull it off.
'It's a last resort, but I do have True Progenitor Form.'
Once he used True Progenitor Form, his body would be in no condition to keep operating in a gate that day.
'Which is exactly why it's a last resort.'
"Ha, do your best, then. I take no responsibility if you die."
Perhaps he thought Garam was posturing out of bravado.
As Kim Tae-hyeon screwed up his face in disbelief and started to walk past,
"Hold on a moment."
Garam stopped him.
And, "How about we make a bet?"
From the Kim Tae-hyeon in front of him wafted the same scent of a sucker as from Yang Jin-hak.