24 chapter - The Auction House (3)
“She definitely said two hundred million, right?”
Lee Yuna was speaking while staring intently at the woman in sunglasses.
“I didn’t mishear that, did I, oppa?”
It wasn’t me who answered her—it was the auctioneer.
“Two hundred million! We have a bid of two hundred million! Customer number 84, what will you do?!”
Though briefly flustered, the man quickly regained his professional composure and continued the auction.
He was referring to the massive man who’d earlier shouted “one hundred million” in awkward Korean.
The man in the cat mask roared again.
“Two-twenty million!”
And as if she’d been waiting for it, the woman in sunglasses calmly responded,
“Two-thirty million.”
Her tone was so relaxed it was as if ten million won meant nothing at all.
“Ahem! Two-forty million!”
“Two-fifty million.”
An unstoppable clash.
The auction price for the egg soared, driven by the pride of two unrelenting lunatics.
“Three hundred million.”
At last, the woman in sunglasses upped the lead digit.
The giant looked like he wanted to keep going, but the nimble-bodied woman beside him was throwing herself across his mouth to block it.
Seeing her desperation, the man reluctantly gave up.
The auctioneer, quick to catch on, seized the moment.
“Customer number 33, sold at three hundred million!”
“Wooooaah.”
A mix of admiration and scattered applause swept through the auction hall.
“AAAJAAAAGGHH!!”
Some crazy woman screamed—turns out, it was Im Jin-sol.
And at that moment, I realized something.
Ah.
I’d promised to split all auction profits with my party members.
That reality hit me like a slap across the face.
It really sold for three hundred million? It actually sold for that much?
Just moments ago I’d been feeling good about the monster corpses going for higher than expected—then came this lightning bolt.
No—this was a money bolt straight out of a clear sky.
“Did you hear that, oppa? They said it sold for three hundred million! Three hundred million!”
Three hundred million won.
Split between five people, that meant each of us would get sixty million.
But if I kept it all to myself, that’s still three hundred million…
The number was large enough to tempt betrayal.
Should I just play dumb and keep it all?
That thought flickered across my mind, and that alone showed just how massive that sum was.
No.
Thankfully, it wasn’t quite enough to drive me insane.
Money isn’t all I want.
I want money, yes—but also fame. And power.
I wanted to rise even higher.
Once I become an A-Rank Hunter, three hundred million will be nothing.
What mattered most to me right now wasn’t money—it was growth.
Yeah. It’s just money.
With my thoughts finally back in order, I sent a message in the group chat.
[Everyone out. We’re going to celebrate.]
It’s not like we had the funds to buy anything else in the auction anyway. No reason to hang around.
“And now, finally—the crown jewel of tonight’s auction! A masterwork by Korea’s most prestigious artifact artisan, Mr. Baek! A Unique-grade spear—!”
As the auction hall buzzed toward its climax, we slipped out.
Im Jin-sol, visibly high on excitement, linked her arm with mine and said,
“Boss, I never doubted for a second that you’re a man who keeps his word.”
I let out a soft chuckle and nodded, as if it were obvious.
“After the fee, it comes out to about sixty million per person. How does it feel to earn sixty million from a single Gate?”
“Boss… I think I’m in love with you.”
She spent the next few minutes showering me with over-the-top praise before asking,
“So, Boss—what are we eating tonight?”
“On a day like this? Beef, obviously.”
Back then, I had no idea.
That the meat alone would cost 1.2 million won.
**
“That’ll be 287,000 won.”
“…”
My hand trembled as I handed over the corporate card.
Once I barely finished paying and stepped outside, an absolutely hammered Im Jin-sol welcomed me with wide open arms.
“Oooh our glorious Boss! It’s time for Round Three!”
Round One: Premium beef, 1.27 million won.
Round Two: Wine bar, 280,000 won.
We’d already blown through more than 1.5 million won in one night.
“Partyyy leadeeer, I loooove youuu~”
Seong Yohan, face flushed red, declared his love for me like a drunk idiot, and I shot him a death glare.
He’d been the unexpected problem tonight.
Last time, he’d eaten less than Im Jin-sol, maybe because he was holding back.
But today, the moment he unbuckled his belt and started going full throttle, the food vanished into his mouth like a black hole.
That bastard probably ate over 300,000 won worth of meat on his own.
I thought about clocking him, but stopped myself.
I ate a ton too.
After pulling in 300 million in a single day, my appetite had completely lost its leash.
Normally I’d stop once I was reasonably full, but today, I kept eating until I was about to burst.
Whatever. It was good food, that’s what matters.
Days like this are meant to be enjoyed.
“How about karaoke for Round Three? To chill a bit?”
“Karaokeeee? I’m dowwn!”
The one enjoying the karaoke most enthusiastically was, unsurprisingly, Im Jin-sol.
She was singing and dancing like a pro, so I asked if she had a background.
“Used to be a trainee. Quit ‘cause it was bullshit.”
“No wonder. Unni, your moves are gorgeous!”
“Hehe. Want me to show you more?”
“Yes, please!”
Hong Soo-ah was passed out drunk in a corner, while Seong Yohan and Lee Yuna clapped along to Jin-sol’s performance.
Ding.
A notification popped up on my phone.
[Deposit] 301,150,000 won — Choi Changshik (12321)
I immediately turned off the °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° karaoke and grabbed the mic.
[Attention, everyone.]
As my party members blinked at me in a daze, I held up my phone screen.
[The money’s in.]
[KYAAAAAH!! KUUNG!]
Im Jin-sol screamed, chucked the mic, and lunged at my phone.
The table got flipped over as liquor bottles and snacks went flying.
Face flushed red, she pressed her nose against the screen and said,
“One… ten… hundred… thousand… ten thousand… hundred thousand… million… TEN MILLION! THIRTY MILLION! THREE HUNDRED MILLION!!!”
After the 5% fee, a little over 300 million had come through.
“All right, one by one—give me your bank accounts.”
“Me! Me first! Boss, me first!”
“Yeah, you first.”
Starting with Im Jin-sol, I sent everyone their share—even Hong Soo-ah, who had apparently sobered up just in time.
“KYAAAH! Oh my god! It’s really in there!”
“Is it that exciting, unni?”
“Yuna… you must be too young to understand the value of money. Sixty million is huge, you know? You could buy rice soup like ten thousand times with this!”
The average monthly income of D-Rank Hunters was, surprisingly, just a little over two million won.
The reason that Hunters, who earn tens of thousands of won per raid, only ended up making that much per month was… complicated.
It came down to a combination of several factors.
“If you could go on raids consistently every day, you could probably make ten million won a month.”
But very few Hunters were actually that diligent.
Most F-Ranks spent their time trying to figure out their Traits, and D-Ranks focused on growing theirs.
Unless you had a Predator-Type Trait, there really wasn’t any reason to stake your life on constant raiding.
So, plenty of Hunters only entered Gates when they needed cash—and otherwise focused entirely on developing their Traits.
It was a perfectly reasonable approach from the D-Rank perspective.
Once you hit C-Rank, it became a lot more efficient to earn money.
“Funny thing is, even so, there aren’t enough Gates to go around.”
Both D- and F-Rank Gates were in short supply compared to the number of people who wanted in.
Here in the capital region—densely populated and overflowing with Hunters—it was especially competitive.
“That’s why people head out to the provinces.”
Leaving the red ocean of the metro area and heading to the blue ocean of the countryside… where there weren’t enough Hunters to meet demand.
“Still… why do you think Kim Jieun paid three hundred million for that egg?”
Lee Yuna’s question made everyone fall quiet for a moment.
The first to speak was Seong Yohan.
“Maybe collecting things like that is her hobby?”
Im Jin-sol smacked him on the back of the head.
“Dumbass! Did you not watch her? She was gonna buy it no matter what the price was! That means it’s something she needs.”
To be honest, she probably only had to pay that much thanks to the guy in the cat mask.
If their back-and-forth had continued, the price could’ve hit five hundred million.
“Still… who the hell were they? Didn’t seem Korean.”
As I wondered about the identity of the man in the cat mask, Lee Yuna said,
“If it’s something she absolutely needed… maybe it has to do with her Trait?”
“Her Trait? You mean the Summoning Trait?”
Kim Jieun’s Trait was incredibly well known.
The ability to command dozens of summoned creatures.
“But all her summons are just normal animals, aren’t they?”
Her brown wolf, ironhide rhino, black vulture—those were all common animals that had supposedly evolved using her mana.
Then someone floated a plausible theory.
“What if the condition to turn something into a summon has to be fulfilled before it’s born? Or maybe you have to raise it from infancy?”
We sat there mulling it over—then nearly all said it at the same time:
“Ah.”
It suddenly made perfect sense.
Why all of her summons looked like ordinary animals.
They had to be.
There hadn’t ever been monster eggs before, after all.
I felt a chill run down my spine.
Her summons, born from mundane creatures, had physical power comparable to D-Rank Gate bosses.
So if this was a D-Rank boss’s egg from the very start, and it grew under Kim Jieun’s mana…
What the hell kind of monster would be born?
It would almost certainly surpass the limits of anything we’d seen before.
And with Kim Jieun’s support on top of that…
Even that brown wolf I’d fought—when buffed by her—had been several times stronger.
And her summons could revive if they had enough mana.
A monster beyond comprehension would be born.
She might just create the most powerful summon ever.
“Three hundred million was nothing.”
If Lee Yuna’s theory was right, Kim Jieun would’ve gladly paid a billion and still considered it a bargain.
“Damn. If only that guy in the cat mask had pushed a bit harder, we might’ve made even more…”
Sprawled flat out on the table, Im Jin-sol let out a sigh and groaned.
“A-Rank Hunters are insane. That’s the price of a house, and she dropped it like pocket change.”
“Noona. You can’t even get a decent house for three hundred million anymore.”
“Just take out a mortgage!”
“D-Ranks are treated like freelancers. Banks won’t even lend them a hundred million.”
Im Jin-sol turned and glared murderously at Seong Yohan—then bit his neck.
“Aaagh! N-noona—agh!”
“Ptoo! What’s with the moaning, you damn pervert!”
Lee Yuna, watching the scene unfold with a gentle smile, chimed in.
“You two really get along well.”
““Where?!””
Im Jin-sol and Seong Yohan shouted in unison.
After a while of smacking and bullying Seong Yohan, Im Jin-sol collapsed onto the couch with a tired sigh.
“Ugh. I’m getting hit with a serious existential crash. I wanna be an A-Rank Hunter toooo!”
I agreed.
I wanted to be an A-Rank Hunter as soon as humanly possible.
“I wonder what the great A-Rank Hunter herself is up to right now…”
**
Late at night.
On a roadside near Mount Goryeo in Ganghwa-do, a car lay totaled, its wreckage scattered across the pavement.
From the smoking vehicle emerged none other than Korea’s A-Rank Hunter, the summoner Kim Jieun.
She held the egg—nearly the size of a human head—tightly against her chest.
As she stepped out of the destroyed car, her eyes locked with a chilling gleam on a single point ahead.
“…What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Standing there was the same massive man from the auction—still wearing the cat mask.
He answered,
“I obtained a new spear. I simply wanted to test it.”
He spoke in Chinese.
Kim Jieun responded in kind, also in Chinese.
“No. You want the egg.”
The man gave a soft chuckle.
“Sharp of you.”
He raised his spear toward her and spoke again.
“Hand it over.”
Kim Jieun raised her middle finger.
“Eat shit.”
And at that very moment, dozens of summoned beasts appeared around her.
Their eyes were glowing with bloodlust, mirroring their master’s rage.
Zhang Wei scanned them one by one—and behind his mask, a wide grin stretched across his face.
Then he spoke, utterly composed.
“I’ll let you strike first. Come at me.”