Ch.20The Saint Who Doesn’t Want to Work

“Wow, young man, you’re really good at this! Thanks to you, we finished quickly!”

“Yes, thank you…”

“All that luggage in less than two hours… thank you so much!!”

“No, I just did what needed to be done…”

“Thanks to you, we finished the job comfortably. Here, it’s not much, but a small token of appreciation…”

“I-I can’t accept this!!”

“…This is different from the job I thought I’d be doing!!”

BANG.

Saturday evening, after emptying her rice bowl twice, Aila stared at her empty soup bowl, suddenly stood up, and slammed her hand on the table.

The other three who were eating looked blankly at Aila’s outburst.

“Something’s wrong! Th-this isn’t the kind of work I thought I’d be doing!”

“What’s suddenly gotten into you?”

Kang Seona asked after swallowing her soup.

“Look at what I’m doing now! This is just menial labor!!”

Aila slammed the table once more.

“…Hmm? What’s wrong… unni?”

“No, it’s not exactly a complaint, but rather… I feel like I’m doing work that’s completely different from what I expected…”

Aila carefully sat back down.

A cold voice flew toward her.

“What, are you throwing a tantrum now? You said it yourself. That you’d do any kind of work… Was that a lie?”

“No, it wasn’t a lie, but… I was expecting to fight monsters or close gates…”

Aila recalled the jobs she had been doing so far.

Moving furniture, carrying materials at demolition sites, carrying materials at construction sites, classifying and moving books in libraries.

In other words, manual labor.

“The things I’m doing now are jobs that anyone could do even if it wasn’t me…”

“Aila.”

After hearing Aila’s words, Kang Seona slowly opened her mouth.

“There’s no such thing as lowly work–“

“I know that too!”

“…Then what is it?”

“There may be no such thing as lowly work or profession, but that doesn’t mean you can assign any job to just anyone.”

Aila continued.

“Everyone has abilities suited to them. And they should do work that matches those abilities. For example, you wouldn’t ask a Mithril-rank adventurer to pick up trash, which is a job for a Copper-rank adventurer.”

“…I still don’t get it with that comparison.”

“Aila, do you… like fantasy novels?”

“Shut up, oppa.”

“Guhk!!”

Lee Chanwoo, who had sensed a kindred spirit in the familiar words and tried to make contact, was immediately shut down by Lee Sekyung.

Her elbow landed squarely on his chin, and Chanwoo collapsed sideways with a spoon still in his hand.

Surprisingly, no one paid any attention to the fallen Chanwoo.

Lee Sekyung was silently wrapping side dishes with rice in seasoned seaweed, while Aila and Kang Seona were engaged in a deep discussion about the correlation between professional ethics and capitalism.

“So, you want to do more ‘hunter-like’ work, is that it?”

“The jobs I’ve been doing so far are things that ordinary people could do if they put in the time. But closing gates is nearly impossible for ordinary people. So–“

“I get that, but we need dungeons to open before we can do anything. I heard there’s a raid in Gangbuk tomorrow, but it’s B-rank, so you can’t even go.”

Kang Seona shrugged.

The current situation was ideal for her.

Aila was strong.

Perhaps even stronger than herself at full power.

This meant that if Aila broke the contract and ran away, there would be no way to catch her.

That’s why she needed to make the most of her while she could.

Dungeon raids that could take weeks weren’t cost-effective.

Manual labor that could be quickly completed and paid for was the optimal solution…

‘She couldn’t have figured this out, could she?’

Kang Seona studied Aila’s expression.

She only ate two bowls of rice, so she must be angry… no, she ate from a soup bowl.

So the amount of rice hasn’t really changed.

The atmosphere doesn’t seem angry, more like dissatisfied…

As Kang Seona was cautiously observing Aila, she heard a voice.

“Boss?”

“What?”

Aila asked.

“What’s a raid?”

“…Ah. I need to explain that too, huh.”

Kang Seona scratched her head.

“Well. Simply put, it’s opening a dungeon and storming into it.”

“…You can artificially create dungeons?”

Aila was shocked.

Lee Sekyung, who had been quietly eating, tilted her head in confusion at Aila’s reaction.

“Isn’t that obvious? How else would you raise your rank?”

“Th-that’s obvious…? Deliberately opening those demon lairs is outrageous. It’s blasphemy!”

“Why are you going as far as blasphemy…”

“What’s wrong with unni?”

“I don’t know.”

Aila muttered to herself with a strange look in her eyes.

Perhaps the fact that dungeons could be artificially opened was quite shocking to her, as she kept mumbling things like “That’s impossible” and “It can’t be” like a broken radio.

“Boss, do you know where unni came from? Don’t they have raids in other countries too?”

“Don’t ask me. Ask her directly.”

“I don’t think we’re close enough for me to ask that yet. You know, it’s like when you think you’re really close friends with someone, but it turns out they just think of you as ‘just, you know, a regular friend.’ That kind of embarrassing experience? My friend transferred schools once, and made a new friend there. But it turned out only she thought they were friends. It was so funny, when I heard it–“

Here we go again.

Kang Seona woke Aila up.

They say shared pain is halved, don’t they?

“Hey, Aila, snap out of it. Hey!”

“……”

“Hey, if there are devices to prevent dungeons from forming, wouldn’t there be devices to create them?”

Life returned to Aila’s eyes upon hearing those words.

“There are such devices?!”

Perhaps a bit too much life.

“Huh? Yeah… Why so suddenly…?”

“How did you do it?! I tried everything but failed! I couldn’t do anything!! But, but how, by what means…?”

“Okay, easy, stop, shaking, me! Hey! Someone help meee!”

Aila grabbed Kang Seona by both shoulders and shook her violently.

Kang Seona flailed like an inflatable tube man.

Despite being about two heads taller than Aila, Kang Seona’s body moved exactly as Aila directed.

“U-unni! Stop! Stooop!! If you’re going to kill me, at least find out my bank account password first!!”

This little bitch?

While Kang Seona was cursing internally, Lee Sekyung rushed over to restrain Aila.

As Aila’s hands fell away, Kang Seona staggered and coughed roughly.

“Cough! Cough! …Did I do something wrong to you…? Can’t we talk this out?”

“I’m sorry… My emotions, got the better of me…”

Aila bowed her head.

She got too excited.

…But it couldn’t be helped.

If that technology had been available on her side, how many people could have been saved, how much sorrow could have been erased. How many people’s futures could have been preserved.

Even now, when she closes her eyes, she can see that landscape.

A world that had died, where everything was monochrome except for the pitch-black, bright red, and crimson flowing colors.

If only they had the technology to prevent gates from forming…

“Unni, are you crying?”

“N-no, I’m not crying…”

She doesn’t cry.

She mustn’t cry.

Because the “Saint” who went on adventures with the Hero was always cheerful, slightly oblivious, and never lost her smile, encouraging everyone in any situation.

Because the Hero loved such a Saint.

Because for such a Saint, the Hero ■■.

“I shouldn’t, cry…”

“……”

“……”

The two were at a loss for words.

***

“Unni, are you okay now?”

“…Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry… and thank you.”

“If you’re grateful, just work hard.”

“Boss, you’re really trash. Is that what you want me to say?”

“What did I do?”

Aila gave a bitter smile.

“You don’t need to do that for my sake. I’m really okay.”

“…Oh, alright unni.”

“……”

The two fell silent.

Though they were just fighting as usual, to Aila it seemed like they were exaggerating their argument to cheer her up.

But it’s better to let it be.

The two exchanged glances briefly and continued the conversation.

“So, what were we talking about earlier?”

“Unni said she doesn’t want to work.”

“Right, that’s it.”

“That’s not it!!”

Aila shouted.

As the two giggled at her reaction, Aila realized they were joking and blushed slightly.

Kang Seona said with a laugh:

“Okay, okay, you want to enter dungeons… that’s what we were talking about, right?”

“…Something like that?”

“But how? Hey, the regular raid in Gangbuk this time is B-rank, right?”

“Well, considering I haven’t been contacted, it’s not A-rank.”

“Ah shit, if it were just a normal dungeon, I could take you along, but it’s a raid so I can’t bring you.”

“I can’t go as a safety officer?”

“The raid is tomorrow, as if they’d let you join now…”

Kang Seona sighed.

Just as hunters have ranks, dungeons also have ranks.

More precisely, just as dungeons have ranks, hunters also have ranks.

If you can safely clear an A-rank dungeon, you’re an A-rank hunter; if you can safely clear a B-rank dungeon, you’re a B-rank hunter… and so on.

This classification greatly contributed to increasing hunters’ survival rates, but there was a minor drawback.

Hunters’ growth became unbalanced.

Naturally, the ranks of naturally occurring dungeons can’t be controlled.

If high-rank dungeons keep appearing, low-rank hunters have no way to grow.

The best way for hunters to grow is to enter dungeons and absorb mana.

That’s why “raid dungeons” were created—artificially opened dungeons to train hunters.

By slightly modifying the devices that suppress dungeon formation, dungeons of desired sizes could be created.

Therefore, for raid dungeons, entry is restricted to hunters of higher rank than the dungeon itself, except for a minimal number of personnel deployed for safety.

This is because it would defeat the purpose of raid dungeons, which is to help lower-rank hunters grow.

Kang Seona fiddled with her phone.

“…Hey, are you a fast runner?”

“I’m not slow, but why do you ask?”

“There’s a C-rank dungeon raid in Chungnam tomorrow at noon. Want to go?”

“Is there any reason not to…?”

“Good, so tomorrow… I have something to do, but I’ll text you the location, so find your way there. Can you do that?”

Aila nodded.

A moment later, her phone vibrated.

“I just need to be at this location by noon, right?”

“Yeah, as for your gear-“

“I’ll take care of it myself.”

“Really? Then we’re good.”

Kang Seona stood up.

The conversation was now over.

Even in the worst case, a C-rank dungeon would be cleared within two days.

‘I’ll need to adjust my schedule a bit.’

Kang Seona stretched.

“Huh? Seona-ssi, why is Chanwoo-ssi lying on the floor?”

“Huh? Why is he on the floor… sleeping?”

“Ah, I forgot about him.”