Chapter 37

Chapter 37

The message notifications filling the screen kept flashing without pause.

Every time the phone vibrated, Chae-ho calmly scanned the names of the guilds appearing on the screen.

They were scouting offers sent one after another by major guilds that almost everyone in South Korea would recognize.

Both the signing bonuses and the conditions they offered were exceptionally generous.

For a hunter who had been calculating his living expenses from porter wages until recently, the sudden attention was quite overwhelming.

It probably meant that the record of zero casualties at the Red Iron Mine was just that unbelievable.

But Chae-ho's finger pushed those glamorous offers aside without hesitation.

There's no reason for me to join a guild right now.

Even if they gave him several hundred million won more as a signing bonus, once he belonged to a guild, he would eventually be tied down by their schedules and obligations.

He did not want to give up the ordinary evenings he spent with his family, and more than anything, he did not want to constantly worry about hiding the secret of his skill while surrounded by strangers.

Chae-ho simply turned off his smartphone, sat down on a bench in the locker room, and tightly tied his shoelaces.

More than seventy million won from yesterday's settlement was sitting safely in his bank account.

The thought that if he continued saving money like this, his parents, who had settled into their new apartment, would be able to live without worrying about living expenses or hospital bills made his chest swell with emotion.

But that was as far as it went.

He had no intention of becoming intoxicated by money, growing arrogant because of his rising reputation, or immediately rushing into the next dungeon.

Just because my head understands something doesn't mean my body can automatically keep up.

The final moment of the battle against the boss of the Red Iron Mine.

Chae-ho had clearly followed the exact timing when the base of its core opened.

Thanks to Time Slow, he could clearly see the weakness and its movements.

In his head, he had already calculated where he needed to move and how he needed to slash.

But simply finding the answer in his head did not make his body faster.

If he had not already positioned himself close behind the boss in advance, he would never have been able to thrust his sword into the opening before that brief gap closed.

The more he reviewed his victory, the more clearly he could feel the limitations of his body, which had relied heavily on his positioning beforehand.

Against higher-rank monsters, even the slightest error in that brief instant could lead directly to death.

No matter how clearly he could see an attack, it meant nothing if his body's speed and ability to change direction could not execute the movement.

Chae-ho stood up and entered the private training room.

It was a high grade private training room he had rented for an entire week, completely cutting himself off from outside contact.

Standing in the center of the large, empty room, he slowly exhaled and turned on the training equipment.

Mechanical sounds echoed from every wall as round barrels emerged.

It was a high intensity evasion training program designed to recreate the speed and irregular attack patterns of upper C-rank monsters.

Normally, hunters used this setting in groups when testing the performance of their armor, but Chae-ho stood alone in the center holding only a single training sword.

Beep!

At the signal, rubber bullets the size of tennis balls shot toward him from every direction at frightening speed.

They did not simply travel in straight lines.

They bounced off the walls, changed their trajectories, and pressured Chae-ho from every direction.

Chae-ho's eyes moved rapidly.

Time Slow.

In an instant, the mechanical noises striking his ears became muffled, as though he had been submerged underwater.

Dozens of bullets flying through the air began to move so slowly that they almost seemed frozen.

Chae-ho's mind continued working at its usual speed.

Three toward my right shoulder, two toward my left knee. The one coming from behind is half a beat slower.

Within the slowed world, he found a gap between the bullets.

Lower his head slightly, take half a step to the right, then twist his waist and let the bullet from the left pass by.

After perfectly drawing the route in his head, Chae-ho released the skill.

The world's normal speed crashed back over him.

Following the path already entered into his mind, Chae-ho explosively moved his muscles. He lowered his head, pushed off the floor, and twisted his waist.

Thud! Thump!

"Ugh."

Along with a low groan, heavy impacts struck his shoulder and side.

His body had failed to escape the trajectories by the smallest difference, even though he had thought he had dodged them.

The places where he had been hit burned as pain spread through him.

Breathing heavily, Chae-ho looked down at the rubber bullets scattered across the floor.

I put too much weight on my ankle when I changed direction. My muscles take longer to contract than I expected.

While working as a porter in the past, he had watched countless monsters move from the rear of the party.

Thanks to that experience, his ability to read the flow of attacks was sharper than almost anyone else's.

But personally breaking through that flow with his own body was a completely different matter.

Chae-ho lightly rubbed his aching side, then corrected his stance again.

Again.

Beep!

The bullets poured toward him once more.

He slowed time to check their trajectories, calculated the timing and angle at which his body needed to move, then threw his body into motion without delay the instant the skill ended.

Thump! Crack!

Failure followed failure.

His muscles could not keep up with the speed his mind demanded, and sometimes his feet became tangled because of momentum.

But Chae-ho neither became irritated nor stopped.

He silently wiped away his sweat and analyzed the reason behind every hit he took.

He had to cut away unnecessary movements.

He forcibly corrected habits such as swinging his arms too widely when avoiding an attack or shifting his center of gravity more than necessary.

He poured the brief extra moment gained through his skill into a single goal, moving as efficiently as possible.

His breathing became ragged, and every muscle in his body screamed in pain, but the mechanical sounds inside the training room never stopped.

The sweat pooled on the floor gleamed under the lights.

After spending several days shut inside the training room, Chae-ho's body was covered in bruises.

Even though they were only rubber bullets, they were fired at speeds designed to simulate the striking power of C-rank monsters, so the impacts were far from weak.

However, his gaze had become far calmer and sharper than when he first entered the training room.

Now, simply dodging was no longer the goal.

His next stage of training involved sharply changing direction while simultaneously thrusting the training sword in his hand into an exact target point.

The machines activated, and this time, virtual red targets appeared in the air as holograms.

He had to avoid the bullets while striking the exact center of those targets at the same time.

Tat! Tatatat!

Bullets poured in from every direction.

Chae-ho activated his skill in short bursts to understand the situation.

The slowed world.

His eyes captured both the incoming trajectories and the holographic targets at the same time.

Half a turn using my right foot as the pivot. Dodge and thrust at the same time.

The skill ended.

Chae-ho's body kicked off the floor as if it had been launched.

Unlike before, he did not twist his body excessively or force himself into a large jump. He merely changed the angle of his ankle slightly and shifted his center of gravity.

The incoming bullets narrowly brushed past his cheek and shoulder before cutting through empty air.

At the same time, the sword in his hand shot forward in a short, clean trajectory.

Ding! Diding!

The tip of his sword pierced the exact center of the red holograms one after another without shaking.

There was no dramatic shout or flashy sword aura.

It was simply a clean, precise strike without a single unnecessary movement.

A clear electronic sound announcing the successful hits filled the training room.

I've definitely improved.

Chae-ho lowered his sword while catching his rough breath.

A single week of training had not made him physically stronger or dramatically increased his stamina.

But the wasted time and unnecessary movements in his body had been reduced significantly.

The gap between the speed imagined by his mind and the reaction speed of his body had noticeably narrowed.

Now, whenever he discovered an opening in an enemy's defense, the chances of losing that opportunity because his body reacted too slowly would be much lower.

The alarm announcing the end of the final training set rang loudly through the room.

Chae-ho dropped to the floor and roughly wiped his face with a wet towel.

Every muscle in his body throbbed as if it might burst, but the sense of accomplishment flowing through his veins felt more exhilarating than ever.

And the results of that brutal week were not limited to correcting his physical balance.

Ding.

A translucent system message quietly appeared at the edge of his vision.

[Your skill proficiency has reached a certain level.]

[The total daily usage time of the EX-rank skill 'Time Slow' has increased from 15 seconds to 18 seconds.]

A faint smile appeared on Chae-ho's lips as he draped the towel around his neck.

Three seconds.

To someone else, it might be no more than the short amount of time needed to take a single breath, but for Chae-ho, while his skill was active, it was an enormous amount of extra time, enough to overturn the entire course of a battle.

With only fifteen seconds, he had already found the blind spot of a C-rank mutant boss and directed the party to defeat it.

Now, that limit had been pushed one step further.

"All that hard work was worth it."

Chae-ho stood up and lightly stretched his body.

The sensation in his shoulders and back felt much lighter than before, which was pleasant.

Instinctively, he could tell that the empty vessel that was his body had become sturdier and deeper through this training.

He gathered the belongings he had left resting against the wall.

The solo entry permit for the Gray Swamp, which he had applied for after ignoring the troublesome scouting offers from the guilds, had also been approved.

With fog and swamps creating countless blind spots, and ambush-type monsters hiding throughout the area, it was the perfect place to test his improved physical ability and the increased duration of his skill.

Chae-ho switched off the lights in the darkened training room and walked outside without hesitation.

Firm strength filled the fingertips gripping his worn training sword.