Free Web NovelChapter 157: Old Friends
The transaction was processed faster than any standard guild request in history.
The receptionist practically tripped over herself to finalize the paperwork, her hands shaking the entire time as she weighed and evaluated the dark crystal. When she finally pushed a heavy, reinforced leather pouch across the counter, Hajin didn’t even bother counting it.
He just dropped the pouch into his inventory.
’It’s a little bit of a shame,’ he thought, walking away from the desk while the rest of the guild hall remained dead silent. ’A six-shard core could have been forged into some seriously good defensive gear for the girls. But whatever, I am sure more cores will come.’
They had survived the beast king gate, but the power scaling in the capital was only going to get steeper from here.
For now, securing a massive amount of liquid money was far more important than holding onto a single crafting material.
He walked out through the open entrance, stepping into the bright afternoon sunlight with the girls following closely behind him.
The street outside the guild was just as busy as always, but as he walked down the steps, he noticed something strange. People were giving him weird looks.
Adventurers standing near the entrance, merchants walking by, even a few passing city guards—they were all staring at him. But the second he turned his head to look back, they would immediately avert their eyes, suddenly pretending to be extremely interested in a random wall or a spot on the ground.
He stopped at the bottom of the steps, his hands stuffed into his pockets as he looked at the crowd.
’Word travels fast,’ he thought, letting out a tired sigh.
His eyes swept over a small group of adventurers lingering near the edge of the guild’s courtyard. They had been staring the hardest, but when he looked in their direction, they flinched so violently it was almost comical.
He paused, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at them for a bit longer.
There was a woman with short hair who looked like she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her, a large man nervously rubbing the back of his neck, and a third guy who looked like he was about to pass out from sheer terror.
It took him a few seconds to place their faces, but when he finally did, he realized it was the same party from the forest—the exact same people who had stood around his campsite and tried to rob him of his deer core while he was passed out right after he first awakened.
’No way,’ he thought, a slow, amused smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. He took his hands out of his pockets and started walking directly toward them.
The moment he took his first step in their direction, the entire group stiffened like they had just been hit by lightning.
"He is coming here," the large man hissed, his eyes wide as he frantically nudged the woman’s shoulder. "Cassie, he is walking right at us. What do we do?"
"Don’t move," she whispered back, her face turning completely pale while she tried to stand as perfectly still as possible. "If we run, we are dead. Just don’t make eye contact and maybe he will walk past us."
"Walk past us?" the third guy squeaked, his voice cracking from sheer panic. "He’s literally staring straight at me! He remembers! He definitely remembers we tried to steal his stuff!"
Juna, Loccy, and Vella followed right behind him, their combined presence making the air around them feel heavy and suffocating as Hajin casually strolled up to the terrified party.
He stopped right in front of them and the three adventurers held their breath, looking like they were waiting for an executioner’s axe to drop.
"Yo," he said casually, raising a hand in greeting. "Been a while."
Cassie blinked, her brain completely short-circuiting as she stared at his relaxed smile.
The large man and the third guy exchanged a wild, thoroughly confused look. They had been expecting to get their heads taken off, or at least be violently threatened, but instead, the terrifying ranker who had just turned the capital upside down was greeting them like they were old drinking buddies.
"U-um," Cassie stuttered, completely at a loss for words. "Y-yes... it has. R-Ranker Hajin, sir."
"You guys operating out of the capital now?" he asked, crossing his arms and completely ignoring the sheer terror rolling off of them.
"W-we are," the large man managed to squeak out, his voice practically jumping an octave. "Just, uh, doing some basic requests. Nothing crazy."
"That’s good," he nodded, his tone genuinely friendly. "It’s always nice to see familiar faces from the border." fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
Cassie swallowed hard, the friendly tone doing absolutely nothing to ease her anxiety. If anything, it made it worse.
"L-look," she stammered, offering a nervous, strained laugh. "About what happened in the border forest... we are really, really sorry. We didn’t know who you were, and we were incredibly stupid. If you want compensation, we will pay you whatever it takes. We will do anything to make it right, just please don’t kill us."
"Anything?" He asked, raising an eyebrow as his smile widened just a fraction.
"Yes!" the large man practically yelled, nodding so fast his neck looked like it was about to snap. "Anything you need, sir!"
Hajin stood there for a moment, looking at the three terrified adventurers while his smile slowly shifted into something much more dangerous.
"Actually," he said, his eyes flicking back toward Juna and Loccy, "I do need a favor."
An hour later, in a deserted clearing just outside the capital walls.
"KEEP RUNNING!" the large man screamed, tears literally streaming down his face as he sprinted across the uneven ground as fast as his legs could carry him. "DON’T LOOK BACK! JUST KEEP RUNNING!"
"I CAN’T!" the third guy sobbed, tripping over a rock and scrambling back to his feet without losing any momentum. "MY LUNGS ARE BLEEDING! I THINK MY LUNGS ARE ACTUALLY BLEEDING!"
A massive boulder the size of a barrel slammed into the ground just inches behind their heels, exploding into a shower of dirt and sending them stumbling forward with terrified shrieks.
"You missed," Juna’s voice echoed across the field, calm and completely unimpressed.
"They are moving too erratically!" Loccy complained from the tree line, her ears pinning back as she hoisted another massive rock over her head like it weighed nothing at all. "And it’s really hard to hit a moving target when they scream that loud!"
"Then aim ahead of them," Juna instructed, leaning casually against a tree trunk with her arms crossed. "Watch their footwork. They always heavily favor their right legs when they panic. Lead the target."
"Okay!" Loccy nodded enthusiastically, winding her arm back to throw.
"SHE’S THROWING ANOTHER ONE!" Cassie shrieked and spun around, slamming her palms toward the incoming projectile.
A thick, glowing wall of defensive mana erupted into existence just as the massive rock collided with it, the impact sounding like a siege weapon firing.
The barrier instantly shattered into a million pieces, the sheer force throwing Cassie violently backward as the remnants of the boulder cratered the earth right where she had been standing.
She scrambled back to her feet, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she seriously questioned if she was going to make it through the day alive.
"SPLIT UP!" she screamed, abandoning any further attempts to block. "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SPLIT UP!"
Hajin sat on a large fallen tree near the edge of the field, casually eating an apple while he watched the three adventurers run for their miserable lives.
Vella floated beside him in her spirit form, her eyes tracking the chaos with mild amusement.
"This is surprisingly effective," she noted, watching the large man dodge another flying rock by throwing himself into a patch of mud. "Live targets are much better for physical conditioning than stationary dummies."
"Right?" He agreed, taking another bite of the apple. "And the best part is, it’s completely free. They even volunteered."
Another massive boulder crashed into the field, followed immediately by Cassie’s terrified screaming as Loccy chased them toward the tree line with absolutely terrifying enthusiasm.
Hajin watched them scramble over each other to escape, a low, dark chuckle escaping his lips.
It started quiet, but as another rock obliterated a tree right next to the screaming party, the chuckle grew into a full, unapologetic laugh. It was a dark, thoroughly amused laugh that made him sound exactly like the villain of the story, completely enjoying the chaos he had unleashed.
Vella watched him for a second, a small, elegant smile pulling at her lips. A moment later, she threw her head back and joined him, her own laugh echoing with a slightly unhinged, predatory amusement that perfectly matched her master’s. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
They sat there together on the edge of the field, laughing like a pair of absolute villains while Cassie and her party continued to scream for their lives in the background.
