A vast forest stretched out before him.

OOOH!

SCREECH!

Cries rang out in the distance.

Time to slaughter those gorillas...

[Warning!]

[There is currently 1 intruder inside the gate!]

“Huh?”

He wasn't particularly flustered. After all, this was one of the events that came up fairly often when playing Gate Hunter.

'Someone snuck in.'

Gates were divided into separate sections for each entry. Section 1, Section 2, Section 3... It was easiest to think of them as parallel worlds, each containing the same boss. Parties would enter these sections one at a time to clear them.

'They probably came in with me before the sections split.'

Nine times out of ten, the intruder was an assassin. Not only did that class have stealth skills, but hiding was its specialty. Their reason for entering this way was simple.

'Murder pays.'

No matter how many ordinary monsters you killed, you might barely get a single piece of equipment. But awakeners? Kill one, and you could strip them of everything from head to toe. They would be lower-ranked than you, making them easy prey, and some bastards simply enjoyed killing people regardless.

This was also one of the main reasons awakeners in this game formed parties. In gates ranked D or below, each section allowed a maximum of five entrants. When five people formed a party and the leader stood before the gate, an entry message appeared for every member. That meant they could prevent an assassin from slipping in with them.

Of course, the association and the government took the issue seriously too, stationing awakeners to guard popular gates.

'But they can't stop someone who's really determined.'

An assassin's stealth was difficult to detect even at the same level. To reliably catch an intruder, the guards had to be much higher-level. That was hardly easy. The world was vast, and there were countless gates. Between the cost of hiring guards and the limited number of high-ranking awakeners, preventing intrusions was fundamentally difficult.

'At least C-rank, then.'

For assassins ranked D or below, leaving the gate was the problem. Whether someone left after clearing it or exited through the intermediate zone, the gate flashed with light. It was a signal announcing, We're coming out. But what if nobody appeared? That meant an assassin had killed everyone, then slipped out under stealth and fled. An investigation would begin immediately.

A D-rank assassin ran a very high risk of getting caught. That bracket covered levels 101 to 150, and there were almost no skills available for erasing traces at those levels.

'C-rank is different.'

Levels 151 to 250. That was where awakeners firmly left the lower ranks behind and entered the middle ranks. Assassins learned their signature skill, Erase Traces. After that, most tools couldn't track them once they disappeared.

He had a pretty good idea why this one had followed him inside. Someone entering a gate alone? Unless they had a death wish, they had to be highly capable, which ultimately meant good equipment. That must have caught the intruder's eye.

Minwoo smirked.

“I get why you came, but...”

Did this bastard realize he'd already killed thousands of assassins in gates? He was thoroughly accustomed to dealing with them.

[Using Summon Cedric (SSS)!]

[Using Summon Skeleton (F)+9!]

After summoning his undead...

[Consuming Detection Potion (Top Grade)!]

[Effect activated for one hour!]

[Consuming Strength Enhancement Potion (Top Grade)!]

[Strength increases by 50 for one hour!]

[Agility Enhancement...]

.

.

He drank the potions he'd purchased at the auction house. Now it was time to hunt the bastard down.

* * *

OOOH!

OOK! OOK!

Huge gorillas and monkeys charged in a frenzy. Yet for all their ferocity, a small dagger swung out, and they died in an instant, spraying blood.

“Hmm.”

The woman killing the monsters with a gentle smile, as though she were having the time of her life, was Lee Seoyun.

She was a skilled assassin. In Korea, considered a weak nation when it came to awakeners, she'd reached the impressive rank of B. Even among B-rank awakeners, she was on the higher-level side.

Levels 251 to 350 were the B-rank bracket, and her level was in the low three hundreds. She even had an epithet: Dark Shadow. She'd earned it for her elusive movements whenever she hunted.

With her beautiful looks and her intelligent, refined demeanor, she was immensely popular. With a little exaggeration, she could even be compared to the Sword Phoenix. Yet behind that active public presence lurked a cold-blooded killer.

Stabbing, killing, dismembering. Those acts were pleasures in themselves. But monsters bored her. She'd killed far too many of them.

'People are different, though.'

The ecstasy of severing the tendons in their limbs and making them crawl! Her pupils constricted as she recalled the past. It was a thrill you could never experience without doing it yourself, a pleasure like pouring fizzy soda straight into your veins. That was why she'd always made sure to kill at least one person a month.

“I've been too busy lately.”

She hadn't been able to enjoy herself for a while, occupied with work assigned by the “Gathering.” At long last, she'd carved out some time.

An E-rank gate. The perfect place to toy with prey. As luck would have it, she'd found a suitable target: a middle-aged man entering alone. Since he was going into an E-rank gate by himself, he was probably D-rank. C-rank at most. Even if he were B-rank, it wouldn't be a problem. She was confident in her abilities.

Since they weren't in a party, their spawn locations inside the gate were random. That didn't give either of them an advantage such as starting drastically closer to the intermediate zone, though. He should have received the message by now, so he was probably frantically fighting his way through, desperately hoping he'd reach the intermediate zone first.

Just then...

[Humanoid Tracking (B) activated!]

Her skill activated, signaling that her prey was nearby.

Grinning, she activated another skill.

[Activating Shadow Concealment (B)!]

[The skill may be canceled if you are attacked or collide with an object!]

Her body instantly grew indistinct.

She hadn't activated the skill to mount a cautious ambush. The level gap was overwhelming. Unless her opponent was an A-rank awakener or higher, there was no reason to be careful. It was simply...

'I'll go give him a nice surprise.'

...for her own pure enjoyment.

When she appeared right in front of people, they usually went beyond surprise, trembling as though they were having a seizure. The process of driving her prey into terror—that was what she'd come here for.

STEP.

STEP.

Hidden in the darkness, she slipped into the forest. But the moment she found her prey...

'Huh?'

Her eyes widened. She was looking at a sight she'd never even imagined.

A troop of fallen gorillas. Nothing particularly strange about that. But the ones who'd brought them down were skeletons. Even at a glance, there were well over four hundred.

'A necromancer?'

He'd only had a sword strapped on when he entered, so she'd assumed he was a swordsman. His class was unexpected. Even more surprising...

'Wait... could this be that guy?'

Kim Minwoo, Korea's hottest Super Rookie! There was a reason that name immediately came to mind.

Every single skeleton was equipped, with gear easily worth hundreds of millions of won per skeleton. A few dozen would be one thing, but no necromancer in Korea other than Kim Minwoo equipped hundreds of skeletons like that.

'Jackpooot!'

Lee Seoyun's eyes glittered wildly. Thinking about it, there was nothing strange about Kim Minwoo coming here in disguise. He probably didn't want to attract too much attention. So he'd forged an ID. For someone in his position, that would be a piece of cake.

'There it is! That thing!'

Cedric. The skeleton he'd introduced on his stream, the one featured in countless articles. It was right there among the other skeletons, part of the package.

She'd only come for a bit of casual fun, yet she'd unexpectedly landed a huge catch. Like a cat watching a mouse, her eyes filled with curiosity and sadistic delight. Then, her eyes alight with excitement, she took a step forward.

CLICK.

'Huh?'

[You have stepped on an Explosive Shrapnel Trap.]

BOOM!

An enormous explosion erupted.

* * *

'Found you.'

Kim Minwoo's eyes gleamed.

Even after drinking a top-grade detection potion, the level gap was still there. It would help him detect his opponent, certainly, but spotting an assassin approaching under stealth was no easy task. Ultimately, victory hinged on whether he could find the assassin before they closed in. If he couldn't, he'd die with a blade buried in the back of his head.

That was why he'd used traps. A thief-class opponent, an expert at detecting and disarming traps, would be another matter.

'But assassins are vulnerable to traps.'

He hadn't laid just one or two, either. He'd used the skeletons to scatter them all around the perimeter. Assassins typically possessed plenty of tracking skills, such as Heat Detection and Humanoid Tracking.

'So they're bound to come to you first.'

That was especially true in low-rank gates like this one. They weren't hunting monsters of their own level, but opponents far below them. Nine times out of ten, they'd let their guard down, thinking only of a quick kill, looting the items, and leaving. Besides, traps were expensive. Nobody would normally pour them into a low-rank gate just to prepare for an assassin.

'Stepping on a trap probably never crossed your mind.'

Then the skeletons revealed that the prey was none other than the wealthy Kim Minwoo. His equipment alone was worth tens of billions of won. On top of that, it was public knowledge that he was a newbie in the level-twenty range. Resist charging at a target like that? You'd have to be Buddha, not an assassin.

His prediction had been spot-on. Like countless assassins before, this one had rushed in like a moth to a flame and stepped on a trap.

'Well, the damage itself isn't much...'

But shrapnel traps had one very useful effect. Once the particles stuck to your body, they didn't come off easily. Just like the assassin glittering before him right now. With that, stealth was useless. From now on, he'd have a very clear view.

“Nice to meet you?”

“... Ha.”

The assassin snorted in disbelief at his greeting.

But when the assassin raised her head, surprise flickered in Minwoo's eyes.

'Huh?'

A woman with a familiar face. He knew her very well.

'Lee Seoyun?'

She was one of Gate Hunter's better-known villains. A character who frequently appeared in the media, pretending to be nice, while actually being a psychopath. Left alone, the damn woman would keep growing until she reached S-rank, getting in the way of the game's progression.

'I'm running into her now?'

Naturally, she was one of the characters players wanted to grind into a pulp. The problem was that killing her outside the gates was difficult. She was something of a celebrity, which made disposing of her a real pain in the ass. If you wanted her dead, you had to catch her during one of her random gate appearances.

But they weren't called random for nothing. Both when she would appear to hunt awakeners and which gate she'd choose were random. And he'd just happened to run into her now?

'Fucking sweet.'

Just then, Lee Seoyun gave him a venomous look.

“Mr. Kim Minwoo, you've certainly got nerve. I thought you'd run, but here you are laying traps instead.”

Poison dripped from the dagger in her hand.

“You've got some nerve yourself, trying to take me on.”

“Ha...”

Lee Seoyun gave a derisive laugh of disbelief.

After all, the gap between their levels was well over two hundred. Talent or no talent, anyone faced with that kind of difference would normally run without looking back.

“Do you not know who I am? I'm fairly famous.”

“Let's see, right about now... aren't you some scrub assassin around level three hundred?”

“I've met plenty of people, but never a lunatic like you.”