Well, he had finished his work, so it made sense for him to leave. His time was worth an enormous sum of money, after all.
But there was such a thing as basic manners, and I thought he was going a bit too far.
"Is it unavoidable?"
I briefly entertained the thought that the tendency to ignore me might be strong since I had no reputation or notable career. Then, evening out my breathing, I took a step forward.
It was a situation where I looked forward to what monster awaited beyond the Gate, so I crossed cautiously. The first sensation I felt was a faint chill.
Looking around, my eyes were filled with fallen leaves ripening into autumn scenery. That the world was awash in autumn leaves—honestly, I had never seen such a sight.
Because whenever you hired ants, the main work was hunting Tyrone herds in vast plains. Anyway, I had come here, but I couldn't understand what kind of monster could be in a place with such beautiful scenery.
It was just as I recalled that low-grade Gates were often empty and thought, Surely not—
From afar, noises that an ape might make, *screech screech*, rang out, and soon cries were heard one after another from everywhere. I could tell what it was at once.
"Hell Monkeys?"
Monkeys of hell, living up to their name. Their fur was black all over, while certain parts like their faces were red as blood. Moreover, because they lived in groups, they were infamous as the monsters that had killed the most clumsy rookie parties.
Their size was about half that of an ordinary person, and their physical abilities were tremendous enough to suit the word *monster*. They were known for their ranged attack characteristic of picking up and throwing whatever they could grab, so they were monsters that Neohumans with long-range weapons or ranged attacks usually went out to hunt.
"This is troublesome..."
I was inexperienced, yet Hell Monkeys from the very first encounter? It was absurd. But Hell Monkeys had an advantage. It was that the things they threw were sometimes surprisingly good minerals.
Thinking it was worth getting excited about, I shouted.
"Uwoaaaaah!!!"
The cry echoed, and Hell Monkeys began reacting from everywhere. Honestly, I thought meeting these guys, who were also called Mineral Monkeys due to their habit of scattering away somewhere if you just dodged everything they threw for a certain amount of time, might actually be lucky.
Shortly after, the Hell Monkeys appeared shouldering armfuls of rocks. Those guys mercilessly began throwing stones at me.
The throwing positions were high, and the stones weren't light either. Moreover, the distances were all different, and they even adjusted their speed. Looking at those things flying toward me, a small laugh escaped me.
When I focused, they felt too slow. I casually glanced around here and there, dodging for a while. Was there no way they could hit me at all?
After huffing and puffing for a while, I could confirm one herd fleeing first.
The time spent dodging was roughly a little over ten minutes. Not a long time, but not short either. So I kicked away the minerals piled around so they wouldn't obstruct my path, then looked up at the sky again.
Before I knew it, a second herd that had been watching cautiously from afar approached and threw stones.
"Good timing. Good spacing, but control? Bad!"
I was starting to get excited. Honestly, if the pebbles they were throwing now weren't just ordinary stones, they were clearly otherworldly minerals, so they would definitely have value.
There was the downside of having to go in and out of the Gate countless times because there was a lot and it was hard to carry out at once, but my former job had been an ant.
There was no reason I couldn't do something like this.
"Money's falling!!!"
A provocative shout, and the guys truly threw pebbles in time with my cry. Dancing about like that, lost in excitement, I played with the guys for a while. Roughly gauging how many times I repeated it, it seemed to be about seven or eight times.
"It's a small Gate, but there are a lot of Hell Monkey herds?"
There were occasionally cases like this, and at these times Neohumans would form teams to hunt one. The Hell Monkey Lord.
I recalled hearing that if a Hell Monkey Lord, which could be called a boss mob, existed, you would be attacked by at least six or more herds of Hell Monkeys.
Otherwise, the guys currently throwing minerals at me were rotating in a well-coordinated shift... Anyway, the situation was certainly nothing but good.
Then, suddenly, one thought struck me.
"Wait? There's no rule saying only they can throw, right?"
A change in thinking. Someone had said it before—humans couldn't think negative thoughts. The reason was simple. If you said, "Don't hit the tree!" someone would definitely hit the tree.
But conversely, if you said, "Just look at the road and go!" almost everyone would recognize how wide the road was, run along it, and avoid all the trees.
Seeing that, I thought, Ah, isn't this it?
With a smug mindset, after such useless thoughts, I picked up a pebble from the ground.
"I have absolute confidence I'll hit you guys!"
With a confident shout, I picked up and threw the pebble. Truly flying at a ferocious speed, the pebble embedded itself in a Hell Monkey's head. With a *thwack*, I saw the guy falling straight to the ground, along with the mineral he had been holding.
I saw the illusion of money rolling and falling.
Looking at the guys filling the surroundings, I said.
"Hell Monkeys are money too. They're just not expensive."
Yes, money was money. With the thought of desperately saving up to eat and live well, I began endlessly repeating the cycle of dodging and throwing.
Each time the Hell Monkeys' screams echoed, more of them kept appearing from somewhere. I began a life-or-death struggle with Hell Monkeys filling the surroundings to the point that I wondered if there had always been this many of them.
"Take that! Die! Hup!" and so on, while chattering endlessly and repeatedly picking up and throwing pebbles—finally, what was bound to come came.
The appearance of the Hell Monkey Lord!
I had expected it, but hadn't truly thought it would be there. Still, I considered it a gold mine. The reason Hell Monkey Lords were money was nothing special.
Their leather was sturdy and splendid. And because of the "Boss Mob" title, despite being relatively easy to hunt, they traded at enormous prices due to high demand and low supply.
I remembered hearing that the highest price one had fetched was about 12 billion won. Because of that, low-grade Gates had boomed for a time, but even so, Hell Monkey Lords were known not to appear easily.
Anyway, that expensive monster had now appeared before my eyes.
"Now, shall I go to you? Or will you come to me?"
The guy tilted its head at my words. Right, there was no way it could understand. I was well aware that my case with the captured demon had been an exceptional circumstance.
But I had no intention of selling the Hell Monkey Lord. I was going to add it to my Collection.
I gripped a mineral in each hand and lightly clacked them together. With this much force, they should normally break. But after confirming they were sturdy minerals that were clearly not ordinary pebbles, I began closing the distance with the guy, using them as weapons.
Moreover, the guy was also quickly closing the distance with me. Even the mineral it held was similar to mine but a bit darker in color and bigger.
Wasn't it probably a higher-grade mineral?
*This really is a gold mine!* Thinking that, I quickly closed the distance. It was a situation where if either of us swung well, we could smash the other's head in one blow.
But I didn't feel scared or worried. It only looked about as fast as an ordinary Tyrone, and I had hunted Tyrons to the point that they had become what people commonly called trash mobs.
Therefore, with the conviction that this guy would also be nothing special, I dug into its chest.
The guy too bared a ferocious smile at the thought of crushing me with that big rock, but I, having dug into the guy's chest, looked up to meet its eyes and shouted.
"First strike wins!!"
The pebble swung in an uppercut, drawing a graceful arc!
But the guy quickly bent its body back and dodged.
"Oho?"
A movement nimble enough to draw admiration. But the guy didn't know me. Immediately launching my body into the Hell Monkey Lord's chest, I delivered a body bash to its fully exposed torso.
As I drove my shoulder straight into the guy's solar plexus, with a bizarre *kwaeht!* sound, the guy tumbled backward as if bouncing. It was unable to breathe, making *syaek-syaek* sounds as it barely held onto its life. As I confirmed this state and was about to charge again, the other Hell Monkeys watching came to help.
Pebbles flew at me, but I roughly dodged them, quickly closed the distance with the Hell Monkey Lord, and swung the pebble in my hand.
And the cheerful impact that followed.
*Thwack!!!* The sound spread through the forest, and the bizarre silence that descended for a moment was broken by the Hell Monkey Lord collapsing with a thud. Then, seeing the Hell Monkeys fleeing while shrieking *kieeek!!*, I said.
"Their boss just collapsed, you disloyal bastards."
After quickly glancing around and confirming everyone had left, I reached out toward the fallen Hell Monkey. Examining its half-mangled head, I worried about what would happen if it had died.
I recalled the case where I had tried to Collectionize a Tyrone in a dead state—because it had literally been dead rather than alive, it had become a "corpse" in the Collection.
Thinking the conditions were quite strict, I shouted without wasting more time.
"Collectionize."
At that moment, the Hell Monkey gradually stiffened and hardened. Looking at it, I took a deep breath and shouted one more word.
"Collect."
As I looked down at the guy with an anxious heart, unlike a corpse, the Hell Monkey Lord rapidly shrank in size. It had been figurized.
Proof that it had still been alive. After shouting in joy, I used Collection and took out the display case. Seeing the densely packed contents, I roughly found an empty spot and shoved it in. I definitely started to feel something.
Unlike ordinary objects, when I had actually figurized a living creature and placed it in the Collection, the feeling was completely different from items.
At that subtle sensation of something seeming newly added, I clenched and unclenched my fist and looked around.
"There's so much to pack up..."
I briefly worried about whether I had no choice but to hire people.
I recalled one alternative, then took two types of rocks—the pebble the Lord had held and the rock ordinary Hell Monkeys held—and exited the Gate. Then I immediately went to the counter at the Gate yard, placed the two ores down, and said.
"Can you appraise these?"
At those words, an employee looked the rocks over and went somewhere. Shortly after, he returned with the appraiser I had seen before, who gave me a knowing look.
"We meet again. Do you happen to have any more of those items from that time?"
Not knowing what his intention was, I flatly denied it and said.
"Even if I wanted to get more, I can't anymore. Rather, can you appraise these?"
"They're minerals. Pebbles used by stone monkeys?"
It seemed Hell Monkeys were called stone monkeys here. So I roughly nodded and said.
"They're pebbles thrown by monkeys from a low-grade Gate. I brought them because their material seemed different from ordinary pebbles."
"This one is... I see, and this big one, hmm, could it be that you hunted the stone monkey leader?"
The appraiser guessed as much. So I smirked. Then he immediately asked.
"By any chance, are you thinking of bringing the corpse to sell?"
The appraiser asked that because the first day after a Gate opens meant complete ownership of the Gate. But I had already packed it in my Collection.
I spoke as if regretful.
"Because of the ability I use, it was torn to shreds, so I couldn't retrieve the corpse."
Seeing the appraiser and Gate yard employees make expressions of absolutely maddening regret, I thought it must be quite valuable here too, and urged them to finish the appraisal.
Then the appraiser focused on examining the ores.
He was doing something diligently using various equipment, but the results didn't seem easy. Ten minutes passed, then thirty, and the appraiser kept repeating. Wondering what wasn't working out, he turned on a computer and rummaged through something diligently, but it didn't look easy. I wondered what on earth it could be.
Afterward, finally around the one-hour mark, the appraiser spoke to me in a cold sweat.
"I'm sorry. It took too long, didn't it?"
"Well, it happens. But what took so long?"
"Well, it took a long time to find reported cases of this mineral itself."
"Reported cases?"
The appraiser nodded. And he showed me some data, but there was no way I could understand it. Looking away from that thing full of bizarre technical terms, I said.
"Please explain."
"Ah, well, there are many terms that are generally hard to understand. I'm sorry. Well, first, the name of this mineral is 'Kobellite.'"
"Kobellite?"
"Yes, it's a rare one used for weapon-making among special minerals. It's a very hard-to-obtain mineral, and its malleability and hardness are incredibly excellent. So not only is smelting difficult, but there are extremely few who know how to handle it."
It was a familiar yet unfamiliar ore. No, to be exact, it was a completely different mineral from the Kobellite I knew, but at the word *rare*, a grin threatened to split my face.
So I asked.
"What's the value?"
"If it's this small one, roughly about 100 won."
A not insignificant price, and the chunks of money beyond the Gate came to mind. If I could easily handle Hell Monkeys, it was no different from a gold mine. So I urgently left the two minerals at the counter and said to the employee.
"In an hour, could you call—well, a lot of porters?"
At the word "porters," the employee and the appraiser looked at me with envious gazes. Receiving their gazes, I ran. Because time was gold...