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Chapter 5
[F-Rank Ultra-Small Gate]
[Time Limit: 6 Days 23 Hours 59 Minutes]
[Entry Limit: 0/4]
[Accepted: 0]
[Rejected: 0]
[Would you like to accept?]
New gate information had been uploaded to Gaya Guild’s community.
An ultra-small gate, the lowest difficulty even among F-Rank gates.
“Did I log in too quickly?”
Less than a minute had passed since the information was posted.
It seemed no hunters had checked it yet.
“Guess I should wait a bit.”
After quite some time, I logged into the guild community again.
But what I saw was ridiculous.
[F-Rank Ultra-Small Gate]
[Time Limit: 6 Days 20 Hours 39 Minutes]
[Entry Limit: 0/4]
[Accepted: 0]
[Rejected: 28]
What the hell.
Twenty-eight rejections?
Wasn’t this guild supposed to have only thirty members including me?
At this point, it basically meant everyone except me had rejected it.
“Are these people serious? A gate opened, and they’re ignoring it just because it’s F-Rank?”
I accepted it by myself anyway.
But nothing changed.
The people who already rejected it would never bother checking the page again.
“If they’re going to act like this, why even become hunters?”
The gate’s time limit was a full week.
There was still plenty of time even if we did not clear it today.
But that was not the issue.
Nobody wanted to participate at all.
“Ding.”
Another notification rang.
A message appeared.
[This is Guild Master Lee Sunjin. It seems you’ll have to go alone, Mr. Kang Hyuk. Since you said you can summon dragons, an F-Rank gate should not be a problem for you. Of course, we’ll pay you double.]
“They’re seriously telling me to go alone.”
The double payment was not the important part.
I never imagined they would ask an E-Rank hunter and porter to clear a gate alone.
But…
“I can’t give up on the artifacts.”
Rejecting was not an option for me.
Honestly, an F-Rank ultra-small gate was easy enough for me to clear alone anyway.
I was already setting records in the Tower of Trials.
An F-Rank gate was nothing.
***
A small village on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province.
The gate had appeared deep in the countryside, ridiculously far from my house.
A low-paying F-Rank gate in a terrible location.
“No wonder everyone rejected it.”
This guild really lived comfortably.
If the reward-to-effort ratio was even slightly bad, they would not bother.
Because someone else would handle it eventually anyway.
And somehow, that “someone else” ended up being an E-Rank hunter who had only recently awakened.
The sun had already set, and the sky was dark.
I just needed to clear it quickly and head home.
“Welcome. Please come in.”
A Hunter Management Bureau employee stood guarding the gate entrance.
Most field workers from the Bureau were F-Rank hunters.
Whenever a gate appeared, the nearest branch sent employees to control civilian access.
“I’m Kang Hyuk, an E-Rank hunter from Gaya Guild.”
“Identity confirmed. But… did you really come alone?”
“It’s such a remote place that things turned out this way.”
“F-Rank gates really aren’t popular, huh? Well then… huh? What’s that?”
The Bureau employee suddenly stopped talking.
His eyes focused somewhere in the distance.
“What is—”
Just as I turned my head toward where he was looking, a small fireball flew past me.
Its target was the Bureau employee standing behind me.
BOOM!
A small explosion erupted.
The employee barely managed to throw himself out of the blast radius.
The power was not particularly strong.
But the problem was the situation itself.
“She targeted a Bureau employee?”
The attack came suddenly, but understanding the situation was easy.
If someone attacked for no reason, there was only one conclusion.
A villain.
“So the rumors about porters being targets were true…”
This was absurd.
Of course, I had planned on dealing with villains eventually.
Since I could grow much faster this time, it was definitely possible.
But it had only been a few days since my return.
Running into a villain already was never part of my plan.
I turned toward the direction the fireball came from.
Dark night.
And from within that darkness, someone stepped forward.
“You dodged pretty well.”
The person who appeared before us looked like an ordinary, slender woman.
But I was not surprised just because she was female.
Awakened people appeared regardless of gender.
Villains were the same.
A female villain.
Who was she?
I searched through all the memories from my past three years.
But no famous villain matched her face.
Then again, there were no truly infamous villains at this point in time yet.
Which probably meant she was not especially powerful.
And honestly, her first attack had not seemed that impressive.
Even an F-Rank Bureau employee managed to dodge it.
It fit perfectly with the idea of a villain who targeted weak porters.
The woman stopped walking while keeping some distance between us.
“Sorry, but this gate belongs to me now.”
What a ridiculous thing to say.
With only that level of power?
“You look unconvinced. Then why don’t you try dodging this too?”
Before she even finished speaking, a bright flash erupted.
Another fireball shot toward us before we could react.
This one was completely different from before.
Its size was insane.
Its speed was unbelievable.
“She was hiding her strength?!”
This was not the time to stand there in shock.
I instinctively threw myself aside.
The fireball was far too large.
BOOOOOOM!
A massive explosion erupted behind me.
If I had taken that hit directly, there would not even have been bones left.
“Urgh…”
But I was the only one who dodged.
The Bureau employee behind me failed to react in time.
The shockwave blasted his body far away.
“She’s this strong?”
At that moment, one thing became clear.
I had judged her completely wrong.
At minimum, she was an A-Rank hunter.
Her attack activated without even a visible casting motion.
This was definitely not some weak villain targeting only porters.
I quickly reached toward my waist to summon my dragon.
But then a sudden thought crossed my mind.
Could an E-Rank dragon even defeat a woman like her?
That was when it happened.
“Grrrrrr…”
A deep growl suddenly echoed through the air.
It sounded like the roar of a wild beast.
But far more overwhelming.
There was only one creature in my memories capable of making a sound like that.
The Red Dragon.
But I had not summoned it yet.
Confused, I instinctively looked up at the sky.
And doubted my eyes.
A Red Dragon was really flying overhead, flapping its wings.
It appeared on its own without me summoning it.
But that question could wait.
Because that was not an E-Rank dragon.
Its wingspan was so enormous I could not even estimate its size.
That was the exact appearance of the S-Rank Red Dragon from before my return.
“W-What the hell is that…?”
The woman who attacked us stepped back in horror after seeing the Red Dragon.
I was the only hunter in existence who could summon dragons.
Of course she had never seen one in real life before.
But honestly, I was just as shocked.
Right now, I was still only an E-Rank hunter.
Back before my return, maybe.
But now, I had no ability to summon an S-Rank dragon.
“Grrrr…”
Before I could even understand the situation, Dragon Breath burst from its mouth.
Its target was obviously the woman.
“Ah…”
Faced with this impossible situation, the woman froze completely.
It was like she forgot she even needed to dodge.
Watching this, I quickly retreated several more steps.
This was the breath attack of an S-Rank Red Dragon that cleared the 100th floor of the Tower of Trials.
At this distance, I would get caught in it too.
BOOOOOOM!
The breath collided with the ground and exploded.
But the power was different from what I expected.
Instead of total destruction, only a shallow dust cloud spread across the area.
Honestly, I almost felt embarrassed for retreating so far.
Still, even that level of power was more than enough to overpower a hunter.
“Cough…”
The woman collapsed miserably at the center of the explosion.
Her entire body was destroyed.
It was surprising she was even alive.
“Grrrr…”
At the dragon’s cry, I looked back toward the sky.
But the dragon had already disappeared.
Only the lingering echoes of its roar remained.
I quickly grabbed at my waist.
The summoning medium.
The Bronze Sword.
“It’s gone?”
But I could not feel the Bronze Sword.
When I looked down, I saw only fragments of bronze scattered like dust.
“What the hell…”
This was the first time I had ever experienced something like this.
The dragon summoned itself without me even activating the skill.
No, forget that.
The Bronze Sword itself had crumbled into dust.
“M-Mr. Kang Hyuk…”
I heard the Bureau employee groaning behind me.
He failed to dodge the woman’s attack, and his condition looked terrible.
I needed to save him first.
Ancient artifact.
Bronze Shield.
[Summon Rank: E-Rank]
[Summoning a defense-type dragon using the Bronze Shield as a medium.]
[Summon Limit: 1/1]
“Grrrr…”
A small E-Rank summon appeared.
The Gold Dragon.
Yeah.
This tiny dragon was what normal summoning looked like.
“Heal him first.”
The Gold Dragon released its aura toward the employee.
The dragon’s healing ability was on an entirely different level compared to ordinary hunter healing magic.
His wounds began recovering rapidly.
“At least this side is fine now…”
I turned toward the opposite side.
The female villain lay collapsed in terrible condition.
I still could not believe she survived a direct hit from the S-Rank Red Dragon’s breath.
“Did it hold back?”
The breath attack definitely felt weaker than the one I remembered.
But barely surviving was all she managed.
She was hanging onto life by a thread.
I slowly walked toward her.
Her body trembled violently.
“P-Please…”
It was a pathetic voice that no longer matched the woman who tried to kill us moments ago.
The confidence she had while claiming the gate was hers had completely vanished.
“P-Please… I don’t want to die like this…”
If the dragon had not appeared on its own, we would have been the ones lying there instead.
If the situation had been reversed, would she have spared us?
I stepped closer.
Fear filled her eyes.
She did not want to die?
“You shouldn’t have done this in the first place.”
It looked like she no longer had any pride left.
Only survival instinct remained.
“Ah…”
After a short gasp, her body went limp.
I looked around.
Flames still burned in several places.
With this much chaos, more Bureau employees would arrive soon after hearing about the situation.
“T-Thanks to you, I survived.”
No.
One person was already here.
The Bureau employee managing the area.
At some point, his treatment had already finished.
He looked toward the woman.
“She’s still alive?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe unconscious. Maybe dead.”
Hearing my answer, he walked toward her.
After checking her condition, he slowly turned back toward me.
“Thankfully, she’s still alive.”
“How is that a good thing?”
“At least now there’s room for investigation.”
He was an employee of the Hunter Management Bureau.
A government worker who followed procedures.
Since she was alive, the Bureau would arrest her, investigate her, and punish her properly.
I looked at her face one more time.
Even now, no memory from my previous life matched her identity.
“You should consider yourself lucky you didn’t meet me alone.”
A little later, voices began echoing from the distance.
“Is everyone alright?!”
