Cheon Yu-hwa (1)

When they said the gate’s monsters were golems, I was worried at first.

Would fire and lightning even work on golems?

Aren’t they made of earth or rock?

I didn’t think fire and lightning would be very effective against earth and rock…

“They work.”

“Huh?”

“Even if they’re golems, they move using magic power. They’re not just rocks that move on their own.”

“…Is that so?”

“Exactly. So you can either corrupt the flow of magic with fire or disrupt it with lightning. Or you could just burn the core to a crisp and shatter it with a thunderbolt.”

“Ah, I see.”

He was right.

And what’s more—

‘This is fun!’

The technique I practiced with the spirit the other day. A combination with Fire Arrow.

I am a contractor of a Fire Spirit.

Which means a Fire Spirit can inhabit any flame I create.

Now, the moment I willed it, a Fire Arrow compressed and took shape, and the spirit inhabited it.

Just before the arrow, flying at incredible speed, struck its target, the spirit leaped out and threw a punch—

Boom—!

The spirit’s fire punch, the same one that had incinerated the leader during the ‘Green Forest’ raid.

The punch was far more skillful than before, combined with the power contained in the Fire Arrow that exploded in perfect sync.

It shattered the golem and incinerated the core within in a single blow.

‘More! More! Do it more!’

After the golem was destroyed, I used the flames still burning from its core to form another Fire Arrow and shot it.

The spirit would get sucked back into the Fire Arrow as if boarding a train, arriving at the next station—no, the next golem.

Transferring again and again like this…

Boom! Ba-boom! Ka-boooom—!

Craaackle—!

Before long, a double-digit number of golems had lost their cores, becoming ‘former golems’ scattered across the ground.

Any golem that tried to resist was briefly paralyzed with a thunderbolt before being hit with a Fire Arrow, so we took almost no damage.

“Whoa, impressive! A Spirit Summoner is really on another level. I wonder what Sung Yu-han is doing, still hasn’t even found a spirit.”

“Haha…”

“Are there any more nearby?”

“Just a moment.”

It didn’t end there.

The fact that the spirit could inhabit my flames meant that the fire I created literally became a path for it.

Like the rails of a maglev train, it traveled along my flames from one place to another at incredible speed.

Even if the trail of fire was broken, it would just jump to the next one.

All I had to do was start a long wildfire in the jungle, creating a single, continuous ribbon of flame.

If I did that…

‘Nothing nearby!’

The spirit’s voice echoed in my head.

“It says there’s nothing nearby.”

“Really? That was faster than I thought.”

“I know. Let’s pull back for now then. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything different from the initial intel. The range is 500 meters, plus or minus… 50m? That seems about right, doesn’t it?”

“Mm. Yeah. About that. I thought so too.”

“Then let’s just check if anything else is coming—”

‘They’re not moving yet!’

“It says nothing seems to be coming. Let’s go.”

*

At the campsite.

A map was spread out in the middle of the tent.

A hand-drawn map sketched over a printed one.

“…Noona, you’re not very good at drawing.”

“…As long as you can read it, it’s fine.”

“A map just needs to be readable.”

“Still, for a scout… Noona, how about you take some art classes later? I’ll pay for them.”

“Forget it.”

“Hey, this is more than enough. It shows the terrain, the location of waterways, monster positions… Let’s plan our next move.”

The map was more crooked than I expected, but it was still readable.

Besides, Yu-hwa-noona can’t draw while flying, right? She said her arms are her wings, so she has to draw the map from memory.

Even if it’s drawn from memory, she said she doesn’t leave out the important parts, so this was fine.

“First, our golem assessment team subdued about forty to fifty golems in this area, and there didn’t seem to be any deviation from the initial intel.”

“Oh~. Forty to fifty? Already? That’s fast. Then again, I did see a lot of flashing over there from the sky.”

“Han-gyeol fought really well. It was almost one-shot, one-kill. I guess fire really is the best element…”

“I’ll exclude water, hyung.”

“Hey, Seung-hoon.”

“So… are we going all the way to the temple this time? Since there was nothing unusual at the campsite, it might not be a bad idea to go straight in. We should go while we’re in good condition.”

“We haven’t faced any real challenges so far… so I think that’s a good idea.”

The role of a team leader.

Leading the gate strategy meeting.

I had to receive and consolidate the information and notable findings gathered by each team member or unit, then formulate a plan for how to proceed.

It’s a headache-inducing task because you never know what variables you’ll encounter inside a gate.

And with the team members’ lives on the line, you can’t afford to be careless.

It was a relief there were no major issues this time; if there had been, I would have had to run around and check them myself.

It wasn’t a strict rule, but it was recommended for the team leader to experience any unusual phenomena firsthand.

They say you can’t know exactly what happened just by hearing about it.

Usually, the team leader has the highest rank, and since rank is proportional to magic sensitivity, they can perceive more.

But since there was nothing, well.

“It seems like it’d be too difficult to enter the temple after eliminating all the golems.”

“Yeah. That’d be tough. I don’t know about Han-gyeol, but it seemed like it would be a bit much for me and Ji-min to go around the temple smashing them one by one.”

“The temple was huge when I saw it in person.”

Even from 500 meters away, I couldn’t see both ends of the temple. Seeing as the corners of the temple on the map were greater than right angles, it was definitely not a quadrilateral.

Maybe… a decagon? A dodecagon?

If so, that meant this massive structure was enclosed by ten or more sides, making it unbelievably vast.

It was less a temple and more a city.

It was only called a temple because its shape was similar to Angkor Wat.

“Then let’s enter through the nearest side.”

“The nearest side… I heard it’s already been partially cleared.”

It’s not that the inside of the temple had never been explored.

It was just that inside the temple… at least inside the entrance on the side closest to the gate, there was nothing.

Inside the temple was just more stone temple. The occasional golem, maybe?

There was no obvious way to make money, and the temple was too large to go any other way, so the expedition ended there.

That was the result of the last expedition. The result obtained by a relatively high-ranked team, at that.

Information given to the team leader by the ‘Expeditionary Force’ guild.

“Really? Then…”

“If we’re going to do that, we’ll have to move the campsite.”

“Well… I didn’t spend an excessive amount of time setting up the camp.”

“I saw earlier that he definitely didn’t spend any time on it, except for his girlfriend’s spot.”

“Hyung, are you going to keep this up?”

“Hey, Geun-tae is just excited because things are going well. Geun-tae, you stop messing around too.”

“Noona, ‘messing around’?”

The meeting ended after some more banter.

The light atmosphere meant the expedition was going smoothly, which wasn’t a bad thing.

We decided to keep moving the campsite and enter the temple through a different entrance.

And then, a break.

You have to give plenty of rest during an expedition.

But if the breaks are too long and the mission drags on, everyone’s condition will eventually decline.

Finding the balance between the two is the team leader’s job.

For now, I decided to give them a break.

“You’re a good team leader. And you must have fought really well. Geun-tae seemed impressed.”

“Ah, Yu-hwa-noona.”

“Surprised by how bad my drawing was?”

“…It was fine, really. All the important stuff was there.”

“Your answer was a little slow, wasn’t it?”

“…My apologies.”

“I’m kidding. I saw a nice sunny spot over there while I was flying.”

“You did? You mean… the place you marked on the map earlier?”

“Yeah. I wonder why they didn’t set up camp there.”

“Can’t be helped. This spot was probably made when the gate first opened.”

When we actually went there, it was a place where warm sunlight poured down.

Gate 132 had only one sun, but it was slightly larger than Earth’s.

The plants that grew under its light grew tall and dense, so the inside of the jungle was a continuous, repetitive stretch of green.

A place like this, where the sky was open and sunlight streamed in, was a rare sight.

The ground was soft, covered in moss.

Moss usually grows in damp places, but this was a classic sunny spot. It probably wasn’t technically moss, but it seemed to be a similar type of plant.

I lay down on the fluffy moss and enjoyed the sunlight for a moment before sitting up to eat the preserved rations I’d brought.

“Ugh, I’m so sick of this.”

Yu-hwa-noona complained about it being boring, but it actually tasted pretty good. It was incredibly high in calories and rich in nutrients for its size, and the taste wasn’t half bad.

These were preserved rations made from the meat of monsters, which had once caused a huge stir in the culinary world.

Of course, due to supply stability and potential safety issues, they hadn’t spread to civilians or non-Awakened military units, but for Awakeners, they were practically an essential combat ration.

In the case of the ‘Expeditionary Force’ guild, they provide 1.5 times the amount of rations compared to other guilds for expeditions of the same duration.

So Yu-hwa-noona, who used a lot of energy flying, must have eaten a ton of it.

“I guess this still tastes good to you, Han-gyeol?”

“…It is good.”

“You get tired of it if it’s all you eat… And you can’t just eat the monsters in the gate because you never know if they’re poisonous.”

“That’s true… I can see that.”

“Still, there’s nothing better inside a gate… Tsk, well, it’s not like we come to gates for the food, right?”

“But because you come into gates, Noona, we get to come to places like this.”

“Such a smooth talker.”

The surrounding trees rustled in the wind.

The meat tasted smooth and rich, yet had a clean aftertaste. Was this due to the processing, or was this just how the monster’s meat tasted—

“Han-gyeol.”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry about being drunk back then… especially since we’d just met that day.”

“Ah, it’s okay.”

“But, Han-gyeol.”

“Yes.”

“What do you… think of me?”

“Huh?”

“I’m asking what you think of me. I’m really not trying to pressure you. If you don’t feel anything for me, I’ll keep my distance for the rest of this expedition. I’m just saying this because I don’t want to lose focus on the mission by keeping it bottled up. You don’t have to feel burdened.”

She was rambling.

‘She said “for this expedition”… does that mean things could be different later?’

But I already had an answer in mind.

“Well, it’s not that I don’t like you, Noona… It’s just that I’m really busy outside the gate.”

‘I have to operate as a succubus on the outside… What kind of man who transforms into a succubus can have a girlfriend? Hah… Am I going to have to live like this forever?’

“So you’re saying you don’t dislike me?”

“How could I possibly dislike you, Noona? But I’m really busy on the outside, so for my own sake, to have you… with you, um…”

If I said the wrong thing and made the atmosphere weird, the rest of the expedition would be hell—

“If you’re busy on the outside, then it doesn’t matter in here, does it?”

“…”

She had a point, but it wasn’t like we were never going back outside. And we couldn’t just pretend not to know each other out there.

“…Han-gyeol. There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t trying to find out, but my senses are pretty sharp, so I just happened to notice.”

“Yes.”

“Um… why is it that every time you see me… you come out of the bathroom after taking care of things by yourself?”