-Your parcel has been delivered.
"Is it because it's the Hunter Market? That was incredibly fast."
After finishing his shopping at leisure (?) and returning home,
Garam said this while looking at the notification that had sounded on his phone.
It was a text saying that the mana stabilizers he'd ordered had already been delivered to Ha-yeon's dormitory.
Considering barely an hour had passed since he ordered them at the Hunter Market, it was an astonishing speed.
'Sending it VIP express paid off.'
It had cost another five hundred thousand won, but he'd pushed that onto Yang Jin-hak as well, so not a single won had left his own pocket.
"Well, that's taken care of."
Tossing the phone in front of his bed, Garam stood before the mirror.
On the other side of the mirror stood an ordinary man.
Thanks to the body trained by eight years of living as a porter, he had a certain rugged appeal, but only that much.
A Korean you could see anywhere.
The Garam reflected in the mirror gave exactly that impression.
VWOOOOM
But when Garam released the True Progenitor's power, it began to change bit by bit.
His ordinary black eyes turned red,
FWUMP!
and wings made of blood spread out behind his back.
Nothing but bare framework, the same form as in the gate that night.
When those wings folded, they looked like an enormous cloak.
As though he had transformed; strictly speaking, this was the true form of a True Progenitor.
[Sub-skill: True Progenitor Form (A) acquired.]
[While True Progenitor Form is in use, skill Grades rise by a set degree.]
Power overflowed.
A difference in power so overwhelming that the self who had fought a Vampir today felt like a child.
It was on another level entirely from simply using the sub-skills separately.
He felt certain he could sweep away the lowest-tier Vampir from the entrance exam even if they came at him in a swarm.
"The problem is... urgh."
[This Grade does not match the current body.]
[Maintaining it consumes blood in large quantities.]
[Consuming blood beyond the threshold risks collapse of the body.]
True Progenitor Form dissolved and Garam sank to the floor.
"COUGH!"
Blood burst up out of his mouth.
True Progenitor Form burned through mana, or more precisely blood, far too quickly.
And the strain it placed on the body was severe.
A mere thirty seconds.
Maintaining it for that long alone had made half the blood he had disappear.
The overwhelming weakness flooding his whole body came free with it.
Just as moving too violently brings muscle pain,
his body couldn't withstand blood spent that fast all at once.
A state much like an overload.
[Sub-skill: Regeneration (C) Lv1 activates.]
"Hoo."
With Regeneration active, his body improved a little.
Only once he was barely able to move again did he pick up his train of thought.
"Pushed to the limit, one minute. To test it precisely I'd have to go into a gate after all."
One minute was short, but enough to use in a pinch.
At this level he seemed to be at least an A-Grade hunter, just as he'd first guessed.
Only one minute, but it meant he was hiding one card up his sleeve that nobody else had.
"So using the sub-skills without True Progenitor Form doesn't strain me all that much."
But then the sub-skills weakened as well, and that couldn't be helped.
Just as he was mulling that over, a familiar voice came out of the air.
"What are you? How have you already changed into the True Progenitor's form?"
Carmilla had woken, perhaps because he'd used the True Progenitor's power.
Red smoke flowed out from around his chest, gathered in the air, and Carmilla popped into being.
"I was testing it. How far the True Progenitor's power goes."
At the mention of using the True Progenitor's power, Carmilla's eyes sparkled.
She flew straight over, grabbed Garam's cheeks with both hands, and shouted.
"True Progenitor or not, drawing that power out fully should still be hard for you."
"That's how it was. One use of True Progenitor Form and I can't even lift a spoon properly."
Garam said it while looking down at his trembling hand.
Was this what ten straight hours of nothing but weight training would feel like?
Even raising his arm was a struggle.
"No. It shouldn't be at that level. This is like firing the water in a dam out of a water pistol. It shouldn't end with mere muscle pain."
Carmilla chewed her nail and looked Garam's body over from every angle.
"Don't you feel like you're about to die, like your body's about to burst?"
"Not really."
Contrary to Carmilla's worry, his body was healthy.
"Whoa, you really are a born True Progenitor. The revolution's looking seriously promising. It might actually happen."
"I'm not doing it. The revolution."
A firm refusal.
He knew what the revolution Carmilla spoke of was, so he had not the slightest intention of taking part in it.
'But that doesn't mean I'll ignore it completely.'
Carmilla had said that the beings Nosferatu had arranged for the time of revolution would awaken.
'The prophecy that the True Progenitor destroys the world. I can't let that actually be carried out.'
They were beings who would destroy the world alongside the True Progenitor, no less.
If he couldn't stop them, the world would end anyway.
'And if I absorb the blood of beings like that.'
He might be able to reach S-Grade very quickly.
The S-Grade that could learn about the Elixir.
Stop the world's destruction and get the information on the Elixir.
Two birds with one stone.
"So how does this revolution actually proceed?"
The world wasn't going to pop into a sea of fire out of nowhere.
Knowing exactly when and what would happen would make responding easier.
"They'll come out of gates."
"Gates?"
She shrugged, flew up again, and perched on Garam's shoulder.
Then she propped her chin on her arm and continued with a sigh.
"That's right. Now that a True Progenitor has appeared, monsters never seen before will start coming out of gates. And mixed in among them, Nosferatu's arrangements will come out too."
In one way or another, in one form or another, they will show themselves in this world.
Carmilla added that with a meaningful expression.
Garam simply asked back, at a loss.
"Then is there no way to know when those beings will appear?"
Calling them arrangements for the revolution and then having not even the True Progenitor himself know was a total bust.
"I can sense that. I'm the Guide who exists so that you can be reborn as a complete True Progenitor."
"The Guide, huh."
She'd certainly said the same thing when he first Awakened as the True Progenitor.
"Then is it all right? Even if I end up standing against Vampirs?"
He was Holy Knights now.
Which meant he had no choice but to be at odds with Vampirs in some form.
At his question Carmilla snorted a laugh, flew up into the air, and looked down at him.
"It doesn't matter. What matters to me isn't a few Vampirs like that, it's completing you."
As she said it, Carmilla's eyes seemed to glow redder than at any time before.
"Well, for now it's quiet, without a sound or a rumor."
"Meaning they won't be appearing right away."
"Something like that."
Carmilla shrugged, then her eyes sparkled again as she flew right up in front of Garam's nose.
"Asking this means you're joining the revolution too, right? Overturn the human world, a red revolution of blood! How cool is that?"
"Not doing it."
Red... what?
Being a blood-sucking Vampir, her ideology seemed to run red too.
Any redder and she'd turn dark in an entirely different direction.
"Aww, come oooon! Let's have a revolutioooon!"
Carmilla started throwing a tantrum, yanking on Garam's hair.
He flicked her away with a light snap of his finger and lay down on the bed.
'I should go to a gate tomorrow.'
If he couldn't meet those arrangements right now anyway, he might as well go into a gate and train instead.
Practice controlling the True Progenitor's power, and earn a little money while he was at it.
'And I happen to have a hunter license now.'
The hunter license Hae-rang had issued him.
It had some special coating and doubled as a Holy Knights member card, apparently.
On the outside it was an ordinary D-Grade hunter license.
"Revolutiooooon."
Ignoring Carmilla, still whining beside him, Garam organized tomorrow's schedule in his head.
***
"Looking for a healer!"
"Anyone want to party hunt together!"
The area in front of the gate was a sea of hunters.
Hunter society was over ten years old by now and party members could be found through an app, yet the front of the gate was still packed with people looking for parties.
[Ugh, there are way too many people here.]
At some point Carmilla had tucked herself into the breast pocket of the clothes Garam was wearing.
Hunched up tight, she looked as though...
"Scared?"
[That's bullshit! I'm just being careful in case they find out I'm a Vampir.]
There was no chance of that.
Not even Hae-rang had seen through Carmilla's concealment state; there was no way the other hunters here could.
Between this and the trip to the Association the other day, this Carmilla had a worse case of being a loner than she looked.
"Let's say that's it."
[I said that's not it!]
He was teasing Carmilla as she shouted in indignation when,
"Hey there, friend. You look like you can handle yourself. Want to party with us?"
"Hm?"
While he'd been talking with Carmilla, a man had come up right beside him without his noticing.
'Do I have some kind of fate with bald men?'
Like Yang Jin-hak yesterday, the man in front of him was bald.
He tensed for a moment, but the man smiled a good-natured smile.
"We've got a healer, but we're a bit short on damage dealers."
When he turned to look where the man pointed, the man's party members were there.
All of them are bald.
GLEAM-
[Ah, so bright.]
"......."
What is this?
It seems I haven't met the membership requirements yet.
Was I in danger of it myself before long?
I felt a chill for a moment, then slowly shook my head.
"I'm sorry, but I don't think I need a party."
In his porter days, when a single won was precious, he'd have thanked the man and accepted on the spot.
But today he had come to test the True Progenitor's power.
Party members would only get in the way.
The bald man looked at him with regret, but Garam moved on without wavering.
"I'll check your hunter license."
He showed his license to the soldier blocking the way in front of the gate and stepped inside.
The familiar floating sensation came, and at the same time the scenery changed completely.
[Gate: You have entered the Unexplored Wasteland.]
Unlike with the Full Moon Temple, the entry message ended concisely in a single line.
Just as the entry message said, before him lay a vast wasteland with hunters scattered here and there, killing monsters.
'Yes. This is it. This is what entering a normal gate looks like.'
A normal gate, with no Bloodred Night or anything of the sort.
The many hunters visible around him even brought a sense of relief.
And yet, somehow.
His legs wouldn't move.
[Heh, scared?]
"It's called PTSD. Not being scared."
Well, he'd gone into a gate, been brutally killed by a monster no one had ever seen before,
had his race changed,
and nearly been killed by an S-Grade hunter on top of that; PTSD was the least he could come away with.
'How did I ever decide to keep doing this?'
Even he found it absurd.
Not entering gates had never been an option to begin with.
The thought that he had to earn money and the resolve that he had to become S-Grade crushed the PTSD that had almost formed.
[Long tongue on you. That's being scared.]
She sneered at Garam and burrowed deeper into his breast pocket.
Garam considered pulling her out and throwing her, then sighed and headed for a corner where few hunters could be seen.
'No need to expose my identity for nothing.'
[Sub-skill: Hardening is used.]
KRRCK.
A mask of blood formed in Garam's hand.
Perhaps because the level was low,
the mask made in his hand was crude in the extreme.
No pattern of any kind, not even eye holes, a mask made purely to cover the face.
It was a measure to keep any rumor that Kim Garam used blood from reaching Hae-rang's ears in any form.
"I won't be able to see a thing with this on."
CLICK.
Fortunately, once the mask was on his face, perhaps because it was made from his own blood, there was no problem at all with his vision or his breathing.
If anything, it created the illusion that he was wearing nothing.
[Train properly and you'll be able to make a far more badass mask than that.]
"That's the training I came here for today."
"GRRAWR!"
A monster burst out beside him.
It had a wolf's shape like the Black Wolf he'd seen at the Full Moon Temple, but this one had a fundamental difference.
[This one's standing on two legs.]
Unlike the four-legged Black Wolf, the monster in front of him, a Kobold, walked upright.
As befit a bipedal monster, the Kobold held a crossbow and a cheap sword in its hands.
'In my porter days I'd have run immediately.'
Kobolds were D-Grade monsters.
Which meant they were on the same level as the Black Wolf from the Full Moon Temple.
Back then even killing a single Black Wolf had been hard, but,
[Sub-skill: Hardening is used.]
CRUNCH—!
"KRAAAWR!"
The hand axe made of Garam's blood tore through the Kobold's hide and buried itself in.
At the Kobold's scream, other Kobolds began gathering one by one.
Hunter or not, being surrounded by monsters like this was nothing but dangerous.
"Ha, haha!"
But for some reason Garam couldn't hold back the laughter spilling out of him.
The exhilaration of battle, the real sense that he had finally left portering behind and become a hunter.
And the inescapable satisfaction of being able to feed on blood freely as a Vampir.
[Sub-skill: Absorb activates.]
"Haah..."
The Kobold, robbed of its blood, shriveled up like a mummy.
THUD.
He dropped it on the ground and took a step forward.
The axe lodged in the Kobold's shoulder turned to red smoke and was back in his hand.
"Very nice. Next one, come on."