IRTPTA 20🌸

Episode 20

Kang Suho stared blankly at her for a moment before furrowing his brows.

“How do you even know that?”

His voice came out sharper than he intended.
No one could predict who would awaken and who wouldn’t.

If someone really had that ability, every guild in the world—every government—would line up to recruit them.

It was the kind of power that could change the balance of the entire world, for better or worse.

“Hm, it’s a bit hard to explain… but sometimes I can just see who will awaken.”

Yet this woman was saying she could.

“I can’t tell for everyone. I just… sense a kind of flow from certain people, I guess?”

She spoke carefully, as if she didn’t fully understand how it worked herself.

“But one thing is for sure—Kang Suho, you will awaken.”

There was absolute certainty in her voice.

Kang Suho’s heart began to pound.

Whether it was confusion, hope, or unease—he didn’t know—but he suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe.

A wave of nausea rose in his stomach, but then she smiled and extended her pinky finger toward him again, and that unpleasant feeling disappeared.

“So promise me this—don’t go to the Four Great Guilds, don’t leave the country, and join my guild instead. Promise me, in Sihoo’s name.”

The way she shamelessly used Sihoo’s name—just to make sure he couldn’t break the promise—was ridiculous, yet strangely dazzling.

“…This should be fine, right?”

Saebyeok muttered softly after stepping off the bus.

In the end, she had gotten a promise from Kang Suho.

“If I awaken… I will definitely join Han Saebyeok’s guild. I promise.”

Even as he said it, he still didn’t seem to believe her words.
But she had gotten his word.

They even hooked pinkies and signed a written agreement—though it had no legal power, what mattered was the heart behind it.

With one part of her plan after returning to the past complete, she sent him home to rest and moved on to her next task.

But now that the excitement of recruiting him was fading, she began to worry.

‘What if telling him about his awakening… changes things? What if it stops him from awakening at all?’

At first, she hadn’t planned to tell him.

But when she saw the heavy darkness weighing down on his face, she couldn’t help but blurt it out.

She didn’t regret it.
She was just worried—worried about the smallest butterfly effect changing his future.

‘It’ll be fine. He’s Kang Suho—the man who once ruled the world alone. No matter how big the butterfly effect, there’s no way someone like him won’t awaken.’

He had been one of the top S-rank hunters.

When he first awakened in her past life, the entire group of Korea’s S-rank hunters had to mobilize just to stop him from rampaging.

And even then, they only managed it because he hadn’t fully mastered his title’s power.

If he had been at his peak back then, Korea would have been destroyed long before the “Doom” ever came.

‘I’ll just take him to the awakening site myself this time.’

In her past life, he had awakened after being sucked into a gate that opened on a bridge over the Han River.

He had lost his younger sibling, been caught by his father, and sunk into despair.

He had gone to the Han River to end his life.
And there—at the last moment—he was pulled into a newly formed gate and awakened.

But this time, he hadn’t lost his sibling.
And she had no intention of letting him be found by his father.

So she would have to handle that part herself.

“It’s fine. There won’t be a problem,” Saebyeok told herself.

Potential didn’t just vanish, after all.

“Anyway… this place hasn’t changed.”

Pushing her worries aside, Saebyeok looked up at a seven-story building.

Long ago, part of it had collapsed during an early gate break, but it had been left that way and was still in use.

Once famous as an electronics market, the place was now known as Yongdeon—completely transformed into a hunter’s market, selling all kinds of gear instead of gadgets.

Unlike the regulated hunter malls or guild-owned exchanges, this place dealt in goods that often skirted the line between legal and illegal.

“Come take a look! We’ve got everything—well, almost everything!”

“Better stuff downstairs! Want to see?”

“Lots of shiny accessories for young ladies!”

Voices shouted from every corner, automatic as breathing.

Saebyeok stood still for a moment, letting the noise wash over her.

After living so long in a silent world, this chaos felt almost comforting.

She walked slowly toward the stairs.

The lower she went, the darker it became, the atmosphere turning almost gloomy.

By the time she reached the lowest floor, the brightness and noise above had faded away.

Here, strange items hummed with faint sounds, and the smell of rare materials mixed with smoke from cigarettes.

The merchants barely spared her a glance, too busy flipping through their ledgers.

A few observed her like she was some strange animal in a zoo, but quickly lost interest.

‘Still the same.’

Saebyeok chuckled softly at the rare materials casually displayed on mats—wyvern hides, basilisk teeth—things that, in official markets, might appear only once a quarter.

This was why high-ranking hunters preferred Yongdeon to the official stores.

“Old man.”

She squatted in front of a stall at the far end—no mat, just an anvil, where an old man was carefully working on a longsword.

Beside him lay a finely crafted prosthetic leg. His left leg ended above the thigh, leaving the spot empty.

“Buy my stuff, will you?”

Saebyeok said with a bright smile.

The old man glanced at her, then turned back to his sword.

“Got nothing for kids.”

“Who even judges hunters by age these days?”

“I do. Go home, kid.”

Ignoring her, he placed the sword on the anvil and began tapping it with a small, mismatched hammer.

Saebyeok opened her inventory and

Saebyeok pulled out the items she had stored.

From thin air, staffs, daggers, and crossbows appeared one by one, piling up until the stack reached her crouched height.

The old man stopped hammering.

He narrowed his eyes, glancing between Saebyeok and the mountain of weapons.

“An item space this big… at least A-rank.”

As expected of a first-class blacksmith, his eyes were sharp.

Although he grew a little serious, he soon snorted again.

“Still, it’s all junk. Take it and get lost.”

“Don’t be like that, old man. Just buy some. I can’t really sell these on the Exchange or Hunter Mall.”

Saebyeok tossed about twenty cloaks on top of the pile.

Each one had the Scavenger Guild’s emblem embroidered on the chest.

“Ha!”

Finally, the old man threw his hammer to the floor and laughed.

“So, the mysterious helper they mentioned on the radio was you, kid?”

Behind him, the radio crackled faintly.

“…while waiting for the Association’s briefing on the incident, a media outlet reported that they’ll reveal the mysterious helper’s identity as soon as they…”

Apparently, it had been a long time since such a large villain hunt had taken place. No wonder people were curious.

Some even claimed that the lightning strike from the mountains had been visible all the way from Gangnam. This story wouldn’t die down anytime soon.

“So? Will you take my request now?”

“Show me.”

The old man finally showed interest. He set the longsword aside and motioned with his hand.

“I knew you’d say that.”

Saebyeok removed the key-shaped earring from her ear.

Once unequipped, its invisibility effect faded too.

She handed it to the old man, then placed a small chunk of adamantium on his anvil.

“I only have one kilo. How many copies can you make?”

The old man barely glanced at the adamantium. His eyes were glued to the earring.

He held it up and lifted his other finger.

“〈Appraisal Analysis〉.”

His fingertip transformed into a rounded magnifying glass.

Peering through its violet-tinted lens, his brow furrowed, but the corners of his lips curled upward.

“This is the first item I’ve seen with no description.”

“That can’t be. It’s A-rank.”

Saebyeok already knew the old man’s appraisal skill was A-rank.

In her past life, they had even shared drinks together, so she knew his abilities well.

An A-rank skill could easily analyze A-rank items and partially read some S-rank ones.

“It shows that it’s a bound item, that it grants invisibility, and that it can be copied with adamantium. But there’s no skill.”

“Ah, the skill…”

Maybe the skill was EX-rank, making it unreadable.

But as Saebyeok thought about it, something clicked.

“Wait. Old man, give it back for a second.”

She grabbed the earring and checked it again.

[Item: Safehouse Key (A)]

• A key to the Safehouse of Server: Earth (S3-EH).

• The owner of the Safehouse is the Server Administrator.

• This key is a master key usable only by the Administrator.

• Grants access to Atlas’s Safehouse when worn.

• Bound to the Server Administrator.

• Grants invisibility.

• Can be copied using adamantium. (0/3)

• Registered copies: None

‘Wait… what?’

She had missed something important when she first got the item.

Her heart pounded as she checked another item for comparison.

[Item: Spear of Separation Anxiety (B)]

• A spear made by a blacksmith who often left it alone during its creation, making it crave affection.

• Shows strong attachment and a homing instinct toward its owner.

• Permanently bound to: Han Saebyeok

Passive: Evolve – Increases the user’s skill power by 1% every 10 minutes in combat. Resets when combat ends.

Passive: Attachment Skill – Forms an attachment to one of the owner’s skills and may activate it without mana cost. Attachment is random and can be reset once every five days.

• Current Attachment: 〈Lightning〉

Skill: Return – Can return to its owner regardless of distance in dungeons, or up to 30 km outside.

‘…The old man’s right.’

She checked several more items looted from the Scavenger Guild members.

The truth became clear.

“This thing… doesn’t have a skill.”

The Safehouse Key had no skill of its own. It only allowed access to Atlas’s Safehouse, but that ability wasn’t tied to the item.

It was linked to her title.

‘So… what does this even mean?’

The more she thought about it, the stranger it felt.

“What’s the real purpose of this item…?”

As she muttered and gripped the key tightly, it suddenly began to hum.

Vrrrmmm—

The earring vibrated, glowing dark red, then grew larger.

In an instant, the tiny, cute earring had transformed into a key as big as her hand.

And then—

“…Old man, you see this too, right? It’s not just me?”

Before Saebyeok, a huge door appeared out of nowhere.