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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Teottry
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By the time I left the guild building, it was the middle of the night with the moon high in the sky.
It had been evening when I came for the examination, but the detailed tests had taken too long.
I took out my phone and checked the current time, it was already 10 PM.
“It’s already 10.”
10 PM. A very personal time, a time for rest after wrapping up the day’s work and before going to sleep.
It was definitely a late hour to be sending a message to a coworker.
In the first place, sending a message during someone’s rest time after work is kind of nuisance.
The reason I was contacting Ia Aris was to heal my body.
Considering her main job was treating injured guild members, me contacting her now was like an F-rank nobody, while she was comfortably resting after work, sending a work-related message saying he was injured and needed treatment.
That was definitely a very annoying thing for a working person.
And for me, who had received numerous work-related messages and pressure to come to work even after hours from Lapi when she was at the height of her tyranny after becoming the Team 2 leader, it was something I could not bring myself to do.
Therefore, I decided to approach it not from a work perspective, but from a personal one.
The one contacting Ia Aris right now is not an F-rank Awakener of Liar’s Trap, but the man, Faster. The kind of tremendous man that Ia Aris wants so much she would give up luxury for. Don’t be scared, Faster! You can do it!
Come to think of it, I had contacted Ia Aris in the middle of the night before.
Back then, I had mindlessly sent a message at an even later time than now, so why was I so hesitant to send one now? After some thought, I realized that back then, I didn’t know Ia Aris’s true nature. Now, I knew very well what kind of person she was.
That was the reason why I could mindlessly send a message back then, but found it difficult now.
I didn’t have the guts to mindlessly send a message in the middle of the night to a woman who could blow away the ceiling of someone’s house.
But I did have the courage to send a message with some thought.
I exerted the intellect I had built up to survive to its maximum and composed a message that would not offend Ia Aris when she checked it.
First, the title ‘Ia-nuna’ must be included. She was noticeably pleased when I called her nuna and hugged her last time. Yes, let’s get into the habit of calling her Ia-nuna from now on.
“So, let’s start with ‘Ia-nuna.’ What should I say next? Something short and concise would be good.”
There’s a reason for the phrase “three line summary.” No one dislikes concisely summarized information.
The message I was about to send had to be one that Ia-nuna… no, Ia-nuna could check at a glance, and the content of the message had to be able to move her heart.
I carefully considered a message that would meet these conditions and then, after some thought, added five syllables with some the spaces.
‘Ia-nuna, I’m in pain.’
For a message that came out after racking my brain, the content was incredibly shabby.
Like she’s going to fucking treat me after seeing such an absurd message.
A summary should be a summary to a certain extent; this was just an omission. That being said, explaining the circumstances of how I ended up in this state to Ia-nuna, who was running wild with her possessiveness towards me, was too dangerous.
I can’t just say, ‘I had sex with Scarlet and my body heated up, so I had sex with Lapi to cool it down, and now my body is a mess and I’ll die in three days if I stay like this. So, ‘please’ treat me.’
It was just this evening that I had almost shed blood by saying something I didn’t have to, just to make myself feel better.
Unless she persistently asked why it happened, it was a conversational skill I learned today to gloss over sensitive content without explicitly stating it.
In that sense, the message ‘Ia-nuna, I’m in pain.’ was a sentence that could give the recipient all sorts of room for imagination.
Upon receiving such a message, the probability of thinking ‘Huh? Did something happen?’ before thinking ‘Faster is in pain! I have to treat him!’ was high.
That question would naturally lead to persistent questions, and I, who had succumbed to those persistent questions, would eventually confess what had happened today.
Just imagining it was terrible. It seemed better not to send this message.
“It would be better to just send a normal message asking if I can visit because I’m in pain. So, I’ll cancel this message…”
-Craaaack!!!
The moment I put my finger to delete the message I was about to send, the air vibrated with timing that was really like something out of a drama.
-Eeeeeeeeeeeeng!!!!
At the same time, a piercing siren sound ravaged my ears, and soon after, the empty space right in front of me began to crack.
-Crack…! Crackle…!!
With a loud rupture, a crack appeared in the empty space, and the mana level in the surrounding air skyrocketed.
The biggest factor preventing humanity from developing significantly in this new era with the new resource of mana. A disaster whose cause of occurrence is unknown and the disaster that has killed the most people in all of human history. GATE.
Unlike dungeons, which are created in various parts of the world and assimilate into the terrain, and do not spit out monsters unless their monster capacity is exceeded, gates release monsters as soon as they are created.
Because of that characteristic, gates were called the most dangerous disaster that threatened humanity.
-Craaaaaack…!
And now, the most dangerous disaster that threatened humanity was occurring right in front of my eyes.
Mana measurement result, an A-rank gate is occurring near Liar’s Trap. Please evacuate the area immediately. I repeat. Mana measurement result…
The siren stopped, and a mechanical voice took its place.
It was the sound from the gate rank measurement and alarm device developed by the Doctor.
Awakeners of C-rank and below near Liar’s Trap, please cooperate in rescuing civilians. Awakeners of B-rank and above, please gather at the designated area immediately, form a gate-dedicated team, and cooperate in destroying the gate. The currently occurring gate is an A-rank gate, so Awakeners of C-rank and below cannot participate in the raid. Please act with the goal of saving lives.
Usually, gates started from B-rank, and B-rank gates occurred the most, but the one opening in front of me right now was an A-rank gate.
An A-rank gate could only be destroyed with a well trained A-rank Awakener at the forefront, with ten B-rank Awakeners who had good teamwork.
Of course, one A-rank Awakener and ten B-rank Awakeners was just the minimum force to destroy a gate. Usually, about two to three times that force was deployed to prepare for various factors.
The A-rank gate opening right in front of me was so dangerous that it required, as a minimum force, ten B-rank Awakeners, who were treated as successful even in the Awakener society, and one A-rank Awakener, who could at least become the guild master of a small to medium sized guild, a goal for most Awakeners.
-Crackle! Crack!
The crack, which was at first as thin as a hair fracture and seemed to be less than 1M in length, had now widened to a huge 5M crack with a gap that could easily swallow a person.
In less than a minute, that crack would become an oval-shaped gate and pour out the monsters it held within.
-Grrrrr! Kraaaaaak!!!
-Kakak! Kakakakak!
As if to announce that the gate was not far from opening completely, a vicious claw that could tear a person apart like tofu protruded from the open gap.
From the claw, which had sharp, jagged-saw like teeth like a shark’s, I could feel the will to come out of the gate immediately and slaughter everything alive.
“Ha, fuck!!!”
With the A-rank gate growing larger, the alarm constantly ringing, and the monster just waiting for the right moment to jump out, in this situation that was a sudden disaster itself, I could only mutter in vain.
“I pressed the wrong button…”
On the phone I was holding, a message was displayed saying that the message ‘Ia-nuna, I’m in pain.’ had been sent.
Should I say I sent it by mistake now? No, then what would I say to Ia-nuna when I go for treatment? Ha, fuck, why did a gate have to open all of a sudden and cause this mess, seriously.
“First, I should try to come up with a reason that Ia-nuna would find convincing and add it…”
-Craaaaaack!!!
Just as I was trying to rack my brain to write down the reason why my body was a mess, another loud rupture erupted from the crack in front of me.
If the first rupture was a sign of the gate opening, this one meant its completion.
I took my eyes off my phone and looked ahead, and an oval-shaped gate with a diameter of about 10M was towering before me.
-Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
From the darkness inside the gate, a wolf-shaped monster that seemed to be the owner of that claw was walking out step by step. Even though half of its body was hidden in darkness, its size was comparable to a village bus.
Why is something like this coming out from the start? Don’t gates usually start with weaker ones?
Actually, each gate was different. It was different every time it opened.
And as long as the gate in front of me was an A-rank gate, it didn’t make much difference to me whether the one coming out now was the weakest monster or the strongest.
Because whatever came out, it wouldn’t be an opponent I could even try to fight.
The wolf-shaped monster… if I were to name it Silk Blonde style, it would be something like Wolfy, anyway, Wolfy, as if it didn’t like me just standing there and staring at it without running away, began to threaten me by releasing its mana.
-Grrrrrrr!!!
Seeing the creature showing its aggression with a growl that scraped its throat, it seemed difficult to compose a message here.
Well, there’s nothing I can do right now anyway.
Standing in front of a fully opened gate was no different from suicide, but that didn’t apply to me, who could use Rabbit Burrow.
“You, of all places, had to come out right in front of our guild. How stupid. You see the lights turning on back there? The guild members on duty will be swarming out soon. So… in your next life, be born in a dungeon, not a gate. Well then, goodbye!”
I prayed for the soul of the incredibly unlucky Wolfy, who had to come out right in front of Liar’s Trap, and was about to use Rabbit Burrow to get out of there.
“A-A monster…..! Help meeeee!! Someone help!!!”
-Kwoooooong!!!
“You gotta be kidding me.”
I spat out a short curse at the Hypocity citizen who had suddenly appeared and started screaming when I was about to leave, even though there had been no sign of anyone until now, and at Wolfy, who reacted to that citizen’s scream and flew towards me in an instant.
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This is a breaking news report that an A-rank gate has occurred near Liar’s Trap. We are hearing that the guild members of Liar’s Trap are quickly forming a team to close the gate, and in response, the Association…
“To appear right in front of our guild of all places. The monsters in that gate are truly unlucky. Just like me…”
At the breaking news on TV, Ia Aris laughed self-deprecatingly and tilted her wine glass.
Although she tilted a wine glass, what was inside was soju. So even though she was tilting a wine glass, her house was filled with the smell of soju, not the fragrant aroma of wine.
But even after downing dozens of shots of soju from a wine glass, she couldn’t get drunk easily.
Her unique healing ability would instantly detoxify the alcohol that entered her body.
“This is fucked up… Everything is just fucked up.”
Today was a very shitty day for Ia Aris.
She had seen a post on Instagram because Scarlet Rate had tagged her, and it was a picture of her on a date with Faster. She had immediately searched all the outlets in Hypocity because it said they were going to an outlet, but there was no Faster, only a shit ton of pasta restaurants, which made her even more pissed off.
Anger prevented Ia Aris from making rational judgments, and she, true to her hidden nickname of “crazy bitch,” began to search the outlets frantically.
In the end, after going through the five outlets in Hypocity four times each, she finally realized she had been tricked by Scarlet Rate, and she ended up stumbled home under the setting sun.
And because she was in a bad mood, she had been pouring soju into a wine glass and drinking it until this hour.
“Nooo….. why can’t I even get drunk as I please…..! One more!”
-Pour…
-Brrr…Brbb… (Vibrate)
Just as Ia Aris was filling her wine glass with soju for the 89th time, her phone, which had been carelessly thrown on a corner of the sofa, vibrated briefly.
“Hmm? What is it at this hour.”
Ia Aris, who was already in a bad mood, picked up her phone with the intention of not letting it go if it was something useless.
“Ia-nuna… I’m in pain…?”
And the moment she checked the message that had been sent to her, Ia Aris’s entire body was enveloped in white mana.
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