Chapter 50: Monster
"Are you absolutely sure you can kill me?"
The silence that followed his words was absolute.
Every single adventurer in the guild hall stared at him, their faces frozen in pure shock and disbelief.
They couldn’t tell if the kid had completely lost his mind or if he just genuinely didn’t understand who he was talking to. Was an unregistered rookie actually challenging a Ranker?
But even with the sheer absurdity of the threat, no one was laughing or rather, they couldn’t.
Because beneath the disbelief, everyone in the room could feel the suffocating, heavy weight of the mana bleeding off him. It was a dense, incredibly violent pressure that completely defied his lack of a guild badge, proving that he wasn’t just making empty threats.
Even Yenna felt a brief flash of genuine confusion.
’Does he actually think he can beat me?’ she thought, her eyes narrowing as she stared into his unblinking eyes.
As a Ranker who had fought anomalies, cleared restricted zones, and survived horrors that would shatter the minds of ordinary adventurers, the sheer arrogance of this kid thinking he could look down on her sent a violent flood of anger racing through her veins.
Her fingers twitched over the hilt of her sword, a dark, sinister smile slowly stretching across her face. If he wanted to die to prove a point, she was more than happy to crush him.
She gripped her hilt, her freezing mana spiking violently. But before she could even draw an inch of steel, the air in the guild hall suddenly vanished.
A new, completely overwhelming pressure slammed down onto the room, entirely eclipsing both Hajin’s aura and Yenna’s freezing mana in a split second.
It was so dense, so utterly suffocating, that several of the lower-level adventurers immediately collapsed onto their knees, gasping for breath as the sheer weight of it crushed them against the floor.
Hajin’s eyes widened, his hand instantly wrapping around his own hilt as his body screamed at him to move.
The presence rolling over the room was monstrous. It wasn’t just dense but also refined, feeling exactly like the terrifying, immovable pressure the King had given off back in the throne room.
’Just who...’ he thought, gritting his teeth against the sheer weight of the aura as he slowly forced himself to turn his head.
A man was casually walking down the grand staircase at the back of the hall.
He had his hands resting loosely behind his back, his posture completely relaxed despite the crushing pressure radiating from every step he took.
He was dressed in intricate, high-collared robes that dragged slightly against the steps, and his eyes carried a heavy, exhausted look that seemed to instantly dissect everything they landed on.
Hajin didn’t need to ask who he was.
The overwhelming aura, the robes, the way even Yenna had immediately let go of her sword and stiffened, there was absolutely no doubt.
It was the Guildmaster.
Hajin mentally cursed, a sudden spike of panic cutting through his earlier confidence. He hadn’t even considered that flaring his mana to challenge a Ranker in the middle of the main hall would obviously draw out the strongest person in the building.
He had let himself get way too heated up.
The Guildmaster reached the bottom of the stairs and slowly walked up to the front desk, the suffocating pressure of his aura refusing to lighten even a fraction.
He stopped directly between Hajin and Yenna, his eyes lazily shifting between the two of them.
When his gaze finally landed on him, Hajin actually felt his heart skip a beat. The sheer, overwhelming difference in their power was so massive that his body instinctively began to tremble.
It was a primal reaction, an involuntary warning that the man standing in front of him could erase him without a second thought.
He gritted his teeth, clenching his fists hard as he stubbornly forced his body to stop shaking. He refused to look down, keeping his eyes locked onto the Guildmaster’s face.
The older man clearly noticed the subtle shift. A faint, genuinely amused smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he watched an unregistered rookie actively force his survival instincts into submission.
"Well," the Guildmaster finally said, his voice quiet but carrying an undeniable weight that echoed clearly through the silent hall.
"It seems I picked an interesting time to leave my office," he continued, his gaze shifting from Hajin’s rigid posture down to the counter.
He walked over and picked up the envelope, his fingers lightly tracing the royal wax seal. He didn’t look surprised or shocked by it. He just stared at the King’s personal crest for a long moment before casually slipping the letter into his robes.
"Yenna," he said, not even bothering to look at her.
"Guildmaster," she responded immediately, her voice tight but perfectly respectful as she bowed her head slightly. The freezing pressure of her Frost Fang aura had completely vanished the second he spoke her name.
"You are causing a scene," he said simply. "And you are terrifying my receptionist, stand down."
It wasn’t a request or a suggestion, it was an absolute command that left zero room for argument.
She didn’t hesitate. "Yes, sir. I apologize."
She stepped back, shooting one last, unreadable look at Hajin before turning around and walking toward the guild hall exit without another word. The crowd practically threw themselves out of her way as she left, no one daring to speak or even breathe too loudly.
Once the doors swung shut behind her, the Guildmaster turned his attention back to Hajin.
"And you," he said, his amused smile fading into an expression of exhausted boredom. "You have a very bad habit of drawing unnecessary attention to yourself. First the pillar, and now picking a fight with one of my top Rankers over a misunderstanding."
Hajin slowly exhaled, his shoulders relaxing just a fraction now that the immediate threat of a fight was gone.
"She started it," he pointed out bluntly.
A few people in the crowd actually choked on their own spit at his casual tone.
The Guildmaster just sighed, shaking his head slowly. "Follow me. If you want to take the Ranker exam using a royal recommendation, we are going to need to have a very long, very private conversation about what exactly you think you are doing."
He turned around and started walking back toward the grand staircase without waiting to see if Hajin would follow.
Hajin let out another slow, irritated exhale. He knew the exact second Yenna showed up that this entire process was going to turn into a massive, unnecessary headache. He just wanted to hand over the paperwork and take the exam, but now he was being dragged into a private meeting with the most terrifying man in the building.
He glanced over his shoulder at Juna, tilting his head slightly toward the stairs.
"Come on," he muttered, turning away from the front desk. "Let’s follow him."
Juna nodded silently, falling into step right behind him as they started walking across the hall.
The crowd immediately parted for them, leaving a wide, empty path straight to the grand staircase. No one whispered or made eye contact as the sheer absurdity of watching an unregistered rookie casually mouth off to the Guildmaster had completely short-circuited their brains.
Halfway up the stairs, the Guildmaster paused, turning his head slightly to watch them ascend.
His gaze didn’t linger on Juna or the presence of the legendary core in his bag. His eyes were entirely focused on the relaxed, unbothered way Hajin was walking up the steps.
He had already pulled his aura back, but the residual pressure hanging in the air was still enough to make normal adventurers, and even some Rankers, struggle to breathe. Yet this kid was walking through it like it was nothing more than a light breeze, his own dense pressure completely unaffected.
’A royal recommendation, an unregistered background, and an aura that feels like it could clash directly against my own,’ the Guildmaster thought, his eyes narrowing slightly as he watched Hajin take another step.
He had seen countless prodigies and arrogant nobles with deep pockets over the decades, but he had never seen anything quite like this.
’Just where did such a monster crawl out from?’