A little while later.
“Ding ding ding~!”
Even though I was sound asleep after a vigorous round of hammering, notifications kept ringing relentlessly in my ears.
The only person who would contact me like this was Nam Bora.
But even she rarely sent me messages back to back like this.
I wondered what could possibly be going on, and reluctantly opened my eyes to check the messages.
– “Vulcanus, Park Kang-chul is here to see you.”
“Park Kang-chul?”
The moment I heard that name, I was instantly wide awake.
Who was Park Kang-chul?
The 4th-ranked Hunter in Korea.
The Berserker, Park Kang-chul.
Well, maybe not exactly 4th right now.
Rankings changed so frequently these days that it was hard to be sure if he still held that spot.
But on average, he was more often ranked 4th, so it was safe to call him that.
Anyway, Park Kang-chul had come to the Vulcanus Guild?
“That Berserker? Why on earth?”
– I don’t know.
–Â “He suddenly showed up, saying, ‘I need to meet Vulcanus,’ and just settled in.”
– “The guild members in the building tried to stop him, but… you know how it is.”
“I know. How do you stop a Berserker?”
– “Yes. He just pushed through relentlessly, and no one could hold him back.”
Park Kang-chul, the Berserker.
One of Korea’s top five strongest Hunters, and there weren’t even five people in Korea capable of stopping him.
What’s more, Park Kang-chul was a solo player who tackled Gates alone without forming parties.
His individual power was said to rival even the Sword Saint, so not even the Vulcanus Guild members could stand against him.
“Sigh…”
I couldn’t help but let out a deep breath.
What kind of trouble was this all of a sudden?
For the sake of Nam Bora and the other guild members struggling with this, it seemed I had to meet Park Kang-chul.
“Well, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Having finally leveled up enough to craft gear for Rankers by clearing rank 8 Gates, I was just about to start taking on equipment orders from them.
And now Park Kang-chul came to me of his own accord.
It was better to keep a positive mindset.
“I’m coming now.”
– “Sorry. You must have been resting.”
“No, I have to handle things like this. I’m the Guildmaster after all.”
To be honest, I felt nothing but guilt toward Nam Bora.
She had taken on almost all the guild’s operations as my proxy.
She seemed fairly satisfied with that arrangement, but still—
This was something I had to take care of myself.
“Vwoong—”
I possessed Guildmaster 1’s body.
After recently venturing into rank 8 Gate clearances, I’d become quite adept at handling Guildmaster 1’s body.
In gaming terms, the synchronization rate had improved.
As I entered Guildmaster 1’s body, Nam Bora was waiting as usual.
“You don’t have to wait.”
“No, I was avoiding the chaos. I can’t handle it if I stay downstairs.”
“Ah.”
Park Kang-chul.
I’d often seen the news of his exploits on Hunter News, so I immediately understood what Nam Bora meant.
Suppressing an instinctive sigh, I headed downstairs.
Perhaps they hadn’t even managed to guide him to the reception room—Park Kang-chul was sitting cross-legged right in the middle of the guild’s first-floor hall.
Was it the aura or just his leveled-up presence?
He looked bigger somehow.
Not just muscular, but taller as well.
He was no longer at a typical Korean scale.
No, not even at a human scale.
He was like a real-life version of the Barbarian I used to play in games.
Thinking that, I approached, and Park Kang-chul looked up at me and stood.
“So, it’s you again.”
We had exchanged messages before, but this was our first face-to-face meeting.
Or rather, the first time we actually looked at each other and talked.
Seeing him up close made him look even bigger.
Judging by what he said, Park Kang-chul also seemed to realize that the person in front of him wasn’t my original body.
Most Rankers reacted like that.
I still didn’t know how they figured it out.
“So, why did you suddenly come here without an appointment?”
“You ignored all my messages, so I had no choice but to come.”
“I ignored them?”
“Did you really not know?”
Me, ignoring messages?
I genuinely had no idea.
Now that I thought about it, aside from Nam Bora’s messages, I hardly checked any messages these days.
Curious, I opened the message window.
[Hunter, hello. This is Jeil Guild. The reason for this sudden contact is Vulcanus…]
[Ranking 98, Jang Geunha here. I also sent a request through the Blacksmith page. I sincerely hope you accept my order…]
[Vulcanus request acceptance day 112.]
[Please consider our guild’s crafting request…]
No surprise.
Thousands.
No, tens of thousands of messages had piled up.
No wonder I couldn’t check them all.
That was exactly why I only set notifications for Nam Bora’s messages.
“Well, Mr. Park Kang-chul, you should know it’s hard to check messages that way. You could’ve sent a request through the blacksmith’s page, and our proxy would’ve taken care of it.”
“Of course I did. Several times.”
“What?”
You sent requests through the blacksmith page too?
Until now, Nam Bora had checked all important matters and relayed them to me.
I wondered why Park Kang-chul’s requests hadn’t been passed on.
I glanced at Nam Bora.
“Vulcanus said he wouldn’t accept requests while making overseas support items, so we planned to contact you after that finished.”
She had her reasons too.
In truth, it was all my fault.
At first, there had been requests from Rankers, but I ignored most because I wasn’t at the required level.
Only recently had I reached the level to craft Rankers’ items, but until then, I was busy accepting overseas support requests offering high-grade materials, so there was no time for other orders.
Naturally, Park Kang-chul’s requests were ignored.
I wasn’t sure, but I guessed Park Kang-chul wasn’t the only one who had been ignored.
Once I finished talking with Park Kang-chul, I’d check for other Rankers’ requests as well.
“…I’m sorry. I was just too busy. It wasn’t intentional.”
“So you’ll take the order?”
“First, I want to hear it. What kind of item are you asking me to make?”
I couldn’t just accept the order right away after an apology.
If I gave in once, I’d never stop.
I didn’t know what unreasonable demands Park Kang-chul might make, so I had to be firm.
Though Park Kang-chul was a little scary, this wasn’t even my original body.
After facing several rank 8 boss Monsters, I wasn’t intimidated even by him.
As expected, Park Kang-chul made a ridiculous demand.
“I want a full set.”
“A full set?”
“I already checked. Before tackling the rank 8 Gate, the highest level of equipment on the blacksmith page was level 280. Now, you should be able to make level 300 items. If not now, then soon.”
Park Kang-chul.
He looked like a brute who charged in blindly, but surprisingly, he was quite sharp.
If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have made it this far.
But seriously?
A full set?
You mean weapons and armor all together?
Armor alone had several types—helmet, chest armor, pants, shoulders, gauntlets, boots—
There were quite a few.
Making all that in a day was impossible.
Level 300 items required careful crafting on my part.
“I’ll pay whatever it costs.”
“Money isn’t really necessary.”
Money?
I didn’t need it.
The Vulcanus Blacksmith ran constantly, and I was stacking money steadily, especially after taking overseas orders.
Money was the last thing I was short of.
“I heard you’re focusing on gathering materials recently. If you accept the order, I’ll give you all the S-grade materials I’ve collected.”
“How many?”
“I haven’t counted, but at least dozens.”
“Hm. That’s a lot, but…”
“There’s one more thing.”
Did he expect I wouldn’t accept the order just with that?
Park Kang-chul held something out in front of me.
It was an item taken from a Space Pocket, and it was quite large.
It looked at least a hand span bigger than Park Kang-chul’s big frame.
“Teeth?”
“Check it out.”
It was clearly a Monster material.
It looked extraordinary, and curiosity got the better of me as I reached out to touch it.
[Colossal Ogre’s Molar]
Type: Material
Grade: SS
Description: The largest and deepest molar of the Colossal Ogre, a being said to have its upper lip touching the sky and its lower lip burrowing beneath the ground, a creature destined to swallow the world whole.
“Double S-grade material?”
SS-grade.
A rank I had never even imagined appeared.
S-grade materials were precious enough to be managed by the government, and now SS-grade?
As far as I knew, there were only a handful of SS-grade materials in Korea, including those obtained by the Sword Saint when hunting Basilisks alongside Giant Guilds.
How did Park Kang-chul have one of these?
While I was puzzling over this, Nam Bora, who had been watching behind me, spoke.
“It must be from the rank 9 Gate ‘Swallower’ during the Second Gate Burning.”
“Ah.”
“Giant Guilds gathered to take down the boss Monster Colossal Ogre. They couldn’t deal damage or hold the line at first, but thanks to Hunter Park Kang-chul, they managed to bring it down.”
“They worked well together. By attacking inside its mouth and making it bleed profusely, they managed to defeat it.”
“I heard the Colossal Ogre’s materials were given to Park Kang-chul as a reward.”
The rank 9 Gate, Swallower.
I had heard about it.
Back then, it was all over the news that Giant Guilds and the Sword Saint had mobilized to stop that Gate.
That was also why those powerful groups couldn’t deal with other situations at the time.
“There was only that Colossal Ogre in the Gate.”
The Gate type of Swallower was simple.
At the edge of a vast terrain, the boss Monster Colossal Ogre was slowly advancing toward the Gate’s entrance.
True to its name, the Swallower devoured everything along its path.
There were no smaller Monsters like in other Gates.
Or rather, the existing ones were all swallowed by the Colossal Ogre.
If they hadn’t stopped it at the entrance, it would have come through the Gate into reality and swallowed Korea whole.
I never expected the Colossal Ogre’s materials to be in Park Kang-chul’s hands.
‘Not quite comparable to Cheonjeoseok.’
An SS-grade material.
Such materials were extremely rare.
They weren’t items you could buy with money.
Defeating an rank 9 Monster wasn’t an easy feat.
Some of the countries that fell during the recent Second Gate Burning were doomed because of the rank 9 Monsters that appeared near the end.
“How about it? I think this is a fair price.”
Park Kang-chul continued.
The SS-class material, Colossal Ogre’s Molar.
Definitely a coveted material.
If I made Combat 5 with this, it might become an assistant even stronger than Combat 3.
But no matter how much I thought about it—
‘Hmm…’
Right now, I was in control.
It was a tempting material, but not an absolutely necessary one.
And at this moment, I recalled what the two statues in Zone 5 had said.
‘It’s probably not much longer.’
‘Age of Destruction.’
‘Ragnarok.’
The reality that the world’s destruction was imminent.
‘There was only one way to stop the destruction—’
‘Conquer the Tower.’
The only way was to clear the Tower.
The best method was for me to climb the Tower myself, but asking a blacksmith to climb the Tower was absurd.
I wouldn’t climb the Tower.
Then what should I do?
‘Soon, an ‘Opportunity’ will be granted to Seo jun’s Present World.’
The only way to stop destruction without me climbing the Tower.
It was to conquer the ‘Opportunity’ that would appear in reality.
A Tower would manifest in reality as well, and even if it wasn’t as good as entering the real ‘Gate’ in my Mines, climbing the Tower through Opportunity could prevent destruction.
No one had ever succeeded in doing so.
When I asked recently why, I was told it was mostly due to a lack of unity.
To overcome that, it was necessary to gather strong individuals and unify them.
That was why I was focusing on growing the Vulcanus Guild.
Therefore—
“Mr. Park Kang-chul.”
Instead of taking the SS-grade material ‘Colossal Ogre’s Molar,’
I presented a new proposal.
“Will you join the Vulcanus Guild?”