The moment the Three-legged Crow collapsed on screen, the world erupted into a frenzy of jubilation.

From those watching in their living rooms to patrons in crowded bars, to the throngs gathered at Gwanghwamun Square praying for success—every soul roared as one.

“Woooooaaaah!!!”

“We got it! We got it!!!”

“This is Korea’s first S-Rank champion subjugation, right!? Huh!?”

Some threw their arms around complete strangers and screamed.

Others went limp with relief, their legs giving out beneath them.

There were even those who wept openly.

This was the achievement forged at the crossroads of the Three-legged Crow’s subjugation and the annihilation of Korea’s S-ranks.

A victory in a game where the nation’s fate had been the chip on the table. It was euphoria that made every other gamble seem trivial by comparison.

So they laughed.

The newsrooms broadcasting the live feed were no different.

The tremor in the anchors’ voices alone conveyed the intensity of their emotions.

“South Korea’s first S-Rank champion subjugation! What makes this achievement all the more extraordinary is that it was accomplished solely with domestic forces, without borrowing strength from any foreign power!”

“Breaking news! The news of the Three-legged Crow’s subjugation is currently spreading across the entire nation…!”

They had proven that reclaiming Erosion Zones and subjugating gods within those territories was realistically possible.

There was no such thing as an incomprehensible catastrophe anymore.

The evil god had been reduced to nothing more than a beast that humanity could truly hunt.

The paradigm was about to shift.

This was the inflection point Jung-woo had desperately longed for.

Foreign press outlets were likewise frantically flooding the airwaves.

But the busiest of all were the national agencies scrambling to quantify the data.

“Redirect all analysis processes to this footage! Not a single variable goes unaccounted for!”

“This could be the key to the Greek Erosion Zone! Issue a high-rank hunter mobilization order immediately!”

Awe, astonishment—but somewhere, greed.

The moment they glimpsed the possibility of a power capable of stripping away Erosion Zones, a dark desire had bloomed unbidden.

“What are our options for utilizing Hunter Shin Jung-woo?”

“We’re conducting a thorough background investigation as we speak.”

“We need to bring him in. If that proves impossible, then we set up a negotiating table he can’t refuse…”

But someone was watching, and would not let such attempts stand.

“B-Bureau Chief! Urgent news!”

A post appeared on the world’s largest personal social media channel.

[Edmond Richmond]

[For Hunter.]

It was a photograph of him raising a whiskey glass as if in a toast toward a Teddy Bear doll.

Accompanied by the caption: ‘For hunter.’

No one in the hunter industry could fail to understand its meaning.

The Savior of North America had his eyes on Jung-woo.

The strongest man alive, who bestowed the title of ‘hunter’ solely upon those he personally acknowledged, had recognized Jung-woo as his equal.

The post’s comments were updating at a frenzied pace.

His watching the affair sent ripples through North America, which suffered its own Erosion Zones, and simultaneously forced those scheming to leash Jung-woo to stay their hands.

“…We can’t give that mad racist an opening. Send a congratulatory message. And request a formal meeting in Korea.”

“Damn it…”

The apex divided humanity into two categories.

Hunters, and everyone else.

He cherished his own kind.

If they understood what the word ‘hunter’ meant to him, they would readily grasp how profoundly foolish it was to target Jung-woo.

Such was the frenetic pace of the world outside.

Meanwhile, what were the Korean hunters doing now that the subjugation was complete?

The live channel had the answer.

[Kya!!! Victory feast is totally justified lolololol]

[Even in all this excitement, the perimeter watch is still running. Seriously impressive.]

[If it were me, no way I’d hold back on drinks today lmao. Watching with chicken and beer right now.]

[It’s a day that rewrote history, so screaming like that is basically a free pass lololol]

At the secondary base camp, the participating hunters were guzzling drinks in a state of excitement unlike anything before.

The key figures, naturally, were absent.

[So where did the S-ranks who actually fought face-to-face go?]

[Where do you think lmaooo]

[They just took down an S-Rank champion, you think they’d be sitting around drinking?]

[Gotta go divvy up the materials lololol Gotta craft that post-civilization-grade gear for sure lmaoooo]

The public continued with their eager predictions.

[Jung-woo must be the most hyped right now. He basically did the work of three people solo.]

[Not three, four. Shin Jung-woo was handling field command. It was almost like precognition.]

[Seriously unreal. Isn’t it broken that a summoner has that level of command ability?]

[Probably getting showered with congratulations right now lmaooo]

What the reality might be was something they had no way of knowing.

Swaaaaah—

Jung-woo stood beneath the shower’s cascade in the camp’s washroom.

Washing away the grime of battle, cleansing his body.

But his expression was a far cry from the euphoria gripping the world outside.

It was quiet, and still carried an edge.

‘Was it perfect?’

An after-action review.

A chronic habit by now. A relic of the days he had spent clawing for every scrap of improvement—Jung-woo meticulously traced back each mistake from the field, one by one.

‘Perfect, my ass.’

The Three-legged Crow had already been marching south.

Caught in the current of events, they’d had no choice but to scramble for the best possible outcome.

An unforeseen variable had forced them into a hasty subjugation, and with the odds of victory nowhere near a hundred percent, he’d bluffed to bolster morale.

It had been necessary, but it didn’t sit well with him.

He’d leaned on the excuse of time constraints, but in the end, wasn’t it little more than a gamble?

‘The hunt itself was the same.’

He had devised a strategy.

He’d trusted in the open-field conditions and the advantage of distance from the gate, but it was still an S-Rank champion.

He had prepared for two possible outcomes.

Either the L-Class All-Ages Filter would work, or it wouldn’t.

Fortunately, it was the former.

Unlike lesser magical beasts, the champion seemed to resist with a kind of static-like interference, but it was fleeting.

Once the system alert triggered, its resistance was sealed.

【[All-Ages Filter] enforces review standards!】

In the end, the mutated Three-legged Crow had its physical capabilities restricted.

Its compact, stubby body made its movements easy to read. Combined with the already favorable conditions, pattern analysis became that much simpler.

So they analyzed it without much trouble.

And in the end, they won.

That was the problem.

‘What if the mutation hadn’t taken hold?’

A perfect score meant both paths led to the right answer.

So let’s consider the one-in-a-thousand, the one-in-ten-thousand scenario.

‘If the Domain hadn’t worked, we’d have lost. I could’ve blocked the Black Sun, but we’d have been at a disadvantage in melee.’

There was such a thing as raw physical prowess.

The standard benchmark for a champion’s combat power was five hunters of equivalent rank.

But that only held true below S-Rank.

‘For S-Rank champions, quantifying combat power by rank is meaningless.’

They existed at the very ceiling of human classification.

How much further they could grow from that state was anyone’s guess.

Attempting to gauge their combat power by conventional metrics was an error in itself.

Fortunately, Tae-woon was a tank with elemental attributes, and the Three-legged Crow was a magical beast with only a single Flame Heat System ability, so they’d held on through attribute advantage. But if not?

The Three-legged Crow, wielding its original body at full capacity, would have tossed Tae-woon around like a plaything and posed a far greater threat.

Once the vanguard shatters, no amount of flailing from the rear guard can hold the battle line.

He’d had to sustain a gamble where victory or defeat couldn’t be determined until someone died—feeding back every split-second of battlefield intel in real time.

This wasn’t a matter of idle speculation.

This wouldn’t be the last S-Rank champion they hunted.

They had to breach the Zero Gate.

Jung-woo’s ultimate target was the monstrous entities that claimed pan-human talents as hosts, weaving their abilities together with the powers of the otherworld.

It was fortunate that these inadequacies had surfaced here.

At the same time, it was something to be deeply ashamed of.

Kkwak!

It gnawed at him.

Because it meant he’d relied on raw ability output rather than strategic perfection.

He had simply failed to execute what he could have done better.

‘…That’s enough reflection.’

Jung-woo shut off the water, stepped out, and dressed.

‘The saving grace is that we won. We’ve accumulated combat data from the Erosion Zone, and collected sufficient samples.’

The cooling shells had underperformed.

It proved the existing formulation was wrong for erosion environments, but with data in hand, improvement was entirely feasible. Test subjects for experimentation were practically everywhere.

In the next battle, they’d be able to employ far better tools.

‘And more than anything…’

“Jung-woo!!!”

The voice that shattered his thoughts belonged to Baek Geun-ho.

The hidden contributor who had overseen the western flank sniping for this operation came barreling in for an embrace, thoroughly intoxicated.

“My, you’ve had quite a bit to drink.”

“Hahaha! Of course I should! This is a day that carved a chapter into human history!”

“You’ve been through a lot. You too, Geun-ho.”

Jung-woo sidestepped smoothly, and Geun-ho stumbled—though he caught himself quickly, as befit a physical-type aptitude user.

“Are you heading to the command tent? Everyone’s in there with no plans to come out! Jin Hae-seo doesn’t need to come out, but please do call Tae-woon for us!”

“I’ll mention it to them.”

“Then wrap up the meeting and come on out! You’ve got to give a toast!”

Geun-ho wandered off with a hearty laugh.

Always a cheerful sort, the man’s good energy was infectious. Jung-woo let out a short laugh.

In that state, he entered the headquarters tent.

The S-Rank hunters were gathered inside.

“You’ve all been through a lot. Have you eaten?”

“We’ve got something far more satisfying than food. No need. You’re the one who put in the real work, Jung-woo. How’s your head?”

Tae-woon’s tone was far warmer than before.

The emotions he had felt on the battlefield were the reason.

The near-prophetic briefing had lowered the battle’s difficulty by several orders of magnitude.

It had upended Tae-woon’s world, where raw power had been the only law.

“There’s much I want to hear from you. Especially regarding strategy. I’m even considering establishing a new department within my guild.”

Hae-seo likewise spoke, keeping the sensation at their fingertips alive.

Open-field hunting. It was an unfamiliar experience for modern hunters.

But to ultimately reclaim the land of North Korea, they needed to grow accustomed to it.

Above all, considering that the very foundation of hunting was open-field combat, the battle theories systematized over the past decade deserved to be overturned.

“Thinking it over, your command was rooted in hunting drills. It took me back. Our Hunter Shin Jung-woo has given me much to reflect on.”

Kwon-seung possessed more open-field combat experience than anyone, having hunted Izanami on the front lines a mere dozen-odd years ago.

The need to whip his own complacency.

He was filled with goodwill toward Jung-woo, who had taught him.

Jung-woo smiled at the center of it all.

His humility surfaced.

“It’s all thanks to you gentlemen. I did nothing special.”

It was no empty platitude. They would eventually arrive at the answers on their own.

And not solely because of the Seoul Zero Gate incident.

Six and a half years from now, one of the Central Plains 16 Nations would collapse from a gate shock, and through the battles they would be mobilized to fight, they would reach their epiphany.

There was never any reason to boast in the first place.

Of course, they didn’t see it that way.

Meeting their unwavering gazes, Jung-woo shifted the mood.

“Then let’s get to the matter at hand.”

“Right. We should get to the distribution.”

They had hunted a magical beast.

This was no mere threat neutralized—it was a feat that warranted proper compensation.

Tae-woon chuckled.

“S-Rank champion materials? I never even dreamed of those.”

At the center of the command tent, the Three-legged Crow slumbered within a glass tube.

With the filter deactivated, the creature boasted a horrific appearance even in death, inducing a visceral sense of revulsion.

Though at this point, it was nothing more than an appetizing feast.

“I want the organs, specifically the heat-generating one. Looks perfect for customizing my equipment.”

Hae-seo picked up where Tae-woon left off.

“I want the outer hide, muscle fibers, and bones. Same here—for equipment reinforcement. Seeing how mine took damage in this fight, I urgently need the durability to handle whatever we hunt next.”

“I want the plumage. I need a weapon suited for the Immortal’s Play, and it looks perfect for crafting a war fan.”

That was Kwon-seung’s piece, rounding out the three.

Jung-woo spoke with a hint of guilt.

“There’s only one thing I’m asking for.”

The S-Rank champion’s magic stone.

Even counting every one ever recovered by humanity, fewer than ten currently existed—a rarity of the ages.

That the others willingly conceded it to him made him feel profoundly apologetic.

“What’s with the sheepishness? You didn’t just handle field command.”

“Not just the filter—in terms of raw combat power, your three summons pulled as much weight as the three of us combined. And it was Teddy Bear who dealt the killing blow.”

“The distribution was fair. If anything, we’re the ones grateful that Hunter Shin Jung-woo conceded everything else to us.”

No matter how prettily they wrapped it, they had gathered for profit.

Yet in matters like this, they meticulously credited each person’s contributions.

Had they been greedy, things could have devolved into an ugly squabble.

What a relief it was.

To know that they were colleagues who held firm to their principles.

“…Thank you.”

Jung-woo bowed his head deeply.

That was where the good news ended.

“Haa, well then, the next matter…”

Tae-woon scratched his head vigorously, his expression complicated.

The others felt the same, and even Jung-woo felt a knot tighten in his stomach.

Their gazes drifted simultaneously toward the Three-legged Crow’s corpse.

More precisely, toward the abdomen that had been wreathed in black flames during the battle.

Tae-woon muttered low.

“…This is the worst. Seriously.”

A scar reminiscent of a vortex marred the flesh there.

None of them could have inflicted such a wound.

Which meant it hadn’t come from any hunter’s attack.

Nor could it be called a simple wound—not for an S-Rank champion.

A being incapable of healing its own wounds would have been the anomaly.

The implication was singular.

“That bastard… charging in so eagerly, and in the end…”

“…Yes. It was nothing more than a creature that had lost its territory and fled.”

The Three-legged Crow hadn’t simply left Pyongyang.

It had been defeated in a conflict, wounded, and driven out.