Chapter 7
The pet shop was finally quiet after the woman's screams died down and the storm-like consultation ended.
The heavy silence that followed felt utterly at odds with the commotion just moments ago.
“……”
“……”
…I had gone way too hard from the very first meeting, all in the name of a consultation.
No, honestly, I had only stated the facts, but it ended up feeling like I had beaten her senseless.
‘……Did I go too far…?’
Her reaction was completely different from Hunter Lee Yujin's.
Hunter Lee Yujin had found it fascinating and enjoyed the experience as though she had come for a fortune-telling session, but every one of my words seemed to strike Hunter Yeon Harim with crushing force, leaving her in agony.
Maybe the difference wasn't so much a matter of personality as…
‘The difference in an Awakened person's experience and rank.’
Hunter Lee Yujin was only C-Rank and had awakened relatively recently, so each of my words had helped her recognize problems she hadn't even been aware of or discover room for improvement, whereas…
Hunter Yeon Harim had already identified most of the problems I mentioned herself. But since she had known about them and still been unable to correct them for so long, she had reacted that way.
A wall that effort alone couldn't overcome.
‘……As expected of an A-Rank, she seems to have spent a lot of time reflecting on herself.’
A-Rank Hunters who had reached their limits weren't all that rare in today's Hunter society. In fact, most first-generation Hunters had already reached their growth limits.
Hunter Yeon Harim's case could be considered perfectly ordinary.
Anyway… for some people, simply listing information based on my Customer Window could be an act of violence.
After being dazed for a while, Yeon Harim seemed to regain her composure. She brushed back her swaying hair and spoke.
“Ahem… I made quite a spectacle of myself.”
It was hard to believe she was the same person who had looked like she was about to cry just moments ago. She now appeared elegant and self-assured.
As expected, the Guild Master of a guild was something else.
“……I should be the one apologizing.”
I hadn't expected her reaction to be so intense.
She had practically convulsed when I mentioned Hunter Baek Seol-ah in particular.
‘……Was Hunter Baek Seol-ah more on her mind than I expected…?’
Baek Seol-ah, the Guild Master of Dongbaek and an A-Rank Hunter.
People generally cast Yeon Harim and Baek Seol-ah as rivals, but since they didn't have many points of contact, I had assumed she wouldn't care that much. Apparently, I had been wrong.
‘Well… the rivalry between them has been falling apart in various ways lately….’
Just look at the Korean Hunter Gallery from yesterday…
【 Korean Hunter Gallery 】
[ Poll ] Dongbaek Baek Seol-ah vs. Moonshadow Yeon Harim: Who's Better?
Author : 꼬꼬댁꼬꼬
A showdown between Korea's representative beauty Hunters, yeah. Vote away.
(Poll Results)
Yeon Harim 29%
Baek Seol-ah 66%
Draw 5%
[ Comments ]
ㅇㅇ (175.223) : Baek Seol-ah has more skill in the bag, bwaaaang lol
└ 부기부걱스 : Hey;; Even if you're anonymous, watch yourself. You'll get doxxed and ruined;;;
제제제트 : Hmm… They do get compared as rivals a lot, but whether you look at guild rankings or actual results, Baek Seol-ah seems to be in better form lately.
ㅇㅇ (211.235) : Wow, look at that turnout. Yeon Harim got absolutely crushed lol
└ 연하연하 : Honestly, I think even that 29% was just fan loyalty lol. Our Harim isn't that bad.
‘……If Hunter Yeon Harim is the type to search her own name on community sites, this must be brutal.’
There weren't just one or two posts like that.
In the community, “Yeon Harim < Baek Seol-ah” was practically becoming official consensus.
That was why Baek Seol-ah, another A-Rank Hunter and Guild Master, must have been Yeon Harim's trigger.
I understood.
I felt bad for bringing up Baek Seol-ah…
‘Hunter Yeon Harim seems rather pitiful when I look at it this way….’
She probably hadn't wanted to be part of a rivalry in the first place. The media had simply forced the two of them into one because they shared the traits of being beautiful, A-Rank Hunters, and Guild Masters.
The public had created a rivalry between two beautiful Hunters, but reality was far from kind.
An unwanted rivalry… The gap widening as time passed…
And so, having settled into the position of perennial runner-up, Yeon Harim could be called the second-place girl.
That was how Yeon Harim came to occupy the position of perennial runner-up… In other words, she was the second-place girl.
‘Runner-Up Harim….’
The wording fit her so perfectly that I couldn't help but shed a tear inwardly.
Drip
I looked at Hunter Yeon Harim with pity in my eyes, but perhaps the shock of the consultation hadn't completely faded yet, because she couldn't meet my gaze.
“…Alchemist Yoo Hyun. Your insight really is extraordinary… You truly are exactly as the information described. To pinpoint my information in such detail through nothing but a consultation….”
“……Well… It's my specialty.”
At my words, Yeon Harim hesitated for a moment as though thinking, then opened her mouth.
“…Then… would it be possible for me to purchase a custom-made pet, too?”
Perhaps the consultation had shocked her quite a bit, because she now seemed interested in commissioning a custom-made pet.
‘A custom-made pet for an A-Rank Hunter….’
With the magic-control performance of my current incubator, I couldn't cultivate magic beasts with magic cores higher than D-Rank.
Once the used incubator I had ordered recently arrived at the shop, I would be able to handle up to C-Rank. But Hunter Yeon Harim was A-Rank.
A C-Rank magic beast wouldn't normally be much help to an A-Rank Hunter, but…
‘Things are different with my ability.’
The EX-Rank Magic Beast Alchemist trait defied common sense.
The enhanced E-Rank Rune Turtle had withstood multiple attacks from a B-Rank variant, and the D-Rank Silphid had made an enormous contribution to eliminating C-Rank minor mobs.
If so, the C-Rank magic beast I created should also be able to help an A-Rank Hunter despite the difference in rank.
‘And the most important thing isn't its rank, but making up for Hunter Yeon Harim's weaknesses.’
A rank was just a rank.
In my opinion, a pet's value was determined less by the rank of its magic core than by how well it matched its owner.
Even a C-Rank pet could outperform any piece of equipment if it made up for an A-Rank Hunter's shortcomings and made her strengths stand out even more.
But before I took on the custom-made pet commission…
There was one question I absolutely had to ask.
“Hunter Yeon Harim. You're hiding something, aren't you?”
“…What? What do you mean…?”
She was playing innocent, but I was certain she was hiding something.
The Customer Window I had checked for Yeon Harim read as follows.
[ Name 》 Yeon Harim ]
[ Race 》 Human ]
[ Awakened Rank 》 A-Rank ]
[ Position 》 Melee Damage Dealer and Sub-Tank ]
[ Combat Tendency 》 Prefers counterattacking after receiving the opponent's attacks. Prefers short hit-and-run engagements. ]
[ Points for Improvement 》 Tends to put too much force into her attacks, resulting in poor balance. Her physical enhancement ability is weak compared to her amount of magic power. She appears to need an excellent support capable of making up for her poor physical build. ]
Her position put her in the damage-bruiser category, but her actual combat tendencies centered on counters and hit-and-run tactics.
Of course, hit-and-run was a good tactic.
A damage bruiser could use hit-and-run tactics, too.
But Yeon Harim primarily fought with counters.
In other words, she counterattacked even at the cost of pulling aggro away from the tank. I suspected that was why the Sub-Tank position had also appeared in her profile.
What was this dissonance?
‘Hmm… She's clearly outstanding, but something about her direction feels ambiguous….’
There was something fundamentally wrong with her status window.
I used everything I had learned from the consultation and the Customer Window to reason it out.
‘Let's think….’
She had a tendency to squeeze out too much strength and lose her center of gravity.
Why was that?
The answer was obvious.
‘Because she lacks offensive power.’
That was why she preferred a combat style centered around using the opponent's strength against them through counters.
Then why did she use hit-and-run tactics?
‘……Because she's squishy.’
Normally, the tank handled aggro, so melee damage dealers generally locked into siege mode and dealt damage, didn't they…?
Even if a tank made a mistake and aggro shifted to them, a melee damage dealer's defenses made it easy enough to hold out until the tank drew the aggro back.
So unless they were pulling back because an area attack was coming in, constantly striking and retreating wasn't exactly normal.
In other words, Hunter Yeon Harim's bizarre combat style had formed because she lacked both damage and durability.
But that was strange.
She was A-Rank and had a long career, yet her physical enhancement ability was weak?
‘…She's compensating for her inadequate stats purely with combat sense.’
I could think of a few possible causes, but the most likely one was…
“Hunter Yeon Harim. You have another trait, don't you?”
“……!!”
She flinched at my words.
“I knew it….”
“H-How did you know that, too…?”
She looked even more shocked than she had during the consultation using the Customer Window.
“It seems that Hunters with multiple traits sometimes have a lower ability ceiling than Hunters with only one trait.”
Could it be described as a constitutional issue?
There were statistics showing that when a person's body had multiple magic circuits, their abilities grew more slowly and reached a lower ceiling than those with a single trait.
Of course, having more traits was always an advantage.
The ceiling was lower only when comparing individual traits. Once synergy between traits was taken into account, Hunters with more traits had a higher overall ceiling.
“Hunter Yeon Harim, you probably have another trait besides the physical enhancement trait that's fundamental to melee damage dealers.”
Hunters had greater physical abilities than ordinary people.
And among Hunters, melee classes possessed even more powerful physical abilities because of their traits.
The fact that her abilities weren't suited to an A-Rank meant that some outlet was diverting her power elsewhere.
“……”
“Hunter Yeon Harim, I need to know what that trait is if I'm going to create a custom-made pet for you.”
Hunter Yeon Harim fell silent.
‘……Could it be some kind of Necromancer trait, the type with the worst public reputation?’
Ethically problematic traits occasionally manifested in Awakened people… Surely Hunter Yeon Harim didn't have one, too…?
“…Hunter Yeon Harim? If it's truly impossible for you to tell me, we can skip it.”
After thinking for a long time, she finally opened her mouth.
“……If you make the pet.”
“…?”
“If you make the custom-made pet, it will definitely solve the problem, right?”
……How could I solve a problem when I didn't even know what it was in the first place?
But she seemed to have made up her mind, so I offered her the best answer I could.
“Once you have the pet, I promise things will definitely improve compared to before.”
My words seemed to help her make up her mind.
“Sigh… I never thought I'd show something like this to someone I met for the first time today. The cameras can see us here, so come farther inside.”
I followed her toward a blind spot outside the CCTV's view.
“As you said, I do have one more trait. However… it's not a trait I can show in front of other people. I'll only show it for a moment, so don't look below my neck. If your eyes leave mine, I'll stab you.”
‘……Oof, that's intense.’
What on earth could it be?
“……If you hate showing it that much, you could just explain it verbally.”
“No. Seeing the phenomenon with your own eyes is the most certain way to understand it.”
That was true. There was definitely a difference between merely hearing an explanation and seeing something firsthand.
In a corner of the shop hidden from the CCTV…
I stared at Hunter Yeon Harim as though we were having a staring contest, and she used her ability.
Her body seemed to shine like a prism before turning semi-transparent…
Sssrrk-
I heard the sound of some kind of fabric sliding down.
The sound made me break out in a cold sweat.
“……No way.”
“…That's right. When I enter this state, my clothes come off.”
I desperately resisted letting my eyes drift downward as I asked a question.
“……Is there no special equipment that keeps your clothes from coming off?”
“……Unfortunately, no equipment can keep up with this phenomenon yet.”
Her body… well, I was only looking at her face… but on closer inspection, this wasn't ordinary spirit-form.
‘……Hmm, this is….’
“It's etherization, isn't it?”
“…You know about it?”
Of course I did. Her condition had properties similar to the Ether Cat model that had recently become a hot topic on overseas alchemist forums.
“…Then this really is a problem that current equipment can't cover.”
Ether itself was an almost entirely unexplored field.
If one thing had been discovered, it was that ether possessed extremely unusual properties and, in its normal state, was almost entirely unaffected by the material realm.
‘I never thought humans could become etherized, too….’
Anyway, thanks to this, I had found a clue.
Having finished observing her trait, I turned away from her and spoke.
“……By the way, something occurred to me.”
“What is it?”
“How did you manage to anchor yourself to the horizontal coordinate system?”
I had always wondered how a spirit-form life-form unaffected by gravity could avoid being flung off into outer space.
*
Yeon Harim trudged back to the guild building with heavy steps.
“Sigh… That one consultation drained me dry… Her insight and everything… She's definitely no ordinary person.”
Yeon Harim wanted nothing more than to get off work and rest.
When Yeon Harim returned to the guild building, her secretary, Cynthia, came out to meet her.
“You're back? How did the contract go?”
“Oh, right… The contract….”
She had definitely gone there over the contract, but the conversation had veered off in a strange direction along the way.
And of all things, Baek Seol-ah had come up, too….
Cynthia questioned Yeon Harim with an incredulous look at her reaction.
“No… then what on earth did you go all the way there to do, only to return now? And why is your outfit so disheveled? I made sure everything was perfectly set before you left!!”
“As we talked, he said he'd make me a custom-made pet… Somehow I ended up naked… No… I should get off work and rest….”
“……”
At Yeon Harim's unfiltered, jumbled words, Cynthia's brain momentarily stopped.
“Uh…?”