SSS-Class Hunter Goes On Vacation (4 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 9

Stab.

Stab.

Stab.

[Quest completed.

Rewards are being distributed.

10G] [A new quest has been added.

Weed Removal Lv.3

(0/1,000,000)

Reward: 20G]

The higher the level, the bigger the reward became, but it was still just a miscellaneous quest.

‘I never had any expectations for rewards from misc quests anyway.’

Thinking that way, Su Ji mercilessly tore through the grass. Once she got the hang of strength, speed, and technique, an absurd superhuman pace emerged.

Humming the work song from the island decoration game she had been playing earlier, her hands moved, and it somehow made her feel more excited.

Stab.

Stab.

Stab.

[Quest completed.

Rewards are being distributed.

20G] [A new quest has been added.

Weed Removal Lv.4 (Final)

(0/10,000,000)

Νύμφη questions your actions.

Reward: 30G, Νύμφη’s Stone]

Su Ji’s hand, which had been mechanically digging the ground like pulling weeds in a game without any thought, suddenly stopped.

It had only taken about seven minutes to reach the fourth-stage quest, right?

Su Ji’s hand, which had been mechanically digging the ground like pulling weeds in a game without any thought, suddenly stopped.

Clearly the language setting was working properly, yet some unfamiliar characters had suddenly appeared.

‘What language is that supposed to be?’

She narrowed her eyes and scanned the status window log again.

Stories that circulated like legends among hunters instantly came to mind. Rumors about the 〈Great Existences〉.

It was said that anything related to them appeared in a language different from the user’s language environment.

Could what she was seeing right now be exactly that?

They say there are moments when the 〈Great Existences〉 take notice of an individual hunter.

Su Ji narrowed her eyes even further. Then she tried to recall related memories.

She had heard such stories in the exclusive social club that only S-rank and above hunters from around the world could join.

Among them, only three people had personally experienced it: Priya, the first hunter in India to reach SS-rank; Matthias, a British-born SS-rank hunter who immigrated to America; and Knight, the former SS-rank hunter currently serving as the director of Korea’s Gate Safety Administration.

Their testimonies were all the same.

The 〈Great Existences〉 possess unimaginable power but are extremely capricious and rarely focus their attention on anyone.

Yet if someone somehow catches their fancy, they watch from very far away with cautious curiosity, like a human observing ants. And if they ever directly lend their power, that hunter would become a being worthy of being called a god.

Honestly, she had been half-skeptical.

Su Ji was higher ranked than those three who gave the testimonies and had climbed the tower even higher. She lacked nothing compared to them.

Yet until now, Su Ji had never once heard the voices of the Great Existences, and the same was true for her team members.

Even when comrades who had conquered the tower together died right in front of her, she had never felt even a trace of the Great Existences.

‘…So why now, of all times, when I’m doing a miscellaneous quest like this?’

They say it’s extremely rare to be chosen, so maybe it’s an honor… but from Su Ji’s perspective, it was simply absurd.

She ignored the log and resumed her crude weed-pulling with the dagger.

Stab.

Stab.

Stab.

[(9,999,999/10,000,000)]

Just before the Lv.4 quest was about to be completed, Su Ji abruptly stopped her hand.

Only a single handful of weeds remained in front of her.

‘If I pull just one more, it would be a perfectly clean clear…’

She was interested in the reward.

Any high-rank hunter naturally possesses tremendous curiosity and a drive to explore. Simply having brute strength wouldn’t let anyone survive in this profession.

And this was a reward from the 〈Great Existences〉 themselves—of course she was curious. She was curious about their true nature too.

Yet at that moment, for some reason, spite overtook curiosity.

They had been silent when she was climbing the tower like a madwoman, risking her life at every step, and now they show up?

“These weeds finally grew after so long; it feels wasteful to rip them all out. Maybe I’ll leave just a little.”

Muttering to herself, Su Ji straightened her back and shoved the dagger back into her inventory.

[Νύμφη questions your actions.]

The same log appeared again.

It wasn’t detailed dialogue, but somehow she could guess what it meant.

Seeing that awkwardly incomplete number short by exactly 1 must feel frustrating.

But the Great Existences should feel a little impatient too.

‘When I needed them, they said nothing, and now they do whatever they want? If they speak, am I supposed to obediently listen to everything?’

Feeling inexplicably irritated, Su Ji pretended not to notice and started walking toward the house.

[Νύμφη questions your actions.] [Νύμφη questions your actions.] [Νύμφη questions your actions.]

With every step she took, another log appeared.

For beings rumored to be supremely great, they felt suspiciously like a whining child.

“Hah… after staying quiet all this time, they pop out on their own and pretend to be extremely interested.”

[Νύμφη denies your words.]

‘What exactly are they denying? Don’t tell me… they were interested all along? No, wait—that’s somehow even worse.’

If that were true, it would mean they had leisurely watched her risk her life climbing the tower like someone observing an ant, never helping or even speaking until now… That would really be awful.

Feeling even more perverse, Su Ji shook her head, removed her gauntlets, tossed them into inventory, and went inside the house.

[Νύμφη questions your actions.] [Νύμφη questions your actions.] [Νύμφη questions your actions.]

‘Ugh, what is wrong with them.’

Su Ji waved her hand as if annoyed and muted the notification window.

It might be the first time a Great Existence had ever been muted by someone, but who cares. It was noisy enough to drive her mad.

At that moment, the still-unmuted quest window updated.

[Weed Removal Lv.4 (Final)

(9,999,999/10,000,000)

Reward: 30G, Νύμφη’s Stone, Νύμφη’s Breath]

An additional reward had been added.

‘…At this point, they think I won’t be able to resist doing it, right?’

Su Ji turned off the quest notification as well, washed up cleanly, changed into pajamas, burrowed into her blankets, and went to sleep.

She had been enjoying a rare moment of solitude, yet dealing with a being that had suddenly barged into her daily life without permission only brought exhaustion.

[This is the timeline separator]

She slept deeply and woke up to find quite a bit of time had passed.

When she fell asleep, the sun had just been setting; now it was already deep into the early morning.

“Ah, I slept well.”

As she stretched luxuriously, she noticed the numbers on the muted window kept rising.

She had done nothing related to the quest, so there was only one possible reason for notifications.

‘The Great Existence.’

‘Whatever Νύμφη is… really persistent.’

Su Ji had zero intention of checking the updated quest.

Instead, she finished stretching, loosening up her whole body pleasantly, and stood up. Then she spotted her pad on the charger far away, blinking.

Most people wore their terminals like watches, but Su Ji found even receiving messages annoying, so she avoided terminals and only occasionally used the pad for contact.

Since almost all alarm functions were turned off, there were only two situations when the screen would light up like that.

Either a disaster requiring the immediate deployment of an S-rank or higher hunter had occurred, or her teammates were calling.

If it were the former, no matter how secluded she was inside a dungeon, Su Ji would have known.

Among her traits was one related to watchtowers; she had placed several evenly across every region, so she could detect any danger above a certain level.

That left only one possibility.

“Saint or Peace?”

Her teammates rarely contacted her unless absolutely necessary.

It wasn’t because their relationships were distant. They were closer than most families—close enough that risking their lives to protect one another meant nothing.

But they knew Su Ji found media attention and public opinion exhausting, and that she felt burdened by the expectations and favors people directed at an SSS-rank hunter, so they deliberately kept their distance.

So for them to reach out after she had stubbornly disbanded the party and stayed silent for a full month, something must be up.

Su Ji picked up the pad, walked to the sunny side of the room, and settled comfortably on the sofa.

An enormous pile of unread mail had accumulated while she was offline.

Regular mails from the Hunter Response Department, check-in messages from her dad, recruitment offers and modeling proposals from fairly famous hunters whose names she recognized.

Scrolling through, there were also messages from friends she had spent academy days with.

But Su Ji ignored all of them. She only opened the team member contact marked with a pop-up notification.

The sender was unexpected.

“Elaine?”

‘I thought if anyone contacted me, it would be Saint or Peace.’

She had never once received a private message from Elaine.

For a moment, Su Ji paused her hand in slight surprise.