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[Translator - Pot ]
[Proofreader - Kawaii ]
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Chapter 3: Return
Dimensional travel belongs to the realm of the ultra-high class.
Even for her, the one who carried the blood of the Primordial Dragon, this was far from easy.
She was burning everything she had in this one lifetime opportunity to send Yeonwoo across dimensions.
Vwooooom!!
As the beautiful tones of her voice flowed out and she began a delicate dance, the magic circles resonated automatically and began to spin.
Yeonwoo silently walked forward, passed by her, and stepped into the center of the circle.
Then he turned his head to look at her.
Zzzzzzzttt!!!
Clusters of multicolored light began to form into small orbs and surrounded him from all directions.
The rocky chamber around them darkened as if tossed into the depths of space.
“Ugh...”
As an immense surge of mana started being drawn in, strain began to show on Artenis’s face.
But Yeonwoo couldn’t go to her.
The orbs of light that made up the dimensional magic were surrounding him now.
If he stepped out of the circle, everything she had built would collapse in an instant.
She struggled to arrange the torrents of mana, but still, she managed to smile brightly.
Perhaps it was a smile he would never see again, but she didn’t want to let her younger brother leave with worry in his heart.
Yeonwoo clenched his jaw and bowed his head deeply.
“Raise your head, my beloved brother.”
Her voice was soft, a quiet smile on her lips as if trying to pass her will to him.
Yeonwoo looked up, his eyes red and shimmering, and she flicked her hand once.
Crackle!!
A space just in front of Yeonwoo split open, and a small box floated toward him.
“What is this?”
“Most magical devices and artifacts will break down from dimensional transfer, so this is all I can give. Just a little gift.”
His voice was low, thick with emotion, and she playfully brought a finger to her lips as if to say, ‘It’s a secret.’
Fwooom!!!
At last, the magic circle resonated completely and began emitting a massive beam of light.
Artenis’s face turned paler by the second.
“There’s no more time.”
If he just stood there doing nothing, she would suffer even more.
This was a once in a lifetime invocation, the power to cross dimensions.
Yeonwoo grinded his teeth and quietly locked eyes with her as if etching her into his soul.
Then he closed his eyes, allowing himself to merge with the mana spheres enveloping him.
Fsshhh!!
At that moment, his body began to scatter, like dust carried on the wind.
In a matter of moments, he had completely disappeared.
Pop!!
The giant whirlpool of mana that had surged into the cavern quieted as if nothing had happened.
At the center of the magic circle there was not a single trace of Yeonwoo remained, as though he had never been there to begin with.
For nearly ten years, she had known joy.
But now, she was alone once again.
Thud.
Artenis face twisted was in sorrow, collapsed to her knees and let out a shallow, ragged breath.
“Huhh...haaah. Even if...I never see you again... how could I ever forget you?”
There was the unmistakable sound of tears behind her voice, a cry long suppressed, finally cracking through.
She silently stared at the spot where Yeonwoo had vanished, then finally covered her mouth with one hand and bowed her head.
Her lightly trembling shoulders spoke more than words could.
"Maybe I should’ve just insisted a little more..."
Compared to her long life, the ten or so short years were nothing, but it was still the happiest time she had ever known since being born in the Rune Continent.
And just like that, it came to an end.
***
Within the vortex of enormous power, Yeonwoo drifted through the rift between dimensions, almost as if swimming.
His destination was Earth, the planet where he was born and raised.
The Earth Yeonwoo remembered was, to put it bluntly, an absolute shitshow.
Adding up all the time he’d spent away, it had been around sixteen years since the First Hellgate Incident, the monstrous invasion that turned Earth upside down.
Monsters had spilled out from simultaneously appearing red mist zones across the globe, and these bizarre creatures ignored most conventional firearms as if they were nothing.
The military had been rendered useless.
Monsters ran rampant, cities were trashed, and law and order crumbled into chaos.
They weren’t impossible to kill, but it was so inefficient that fighting them felt like a waste of effort.
But even a rat hole sees the sun someday, right?
With the monsters also came humanity's answer: Hunters began to emerge, one by one, as symbols of hope.
Hunters capable of direct combat against monsters were rare and called Combat-Class Hunters.
Then there were the ones who couldn’t do much damage but had specialized abilities for reconnaissance and detection.
These were Recon Hunters, derisively referred to back then as parasites or leeches.
The ratio between Combat and Recon was roughly 3 to 7, a huge gap.
Yeonwoo had gotten lucky and awakened as a Hunter, but his classification was Recon, not Combat.
Still, he didn’t give up.
Even if he was a Recon Hunter, he believed he could contribute to the fight against monsters.
Driven by that belief, he threw himself into studying monsters and strange phenomena.
Eventually, he rose to a high-ranking position in a major intelligence organization.
But despite his efforts, the situation didn’t improve much.
The information was always lacking, and the monsters kept getting stronger.
Despite how bleak things were, the world’s governments didn’t collapse.
They clung to survival using every trick in the book.
At the center of that desperate resistance were the Combat-Class Hunters.
They were treated like saints, saviors of the world.
Wherever they went, they were celebrated and acknowledged.
‘Which is exactly why so many of them turned into arrogant pricks. Fucking bastards.’
Yeonwoo muttered a curse under his breath, but kept his mouth shut after that.
Hunters were like game characters, after all.
Thanks to the semi-transparent cube interface that projected stat and skill data, they could wield mysterious powers and strike down monsters.
Even swinging the same cold weapon, a sword was different.
A regular person’s strike and a Hunter’s strike had a world of difference in impact.
If a regular soldier tried to attack a monster with a bayonet, they’d be lucky to even scratch it.
But a Hunter could kill it in one clean hit.
It wasn’t about physical strength.
Hunters possessed some unknown power that let them bypass the monsters’ bizarre defenses in one blow.
And yet, they couldn’t just rely on guns or artillery either.
It was like being in a game with strict conditions and limitations.
So Combat-Class Hunters had no choice but to fight monsters with their own powers or enhanced physical strength.
With swords, spears, arrows, you name it.
Then why didn’t Recon Hunters, like the reconnaissance type, join the frontlines?
The reason lay in their physical stats and abilities.
Not all monsters were small fry.
Yeonwoo remembered seeing creatures like High Orcs, things an average human couldn’t hope to take on.
And they didn’t come one at a time either.
When they showed up, it was like your one-way ticket to the afterlife had already been punched.
Recon Hunters had physical stats not much better than ordinary people.
Trying to fight even one of those things would lead to massive casualties.
That’s why Recon Hunters were pushed away from the frontlines.
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[Translator - Pot ]
[Proofreader - Kawaii ]
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