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Oh Kang-Woo staggered slightly with a shocked expression upon exiting the cafe. He had thought they were in a relationship because Han Seol-Ah had let him live in her house and cooked delicious kimchi stew for him every day.

\'Did I get ahead of myself?\' Kang-Woo shrugged sadly.

Seol-Ah approached him cautiously. "Uhmm, Kang-Woo."

"Yes…?"

"Did you… really think we were dating?"

"I\'m ashamed of that, but I did."

"I-I see," Seol-Ah said and took a few steps back.

Her face was red, but she seemed strangely happy. She just stood there, fidgeting and staring off into space.

"What\'s wrong?" Kang-Woo asked her.

"N-Nothing!" Seol-Ah, who was surprised by his question, shouted in surprise.

Kang-Woo tilted his head, confused by Seol-Ah\'s suspicious behavior.

Meanwhile, Seol-Ah turned around and once again stared blankly into space.

"Hehehe," she giggled while imagining something.

She even clenched her fists and whispered to herself, "All right!"

Seeing that Seol-Ah\'s weird behavior continued, Kang-Woo was about to approach her. Nevertheless, before he could, Seol-Ah turned back to face him with a determined look.

"K-Kang-Woo!" she called out.

"Uh… Yes?"

"Wh-Why don\'t w-we ju…" Seol-Ah stuttered as she tried to propose something.

However, the more she talked, the more embarrassed she felt. She blushed even harder, and her voice became quieter.

"Seol-Ah?"

"U-Urghhh."

Seol-Ah was trembling while biting her lower lip. She suddenly opened her mouth as if to resume speaking, but she continued to fidget without being able to finish her sentence.

Then she took a deep breath and finally managed to talk.

"S-Spea…"

"I\'m sorry?"

"Y-You can speak to me casually. Yes. L-Let\'s start with that."[1]

Kang-Woo smiled at Seol-Ah\'s words. "Sure. I\'ll do that."

"Th-Thank you very much, Kang-Woo."

"You can speak to me casually too."

"N-No! This is more comfortable for me!" Seol-Ah exclaimed while shaking her head.

Kang-Woo shrugged at her firm answer and replied, "Okay."

"Hehehe, I\'m loving this, hyung-nim," Kang Tae-Soo said as he watched them with a smile. He patted Kang-Woo on the shoulders with his giant hands and continued, "I\'ll see you at Incheon tomorrow then, hyung-nim. I\'ll send you the exact location later."

"Huh? Why Incheon instead of the D-rank Gate that\'s closer?"

"Well, we had an incident at that Gate, didn\'t we? That\'s why I decided to change our target from Lizardmen to Orcs."

"Oh."

"They\'re stronger than Lizardmen, but we won\'t be in a swamp and won\'t need to be silent. So, it\'s a more comfortable place to hunt."

"Good idea." Kang-Woo looked at Tae-Soo in surprise.

\'He clearly isn\'t dumb.\'

Tae-Soo was thoughtful and knew how to take action. On top of that, he was loyal to Kang-Woo.

\'As an underling, he\'s perfect.\'

Kang-Woo gazed at Tae-Soo with satisfaction. He thought he had made the right call in saving Tae-Soo from the Andras Guild members.

"Okay, then. I\'ll meet you there tomorrow," Kang-Woo said.

"Understood, hyung-nim. Do you have any plans tonight? Why don\'t we go out and have a drink?" Tae-Soo asked while making the motion of drinking a glass of soju.

"No. I have stuff to do today."

"Aw, man. What stuff?"

"I need to level up," Kang-Woo said while thinking about his level.

He was currently Level 29 and about to get his Fourth Awakening.

\'I should level up as much as possible while I still can.\'

He wanted to become as strong as possible before focusing more of his attention on gathering information on the demon worshipers. For him, achieving more Awakenings was the equivalent of weakening the seal on his Ten Thousand Demon Core.

Unlike normal Players, who had to worry about whether they would get a high-ranking Trait, Kang-Woo was guaranteed to become stronger with each Awakening.

\'I also want to know what I\'ll get as my fourth Trait.\'

Traits were a new power that he didn\'t have back when he used to rule over Hell. He couldn\'t help but wonder what kind of new Traits he would unlock down the road.

\'They say that the higher your level becomes, the higher your chances of unlocking a higher-ranking Trait will be…\'

Kang-Woo thought that he might be able to get an even better one this time.

He then said to Tae-Soo and Seol-Ah, "I\'ll get going, then."

"Hunt safe, hyung-nim!"

"Okay. I\'ll see you tonight, Kang-Woo."

After saying goodbye to both of them, Kang-Woo walked to the C-rank Gate.

* * *

"Now, then…"

After the inspection was completed, Kang-Woo entered the Gate and took a deep breath.

\'Let\'s begin.\'

Kang-Woo didn\'t need to formulate a strategy to fight against mere Trolls or Orcs. He only needed to think about how he should move to kill more of them faster.

\'I guess leveling up really does get progressively harder.\'

Even though he\'d killed so many monsters, he still hadn\'t leveled up. He wanted to advance to a B-rank Gate, but that wasn\'t an option yet. The promotion requirements for becoming a B-rank Player were similar to the C-rank promotion requirements. He needed to provide mana stone exchange receipts and a certificate that stated he had reached Level 30.

\'So, this is why personal connections are important.\'

Players who belonged to big guilds could enter high-ranking Gates freely and bypass the rank restriction. However, Kang-Woo could not hope to reap such privileges, as the only guild that he knew was the Andras Guild, whose members were on the watchlist of the Hwarang Corps.

"I should try to make some connections."

He had no intentions of entering a big guild, but maybe making connections with one wouldn\'t be a bad idea.

\'And I don\'t think it will be that hard.\'

Kang-Woo possessed great power that far surpassed what other Players of his level possessed. He hadn\'t closely compared himself with other Players, but he was sure that no one could dismiss him casually.

After the major struggle against the monsters that occurred in the past, power and talent had become valuable commodities in the world of Players. So, it was likely that someone like Kang-Woo was a gem that everyone would desire.

With those thoughts in mind, Kang-Woo used the Authority of the Beholder. Black demonic energy spread out from his body, shoving every single piece of information about his surroundings into his brain.

\'First up, there are eight over there.\'

After finding a group of Trolls, Kang-Woo sprinted toward the group. He ran incredibly fast through the forest thanks to his Authority of Haste.

Slash!

"Kiieekk?"

Kang-Woo charged into the group of Trolls without hesitation and used the blade made from his Authority of Blades to split the head of one of the Trolls in two. The troll screamed in confusion and died before even realizing it had been ambushed.

"GRRRR!!"

It was only then that the other Trolls realized that they were being ambushed, and they charged toward Kang-Woo. For anyone else, seeing Trolls that were almost three meters tall charging toward them was the definition of fear, but Kang-Woo didn\'t feel anything. Compared to what he had experienced in Hell, the Trolls\' charge was nothing more than a cutesy prance.

Clash! Crack!

"Kiieekk."

All eight Trolls were massacred in less than a minute. If someone else were to have seen that fight, they would probably have felt bad for the Trolls.

After catching his breath, Kang-Woo quickly searched for his next target.

\'I can devour their corpses later.\'

At that moment, reaching Level 30 and getting his Fourth Awakening was more important to him than taking the spoils of battle using the Authority of Predation. Kang-Woo left the corpses of the monsters behind and began moving at a frightening speed in search of his next target.

"Huh?"

Kang-Woo caught a faint scent of blood right then. It was obvious that he would smell blood since he was running around killing monsters, but this blood that he was smelling was different from monster blood.

\'It\'s the scent of human blood.\'

Furthermore, the strong scent of blood didn\'t seem to be coming from light wounds but from rather critical ones.

Kang-Woo\'s gaze sank. He slowly moved toward the source of the scent of blood.

\'Did they die while hunting?\'

That was the most likely answer. It was quite common for Players to die while hunting.

\'Authority of Silence.\'

However, there was also a chance that they had been attacked by a Chaos Player or a demon worshiper. So, Kang-Woo stealthily walked toward the source with his Authority of Silence activated.

It did not take him long to find the source of the scent. He brushed through the thickets to see the corpses of five Players on the ground.

"This is…" Kang-Woo mumbled.

He looked at the corpses of the Players. They were so badly torn apart that it was even hard to tell their genders.

"…A monster\'s doing," Kang-Woo concluded while looking at the marks on the corpses.

"Hmm…"

While checking out the corpses, Kang-Woo noticed something strange and frowned.

\'There\'s no monster blood.\'

Other monsters could have dragged away the corpses of any monsters that died during the battle, but it was weird that there wasn\'t even a single drop of monster blood on the ground. There was no way that a party of five Players who could enter a C-rank Gate had died at the hands of Trolls without injuring them at all.

\'That\'s impossible.\'

There was simply no way that could happen unless they had been fighting a boss monster. No, it would be impossible even for a boss monster to decimate a party of five without shedding a drop of blood.

\'Just what exactly happened here?\'

Kang-Woo continued to search the mangled corpses with a frown.

Suddenly…

Rustle.

"Grrrrr," a low cry rang out.

It was a cry that seemed to seep into the soul of those who heard it.

Kang-Woo\'s eyes widened. "No way…"

The thing that emerged from the bushes was a giant beast covered in black and red fur. It was almost five meters tall, and… it was a monster that Kang-Woo knew a lot about.

"Why is a Hellhound here?"

The monster that had emerged from the bushes was a demonic beast that inhabited the First Hell.

1. Casual and formal Korean speech doesn\'t really translate well to English… Just know that they have both been speaking very formally to each other. ☜