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[Translator - Pot ]
[Proofreader - Kawaii ]
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Chapter 30: Grant Mercy, Let Me Join His Side at Once! (9)
About a week had passed.
During that time, Yeonwoo had roamed fields and wandered all over Seoul in search of spirit stones.
The result?
He managed to collect six spirit stones.
Considering that he had consumed two right at the beginning, this was an incredibly poor yield.
That amount was less than even half the spirit stones he had received from Artenis.
The ones he had originally possessed weren’t particularly high quality either, but the quality of spirit stones found on Earth was shockingly low, far below his expectations.
“I figured since Earth has such a long history, there would be lots of high-quality spirit stones, but this is really unexpected.”
In response to his weary voice, Mulhoe calmly asked:
“-Are spirit stones normally this rare?”
“They're not common, but there’s something especially off about how few there are here. Could it be because of the fields?”
Over the past week, Yeonwoo had discovered one important fact:
Spirit stones only existed within the mist-covered virtual space.
By day, he hunted.
By night, starting from Seoul and stretching as far as the nearby regions of Gyeonggi-do, he searched for spirit stones alongside Areum.
The result?
Just six spirit stones found by sheer luck in the fields.
Even getting a single one was a miracle, which made that small scale field Yeonwoo had first explored seem bizarrely abundant in spirit stones.
“Fucking hell. Some people are just born lucky.”
‘The lucky get lucky, the unlucky stay screwed... Kukuk.”
He said it so coolly, but that line utterly shattered his image.
Even so, Mulhoe found herself unknowingly getting used to his ways.
After all, he only acted like this when no one else was around.
That meant he was showing this side of himself only to them, something that strangely filled her with pride.
“-He’s really impossible to figure out.”
Mulhoe had absorbed an immense amount of knowledge, but Yeonwoo remained a complete enigma.
At first glance, with his appearance and aura, she thought her owner might be an exceptional human.
That illusion shattered the moment he named her.
“Let’s go with Mulhoe. Mulhoe it is.”
Absolutely absurd.
He had shown her plenty of other eccentricities.
The only information she had on Yeonwoo was that he was a reconnaissance type Hunter.
Yet he was strangely familiar with the entire Hunter system.
While many details about Hunters had become public knowledge, no one had his level of insight.
It was like he had once been a Hunter and had reawakened.
Which, in fact, wasn’t wrong.
His eccentricities didn’t stop there.
Despite being a reconnaissance Hunter, he possessed overwhelming spirit power, completely shattered conventional wisdom about spirit users, and summoned and contracted with a unique spirit, Areum, using an unusual method.
He also used a bizarre item called a spirit stone and had a specific reason for gathering them.
And that’s not all.
In just a few days, the impressions Mulhoe had of Yeonwoo were endlessly complex.
There was nothing he didn’t know.
Maybe he had lived somewhere far off.
He was unfamiliar with current Hunter affairs, but on everything else, even most experts couldn’t match him.
There was also the strange stat labeled “race trait” in his physical attributes, which had once made her wonder if he was even human.
She remembered him clearly saying he was half-human.
Then there was the incident with the mutant fox.
Using a racial trait, he cast a 1st Circle spell labeled as “chantless casting possible.”
In terms of firepower, it matched the output of a typical F-rank ranged damage-dealer, but its efficiency exceeded most F-rank Hunters by dozens of times.
A mutant fox that would normally take two DPS players several minutes to take down had been obliterated in the blink of an eye.
He targeted monsters weaknesses with surgical precision, as if he were their natural predator.
His hunting techniques were far too efficient.
And Areum, the spirit he had contracted, wasn’t normal either.
Born in the Spirit Realm rather than the Natural Realm, her raw power was absurd once she met Yeonwoo.
How far could this man go?
Mulhoe found herself looking at Yeonwoo with feelings she shouldn’t have as a Navigator.
Back when Yeonwoo lived in Artenis’s lair, he had fought frequently under the pretense of gaining real-world experience.
Among his opponents had been remnants of the demon bandit group Hellhound, who once treated him like a slave.
Hellhound’s core power was monsters and magical beasts.
Thanks to them, Yeonwoo had grown used to efficiently killing monsters.
Most of that knowledge came from his older sister Artenis, but it was still Yeonwoo who put it into practice.
For monsters of mid to high rank or above, they might not have clear weaknesses, but he still knew how to create unfavorable conditions for them.
“I think we need to hit a dungeon, Mulhoe.”
At Yeonwoo’s voice, Mulhoe who had been tugging at her cheeks and making faces turned her head.
“What’s the current dungeon distribution and difficulty level in Korea?”
“-Since the Second Hellgate, F-rank and E-rank dungeons have disappeared. Most dungeons now have a four-person entry limit and contain traps or enhanced monsters, so the minimum tier is D-rank.”
It was similar to the requirements for soloing a field.
The main difference was that while fields allowed solo access if the player was two tiers above, dungeons only allowed party play if the same difference applied.
“-I don’t have a complete count of the existing dungeons, but they’re so popular for their rewards and experience that there’s nowhere you can go without a reservation.”
“What’s the current highest dungeon difficulty?”
Yeonwoo’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Dungeon-type mist zones or closed-type fields, tended to give excellent rewards and experience.
However, their difficulty was far higher than typical fields.
Unskilled players often got killed.
Back in his day, the highest-grade dungeon he’d seen on the global list was D-rank.
That ranking had been calibrated to suit the level of the world’s Hunters at the time.
“The highest-known dungeon worldwide is currently B-rank.”
Only two levels had risen in 13 years since the First Hellgate.
But considering that rank upgrades required massive increases in difficulty, maybe that was natural.
Yeonwoo had a basic grasp of the correlation between dungeon difficulty and Hunter ranks on Earth.
“What’s the highest Hunter rank on Earth now?”
“A-rank.”
“A-rank, huh...”
“Yes. Rumors say there are two of them, but the exact details aren’t known.”
Yeonwoo had a theory.
As Hunter ranks increase, dungeons scale up in difficulty accordingly.
Logically, with A-rank Hunters present, there should be A-rank dungeons and fields.
But B-rank dungeons were likely as high as it could go for now.
The huge stat boost required for B to A-rank transitions probably made them too hard for just two A-ranks to handle.
It was likely the Cube System had balanced things out accordingly.
‘‘Though I can’t be certain.’’
“-Then Yeonwoo? Why have we come back here?”
At Mulhoe’s quiet question, Yeonwoo smiled gently.
They stood in a vast, open space, not far from some mountains.
It was a place few people ever visited.
Mulhoe remembered it clearly.
They had come here once before and found nothing.
She pouted slightly, tilting her head.
Without even looking at her, Yeonwoo replied softly:
“I came to catch a big one.”
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[Translator - Pot ]
[Proofreader - Kawaii ]
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