‘It’s already been a week since then…’

In the end, I hadn’t been able to activate the skill even once. “Imagination and persistence make a good hunter.” That was the first line of an S-rank hunter’s autobiography, and now it’s become a saying among hunters. 

When I first heard it, I laughed at how silly it sounded. But now, I realize it’s completely true. When it comes to persistence, I’m second to none. I’d already spent a whole week focused on this damn F-rank skill, testing every possible scenario. But my limited imagination had run out.

‘But now… I feel like I’ve done everything I can.’

I tried to remember the first time I dealt with those S-rank skills. “Abyssal Hellfire” was a simple skill that activated as long as I poured in all my mana, but “Blazing Gaze” was different. 

At first, it only produced sparks in the air and couldn’t hit the target properly. After several days of thinking, I imagined shooting an arrow and aiming directly at the target. Only then did the skill activate correctly.

Could this F-rank healing skill also require some special condition beyond just selecting a target? The word ‘recovery’ kept bothering me. Did it mean helping the target recover, like restoring them to their previous state? I kept thinking it over, but I still couldn’t find an answer. 

Back when I was Hong Jun, most of the skills I had were simple. They didn’t have any special conditions, either. As long as I fought off monsters, my level went up quickly. Ah, I did use my body to test my skills back then, but I never sat around racking my brain like this. I was spacing out when Min Ga-on, getting impatient, suddenly leaned in close.

“Yeon-ho hyung?”

Min Ga-on’s gentle voice held a subtle pressure, as if he were urging me to answer. I couldn’t get a single moment to think by myself. If he would just stop hanging around in front of me all day long, I felt like I could finally find a lead. 

He even waited outside the door when I went to the bathroom, when I slept, and even when I showered. It was as if he thought I might suddenly disappear. When I didn’t respond and only showed how fed up I was, his handsome face ended up right in front of me. I pushed his face away when he got way too close and replied without much thought.

“…I’m just thinking a bit.”

Min Ga-on gave me a faint smile and took off his glasses, setting them down.

“What are you thinking about? Let me help.”

How was someone supposed to “think together”? Unable to hold back my frustration, I drank my iced Americano quickly. Min Ga-on gave a small laugh and was about to order a new drink from the café’s barista.

“Who do we have here? Isn’t this Hunter Min Ga-on?”

A voice rang out in the empty space. It was a chillingly high, sharp voice, like metal scraping against steel. The unpleasant resonance seemed to scrape my eardrums and echo inside my head. 

The café speakers, which had been playing music, crackled with static and then suddenly went silent. At the same time, a powerful pressure spread through the café, making the air ripple like water. 

I caught a glimpse of the barista at the counter in the distance dropping a cup and staring at us with a pale, frightened face. Something supernatural that ordinary people couldn’t handle was about to happen.

[Support Skill, “□□□□”(□) has been activated!]

The system detected something a moment too late and displayed a message for an unknown skill. But Min Ga-on had already made his move on instinct. A cold chill rose like fog, spreading gently around him as if enveloping the space. He acted in the blink of an eye, without a hint of hesitation, like a trained predator. The next moment, a man dressed entirely in black suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

“…!”

I almost screamed, forgetting how ridiculous I’d look.

‘…It’s a person, right?’

He was a man with a body as thin as a skeleton and a skull-like face. His skin was yellowed like old parchment, and his cheekbones protruded sharply. His bulging eyes glinted strangely, like a reptile’s in a dark cave.

He was so skinny that his bones showed wherever his clothes didn’t cover him. His forearms were fully covered with colorful tattoos that looked like red and blue koi fish scales.

He left a strong, unforgettable impression, different from Min Ga-on. From his unique appearance, I could roughly guess who he was. I had only heard rumors about someone like him and had never met him in person.

‘He must be Ki Hyun-tae from the Cheonyeong Guild, right…?’

He was another S-rank hunter from Korea. There was no way there were two people with that face who also had a teleportation skill. A man with sunken cheeks and wide, bulging eyes spoke up.

“Hunter Min, you’re really hard to meet these days.”

Min Ga-on recognized the strange visitor immediately. The faint smile on his handsome face vanished instantly.

“We didn’t set up a meeting, Hunter Ki Hyun-tae.”

It was essentially a polite dismissal. But he was someone who had used a teleportation skill just to come here and talk to Min Ga-on. There was no chance he would leave after hearing only that.

“Hey now, I came all the way here myself. Don’t be like that.”

Ki Hyun-tae smiled, stretching his thin lips into a wide grin.

“We still have more to talk about regarding the ‘Flame Bead,’ don’t we?”

As soon as I heard that forced sweet tone, a chill ran down my spine. The ‘Flame Bead’ was an S-rank fire-type item I’d worn until the moment I died. When I died, all my items would have been automatically removed. 

Someone must have picked it up and gotten lucky. They were all high-grade items with rare bonus effects, so I assumed they’d ended up with a new, worthy owner and stopped thinking about them.

‘…Min Ga-on has my item?’

Thinking that I might see my item again felt like getting back something precious I thought I’d lost forever. I forced down the burst of emotion and glanced at Min Ga-on beside me, but his ice-cold expression gave nothing away. Still wary of Ki Hyun-tae acting friendlier than his appearance suggested, Min Ga-on answered him in a cold, flat voice.

“I’m sure I already told you I have no intention of selling that item.”

Even with that firm refusal, Ki Hyun-tae still wouldn’t give up. He just shook his head.

“Oh, come on… Hunter Min, why keep an item that’s completely useless for someone like you with a water-and-ice attribute? If you sell it to someone who actually needs it—like me—it’s a win-win. Wouldn’t that make things so much easier?”

Ki Hyun-tae’s piercing eyes gleamed under the fluorescent light.

“Or… like the rumors say, do you really have the ghost of Hunter Hong Jun attached to you?”

Huh… the ghost of Hong Jun really was here… though it was attached to this useless body beside Min Ga-on. 

Ki Hyun-tae, having guessed correctly by chance, shrugged and added.

“No, seriously. Why are you hoarding items from someone who’s already dead? It’s creepy as hell.”

What was he even talking about? I was the one who felt creeped out—enough to make me shiver.

‘Why on earth is Min Ga-on collecting my items…?’

It was definitely suspicious. As Ki Hyun-tae said, most of my items were fire-type. They were of no use to Min Ga-on, who had water-type skills. It was like trying to light a fire on top of ice. A terrible match. 

Even if they were S-class items with good passive effects, Min Ga-on could easily find alternatives, so using mine would only put him at a disadvantage… But Min Ga-on, who had been staring at the other person with a fierce look, stated firmly.

“I have, no intention of, selling it.”

His voice was low and strained, each word forced out through suppressed anger. Hearing that, Ki Hyun-tae, who had already been rejected three times, grew noticeably more hostile. The tattoos on his skin seemed to twitch as if they were alive. The air between the two men felt tense. Were they really about to start a fight…?

“Don’t be so sure. Come find me if you change your mind.”

Ki Hyun-tae managed to answer in a surprisingly polite tone and forced a smile. Then his attention suddenly shifted in an unpleasant direction. His bulging, frog-like eyes had started watching me closely at some point.

“By the way, I’m seeing a new face here.”

Srrk.

The space around us seemed to warp, like black ink dissolving into water. The smell of burning sulfur lingered briefly in the air before disappearing. Ki Hyun-tae’s ghostlike body seemed to scatter like smoke and then instantly reassemble, appearing suddenly right in front of me.

“You crazy…!”

A curse slipped out of my mouth without thinking. Coming face-to-face with his skull-like face made my heart drop. His eyes, staring at me without even blinking, were dark and deep, like a stagnant well. Ki Hyun-tae stretched his mouth into a grotesque smile.

“So this is why Hunter Min has been laying low recently? Hmm. He doesn’t look like much…”

Just as I thought he might start talking trash right in front of me, his bony hand reached out at me without warning. Just as Ki Hyun-tae tried to grab my neck, Min Ga-on moved with incredible speed and smacked his hand away. 

When their hands collided, a sharp crack rang out, like ice shattering. Seemingly quite enraged, Min Ga-on spoke in a cold, low voice, his eyes glowing with a blue light.

“Shut up and get lost. Right now.” 

But the problem was that this gaunt bastard went straight for my neck. My neck was the spot my body remembered most vividly from the attack. The moment I felt my life was in danger, my body reacted before I even realized it.

[Attack skill “Inferno” (S) has been activated!]

It was a skill I had cast thousands, no, tens of thousands of times before. If my life was on the line, it made sense for the skill to activate reflexively. But unfortunately, trying to activate an S-rank skill with this useless body was basically suicide.

‘Damn it…!’

In an instant, I felt the mana in my entire body being sucked away. It devoured my meager mana like a ravenous beast, and in the blink of an eye, the system’s next message appeared.

[Attack skill “Inferno”(S) has been canceled due to insufficient mana!]

It was the message I’d expected. But regardless of the cancellation, my body had already been completely drained of mana. My mind had completely shut down. I was in a state similar to a vegetative one.

All the sounds around me became muffled, as if I were underwater. One by one, the colors disappeared, and the world looked like an old black-and-white film. My body went limp and began to lean over. I could faintly hear Min Ga-on shouting urgently.

‘No way… I’m not going to die like this again, am I?’

Snap. 

I blacked out instantly, like a film being cut. All that was left was complete darkness and silence.