Idiot

“Is your name Eve?”

"Huh? Ah, yes…."

Kim Chaea fell deep in thought as she looked at the girl sitting in the back seat of the car. No matter how she looked at her, she didn't seem like a child who belonged in a place like this. Her pretty, neat clothes and her mature mannerisms were proof enough.

More than anything, she was just too pretty. There were some awakened Hunters whose hair color changed, but she had never seen a color like this before.

White hair with a slight blue tint. Bright sky-blue eyes, and a face so cute that those unique colors didn't look strange at all.

“Where did you live before? You're really young, yet you awakened early.”

"I-I've been living here the whole time…."

No way. It felt like there had to be some incredible backstory behind her. There was no way a girl like that had just plopped down out of the sky.

“Hey, Kim Chaea. Why do you keep picking on Eve?”

"W-What did I do?! I just asked because I was curious, okay?!"

“Do you want to interrogate her or something? Eve, if she's a pain to deal with, don't answer.”

"Huh? Ahaha... no, it's fine…."

Han Dohi's defense stopped Kim Chaea's barrage of questions, but of course Han Dohi herself had plenty she wanted to ask. Still, Eve was a child, and when they'd been chatting by message, she hadn't wanted to talk about her past.

“It'll take about an hour. If you get hungry or need to use the bathroom, tell us, okay?”

"Ah, yes..!"

Eve let out a relieved sigh at Han Dohi's consideration. Kim Chaea still looked like she had a ton she wanted to ask, but she'd answered everything she'd been asked so far. She'd been at an orphanage and then settled here, but there was no need to say that much....

“By the way, where did that eagle golem go?”

"Suri? It's probably following along nicely in the sky."

“Eagle golem? What are you talking about?”

“Didn't I tell you? I sent you a link while we were chatting on KakaoTalk last time. It's the one from that post.”

“Really?!”

Kim Chaea was surprised once again. It had just been a single shared post she'd skimmed through in her conversation with Han Dohi. It was a speculation post about the Nova Guild's newly recruited A-rank Hunter, and she had never imagined that the person in question would be this one.

“Then you're with Nova? Is it okay for you to just show up like this?”

“I told you that's just baseless speculation. This kid isn't with Nova.”

“Oh... really? Then what about the ones next to her...?”

Kim Chaea, sitting in the passenger seat, slightly turned her head to look at Eve in the back seat and the things sitting beside her.

A four-legged machine that looked like a puppy, and a Gundam-like robot that moved now and then with a clank-clank sound. I thought, despite their appearance, that she was playing with toys that were a little boyish.

“Ah, yes. These are golems too.”

“Wow, so including that eagle golem, you're controlling three at once?”

"I-I think so..?"

“That must take a lot of mana. Is it okay to keep those things running?”

That's how the profession of a familiar master works. Golem types that are made and supplied with mana, familiars that are captured and contracted with, or summoned beasts called in from other worlds—all of them consume mana to function.

Since it constantly chips away at the summoner's mental strength, or their resources, there'd be no need to keep running unnecessary golems like this unless it was combat.

"Mana...? No...? I don't really know..."

“It doesn't take mana?”

“As far as I can tell....”

“Amazing. Maybe it's a little different.”

And so they exchanged one meaningless conversation after another, before they somehow arrived in front of the entry-type gate they were supposed to go through.

* * * * *

Central Hunter Affairs Division. CHAD for short, commonly just Chad.

No need to make it complicated; it's simply a worldwide integrated hunter management agency. It gets support from countless national leaders to keep their own country's hunters from being bought off by money and slipping overseas, and as a result, it has a lot of money. There are also many hunters employed here.

Under the Hunter Basic Act proposed here, there are a number of spaces where civilian Awakeners who have not yet had their Hunter rank measured can hunt monsters.

“The open type is the one we saw then. You remember, right?”

"Yes..!"

The places where monsters appear are broadly divided into a few types... what happened yesterday, when after mana warning signs a gate suddenly opens in midair and monsters pour out indiscriminately, is called an 'open-type gate.'

Gates where a portal suddenly appears without mana warning signs and then just sits there are called 'entry-type gates,' and those work by letting monsters out when you go inside.

If nobody goes in, they disappear soon enough; if there's even a slight connection to the real world, they won't close.

Most entry-type gates with valuable contents are purchased by guilds and claimed as their property, then fixed in place with special machines developed after the Gate Incident so they won't close.

There are also cases where buildings or unique structures full of monsters suddenly appear; depending on the form, these are called 'dungeons' or 'towers,' and like entry-type gates, guilds usually buy and own them.

And finally, there's 'terrain erosion.' Instead of a gate or structure appearing, a certain area itself turns into a demonic zone, and monsters begin spawning all over the place.

A representative example is the Manchuria region. With terrain erosion, you can purify it by deploying powerful hunters, but it's an incredibly expensive job.

That's how China, including Manchuria, and North Korea and Russia, which border it, kept putting off purification work until a catastrophe happened.

Thanks to that, our northern neighbor North Korea is now almost in a critical state, and China, which has to defend a wider border region, is always scrambling just to hold the line.

If word gets out that a high-rank hunter has leaked overseas from somewhere, the Chinese government is immediately the first to be suspected. They buy hunters off with astronomical sums of money.

This place is an entry-type gate owned by the Korean Hunter Management Association, and around the entrance there is a large parking lot and a long row of general store stalls where you can buy a few consumables.

There are lots of people here and there carrying weapons like swords and bows, so you can tell at a glance that there are a lot of Awakeners.

“Alright, we're here. Get out slowly so you don't ding the door.”

"Ah, yes!"

“Hee-ya. Get the staff out of the trunk for me.”

“I gave you a ride—do you want a beating or something?”

“You've got the highest strength, don't you?”

“M-Ms. Chaea, are you a mage..?”

Kim Chaea and Han Dohi flinched for a moment at my question, then looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Pfft... Ah, seriously. 'Ms. Chaea'? What kind of kid says that.”

“Call me unnie, Eve. Did you think I was a grown-up?”

"Huh..?!"

What is this supposed to mean? I'm obviously an adult. I definitely look older than you do, don't I?!

“Hmm, maybe not now.”

But the word "unnie" just doesn't stick to my mouth. Unnie? In all my life, I think I've only ever typed the word "unnie" on a keyboard.

Stuff like, "Unnyaaaㅠㅠ퓨ㅠㅠㅠ is it just me who's uncomfortable??"

"U, uh.. Chaea unnie...."

“Aww~ That's right, Chaea unnie. Unnie isn't a mage, she's a healer. A doctor.”

"H-Healer..!"

Surprisingly, Kim Chaea was a healer by trade. In the broader world, B-rank combat jobs and C-rank healers were said to be equally in demand, which meant Kim Chaea was also a tremendous talent.

ㅡ우우웅

In Han Dohi's car trunk, out came a long staff and a single-edged sword. They seemed to be Kim Chaea's and Han Dohi's weapons, respectively.

‘No way... because she uses a dao, is she some kind of dao wielder..?’

It's a splendid sword made of gray metal with a slight purple tint. Weapons become insanely expensive starting at B-rank, and depending on the type, a C-rank weapon can already run from 3 million won to 10 million won apiece—dozens of times more.

At the very least, 100 million won. For particularly hard-to-make weapons, B-rank weapons can even climb as high as 500 million won.

If you think of A-rank as being ten times that, then taking that into account, Han Dohi's weapon is probably A-rank.

You bragged that your monthly income was in the hundreds of millions, didn't you?

"Huh? This? It's B-rank though?"

"Huh? Why? You could afford an A-rank one too, couldn't you..?"

“Hey, that was all staged. I just transferred my savings into my account and took a screenshot of the deposit record. If I were really making a hundred million a month, I'd already have retired. Eve, you're totally naive, huh?”

"Ah... I see...."

It seems that, as a private B-rank Hunter not affiliated with a guild, earning hundreds of millions a month is difficult. It made sense; you have to join a strong raid team to tackle gates where stronger monsters appear.

You don't even need to say that stronger monsters drop more expensive materials.

“Are you bullying the kid? How mean can you get.”

“What are you talking about, you're the worse one.”

When Han Dohi pressed on Kim Chaea's chest, Kim Chaea grimaced and swatted her hand away.

“Hey, hey?! What are you doing in front of a kid?!”

“Eve knows plenty already, you know?”

"Ah, ahaha..."

Han Dohi knows everything about the post I put up on the gallery. I'm so embarrassed I could die....

“Eve, don't meet women like Chaea. Want me to show you a picture of her room? Seriously, it's disgusting. Just breathing the air in there would make you sick.”

“Ah, stop it, seriously?! And Eve is a girl, what are you talking about?!”

“Eve likes girls. I know.”

"Huh..? Really, Eve..?"

In that instant, all the posts I'd put up on the gallery flashed through my mind like a life review. Arguing over the beauty rankings of female Hunters around the world, calling male Hunter fans gay, and so on....

"U-uhhh...."

“Stop teasing Eve already and let's go in. Let's finish early and go eat dinner.”

Han Dohi chuckled and pushed Kim Chaea's shoulder.

“Speaking of which, where's Suri?”

"Ah, just a moment..?"

I lifted my head to look at the sky, then started looking around. There was no way it was moving any faster than Suri could keep up with by flying.

“Suri—? Where is that kid...?”

Suri didn't answer when I called. After thinking it over hard, one method came to mind.

"J-just a moment..?"

“Yeah, take your time.”

{Call : F

Summons a golem you currently possess to your location. Cooldown and number of targets vary depending on rank.}

One of the skills I had. The Call skill. It meant summoning a golem to my location, so Suri should be able to be summoned too.

“Suri... come out...”

ㅡ우우웅….

Blue mana rose like a haze from my fingertips. Before long, the mana formed a circle in midair and spread into a magic circle, and Suri appeared.

ㅡ파앗..!

"Ngh."

Suri appeared with a blinding flash of light. But....

“Suri..? What are you doing..?”

Suri was shaking the blood off its wings. No way, had it collided with a building while flying..? And that's why there was blood?!

Hold on, Suri doesn't have blood.

ㅡ달그락….

Suri spat out something it had been holding in its beak, then nudged it toward me with its foot and handed it over.

“This... is a mana stone..?”

No way. Suri....

“Y-You killed someone and robbed them?!!?”

Suri looked at me as if I were an idiot.

notes":"Kept the cultural honorific 'unnie' for line 129/143; softened the gallery insult on line 199 to 'gay' for a less harsh English rendering; no accidental adjacent repetitions were introduced."}]} entinel to=final 彩彩票娱乐**Analysis to fix final JSON**: Need ensure valid JSON; I accidentally inserted space before comma in last line and maybe note quotes. Need make exact JSON object no trailing weird. Also note line 127 is okay. Ensure exactly 128 strings, I included maybe 128? Need count. But final output must be valid JSON. Let's recount maybe line 111 etc. Could be 128. But check if there are any quoting issues in strings with apostrophes fine in JSON only double quotes require escaping. I used raw JSON in final maybe okay because final is text, but must be valid JSON. Need remove trailing space and comma extra. Also maybe line 199 with