Episode 23. Other Wolf
‘Maybe this’ll be over faster than I thought?’
Perhaps because of the movement speed buff, Sindae was rapidly gathering materials, his body feeling lighter.
He’d only just formed a pleasant smile when something burst out from the Harpy corpse he’d flipped over to loot, sending him into a frantic roll across the ground.
“Wh… What the hell!”
The aura he felt was unmistakably that of a monster.
Furthermore, seeing as it had waited for him right here, it was clearly a creature with some degree of intelligence.
‘What kind of creature…’
It was a dungeon where 7-Star monsters appeared, so 5-Star monsters were the bare minimum roaming about.
When Sindae spotted the hyena-like monster snarling at him, he couldn’t help but swallow dryly.
“Of all things, it had to be that one…”
The [Other Wolf], which survived by eating the corpses of dead monsters. If you were unlucky, you could encounter one instead of the cleanup crew.
They lived in packs inside dungeons of 5-Star or higher, and it was obvious that this one had been feeding on Harpy corpses here.
‘A 5-Star monster…’
Sindae let out a sigh as he looked at the creature pacing about, keeping its guard up against him.
It had clearly cut off any chance of fleeing to the dungeon entrance.
“This is my first time facing a 5-Star…”
The highest monster he’d hunted until now was 4-Star.
He had never even considered fighting anything above 4-Star with his current stats, so tension began to surge through Sindae’s body.
The moment Sindae slowly drew his longsword, the Other Wolf took it as a signal and lunged at him once more.
Sindae was startled by its speed beyond his expectations, but only for a brief moment.
He blocked the Other Wolf’s claw, slashing down at him, with his longsword.
‘It’s heavy…’
He couldn’t understand how such power could come from a light frame, but again, only briefly.
Sindae looked at his arm, which had begun to go numb from the exchange just now, and let out a sigh internally.
‘If I fight now, I lose, one hundred percent.’
He was being pushed back by stats befitting a 5-Star monster.
He took out Ogre jerky and Troll jerky and hastily stuffed them into his mouth.
Buffs appeared the moment he consumed them.
Sindae smirked at the Other Wolf, which seemed slightly surprised by his sudden change.
“Hey, hey, I haven’t finished eating yet.”
Sindae had recently learned that there was no limit to the buffs gained from eating meat.
He proceeded to take out various kinds of jerky and began stuffing them into his mouth.
“I’ll fight you after I finish all of this.”
***
“Wh… What the hell is that?”
Gu Sincheol, who rarely got surprised by anything.
He watched in astonishment at the changes in Sindae each time he consumed something that looked like jerky.
‘Isn’t this just like the monsters…’
In those changes, Gu Sincheol detected the auras of the monsters they had fought so far.
As if confirming his prediction, he could see Sindae taking the Other Wolf’s attacks head-on without any trouble—attacks that Sindae had struggled to block and avoid until just moments ago.
“This isn’t something I expected either…”
Cha Yerin, who was beside him, also stroked her chin with a straight face, seemingly surprised, as she looked at Sindae.
‘So that’s why he ate monster meat…’
Cha Yerin recalled the sight of him eating Griffin meat when they first met.
She didn’t know what his unique skill was, but it was clear that it absorbed monster traits.
“Interesting…”
The thought of a human being able to display the characteristics of some monsters she knew crossed her mind, and Cha Yerin smiled as if intrigued.
“Should we go save him for now? It’d be a waste if he died.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
Cha Yerin was about to ask what he meant by that.
But in that instant, her eyes went wide at the sight of Sindae’s sword cutting off the Other Wolf’s foreleg.
“Th… That guy can hunt a 5-Star monster?”
“It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?”
Gu Sincheol watched with interest.
Before long, Sindae’s shout as he thrust his sword toward the Other Wolf’s heart reached them.
“This time it’s your heart, you bastard!!!”
“…Did he just say heart?”
“Th… That seems to be the case?”
Gu Sincheol and Cha Yerin couldn’t close their mouths as they watched Sindae shouting with a triumphant grin.
Gu Sincheol, coming to his senses first, raised the corner of his mouth and looked at Cha Yerin.
“You’ve brought quite the extraordinary one this time. An Irregular, no less… Most of them are discovered by the Association first, you know.”
“I just got lucky, that’s all.”
Gu Sincheol recalled that the vast majority of known Irregulars had joined the Association.
He felt that the heavens themselves had aided Ares by allowing them to discover Sindae now.
“We have to recruit him. I’ll apologize for today, so bring him to the guild when you’re done.”
Cha Yerin was surprised by those words telling her to bring him to the guild.
She had merely intended to introduce an interesting Awakened to Gu Sincheol; she had never imagined that Gu Sincheol himself would personally step forward to recruit him.
“Is this something that requires you to step in?”
To her knowledge, the only recruitment offer Gu Sincheol had personally made was to ‘that man,’ an S-Rank Awakened who was now the leader of a different guild, so Cha Yerin spoke in a surprised voice.
Gu Sincheol glanced back at her for a moment and simply scoffed.
“No.”
Cha Yerin had thought he was just being capricious for a moment. As she shook her head to dismiss the thought, Gu Sincheol muttered softly to her.
“He’s beyond that…”
“What?!”
Cha Yerin was shocked by Gu Sincheol’s words.
***
“Huh! This is an Other Wolf! Mr. Bak Sindae, are you injured anywhere?!”
An employee of Ares Guild, who had been inspecting the items Sindae had butchered, cried out in surprise upon discovering an Other Wolf among the butchering targets.
“Yes… Well, for now…”
‘I need to get my hands on Ogre and Troll meat somehow soon…’
The Ogre’s high defense and the Troll’s regenerative power.
Without these two, hunting an Other Wolf would have been absolutely impossible.
It was a hunt made possible because, befitting monsters of 6-Star rank, they nullified the majority of the 5-Star Other Wolf’s attacks.
Sindae smirked as he thought of the +5 Agility stat he had obtained from the Other Wolf.
‘Does this mean that if I invest everything, even 5-Star is possible now…’
Excluding the Ogre and Troll meat he had mainly consumed during the hunt, the types of meat he had eaten totaled five.
The majority were buffs focused on defense and stamina.
‘I have to stack a total of seven buffs to hunt a 5-Star monster…’
Sindae stroked his chin, lost in thought for a moment.
He soon smirked.
‘I’ve improved a lot.’
5-Star was the domain of rankers.
Sin Dae felt proud of himself for having managed to set even one foot into that realm, if only for a moment.
“I’ll report this to the guild for now. You’ll probably be able to receive a reward.”
“Is that so?”
Since word that scraps had come out of Ares Guild couldn’t be allowed to leak, they would surely hand him a large sum of money under the guise of compensation.
“No, no, there’s no need to report it. I’ll handle it myself.”
“V… Vice President?!”
“Ms. Cha Yerin?”
The Ares Guild employee was surprised by Cha Yerin’s sudden appearance.
Cha Yerin merely smiled at him.
“I’m going to take him with me, but he can handle the rest himself, can’t he?”
“Ah… yes… y-yes! Understood!”
As Cha Yerin began leading Sindae out toward the dungeon entrance, the Ares Guild employee hurriedly nodded his head.
‘Is she trying to recruit that man?’
Seeing the Vice President personally stepping in to recruit him, the Ares Guild employee gazed at Sindae’s retreating figure with a look full of envy.
“Phew… He must be an Awakened of A-Rank or higher.”
The Ares Guild employee, who had mistaken Sindae for an A-Rank Awakened, couldn’t help but let out a deep sigh of envy.
***
“Get in beside me!”
“Where are we going?”
He was momentarily surprised by the luxury sports car that was Cha Yerin’s.
Sindae asked her as she naturally tried to let him in, and she simply smiled.
“Are you worried I’ll eat you or something?”
“No… it’s not that, but…”
Cha Yerin looked at Sindae, whose face had turned slightly red, as if amused.
She merely smiled and opened the car door for him.
“There’s compensation for what happened today, and I have a proposal to make, so let’s go somewhere together.”
“A proposal?”
Sindae had thought that by compensation, she meant buying him luxury clothes worth tens of millions of won like last time.
However, at the unfamiliar word “proposal,” he tilted his head as he got in the car.
“That’s right, a proposal. No, you should think you hit the lottery. This is an opportunity you won’t get even once in your whole life!”
“What kind of proposal is it that…”
Sindae asked her, but she merely scoffed and started the car as if telling him to wait and see.
‘What the hell kind of proposal is it…’
The car sped off toward its destination, and before long, Sindae stared at where they had arrived, his eyes going wide.
“Huh… where is this?”
The Oseong Tower, which had once been called the tallest building in the Republic of Korea.
But as the flag of Ares Guild fluttering on the rooftop showed, it had been used as the guild building of Ares Guild for some time now.
“The Vice President is entering.”
Sin Dae was surprised that even the security guard standing watch at the entrance was an Awakened.
When he followed her inside, the sight of hundreds of Awakened greeting her in turn made Sindae shrink back.
“Hey, hey, hey, relax. Anyone seeing you would think you’re being arrested.”
“It’s not that, but…”
Hundreds of famous Awakened from Ares Guild were looking at Sindae beside Cha Yerin with curious eyes, doubling his discomfort.
He couldn’t help but let out a deep sigh inwardly.
‘I want to go home quickly…’
While riding the VIP-only elevator up and lost in various thoughts, Cha Yerin suddenly looked at Sindae as if something had come to mind.
“By the way, why didn’t you wear the clothes I bought you today? That coat I got you really suited you.”
Sin Dae couldn’t help but sigh internally at her somewhat disappointed gaze.
‘I need to get that repaired quickly.’
The coat Cha Yerin had bought had become rags when he entered the trap-type dungeon last time.
Hiding that fact, Sin Dae simply smirked.
“If I wear clothes like that while working, they’ll get ruined.”
“Really? I wear mine all the time, though?”
She looked at Sin Dae as if she couldn’t understand, but only for a moment.
Before they knew it, they had arrived at the top floor of the Ares Guild building.
‘Huh, if it’s the top floor…’
There was only one office in this massive building that took up an entire floor by itself.
Sin Dae glanced at the sign beside him and couldn’t help but open his eyes wide.
‘Ch… Chairman’s Office!?’