Chapter 124

“So it really is an A-rank gate.”

“This guy, that guy. What, have you spent your whole life being deceived?”

“What?”

“Never mind, it’s just me talking to myself.”

Waving his hand dismissively, Sa-yoon stared at the rippling gate entrance before him. A-rank gate Fantasy Theater. In terms of difficulty, it was among the easier A-rank gates, but Fantasy Theater’s notoriety came from an incident where the gate reached saturation point after missing the conquest timing.

The method for conquering Fantasy Theater was simple. Choose one of several movies prepared inside the gate, watch it, and then deal with everything that appeared in that film transforming into Irregulars and jumping out of the screen. As such, if you brought enough force to handle the monsters that would pour out, it was an exceptionally straightforward gate. However, things became very different if gate saturation occurred.

Fantasy Theater contained twenty-two movies in total. If gate saturation occurred, everything that appeared in all twenty-two movies would transform into monsters and pour out—that’s what made it terrifying. Fantasy Theater turned not just people from the movies into monsters, but trees, grass, and even insects, so a single movie would produce over a hundred monsters. When twenty-two of these erupted simultaneously, Fantasy Theater’s infamy rivaled even some S-rank gates.

In fact, when the gate saturation incident occurred, countless people died and an entire city was devastated, taking over half a year just to recover.

Back then, the damage was more severe because it was during the early period before the hunter system was established. Since past wounds tend to leave deep scars, most hunters avoided conquering Fantasy Theater. The Night Rats guild had acquired this dungeon, classified as one to be avoided, at auction and was managing it as a guild-owned gate.

Though it was an A-rank gate, the conquest method wasn’t particularly difficult and the difficulty level wasn’t astronomical, so Fantasy Theater’s popularity was low even within Night Rats. That’s why this plan could be set in motion.

When an S-rank offers to carry you, you can’t just take an ordinary ride, can you?

Hehehe.

As Sa-yoon laughed wickedly with his arms crossed, Jae-hee turned to look at him with questioning eyes. Regardless, Sa-yoon checked the conquest cycle through the measurement device beside the gate.

30 days.

And time remaining until gate saturation: 30 minutes.

If they didn’t conquer Fantasy Theater within the next 30 minutes, gate saturation would occur. Normally, the guild conquest team would have moved in to manage it when six hours remained, but this time Sa-yoon had ordered them not to. In other words, this entire situation was Sa-yoon’s production. As he kept chuckling at how perfectly it was orchestrated, Jae-hee followed Sa-yoon’s gaze with puzzled eyes and let out a quiet exclamation.

“Are you planning a time attack?”

Time attack.

The practice of attempting to conquer a gate with little time remaining, setting records under pressure. Some hunters called it suicidal, others called it reckless, and some called it showing off. While it was undeniably reckless since gate saturation could occur if anything went wrong, the prestige gained by the guild and the experience gained by guild members from clearing a gate through time attack were substantial. That’s why guilds consistently attempted time attacks despite circulating criticism that it was needless showing off.

Of course, most guilds entered time attack attempts with at least two hours of conquest time remaining. Since a gate saturation would result in endless criticism and cursing while cleaning up the mess, leaving at least two hours for time attacks had become an unspoken rule.

However, Fantasy Theater had only 30 minutes remaining. Slightly surprised that this extraordinary man would act so boldly, Jae-hee expressed admiration, but Sa-yoon turned to look at him with an incredulous expression.

“What nonsense are you talking about?”

“What?”

“Who would conquer a gate using such garbage methods? Time attack clears are for people obsessed with showing off.”

“…?”

Question marks appeared over Jae-hee’s face at the scathing criticism. Sa-yoon curved his lips upward as he looked at the man who couldn’t begin to predict what he was about to do.

What? You’ve never faced a crisis? Crises don’t come that easily?

What nonsense. How did the Night Rats guild grow? Through overcoming hardship and adversity, through growing in the crises Sa-yoon created. There was a reason why Night Rats’ guild members showed particularly steep improvement in their abilities—it was all Sa-yoon’s doing.

And what was about to unfold was one of Night Rats’ secret special training methods that Sa-yoon prided himself on.

The method that made all guild members who experienced it curse and try to hit Sa-yoon before getting beaten down themselves.

“Listen well, Jae-hee. Night Rats doesn’t use such pathetic methods.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’re going to set up a show, you have to do it big.”

As if a time attack would be enough.

Adding this in a humming tone, Sa-yoon called over a nearby guild member.

“Is everything I mentioned prepared?”

“Yes. All residents within a 3-kilometer radius have been evacuated, and conquest teams 1 and 2 are standing by beyond 4 kilometers for any contingencies.”

“The barricades?”

“Perfect.”

“Good then.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jae-hee tilted his head, not quite understanding the conversation between Sa-yoon and the guild member. Sa-yoon smiled at this man who, among all the people he’d met, had luck rivaling Han Geon-joo’s.

Talk about you getting fucked.

Of course, he couldn’t say that out loud. This was an alliance, after all. Even though he had planned to milk him for all he was worth and take advantage of the bus ride, their relationship was formally an alliance, so he had to phrase it more diplomatically.

“We’re talking about things you couldn’t imagine happening soon. You’ll have to work hard soon, so just sit there and rest for now.”

There?

Jae-hee turned around and was surprised. A steel chair had somehow been placed behind him. The man sat down reluctantly and looked up at Sa-yoon.

“Aren’t we going to conquer the gate?”

“Why would we conquer the gate, Jae-hee?”

“…Isn’t that why we came to the gate?”

“Well, that was the initial plan.”

Sa-yoon hadn’t planned to conquer it this way from the start. He’d thought that doing something crazy from the very first gate might damage his image in Jae-hee’s eyes and possibly break their alliance. But thinking about it carefully, it seemed wasteful to use a card like Jae-hee just to clear an A-rank gate. He was a Summoner. While Summoners had disadvantages like physical weakness and somewhat lacking combat ability, they were a hidden class that could do the work of at least three people by handling summons. Moreover, Jae-hee was an S-rank Summoner. And an S-rank Summoner with top-tier stat abilities at that.

How could he use someone like that for mere A-rank gate clearing?

Additionally, Jae-hee was crazier than expected. Being obsessed with truth and facts meant he wouldn’t break the alliance no matter what Sa-yoon did, and he seemed likely to find interesting things fascinating. As for Sa-yoon’s image—well, since their first meeting started with an assassination attempt, it couldn’t get much worse.

So he needed something more challenging than simple A-rank gate clearing. However, even for Sa-yoon, jumping straight into an S-rank gate would be too much. More precisely, considering the time needed and multiple deaths required for conquest, the efficiency wasn’t there. In their current state, conquering one S-rank gate would take longer than clearing three A-rank gates.

Thus, Sa-yoon chose this special training method.

“Wait a moment. Surely not…”

It had been 20 minutes since they arrived at the gate. As Sa-yoon kept telling him to wait while doing nothing but standing still, Jae-hee looked back and forth between the gate and Sa-yoon in confusion before opening his mouth in shock. Sa-yoon, guessing what he was about to say, curved his eyes in a smile.

“That’s right.”

Tick.

The time shown on the gate measurement device decreased from 10 minutes to 9 minutes.

“Countdown starts now! Final check on the barricades and stack them two layers high!”

The surrounding guild members became busy, inspecting the barriers built within a 2-kilometer radius of the gate. Trapped inside the perfectly constructed barriers made during those 20 minutes, Jae-hee looked at Sa-yoon with incredulous eyes.

“I’ve never heard of this method.”

“Of course you haven’t. Who in their right mind would do this?”

Who would deliberately trigger gate saturation and try to handle the flood of monsters that pour out?

That’s right.

Sa-yoon planned to cause monster saturation in the Fantasy Theater gate.

“You should start preparing too, Jae-hee. Draw your circles.”

“What?”

“I said draw your summoning circles. When Fantasy Theater bursts, at least 2,000 monsters will come out—even an S-rank would struggle with that without preparation. Bring out your strongest cards.”

If you’re going to take a ride, might as well do it properly.

Sa-yoon just smiled kindly at Jae-hee, who lost his words with an incredulous expression.

Conquering the gate, raising ranks, and checking Jae-hee’s full capabilities—it was a perfect three-birds-with-one-stone approach. As he smiled contentedly, when 5 minutes remained, the man finally realized Sa-yoon wasn’t joking and got up from his seat to draw summoning circles.

He drew five summoning circles in total.

Each circle took about 1 minute to draw, and by the time all the summoning circles were complete, the gate had started to crack with a creaking sound. Recognizing the precursor to gate saturation, Sa-yoon raised his voice forcefully.

“Everyone except conquerers out!”

At Sa-yoon’s shout, the guild members quickly retreated outside the barriers. Crack, creak. Finally, brilliant light poured out from the endlessly cracking gate. Sa-yoon smiled brightly at the light that seemed unfitting for the calamity about to strike, and drew his dagger.

“…Though I shouldn’t be the one saying this, you’re really out of your mind.”

BOOM!

With Jae-hee’s tongue-clicking criticism, a thunderous roar erupted. The beginning of gate saturation.

“GRRRR!”

“KIEEEK!”

“SHISHIK!”

As the light faded, countless monsters instantly filled their vision. Watching them rush out of the gate one after another, Sa-yoon smiled from ear to ear.

Hadn’t he told them?

That he was the craziest one of all.

As the leader of lunatics, he naturally had to live up to that standard. Without a moment’s hesitation, Sa-yoon grabbed the nape of one of Jae-hee’s summons and charged toward the pouring monsters.

Woof!

The wolf-shaped summon yelped in surprise.

That’s right, you’re the tank.

Leaving behind the startled Jae-hee, Sa-yoon threw someone else’s summon right into the midst of the monsters.