Solo Leveling- Ragnarok-Chapter 295

***

“All right... I’ll leave that to you, then,” Suho said. He put down his phone, ending his conversation with Liu Zhigang.

Ding!

[Apostle of Paradise has been defeated.]

Thanks to the system, Suho immediately learned which follower of the Itarim it was that Liu had just chanced across and killed. He regretted not being able to gain experience points since the apostle had perished so far away, but it was just as well that he had died at Liu’s hands. Absorbing the Apostle of Paradise would be a great help to Liu in recovering his past power as a National Level Hunter.

It would be much more effective if Suho had allies in tracking down and eliminating every last follower of the Itarim hiding across the world. In particular, if former National Level Hunters could reclaim their full strength, they would become a terrifying force against the followers.

“Man, that guy had the worst luck,” Suho muttered. “No paradise for you to escape to.”

He grinned to himself. The Apostle of Paradise had escaped while swearing revenge, but he hadn’t even lasted a full day before meeting his end.

“Young Monarch, I don’t think that quote is quite relevant— Eh? Come to think of it, it does seem fitting.”

Beru had been about to correct Suho, but he tilted his head in thought before nodding in admiration. After all, the apostle had indeed fled to what was supposed to be his sanctuary, only for it to be utterly annihilated in his absence.

“It must be your art studies!” Beru exclaimed. “Your poetic expressions are becoming more refined, and...”

As always, the shadow ant’s endless flattery flew into one of Suho’s ears and exited the other. With the Apostle of Paradise no longer on his mind, he turned his gaze toward the mound of corpses he was crouching on.

The sight before him could have been described as hell on earth—a storm of fire and ice, a chaotic winter forged from extreme heat by himself and Sirka. The overwhelming destruction had led to mountains of high elf bodies covering the land as far as the eye could see.

To call it a “mess” would be an understatement. Some of the bodies were burnt beyond recognition and disintegrating into ash, while others were frozen solid, their forms shattering as the cold gripped them. Many were so mutilated that it was hard to even tell what they once were.

Just then, Greed’s massive fist crushed the skull of the last remaining high elf, and a notification sounded.

[Enemies to Eliminate: 0]

[Enemies Eliminated: 2,918]

At last, the quest was over. For the high elves who had betrayed their kind and taken refuge in war, the winter was also at an end.

[Emergency Quest: “Defeat the Enemy” has been completed.]

[Level up!]

[Level up!]

[...]

There was another ding.

[You have received rewards for completing the quest.]

Before taking a look at the rewards, Suho turned to look at Sirka ahead of him. “Not yet, huh?”

Sirka gave no response. She had been encased in a massive pillar of ice for some time now, her eyes shut.

[Sillad explains that this is the result of trying to dominate too many spirits at once.]

In other words, Sirka had exceeded the limits of her vessel.

Suho understood the explanation immediately. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

“Does that mean Sirka is not yet ready to be a Monarch?” he asked.

As if in response, the ice surrounding her continued to radiate an intense, chilling cold. The former Monarch refuted it, however.

[Sillad says we must wait until she can control the power she has taken for herself, as her vessel is more than ready.]

“We have to wait? For how long?”

This time, Sillad remained silent. It was clear that even he had no idea.

“Well, all right.” Suho nodded, then stretched and rose from the pile of corpses. “We can’t sit around here forever. We’ll leave her here and move on by ourselves.”

“An excellent idea. Why don’t we leave a sentry here?” Beru suggested.

“Sure. That we can do.”

Suho’s gaze swept around, searching for a shadow soldier to leave behind as Beru had recommended. His eyes landed on Haseul, who had been watching him indifferently from a distance.

“Right... I forgot about her.”

Suho had been so immersed in combat that she had slipped his mind.

Haseul had been watching everything he’d done here from beginning to end, and as such, she was reduced to silence. There had been nothing she could do. She had tried to help at first, only for a small shadow ant to appear and shout at her to get lost and stop being a hindrance. After that, she’d backed into a corner and stayed there ever since.

It didn’t take her long to understand why she had been in the way. In the beginning, she had assumed this was an all-out war. Thousands of enemies surrounded them, and she had imagined Suho’s summoned creatures struggling to hold their ground, defending their position in an intense siege. She had expected she might be able to lend a hand.

But once the fighting began, Haseul realized how wrong she was. It was no war.

It’s just a hunt...

Indeed, everything happening around her was a hunt, nothing more and nothing less. A hunter in a forest wouldn’t care how many animals appeared in that forest—the result of their efforts would always be the same. Suho, who was truly a hunter, seemed glad to kill so many enemies at once. He embraced the hunt as he continued to take down the hordes of high elves.

In the face of that, Haseul could do nothing but watch. What else was there to do? Even as an S-rank, all she could do was stand there, wide-eyed, drinking in the overwhelming sight.

She reminded herself that a hunter hunts magic beasts, and Woo Jinchul’s words came back to her. She clenched her fist and tapped the left side of her chest, where a strange weight had settled.

To Haseul, the word “hunter” had a special meaning. She had awakened as an S-rank earlier than anyone, but it had happened so early that she hadn’t discovered her own rank for a long time. Then because she’d crossed over to North Korea as soon as she awakened, she had missed her chance to be a hunter as well.

Given her prior misdeeds, she probably wouldn’t have been allowed to become a hunter even if she had stayed in South Korea. She would have been imprisoned as a villain instead. From what she had heard, an S-rank villain by the name of Hwang Dongsoo was on the run from the association and living in hiding. If she hadn’t left the south, her fate would have been no different.

Ironically, that would have been the best-case scenario for her, the happiest ending. It was the only one she could have experienced if she stayed.

As such, the word “hunter” symbolized regret toward a life she could have had and admiration for something she would never get a chance at again. The more she heard about the lives of hunters from the villains who crossed over to North Korea, the more those feelings grew.

Then she had an encounter with none other than Jinchul.

“You’re lucky. If this were South Korea, we’d have to fight each other. The association can’t allow an S-rank who committed murder to live among the people.”

But they met in North Korea, not South Korea. Perhaps for that reason, Jinchul did not treat Haseul with hostility. Instead, he approached her calmly, as if she were a non-threatening herbivorous animal, and suggested she join him.

Naturally, Haseul never let her guard down. It was only natural for her to be cautious. He was a strange older adult who seemed to be favorably disposed toward her for no reason. Why would he, of all people, try to recruit her without knowing anything about her? She was just a villain wandering about in North Korea, after all.

When she asked for the reason, however, Jinchul simply grinned at her and nudged up his black sunglasses.

“Well, let’s just say... I have a good eye for people. I’ve had quite a few ups and downs in my life, and I’ve learned to read people pretty well.”

So there was basically no reason, it seemed.

It was a flimsy excuse, completely devoid of persuasion, and Haseul found it absurd. She had been raised in a brutal orphanage that she had escaped on her own. The word “adult” was synonymous with “disaster,” and now this “adult” was standing before her, casually shrugging off his own past hardships as if they were nothing. It was no wonder she didn’t trust him.

Besides, Woo Jinchul was an infamous name. It had been on the lips of many of the villains she had met in North Korea. Even from behind those ever-present black sunglasses, she could sense the sharpness of the man’s gaze, like that of a raptor watching its prey.

He seemed to understand her wariness and simply grinned. Then he offered a different suggestion.

“Well, all right. In a world like this, general suspicion is a good policy. How about this? It’s just not a good strategy for two S-ranks to move around as a pair, you know.”

“Huh?”

“Let me give you this radio. Let’s just exchange news from time to time with it. It’ll be our little secret.”

“So we’re... secret friends?”

At Haseul’s question, Jinchul choked.

“N-no! That sounds really suspicious! There are plenty of better ways to put it, aren’t there? Like... spy! Or intelligence agent!”

“Huh? Isn’t ‘spy’ even more suspicious?”

He seemed very taken aback by her response. Noticing the way the other hunters were snickering at him, Haseul had relaxed her guard just a little.

“Yes, I’ve got it! How about this? You’ll be an unofficial hunter!” Jinchul declared.

“A hunter?”

“Yes. Become a hunter. You may not be able to operate in South Korea due to the circumstances, but the association will provide full support for an S-rank hunter...”

He went on, but Haseul barely heard the rest. The first part was what mattered—the suggestion that she could be a hunter. The meaning was even greater since the words had come from the lips of the head of the Hunters Association, no less.

From that day, Haseul became an unofficial hunter of the association. Just as Jinchul suggested, she roamed North Korea as she always had, but now she maintained regular contact with him.

She had always been wandering North Korea, so her life hadn’t changed much. Still, something was different. The fact that she now belonged somewhere amid this barren, apocalyptic land gave her a sense of relief she hadn’t felt before.

This was especially true for someone like her—a girl who had been abandoned by her parents and spent her adolescence in an orphanage. She’d gained freedom from that hellish place on her own, but ironically enough, belonging to some other institution melted her anxieties away.

And as for Jinchul...

He had given Haseul shockingly little to do. He was unlike the other adults who had approached her in the past. True to his word, they only exchanged news from time to time and nothing more.

And now Haseul was facing a real hunter for the first time. Sung Suho, the S-rank hunter from South Korea, had just shown her beyond all doubt—and impressed upon her like nobody else had—what it really meant to be a hunter.

Having finished his hunt, he locked eyes with her and said, “Oh, right. I forgot about her.”

He reminds me of Jinchul, she thought.

“Was your name Hassle?” he asked.

“Haseul...”

“Right. Whatever.”

I take that thought back.

Jinchul would never speak to her like this. He always used polite language, showing he respected her as a person.

“So Haneul,” Suho continued, “What will you do next?”

“Haseul... It’s Haseul.”

“Okay. So what’s next for you? If you’ll stay, I’m going to ask you to protect Sirka. If you want to come with me, you can do that too.” He pointed to the destroyed Álfheimr and the chaotic scene beyond, adding, “The Apostle of Paradise just died, and this is the result.”

Haseul looked in the direction Suho was pointing and saw something surprising that hadn’t been there before. The death of the Apostle of Paradise had removed the anti-detection magic that had hidden his gardens. Now the many Elvenwoods towering in the skies of the large-scale apocalypse—throughout China, Russia, North Korea, and so on—had been exposed for all the world to see. The massive trees that had once been kept secret were now fully visible.

“I’m gonna cut down every last one of those trees and head to Jinchul,” Suho declared. “Would you like to come with me? Or you could just tell me his location.”