Chapter 386

Tang.

And after waiting for a moment, something heavy fell from the sky this time.

‘There’s a saying, “there’s always a sky beyond the sky,” but I never expected someone to literally appear from the sky...’

It seemed they had encountered each other much sooner than expected. In any case, for now, he could only be grateful that they had met safely.

For reference, Jung Haseong currently had his eyes tightly shut. When his integration partially unraveled after he failed to control his psychic powers, his eyes had become sensitive to light.

‘It’s hot.’

So, for the moment, he couldn’t see anything in front of him. Yet from the sound alone, an image of the other person instantly formed in his mind.

Crack. Crack.

Soon came the sound of high-quality leather soles striking the ground. Despite the exceptionally calm pace of those footsteps, the first thought that crossed the mind of the newly arrived man was roughly this.

‘No, f*ck!’

The wording was a little crude, but anyway, it perfectly embodied the hopes Koreans had been holding on to.

‘What the hell is this! My carefully trained S-rank awakener!’

But regardless of the tone of his thoughts, he was undeniably a savior. The moment he confirmed that Jung Haseong had fallen, a certain blond magician immediately stepped in to deal with the aftermath in exactly the way one might expect.

‘Huh.’

No, let me correct that.

In truth, Jung Haseong had subconsciously expected something a little more touching, but the fire suppression that followed was rather far from anything that could be called gentle.

‘Slap!’

‘My face.’

He had never been slapped in his life.

Only after being drenched with water so violently that his cheeks went numb could he finally enter the extinguishing stage.

A torrential downpour, almost like a squall, suddenly descended. A massive cloud of steam surged upward for a moment, as though tap water had been poured onto burning oil, but soon the temperature dropped.

Then, in an oddly anticlimactic fashion, all the flames went out at once. 𝑅𝐚ℕo͍𝖇ΕṠ

‘No wonder... it feels even harder to breathe than before...?’

At that moment, the alien had secretly cast a spell to cut off the oxygen, but no one present was capable of detecting it accurately.

‘Hmm. Well, it’s probably because I used too much mana.’

It was around the time Jung Haseong was lost in such idle thoughts.

‘Still, now that the skill has stopped, my head cleared up quickly.’

He felt the flames that had fused with his skin peel away.

Following that sensation, he cautiously opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was someone’s badly burned skin.

The spell had succeeded, which was fortunate, but the skill still required many improvements, and the pyromancer himself had suffered injuries in the process.

So, what came into view next?

‘Ssshk.’

Still lying face down, Jung Haseong lifted his head.

And then this scene unfolded before his eyes.

‘Still wearing a suit today, huh.’

A man was kneeling on one knee.

He appeared to be around Jung Haseong’s age. On top of that, as though flaunting his mastery over magical control, he maintained his consistently dyed blond hair, one of his most recognizable features.

“Hunter-nim.”

Kim Giryeo.

That S-rank hunter had appeared at the scene.

“...”

Kim Giryeo rested one arm on his raised knee, looking almost like a vassal receiving an imperial decree.

Most likely, he had lowered himself that way to make the fallen Korean feel even slightly more at ease.

“Jung Haseong.”

But then, the stern-looking man spoke his first words.

And they were completely unexpected.

“You’re a genius!”

Jung Haseong flinched.

Until now, he had never heard that blond man use such a word.

All he had ever received from him was unimaginable contempt—being called talentless, a loser, and worse...

Kim Giryeo was the kind of person who seemed to ration the word “genius,” almost stingy when it came to praise.

And yet now he was saying it to the rank-one Hunter.

“Yes?”

“I underestimated you far too much.”

Patter, patter.

The rain Kim Giryeo had summoned washed away the dirty scorch marks clinging to the ditch.

Unable to move while lying there, Jung Haseong simply kept his ears open and quietly watched the cleansing process.

The blond awakener continued speaking in the same tone.

“I thought Jung Haseong was someone who would never be able to use that skill, even if you devoted your entire life to it.”

“...”

“The reason I still taught it to you, despite knowing that, was simply because I hoped you might improve a little through the practice itself.”

For reference, the current result was a pleasantly unexpected miscalculation for the alien mage.

At this moment, Kim Giryeo was giving him sincere, lavish praise.

“This guy must be insane.”

He hadn’t even properly studied the formula.

He had never seen the technique performed in person.

He was practically illiterate when it came to magic!

And yet, he had actually managed to pull it off.

That was nothing short of a miracle.

Of course, compared to the true secrets of Alphaurt’s pyromancers, the scale was lacking.

Its energy consumption was excessive.

It was inefficient.

The list of shortcomings could have gone on forever.

Even so, one fact remained unchanged.

This was an accomplishment worthy of astonishment.

“He’s gotten ridiculously strong since the last time I saw him!”

In his previous life, he had dismissed the saying that “hard work is also a talent” as nonsense.

‘This makes him a true genius.’

Considering how much practice Jung Haseong had accumulated until now, it was no longer possible to maintain an arrogant attitude toward him.

At last, genuine acknowledgment rose to the surface.

In the alien’s mind appeared the lofty assessment that Jung Haseong might very well be the strongest pyromancer on Earth.

And since all of this had been achieved through relentless effort, an additional reward soon fell upon the diligent Earth sorcerer.

“Seeing you like this... I feel like I can finally retire in peace.”

“?!”

Retirement?

The moment that word left his mouth, the fallen fire sorcerer’s eyes darted about uneasily.

How much effort had he poured into himself just to hear those few words?

Jung Haseong’s goal, both in the past and now, had always been to follow the guiding light of his profession for as long as possible.

That was precisely why he had worried about Kim Giryeo overworking himself.

But now that he had actually achieved his goal, what overwhelmed him wasn’t triumph, but a strange sense of disbelief.

“Excuse me.”

Above all, hadn’t Kim Giryeo himself said something like this not too long ago?

“Hunter-nim, wasn’t it because you had... antisocial... personality traits... that you had to keep working?”

Jung Haseong refrained from using the blunter word psychopath.

But when the hero lying on the ground phrased it that way, the alien mage—now crouching halfway down—paused to think.

‘Huh? Did he actually believe that?’

No way.

No matter how you looked at it, the story had been so absurd that he had assumed Jung Haseong would obviously take it as a shameless excuse.

‘Wow. This primitive guy is no joke! He’s so pure that psychological tricks don’t even work on him.’

Who could have imagined that an Alphaurt-style battle of momentum would lead to an outcome like this?

Kim Giryeo had never expected his offhand claim about being an SS-rank psychopathic government agent to be taken this seriously.

‘I thought, at most, he’d waste some time trying to figure out whether it was true.’

Well, there was no need to explain every detail right now.

And unfortunately, the situation was far too uncertain for them to sit down and have a long, leisurely conversation.

‘Come to think of it, why is our Solar System’s Tower Master lying around like that again?’

Jung Haseong.

Esther.

At present, no fewer than two S-rank individuals were down, both heavily injured.

‘Normally, making companions is a pretty bad habit. Still, compared to the damage I saw in India, this is lighter, so at least they seem to have a chance of recovering.’

Anyway, it was fortunate that Jung Haseong had managed to finish the raid quickly.

‘To think an S-rank gate appeared during that brief period while I was away on a business trip. And on top of that, why the hell did it have to break open?’

He had made a flashy entrance, even using magic to make himself look impressive, but from another perspective, this entire incident meant that he had arrived far too late.

Aware of his own failure, Kim Giryeo quickly wrapped up the conversation.

“There’s no time right now, so I’ll just give you one hint.”

It was his answer to the question of whether he truly had to keep working because he was addicted to stimulation.

“They say psychopathy levels and IQ are often inversely related.”

In its own roundabout way, this was an admission that every excuse he had made until now had been a lie.

‘So, to put it simply, the chances of me having frontal-lobe abnormalities are low... Oh dear. Did he already pass out from the pain of the burns?’

For reference, this alien had forced himself to use teleportation magic in order to return to Korea as quickly as possible.

He had been overcome by such a sudden sense of foreboding that he had even abandoned a perfectly normal flight midway through.

After folding space to propel himself forward, he had continued toward the S-rank gate’s location at maximum speed, leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

But since this sort of backstory was obvious enough, it had been omitted for convenience.

Moreover, in the same vein, there were several other things he had done that still had yet to be mentioned...

***

Home!

‘Korea is the best~’

As expected, I like winter here the most.

Watching the Earth weather phenomenon known as ‘snow’ fall over the seaside has become quite an enjoyable hobby.

‘Wow~ what a killer view.’

I still don’t understand why humans use such a frightening word as ‘kill’ to describe something good, but anyway, it was one afternoon as I tried my best to think like an Earthling.

‘Anyway, I’m not going out anymore. If it’s going to snow, I hope it snows even harder.’

Actually, quite a lot had happened in India.

Originally, I had planned to bring only a thirty-seven-year-old Earthling named Sonakshi as a witness, but their government stubbornly insisted on sending other S-ranks along as well, so I ended up dealing with both in the process.

By the way, being an awakener of the water element, which many humans had entered together, created all sorts of logistical complications and so on.

Anyway, it had been quite a hassle.

But if I had to summarize only the truly important parts...

“Hmm.”

I came away from the S-rank gate operation in India with a huge gain.

Unique-grade!

I actually obtained a unique-grade item!

‘Amazing! Saying I got a unique-grade item from an S-rank gate might not sound that impressive, but the fact that I snagged one in a single run is completely insane.’

Anyway, this was exactly why high-rank loot boxes were so great.

Even A-rank gates had atrocious drop rates for high-grade items, to the point that you could almost call them false advertising.

“Hahahaha!”

Thanks to the enormous profit represented by that unique-grade item, I no longer had any reason to get angry over trivial matters.

For reference, I had agreed on travel expenses with the S-rank hunters in India, only to witness the mysterious magic by which the agreed amount suddenly changed after the gate had been cleared.

But now, what did any of that matter?

‘Whatever. I’m never helping them again. Those despicable mammal brats.’

The unique-grade equipment I obtained would fetch °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° an extremely high price on the market.

It probably wouldn’t reach one hundred billion, but...

Several hundred billion?

That much was practically guaranteed.

‘Ha~ I’m finally free from this damn money problem.’

The only thing that still bothered me was the look I had seen in the eyes of a certain water-element S-rank hunter.

‘By the way, that person named Sonakshi seemed kind. When the surrounding team members tried to cheat me and cut the reward, they were at least the only one who objected...’

Different in race, age, and even spirit, yet the sorrowful expression shown by that awakened individual in India lingered in my mind for a moment.

By the way, being awakened with a water element that so perfectly resembled human tears—and without any particularly dramatic effect—was originally a sign of a certain disposition.

‘With the supreme talent of an S-rank, why would someone look so gloomy every single day?’

But as someone who understood the human heart even less than a psychic did, what more could I possibly say about it?

“Hmm.”

I quickly changed the subject.

Anyway, thanks to this raid, I had ended up with an enormous treasure in my hands.

I would have to sell it at the upcoming [World Artifact Auction] this spring.

‘The tax period starts in February, so I guess I’ll have no choice but to pay a bit of a late fee.’

And once I sold this item through that process for the highest possible price, I would truly retire.

‘No more backing out! I swear it on Kim Giryeo’s mother’s name!’

This decision had been heavily influenced by the pyromancer I had seen only a few hours earlier.

Back when I was preparing to leave for India, I had thought:

‘How am I supposed to ignore these incompetent mammals when they can’t even handle a single S-rank gate by themselves?’

But when a certain genius produced results far beyond my expectations, I finally felt at ease.

‘Because the potential of the human species was far greater than I had expected.’

What I had said to Jung Haseong yesterday wasn’t empty flattery.

‘Wow~ Anyway, whoever taught that guy really...’

Then, having made plenty of money, it was time to leisurely enjoy some free time.

Like an office worker taking a day off, I casually picked up my phone.

‘Oh, right. Come to think of it, I didn’t bother charging it after the India dungeon run. I’ll have to turn it back on.’

‘No wonder it’s taking a little longer than usual to start up today~’

And then, as usual, I switched on the electronic device.

[2 Missed Calls]

[128]

I froze for a moment as the numbers reflected in my eyes.