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Amazing Achievement!
You have hunted the top-tier monster of this area single-handedly!
Though this was also thanks to a powerful weapon one wouldn't expect to find in this area, it too can be said to be a part of your ability. We praise your amazing ability and recklessness.
As a reward, you are given 100 coins and a lowest-grade recovery potion.
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After reading all the contents that appeared before his eyes, Uju looked at the red potion clutched in his hand.
“Haa... haa...”
And he looked at his own hand, trembling violently as it held that potion.
“Kk... ugh!”
He wanted to chug the potion quickly, but if he opened the lid like this, he felt like he would spill it all. He tried gripping with all his strength, even tapped it against the floor... but the trembling wouldn't stop.
“F... fuck...!”
Giving up on calming his hands, he decided to find another way.
“Haa... ha... heugh...”
He lay on the floor, opening his mouth as wide as possible and holding his breath. Then he brought the potion over his open mouth and opened the lid.
“Ubkk?! Gulp... keugh!”
Even though he was prepared, swallowing a sudden flood of liquid pouring into his mouth was difficult.
“Gulp... gulp gulp.”
Still, after barely managing to swallow it all, he felt the pain in his back subsiding.
“Haa... haa... ha...”
It didn't take long before he was fully healed, beyond just the pain disappearing.
“Hahaha... hahahahaha...”
Uju slowly sat up and laughed hollowly.
“Hahahaha... fuck. I'm going through this shit even with a gun, and what? Hunter? My fucking ass.”
He had only now realized how naive he had been, how lightly he had taken the phrase 'crossing the line of fire.'
So what if he grew steadily? That he could become the greatest Hunter with immunity to mental attacks someday? Those pieces of trash who couldn't see that and didn't invest in the future? That he just had to do retrieval work while watching for opportunities, and if he luckily grew, that was enough??
He wanted to slap his past self's face, tell himself to stop talking shit, and to just be satisfied with being a field retrieval agent.
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Contract Mission - Have Sex
Have sex in any form within the time limit!
Time Remaining - 5 Days
Reward - A skill bestowed by the 【King of the 72 Legions】
*Failure Penalty - Your Death*
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Just as he was thinking he wanted to quit like this, another notification window suddenly appeared before Uju's eyes. It was something he had seen earlier, but hadn't properly processed in his head due to the urgent situation.
“......Ah.”
At the timing as if it had been waiting for this, Uju let out a sigh. There was no doubt that the 【King of the 72 Legions】 had done something. If you forcefully popped up a window like this and made the penalty section flash, anyone would think that way.
It had definitely said it wouldn't say anything more. Should he call it petty, or should he say it keeps its word? For such a grandiose name, its behavior was rather... questionable.
“Come to think of it, this means I actually die, doesn't it......?”
This 'something' that was extremely similar to a status window had never shown a lie even once. He couldn't understand the principle of how it gave these things, but at least the antidote and recovery potion given as actual rewards had shown astonishingly outstanding effectiveness.
Then the claim that he would die if he didn't have sex within these 5 days was probably true with a very high probability.
But, sex? That kind of sex? Why the hell sex all of a sudden??
“......It's fucking sex. I need a woman for that.”
And it wasn't like having a woman solved everything. It wasn't like she was just going to give it to him. Not at all...
“......Uh.”
As Uju was thinking negatively like that, an even more negative thought suddenly crashed into him.
“Any... form.”
Taken by itself, it was a phrase that guaranteed freedom, that respected Uju. But if that became the premise of 'sex,' the story changed completely.
Any... in other words, wasn't it saying that anything 'uncommon' or 'abnormal' was fine as long as it was sex?
“If I can't find a woman, I have to fuck a man or get fucked by one......?!”
There was the premise of 'if you don't want to die.' But who would want to die? Not even Uju, who had already died once, wanted to die again.
“Fuck!”
Uju jumped up from his seat, forgetting his exhaustion.
Now was not the time to be like this. There was too much to do. He had to pack food, check his backpack for intact magazines and ammunition. And he had to find people—a woman, above all else! A pretty woman, normally!
Consent and all that bullshit—if push came to shove, he'd have to rape!
“Damn it!”
He had just finished a life-or-death struggle. No matter that his injuries were healed by potions, mental fatigue was a different matter. He wanted to rest properly and examine his status window, missions, quests, and so on... to figure out what was what.
But thinking that if he took it easy he would end up dead or having gay sex, he simply couldn't do it.
Uju roughly grabbed his tattered backpack and ran into the mart first.
“...Tch.”
The inside of the mart was horrific. It was exactly as Uju had expected, a complete mess. Especially the open-type refrigerators common in large marts were the worst.
As if asking why these inedible weeds were gathered, every single vegetable had been torn apart and trampled, and perhaps because they didn't know how to open them, containers holding milk, juice, and such were completely smashed, their contents scattered everywhere.
“These motherfuckers. Why didn't they just eat the raw meat over there...”
Fortunately, the plastic bottles were all intact. There was plenty of drinking water, safely preserved—something no less precious than life in a disaster situation. And since there should be a warehouse stocking inventory besides the checkout counters, he was set for provisions.
But having too much was also a problem. He couldn't carry all this by himself. He could take just what he could carry, but it was too wasteful. Yet making multiple trips was a waste of time.
“Tsk tsk tch...”
Unable to decide, clicking his tongue and thinking quietly, Uju cautiously lowered his gaze downward.
“......”
He saw a corpse with the back of its head smashed in. He had tried hard to ignore that horrible sight, but... now there was no other way.
With a deeply wrinkled face, Uju cautiously began rummaging through the corpse's pockets.
“...There it is! Good, this makes it doable.”
Finding what he was looking for so quickly, his expression shifted from relaxing to a bright smile.
Without losing his smile, Uju ran straight to the opposite side of the entrance he had come through. There was another entrance there—specifically, an entrance from the parking lot side.
-Beep beep
He pressed the key obtained from the corpse as he exited. He heard a car responding from somewhere.
-Beep beep
-Beep beep
-Beep beep
-Beep beep
Since he couldn't tell which car the key belonged to, he kept pressing it and approached where the sound grew closer.
“......Whew.”
Uju let out a short sigh and sat in the driver's seat.
Having never imagined he'd end up doing something akin to robbery, he felt strangely troubled.
-Vroom...
'But what can't you do to survive?' he told himself. It wasn't real robbery—just effectively using a dead person's belongings. Comforting himself with that, he rammed the mart's back door with the car.
-Crash!!
Not stopping at the crash, he pushed straight through. It was to minimize the time spent transporting goods.
“First, water... then ramen, butane gas?”
He roughly threw out everything in the trunk and brought lots of 1L water bottles to stack them. Muttering what he needed, he stacked them neatly even into the back seats and passenger seat, filling the car to the brim before wiping the sweat from his brow and sitting back in the driver's seat.
“Is there nothing else?”
He pondered for a moment whether there was anything else he needed to take, then pulled a pistol from his waist. He realized that if a moment came when he suddenly needed the gun while driving with a seatbelt on, it would be much easier to grab it from the side than to fumble around his waist drawing it.
“......Ah, the backpack.”
Only then did he realize he had neglected and not even glanced at the backpack, which could be called the most important thing.
He got out of the car again, found his backpack, and examined its contents.
“Hmmm......”
When he actually looked, it was hard to tell where the unusable damage ended. He should obviously throw away bullets that were deeply dented or crushed, but from a non-expert's eyes, many bullets were somewhat ambiguous.
“Tch.”
It was a waste, but he decided to throw away anything that seemed even slightly off. Because there was nothing more costly than using bad ammunition and getting a bullet jam or gun malfunction.
Holding back tears, he discarded about sixty percent of them here, then quickly left the mart in the car and headed home.
It was a distance he could quickly cover even by running, so by car he arrived home immediately.
“Haa...... No, this isn't the time to sigh.”
But what would take time was from now on. Since he couldn't drive right into the house like he did at the mart, he had to carry everything inside through inefficient movements.
Part of the sigh was due to the large amount, but more than that, he was exhausted and didn't want to move.
“Should I just do it tomorrow?”
The excitement of battle, the elation of having survived death, and the compulsion to prepare for the future had combined to somehow let him load the goods and drive back. But now that he had arrived and safety seemed secured, his strength drained completely.
“Yeah, just tomorrow...”
“Kiee!”
-Bang!
“......Ah, shit.”
Uju reflexively drew his pistol and fired, then cursed.
A single goblin had been hiding in the dark beside the door.
“Was it aggroed by the corpse of its kin?”
Monster corpses basically disappeared along with the Gate if left inside it. So he had left the goblin corpse in front of the door without a thought, and this had happened.
“Aa......... Aaaaargh...!”
He tried to scream in annoyance but desperately suppressed it, thinking more goblins might swarm from somewhere.
“Do I have to clean up these damn bastards' corpses too?”
Uju quickly brought a few items from the back seat into the house and grabbed several towels from inside.
“Ugh... filthy bastards.”
First, he plugged the nice, gaping hole going clean through, wrapped the remaining body parts in towels, and loaded them onto the car.
If he tossed them nearby, they might draw aggro and bring others around, so he planned to take them far away—all the way to the mart where the corpses were gathered.