Chapter 4
I looked at the smoothie bottle I'd just emptied.
Swish—
The bottle vanished the moment I finished it, as if it had never been there.
I didn't know how that was possible, but I liked that it left no trace.
More importantly, something else remained.
[You have consumed Goblin Head Smoothie.]
[The user's Agility has increased.]
[Agility stat increased by 0.5.]
“Yeah, this is what I was waiting for…”
The system message appeared almost immediately after I finished the smoothie.
Thankfully, the effect was exactly as described.
“Ah… I'm overflowing with powerrr.”
I wanted to test this slight but definite growth right away, but there wasn't anything around to test it on.
Running would be too much, though.
This body had about as little stamina as its size suggested, so I didn't really want to test it with cardio like that.
As I continued to ponder,
the system message appeared again.
[Congratulations! You have cleared the quest.]
[You have acquired 5 points as a reward.]
“Ooh! Right, I had this!”
I'd forgotten.
That I'd come into this Gate I knew nothing about because of that.
“More importantly, what the hell are points?”
Well, now that I'd awakened, this was a place I should've visited at least once.
I figured I might as well get the unpleasant part over with and looked for where I could spend the points.
The points seemed different from free stat points, no matter how I looked at it.
I looked around the System Window, trying to figure out where to use them.
I checked the Status Window and the Recipe Window, but all I saw were my pathetic stats and bizarre names.
Nothing useful.
That's when it happened.
“Oh, Shop… Is this it?”
The word Shop caught my eye.
Maybe it was just a hunch, but I had a feeling this was where I could spend those points.
“Then let's give it a taste~”
When I pressed the Shop button, a blue window appeared.
ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ
Shop.
1. Skill Draw. 1 point.
2. Recipe Draw. 2 points.
3. Item Draw. 2 points.
4. Ingredient Draw. 3 points.
Remaining Points: 5
ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ
“Hey, that's a gacha shop, not a point shop!”
My encounter with the thing I'd thought was a shop had been the worst.
You called it a shop! I trusted you! I trusted youuu!!!
Could there be a bigger lie?
I glared at the Shop Window, consumed by pure rage.
“Ugh… I'll think about this later…”
I looked away again.
I could think about it after I got home.
I'd cleared the quest, after all.
I can hold it in. I can.
I had to think about what to do next.
“I need an identity… and to register as an Awakened… I should climb the Tower too?”
There was still so much to do.
Hmm… But I felt like I was forgetting something…
For now, I stood up to head home.
It suddenly occurred to me that I'd forgotten something important.
I had a feeling I shouldn't be standing around here like this.
That's when it happened.
“Hmm~ So here you are.”
Whoosh!
Grab—
“Eeeek?!”
Someone grabbed the nape of my neck from the bushes where I'd been hiding and lifted me up.
“W-who are you? Let go of me!”
I resisted as desperately as I could, but…
The gap in strength was so overwhelming that the hand holding me didn't budge at all.
“…How did a little kid like you even think to come inside a Gate…”
“W-who…?”
The hand holding me turned, and the woman's identity began to come into view.
A woman with long obsidian-black hair, dark eyes tinged with gray, and a black martial-artist's outfit.
When our eyes met, I felt a sense of déjà vu, as if I'd seen her somewhere before.
“So why did you come inside the Gate?”
“N-no, well, I got caught up in it too…”
I glanced at her warily as I answered.
“Hmm… That's strange. How'd you get caught up in a low-rank E-class dungeon like this?”
“Ahaha… I'm kind of unlucky, you see. Hehe…”
I tried to avoid her gaze as she looked at me with narrowed eyes.
I had an instinctive sense that I shouldn't reveal anything about myself.
“Ah! Lady Cheonhwa, I told you not to go on ahead!”
As if to break the tense atmosphere between us,
another woman, an Awakened, appeared behind her, shouting.
But that wasn't what mattered.
‘Oh~ So it was Lady Cheonhwa~’
…
‘…Oh, hell, I'm screwed.’
Cheonhwa.
A Chinese Awakened.
A figure said to be called the Heavenly Demon in Awakened martial arts circles.
And an S-rank Awakened recognized across the world.
In short, all it would take was a flick of her finger
to pop my head off like a bottle cap.
But I remembered reading somewhere that she'd vanished because of some internal conflict in China…
Why would she go out of her way to come here…?
I had no idea why someone like her was here.
Anyway, that was beside the point.
Read the room…
For now, reading the room and getting through this was probably my best bet.
“Huh? You found her already?”
“Yeah. I don't know how she made it this far inside, though.”
“Looks like she was lucky enough to avoid all the goblin packs.”
The two of them chatted among themselves, leaving me out of it.
They seemed off guard, but the hand gripping the nape of my neck showed no sign of loosening.
‘L-let me go…’
I was trying to find some way to escape, but I couldn't see one.
I must've been watching them warily for a while.
The woman who'd been glancing at me from behind Cheonhwa came over.
Whisk—
“Waaah…”
In an instant, the woman pulled off my hood and began examining me closely, as if trying to figure out who I was.
“Oh my… Are you from overseas?”
“It's really rare to see someone who looks like you in Korea. You're so pretty…”
It was the first time in my life anyone had called me pretty.
For me, someone who'd lived my whole life as a man, the word felt incredibly strange.
“Ahem. Where are you from?”
“…I'm Korean.”
“…You are?”
I felt like my odds of escaping had just gone up.
She seemed more scatterbrained than I'd expected, so I might be able to fool her.
“Well, now that we've rescued the kid, let's head outside.”
“Agreed.”
Just as I was trying to keep a low profile and eavesdrop on the two of them,
Grab—
“Uwaaah!”
The hand holding me moved up.
It changed from gripping me by the nape like a cat to slinging me over her shoulder.
“Hold on tight. You might fall.”
“Huh?”
What did that mean?
I might fall?
As I tilted my head in confusion,
Tap—
“Waaaaah!”
Cheonhwa, who had me slung over her shoulder, leaped forward and started running at an incredible speed.
‘Aaaagh! You crazy woman! I'm gonna die, I'm gonna dieee!’
I let out something like a dying scream—though only in my head.
It felt like every drop of blood was being drained from my body.
Even a roller coaster seemed less scary than this.
“We've arrived.”
‘Ugh… The world is spinning…’
It felt like I'd been put through that for ages.
After she set me down, the world seemed to have turned upside down.
‘I'm never getting involved with her again…’
Having experienced it firsthand, I understood
what it was like to get involved with a real ‘monster’ like her.
“Ah, Yunha, you're here.”
As I struggled with the sensation of the world spinning around me, a person in a black suit approached the Gate.
“I'm glad you managed to rescue her safely.”
“Yeah. I rescued her while someone was leisurely having a cup of coffee.”
“Ahaha… Well, that's…”
Hmm, do I feel a little like a cat someone picked up off the street?
The way this woman named Yunha spoke made it sound like she'd rescued a cat in danger while passing by.
If so, maybe it'd be easier to get away.
While the two of them talked, I started racking my brain for a way to escape.
That's when the name tag on the man's suit caught my eye.
[Aenghwa Affiliation: Park Jinwook]
‘Aenghwa…? I thought they were with the Association, but they're a guild?’
Aenghwa.
One of Korea's three major guilds, and a major name that always came up in discussions of the strongest guild.
I didn't know why such a huge guild was with Cheonhwa, but it wasn't my business.
‘Tsk, this looks like it'll be a real pain if I get mixed up in it…’
It was obvious at a glance that getting involved would be trouble.
The news had recently been reporting a rise in crimes committed by illegal Awakeners.
And on the Gallery, public opinion of illegal Awakeners had fallen to rock bottom.
On top of that, I had no ID or Awakened Certificate, and even my gender had changed, so I had nothing to prove who I was.
‘…At least they don't seem suspicious of me at all?’
The one bit of good news in this worst-case scenario.
They weren't restraining or questioning me. They really were treating me like a cat they'd picked up.
I didn't know if it was because of my innocent, middle-school-girl appearance or because they were a powerful guild capable of handling any situation.
But judging by the reactions Cheonhwa and Yunha had shown earlier, they didn't seem to suspect me very strongly.
Gulp—
‘Right, let's give it a shot… It's better than just standing here.’
I suppressed my rising nerves as much as I could and casually approached Cheonhwa, who was standing apart from the others.
“Um… Excuse me…”
“…What is it?”
Cheonhwa looked puzzled as I suddenly approached and spoke to her.
I was a little—no, a lot—nervous standing before someone recognized as one of the world's strongest, but I steeled myself with the determination to get out of here and go home.
Then I looked at her with the most innocent eyes I could manage and began to speak.
“I-I, um… My parents are waiting for me, so I think I should go…”
“……”
I even put on a coy act I'd never dreamed of trying when I was a man, and looked at her pitifully, like a soaked puppy.
It felt like something inside me was snapping, but that wasn't important right now.
‘Come on, say something…!’
I'd swallowed my pride and begged her with all the estrogen I could muster, but Cheonhwa sat there utterly silent, showing no reaction.
She seemed to have a knack for making people uneasy by leaving them to wonder what she was thinking.
Just then.
“Well, fine. I suppose it won't be a problem. Go on home.”
“Yes!”
Maybe my efforts hadn't been in vain, because she gave me permission to go home.
‘R-run for it!’
I turned toward home as naturally as I could and started walking.
I wondered if I should run in case they tried to stop me, but the moment I started running, they'd probably get even more suspicious.
I walked for about fifteen minutes.
“Phew… I should be out of sight by now, right?”
At last, I was free of that damn Gate.