Chapter 38 The Defeated Wolf

An Se-ah disappeared smoothly into the depths of the gate.

“Si-woo. Will she be okay? That child alone…”
Looking at An Se-ah like that, Park Jin-ha had a slightly worried expression.

It seemed she didn’t quite trust An Se-ah.

“She spoke so confidently, we should trust her.”

Honestly speaking, there were many aspects that didn’t seem trustworthy, but I decided to believe her anyway.

If she spoke so confidently, there must be something to it.

After all, An Se-ah is S-class, and a 9th rank expert at that.

I think she should be fine even if it’s a Red Gate.

We just need to wait.

“If Si-woo says so…”

Hearing my words, Park Jin-ha nodded.

And so, me and Park Jin-ha.

The two of us were resting on the nearby floor while waiting for An Se-ah.

However, we couldn’t rest comfortably.

Because it was extremely cold inside this gate.

“Brrr…”

After waiting for An Se-ah for several dozen minutes, I could see Park Jin-ha shivering from the cold beside me.

“Are you cold?”

I looked at Park Jin-ha and asked.

The temperature inside this gate was indeed very low.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the weather was like midwinter.

Thanks to the Hero’s body, I didn’t feel that cold, but Park Jin-ha seemed different.

“… No. This much is fine.”

Park Jin-ha said she was fine.

But I know just by looking that it’s a bluff.

So the only thing to do was to make her not cold.

“Kyaa.”

I pulled Park Jin-ha towards me and hugged her, and Park Jin-ha let out a slightly cute scream.

Normally, this is something only couples do, but it’s a dangerous situation now.

There’s nothing better for shivering from cold.

“Let’s stay like this.”

“… Yes.”

Fortunately, Park Jin-ha seemed to have warmed up.

Deep inside the gate, a chill began to settle.

With each step deeper, the temperature gradually dropped below zero, and a cold wind that cut the skin was blowing.

“Mmm~”

However, An Se-ah didn’t particularly feel the cold.

With her skill [Beast Transformation: Wolf], which enhances all basic physical abilities, the cold wasn’t much of a problem for her.

Rather, An Se-ah was feeling hot despite the cold.

An Se-ah now felt her body itching and her blood boiling.

“Hehehe… I can finally stretch my body after a long time.”

Right now, An Se-ah couldn’t control the heat flowing through her body.

An Se-ah.

As the 9th ranked S-class of the [Witch’s Temptation] guild, she has tremendous power, but in fact, she rarely appears on the front lines.

Because she’s still unfinished.

Under the policy of ‘She shouldn’t strain her body yet’ by Min Seo-jin, the guild master of [Witch’s Temptation], An Se-ah’s daily life was always being confined at home.

And such a daily life was extremely painful for An Se-ah.

A life of eating, sleeping, and playing every day, it was a very painful life.

Why is this a painful life?

An ordinary person wouldn’t understand why this is boring. Why resting at home without working is painful.

But that’s because An Se-ah is not an ordinary person.

An Se-ah is an entity who artificially obtained the [Beast Transformation] skill.

The [Beast Transformation] skill gives overwhelming physical abilities and the sixth sense, but in exchange, her intelligence and instincts become closer to a beast’s conception.

Such an An Se-ah naturally has the instinct of a ferocious beast infused in her.

That instinct of wanting to fight.

Moreover, the wolf skill that An Se-ah was implanted with is not an ordinary wolf.

A ferocious wolf, the genes of the SSS-class gate beast ‘White Fang’.

For An Se-ah, who received a skill from such a wolf, a peaceful daily life was torture.

Slaughter. War. Massacre.

Despite inheriting the genes of White Fang, An Se-ah could think rationally,

But still, in her mind, she wanted to bite, kill something.

Fighting to the death, bleeding against each other, was the best entertainment for her.

So now, at this moment, she was so happy.

Now that Min Seo-jin, who had been controlling her, was gone, this moment was a situation where the leash that had been strangling her was released. It was such a free moment.

An Se-ah was excited at the thought of having a proper fight after years.

“There it is…!”

Sniff sniff…!

While exploring the inside of the gate, suppressing her excited feelings.

An Se-ah could detect an enemy with her sense of smell.

The smell of a gate dimensional being that stings the nose, this was the smell emitted by the boss of the Red Gate.

An Se-ah immediately sprinted there with all her might.

“Kukk. It’s time to rampage.”

A smile formed on An Se-ah’s lips.

Her ears and tail fur became even sharper.

To enjoy a bloody fight…!

“It is cold indeed.”

The temperature inside the gate continued to drop gradually.

The feeling that it’s colder than before is definitely not an illusion.

Of course, as someone with the Hero’s body, I just felt the temperature difference and didn’t have emotions like struggling because of the cold, but I could clearly tell it was cold.

The increasingly cold temperature.

If I had to guess the reason for this phenomenon, there would be only one possibility.

It’s likely that the boss of the gate is the kind that handles ice.

This is a very common phenomenon.

If the boss handles ice, the temperature inside the gate drops.

If the boss handles poison, the inside of the gate is full of poison.

If the boss digs holes, the gate changes to be like a maze.

So the fact that it’s gotten so cold now makes it easy to guess that the boss of the gate is one that handles ice.

“By the way, isn’t An Se-ah coming?”

It’s already been an hour since An Se-ah left.

It’s been a long time since we waited for An Se-ah who had left saying she would catch it quickly, but there’s no news.

By now, I couldn’t help but feel a bit bored.

Honestly, although I said wait, just staying here doing nothing is a bit tiring.

And above all.

“Haah… Haah…”

Park Jin-ha’s condition wasn’t good.

Park Jin-ha was shivering and her face had turned red as if she had caught a cold.

It seemed that due to her injury weakening her body, plus the cold, her condition now looked quite bad.

Even hugging wasn’t a panacea.

Eventually, Park Jin-ha’s body temperature gradually dropped.

Well, it’s not to the extent of being life-threatening, probably just a mild cold.

Nevertheless, looking at Park Jin-ha’s face, she seemed a bit distressed.

So at this moment, I eventually had to make a decision.

Whether to continue waiting for An Se-ah or to leave to find the boss of the gate myself.

I thought for a moment, and the decision was made quickly.

I had no choice but to leave to find the boss of the gate.

I can’t keep waiting without knowing when An Se-ah will come.

“This should be fine for a while.”

I took off the clothes I was wearing up to the top, wrapped them around Park Jin-ha, then got up.

My attire became just a simple t-shirt and pants.

Anyway, I don’t feel the cold, so it didn’t matter at all.

“I’ll be back soon.”

I stroked the hair of the soundly sleeping Park Jin-ha, and I stood up.

And I walked into the interior of the gate where An Se-ah had walked.

It wouldn’t be a long task anyway, so I didn’t feel the need to wake her up.

Step, step.

The inside of the gate.

I felt it getting colder as I went deeper.

Looking at the walls as I walked, the stone walls were now beginning to be covered with ice.

“Fortunately, I don’t need a detection skill.”

Usually, when finding a boss inside a gate, a hunter with a detection skill is essential.

In an enormously wide large gate, there’s no other way to find the boss.

But in this situation, I don’t seem to need a detection skill.

Because the boss is advertising “I’m here.”

If you keep going to where it gets colder, you’ll naturally meet the boss.

Step, step.

I walked like that for about 10 more minutes.

And now the texture of the chill I was feeling began to change.

It wasn’t just a feeling of “cold,” but a chill that felt like “freezing.”

Of course, for me with the Hero skill, there was no problem at all.

Anyway, it was about time.

The boss is right beyond here.

I approached step by step like that.

Finally, I could see the boss’s face.

“This guy must be the boss.”

The identity of the Red Gate boss was an Ice Golem.

Ice Golem.

I could see a huge, white ice mass that seemed to be about 50M tall.

And I could also see a body made of ice and a huge core in the center.

The overwhelming chill emanating from the core, this guy was the boss of the gate.

“It’s quite big.”

However, it wasn’t an ordinary Ice Golem.

Normally, if we talk about an Ice Golem, as a high-risk gate boss of S rank.

Its height is generally about 10M.

But, perhaps due to the nature of the Red Gate, the boss now seemed to have received an enormous buff, and its height seemed to exceed 50M.

Due to the nature of large gates, the cave is very wide, but despite that, the Ice Golem looked so big that it seemed like the cave would collapse if it moved wrong.

It’s definitely not an easy opponent.

If I had to rank it, it wouldn’t just be S-class, would it be SS-class?

“I should start preparing.”

But nothing changes.

I will defeat the boss and clear the Red Gate.

I drew my sword, and now I was about to loosen my shoulders and engage in battle.

“But, by the way, hasn’t An Se-ah arrived here?”

However, feeling like I had forgotten something, I briefly thought before combat and could recall An Se-ah.

If An Se-ah had headed straight here after parting with us, she would definitely have stopped by here.

Yet, there was no trace of An Se-ah to be felt anywhere.

“She should have definitely stopped by here…”

So, with a slight hope, I looked around.

I could find An Se-ah.

“Why is she sleeping here…?”

White ears and tail drooping.

An Se-ah was collapsed in a corner of the cave.