55
Boarding the train on time, Baek Woojin was able to arrive in front of the Hongyeon Guild headquarters in the late afternoon.
As he entered, the woman who had greeted him during his first visit rose from her seat, gave a light bow of acknowledgment, and made a call somewhere.
"Please go up to the 5th floor."
"Thank you."
Baek Woojin hung the visitor's pass he had received before around his neck, passed through the actual entrance, got on the elevator, and pressed 5.
'Since he seemed busy, it should be fine to just go.'
Before ending the call at home, Hong Ikhyeon had himself mentioned that he had a schedule, so Woojin judged there was no need to announce that he had come to the headquarters. The elevator moved and stopped, and the doors opened.
"……?"
However, the scene outside the opened elevator doors was quite different from what he had expected.
'Simulation room.'
Stepping out of the elevator, Baek Woojin walked toward Hong Yeonha, who was battling a virtual monster inside the massive glass-enclosed space.
"Yes, that's far enough."
A hand suddenly shot out from beside him, stopping Woojin in his tracks. He turned his head toward where the hand had come from.
"Long time no see, should I say?"
The owner of the hand was none other than Lee Dayoung, who had been with him in the linked dungeon.
She too must have been fighting virtual monsters until just moments ago, as she radiated heat and sweat dripped from various parts of her body.
"Hunter Lee Dayoung."
"Uh, doesn't that feel a bit too distant?"
"We're not actually that close, are we?"
He had simply spoken his honest thoughts, but Lee Dayoung looked as bewildered as someone who had suffered a much greater shock than expected.
"If we survived a life-or-death crisis together, wouldn't that make us close enough?"
"If you're isolated in a dungeon, that's just how it is."
"Hmm, you're really putting up a wall."
"Yeon, ha!"
"Oops."
Lee Dayoung, who had been subtly reducing the physical distance between herself and Baek Woojin, raised both hands playfully and took a big step back at Hong Yeonha's breathless shout from behind.
"Haa, haaaa."
Hong Yeonha approached while exhaling roughly, paused briefly on her own, then went to a bag she had placed nearby, wiped away the trickling sweat with a towel, and only then came back to Woojin's side.
"Didn't you say you were going home yesterday?"
"I did go home, then came back down."
"……?"
Hong Yeonha showed a puzzled reaction to Woojin's answer. And watching her, Woojin also realized that this situation was somewhat unnatural.
"There's something I was supposed to receive from the Guild Master, so I was just going to take that and go back up. But the person at the 1st floor told me to go to the 5th floor, so I came."
And so I came, and here you are.
Woojin said as much with his eyes, and Hong Yeonha, seemingly understanding the situation from his gaze, furrowed her brows slightly.
"It seems like Grandfather gave instructions to send me when you came."
"I think so too."
"Really. Not me."
"Yes."
"……."
Even though Woojin had agreed with her own assertion, Hong Yeonha glared at him with half-closed eyes as if dissatisfied, causing Woojin to blink in confusion.
"Now, now, since this isn't a scheduled meeting, Miss should go inside and continue training. I'll guide our Hunter Woojin properly."
"What are you talking about? Crazy?"
"I'm perfectly normal. Please go on in~"
"Ugh! L-let go! You insanely strong brute!!"
"When you were young, you had such a kind heart and refined speech. How did you grow up so rough. Sob."
Despite calling her Miss, Lee Dayoung tickled Hong Yeonha persistently, then ultimately threw her into the simulation room with sheer force and shut the door.
"Yes? What did you say? Sorry, I can't hear a thing~"
Hong Yeonha, thrown into the simulation room, was moving her mouth rapidly toward Lee Dayoung with only a glass window between them, but unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—her voice couldn't penetrate the glass wall.
"Were you perhaps supposed to receive it directly from the Master?"
"No. What I'm supposed to receive are magic stones, and I was told to just inform the person in charge and come by when I have time later."
"Ah, then there's no need to go find them."
Lee Dayoung casually folded the towel draped around her neck and tossed it toward where her bag was.
"If you wait here, the person in charge will come find you."
Leaving only those words behind, Lee Dayoung entered the empty simulation room.
'I suppose it's okay to watch.'
Usually, watching someone else train was considered quite rude. But while Hong Yeonha might be different, Lee Dayoung had entered the room and started adjusting the training settings despite knowing an outsider like him was present.
That could be interpreted as permission to observe her training.
While waiting for the person in charge as she had said, Woojin moved closer to the room to carefully observe Lee Dayoung's combat, which he hadn't been able to examine closely before.
'That's…….'
The monster summoned in the room Lee Dayoung entered was one he had never seen before.
Even though he had regressed, having started as an F-rank meant his information about monsters from high-rank dungeons was inevitably scarce.
'Fast.'
Against the massive one-eyed monster with entirely blue skin, Lee Dayoung's whip swirled like a storm.
The one-eyed monster was hard-pressed just blocking the whip, and Lee Dayoung demonstrated her experience by nimbly darting through the storm of the whip that could potentially tangle and be swung back at her, precisely piercing the one-eyed monster's openings.
It was then, when Woojin had internally become certain of Lee Dayoung's victory.
The one-eyed monster's eye glowed, and a beam of light shot out, deflecting the storm of whips that had been rushing toward it.
"Huh."
However, as if she had anticipated this, Lee Dayoung leaped at the exact moment the whip was deflected, and the moment her head aligned perfectly with the one-eyed monster's head, the widely spread whip instantly wrapped tightly around the one-eyed monster's body, following her hand.
Then, Lee Dayoung's left foot, which had been falling in a circular arc, burst the monster's single eye.
Flash.
The red signal hovering above the simulation room turned blue, and the monster disappeared.
'They say the higher the rank, what you need is experience and skill.'
Seeing Lee Dayoung's movements, those words resonated even more deeply.
Even though she could have rested a bit, Lee Dayoung immediately returned to her original position and summoned a new monster, diving straight into battle.
"Excuse me."
And when Lee Dayoung summoned her third monster, the person in charge arrived.
"Are you Hunter Baek Woojin?"
"Yes. I'm Baek Woojin."
"I apologize. I had some backlog of work to process, so I made you wait too long."
"Not at all. I'm the one at fault for visiting suddenly without prior notice."
After exchanging formalities with the male staff member who looked completely unrelated to combat, they moved to the basement warehouse.
"The Master told me to give you as much as I could prepare for you."
The person in charge passed by several sections marked with letters at each entrance, stopping near the very end.
"I've prepared 200 of them."
Following the person in charge inside, there were small black boxes the size of a palm stacked abundantly, and exactly 20 boxes had been brought forward and placed inside a large backpack for easy carrying.
No further words were needed.
"Thank you."
"Haha, not at all. If the Master told me to take care of you, it must mean you did something worthy of it."
The two exchanged a few more perfunctory words, and once Woojin shouldered the bag, they took the elevator back up together.
"Have a safe trip."
"Yes."
With 200—an unimaginably higher number than he had expected—in his hands, the existence of Hong Yeonha had already faded far from his mind, and Woojin headed straight home by train.
"Hmm? What's this, you're home earlier than Mom?"
"Yeah."
Baek Ayeon, who had been watching TV when he left, was still sprawled on the sofa in the exact same posture, and Woojin barely acknowledged her greeting as he went straight to his room and locked the door.
'This is crazy.'
He could barely remember how he got home.
Something that was hard to obtain even one of—not 20, not 100, but a whopping 200—had fallen into his hands.
The number of magic stones needed for a single trip was roughly around 20.
Even considering some variables, it was enough for at least 7 trips.
"So this is why everyone twisted themselves into pretzels trying to get into large guilds."
Even now, having arrived home by train, the excitement that wouldn't subside made Woojin repeatedly steady his breathing over and over again.
"Alright."
When he had calmed down to some degree, Woojin opened the bag and unboxed one of the containers.
Inside, there was a red cushion, and on top of it, arranged precisely in two rows of five each, lay exactly ten black magic stones.
There was no reason to hesitate, so Woojin immediately brought his right hand over them.
Then, the ten magic stones transformed into fine powder and were sucked into the gemstone of the ring on his right index finger.
"What……?"
To check how much the ring's gemstone had turned blue, Woojin shifted his gaze, only to fall into deep thought for a moment at the blue area that didn't even reach halfway.
"Is the reason… because I've grown?"
Schrodinger had once told him.
That if he grew, rather than being in a soul form, they would be able to face each other while he maintained his physical body entirely.
"I suppose I should be happy……"
The increase in the amount of magic stones needed to turn the ring's gemstone blue was also a visual indication that he had achieved that much growth.
However, such thoughts didn't last long.
'Damn this insane gemstone.'
The ring's gemstone, having swallowed a total of 52 magic stones, only then dyed its entire body in blue light as if satisfied.