Chapter 301

"So, next time you see Giryeo, try asking him to be your friend."

"..."

"There's nothing shameful about an adult saying something like that. What's truly shameful is ruining a relationship just because you lost your temper."

He wasn't trying to marry her off. Nor was he meddling in her love life. He was simply an older brother worried that his eccentric little sister didn't have many friends, encouraging her to broaden her social circle a little.

"Oppa..."

The violet-haired woman listened quietly, then drew her brows together in a faint frown.

And in a calm, measured voice, she said,

"I hit men too, you know..."

It was a warning.

If he wanted to keep all his limbs intact, he had better not say anything like that again.

Still, with his little sister reacting this strongly, how could an older brother possibly resist teasing her?

"Hey. I tell you this all the time, but you really shouldn't hit anyone."

Quick to throw a punch, incapable of letting go of a grudge, and deep down...

Far more easily hurt than she ever let anyone see.

And yet, somewhere in her heart, she always tipped the scales in favor of the weak and the ordinary.

His kind-hearted little sister.

A family member he was simply grateful to have in this world.

"Manager Seo Yohan, if you have time to joke around, maybe you should go do some work instead?"

"Today's my day off too."

And just like that, Seo Yohan spent a brief but precious moment chatting with his youngest sibling.

"...Jilieng."

[Korea Association!!]

"What the—? A call from the Association at this hour...?"

This was the age of gates.

And so, their quiet, ordinary moment vanished without a trace.

***

A short while later.

"I was just about to take a nap!"

An S-rank Hunter came flying in with her brows practically twitching, propelled by the mobility artifact known as [White Bird].

"If I could just take a nap now, everything would be perfect."

It had been ages since she'd gotten a proper day off.

So why did something always have to happen the moment she finally had one?

Fifteen minutes earlier, Seo Esther's phone had buzzed with news of a major incident in Seoul's central business district, where the headquarters of countless conglomerates were concentrated.

And when she asked what exactly this 'major incident' was?

It turned out to be nothing more than a pre-break warning for an A-rank Blue Gate.

"Huh."

But contrary to what she'd first assumed, the situation was actually quite serious.

Inside the gate, an enormous species of insect had begun multiplying at an extreme rate.

Their numbers had grown so overwhelming that no one could even attempt to enter, much less conquer the dungeon.

It was an abnormal phenomenon—something human science had no way to explain.

"A dungeon anomaly..."

She was furious.

But she couldn't simply throw the job aside because she was in a bad mood.

The monsters expected to emerge during this break were flying creatures, which meant long-range awakened abilities were needed to intercept them from every direction.

What kind of disaster would unfold if someone like Jung Haeseong tried to engage them in urban combat?

Skills with the [Curse] attribute generally had little effect on physical objects.

But in modern society, depending on the circumstances, that limitation could actually become an advantage.

There was no need to look far for an example.

Just like now.

"Phew."

Soon, she arrived at the scene.

Esther swept her gaze across the surroundings.

"When I was a kid, I used to think those creepy things were pretty... I even liked them once."

The city center, once crowded with office workers in suits, had already been transformed into something resembling hell.

Since the dungeon eruption was expected to occur before she arrived, a group of A-rank Awakened had rushed ahead and erected a heavy containment barrier to block the monsters.

But...

"It's a little cramped for you in there, isn't it?"

Flap, flap, flap.

A moment later, the beating of wings echoed from every direction.

Inside the barrier woven by the defenders of the business district fluttered a gigantic butterfly, easily the size of a young whale.

[Offensive Morpho]

[Grade: A]

[Information: Normally docile, but will immediately fire a beam in response to skills, physical attacks, or any form of provocation.]

Esther deliberately stirred their hostility, making certain they would no longer be able to roam freely.

She reminded herself that these beautiful butterflies devoured people and disrupted ordinary lives.

With that thought in mind, she dragged them down one by one with her curses.

"Ugh, what a pain! They already came all the way out of the dungeon—when am I supposed to clean all this up?"

She was steadily eliminating the butterfly-shaped monsters when something happened.

A single magical creature, unusually small compared to the others and lurking behind her unnoticed, barely managed to enter the edge of her curse's range.

!

The boss of the damaged dungeon, the Luring Morpho, suddenly began to emit an eerie glow.

"What is that?"

As an S-rank Hunter with above-average mana detection, Esther immediately sensed the change in the atmosphere.

"I should kill that one first..."

But the timing of her turn was unfortunate.

Seo Esther had killed so many butterflies that their wings now covered the road like decoration.

Naturally, she was standing atop the soft, silky bodies of the monsters.

"Ack."

Cause and effect.

Slip.

South Korea's #2-ranked Hunter stumbled and fell with a weak cry.

As she lost her footing and collapsed, the dungeon boss, as though it had been waiting for precisely this moment, began gathering energy for an attack...

"It was my favorite coat, too."

The opponent was only an A-rank monster, so even if the attack landed, it was unlikely to be fatal.

But imagining her clothes being ruined, Esther wrinkled her nose in irritation.

Step, step, step.

If only this hadn't been a battlefield crawling with magical beasts...

Then perhaps, just perhaps, she might have changed her mind after hearing those approaching footsteps.

Flash!

The situation changed in the blink of an eye.

And that wasn't a figure of speech.

She had simply squeezed her eyes shut from the shock of falling, and by the time she opened them again, everything had already been resolved.

Polished shoes.

A neatly tailored suit...

And a pair of black leather gloves she had never seen before.

When her vision cleared, there was no beam of light from the monster waiting for her.

Instead, something like this hung loosely before her eyes.

"Hunter Seo Esther."

Another person's voice rang out.

"What are you doing out here? Don't tell me someone who was supposed to be on vacation came back to work?"

The man standing before her spoke in a tone slightly brighter than usual.

The last time they had talked, he had mentioned going to the artifact expo in Tokyo, and they hadn't exchanged so much as a word since then.

She wasn't sure why.

But one thing was obvious.

Kim Giryeo seemed to be in exceptionally good spirits today.

And no wonder.

Because even for an S-rank Hunter...

How could anyone block the terrifying beam of a charging monster with such overwhelming force...?

'It was as if he'd erased it from existence.'

How could he stop it head-on and remain completely unharmed?

"Did you hurt your ankle?"

Thinking back, the blond Hunter had been holding one gloved hand in front of his face, as though shielding himself from sunlight.

But seeing that Esther was still slipping and unable to stand, he quickly found another use for his right hand.

He readily offered it to her, clearly telling her to grab on and get up.

Esther took his hand and rose to her feet.

Then Giryeo, a faintly melancholic look in his eyes, said,

"I cannot use my awakened abilities in such a public place..."

Esther understood immediately and resumed clearing the area.

Thud. Thud.

By the time all the surrounding monsters had been dealt with through their curse skills...

"Giryeo-ssi."

Esther skipped over greetings like, "Were you free today, so you came by?" or "Thanks for helping."

Instead, she went straight to the point.

"But... how did you even get inside this restricted zone?"

There was a barrier in place.

For an outsider to have entered anyway, something was clearly wrong.

And yet Kim Giryeo, who only moments ago had seemed unusually cheerful, like someone whose day was going perfectly according to plan, suddenly shifted his gaze into the distance as though admiring some far-off mountain.

"Well, you know... monster barriers don't usually really..."

"Yes?"

Kim Giryeo's tone grew strangely cynical.

After all, to get into this combat zone, he had reused the same mechanism from the Flower Baron incident.

To put it simply...

The hastily erected human barrier had classified him as 'nothing more than dust.'

"I mean, it's just that... the recognition vectors for inside and outside were different, so I was able to slip in fairly easily. I'll ask them to lower the barrier when I leave, I promise..."

The man in the suit quietly raised his left hand and wiped at the corner of his eye.

Still.

If he had to wipe away tears, doing it with hundred-billion-won gloves felt slightly better than using his bare hand.

***

Seriously.

How was anyone supposed to admit something like that in front of an actual S-rank Hunter?

"I'm... dust?"

Just as Kim Giryeo pressed his fingers to his forehead, trying to suppress the headache creeping up on him...

'I wasn't imagining it. Those definitely aren't mass-produced gloves.'

Esther's attention shifted to something new.

More precisely, her gaze belatedly settled on the fact that Kim Giryeo was wearing gloves.

'Not bad.'

Well, there really wasn't an accessory that paired better with a suit than gloves.

And with that vintage leather finish adding an accent...

It looked clean.

Refined.

'But seriously, how did someone with this much taste ever end up wearing a sweatshirt so ragged it couldn't even pass for a cleaning cloth?'

As she cleared away the monster carcasses littering the road, Esther spotted a discarded sign from [Matja Outing Chicken & Pizza] near one of the commercial buildings.

She narrowed her eyes at it, her expression somehow turning bitter.

But only for a moment.

"Anyway... thank you for coming all the way out here to help."

After all, he had quite literally blocked the dungeon boss's attack with his own body.

It was only right for Seo Esther to thank him.

But the blond man merely shrugged once, as though it had been nothing.

'If I tell her I was actually wandering around looking for a battlefield just so I could test my new equipment, that'd probably ruin the mood, wouldn't it?'

It wouldn't merely ruin the mood.

The truth was, he had sensed the disturbance long before anyone else by using his near-zero internal mana to remain undetected.

Then he'd deliberately lingered in the area under stealth, pretending not to know what was happening.

If the S-rank Huntress standing before him found out...

It wouldn't just be the mood that got shattered.

Probably his teeth too.

"D-don't you find it tiring... having to collect all those monster magic stones one by one?"

"Oh my."

"Should I mark all their locations from over here? I'm good at finding magic stones. I'm an [Appraisal] skill user, after all."

The man in the suit hesitated for a moment, cautiously watching her as he muttered the suggestion.

Then, subtly—almost as though it had happened by accident—he began helping Esther with her work.

"I'll have it done in no time. You should take a break."

Come to think of it, aside from merely paying the price for his recent laziness, Seo Esther had helped him enormously during the whole Kang Changho incident.

Financially.

Physically.

And in more ways than one.

So Kim Giryeo thought,

'Considering the help I gave her last time, I'd say that primitive curse-wielder and I are more or less even now.'

The emotional debt Seo Esther carried toward him had probably diminished considerably by this point.

And that was exactly why he'd started behaving humbly again.

He figured it was time to begin rebuilding goodwill with the curse-wielder from scratch.

"..."

Watching his quick-witted maneuvering, however, the purple-haired woman arrived at an entirely different conclusion.

'Oppa probably thought that Hunter and I seemed pretty close...'

More precisely, what surfaced was concern.

'But honestly, even now... it still feels a little too vague to confidently introduce him as someone I know well...'

Even though she acted friendly with him on the surface, the truth was that Esther had never truly thought of him that way.

'My little sister finally made a close friend in the industry!'

That hopeful assumption would probably come as a shock to someone right about now.

Because in reality, Esther didn't feel any genuine closeness toward the man in the suit standing in front of her.

To put it more accurately, she was almost incapable of feeling that kind of closeness toward him.

By nature, her anger control was significantly worse than most people's.

So how could she ever feel completely at ease around someone so prone to violence—

Especially when that person also possessed a strange resistance to her curses?

"Hmm."

He had instantly blocked the boss Morpho's beam.

Was that a defensive skill?

Or, considering that he had fought Kang Changho and even overpowered him, was it some form of physical enhancement?

Whatever his awakening attribute might be, whenever Esther encountered one of her fellow countrymen whom she couldn't fully control, an inexplicable tension always stirred somewhere inside her.