“Are you saying you’re going to have my skeleton soldier check inside Khalid’s nostrils?”

In truth, Khalid does not attack humans preemptively, but the moment someone loiters in front of him and becomes a nuisance, he kills them without mercy.

Checking Khalid’s nostrils was not even comparable to plucking the whiskers of a sleeping lion.

Yeah. That’s right.

“What if Khalid goes berserk because of that?”

A great catastrophe would begin.

The peace of the Oryukdo Gate would be shattered.

Even at the gate entrance alone, there were hundreds of hunters, but even if all of them joined forces, it would be difficult.

And if they were to fail the raid?

It would lead directly to a gate break.

If Khalid started rampaging outside the gate, the metropolitan city of Busan could be reduced to scorched earth in less than a day.

It was terrifying.

Not hundreds, but tens of thousands of casualties would occur.

It was only because Khalid was relatively docile that he hadn’t already been labeled a disaster-class boss monster.

I’m just going to check.

“And after you check? If Bae Hyeongsin really is inside Khalid’s nostrils, what are you going to do? You’re going to catch him, right? How are you going to pull him out?”

We’ll figure it out somehow.

The risk was far too great.

Was it really worth burning down an entire house just to catch a single flea?

“I’m not doing it. If something goes wrong, I’ll be responsible too.”

I’ll give you the entire 500 million won bounty for reporting Bae Hyeongsin.

“No thanks. Even if you offered 5 billion, there wouldn’t be anyone willing to do it.”

If you won’t do it, then I will.

A fanatical madness glimmered in his eyes.

“Why are you going that far?”

Five years ago, my wife died in that bastard’s terror attack. I’m avenging my family.

The ever-smiling Kim Taesu looked up at the sky.

Seeing that, my chest tightened.

It felt as though I could sense the endless despair and guilt my father must have felt after my mother died.

My mother’s death had been an accident.

But if she had been murdered like his wife?

Both my father and I would have dreamed of revenge.

It became hard to refuse.

I felt like I’d caused all this for no reason, spouting that ridiculous nonsense about the bastard possibly hiding in Khalid’s nostrils.

Kim Taesu was already fixated on that hypothesis and now he even believed it.

Because he had spent so long chasing something with no tangible form, his obsession was firm.

“Then I have a condition.”

Anything. If you help even a little in finding Bae Hyeongsin, I’ll grant you your wish.

I stated my condition.

“My original goal was to summon three skeleton soldiers. If the Fibonacci sequence you mentioned really applies, then the skill level needs to reach 4. I want you to help me with that. And if the skeleton soldiers are going to get stronger, I need to get stronger too, so please help me raise my level as well.”

You want me to help you farm barnacles?

“Yes. Even if it looks trivial, for trash-tier newbies like us, leveling up isn’t easy. Skeleton soldiers can at least pretend to be dead, but I can’t even make it here. I’d get eaten by a frog on the way.”

Hm… fine. That much is doable.

* * *

The next day, at the promised time.

Taesu was waiting at the Oryukdo Gate.

Unlike yesterday, he was carrying a large backpack.

It was obvious he had packed supplies to last several days.

“Taesu hyung.”

“Yo. First time meeting face to face.”

He offered me a handshake.

He was about my height, but his shoulders were at least a full handspan wider, a solidly built man.

If we hadn’t built some rapport non-face-to-face beforehand, I wouldn’t have even dared meet his eyes.

I took off my helmet and clasped his hand.

“Nice to mee—ngh!”

“You little punk.”

“Ah, it hurts, it hurts!! Is it okay for a cop to use violence on a civilian like this?!”

“You pulled all that aggro and then played dead. Do you know how many times I kicked my blanket last night when I suddenly thought about it?”

Holding a grudge?!

Damn it, was all of this just groundwork for a real-life showdown?

I got played.

“Sorry, sorry, please spare me!”

Taesu laughed and let go of my hand.

It felt like my bones had been crushed, but maybe he’d controlled his strength, because the pain quickly faded.

“Are you a cop or a thug?”

“This from you? You really don’t hold back with your hyung, huh?”

“What kind of hyung tries to crush his dongsaeng’s (junior) hand bones the moment they meet?”

“Heh. You exaggerating? Did it hurt?”

“How much do you think it hurt?! Just wait. Once I get strong, you’re the first one I’m taking down.”

He’d been so irritated about getting tricked by Hansik’s playing-dead strategy that he’d been kicking his blanket in frustration, but I couldn’t fall asleep easily, imagining a hundred million skeleton soldiers.

If my skill really followed the Fibonacci sequence, then at skill level 40, the number of skeleton soldiers would exceed one hundred million.

When that day came, who would be able to touch me?

“What? Take me down? This guy.”

“Aaagh!”

He playfully put me in a headlock.

Anyway, the two of us entered the gate together like that.

[Oryukdo Gate]

“Oh.”

It felt exactly like logging into an online game for the first time.

Hunters roamed around with weapons and equipment that looked like straight-up game items.

“Yo, Taesu hyung. Business bad these days? Looks like you were here yesterday too.”

At that moment, a middle-aged man approached him familiarly and offered a handshake.

It was different from the handshake Taesu hyung and I had shared.

Between their clasped hands were several blue checks.

‘A bribe?’

“Cheolgeun-hyung, how’s business these days?”

“Repairing weapons and gear is always steady. But who’s this? A Hunter Police rookie?”

“No, just a newbie and a stickman.”

“Skinny little thing. Definitely a newbie. Here, take my card. When you grow up and need a weapon or repairs, come to me. Just say Taesu hyung’s name and I’ll take good care of you.”

Kid?

There were limits to treating someone like a child.

He looked like he was in his early to mid-forties at most.

I was still 28 by international age, but by Korean age I was already thirty.

This was absolutely not an age to be treated like this.

“What do you mean kid? I’m thirty now!”

“So what? You’re still a newbie.”

“That’s right. In this world, level is your age.”

He handed me his business card and left.

The rather classy card had the shop name [Steel Breath] along with his personal details.

His name was Kim Cheolgeun, along with his contact number and email.

Below that, it listed custom weapon and armor crafting, magic weapon reinforcement and enchantment, no cash accepted, magic stone transactions only.

“Why is a blacksmith giving bribes?”

“That guy doesn’t pay taxes. No cash, no cards, only magic stones as currency. When he needs it, he converts magic stones into cash. Tax collection doesn’t work. So I collect it like this instead, as a substitute for taxes.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Heh, can’t catch him. There are no books. If he says they’re just magic stones he hunted himself, that’s the end of it. How do you catch him without evidence? Sure, if you really cracked down, you could catch a few, but the more you do, the deeper they hide.”

This was a world solely for hunters.

Because magic stones were more valuable per unit volume than money, a naturally occurring underground economy had formed.

“Doesn’t the government know?”

“They do, but it doesn’t have a real negative impact on the actual monetary economy. Magic stones are consumables used for hunter spec-ups anyway. And only hunters can obtain magic stones, so what can they do?”

The primary uses of magic stones, worth more than pure gold, could be broadly divided into three categories.

First, crafting magic equipment, second, enhancing it and third, absorbing mana.

Most simply, they could be used like mana potions in a game.

Of course, on a higher level, there was research into converting the mana contained in magic stones into eco-friendly energy, but due to supply difficulties, it was still in a transitional phase.

On top of that, the government-run magic stone exchange had a 15% price gap between buying and selling, so private trades between hunters were far more active.

“The world has changed, but the government hasn’t.”

Of course, large corporatized guilds like Babylon Co. Ltd. operated within legal boundaries, but the government’s reach didn’t extend to small merchants.

After that, Taesu hyung continued collecting payments from small merchants in the Oryukdo Gate.

Judging by the blue checks being worth one million won each, he must have earned at least several thousand.

Making money really was that easy.

It made my stomach churn, but what could I do?

Even if I reported it, it didn’t seem like anyone would be punished.

There weren’t many Hunter Police officers to begin with.

I looked away, pretending not to see.

“Shall we go?”

“Yes.”

Walking a path you’d already taken once wasn’t difficult.

Khalid was exactly where he’d been yesterday.

As expected, we ran into Perillok as well.

Seeing Perillok in person made the back of my neck stiffen with fear.

Anyway, without Taesu hyung, there was no way someone as weak as me, basically a normal civilian, would ever reach Khalid.

Of course, you could hire a B-rank hunter like one of those Trash Expedition Squad YouTubers to escort you, but even that would cost at least a million won.

I wasn’t used to sums like that yet.

“Huh?”

Khalid slowly raised his head and scanned the surroundings.

He resembled depictions of the mythical Black Tortoise.

The face and body of a turtle, but with a neck and tail as long as a snake.

“It’s feeding time for Khalid. Don’t provoke him. Let’s lie low and wait.”

“Yes.”

Kuuung-

In the blink of an eye, Khalid’s head lashed out and attacked something.

His throat bulged as he swallowed a monster whole.

It was brutal.

Anything caught by him would die like a fly.

Even monsters classified as B-rank were nothing more than insects to Khalid.

Only after sweeping the area clean did Khalid retreat back into his shell.

“Let’s go.”

Even Kim Taesu, who’d spoken so boldly, had cold sweat beading on his forehead.

After seeing Khalid in action for the first time, my conclusion was this.

“No matter how I look at it, it doesn’t seem like Bae Hyeongsin could be inside Khalid’s nostrils. He moves way too violently.”

Now that I saw it, it really didn’t make sense.

“You won’t know until you see it with your own eyes. And I looked it up online yesterday, apparently turtles have quite a bit of space in their nasal cavities. With all the ocean trash, plastic debris gets sucked into their nostrils and fills up their nasal passages and all that.”

“Is that really the same thing?”

“What’s the difference?”

Confirmation bias.

Once you believe a hypothesis, other information starts to look like it supports it.

Kim Taesu was in exactly that state.

“So we just hunt barnacles the same way as yesterday?”

“Yes. Hansik and I will handle prying off the barnacles, so hyung, please burn them to death.”

“I brought soju and chojang today for this exact reason.”

“What?”

Kim Taesu grinned and shook the backpack he was carrying.

The faint clinking of bottles and the sloshing of liquid could be heard.

“Scallops tasted incredible.”

“Ha…”

“Why? You not eating?”

“No, I brought stuff too. Instant rice, lettuce and perilla leaves.”

“Puhah.”

A lively mood right from the start.

Just like yesterday, once we climbed onto Khalid’s shell, Hansik and I began swinging our pickaxes.

Clang-

It’s not easy….

Clang-

But we have to do it.

Clang-

Because it’s a total jackpot.