Chapter 341

Another bright morning.

‘Ugh, what is this? I left the window open, and now it’s practically cold.’

The sunlight streaming through the window seemed especially crisp today. While one alien groaned in a hospital room, South Korea had already entered the height of autumn.

It was truly...

‘Perfect weather for retirement!’

Well, that was how he saw it.

In the early days after arriving on Earth, money had been his first concern. After that, he had endured all manner of hardships on his journey to regain his strength. But now, Ki-ryeo had obtained both of the things he had wanted.

So he decided not to get greedy and to stop while he was ahead.

The third S-rank hunter had compensated him with enough money to buy a house, and there was still plenty left in his bank account. What better circumstances could there possibly be for retiring from society?

‘With the money I have now, I could laze around for decades—’

And when he thought about it, even the tumor problem that had once threatened to become a major crisis might actually have been an unexpected stroke of luck from his perspective.

After all, retirement was practically within reach now.

‘Now that I’m an SS-rank hunter, even if Jung Haseong tries to stop me, it’s... it’s... not going to be easy, but I should still try to persuade him and call off that promise.’

Still, it felt uncomfortable to end things coldly with an Earthling he had grown somewhat fond of.

So, now that the truth was already out in the open, a certain alien decided to use his illness and weakened condition as an excuse to retire from hunting altogether.

‘If I can retire without causing too much conflict, I won’t need to keep hiding my identity. Then I can just continue living here.’

If everything went according to plan, what awaited him was a dreamlike life.

‘Seoul is a nice city.’

Giryeo gave that particular corner of Earth a generous assessment and continued thinking.

‘At first, I wondered whether I’d picked the wrong place to start over... but now that I’m used to it, the food is pretty good, and public safety isn’t bad either...’

Unfortunately, there was one thing he had yet to realize.

‘All right. Now that I’ve made up my mind, I’ll make sure the last house I ever buy is somewhere in this city.’

In truth, the alien needed to save money for a certain reason.

‘How much should I budget? Hmm. I’ll probably be living here for at least another twenty years, so... maybe I shouldn’t hold back and should just buy something expensive? That would be the rational choice, wouldn’t it?’

For reference, the amount he needed to set aside was forty billion won.

‘I want to turn at least one small room into a safe zone. So I can divide the money like this—about seventy percent for the house, and twenty percent for the infinite power core.’

No.

‘Then I’ll use around ten percent of my wealth to fully enjoy all the Earth experiences I’ve always wanted to try. After that, I’ll keep about five billion won in reserve and live frugally for a while.’

Of course, that plan was never going to work.

‘Perfect. I heard ordinary Earthlings struggle to earn even seven billion won over an entire lifetime. This should be more than enough.’

The problem was that he didn’t actually know what he was talking about.

In September—which was steadily drawing closer—a financial catastrophe was already waiting for the alien.

The swindler alien who habitually concealed the truth began another ordinary day, completely unaware of the future creeping toward him.

‘All right. The plan is set.’

Of course, just because everything felt peaceful didn’t mean he had nothing left to do.

He had already asked Kang Changho in advance to arrange a meeting. As a result, matters such as buying a house would have to be postponed.

‘Then I suppose it’s time to finish preparing to leave the country.’

The group that had openly attempted to carry out a dungeon terror attack in the nation’s capital.

How exactly had they gathered in that place?

And how had they known in advance about the existence of a monster like [Sunflower]?

Perhaps it was finally time to uncover what was really happening behind the scenes.

***

[#New chat]

[Youth:......]

[P:......]

[Youth: Friend. Can I speak first?]

[P: Go ahead.]

[Youth: I think we’re totally f*cked.]

***

This was a fragment of an online conversation that had taken place some time ago.

Around the moment a user with the nickname Youth posted a line harsh enough to trigger the profanity filter, someone staring at the OLED display of their monitor began moving their hand.

***

But in the end, that person couldn’t bring themselves to type anything.

Because, just as the other person had said—

they really were screwed.

But then a question arose.

Why on Earth had the incident in Korea ended the way it did?

‘This operation involved not only Enzo, but two S-ranks.’

Enzo Ciano.

As everyone in the world knew, that Awakener was an exceptionally capable individual. His alcoholism wasn’t enough to count as a real flaw—that was how formidable he was even with such a weakness.

Furthermore, unlike ordinary soldiers, he occupied a significant position within the organization and operated under contract terms comparable to those of the leadership with whom he conversed.

At the very least, his abilities had always been something they could trust.

‘Even during that international tournament, when he had barely any support, he still managed to defeat Zhan from the mainland.’

The fact that Enzo’s team had lost was enough on its own to throw their plans into chaos.

No.

Calling it mere “chaos” might have been too mild.

The carefully constructed cartel they had spent so long building was now in danger of collapsing altogether.

‘At least I expected them to return with the [Book of Destruction].’

Which brought them back to the same question.

What on Earth could have caused an S-rank hunter carrying the [Book of Destruction] to lose?

South Korea.

Of course, that country had the famous East Asian hunter Jung Haseong.

Seo Esther was also an Awakener powerful enough to stand alongside hunters from the world’s leading nations.

Above all, that woman was highly regarded for her rare talent in handling curses.

But...

“This isn’t what we planned.”

If they were talking about Korea’s first- and second-ranked hunters, then surely their strength should have been predictable.

Above all, far too much information about them was already publicly available.

Enzo Ciano had wanted to uncover the truth behind the [Mini City] gate incident instead.

They had invested time into the operation and, based on the available information, painstakingly eliminated every possible variable so that their calculated one-hundred-percent chance of victory would not be compromised.

‘Just luring that hunter overseas cost us an absurd amount of money.’

Kang Changho.

Within South Korea’s hunter industry, there was a suspicious individual who went by that name.

[Youth: OMG 😲]

South Korea’s third S-rank hunter, Kang Chang-ho, had an awakening date that remained unclear even to this day.

On top of that, he was notorious for frequently purchasing illegal items through the black market.

Since there was no telling what sort of means he might bring into play, they had made certain to remove him from the scene before anything else.

And yet, despite all that effort, the outcome had been an absolute disaster.

[Youth: My grandmother was right when she said misfortunes never come alone.]

A battle they absolutely could not afford to lose had ended like a nightmare.

At this point, one fact remained unchanged.

This mysterious organization now stood on the verge of collapse.

However, unlike the examples mentioned earlier—such as America’s Spectrum Guild or Japan’s Youth Guild, which was famously supported largely by foreign investors—the one powerholder who uniquely referred to themselves by an acronym still possessed more than enough resources to rise again.

[Youth: The legendary item that Korea found out about can just be blamed on Spectrum, like the contract says. But everything after that is the real problem.]

If they wanted to avoid repeating the same mistake, shouldn’t they at least learn something from this defeat, bitter though it was?

Following that train of thought, Youth finally spoke.

[Youth: By the way, is it really true—like the South Koreans are saying—that their rank 9 (*Kim Giryeo) did all of this by himself?]

[Youth: A superpowered being who can take down three others of the same rank alone? That’s cheating—! -/]

The person who appeared to be affiliated with the Youth Guild continued firing off questions.

Soon, another sentence appeared on the organic light-emitting diode display.

The unidentified Earthling who had been resting their chin on one hand in front of the screen watched the change on the monitor, then finally moved.

He typed a single word.

[P: No.]

So, not him?

Did that mean Kim Giryeo hadn’t been the one who overturned the entire situation?

From Youth’s perspective, however, the answer he had just received seemed strange.

The person on the other end of the conversation hadn’t merely been absent from the incident.

He had never even visited Seoul before—not once, past or present.

And yet he spoke with near certainty.

Naturally, Youth grew suspicious.

[Youth: No?]

[P: It seems that country has no intention of fully revealing what actually happened inside the dungeon. According to the information I obtained, it’s unlikely that Kim Giryeo was the one who killed Enzo.]

[Youth: What kind of intel did you get, exactly?]

[P: I wouldn’t even call it intel. It’s simply the method I’ve always used.]

Intuition.

A gut feeling.

The world was far too harsh a place to survive by relying on things like that.

P’s conclusion was backed by clear reasoning.

And the information he had received was simple.

[P: The micro-analyzer I sent to Enzo Ciano. It automatically synchronized its data when it briefly came out of the dungeon.]

Rounded down, the value was approximately 33.

Lower than expected, perhaps—but regardless, Enzo had diligently carried out his investigation inside the dungeon on the Korean Peninsula.

If memory served, he had also been highly motivated for personal reasons.

‘He said he wanted to find out who killed his colleague, Brooklyn Morgan.’

Spatial manipulation / healing.

The 1st Beast was a monster capable of wielding two attributes with equally devastating force.

It was never an opponent just anyone could defeat.

Enzo Ciano had wanted to uncover the truth behind the [Mini City] gate incident.

That was why he had used a high-end analyzer—far superior to the cheap devices circulating through the black market—to measure a certain person.

‘I heard he planned to strip away every distortion and determine the true difference in strength between Jung Haseong and Kim Giryeo.’

But the number returned during that process was shocking.

Was it around 33?

That was the value transmitted from the awakening measurement device to P’s server.

It wasn’t S-rank.

It wasn’t even A-rank.

To find a classification suitable for Kim Giryeo’s awakening level, one would have to descend quite a few rungs.

‘33aa? That’s about F-rank, isn’t it? The number is so low that it barely even fits into any established classification.’

And, in truth, there was only one conclusion a human being could reasonably reach in a situation like this.

‘I never expected that country to have a full-blown fraud hunter operating openly.’

On this planet, a staggering 99.9% of humans lived their entire lives with the rank they were given, so the concept of a second awakening simply did not exist in their minds.

Aside from extraordinarily rare cases such as Choi Jin, or the effects of an item like the [Dragon’s Eye], there were virtually no known examples of human mana increasing.

Even assuming some undisclosed enhancement method existed somewhere in the world, it was difficult to imagine that it could transform a useless insect into an S-class powerhouse.

‘Hmm.’

And that wasn’t their only basis for suspicion.

An affiliate of the Spectrum Guild had long been present in their chatroom.

In fact, the theory that Kim Giryeo was a fraud—a suspicion first raised by Brooklyn Morgan—had already been shared among everyone involved.

So...

‘Come to think of it, both his vicious fight with Hunter Changho and the destruction of the fake Beast somehow took place out of sight.’

After piecing all the information together, P reached a conclusion.

‘Just as I thought, Kim Giryeo really does appear to be a fraud. If we’ve identified the one who falsified his rank, then the true variable naturally becomes obvious. Jung Haseong—more precisely, the [Sword of Sunset] he carries—must have been the real problem.’

At first glance, there was no major contradiction in that theory.

Hunter Jung Haseong had been present at the deaths of both the 1st and 2nd Beasts.

Moreover, precisely because they themselves had once possessed legendary items, they understood better than most just how overwhelming such artifacts could be.

A legendary-grade artifact, if used correctly, could bring about natural disasters at will.

If South Korea’s number-one-ranked hunter had secretly concealed his true methods, and if the other S-ranks in that country had also chosen to keep that fact hidden for reasons connected to national power, then everything fit together like the gears of a machine.

‘A sword named after the sun, yet its actual attribute is water. Interesting.’

They continued constructing increasingly plausible theories from the information they had gathered.

[P: So, what I’m saying is this—Korea’s Kim Giryeo is essentially a decoy with an awakening value of around 33. For the time being, it would probably be best not to focus on him. The fact that the adjusted value came out at F-rank is certainly surprising, but now that the legendary item has been exposed, it would be far more practical to keep a close eye on the remaining S-ranks.]

The only problem was that they had arrived at that conclusion just a little too late.

Indeed.

The statement itself was correct.