By the time we called the porters and had all the merman corpses moved outside, the gate was close to naturally dissipating.
I did want to look around inside a little more, but I had no desire to be stranded on an island.
“I’m sorry. Because of me.”
Ms. Jea had been repeating apologies ever since earlier. The team members were wrestling with the Gate Yard staff and an appraiser over the settlement, but Ms. Jea was free to come find me and apologize.
To be honest, there was nothing Ms. Jea had done wrong, so I found it strange that she was this apologetic.
Was she simply sorry that I had drawn the imperial family’s attention because of her status?
“You didn’t do anything wrong, did you? I was the one who agreed, and it wasn’t as if you asked me expecting something like this to happen.”
“But…”
“If you feel that sorry, buy me a meal at Cheongru sometime.”
“…”
Ms. Jea stared blankly at me, then blushed. What on earth had she imagined? I couldn’t understand, but since she nodded as if to say she would, I had no choice but to let it slide.
In any case, the settlement was underway. On top of that, because of the crowd that had gathered after hearing the rumors, I had to experience what it felt like to be a monkey in a zoo.
Honestly, after having worked like an ant this much, wasn’t it about time I lived like a grasshopper?
So, to change my line of thought a little, I said to Ms. Jea,
“There must be a lot of gates like this, right?”
“I suppose so… If the profits don’t come out to a certain amount, it’s not uncommon for people to hunt just enough to make up for their losses and then come out.”
She looked at me as if asking why I wanted to know. So I said,
“I’m thinking of going through gates in earnest.”
Ms. Jea looked surprised. She didn’t ask why in particular. But she did say one thing.
“You’re planning to go alone, aren’t you?”
To put it bluntly, in my position, Ms. Jea’s team could end up being a burden. If there was anyone who seemed like they might be of help, it would be the supporter Jeon Eunseok, but he seemed like someone who belonged on Ms. Jea’s team.
So I nodded, since there didn’t seem to be any major issue with me going alone. There was a little regret, but even so, I had no choice but to think that their strength was somewhat lacking for now.
I was planning to fill up my Collection properly, and Ms. Jea seemed to sense that my mind was made up. After that, she said she understood, and the conversation ended.
Ms. Jea showed a little disappointment. But hadn’t her help been only for this one time?
And no matter how much I liked women, my own life came first.
At that moment, Kim Jaeseok approached with a refreshed look after finishing the settlement. He handed Ms. Jea a bundle of money, then gave me a separate stack and said,
“An equal split would be the correct answer, but we also know full well what role you played, so we included a considerable amount. If you feel slighted, please check it and tell me.”
Kim Jaeseok looked as if he had handled the matter cleanly and decisively. Thinking there was no need to count it, I checked the document attached to the envelope containing the money.
The document stated that the total income was about six hundred thousand won. It also said that eighty thousand won would be distributed equally, and that the remaining two hundred thousand won would be given to me.
“This is… a lot.”
“We’re giving it to you because you played that much of a role. If we have the chance later, I’d like us to work together again.”
Kim Jaeseok looked a little different to me now. So I readily nodded, then expressed my thanks to Ms. Jea as well.
It was a moment when we had managed to produce a result everyone could be satisfied with.
But the problem was what came next. The imperial family had its eye on me. Conversely, that meant the noble faction could find me irritating—or else, like the imperial family, they could get greedy over me.
To avoid ending up like floating duckweed or a sailboat at the mercy of the wind, I intended to diligently gather what I absolutely needed from now on. As fast as possible, and as strongly as possible, I intended to be reborn.
* * *
There were well over a hundred gates scattered all over the place, and among them, the gates that could be called high-grade numbered only about twenty in total. And of those twenty, eighteen were currently being explored by people.
That left me with only two options, but even that felt like something to be grateful for.
From high-grade onward, the fee for having a gater open the gate was called at random—in other words, whatever the gater felt like charging.
Because of that, I heard that the large established families often used their own family gaters to open high-grade gates.
So within the limits of what I could do right now, I chose one of the two and stood before it.
Ms. Jea had come to see me off, her face full of worry.
“Are you really going to be all right?”
“There’s no reason I wouldn’t be. Honestly, I’m not worried.”
“…I’m jealous.”
Ms. Jea looked at me as if she truly meant it. But as far as I knew, all New Humans had their own methods of growing stronger.
That much—that an individual could raise their rank through effort—was basic knowledge I had familiarized myself with before coming here, but I found myself wondering what Ms. Jea’s method of growing stronger was.
Still, this was apparently an unspoken rule, something one shouldn’t ask about, so I kept silent and said,
“You’ll be able to become stronger. Everyone has their own method, don’t they?”
Ms. Jea slowly nodded at my words. So I told her I’d be back and strode forward.
I couldn’t simply assume what Ms. Jea was thinking as she came to see me off, approached me warmly, and treated me kindly, but there was at least one thing I could tell.
She was worried about me! Something like that.
The gate I stepped through led to a volcanic region. From the information I had checked in advance, it was a place inhabited by lava golem-type creatures called “Lava Demons.”
“It’s sweltering.”
Because of the heat, the modified hanbok I was wearing definitely felt cumbersome.
Even though I wasn’t layered up with all kinds of clothing, it still felt this hot. I couldn’t help wondering how much worse it must be for others. But strangely enough, why hadn’t clothing developed further?
I was only now finding that a little odd when it happened. A huge golem sensed the presence of a human from afar and began approaching.
Lava dripped from it, and every step it took made the ground rumble with heavy thuds. Its approximate size was around five to six meters. It was by no means small, and since the description said it could only truly be killed by attacking its vital point, I lightly swung the Death God Spear through the air to loosen up my hands.
“Let’s see how tough you are.”
Between the Death God Spear and the lava golem, the less durable one would be the one to break. I steadied my breathing and ran toward the lava golem approaching closest to me.
Then, letting the spear hang in a way that would make it easy to swing, I began measuring the distance.
The creature’s stride, my stride, the range I would need to rotate through, and even the position at the moment of impact—I arranged it all in my head in an instant, then began moving my body according to the routine I had set.
I stretched out my left leg and planted it on the ground. Using that as an axis, I put rotation into my propulsion, turned once, and exerted strength into the taut muscles of my arm as I swung the spear.
With a whoosh as it cut through the wind, the spear struck the lava golem’s leg just as it stepped down with a thud.
Craaaack!!
Along with a tremendous boom like steel smashing into stone, amusingly enough, the lava golem’s leg shattered and burst apart as if a bomb had gone off.
Watching the lava golem stagger, I thought I might get drunk on the satisfying sensation in my hands. Using the recoil of the impact, I quickly spun again and attempted a follow-up strike, just as I had during the evaluation.
The spear swung once more. The lava golem lifted its arm to block it, but the spear struck that arm and, just like its leg, smashed the creature’s arm to pieces.
Watching the fragments fly far away again, I reached the long-awaited timing for a thrust. But due to the lava golem’s will not to simply take it, I had to leap back.
The creature’s opposite hand slammed straight down onto the spot where I had been standing.
A heavy tremor shook the earth, and the enraged lava golem, having lost one arm and one leg, glared at me from where it stood.
This was what I had become, now a reality before me.
It felt like a lie.
“My ant life has finally bloomed, you bastard!”
With a shout of pure satisfaction, I launched myself toward the lava golem. It was said that a lava golem’s core was relatively easy to find. I remembered reading an article stating that because parts of its body were melted into lava, it was easy to spot the location of the core that emitted bright light.
And now that it was wrecked like this, light was leaking out from the destroyed parts of its body. But ironically, the core of the one I was fighting was in an unfortunate location.
“If you get stabbed there, it’s going to hurt a lot. Really… in all sorts of ways.”
It was something that applied only to humans—no, only to men—but even a perfectly healthy woman would find it just as painful to be attacked in a similar location.
No, well, getting hit or stabbed anywhere would hurt, but… because it was such a strangely sorrowful location, I couldn’t readily shove the spear in.
A bizarre standoff. But then I saw several lava golems appear from afar after hearing the commotion, quickly walking this way.
Since I had no choice but to send this fellow off peacefully, I subtly provoked it as if I were about to charge in. Watching my movements, it swung its remaining intact arm here and there to keep me in check, and after observing the timing, I swiftly leaped and swung the spear.
It was to destroy its remaining arm.
The lava golem’s arm, caught by the spear, burst apart with a bang. In the end, after arriving right in front of the creature that had lost both arms and had only one leg left, I mercilessly drove the spear toward the “that” area where the lava golem’s core was located.
A sensation of something breaking reached my fingertips.
And as I watched the lava golem lose its light without fail and spill down to the ground, I had to give it a gaze that was half apologetic and half regretful.
After that, I dealt with each lava golem that approached, one after another. When I realized no more were appearing, I began slowly preparing the final lava golem.
Just like the first lava golem I had hunted, I broke its limbs, leaving only its torso lying on the ground. Then I examined its body from various angles and began shaving it away bit by bit with the spear.
I had no way of judging how much I needed to attack for its condition to drop below twenty percent. So I gradually carved the creature to pieces(?) while repeatedly using Collectionization for quite some time.
When only a small amount of the lava golem’s body remained, just enough to wrap around the core, the lava golem slowly shrank and turned into a figurine.
“Wow, this isn’t twenty percent. By proportion, it’s more like five percent. Are you kidding me?”
It was enough to make me curse. I had spent nearly an hour shaving down just this one thing, and it felt like such a waste.
To put it bluntly, it wasn’t just because the time I could waste here was limited. The field itself was extremely wide, so the distance between one golem and the next made me waste even more time.
Considering that a Byeong-grade field had a radius of about fifteen kilometers, I had to calculate the time it would take to travel far out to hunt and the time it would take to return.
I couldn’t get trapped in a lava field like this again. Then, suddenly, a hypothesis brushed through my mind.
If one’s sworn enemy or a political opponent crossed into a gate to hunt, and if there was a way to close the gate…
Wouldn’t that be like blowing your nose without lifting a hand?
For some reason, the thought gave me chills. In this lava region, there wasn’t a single thing I could put in my mouth to eat.
The Gate Yard and its employees existed to prevent such things in advance, but the problem was that I realized there would be no answer if the imperial family decided to intervene in earnest.
“So that means there’s nothing good about making an enemy of the imperial family…”
The Third Prince was truly a person who made me worry. And when I considered that those standing in opposition to that Third Prince would likely try to keep me in check as well, I realized this might not be the time to leisurely come and go from gates.
That meant I had to find another method. With that thought, just in case, I recalled the ability I had gained upon becoming a New Human.
And there was one thing I was able to realize.
It wasn’t just monsters. It was, quite literally, “all targets.” It had simply said that when a target’s mental strength or physical strength fell below twenty percent, I could turn it into a collection and collect it. So there was no law saying I couldn’t collect humans.
“…Collecting humans, huh…”