Chapter 47: Familiar Voice
The next morning felt like a complete reset.
Hajin woke up feeling perfectly refreshed, his bruised ribs fully healed thanks to a solid night of sleep and whatever residual healing magic Juna’s evolution had pumped through their bond. They grabbed a heavy breakfast at the inn before heading out into the bustling streets, making their way toward the guild to report the gate clear.
"So," Juna said, walking beside him while her tail swayed slowly, "what exactly is a ranker? You talk about it a lot but I don’t actually know what it means."
He looked at her, realizing he had never actually bothered to explain the guild system to her.
"Ahhh, my bad," he said, looking up before continuing, "you see, normal adventurers are basically just mercenaries," he explained, stepping around a merchant pulling a cart of apples.
"They take odd jobs, hunt weak monsters outside the walls, and scrape by. But rankers are the elite, once you pass the ranker exam, you get actual perks."
She tilted her head, her ears flicking forward in interest. "Like what?"
"Like exclusive access to controlled, high-level gates," he said, holding up a finger. "You get massive discounts on gear, the ability to take on national-level requests, and you even get invited to royal banquets to make connections with the nobility. You get a badge that proves your exact rank based on your strength and performance, the higher the rank, the more doors open for you."
He looked forward, a small smile pulling at his lips.
"I want to become a high-ranker so we can explore the world without anyone telling us no," he continued. He didn’t mention the other, more important reason, that he needed the freedom and access to high-threat gates to grind out enough soul energy to repair the Goddess’s core fragment. She didn’t need to worry about that right now.
"That makes sense," she said, nodding slowly before looking at him. "So, what exactly is the ranker exam? What do we have to do?"
He blinked, his smile dropping instantly, "I have no idea," he said casually. "I never bothered to learn about it."
She stopped walking for a second, staring at him in complete disbelief. "You want to dedicate your life to passing an exam, and you don’t even know what the exam is?"
"We’ll figure it out when we take it," he shrugged, entirely unbothered.
She let out a long, heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. Sometimes he was so hyper-focused and terrifying in battle, and other times he was so carefree it legitimately worried her.
They reached the guild hall a few minutes later, pushing through the doors.
The loud, chaotic noise of the morning rush hit them immediately, but the second they stepped fully into the room, a strange ripple went through the crowd.
Conversations started dying out near the entrance, the silence spreading rapidly across the room until the entire guild hall was practically quiet. Dozens of eyes locked onto them, staring openly as people started leaning in and whispering to each other.
News traveled fast in the guild.
Everyone already knew that a heavily mutated anomaly had taken over the two-shard gate, and everyone knew that a massive percentage of the parties that went in didn’t come back.
The checkpoint guards had already sent word to the guild that the gate was cleared, reporting that the only two people to walk out alive were a guy with dark silver hair and green eyes, and a wolfkin with glowing white fur.
Seeing them actually walk through the front doors was something else entirely.
Hajin definitely stood out, but it was Juna who was drawing the most attention. Her white hair, glowing silver eyes, and the sheer, intimidating pressure rolling off her new form made her look completely different from the average beastkin, leaving absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind that they were the ones who killed it.
Hajin ignored the stares, walking straight toward the front desk.
Juna followed close behind him, but her mind was completely elsewhere. She tuned out the whispers of the crowd, her thoughts drifting back to the conversation she had with Princess Didi in her bedroom.
’She asked me to convince him to go to the royal banquet next week,’ she thought, her eyes tracking Hajin’s back.
She had been furious at the time because of how the princess had spoken to her, but hearing Hajin talk about how important making connections was for a ranker made her reconsider.
If attending that banquet and meeting the high nobles would actually help him achieve his goal, maybe her pride wasn’t as important as she thought.
’Maybe I really should ask him to go,’ she thought, her tail flicking thoughtfully as they reached the receptionist.
The young receptionist was already staring at them with wide, nervous eyes as they stepped up to the counter.
"E-excuse me," she stammered, looking nervously between Hajin and the imposing wolfkin standing behind him, "are you two... are you really the ones who cleared the two-shard gate anomaly?"
He didn’t say a word, just reached into his bag and pulled out the heart of the apex, placing it onto the counter.
The dense, suffocating mana of a four-shard monster instantly washed over the front desk. The core pulsed with a deep crimson light, its sheer quality completely unhideable.
It had originally dropped as an epic grade item, but his passive fragment’s blessing had forcefully elevated it to legendary, making it undeniably the core of a heavily mutated boss.
The receptionist actually took a step back, her face turning slightly pale at the sheer density of the mana.
That was all the proof she needed.
"R-right away," she stuttered, quickly pulling out a ledger and frantically writing down his party’s details to officially record the clear.
She swallowed hard, looking back up at the glowing crystal, "um... does your party wish to sell the core to the guild? An item of this grade would fetch an astronomical price."
He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak, a familiar voice cut through the air behind him.
"If he has any brains at all, he’ll hold onto it."
He didn’t even need to turn around to recognize the voice.
He slowly turned his head, watching as the crowd automatically parted to make way for Yenna. The Frost Fang walked forward with the same perfectly composed, icy demeanor she had when she fined him for smashing a pillar days ago.
Pinned to the collar of her coat was a small, silver badge with the number ’412’ engraved into the metal. She was a Ranker, not exactly a high-level one by the global standard of Rankers, but holding a number in the low four hundreds meant she was still a terrifyingly capable fighter and easily one of the strongest in this specific guild branch.
She stopped a few feet away, her sharp eyes flicking from the legendary core on the counter, to Juna’s new form, and finally settling directly onto Hajin’s face.
He stared back at her, his jaw tightening slightly as a very distinct, very bad feeling started pooling in his stomach.