Chapter 38
#38. Gate (3)
For a moment, Choi Hye-na wondered if there was something wrong with her ears.
“...What?”
“From now on, don't call me ‘you’ or ‘hey.’ Call me honey instead.”
The moment she saw Kang Hyeon-woo's face beaming with amusement, her stomach churned.
“Have you finally lost your mind? Just because you're my benefactor, do you think I'm a pushover?”
“Then starve.”
Ha! Threatening her with food? As the only heir of the Seongbuk Choi clan, she had trained herself in restraint, so such a cheap threat would never work on her.
“How petty...!”
That would have been a fine thing to say if she weren't so hungry.
It definitely didn't feel as though much time had passed since dinner, yet her stomach was clamoring for food.
She felt acid rising in her throat and her stomach shrinking from hunger, while that damned bastard was even cooking ramen beside her.
“...Gulp.”
The smell of ramen was driving her insane.
“Looks like you want some?”
As he deliberately lifted the perfectly al dente noodles with his chopsticks to show her, Choi Hye-na felt something snap inside her.
“I'm not eating! I said I'm not eating!! You eat it all, you pig...”
At that moment, Kang Hyeon-woo came into view after throwing the ramen far away and rushing toward her.
‘W-Was he really that o-offended by being called a p-pig...??’
The force of his approach was so intense that she instinctively squeezed her eyes shut.
“Dodge!!!”
“...Huh?”
KABOOM!! A giant, grotesque arm tore through the cloth blocking the cave entrance and crashed down on Choi Hye-na.
‘I'm too late!’
Realizing that the spell would not activate in time, Kang Hyeon-woo threw away his wand.
In the brief instant that lasted less than 0.1 seconds, he drew a sword from his inventory.
Mana surged violently through the hand gripping the sword's hilt.
[Imperial Army's Magic Sword]
[Rank: Rare]
[Its cutting power increases when infused with mana]
He poured most of his mana into the sword, increasing its cutting power.
It wouldn't have enough power to cut through diamond, given its Rare rank and his limited mana, but it was enough to sever the monster's arm.
“Hup!”
Schlick—Blood sprayed from the monster's cleanly severed hand and wrist.
-GRAAAAAAAH!!!
Ignoring the monster's shriek of agony, Kang Hyeon-woo pulled Choi Hye-na into his arms and leaped out of the cave.
Outside, a monster covered in white fur clutched its severed wrist and writhed in agony. It looked like a yeti.
The giant creature looked at least four meters tall, but the shock lasted only a moment. Seeing it writhe in pain with its back exposed, Kang Hyeon-woo realized this was his chance.
He set Choi Hye-na down on the snow and quickly ran toward it.
He gathered mana in his toes and thighs to enhance his jumping power, then drove his sword into the back of its neck.
Thunk—The blade went in more easily than expected.
But that wasn't the end.
Even without a wand, which slowed his spellcasting, it still took less than two seconds.
[Flame Circle]
KABOOM!! Flames erupted at the tip of the blade, spinning violently and exploding the yeti's neck.
The headless body dropped to its knees and collapsed.
In an instant, the pure-white snowfield was drenched in dark red blood.
“...What the hell is that?”
It was a monster I'd never seen before.
All I knew about monsters was the fragmentary knowledge taught at school and the contents of a few popular posts on online forums.
“W-White Yeti...”
With her red hair covered in white snow, Choi Hye-na stared at the monster's corpse with a pale face.
“White Yeti?”
“...It's a C-rank monster.”
The moment I heard that, an uncontrollable word rose from deep in my gut.
“...Fuck.”
Ding-
[White Yeti defeated]
[First Kill Reward: 200 Coins]
We seemed to have come fairly deep, but considering the size of an ordinary Gate, this was still near the entrance.
The fact that a C-rank monster had appeared here meant that this Gate was at least C+ rank.
If we were unlucky, it could even be B-rank.
“...I used too much mana.”
Even though it wasn't an elite specimen, I had thought the blade was cutting far too easily against a C-rank monster. As expected, I must have squeezed out more mana than I realized.
Moreover, the mana poured into Flame Circle had been considerable as well.
“Did you bring a wand or staff?”
“...No.”
Of course, anyone who brought something like that to a blind date would be strange.
Of course, lacking equipment didn't reduce a mage to a useless parasite, but it was undeniable that their overall magical power and casting speed fell.
In actual combat, where a difference of 0.1 seconds could decide whether you lived or died, that was a fatal problem.
“Use this, at least.”
I handed Choi Hye-na the wooden wand and magic ring I had been using.
“Then what about you...?”
“Someone has to stand on the front line. If we're both in the back, who's going to draw the monsters' aggro?”
No matter how strong a mage was, they were ultimately a backline class.
Continuing to hunt monsters without a frontline was like building a sandcastle that could collapse at any moment.
At least Choi Hye-na, a third-circle mage, would have greater firepower than me, so I was the one who should stand on the front line.
“What kind of mage stands on the front line!”
“Then will you do it?”
“That's...”
If we had a mage talented in alchemy or summoning, things would have been much easier.
We could simply put a golem or familiar on the front line.
But Choi Hye-na's family was famous for its generations-long talent in elemental magic, particularly fire magic, while I had not learned a single thing about summoning magic yet.
“I'm better suited than you, so quit whining and support me with magic from the back.”
The hideout we'd gone to all that trouble to find was no longer habitable because of the monster's blood. It was unfortunate, but we had to take only the tent and move on.
“And put this on before we go.”
“Huh?”
I tossed the dry fur coat to Choi Hye-na.
I still couldn't understand how the sole heir of the Seongbuk Choi clan, famous for fire magic, could be more vulnerable to the cold than I was, but we had no time to leisurely hear the circumstances behind it.
For now, it would be fortunate if she didn't collapse from the cold along the way.
“...Thanks.”
“If you're grateful, call me honey like I told you.”
“Get lost.”
***
After encountering the White Yeti, we had two goals.
One was to find a cave deep enough to hole up in, with a narrow entrance we could block.
The other was to clear the monsters in a certain area and turn it into a kind of safe zone.
“White Yetis are pack monsters. We were lucky there seemed to be only one earlier, but they normally form packs of anywhere from ten to thirty.”
Choi Hye-na's explanation sent our plan of turning the area where we'd hunted the White Yeti into a safe zone out the window.
Trying to turn a place that might contain more than twenty C-rank monsters into a safe zone was far too reckless.
In the end, we had no choice but to head toward the starting point where we'd first regained consciousness after entering the Gate.
“It's fucking cold.”
Haa...
The air was cold enough to make my teeth ache, rushing in with every breath.
In six days, the Gate's entrance would open at the starting point.
We had to escape the moment a Gate Break occurred, so making a shelter near there would have been ideal. But there was no suitable place in this empty snowfield, and we had no idea how many monsters might converge there to cross over to Earth.
It was an insane choice by any reasonable standard, but even knowing that, we had to turn back toward the entrance.
First, the closer we got to the core inside a Gate, the stronger the monsters became. Conversely, relatively weak monsters lived around the starting point.
Now that we knew this was a Gate of at least C+ rank, we had to establish ourselves near the starting point if we wanted to avoid encountering a miniboss-level monster.
'For now, we should stay around there, then move our shelter again when there are only a day or two left.'
If we encountered a monster beyond what we could handle, we couldn't guarantee that either of us would survive.
“...Or so I thought.”
What appeared before us as we crossed the snowfield amid a fierce blizzard was a bear.
It was enormous beyond comparison to an ordinary bear.
In addition to its savage appearance, its vicious claws were sharp enough to tear my body into dozens of pieces.
BOOM!
Without even giving us time to exchange greetings, the giant bear swung its claws at me.
Thanks to dodging quickly, I escaped unharmed, but the impact left a deep gouge in the snow.
“It's an Ice Bear!”
“What rank?!”
“C-rank!”
What, another C-rank?
‘Should I at least take comfort in the fact that it isn't C+?’
It was no comfort at all.
The fact that a C-rank monster had appeared now, with the starting point growing closer, meant that this Gate might well be B-rank too.
Fuck.
“I'll draw its aggro, so get your magic ready!”
I charged toward the Ice Bear. Close combat was dangerous, but if Choi Hye-na got caught up in it, the situation could become even more dangerous.
The straight sword infused with mana was emitting a blue glow, but I couldn't expect the same cutting power as before.
A C-rank monster was still too much for someone at my level.
Even though all the monsters I had faced in the underground dungeon had been elite specimens, they had ultimately been around C- rank.
If I'd been alone, I probably wouldn't have been able to avoid struggling against the Ice Bear. Even more so if it didn't leave an opening like the Yeti had.
The distance between me and the Ice Bear steadily closed. Apparently unwilling to leave me alone, it charged at me much faster than I expected, forcing me to roll once across the snow to evade it.
I immediately regained my stance and slashed at the Ice Bear's hind leg.
Slash!
‘Fuck.’
It was shallow.
The Ice Bear writhed at the searing pain in its hind leg, then slammed its forepaw down at me with murderous eyes.
In a situation where a clumsy dodge could leave me torn apart by its claws, I abandoned the option of dodging from the start.
BAM! I blocked the Ice Bear's claws with the flat of my blade.
‘Ngh...!!’
The tremendous impact made my head ring. If I hadn't reinforced my entire body with mana beforehand, something would certainly have broken.
“N-Now!! Shoot, quick!!”
A tremendous wave of mana surged from behind me—the high-powered spell created by a third-circle mage concentrating in earnest.
[Water Cannon]
KABOOM!!
The high-pressure water cannon flew forward at high speed and blew away the Ice Bear's forehead.
Thud—The Ice Bear collapsed, blood gushing from the enormous hole in its head.
[Ice Bear defeated]
[First Kill Reward: 200 Coins]
Just as with the White Yeti, the snowfield was dyed red by the dark red blood pouring from the corpse.
I collapsed onto the snow and panted heavily.
“Are you okay...?”
Choi Hye-na hurried over after seeing that.
Her face was full of concern.
“...Wasn't I supposed to be a noble?”
If things had gone according to plan, by now I should have been a member of a stable C-rank party, sitting in the back, firing off magic and getting a free ride.
But now?
I'm fighting a monster head-on with a sword?
I felt like crying at the reality that I had once again become a lowborn warrior.
If this wasn't hell, then what was?
As I was lost in self-pity, Choi Hye-na tapped me lightly.
“Why?”
“...I think we should look at that.”
But the real hell had only just begun.
In the distance, a pack of fucking enormous wolves was running toward us.