The command I implanted into Hansik was this, “There aren’t any monsters around Khalid, but some might show up on the way there, so come up with a countermeasure.”

And the countermeasure Hansik came up with was to play dead.

At first I was dumbfounded, but after hearing Hansik’s explanation, I smacked my knee.

He learned it from Khalid.

Khalid didn’t attack humans who didn’t bother him and because of that, hunters stopped trying to raid Khalid.

A silent symbiosis.

Maybe it was a win-win relationship.

If Khalid had been a vicious boss monster that devoured humans indiscriminately like other boss monsters, the outcome would have been different.

Korean hunters who wanted to prevent a gate break no matter what would’ve banded together and launched a large-scale raid and even accepting casualties, they definitely would’ve found a way to clear it.

Hansik was the same.

Not only did he not attack monsters first, he acted like a corpse that was harmless to them and not worth attacking.

That the strategy worked was proven by Perillok, which immediately lost interest the moment it confirmed the bare-bones corpse.

On top of that, the fact Detective Kim Taesu ended up chasing Hansik was a kind of luck.

Hah, this is ridiculous.

Kim Taesu, feeling like he’d been played somehow, chased right up to Hansik and spoke.

Even if he was pissed, it was something he brought on himself.

All he could do was swallow his anger alone.

Seeing you follow a magic compass, you really are heading to Khalid, right?

Kim Taesu didn’t trail from far away like before.

Instead, he was right up on Hansik.

Mr. Lee Dusik, you can hear everything, right? No? Can’t you just call again or something?

Ignored again.

In the end, the one who’s thirsty is the one who digs the well.

Kim Taesu pulled out a notepad and started writing something.

[Mr. Lee Dusik, call me.]

Haa…

Kim Taesu completely blocked Hansik’s path.

He waved the line he’d written at the body cam, right in front of it.

In the end, I had no choice but to respond.

“Don’t you have anything to do? Why do you keep following us?”

What, you could talk? Then why were you ignoring me?

“None of your business.”

On Hansik’s helmet was a speaker linked to my mic.

Kim Taesu trembled, feeling like he’d been tricked.

Hey, is it really that hard to tell me what you’re going there to do?

“If you want something from me, you need to bring something to the table first, move, you’re wasting my precious time, Detective.”

Once Hansik is summoned, his duration is 17 hours.

Two hours had already passed.

We had to pick even one more barnacle.

Fine, cooperate with me and I’ll grant you one request.

“Really?”

As long as it’s not something unreasonable, like asking to borrow money or…

Money, my ass.

I’m someone who’s about to become a Delivery Lord.

Actually, earlier I was planning to ask him to get us safely to Khalid.

But judging by the vibe, if I played it right, he’d probably do that without any compensation anyway.

And since I figured it wouldn’t be bad to have at least one Hunter Police contact, I said, “One request voucher, saved, this is all being recorded, you know that, right? No backtracking later.”

You’re a picky one, but you are going to Khalid, right?

“As you can see.”

Can’t you walk a bit faster? This is frustrating as hell.

Unfortunately, that was top speed.

I raised Hansik’s strength by boosting stats, but his agility was still the same as before.

“None of your business.”

Tch, so why are you going to Khalid?

“A hunter goes hunting, obviously.”

Pfft, Khalid? You’re out of your mind.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

Hansik kept walking along the path.

Mr. Lee Dusik, but where’s your real body?

“I never agreed to cooperate to the point of revealing my private life.”

Why are you so snappy? We might’ve been able to get along.

“Think back on what you did at the entrance, hey, there’s something up ahead, hey! Frog! Over here!”

Another monster showed up, so I raised my voice and pulled its aggro.

Of course, Hansik had already taken his helmet off and was sprawled on the ground.

This time too, it was the frog monster Perillok.

It was bigger than the previous one and its skin had a purplish tint, making it look stronger.

Hah, what a guy.
Jjeoeong-

Blocking Perillok’s tongue with his shield, Kim Taesu had no choice but to start hunting it with his electric fishing line.

If he didn’t suppress it quickly, there was a chance other monsters would gather and even if Kim Taesu was an A-rank hunter, once about five B-rank trash mobs pile up, it gets tough.

But this Perillok was different, different in a way.

Not only did it avoid getting the fishing hook caught on its tongue, it leapt up into the air.

An insane jump.

It shot so high that Perillok looked small up there.

But then,

Gyago-olk!
Gulp.

A gigantic snake snatched the airborne Perillok out of the sky.

It was enormous and that snake was flying.

A flying snake, isn’t that what an Eastern dragon is in legend, not the Western dragon?

Of course, it didn’t look quite like a dragon, just a big-headed snake.

Then is it an imugi?

Either way, a massive monster had appeared.

At that level, it was definitely a boss monster.

No matter that Kim Taesu was A-rank, there was no way he could handle that.

But Kim Taesu calmly slung the fishing rod back over his shoulder.

Frogs are always stupid, jumping in Khalid’s habitat.

“That’s Khalid?”

I heard Khalid was a turtle, not a snake.

Khalid is known as a turtle, but it’s not a normal turtle like the ones we know, think of it like a snake hidden under a turtle shell, we’re almost there, so let’s hurry, get on my back.

“What?”

Get on, I’m going to get hypertension chasing your slow-ass skeleton, so hurry up and let’s get there and see what you’re trying to do.

This is a massive win.

I ordered Hansik to climb onto Kim Taesu’s back as he took the piggyback posture.

What, why are you so light?

“Because there isn’t a scrap of flesh on him, of course he’s light.”

True.

With that, Kim Taesu sprinted forward at an absurd speed.

A hunter really is a hunter.

Even an electric kickboard wouldn’t be faster than this.

* * *

Khalid was huge, just like the rumors said.

The claim that it was over 300 meters from head to tail was true.

Ten times the size of a blue whale.

Overwhelming just from its sheer size, Khalid was in the sea, yet its shell rose above the surface like the tip of an iceberg.

“Please get us onto the shell.”

You sure ask for a lot.

He complained, but Kim Taesu hooked his fishing line onto Khalid’s shell and shot up like Spider-Man.

I worried Khalid might swallow us when we were floating in the air like Perillok did when it jumped, but just like the rumors, Khalid had no interest in humans.

Is that enough now?

“Thank you.”

Since he’d helped us cut down time, I thanked him out of courtesy.

Hansik walked to where the shell met the sea surface.

There were an absurd number of barnacles stuck on it.

Looking closer, there were also unknown clams wedged between the barnacles.

Harmless.

They wouldn’t attack.

And all of this was experience?

Hansik set down his pack and pulled out the pickaxe.

“You said you were curious why we came here, right? We came to mine these barnacles.”

What? You dragged me all the way here just to grill some shellfish?

“You’re the one who followed us.”

And you act like it’s some huge secret, like it’s so important.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t interfere.”

Kkaang-

Hansik slammed the pickaxe down onto the barnacles.

The barnacles were stuck hard to Khalid’s shell, so you had to smash them with the pickaxe and then scrape them off with a shovel.

Anyone who’s done it knows, digging and swinging a pickaxe drains a ridiculous amount of stamina.

Even the Trash Expedition Squad YouTuber got exhausted after an hour and the barnacle leveling content got exposed as nothing more than a clickbait video.

But Hansik was different.

He didn’t get tired.

Kkaang-

Hansik started ripping off barnacles without a word, stubbornly.

Kkaang- Kkaang-

A steady tempo like a metronome, about 30 BPM.

Kim Taesu, who’d wasted his entire day on this nonsense, must’ve found it annoying to go back, because he just lay down on the ground.

Kkaang kkaang-

Either way, the barnacle pile kept growing.

I had the status window open and stared so hard my eyes were going to pop, watching to see if experience would rise.

+——+——+Status Window+——+——+

Name : Lee Dusik

Level : 0

HP : 300

MP : 250

Experience : 0 / 1,000

Class : 'Unique' Skeleton Lord 'Skeleton Lord'

Constellation : Skeleton Star

Trait : [Skeleton] [Lord]

+——+——+——+——+——+

Experience 0 / 1,000 didn’t budge at all.

‘What the hell, how much do we have to mine? It should go up by now.’

But then, I noticed something had changed in the status window.

——+——+Skill+——+——

['Unique' Summon Skeleton Soldier LV. 1]

Skeleton Lord’s unique skill, summons a skeleton soldier for 17 hours '1 hour x Intelligence'.
Stat Inheritance: The summoned skeleton soldier inherits 25% '0.01 x Wisdom' of the lord’s stats.
Number of soldiers that can be summoned: 1 'scales with skill level'
Equipment System: You can equip each skeleton soldier with an individual equipment set, the equipment set is saved and when re-summoned, it is summoned with the saved setting.
Individual Entity: Each skeleton soldier is a separate entity, allowing different abilities and equipment configurations.
Stat Transfer: If a skeleton soldier dies in battle, that entity’s stats are transferred to nearby skeleton soldiers for 17 minutes '1 minute x Intelligence'.
MP Cost : 50
Cooldown : None
Experience required to level up : 2 / 1,000

+——+——+——+——+——+——+——+—

‘Huh?!’

Experience required to level up : 3 / 1,000

‘What, my experience wasn’t going up?’

What was going up was the skill experience for ['Unique' Summon Skeleton Soldier LV. 1].

Lying on the motel bed, I shot upright.

‘Damn it… does that mean I have to earn my own experience myself?’

Was I trying to freeload too hard?

I was planning to raise agility on the next level-up so Hansik could move faster.

But if it’s like this, I can only level the skill and increase the number of trash skeleton soldiers….

Sure, even trash can do deliveries, but still.

Just then, Kim Taesu’s voice came through the laptop speaker.

Hey, Mr. Dusik, you got me all the way here, can I grill some of these clams and barnacles? I’m hungry.

Well, that much wasn’t a waste.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

They look pretty meaty, you know?

It wasn’t even the cops’ quitting time yet, but it looked like he planned to slack off here and kill his whole workday.

When I gave permission, Kim Taesu held his palm over the pile of scallops and clams Hansik had stacked.

Then, whoosh, flames surged from his hand.

The fire dug through the gaps between barnacles and clams.

The shellfish started sizzling almost immediately.

That wasn’t the important part.

“What, you’re a mage?”

Kim Taesu replied sulkily.

None of your business?

Childish.

“I saw the shield and thought you were a tank.”

Is there a law that says mages can’t use shields? I’m obviously a mage and I’m an electricity-type, if you apply it right, you can use fire too and what exactly are you? Looks like you’re working remote from home, don’t summoners usually lose control if their summons go too far away?

As he spoke, Kim Taesu tossed a properly cooked scallop into his mouth in one gulp.

This is perfect as a drinking snack, if you set up an all-you-can-eat grilled shellfish street stall at the gate entrance, it’d do great.

That was actually a pretty decent idea.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off the status window.

The Summon Skeleton Soldier experience that had been 2 / 1,000 was now a whopping 48 / 1,000.

Wait.

‘The barnacles had to die.’

Even hunters don’t gain experience if they just capture monsters.

You only gain experience when you kill them.

Kim Taesu poured fire over the pile of shellfish.

55 / 1,000

68 / 1,000

74 / 1,000

…

As the barnacles boiled and the clams popped their shells open, the experience rose.

The results of only 15 minutes worth of ‘hunting.’.

100 / 1,000

Once it passed 100, my heart started pounding.

108 / 1,000

Trashiru, the Trash Expedition Squad YouTuber, said experience goes up by 1 at a time while you mine shellfish.

He spent a whole hour and barely scraped together 10 experience.

But that wasn’t how it worked.

You had to ‘kill’ the shellfish to get experience.

‘What the hell, this was a total jackpot.’