Chapter 4

Chapter 4

‘How long do buff-type skills usually last, anyway?’

I couldn’t remember exactly, but I’d heard that even an S-Rank professional buffer hunter’s buff skill didn’t last more than an hour. So Yoon Juyeong’s stealth skill probably wouldn’t last past an hour either.

‘If I compare the time left until the gate passage limit resets with the stealth skill’s duration… even at the longest estimate, it’s not enough.’

And once Yoon Juyeong’s stealth skill wears off, things aren’t going to end well. If I were hiding in this rock crevice alone, maybe, but with Yoon Juyeong in tow, there’s no way to mask the smell of blood seeping from his abdomen.

Monsters in dungeons basically have blood-scent detection as a passive skill, so any hopeful guess that the thing might not catch the smell is better off thrown away for peace of mind.

‘What do I do…’

I’d thought about stepping up to fight it myself, but I shook my head right away. Impossible. If a B-Rank hunter couldn’t take it down, how the hell could I?

If I had some standout awakening skill, maybe there’d be a sliver of a chance… but unfortunately, my awakening skill does have a standout quality, but…

I narrowed my eyes and opened my status window. The blue window, visible only to me, held simple information about “me.”

<Status Window>

Name / Age: Yoon Seohee / 27

Awakened: Y

Rank: EX

Awakening Skills:

―Ruler’s Garden (?)

―Mana * Attribute (C)

‘Even looking at it again, it’s like, what am I supposed to do with this?’

Both the rank and the awakening skills were a complete mess.

Not only did the rank slot, where others would have a specific letter like C or S, randomly show EX (Extra), meaning “out of the question,” but the first awakening skill slot held an unranked skill.

Honestly, I was pretty excited when I first saw my status window.

Right? It felt like something out of a fantasy novel, the protagonist. Seeing something special that only you have, something no one else does—anyone would get their hopes up.

But my hopes were crushed not long after. The reason was painfully simple.

The skill wouldn’t activate.

No, to be precise, the skill did activate, but its effect never showed.

The world is vast, and skills are plenty. Some skills, like “Stealth,” have intuitive effects, but others, like mine, are impossible to understand what they do.

And those kinds of skills are often first-of-their-kind or unique skills that only one person has, so initially, the status window doesn’t even provide a description.

Eventually, you have to use the skill yourself and apply its effect in some way before the description appears… and unfortunately, that was my case.

And regrettably, in the hunter industry, skills like these—whose effects are unknown and with no way to figure them out—are commonly called “trash skills.”

No matter how good the effect might be, if you can’t figure out what it is or the minimum conditions to trigger it, what use is it?

‘This is driving me crazy. Is there really no way… Huh?’

“Hunter Yoon Juyeong?”

Just then, the potion I’d been pouring over Yoon Juyeong’s abdomen ran out, and as I rummaged through my inventory to grab a new bottle, I noticed something strange. I hurriedly brought my ear to his mouth.

“……”

No… breathing. I forgot to breathe myself as I pressed my ear to his chest. Thankfully, his heart was still beating.

Respiratory distress from excessive blood loss? Is that a thing?

I’m no doctor, so I wouldn’t know. All I know is that you’re supposed to do CPR on someone who isn’t breathing, but I’m not even sure if that applies to someone with a hole in their abdomen bleeding out like this.

“Yoon, Yoon Juyeong. Yoon Juyeong! Wake up, hey!”

I slapped his cheek a few times and shouted his name, but there was no response. I even yelled, relying solely on the stealth skill’s effect, but still nothing.

Damn it. Should I do mouth-to-mouth? Is that even okay?

I glanced at his abdomen. Through the shirt I’d pulled open to treat the wound, I could see the skin barely holding together over the injury.

Whether my cheap potion had some effect after all, fortunately it seemed to be healing, but blood was still gushing out from spots that hadn’t recovered yet.

‘Damn it.’

Sink or swim. Anything was better than doing nothing. I poured a whole new potion bottle over his abdomen in a rush, then immediately tried CPR.

How many chest compressions was it? And how many breaths? Damn it, in a crisis like this, I couldn’t remember clearly. I think it was about thirty compressions.

I hurriedly did thirty chest compressions, then pinched his nose and tried mouth-to-mouth. How many times did I repeat that?

“Cough, cough…!”

“……!! Yoon Juyeong, are you awake?!”

Hunter Yoon Juyeong’s breathing came back. I pressed my ear to his mouth in a panic. This time, I definitely felt breath. Wow, did this guy just take a trip to the underworld?

I forced my trembling hands to steady and controlled my own breathing. If Hunter Yoon Juyeong actually died while my own life was hanging by a thread…

I didn’t even want to think about it. An innocent person dying because of me. Out of every worst-case scenario I could imagine, that was suddenly the absolute worst.

“Hunter Yoon Juyeong, hold on. You absolutely can’t die. If you die, huh? I’ll die too, got it?”

“Cough, hh, cough…!”

“Don’t even think about dying—”

Before I could finish, something like a hot breath poured down from above. A chill, completely different from what I was physically feeling, crawled down my spine. Forgetting to breathe, I slowly lifted my head.

It was there.

‘Crazy.’

Between dozens of pitch-black fangs, a long tongue flicked in and out as the monster stared at me. The Red Chimera.

“Aaaah!”

Just like most people scream when a ghost suddenly pops out in a horror movie, I shrieked and hugged Hunter Yoon Juyeong tightly in my arms.

Thanks to that, Hunter Yoon Juyeong, crushed against me, let out a groan that sounded like he was dying. He might have said something about being suffocated, but unfortunately, I wasn’t in an environment where I could listen to a dying man’s fading voice.

‘Crazy, did the stealth skill’s time run out?’

Come to think of it, it was about time. Even top S-Rank hunters could only maintain a buff skill for an hour at most, so a B-Rank hunter lasting over ten minutes was impressive.

I gritted my teeth and held Hunter Yoon Juyeong tighter. Even so, that Red Chimera bastard was drooling and trying to shove its face into the rock crevice where me and Hunter Yoon Juyeong were hiding.

‘At least one good thing…’

True to being a boss of a low-difficulty dungeon, the Red Chimera seemed pretty stupid, wasting its effort trying to force its head into a crevice narrower than its face.

‘What do I do.’

The Red Chimera bastard’s dumb intelligence bought me some time, but that didn’t suddenly raise me and Hunter Yoon Juyeong’s survival odds.

Because the moment that red salamander bastard squeezed its nonexistent brain and chose to just smash the rock, or shot that long tentacle thing at us, this brief time-buying would be over.

‘And there’s nothing I can do with the little time I’ve bought.’

If I had some last trump card up my sleeve, maybe, but unfortunately, all I had were a few cheap potions and a dying B-Rank hunter in my arms.

I gritted my teeth and glared at my status window again.

<Status Window>

Name / Age: Yoon Seohee / 27

Awakened: Y

Rank: EX

Awakening Skills:

―Ruler’s Garden(?) <Available>

―Mana * Star(C)

Other C-Rank hunters around me, even if their grade was low, at least didn’t have skills they couldn’t even use. I had no idea how I ended up like this.

Especially that skill with the fancy name. My initial awakening skill, ‘Ruler’s Garden,’ whose rank and effect were unknown, was the very object of my resentment.

‘I didn’t even wish for anything great. Even if it was just some common passive skill like increased gathering effect… huh?’

Huh. Something was weird. I squinted and looked at my status window again.

Awakening Skills:

―Ruler’s Garden(?) <Available>

―Mana * Star(C)

“Available?”

For the first time ever, words that had never appeared before were attached right next to my familiar skill. I rolled the suddenly-appearing four characters around in my mouth again. “Available”……

‘Available? Now?’

It had never once been properly usable until now, so why now?

I blinked stupidly, staring at my status window. Then, startled by the hot breath I felt above my head, I jerked my head up.

The Chimera, having finally given up on shoving its massive head into the rock crevice, was pulling out something like one of those tentacles from its back.

‘It’s all or nothing.’

I had no idea what its effect was, what the conditions for using it were, or what side effects came with activating the skill — it was a skill I truly knew nothing about. But the only gamble I could take right now was this.

I glared at the salamander bastard, which had finally pulled something tentacle-like from its spine and was aiming it at me, and scraped together every last bit of spite and hope I had left to shout.

“Skill activation.”

‘Please… please let it be a strong skill that can protect me and Hunter Yoon Juyeong. No, even if it can just heal Hunter Yoon Juyeong, that’d be fine…’

The creature’s tentacle-like appendage, covered in leathery hide, was aimed precisely at the rock crevice. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and squeezed my eyes shut.

“—Ruler’s Garden!!”