The main hall of the Guild was incredibly loud, the usual low hum of conversations replaced by a chaotic, overlapping wave of rumors and speculation.

Everyone was talking about the exact same thing.

"I heard the vanguard squad got completely wiped out, and he had to fight it alone," an adventurer said, leaning over a table near the quest board.

"That’s bullshit," another replied, shaking his head. "I heard he used some kind of forbidden dark magic to blow up the entire area. My cousin works in the palace guard, he said the King personally stepped in to stop the council from investigating him."

Yenna sat at a table near the back of the hall, her arms crossed tightly over her chest while she listened to the ridiculous stories spiraling out of control.

Her expression was completely flat, but the temperature in the immediate area was steadily dropping, thin layers of frost beginning to form on the edges of her chair.

"You are freezing my water," Mila said quietly from across the table.

Yenna blinked, pulling her mana back slightly as she let out a slow, irritated exhale.

"They are idiots," Yenna said, gesturing toward the main floor where the rumors were getting louder. "A Beast King Anomaly? A rookie soloing a catastrophe-level threat? It is completely absurd."

Mila took a slow sip from her cup, setting it down before flipping open her small notebook.

"The official guild registry updated this morning," she pointed out, tapping a specific line on the page with her pen. "His rank jumped to 425. They don’t hand out numbers like that just for fun, Yenna. The guild’s automated system must have verified his mana level through his badge."

Yenna’s jaw tightened instantly since hitting Rank 425 meant he was practically right behind her now.

"I do not care what the system says," she fired back, leaning forward slightly. "I felt his mana that day we almost fought in the lobby. He was strong, surprisingly strong for an unregistered rookie, but he was absolutely not Beast King level. I was definitely stronger than him."

She remembered the freezing pressure she had put on him in the lobby, and how he had pushed back.

He had a massive amount of dense, violent mana, but it was raw and unrefined. A Beast King was a monster that wiped out entire veteran raid teams. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"People don’t just jump from struggling with basic mana control to killing a catastrophe-level boss in a few weeks," she continued, shaking her head. "It’s physically impossible. He must have had help, or the anomaly was already weakened by the vanguard squad before they died."

"Or," Mila said, raising an eyebrow slightly, "he was hiding his real strength that day."

Yenna opened her mouth to argue, but the words died in her throat.

She thought back to that moment in the lobby, the way he had looked at her with complete indifference while her freezing aura pressed down on him. He hadn’t been scared, he had just been annoyed.

The memory made her even more irritated, her temper finally snapping as the frost on her chair began rapidly spreading across the floorboards.

"That arrogant little shit," she muttered, her hands clenching into fists as she leaned forward. "He comes into our guild, acts like a completely untrained amateur, disrespects me, and now he is jumping eight hundred ranks overnight? It is complete garbage. If he really is that strong, then I am going to—"

She was cut off by a sudden, massive shift in the atmosphere of the room.

The loud, chaotic arguments echoing across the main hall didn’t just quiet down, they completely stopped. It was like someone had thrown a heavy blanket over the entire building, silencing dozens of seasoned adventurers in a fraction of a second.

Yenna frowned, her rant dying in her throat as she looked past Mila’s shoulder toward the front entrance.

Speak of the devil.

Hajin was walking through the doors, dressed in casual clothes with his hands stuffed into his pockets.

He didn’t look like a national hero who had just saved the capital from a catastrophe-level threat. He looked tired, slightly bored, and completely unbothered by the fact that every single person in the guild hall was currently staring at him like he was a ghost.

Walking right behind him were his girls, completely ignoring the heavy stares of the crowd as they followed him straight toward the reception desk.

Yenna’s eye twitched. She wanted to march across the room and grab him by the collar. Just look at him, acting completely cool and without a single care in the world like he hadn’t just turned the entire capital’s power structure completely upside down.

But what actually made her pause was the group following him.

The last time she had seen him in the lobby, he had only been traveling with one girl—the wolf-girl with the heavy, suppressing mana. But now? He had two more.

A bunny-girl with long, twitching ears, and a tall, incredibly beautiful woman who carried herself with a lethal, almost predatory grace and a faint, golden aura.

’Where is he even getting them?’ Yenna thought, her jaw tightening as she noticed almost every male adventurer in the hall actively drooling as the three women walked past.

Juna, Loccy, and Vella didn’t even glance at the crowd, keeping their attention entirely focused forward as Hajin stopped at the main reception desk.

The receptionist behind the counter, a young woman who looked like she was about to have a panic attack, swallowed hard as Hajin approached.

"R-Ranker Hajin," she stuttered, quickly straightening her posture. "How can the guild assist you today?"

"I need to turn in a core," he said, pulling a dark, jagged crystal out of his pocket and placing it on the counter.

The moment the crystal touched the wood, a dense, heavy wave of mana washed over the desk. It wasn’t anywhere near the suffocating pressure of the Beast King’s core, but it was still incredibly strong.

Yenna felt the mana from across the room, her eyes narrowing. That wasn’t a standard monster core.

"I’d like to sell this," he said, leaning against the counter.

The receptionist stared at the core, her hands shaking slightly as she pulled out a mana-measuring monocle and leaned closer to inspect it.

"T-This is..." she trailed off, her eyes going wide. "This is a six-shard class core. The density is incredible. Sir, the payout for a core of this purity is..."

"Just process it," he interrupted politely, letting out a tired sigh.

A six-shard core.

The entire guild hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Most Rankers went their entire careers without even seeing a six-shard monster, let alone bringing back its core to casually trade for coin.

Yenna sat frozen at her table, her hands still clenched into fists.

He hadn’t been bragging or faking his strength, he had just casually dropped a national-level asset on the reception desk like it was spare change.

"Mila," Yenna said, her voice completely hollow as she stared at the dark crystal on the counter.

"Yes?" Mila answered quietly.

"I think I need a drink."