‘At least the food tastes good, so that’s a relief.’
If I’d known it would be this difficult, I wouldn’t have reincarnated so recklessly.
By the time I finished the Korean meal served in the VIP ward, the clock was already pointing to 10:30. Thanks to the top-grade potion I’d received intravenously, the flesh I’d lost had long since regenerated. With no reason left to linger, I decided it was time to go home and began the discharge process.
But what surprised me most during the whole process was the weather.
‘Huh.’
It was still pouring outside.
‘...the daytime temperature in Seoul, which rose to 22 degrees Celsius, has fallen to around 20 degrees. The monsoon rain that began on Sunday is expected to continue steadily through tomorrow.’
When I was first kidnapped, it had barely been more than a drizzle, lightly dampening my shoulders. Yet that gentle rain had already grown this fierce.
Fortunately, there happened to be a SPA clothing store in Neo Seoul Hospital’s amenities wing. I changed into a one-size-fits-all cotton T-shirt that the third-ranked S-Rank Hunter had bought for me in advance and safely left the building looking like an ordinary civilian.
However, it seemed that guy hadn’t taken the weather into account. There was no umbrella. And to make matters worse, by the time I hurried to the convenience store near the hospital’s main entrance, they were already sold out.
‘No umbrella to keep the rain off me...’
A moment later.
Tak, tak, tak.
A fellow Earthling who had been inside the convenience store with me only moments earlier dashed away, holding a bag over their head. Most people, like that person, were willing to expend energy simply to reduce their exposure to the downpour, even by a little.
But despite witnessing such efforts firsthand, I eventually stepped out from beneath the eaves with my hands shoved casually into my pockets.
Swish.
Come to think of it, what use was a waterproof product to someone who had spent an entire previous life in the ocean?
‘Luckily, the hospital is in Mapo District.’
Ever since I first became trapped in an F-rank body, there had been plenty of inconveniences, but at least here I wasn’t afraid of diving, and being surrounded by flowing water simply felt pleasant.
Besides, I had finally resolved the contract that had tormented me for so long.
At last, I had achieved complete freedom.
I didn’t want to spoil this refreshing sense of liberation in the slightest, so for today, I stopped pretending. Unlike the Earthlings around me, I walked straight into the pouring rain without an umbrella.
But around thirty minutes later, only after reaching the familiar streets of my neighborhood did I suddenly remember the problem I had completely forgotten about...
***
A few minutes later—the park.
‘-_-’
A blond man sat alone on a bench.
Rain poured relentlessly from the sky, yet he merely sat there with his upper body hunched forward, staring blankly into the downpour.
‘I’m screwed.’
It was the hour when everyone else was busy going to work.
So why was he sitting around in a park on a rainy morning instead of going home?
‘Come to think of it, I don’t have a home.’
Swish.
As the rain continued to fall, the blond man occupying one side of the park muttered in a somewhat dispirited voice.
‘Haa. To think I’d lose my home over something like this...’
To put it plainly, Giryeo’s home had been destroyed.
If it had been ordinary demolition, perhaps things would have been better. But the gate had swallowed the entire building whole, leaving behind not so much as the front doorframe.
Naturally, with nowhere to return to, he had ended up wandering around public places like this. ṟἈ₦оＢÈš
‘Damn it! As if I didn’t already have enough to deal with because of that Lee Hayoung situation.’
Now reduced to a homeless wanderer without either a house or a place to stay, the alien—who outwardly still resembled something roughly mammalian—fell briefly into despair.
However, after thinking things over carefully, the situation wasn’t quite desperate enough to warrant that reaction.
As for the tiny, rundown studio that had disappeared, the culprit had already promised some form of compensation during their previous conversation.
[Hydra]
[Surprise Box]
[Screaming Stake]
Besides, all of his truly precious possessions were already with him.
[Sacred Tree Seedling]
Ah, this had definitely been left in the corner too.
While rummaging through the item box he had recovered, Giryeo checked once more for the coral he had hurriedly grabbed during the evacuation. It hadn’t been anywhere near him when he first regained consciousness, so for a while he had wondered whether the kidnapper had simply thrown it away.
‘As expected, to Earthlings, this just looks like an expensive air purifier.’
Kang Changho hadn’t recognized the true value of the [Sacred Tree Seedling], so he hadn’t taken any special measures regarding the magical item.
Of course, he had wondered why someone living in a tiny five-pyeong studio—about 16.5 square meters—would keep something like that around. But given a certain blond man’s lung condition, that brief tug-of-war with suspicion had soon ended.
That settled that.
Then the financial damage wouldn’t be particularly severe.
All that remained was to decide what to do from now on.
‘A house...’
Thinking this might be a good opportunity to buy himself a grand mansion or something of the sort, Giryeo pulled his phone from his chest pocket and sank into thought.
He had simply been too lazy to deal with the hassle of moving until now.
In truth, he had never particularly wanted to keep living in such a cramped, shabby studio apartment forever. So now that the opportunity had presented itself, he genuinely wanted to use it to change residences.
‘Oh my, my hands keep slipping because of the rain...’
Then, without warning, the phone screen went completely black.
‘Huh!?’
He had definitely charged the battery to full at the hospital, so having the display die without warning was entirely unexpected.
The phone showed nothing but a black screen.
Giryeo pressed and held the side button, trying to turn it back on, but the device gave no response whatsoever.
‘Hmm.’
The whole thing was broken.
It wasn’t quite on Aiphaut’s level, but still—how could they sell mass-produced products this vulnerable to moisture on a planet where water was, at the very least, fairly common?
‘Is this finally the end for this junk phone too...?’
Anyway, they could at least have made it durable enough to withstand this much rain.
Damn those greedy manufacturers!
The alien wearing Kim Giryeo’s skin grumbled while gripping the dead phone.
Of course, getting emotional wouldn’t solve the problem, so his thoughts quickly moved elsewhere.
‘Ha.’
Whoosh.
He had originally come outside intending to enjoy the rain he loved so much.
Yet somehow, he had ended up looking utterly pathetic.
Now deprived even of a proper means of gathering information, Giryeo sat there deep in thought, wondering how on earth he was supposed to arrange a move.
‘Life in a foreign land sure is difficult.’
If he’d known things would turn out like this, he really should have taken learning how to buy a house more seriously.
Real estate office.
Licensed realtor.
A few relevant terms still came to mind, but really, how was an alien in an unfamiliar world supposed to secure a home with nothing more than a handful of vague clues?
For an outsider like him, even remembering something as basic as the concept of an internet café was difficult.
So for the moment, all he could do was let his shoulders sag while rain continued pouring from the sky.
Vroom...
But when he happened to glance away, a rather familiar car was passing along the road on the far side of the park.
‘Huh!?’
A white car.
Until everything became this complicated, it had at least been the kind of mass-produced vehicle he saw twice a week.
‘It looked like the one Haseong drove.’
In other words, the vehicle famous for being the national hero’s personal car was currently passing along the road.
‘What was it called again?’
He clearly remembered the owner telling him about it before, but perhaps because the information had seemed unimportant, he couldn’t recall it properly...
Well, whatever.
As a domestic car with a model name that was something like 070 slowly made its way along the rain-slick road, the alien naturally fixed his gaze on the familiar vehicle.
After all, just as one could learn to distinguish individual zebras after seeing enough of them, even he had grown accustomed to recognizing that particular car.
Its windows were heavily tinted, making it difficult to see who was inside with the naked eye.
‘Nese?’
But Giryeo wasn’t relying on his eyesight.
He had the sharpened sixth sense of an archmage.
The man slouched on the bench soon realized something.
And apparently, the person inside the car had sensed the same thing, because the white vehicle moving along the rainy road suddenly turned at the next intersection.
Its destination had abruptly changed to the park.
‘Now that I think about it, seeing that car reminds me—I’m fairly good at driving, so maybe I should buy a motorcycle while I’m at it.’
There weren’t any convenient parking spaces beside that road, so the driver would probably have to circle around for a while to find one.
‘Whatever happens, it’ll still be faster than an F-rank worm running around on foot.’
Giryeo lowered his gaze back to the ground and drifted into idle thoughts by himself.
Not long afterward, a new figure entered the park.
‘Hunter Kim!’
Even from a distance, while still inside the car, the newcomer had clearly recognized him.
So if this Hunter had come all the way over here after seeing him, there could only be one reason.
From Giryeo’s perspective as the teacher, he could already sense the familiar magical power approaching.
And just as he suspected, it really was that S-Rank Hunter.
As soon as Giryeo heard the familiar voice, he raised his head and greeted him.
‘Hello.’
The person who had appeared was Jung Haseong.
‘Oh, Hunter Kim. How did you...’
But the other party looked genuinely startled by the encounter.
The moment Jung Haseong saw his fellow Hunter sitting on the bench, he immediately asked,
‘Why did someone who was hospitalized come out so soon?’
‘Because I’m completely better now.’
‘So that’s why you told me not to visit you at the hospital when I called earlier?’
For reference, South Korea’s top-ranked Hunter had learned—while filing a certain report at the police station—that the other party had been injured in a gate-related incident.
‘Your message came just as I finished changing into regular clothes.’
Even so, the scene before Haseong was as baffling as ever.
‘That.’
Jung Haseong soon spoke again, his expression openly confused.
‘First of all, I heard everything that happened. Kang Changho attacked Hunter Kim and got himself into trouble. He even said he’d never bother Hunter Kim again for the rest of his life.’
‘-_-’
‘Even with law enforcement backing us up, we were left spinning our wheels trying to catch him. Ha... Well, I suppose simply beating him down when he comes looking for a fight is one way to solve the problem.’
It was, in many ways, a pitiful sight.
The country’s top-ranked Hunter had been completely taken in by fake news.
‘You got hit too.’
But how was he supposed to correct the truth now?
Back when that fierce battle between two genuine S-ranks—a clash worthy of being called a fight between tiger and dragon—had erupted on the sand, Giryeo had briefly considered being honest.
At the time, he had thought that perhaps it would be all right to reveal that he was really just an F-rank.
But now that some time had passed, his judgment had changed completely.
‘Come to think of it, wasn’t this guy supposed to have a pretty scary personality to begin with?’
The fact that he was an alien.
The fact that the supposed F-rank S-Rank Hunter had been mistaken for a powerhouse all this time.
Those were the kinds of truths one could only reveal if one completely trusted the other person’s character.
And since Giryeo had once clashed rather fiercely with the national hero the previous summer, he still found Jung Haseong somewhat difficult to deal with.
Afraid that Haseong’s attitude toward him might change if he discovered the deception, Giryeo hesitated to directly deny the new rumor that he had ‘subdued Kang Changho.’
‘As expected, you really are a Hunter.’
‘Mhm.’
If he needed an excuse, there was always the fact that the magic lessons weren’t over yet.
Maintaining his status as an S-Rank was useful for that purpose too.
From a student’s perspective, an instructor’s authority and the trust placed in that instructor were important things.
The alien tutor wrapped his silence in that justification and weakly turned his gaze away, his expression naturally souring with disgust at his own cowardice.
However, Jung Haseong, unaware of the apologetic look being sent his way, merely adjusted the object in his hand.
Which was understandable.
The Hunter sitting before him was drenched to the skin, sitting on a bench without so much as an umbrella.
Sssk.
In the park, beneath the heavy rain, a man in a thin black T-shirt sat thinking.
Raindrops slid over his thick eyelids.
Startled by the sight of his fellow Hunter soaked completely through, Jung Haseong hurriedly tilted his umbrella toward him.
Of course, the man on the bench didn’t particularly appreciate the gesture.
‘I’m already this wet. What’s the point of holding an umbrella over me now?’
If he said that with his usual blank expression, it might sound sarcastic, so he quickly added a half-hearted smile before speaking.
‘It’s fine. Move it away.’
‘But...’
‘You should use it. Your back’s getting soaked.’
If Haseong had trained his abilities a little further, would he eventually be able to selectively dry only the moisture clinging to someone’s clothes in situations like this?
That stray thought passed only briefly through the pyromancer’s mind.
As the conversation continued, however, a certain question began to rise in Haseong’s heart.
‘But Hunter, why were you here?’
The alien creature answered.
‘I was just sitting here.’
‘What? No, you’re still recovering. Shouldn’t you go home and rest?’
‘Haseong-ah, I don’t have a home anymore.’
‘Yes?’
He doesn’t have a home?
What on earth was that supposed to mean...?
‘Ah.’
Jung Haseong understood a moment too late.
‘Come to think of it, the studio apartment sank.’
Now that he thought about it, that blond Hunter had disappeared for several hours after leaving behind only a single message saying that Kang Changho had come.
Thanks to various interviews afterward, Jung Haseong now knew that Kim Giryeo had gone into hiding specifically to move the fight elsewhere and protect civilians.
Of course, by the time Jung Haseong had rushed over to help, the building had already been swallowed whole and vanished.
All that remained on the vacant lot was a Break Monster with unusually low activity—an eerie, ambiguous sight that had been alarming enough in itself.
Jung Haseong briefly recalled the scene from the gate incident, then quickly returned his attention to the conversation.
‘Then instead of staying outside like this, why don’t you at least check into a hotel for now?’
‘A hotel?’
‘There’s no need to rush into finding a new place immediately, right?’
He looked worriedly at the man who seemed liable to turn into a statue on the bench at any moment.
Even when Giryeo refused, Haseong continued trying to hold the umbrella over him.
‘A hotel, huh. That sounds pretty tempting, but now that I think about it, that isn’t exactly easy either.’
‘Why?’
‘When the house sank, I only grabbed the item box before getting out.’
‘Ah, then don’t tell me...’
‘I don’t have my wallet either.’
‘What about money?’
‘My money’s in my bank account. But with my phone dying on top of everything else...’
To repair the phone connected to his internet banking, he needed money.
But to withdraw that money, he needed his debit card.
And every card he owned had disappeared into the otherworld along with his wallet.
To the alien, the situation felt like complete checkmate.
But after watching the other man struggle to come up with a solution for so long, Jung Haseong looked mildly astonished as a thought crossed his mind.
‘It’s only around ten o’clock. If he gets a certificate issued at the community center, shouldn’t there still be enough time to sort everything out at the bank today?’
It was strange.
Inside a dungeon, this man was flawless—so much so that even a prodigy talented enough to make it into veterinary school could seem like nothing more than an ordinary Hunter beside him.
And yet that very same man was now struggling with something as trivial as accessing a bank account.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter