38 – HGL 38

“Kweeeck!”

At the same time, inside the Rift, a giant pterosaur, its Adam’s apple struck by a knifehand, flapped its wings and slumped. Eui-jae twisted the neck of the pterosaur, which resembled a bird but had an uncanny valley feel, as surely as one would twist a chicken’s neck on Dog Days.

Before entering the Rift, he felt nauseous and wanted to throw up, but after beating down a few Monsters, that subsided a little. Since he didn’t sense any other presences, he must have roughly cleared the surrounding Monsters. Eui-jae neatly stacked the pterosaur corpses in one corner and dusted off his hands.

Whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, the people swept into the Rift seemed to have all scattered. Thanks to that, he could slaughter the Monsters that rushed at him without worrying about being watched. He stood in front of the dead pterosaur and rubbed his chin.

‘It doesn’t seem like such a dangerous Rift… but should I reduce the number of Monsters?’

He had to hide his identity, so he couldn’t openly save people, but he could indirectly ensure their safety by killing Monsters. He couldn’t let innocent people get hurt because he didn’t do what he could. Eui-jae straightened the shoes he had been wearing folded down and moved his feet.

And after wandering around for a while, he smashed 24 pterosaurs and three herds of horned bison, then found an office chair with two wheels missing, a desk split in half, and a Lee Sa-young standee half-buried in the ground near a field of blue reeds.

Eui-jae examined the standee with an ambiguous expression. It was just a slightly thick board, but it had managed not to break.

“Should I throw this away, or not…”

After a moment of consideration, it was a familiar face, for better or worse, no, a familiar Gas mask. Besides, he had seen it so much in public service announcements that the hideously ugly Gas mask was starting to feel friendly.

Recently, Ha-eun had been imitating Lee Sa-young’s bizarre hand gestures, and Eui-jae was directly experiencing the horror of the influence of media on children.

In the end, Eui-jae plucked the Lee Sa-young standee, which he had grown fond of despite himself, like pulling out a radish, and tucked it under his arm. Then, he stood the dirt-covered standee upright in the shade under a tree, and he skillfully perched on the broken chair. His body was teetering, but his neat face looked quite serious.

‘Will the rescue team… come?’

This was a Rift that had appeared in a temporary measuring station in the middle of the city. Logically speaking, a rescue team would come. Probably.

He had taken care of most of the Monsters, so the safety of other survivors was also secured, and there was no need for Eui-jae to clear the Rift at this timing. All he had to do was sit quietly and wait for the rescue team with the Lee Sa-young standee.

But just waiting for the rescue team was… a very big problem for him.

“What about the evening business tonight?”

That was the point that he had to open the Hanover Soup Restaurant at 5 PM.

Not only that, but Eui-jae was also having a very realistic and important concern. For a clear broth, he had to keep skimming off the foam, but leaving it unattended for longer than expected was likely to cause problems with the taste. He had even left the broth on a low flame and just came here….

No, what if a fire broke out if he left it like this? Just imagining it made him dizzy.

Eui-jae turned on his phone. The clock had been stuck at 3:25 since he entered the Rift. Since electronic devices didn’t work, he couldn’t contact Grandmother or check the current time.

‘…No way.’

If this continued, his pride in the Hanover Soup Restaurant’s accident-free, diligent operation would be tarnished!

He was in a situation where the store and his heart were about to burn while waiting for the rescue team. Eui-jae anxiously shook his legs.

In fact, the very situation where Eui-jae might meet the rescue team was a problem. The plan that Min-gi Seo had set up and Eui-jae had agreed to was a scenario where he would minimize contact with other Hunters, register as a common Hunter lying on the street, and return.

But because he was caught up in a Rift in the middle of Seoul, even at a temporary registration office, too many variables had been introduced. He expected that the rescue team would be composed of Hunters from the Bureau of Rift Management, Hunters from the Awakened Management Bureau, and even Hunters from Guilds who had rushed over after receiving a request for support.

And the Hanover Soup Restaurant was like a mill for Hunters. It was a place where all kinds of Hunters came and went.

What if there was a Hunter in the rescue team who had been to the Hanover Soup Restaurant? What if they were even a regular? They would recognize him as soon as they saw him.

‘What’s the Hanover Soup Restaurant part-timer doing in this Rift?’

‘I know, right….’

They would naturally start with questions they were curious about and have all sorts of conversations, and no matter how much he hid it, the fact that he had come to register as an Awakened and was unlucky enough to be swept into the Rift would be known to the world. At least all the regulars of the Hanover Soup Restaurant would know. Just imagining it made his blood run cold.

He wanted to live quietly, so he got a job at the Hanover Soup Restaurant, but he kept running into Hunters because it was a Hunter hotspot, he kept meeting Lee Sa-young, he suffered from the aftereffects of the Mana Stone, J’s survival was forcibly revealed to the world, and he was even caught up in a Rift while coming to register as a Hunter.

Since so many misfortunes kept piling up like this, Eui-jae recalled a superstition he had heard somewhere.

‘Fucking hell…. Could I be having a bad year?’

He couldn’t ask NexB because he was inside the Rift. Cha Eui-jae’s life, which was already quite messed up, had been rolling even more messily in recent weeks. It was clear that something had gone terribly wrong somewhere. He resolved to sprinkle salt all over the store when he got out of here.

Anyway, whether it was a bad year or not, he couldn’t let his quiet life fly away like this. Of course, thanks to the Mana Stone and Lee Sa-young, it was already half-tattered, but he was in a state where he had to hang a banner saying, ‘Our quiet life is back to normal.’ He had to protect even what was left.

Eui-jae got up from the chair and rotated his neck once.

‘Let’s make a plan.’

Hunters would come to save those who had been caught up in the Rift, but that side wasn’t a rescue team for him. So it was much better to assume that there was no rescue team. The shameless face of Very Small Miracle Mingi Seo and the smooth face of Lee Sa-young briefly flashed through his mind, but he shook them off.

‘They won’t come.’

It’s better not to have even the smallest hope in times like this. You have to imagine the worst-case scenario and make a plan to be able to cope with unexpected situations with composure. That was the truth that Eui-jae had learned through his past experiences.

He sighed deeply, washed his face with his dry hands, and then drew a picture on the floor with the toe of his sneakers. He had to come up with a plan to escape this place with maximum efficiency.

The Rift disappears when the Master of the Rift at its center is dealt with. The rescue team prioritizes rescuing all survivors, so dealing with the Master is usually postponed to the next stage. If this happened, he would be late for the store’s opening time.

So, while the rescue team enters and rescues the survivors, he would avoid the rescue team and kill the Master alone. Perfect.

Eui-jae rubbed the picture with the sole of his sneaker to erase it. After all, the survivors were all scattered, so the search would take time. If they asked where he was after the Rift disappeared… he could say he was hiding in a corner.

‘Escape after killing the Master as quickly as possible, return to the store, fix the broth, and do the evening business.’

Eui-jae took a short, deep breath, recalling the plan in his head, and took out what he had prepared from his hoodie pocket. It was the Buddha fan he had taken out of the glove box of the truck earlier.

If his clothes got dirty from fighting with his bare hands, it would interfere with the opening at the exact time. If you don’t have teeth, you have to use your gums. Eui-jae closed his eyes.

‘Please cooperate, Buddha.’

The two eyes that opened again were bright blue. Flames flickered and rose above the flat map. The number of Monsters didn’t seem to be that large, perhaps because Eui-jae had killed them once. Seeing human shapes in various places, it seemed that the survivors were also hiding well.

Eui-jae identified the location and number of survivors and then turned his gaze in another direction. In the middle of the Rift, there was a huge flame flickering in green.

‘That’s the guy.’

A pure white wind wrapped around his feet, concealing his presence. Eui-jae began to run silently towards the flame.

Yang Hye-jin, an A-rank Hunter belonging to the Rift Management Bureau, stood in front of what used to be the Gwangjin-gu temporary registration office with dark circles hanging down her face. The place where the container had been was swallowed up by the Rift and was no different from a ruin.

She had been happy that it was quiet when she came to work this morning, but she never expected such a major accident to happen.

‘That’s why you shouldn’t say it’s quiet…. An accident happens right away.’

Her fluorescent vest with white safety lettering fluttered forlornly in the winter wind. Sniffing, she lit a cigarette and mumbled.

“Ha…. Why does a Rift have to burst in a temporary center, of all places? I’m really unlucky as hell.”

Another B-rank Hunter, who was holding a flashing safety baton in each hand and staring at the entrance of the Rift, nodded his head.

“You can say that again. Still, it’s fortunate that most of the people caught up in it are Awakened. We have some spare time, don’t we?”

“Spare time, my ass. They’re all low-ranked Awakened who worked in office jobs, so they won’t be able to fight properly. It’ll be a relief if they just hide well….”

“Senior! Senior!”

A rookie who had gone to control the surroundings, cutting through the conversation mixed with half worry, ran up urgently. Hye-jin blew out a puff of cigarette smoke.

“You’re here? How many reporters came?”

“Uh…. There were about six! I think more will come.”

“It can’t be helped. What about support personnel? I heard they’re coming from the Bureau of Rift Management, too.”

“Uh, that’s. Ah, that’s what I came to tell you!”

The flustered rookie straightened his back and shouted.

“L, Lee Sa-young-nim has arrived! To attack the Rift….”

At the rookie’s last words, Yang Hye-jin paused, about to put the cigarette back in her mouth. The rookie was still standing upright, even though his senior didn’t answer. The face of Yang Hye-jin, who had received the report, was more embarrassed than the face of the urgent rookie.

‘Did I give the kid too much work?’

She stared blankly at the rookie with a cigarette in her hand, and before she knew it, she began to reflect on herself.