Solo Leveling: Ragnarok - Chapter 164

A crowd had gathered around Haeundae Beach. It consisted of citizens who’d come out to watch the unexpected emergence of hordes of undead, as well as teams of journalists.

“Don’t step beyond this line, please!”

“I told you, it’s dangerous!”

The employees of the Busan branch of the Hunters Association, as well as the police, who had been asked to help maintain order, were doing their best to keep the citizens at bay. Their attempts did not seem to help at all, however.

“Dangerous, my ass! An S-rank hunter came from Seoul! We need to see him!”

“Hunter” had become the most popular and sought-after job title since the Great Cataclysm. Dangerous situations were not actually that common, provided one chose a dungeon that suited their level, but the potential monetary rewards were huge. It was only natural that everyone would want to become a hunter themselves. As for S-rank hunters, who were rare even on a global scale, were sometimes as popular as celebrities.

Therefore, when a dungeon break occurred out in the open like this, citizen reactions were divided into two types—either they took refuge far away or came over to have a look. Most chose the former, but there were a surprising number of people who came to see the break for themselves despite the dangers. And these onlookers came in many kinds.

“Oh, hello, viewers! Are you seeing this? I’m risking my life to show you these Skeletons! Look, you’ve probably never seen one outside of a movie theater! Send me some donations, and I’ll get a drone in the air right away!”

“Viewers! The guild master of the Fiend Guild, Lim Taegyu, has come out to provide assistance. There’s no way you can miss this. Am I right? Thank you for the subs!”

Many of these citizens were actually streamers who liked to call themselves “citizen journalists.” Some even brought expensive drone cameras and relayed the battles as they happened live. In many cases, they would put themselves at risk by doing bolder things as they sought greater and greater donations.

“Sir!” A female employee of the association who’d been dealing with the crowd until now looked deeply chagrined. “Do we have to do this every time a gate appears?”

Her direct superior was massaging the space between his eyes, also looking tired. “What else can we do? This is the biggest dungeon break ever seen in Busan, I hear.”

He glanced behind him, the fatigue in his eye growing worse. If the gate had been located early, the situation would not have gotten so out of hand. The location is a beach, of all places… And these are Skeletons we’re talking about! It felt like being in a pirate movie. What was more, the S-rank hunter that was being talked about by everybody recently had even appeared in person. The buzz around this was hard to put into words.

“It’s the perfect material for getting attention,” the superior said. “I mean, I would be out here with a camera myself if I were a streamer.” He liked to watch his fair share of streams. Feeling a sense of irony in all of this, he sighed.

“But he’s pretty amazing. I have to admit it after seeing him in person,” the female hunter commented.

“Who? Lim Taegyu?”

“Yes. There’s something different about him, just as you’d expect. I saw him earlier firing ten mana arrows all at once… and they all hit his target.”

“Well, controversies aside, he is an S-rank hunter.”

Despite the superior’s dismissive tone, he had also been following Taegyu with his eyes, marveling a little bit every time he did something. From what he heard, Taegyu had been sent in to search for the gate, rather than to fight. That was why he wasn’t just shooting arrows from a safe location like he usually did, but was instead relying on his dexterity to flit between the Skeletons and track down the gate. Only when the monsters sometimes surrounded him did he fire his arrows to clear the way. In the eyes of the civilians, Taegyu was continually just a second away from danger, which only made these streamers even more excited.

“My god! Did you see that, people? He kills every time he shoots! That’s Lim Taegyu for you!”

“You know what, guys? The Fiend Guild might have been ruined, but their guild master is still the country’s best archer!”

Bing! Bing!

Donation chimes rang out from the streamers’ live feeds.

—100,000 won for every 10 kills Lim Taegyu makes!

—500,000 won for every 100 kills Lim Taegyu makes!

“That’s what I’m talking about! Thanks for the donation!”

“Viewers! I’m counting the Skeletons he kills in real time right now!”

Are you serious? the association supervisor thought. While the hunters were putting their lives on the line to fight, something truly flabbergasting was happening on the side of the onlookers. The spectators streaming this incident were receiving incredible amounts of donations, proportional to the number of magic beasts that were dying. It hadn’t even been a minute since the exploratory team that included Taegyu was deployed to the site.

Well, how can they not be out here to watch?Even I would do the same in their shoes.As the saying goes, one man sows, and another reaps. Of course, in the real world, the sowers—that is, the hunters who put in the effort—made far more than streamers ever could. So there was no need to criticize anybody.

I guess you could call this a creative economy of sorts, the supervisor mused. In any case, as an association employee,all I want is for everyone to be safe— “Huh…?”

Then something strange happened. A cold wind was suddenly blowing. People who had been focused on Taegyu suddenly turned in the same direction, their eyes going wide.

“Wh-what is that?”

The teams, including Taegyu, had split up in various directions. These teams included an A-rank hunter who was also well-known as the vice guild master of the Knights Guild, as well as various hunters from Busan. There were a few people among them that seemed to be totally new to the area. And as soon as one of these new hunters, who was leading the party, held out his hand, the entire beach suddenly froze over. The crowd was shocked into silence.

The Skeletons who had been emerging out of the sand like so many ants, along with the crashing waves behind them, had all frozen in place. It was a marvelous sight, rendering those who saw it completely still, like they’d been turned to ice, too.

“Wh-who the hell is that?”

“G-guys! Does anyone recognize that hunter?”

Shocked voices could soon be heard from various directions, and shouts suddenly echoed across the entire beach.

“L-look him up right now! Who applied to be in the exploratory teams?”

“I’m making a call right now, sir!”

Even the reporters from various broadcasting stations began to request information from the Knights Guild. Meanwhile, the bolder streamers grabbed the association employees who were keeping people out. They began to beg for information.

“Who is that hunter? Please! Share some information with me!”

“That was just a snowstorm, right? I hear it’s a spell that only a select few can use, even among the high-ranked magic-using hunters!”

“From what I hear, a massive amount of mana is needed to use a spell as powerful as that! Who in the world—”

Another donation alert sounded.

—A million won if you can be the first to find out who he is!

“Whoa! I’ll share the donation with you! Someone, please tell me!”

“S-stop right there! You can’t go beyond this line!”

“Please stay within the safety line—”

People were nearly losing their minds, but this reaction was very natural indeed. None of them had ever seen an area-of-effect spell that could change the temperature of a set region like that. The sky was clear, but a blizzard had come out of nowhere to freeze hundreds of Skeletons at once.

“I-I’ve never heard of a hunter like that before…”

“I-I’ve got it!” someone shouted, and heads turned toward them all at once. A streamer who happened to have a friend in the Knights Guild was holding up his phone like a trophy and shouting confidently, “It’s the Woojin Guild! He’s Sung Suho, the guild master!”

“The W-Woojin Guild?”

“I haven’t heard of them before.”

“Is it a new guild?”

Now that people had found out, they were actually even more confused. They had no information about this Woojin Guild. Some of them, however, had a good memory.

“W-wait… Sung Suho?”

They urgently looked up internet articles they had seen before and soon found what they’d been after.

“Sung Suho! He’s the one who handled the Lee Minsung incident!”

“What?! Damn, you’re right! There’s a photo of him next to Baek Miho and Lim Taegyu!”

The collective intelligence of the crowd was nothing less than impressive. They’d figured out who he was in no time at all after just seeing him use a skill.

Just as planned. Suho was smiling faintly as he listened to the ruckus from afar. I’ve made my guild, and this is the perfect opportunity to make it known.

While handling various incidents and jobs, Suho had always hidden his identity, be it by choice or otherwise. His goal had been to prevent the followers of Itarim, who were no doubt hiding somewhere and waiting to strike, from seeing him using his shadow ability. But it did not matter at all if he gained some attention while using skills that had nothing to do with the shadows.

In fact, this is a good thing. The Woojin Guild gathering publicity was very important to Suho’s plans. He had created this guild in the first place in order to level up. One needed a guild to gain access to harder dungeons, where he could level up more.

Entry to dungeons could be bought if one had the funds, and he would get more money next month from the Scavenger Guild. He might not actually need publicity for his guild in such a situation. But there was another reason he wanted it—North Korea.

In order to go to North Korea, a guild has to be famous. High-ranked dungeons were important, of course, but his end goal was to go to North Korea to hunt. The entire country had turned into a monster field after the Great Cataclysm—an inaccessible demonic realm. There was a reason Woo Jinchul had taken Choi Jongin there and still hadn’t been able to return. If the monsters swarming the country were not killed in time, they would eventually make their way to South Korea as well. Though such expeditions were worded as “providing aid to the North,” it was more accurate to call it a conquest.

This terrible environment, however, was a haven of rich sources of experience points for someone like Suho. The problem was that not just anybody could go to North Korea. Even if the government had fallen apart, their two countries hadn’t been reunited, or anything.

What was more, hunters who had committed crimes, like the villains from the recent Jisan Prison escape, tended to want to flee to North Korea no matter what. If people were given free access to the region without any restrictions, hunters who had committed crimes would be able to escape justice by simply traveling to North Korea. It was likely that such people would commit atrocious crimes against the survivors there, and it would become a completely lawless place.

That was why the South Korean government and the Hunters Association had made it illegal for guilds who didn’t meet the requirements to go to North Korea at all. The most important of these requirements was public recognition—in other words, the public had to think that the guild did not mean any harm in going north. And in order for the public to become aware of a guild, the most effective way was to perform impressive feats while people were watching, just like now.

But problems like Jisan Prison are probably best avoided, Suho thought. While it was impressive and praiseworthy that he had destroyed five hundred villains, the public was more divided on this incident than one would think.

—He killed five hundred human beings in a single day. He can’t be normal.

—He’s a killer. He has to be.

—But these are villains, so it’s fine, right?

Right now, of course, the White Tiger Guild was forcibly preventing information about Jisan Prison from leaking, but if that information was exposed to the public first, Suho would be put in a difficult situation. He wanted to go north, after all. And so he’d chosen to do this instead—jumping in among the Skeletons as a member of the exploratory team and revealing his power in full.

“D-damn it! I sent you to find the gate, not massacre the Skeletons!” Taegyu was taken aback by Suho’s impressive debut as the head of the Woojin Guild. I didn’t know he had a skill like that.Did Thomas Andre give him a skill rune stone or something after Suho followed him?

The sight was simply absurd. A frigid blizzard was blowing at Haeundae, and as Suho ran forward through the center of the beach, a path of white ice paved the ground in front of him like a red carpet. Around him were Skeletons that had been frozen stiff like statues. Taegyu almost became curious as to what people would start calling him. Everyone was seeing this live.

Then Suho’s relentless charge forward stopped short. “Hmm…?” He was listening to Sillad.

[Sillad listens to Sirka’s prayers.]