12:00 p.m.
It was the time of day when the streets were bustling with people.
Everyone was busy living out their own day—
going to eat lunch, taking a stroll down the street, and so on.
It was an utterly ordinary scene, but to someone, it must have been a fascinating sight.
“Wow, there are so many foods I’ve never seen before!”
Was it because she was a mage that she was so full of curiosity?
From the fruits laid out on the street stalls to the clothes hanging in the shops,
Aris looked around here and there with sparkling eyes, like a foreign tourist.
As she did, I noticed one particular trait of hers: she always stared holes into the eyes of everyone she met.
On top of that, whenever she entered a shop, she never greeted the owner first until they greeted her.
‘…Why is she like that?’
The reason was revealed soon enough.
“To think they don’t greet me even after seeing me, the master of the White Tower. Everyone must be very busy.”
“……”
“Back in my day, this would’ve been unimaginable. The world sure has changed.”
“Why are you saying that into my ear?”
“B-but it’s embarrassing….”
Aris’s cheeks flushed bright red.
She may have been timid, but it seemed the blood of an old fogey flowed through her veins.
“No one here knows you.”
“E-even so, if they see me, they should greet me. That way I can say I’m glad to see them too.”
“Do you have some disease where you die if you greet someone first?”
“I have the dignity of the White Tower Master to uphold. I don’t even greet the emperor first, you know?”
What a thing to be proud of.
I stared at Aris as she proudly laughed, wahaha!
Her outfit consisted of the soccer shorts and oversized T-shirt Rachel had worn last time.
On her face, she wore a disguise mask and sunglasses.
“Seo Uri, look over there! You see how people are dressed similarly to me, right? As expected, I’m a fashion pioneer!”
I’d heard Rachel’s outfit had become trendy on social media.
Every young woman passing by was wearing a similar coordination.
Aris, who didn’t know that fact, was busy teasing Rachel.
“See? Everyone’s copying me. This is the power of the great super-super-super archmage Aris.”
“Wh-what are you talking about? I wore those clothes first.”
“Hmph, no wonder the clothes smelled strange.”
Aris frowned for a moment, then soon puffed out her chest confidently.
“But the chest area wasn’t stretched out. Are you sure you really wore them?”
“…”
Rachel’s face stiffened at the sudden provocation.
The two of them were similar in height.
There was only the slightest difference in their figures.
Seeing that the clothes caught on a certain area and exposed Aris’s navel, Rachel’s shoulders shrank.
“I-I don’t think being too big is all that great!”
“Yeah, you might think that, but they say men like them big.”
“N-no way. Brother, do you like them big too?”
“It’s a matter of personal preference, I guess. I’m not necessarily like that, but I’d say it’s not bad.”
“Hing….”
Of course, Rachel wasn’t small either.
If anything, she was on the large side.
But even Baekdu Mountain couldn’t hold its head high in front of Mount Everest.
Rachel grew visibly gloomy as she looked down around her chest.
Then she clenched her fist and shouted.
“S-still, my face is prettier.”
“Hmph, my face is way better too.”
“Brother, I’m prettier, right?”
“No, it’s me.”
“Think whatever you want, both of you.”
It had only been ten minutes since we set out.
But because they kept fighting over me, I was already getting tired.
Come to think of it, after clearing the second floor today, I hadn’t even rested properly.
“Brother, you look tired.”
“Can’t we just rest somewhere nearby?”
“…I agree as well.”
Their faces flushed as the two of them subtly pulled me toward a motel.
To be honest, I also wanted to rest more than anything.
But if we did that, the first experience I had planned would be distorted, so I held myself back and kept walking.
Fortunately, our destination was nearby.
“All right, we’re here.”
“Th-this is where we’ll have our first experience…?”
“What the…. This place really sucks.”
Their faces showed disappointment, as if they had expected a lot.
And no wonder—the place where the long-awaited first experience would take place was a shabby motel.
The walls were even cracked, and there were spiderwebs between the motel’s privacy curtains.
They say you can tell ten things from seeing one.
If the entrance was this poorly maintained, how bad would the inside be?
“Can’t we just go somewhere else? I want to have a glass of wine at a nice hotel.”
“B-Brother, I’m fine with it.”
“You traitor…! Actually, I’m fine too. I was just saying it.”
With reluctant expressions, the two followed me inside.
Soon, both their eyes widened.
“Why on earth are there so many people in such a shabby place?”
“There are even people going in as a group like us…!”
“Was this place actually amazing…?”
“If there are this many people, there might not be room for us...!”
The parking lot was full.
On top of that, the people continuously going inside made it look like a famous attraction.
Well, it was an attraction.
“This is the entrance to a Gate.”
“…A Gate?”
“Yeah, a place where Hunters can hunt freely.”
Entry once per day.
Assigned missions.
A limit on the number of monsters hunted.
Unlike the Tower, which had all sorts of restrictions like those, Gates had no restrictions at all.
‘Of course, from D-rank Gates onward, there’s a restriction that you have to have cleared above a certain floor to enter.’
But E-rank truly had nothing.
You could go in and out whenever you wanted, and you were free to do whatever you wanted inside.
On top of that, the demonic beasts kept respawning in the same spots.
If you secured a place and just hunted, you could earn more than by climbing the Tower.
That was why people crowded here despite this being the lowest-rank Gate.
Especially in places like this that had been discovered long ago, safety was guaranteed, so many Hunters used them like workplaces.
“Are you talking about a rift?”
“We called them gaps.”
It seemed the name differed by dimension.
Well, anyway.
“Welcome. It’s your first time at a Gate, right? It’ll be a very good first experience.”
“Hey, wait. Don’t tell me… you brought us here to write this off as our first experience?”
“Yep! The contract only said I had to provide a first experience in the first place. It never specified exactly what that meant.”
“Y-you noticed that! No. This is invalid. It’s invalid!”
Aris fell into despair.
“I thought you’d never figure it out…. Why are you still smart when you lost your memories!”
Aris muttered to herself out of habit.
Rachel, who heard it from beside her, brightened.
“As expected of you, Brother! To use a loophole written in the contract to get back at her!”
“Hey, you don’t get to do it with him either, you know?”
“I’m fine with that. After all, I’m the one who promised to marry Brother someday, so I’ll be taking his first.”
“What are you talking about? His first is mine.”
Wow, they’re fighting again.
The only difference from earlier was that Rachel, who had been on the receiving end the whole time, now had the upper hand.
“Pfft. You sure have a long tongue for someone who even tried to scam us.”
“Didn’t you scam him too in the first place? No matter how much I seduced him, he never fell for me, so there’s no way he’d be engaged to you.”
“Do you have proof?”
“Eek!”
Aris crossed her arms as if to show off.
Rachel smiled and linked arms with my other arm.
Baekdu Mountain on my left arm, Everest on my right.
This really was troublesome beyond belief.
Ignoring the heavy sensation pressing against both my arms, I went to the counter.
“How many?”
The owner, wearing a sleeveless undershirt, asked while scratching his back with a backscratcher.
Seeing the jewels embedded in the backscratcher, he must have been filthy rich.
They said if a Gate appeared on your land, it was on the level of striking oil. Now I understood why people said that.
“One million won per person.”
Because even if he charged such an outrageous price, we had no choice but to bow our heads and enter.
A violent price of one million won per person.
But once you went inside, you could earn even more, so it didn’t really matter if you paid it.
“Here, one million won.”
“Hm? There are three of you.”
“…The truth is, these two are summons I called forth.”
“They look human no matter how I look at them. Do you have proof you summoned them?”
In that instant, my mind spun quickly.
There were two ways to verify a summon.
One was to dismiss it in front of him and summon it again.
The other was to register the existence of the skill with the Association.
‘I can’t use the first method.’
If I dismissed the summons, I wouldn’t be able to summon them again for a week.
I didn’t want to waste that much time over something like this.
But I couldn’t use the other method either.
If I registered the skill, it would become known that I had an EX-rank skill.
‘If that happens, she’ll come looking for me again.’
Three years ago, after hearing that I had awakened as SSS-rank, an old classmate appeared before me for the first time in a long while.
—Seo Uri, I heard the news. They say you awakened as SSS-rank.
The image of a woman with jet-black silver hair and skin as white as snow came to mind.
—And yet your ability is only that much. How pitiful.
Currently one of the top rankers in South Korea, and the only ranker affiliated with the Association.
The woman I had once liked.
Yu Seolhwa.
Because I never wanted to see that face again, I forced a smile and shook my head.
“Actually, that was a lie. I’ll pay three million won.”
“…How boring. Fine, go to Room 307.”
I received the key and got on the elevator.
Perhaps sensing that I was in a bad mood, the two had been silent for a while now.
After watching my expression, Aris spoke first.
“C-could it be because we’ve been fighting all this time?”
“I’m sorry. We really won’t fight anymore!”
“Look. We made up. Ahaha….”
“Ahaha….”
The two awkwardly shook hands, pretending to be friendly.
Seeing that, the corners of my mouth rose without me realizing it.
“It’s nice to see. Keep getting along like that from now on.”
Ding—
Amid the brighter mood, the elevator stopped on the third floor.
Standing in front of Room 307, I tapped the key card.
[Entering the E-rank Gate, “Infinite Plain.”]