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[Translator - Pot ]
[Proofreader - Kawaii ]
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Chapter 12: The Navigator and the Peculiar Spirit (1)
"I-I'm sorry!"
Her name was Sung Jihee.
Without even knowing the situation properly, she bowed deeply and apologized.
She introduced herself as a 22-year-old E-rank level 2 ability user of the tanker class.
She still couldn’t make eye contact with Yeonwoo, perhaps unsettled by his strange appearance.
No, rather than being unsettled, she seemed downright terrified.
Yeonwoo’s sharp gaze made her visibly shrink in fear.
"Um, so..."
"It’s alright. More importantly, are you hurt anywhere?"
Yeonwoo asked, watching her collapse onto the bench with a heavy sigh and hang her head.
"Nothing hurts in particular."
Yeonwoo nodded at her calm response.
From what he could tell, other than a few minor cuts, she had no visible external injuries and was in relatively good condition.
"I didn’t think not having a water spirit would be this damn annoying."
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
Yeonwoo curtly cut off her confused inquiry.
Water-elemental spirits inherently possess healing powers.
However, without proper knowledge of their application, they can only be used to supply water or for attacks.
In short, healing wasn’t possible without proper training.
Given that spirit summoning was currently impossible, the only option left to treat her was basic first aid.
"Do you know the situation you're in?"
Only then did Jihee recall the horrors inside the misty field and wore a gloomy expression.
Considering Yeonwoo’s age, Jihee was a very young girl and had once been a Hunter herself.
It was hard to view her with total coldness.
"Ah..."
Her eyes quickly turned red.
She looked like she would break into tears with just a little more push.
"It’s all... all my fault..."
Seeing her begin to blame herself in a trembling voice, Yeonwoo clicked his tongue.
Many novice hunters in the past reacted like this after surviving accidents.
"It’s my mistake. Everyone died because of me."
These symptoms were especially prevalent in frontline tankers or healers.
Of course, that didn't mean dealers were immune to it.
Even choosing the wrong position to launch attacks or touching things best left alone could prove fatal.
There were definitely cases like that in the past, even complete party wipes.
Veteran combat Hunters rarely made such mistakes anymore, though.
"Sniff..."
Eventually, she burst into tears, and Yeonwoo silently took out a small pendant from his coat and offered it to her.
"This is a dog tag. The man you were with was already dead when I got there. I couldn’t recover the body."
"T-thank you..."
She responded in a tearful voice.
"When we first entered, it was a large field, but most monsters were kobolds..."
After crying for some time and calming down a bit, she spoke, and Yeonwoo nodded.
"But then... suddenly something strange came out of thin air behind us..."
She was likely referring to the troll’s surprise appearance.
For low-tier Hunters like her, the sudden ambush of a berserk boss-class monster would be overwhelming.
Especially since she wasn’t even a frontline tanker, but a ranged dealer with lower physical stats.
Monster and Hunter ranks serve as a measure of effective combat ability.
Simply put, when fighting an E-rank monster, an E-rank Hunter’s attack is more effective than an F-rank Hunter’s attack of the same strength.
This difference is expressed through the concept of Armor-Piercing Attacks.
By default, F-rank Hunters have 0 armor-piercing, E-ranks have 10, D-ranks have 20, and so on.
While numerically small, these values make a significant difference in life-or-death combat unless one possesses overwhelming combat intuition.
Considering all this, for a group of E-rank Hunters to face a C-rank monster was a death sentence.
Yeonwoo’s case was a unique exception due to his racial traits, he could effectively attack monsters two ranks above him.
But other Hunters didn’t have that advantage.
The bigger issue was the monster’s ability to ambush them by opening space portals.
When Yeonwoo first saw it, the creature had crawled out of a rift in space.
The fact that it attacked them in the same way proved it was a mutant.
It was the kind of thing that would definitely kill people if you let your guard down.
It was best to kill it, but Yeonwoo had already dismissed it from his mind.
It had already appeared, and it wasn’t worth the effort to chase after it in the name of justice.
"Everyone... Everyone died. I was so scared..."
As Jihee rambled, Yeonwoo sighed and brushed back his messy hair.
Though his bangs quickly fell back into place, the brief moment of exposure made his forehead feel cool.
"In a fight where lives are on the line, it’s not strange if someone dies. The important thing is that you survived."
It may have sounded cold, but it was a subtle form of comfort trying to reach her.
"....."
"Think of it as something beyond your control. There’s no need to blame yourself. Is this the first time you’ve seen someone die?"
"N-no, it’s not that..."
In the past, Hunters used to die all the time.
During those dark times, it was common for someone who had drinks with you yesterday to die during a hunt today.
Sometimes fights would break out among Hunters and lead to fatal results.
Trying to explain it in detail was pointless.
While he wasn’t sure of the current state of affairs, the fact that someone as frail as her could work meant things had calmed down to a certain extent.
Originally, it wouldn’t have been surprising for Hunters to develop PTSD after seeing someone die right in front of them.
But Yeonwoo had never heard of a single such case from the past.
Thanks to the Cube System.
It was clear that the system’s mental defense stat provided conditional protection against psychological trauma.
Even as Jihee responded gloomily, she couldn’t easily calm herself or decide what to do.
In the end, Yeonwoo unintentionally ended up waiting patiently until she composed herself.
Finally, after she cried her heart out and was comforted, she seemed calmer.
Yeonwoo had fallen silent, seemingly thinking about something as he watched her.
She noticed his gaze and asked hesitantly:
"Um... are you perhaps a Guardian?"
Yeonwoo quietly shook his head.
He had no idea what a Guardian was, but giving her a definite answer could lead to trouble later.
"You’re not part of our party, but you saved me... so I thought maybe you’d just entered... and, um, I was wondering how you found me."
She was fumbling her words, which made him sigh.
She was clearly full of questions, but her timid personality kept her from asking properly.
Honestly, Yeonwoo’s presence in the field should have made her suspicious, but she wasn’t even questioning it.
In truth, Yeonwoo’s presence was due to an accident.
No matter how he tried to explain, it wouldn’t be easy.
"Due to certain circumstances, I had to briefly enter the field near the entrance. I wasn’t planning to interfere with the hunt, so I meant to leave quickly. We just happened to cross paths. I distracted the monsters and slipped away quietly."
The lie flowed smoothly, and Yeonwoo chuckled at himself.
None of it was true, he had forcibly summoned, slaughtered the kobolds on sight with an axe, and even crushed the troll boss’s testicle.
That was the truth.
But she had fainted before seeing any of it, so what did she know?
At first, he had considered gathering some intel from her, but changed his mind.
As he stared at her for a long time, seemingly lost in thought, Jihee flinched and avoided his gaze.
Yet Yeonwoo persistently stared at her.
"D-do you have something to say...?"
"I didn’t save you in the usual way, but I guess you owe me your life, right?"
"Y-yes, of course. I’m truly grateful..."
She widened her eyes and looked uneasy.
"Then, I have a favor to ask."
"A favor...?"
She tensed up and asked nervously.
Yeonwoo nodded seriously.
"P-please don’t tell me..."
Whatever she was imagining, she covered her chest with both hands and blushed.
But Yeonwoo didn’t care what she was thinking and calmly stated his request:
"Do you know a place nearby where I could bash my head against something?"
From a third person’s perspective, Yeonwoo’s face was utterly serious and sincere.
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[Translator - Pot ]
[Proofreader - Kawaii ]
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