hotmtlnovel Chapter 357: Ranbir & An Hui-yoon (3)
Chapter 357: Ranbir & An Hui-yoon (3)
Chapter 357: Ranbir & An Hui-yoon (3)
“Could I hear a bit more?”
His interest was piqued.
Ma Jin-ho wasn’t well known to outsiders, but as a tank he feared nothing.
He was the No. 3 of the Groo Guild, Jeju’s hegemonic guild. Positions like that weren’t handed out by luck.
The fact that someone like Ma Jin-ho had even suffered a through-and-through was one thing; judging by the situation, he hadn’t even managed proper payback.
“An Hui-yoon. He’s a hunter who has lived on Jeju a long time. I found out he’d been here even before our guild established itself.”
“A native?”
“You could call it that—he’s been here that long. But there are some odd points.”
“He’s a Republic of Korea hunter, yet he seems to have no domestic activity on record.”
When Kang-hoo hit on the point, Ma Jin-ho clapped once and answered.
“Exactly! No activity record in-country at all, and he doesn’t have any local power base on Jeju either.”
“Then there’s no reason for the Groo Guild to take an interest, is there? Maybe he just wanted a quiet life.”
“Right. If he had kept quiet, we would have left it alone. But there was a problem.”
“Hm?”
“He has private property. It’s sizable, and he’s even occupying part of a public road.”
“Ah...”
The picture came together.
Where the friction had sprouted, and what the Groo Guild had decided was a problem.
“He declared his territory off-limits to outsiders. Obviously you can’t pass on the road that cuts through it either.”
“Was that sudden?”
“Yes. He’d lived fine without caring whether people or cars passed, and then he suddenly flipped.”
“Hm...”
“He’s withdrawn it now, but—previously, the Jeju Public Safety Bureau confirmed that harsh responses to intruders on his land were legally fine.”
“You’re saying: treat them as enemies, harm or injure them, and the Bureau would guarantee no charges in its name?”
“More or less. Quite a few hunters went in out of curiosity and died. In my case, that stab was a warning.”
Strictly speaking, An Hui-yoon’s response was heavy-handed, yet not incomprehensible.
It was privately owned land, and with that sort of assurance from the Safety Bureau, he had plenty of pretext.
Still, it was odd that a hunter who had gotten along peacefully had suddenly flipped like that.
Judging by how Ma Jin-ho hadn’t even been able to fight back, the man was surely first-rate.
“An Hui-yoon...”
No matter how he searched his memory, the name wasn’t there.
With skill like that, he would definitely have been active domestically.
If not, it likely meant he operated from an overseas base.
Kang-hoo asked, “Does he use Jeju Airport often? You’d have run into him at the airport now and then.”
“No. That’s what makes it stranger.”
‘He might have an ability to move irrespective of space—like my teleportation perk from the Dimension Plunderer.’
A suspicion formed.
Ninety-nine point nine percent, he was a hunter hiding his strength.
What he’d shown as a “warning” was likely only a sliver.
“No matter how I probe it, nothing rings a bell. He certainly feels like a mystery.”
“Yeah. Which makes him a headache. He does say he won’t act first if he isn’t provoked, but...”
What he wanted was clear.
From Kang-hoo’s perspective, respecting An Hui-yoon’s wishes seemed best; but with friction in play, the Groo Guild wouldn’t see it kindly.
‘An Hui-yoon. I should remember that name.’
It didn’t feel like a name he would hear once and forget, so Kang-hoo etched it into his mind again.
At some point, surely— they would meet again.
Thirty minutes later, as soon as Kang-hoo arrived at the Groo Guild’s building— just as Ma Jin-ho had said, the entire guild turned out to welcome him.
So from the limousine, through the lobby, to the VIP reception room, he heard cheers from Groo guild members so loud they almost split his ears.
It felt strange—like an idol standing in front of fans.
He wondered if he was worth that level of cheering.
Apparently, the message of Yuuji’s death had been bigger than he had expected—enough to spark this fervor.
Soon, in the briefing room with O Yu-jin and O Hye-jin, Kang-hoo requested a briefing on the spot.
Since the purpose of this Jeju trip was to fulfill a partnership contract and raid the dungeon, he needed a fast grasp.
The key point was where the Groo Guild’s push had stalled.
Everything beyond that was unknown; if they broke through, it would be first-time territory for all.
Up to the choke point, there had been no major issues—they said. Kang-hoo listened closely.
In short: there was a stone bridge they had to cross, with cliffs on both sides.
A fault had opened a chasm, similar to the San Andreas Fault, only much longer.
The problem was a single beast that drenched the bridge in flames so it couldn’t be crossed.
Nickname: Fire Dragon (Hwayong).
It was a mid-to-large beast, and it attacked from below the chasm; hunters could only use ranged attacks, which made killing it extremely difficult.
In the end, they had to sneak across the bridge without fighting—but since they were in the dragon’s detection zone, that was hard too.
On top of that, the bridge wasn’t very durable; a few flame baths and it collapsed.
When that happened, everyone had to exit and wait for the natural reset—an endless cycle of futility.
They had spent weeks repeating this miserable loop.
For the guild that owned the dungeon, it was a major loss.
Most of the loot dropped when raiding the main boss and the zone right before it.
Pushing only from the entrance to the Fire Dragon didn’t even cover upkeep.
‘To me, the answer is obvious... Right, this is a skill problem. Without something like Sacred Leap, you simply can’t do it.’
Having grasped the situation and a solution, Kang-hoo nodded.
Near the bridge, mana interference was severe, so spatial magic from mage-class hunters was all sealed.
Sprinting wouldn’t work either—the Fire Dragon would detect them and breathe flames.
They needed a skill that got them to the far side before it could even react. Only Sacred Leap fit.
“It’s certainly tough, right? We kept stalling here, so we asked you to join—at least to get some of us across.”
O Yu-jin said, confidence muted from repeated frustration.
For Kang-hoo, the picture was clear. He only had to apply it in the field.
So he spoke with emphasis.
“I’ve found a method. I think we can get everyone across. I’ll refine details on-site.”
“Really? That’s possible?”
“I don’t brag a bluff I’ll get caught in.”
Kang-hoo nodded.
O Yu-jin and O Hye-jin glanced at each other; perhaps the answer had come too easily.
But this was reality, he thought.
This dungeon’s difficulty changed entirely depending on one particular skill.
And he happened to have it. No more, no less.
Of course... simply having the right skill to use at the right time wasn’t easy either.
Since Kang-hoo had spoken firmly, the two sisters didn’t press further. If there was a way, there was a way.
Then—
O Hye-jin, beside them, asked:
“Then, can we start the raid as soon as the dungeon is ready? About three hours until reset.”
“Anytime.”
“Planning to rest in the meantime?”
“Not particularly... unless there’s nothing to do?”
“Then may I make one request?”
“Hye-jin, maybe not...”
“C’mon. You wanted to say it too, sis. He might surprisingly take it cool.”
Since O Hye-jin was trying to ask something and O Yu-jin was stopping her, it had to be a delicate topic.
When Kang-hoo only smiled in silence, O Hye-jin gently removed O Yu-jin’s hand and spoke boldly.
“There’s something we’d like to ask—formally. Would you accept a sparring match? With us sisters.”
“A two-on-one?”
“Yes.”
A 2-on-1 spar.
From the numbers alone, theirs was the disadvantaged request.
Even so, they asked—which meant there was something they wanted to learn from Kang-hoo.
Another point— the sisters shone more in team play than solo.
Individually, each was arguably less than a “full portion”; together, they were 2.5 portions.
From Kang-hoo’s perspective, there was no reason a spar had to be one-on-one.
He also wanted to hone himself against their team play.
Not every battlefield offered fair one-on-one duels.
1v2, 1v3—unfair setups were common. No reason to pick conditions.
“Alright. Let’s have a go.”
Kang-hoo agreed.
They had proposed it, but it would benefit him greatly too.
He wanted to truly test the prowess of the pair who reigned as Jeju’s overlords.
Things proceeded apace.
Before preparations for the spar, Kang-hoo added just one condition to his acceptance: aside from O Yu-jin, O Hye-jin, and Ma Jin-ho, no other guild member would spectate.
Conditional closed session, in short.
From the Groo Guild’s position—asking for a favor—they naturally didn’t refuse, and the venue was set.
Like the Cheong-an Mercenary Corps, the Groo Guild had recently built a much larger training hall; the facilities were excellent.
The design made it impossible to see the interior from outside, and security was tight.
The security procedures were as meticulous as the movement routes were convoluted; Ma Jin-ho even joked he sometimes got lost.
It was a training facility that showed the Groo Guild’s painstaking focus on security.
As he followed the guide, Kang-hoo organized what he knew about the sisters.
‘O Yu-jin specializes in slowdown; O Hye-jin in freezing. Once your feet are caught even once, freeze follows immediately. Watch that link.’
Slowdown and freezing— the sisters’ specialties.
Officially they were classified as swordswomen, but Kang-hoo had long since categorized them as spellswords.
Their magic wasn’t just a “support” concept.
It created variables in itself and drove the opponent into crisis—an extremely important specialty.
‘Being two has advantages, but it also has inevitable disadvantages. I’ll aim for those.’
He had never done a 2-on-1 spar before, but he had already sketched out a strategy.
Whether it would work— you only learned by mixing sweat and breath. The curtain on an intriguing spar was rising.