My Assigned Hunters Climb the Tower - Chapter 21

========== CHAPTER 21 ==========

“How!”

“Don’t brand yourself as a ‘Hunter of the Papal See,’ but as a ‘Rebel of the Papal See.’ A fallen priest who has a foul temper and a dirty mouth, but is merciless when it comes to hunting monsters. Viewers these days are crazy about that kind of ‘spicy’ flavor.”

Lee Seong-ha’s eyes wavered back and forth. His lips parted, as if he were contemplating what seemed like a plausible proposal.

“……Will that work? Won’t the Papal See excommunicate me?”

“If you get excommunicated, you can just sign a formal Hunter contract. Isn’t that actually better?”

“You crazy bastard, seriously…….”

It was the moment Lee Seong-ha was about to spit out a curse.

-Kwadang!

The office door swung open violently, and three figures stumbled inside. Go Gyeol and Lee Seong-ha’s gazes turned toward the door simultaneously.

“…….”

“…….”

Standing there were party members who looked like they had just crawled out of a dungeon—no, like they had just rolled around in a dumpster.

Kang Ji-hyun’s once high-and-mighty face was stained with black soot, and Kang Hoon was crawling on the floor with eyes that looked like his soul had been sucked out. Kwon Do-geun, who entered last, had been covered in so much dust that his title of ‘Water Mage’ was meaningless; he had become an ‘Earth Mage.’

“……Save me…….”

Kang Hoon broke the silence with a single word, squeezed out as he sprawled flat on the floor. Lee Seong-ha let go of the collar he had been holding on Go Gyeol and muttered.

“Hey, Go Gyeol. Why are they in that state? Didn’t you say you’d train them while I was at the Papal See? Looking at them, it’s like they’ve been to a war zone.”

Go Gyeol looked at the disheveled party members and smiled with satisfaction.

“It is a war zone. A war zone where they’ve just taken their first steps.”

At Go Gyeol’s cold smile, Kang Hoon, who was lying on the floor, flinched and trembled.

Before the lingering effects of the hellish Arcadia could even fade, Go Gyeol presented them with hell.

20km mountain runs starting the moment they opened their eyes, the Hunter Bureau’s murderous consignment training program that ate up the entire afternoon, and the 3-person D-rank dungeon grind that continued day and night.

The 3 days Lee Seong-ha was away. It sounds easy, but that time was a continuous series of pain, like being caught in the gears of a machine and ground down, and every day they felt how comfortable the dungeon raids with Lee Seong-ha had been.

“……I can’t go. I really can’t go anymore.”

Kang Hoon mumbled with his face buried in the office floor. The moment a name was registered at a dungeon entrance, a No-Show led to a drop in the company’s credit rating and massive fines. Dungeons operated by the national reservation system were an opportunity for hunters, but for those led by Go Gyeol’s hand, it was no different from forced conscription.

“Save me…. I’m still eighteen…. I’m at an age where I should be growing…….”

It was when Kang Hoon was crawling on all fours, trying to grab Go Gyeol’s pant leg. Lee Seong-ha, who had approached at some point, placed a large hand on Kang Hoon’s head with a pious expression.

“O Lord. Hear the screams of this lost little lamb wandering here.”

“Ah, seriously, don’t do that!”

Kang Hoon jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on and shook off the hand. But Lee Seong-ha didn’t care and lowered his voice solemnly.

“Though this child’s body is tattered, I pray that his soul becomes as hard as a dungeon’s magic stone. Sister, no, brother. After hardship, joy shall come…….”

“Go see the joy yourself, Father! Ah, get that hand away! It’s creepy!”

Kang Hoon shouted and tried to run away, but his body, exhausted from 3 days of training, could not escape Lee Seong-ha’s grasp.

Beside that chaos, Kang Ji-hyun and Kwon Do-geun stumbled in. The two didn’t even have the energy to talk, and collapsed onto the sofa like dolls with cut strings.

“…….”

“…….”

Kang Ji-hyun, with her usual haughtiness nowhere to be found, stared at the ceiling with disheveled hair, and Kwon Do-geun stared into the void with his eyes open, as if he were having an out-of-body experience. In their unfocused eyes, there was terrible fatigue and a silent curse directed at Go Gyeol.

Go Gyeol watched the miserable sight and shook his head.

‘To think their stamina is still like this. Should I increase the training intensity?’

While thinking such heinous thoughts inside, Go Gyeol opened his desk drawer. And took out two bottles of highly concentrated recovery potions he had bought from the Hunter Shop.

Tok, todok.

Go Gyeol approached the sofa and placed the recovery potions in their hands.

“Drink. We’re starting the briefing.”

“……Hey, you Satan.”

Kang Ji-hyun, who had received the recovery potion, muttered in a cracked voice. Go Gyeol lightly ignored her complaint and checked his watch. The results of the training were clear. Behind their messy appearances, magic power that had become incomparably denser than before was flowing faintly from their bodies.

“Me too, give me one too!”

Kang Hoon, who was crawling on the floor, reached out desperately. Go Gyeol, as if annoyed, shoved the remaining bottle of recovery potion into Kang Hoon’s mouth. Gulp, gulp. Having drunk the water of life, Kang Hoon finally looked like a human being and leaned his back against the sofa.

“I feel like I’m going to live…. But Go Gyeol-hyung, the next one is really a break, right? Please tell me it is.”

Instead of answering, Go Gyeol turned on his tablet PC and pulled up a map. At the red skull mark clearly embedded in the center of the screen and the phrase [S-Rank], the temperature in the office instantly dropped to freezing point.

“The next dungeon is S-Rank. To be precise, it’s a ‘Story-type Dungeon’.”

“S… Rank? And a story-type at that?”

Kang Hoon, who had just drunk the recovery potion and whose eyes were shining, jumped up. Kang Hoon’s curiosity overcame his fatigue at the story of the ‘Dungeon for the Chosen,’ which usually only floated around on YouTube or communities.

“Wow, I heard that’s huge! That’s the dungeon where you have to possess a specific person and clear the scenario to get out, right? I heard the rewards are enormous too!”

Kwon Do-geun, a former movie actor, also reacted to the word ‘story’ and swallowed dryly.

“Does that mean I have to act… no, clear it according to the scenario? If it’s that, I’m confident.”

However, unlike the excited atmosphere of the party members, only Kang Ji-hyun frowned severely and shuddered. She, who usually didn’t lose her haughtiness in any situation, was making a face as if she had seen a rotten fish.

“Have you been there before?”

At Go Gyeol’s question, Kang Ji-hyun nodded slowly, very heavily.

“……It was the worst week of my hunter life.”

“Oho, if our Sister Ji-hyun is that disgusted, what kind of story was it? Did you film a tragic romance or something?”

Lee Seong-ha chuckled and fiddled with his steel pipe. Kang Ji-hyun gritted her teeth and clenched her fists as if recalling the memory of that time.

“Orcs.”

“Huh?”

“I was the vanguard of an Orc legion. The scenario goal was to ‘invade the human kingdom and destroy the world’.”

Kang Hoon tilted his head.

“Ayy, Noona. If you’re destroying the world, that would be a great stress reliever, right? You must have been super strong too. But why was it the worst?”

Kang Ji-hyun glared at Kang Hoon as if to eat him alive and shouted.

“Orcs don’t wash! You idiot!”

The office became quiet as if cold water had been splashed on it.

“I had to sleep in a narrow barracks with that smelly bunch for a week! The smell of sweat, the stench of blood, and the smell of rotten meat were vibrating everywhere! If I tried to wash, they’d swing axes at me, saying, ‘Don’t do weak things unbefitting of an Orc!’, so do you think it was good? Ever since then, my stomach turns just looking at the color green!”

At Kang Ji-hyun’s desperate confession, Lee Seong-ha started rolling on the floor holding his stomach, and Kwon Do-geun quietly covered his nose. Kang Hoon turned pale, as if the mere imagination was terrible.

Go Gyeol added indifferently amidst the chaos.

“Fortunately, this dungeon isn’t Orcs. It’s set in the ‘Imperial Knights’.”

“Phew, that’s a relief. If it’s the Knights, they’d wash, right?”

The moment Kang Ji-hyun let out a sigh of relief, a wicked smile hung on Go Gyeol’s lips.

“The problem is, however, that it’s in the middle of a ‘trench warfare’ that hasn’t ended for 3 years.”

Kang Ji-hyun’s face turned ashen in an instant. Trenches. Mud. Rats. And soldiers who can’t wash.

“……I’m not going! I’m absolutely not going, you Satan-like bastard!!”

Kang Ji-hyun’s scream filled the office, but Go Gyeol was already waving the S-Rank dungeon reservation ticket with her name clearly written on it.

“Go Gyeol, you son of a bitch…!”

As if she couldn’t take it anymore, Kang Ji-hyun summoned a staff with rose vines intricately tangled in the air. It was the moment sharp magic power surged like a storm from her feet, about to swallow Go Gyeol.

Suddenly, the office, which had been bright with sunlight pouring in, went pitch black in an instant.

Wooooong-!

The ground beneath their feet began to tremble slightly, as if screaming. Kang Ji-hyun’s magic power, which had been full of rage, lost its place and scattered. When the party members looked at each other with bewildered expressions, only Go Gyeol ran like lightning and threw the window open.

“……!”

Go Gyeol’s eyes were dyed with shock.

The scenery outside the window looked like a page from hell had been moved there. The sky, having lost its blue light, was dyed a bizarre purple, and between the clouds, massive bolts of lightning were striking, drawing eerie trajectories as if they might touch the ground.

“Why is the sky like this? Is it a weather anomaly?”

Lee Seong-ha, who had approached his side, swallowed hard at the abnormal phenomenon outside the window and asked. Go Gyeol clenched his trembling fists. His heart was pounding as if it would burst. There was no way he didn’t know this phenomenon.

“It’s the Tower.”

“What? What is that…….”

At the word that came out of Go Gyeol’s mouth, the party members in the office gathered at the window all at once. The massive ruin that Go Gyeol used to talk about like a habit, the one that would be the destruction of humanity. The Tower finally revealed its appearance.