Chapter 105

Chapter 105: I Obtained the Inner Core Skill

For the restaurant, until I returned, the front-of-house staff would be handing out two cups of instant noodles per person per day, free of charge, to our patrons.

And so, the Mapo 1 dungeon raid party—the S-Rank Quartet, myself, and Bell—moved to the building via Gate Portal.

As we exited the building and headed toward the Rift—

"S-Rank Hunters!"

"The Sword Saint, Eriksson, and Santos are here too!"

"Are they going to clear the dungeon?"

"Do you need a Porter?!"

With me here, there was no need for a Porter.

As we passed the Hunters and arrived in front of the Rift, Director Jeong Jae-yong and President Lee Su-gil were waiting for us.

Director Jeong Jae-yong asked me,

"Are you ready?"

"Yes. We're ready."

"I hope all of you will clear it and return safely."

"Of course."

The President also asked us to come back safely.

Just as we were about to enter the Rift—

Someone called out to us from behind.

"Hunter An Seon-u, elder Sword Saint! Just a moment!"

Rift Management Bureau officials were restraining him.

He had a camera in his hand.

"Aren't you Reporter An Jae-hyeok?"

The elder Sword Saint recognized him.

Reporter An Jae-hyeok was quite well known in the Hunter industry.

There were a few Awakened Hunter journalists, and he was one of them.

"Yes, elder! It looks like the raid party is about to depart—before you go, could I trouble you for a photo? A historic moment like this must be recorded!"

Was this really a historic moment?

Would it be recorded in Korean Hunter history, or something like that?

The elder Sword Saint turned to me and asked,

"What should we do, Master Seon-u?"

"Hmm, shall we take it?"

"I don't mind."

"Me neither."

"Same."

"Me too..."

Since no one minded, we might as well take it.

I wouldn't mind an article going out either.

And so, we posed for a photo in front of the Rift.

I held Bell in my arms as the photo was taken.

Director Jeong Jae-yong and President Lee Su-gil discreetly stood on either side of us.

***

We entered the Rift dungeon.

"So spacious..."

Not a narrow dungeon, but an extremely massive one.

The ceiling looked about a hundred meters up.

The passages were correspondingly wide.

"It's a vast dungeon. With this much space, we may well encounter strong monsters."

"That's certainly possible."

I'd heard that the other Third Floor dungeon where the Drake had been slain was also an immensely spacious dungeon.

In any case, with so much space, even Bell looked a little flustered.

Her head turned this way and that.

"Bell, can't you find the way?"

"Whine...!"

She looked unsure.

"It's all right if you can't find it well. You'll still be faster at it than we would be. Just lead us wherever your instincts take you."

"Arf!"

And so, we set off following Bell.

One convenient thing about traveling with Bell was that she'd warn us in advance when monsters were approaching.

"Arf!"

"Combat ready!"

We gripped our weapons and readied ourselves for the monsters' attacks.

The monsters that appeared were not just one or two—it was a swarm.

'A Scarlitz swarm.'

A giant rat monster that Hunters hated with a passion.

Individually each was a mid-sized monster, but because they traveled in swarms, they were considered as dangerous as Highest-Grade Monsters.

Their sharp claws were potent, but the truly frightening part was that a bite subjected you to terrible pain for days.

Occasionally, Hunters died from it.

So you had to hunt them carefully to avoid being bitten, which made them tricky to deal with.

'Well, no one in this group is going to get bitten.'

Then—

Han Se-a stepped forward.

She raised her staff and drove it into the ground.

KRRA-CRACK!

The floor ahead froze over, and ice spikes erupted, skewering the charging Scarlitz.

Of the twenty or so, more than half were run through in an instant by the cluster of ice spikes.

"As expected of the Frozen Witch!"

At Eriksson's exclamation, Han Se-a turned and glared daggers at him.

"Witch is the nickname I hate the most! Call me the Frozen Fairy!"

"Fairy is a bit..."

The elder Sword Saint and Eriksson drew their sword and dagger respectively, easily mopping up the remaining Scarlitz.

In no time, all twenty-two Scarlitz were dispatched.

One of them Bell had taken care of.

Bell had dashed after one that the elder and Eriksson had missed, clamped her jaws on its neck, and cut off its breath.

"Bell, I told you—if a monster attacks, don't go head-to-head, dodge."

"Arf!"

Bell raised her head as if to say handling one Scarlitz was a cakewalk.

"Stop that. It's still too early. I'd have to be at least at Highest-Grade level to trust you with it."

"Arf..."

Bell deflated.

I was cautious with her precisely because she was that precious to me.

We extracted the Mid-Grade Magic Stones from the Scarlitz corpses and packed them away.

We pressed on.

Along the way, we encountered Mid-Grade and High-Grade Monsters several times.

Those monsters were easily dispatched by the S-Rank Quartet.

'It's as easy as traveling with a royal escort.'

And then, for the first time on the Third Floor, we encountered what seemed like a powerful monster.

HISSSS!

The monster bared its sharp fangs in threat.

"...A Black Blood Serpent!"

It was soft-spoken Santos who spoke up first.

'A Black Blood Serpent...?'

So it was a real monster after all.

The Black Blood Serpent, estimated to be a Highest-Grade Monster, was famous among Hunters.

The reason being that, instead of a Magic Stone, it supposedly carried something called an Inner Core inside its body.

'An Inner Core with tremendous toxicity, they say.'

And yet, consuming it was said to bring tremendous stat boosts.

Until now, the Black Blood Serpent had been slain only once, and sighted only twice.

The S-Rank Hunter Korchiff, who had slain one, was said to have consumed its Inner Core, briefly experienced a tremendous stat boost, and then rapidly died as blood erupted from the vessels all over his body.

And that was in a gathering of doctors and scholars from various fields.

They had encouraged him to eat it, saying the Inner Core had no toxic components and it was safe—and he died.

That incident was what had made the monster famous.

'What's the use of an Inner Core with incredible effects? Eat it, and you die.'

True to its name, the creature's eyes were red.

Its body was ink-black and yet shone with a sheen.

After uttering its warning hiss, the creature opened its mouth and spewed venom at us.

In an instant, Han Se-a raised an ice barrier and blocked the venom.

Amid the fight, I had a thought.

'Come to think of it... if it's a rare monster, might Acresia want to devour it?'

It had been a while since I had fed a monster to Acresia.

And I was curious what skill I'd get if I absorbed and devoured it.

"Everyone, may I absorb that Black Blood Serpent?"

"By all means."

"There's no gain to be had from slaying it anyway. Do as you like."

The Sword Saint and Eriksson agreed, and Santos and Han Se-a nodded as well.

So I was free to have the Black Blood Serpent to myself.

The elder Sword Saint drew his sword and said,

"Allow us to assist. You could take it down alone, Master Seon-u, but with a venomous monster, a hundred precautions are never enough."

He was right.

"Thank you."

And so the Black Blood Serpent hunt began.

The elder Sword Saint and Eriksson moved at blinding speed, pressing the massive Black Blood Serpent from the flanks.

From the front, Han Se-a stunned it with her ice spike skill.

In the meantime, I moved to its rear.

"Beginning absorption!"

I activated my Absorption skill on the Black Blood Serpent.

The Black Blood Serpent resisted.

"Santos, now!"

At the elder Sword Saint's shout, Santos answered,

"...Got it!"

Santos charged the Black Blood Serpent head-on, shoulder tucked behind his massive shield, and slammed into it with full force.

Its body lifted clean off the ground, and unable to resist further, the Black Blood Serpent was sucked into Acresia.

Absorption was a straightforward success.

'Having absorbed a Bone Dragon and a Lich, a Black Blood Serpent is easy work.'

Would Acresia want to devour the Black Blood Serpent, I wondered?

[Acresia covets the 'Versakion Serpent.']

Excellent.

So its real name was the Versakion Serpent.

Well, I'd let Acresia devour it.

When I gave my consent—

[Acresia devours the 'Versakion Serpent.']

[You have acquired Acresia's absorption-type skill, 'Inner Core Generation.']

Inner Core Generation...?

This seemed like an incredible skill.

I pulled up the skill info.

[Inner Core Generation: You can create an Inner Core capable of various effects. Raw consumption of the generated Inner Core may result in death, so it must be properly processed before consumption. (Skill cooldown after use: 3 months.)]

The description was vague.

Used well, it was medicine; used poorly, it was poison.

And the cooldown was a whopping three months.

'I'll have to use it carefully.'

For now, I'd hold onto it.

I gave the prospective guild members, who were asking how it went, the honest truth.

Expectant eyes turned on me.

"Apparently, if consumed wrong, it can kill you."

At that, the elder Sword Saint shrugged.

"Removing toxins is your specialty, isn't it, Master Seon-u? I'm sure you'll figure it out. Haha!"

He was betting my life on that, having too much faith in me.

Even after a team of experts across various fields had researched it and concluded it was harmless to the human body, they'd fed it to an S-Rank Hunter and killed him.

Probably even Glace Mushroom wouldn't be enough to detoxify it, would it?

In any case, this wasn't a skill to rush into testing.

After the Black Blood Serpent, we made camp inside the dungeon for the night.

Thanks to Bell's presence, we could sleep at ease.

***

The next day.

After advancing for another five hours, we reached our destination.

The Boss Room.

The entrance to a massive cavern came into view.

We did our final preparations in front of it.

"Shall we head in?"

"Let's."

The bosses of Third Floor Rifts were expected to be at least one Highest-Grade Monster, or two or more Highest-Grade Monsters.

Or possibly even a Transcendent-Grade Monster or higher.

According to the S-Rank party who had cleared that one Third Floor dungeon, their boss had been a three-headed dragon-like monster.

After slaying it, they had found a Highest-Grade Magic Stone near each of its three necks.

'In other words, it had been three Highest-Grade Monsters in a single body.'

This being the Third Floor of a Rift as well, the boss here would be no pushover either.

Soon, we set foot in the Boss Room.

Waiting for us inside was someone wholly unexpected.

"That's—"

"Gerald...?"

Waiting for us in the vast cavern was none other than Gerald.

But something was off about him.

He looked dazed, as if his soul had left him.

And behind him was another figure.

Seeing her, I was struck with shock.

"Ji-young...?"

Song Ji-young, the youngest staff member back at Pungjeong.

Her gaze was unfocused and her expression blank, but it was unmistakably Ji-young.

Why on earth was Ji-young here...?

All at once, the pieces began to click together in my head.

Gerald, head of the WPA, whom we had humiliated recently.

Ji-young, my former coworker.

And the unprecedented Third Floor Rift that had opened near my building.

This could never be a coincidence.

Someone had lured me here.

"To drag in even Ji-young, an uninvolved civilian—who are you?!"

Anger surged within me.

Just then, a sound reached my ears.

CLICK! CLACK!

From the opposite side of the cavern, someone walked toward the center.

Then came the voice.

"You're under a misapprehension. That woman cooperated with us of her own desire to become Awakened, so she's hardly an unrelated civilian."

"What did you say...?"

The owner of the voice stepped out of the shadows, her face lit by the torchlight.

My companions and I all gasped at the sight.

We had seen her face many times on TV and in news articles.

"Is that perhaps—"

"Don't tell me—the first S-Rank Hunter, Elena Misha...? She's been missing for ages."

"The Hunter who possessed the Forced Awakening skill..."

Her stats were at S-Rank level, but her skill was even more game-breaking.

She had the ability to draw out the potential of ordinary people and forcibly awaken them.

In other words, a skill that forcibly awakened those non-Awakened individuals who had the latent potential.

This woman with such transcendent ability had one day gone missing.

And now, after nearly two years of being missing, she was alive and well.

'Could Elena Misha have forcibly awakened Ji-young...?'

I could sense the distinctive aura of an Awakened on Ji-young.

"Elena Misha was alive...?"

To Eriksson's question, I shook my head.

"No—she's likely dead."

"Why...? She's standing right there alive."

"She's probably this Rift's boss. A person can't be the boss of a Rift. Proof of that—Bell has been growling at her this whole time."

From the start, Bell had been on guard against her and growling.

Just as she did when facing a strong monster.

Which meant—she was not a person.

Either a monster, or undead.