<Seok’s POV> 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

His name was Seok. He was just a guy in his early twenties when his entire world turned upside down when he awakened his powers as a Hunter.

For most people, awakening was a dream come true, a ticket to fame, wealth, and power.

But for Seok, it was simply a desperate lifeline. He didn’t care about being a hero, and he certainly didn’t care about ranking up for the sake of prestige.

All he cared about was his older sister, who was currently on her deathbed, fighting a losing battle against late-stage cancer.

She was the one who had raised him for as long as he could remember. When their parents passed away, she had sacrificed her own youth, her own dreams, and her own health just to make sure Seok had a roof over his head and food on his table.

She was his entire world.

So, the very moment he awakened his Hunter powers, he didn’t wait even a single moment.

He immediately joined the Association. He was so eager to throw himself into dangerous Gates just to earn money as fast as possible for her expensive medical treatments.

Three years had passed since that day.

Through sheer will and near-death experiences, he had successfully raised his rank from D-Rank to C-Rank after clearing roughly a hundred Gates.

He had earned a decent amount of money along the way, which was enough to move her to a better facility, but it still wasn’t enough to save her.

The cancer had already reached its final stage.

Lately, the doctors had told him that conventional medicine could no longer help her.

Now, the only thing left in this world that could completely cure her was a legendary high-grade potion made from a dragon’s bone.

No matter how hard he tried, no matter how many marketplaces he searched or how many high-ranked Hunters he begged, he was never able to find that one specific potion.

He couldn’t even find a single splinter of a dragon’s bone. Such things only dropped in high A-Rank or S-Rank Gates, and even then, only with a bit of luck. A C-Rank Hunter like him couldn’t even dream of entering one without turning into dust in a fraction of a second.

Eventually, he was forced to give up. Not because his resolve had shattered, but because his sister had seen the toll it was taking on him.

She saw the fresh scars covering his body every time he visited her hospital room. She saw the hollow look in his eyes and the way he was slowly killing himself just to keep her fading spark alive.

One evening, while clutching his trembling hand with her frail and skeletal fingers, she had begged him.

She begged him with tears in her eyes to never put his life in danger because of her anymore.

<"Please, Seok," she had whispered under the weight of her oxygen mask. "Don’t do this to yourself. Promise me you won’t throw your life away for a ghost. And promise me... promise me you will never cry alone in the dark when I am gone.">

That memory was like a heavy stone resting inside his chest. To give his sister peace of mind during her final days, Seok had finally agreed.

He stopped chasing high-risk Gates and took a stable, quiet job as an Association supervisor. He swore to her that he would only participate in safe, thoroughly evaluated raids where the danger was minimal. He promised her he would stay safe.

But this Gate... What on earth was this?

’I thought it would be a simple raid,’ Seok thought to himself as his legs kicked through the freezing water. ’The Association evaluated it as a standard C-Rank Gate. It was supposed to be dangerous, but not this complicated.’

The obsidian trident felt cold and heavy in his hand.

Following the directions given by the mysterious man wearing the paper bag mask, Seok was currently leading the remaining Hunters deeper into the dark, shadowed pathways hidden directly behind the sapphire throne room.

’And what is the deal with those strange masked guys?’ Seok pondered. ’When I first saw them outside the Gate with those ridiculous paper bags on their heads, I thought they were just some foolish rookies. I thought they were desperate people trying to make quick money after recently awakening their powers...’

In fact, Seok had felt a deep sense of empathy for them. He honestly thought they were just like him, people driven to absolute extremes because they were in desperate need of a massive amount of money.

He thought they were risking their lives in a C-Rank Gate to save someone they loved.

That was the sole reason why he had openly ordered the other Hunters to protect them, and why he had been so quick to smack the arrogant archer for insulting them.

He wanted to keep them alive. He wanted to make sure they could go back home to whoever was waiting for them. He wanted to be the shield he never had when he was a rookie.

But his entire image of them being weak and defenseless was shattered in an instant when that girl, Vera, casually stopped a leaping C-Rank mermaid midair and crushed its iron-hard scales with her bare hand.

They weren’t weak at all.

They were terrifying.

And now, the boy—Brian, or whatever his name was—had just accurately predicted an entire underwater civilization, diagnosed a Helping-Type Gate structure, and casually handed him a legendary boss weapon while ordering him around like a subordinate.

The absolute calm confidence coming from that boy was something Seok had only ever seen in elite high-ranking guild leaders.

"Seok! Look ahead!"

The anxious voice of the archer shattered Seok’s train of thought.

Seok snapped out of his memories and gripped the trident tighter as his eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

They had finally reached the end of the dark palace pathway, stepping into a massive, cavernous chamber that housed the royal altar.

At the center of the room stood a grand, circular platform made of ancient and somewhat weathered stone.

But the altar wasn’t unguarded.

The moment the group entered the chamber, the surrounding water began to spin violently.

Dozens of strange, monstrous shapes began to manifest out of the water and blocked the path to the altar.

These weren’t the flesh-and-blood mermaids they had fought on the surface or see inside the grand hall. These were defensive guardians of the palace.

Their entire bodies were made entirely of water and nothing else. They didn’t have eyes or scales; they were just liquid manifestations of pure mana shaped into the silhouettes of fierce mermen warriors holding sharp, watery spears.

"More monsters?!" the archer shouted, his hands visibly shaking as he tried to nock an arrow. "And these ones look like they don’t even have physical bodies! How the hell are we supposed to shoot water?!"

"Stay calm!" Seok ordered.

He stepped to the front of the line. One of his hands was holding his blue spear while the other firmly held Trion’s obsidian trident.

"Our instructions are clear. We don’t need to wipe them out. We just need to clear a path and plant this trident into the altar’s core!" he finished.

"I will support you!" Hana shouted. "But my oxygen filtration spell only has a few minutes left! We have to hurry!"

"Shield user, with me!" Seok called out.

The heavy-armored shield-bearer from the couple moved instantly and stepped right beside Seok, then raised his cracked shield.

Even though the heavy steel structure was dragging him downward in the deep water, he still gritted his teeth and pushed through the fluid resistance with physical force.

"Let’s move!" Seok shouted.

With a powerful kick of his legs, Seok launched himself forward.

The semi-transparent water guardians noticed their approach instantly. Without letting out a single sound, three of the liquid warriors glided through the water at high speed as their spears thrust simultaneously toward Seok’s chest.

Seok didn’t flinch. He spun his blue spear in a swift arc to parry the first two incoming strikes. The impact felt strange, like hitting heavy, dense metal. But his weapon successfully deflected them.

However, the third watery spear managed to bypass his guard and was aimed straight for his throat.

The shield-bearer arrived just in time and blocked the attack with his shield.

"Go, Seok!" he shouted.

Seok didn’t waste the opportunity. Holding the heavy obsidian trident with both hands, he kicked off a nearby stone pillar and shot past the guardians.

More water monsters rushed to stop him from the sides. Their fluid forms kept expanding as they tried to completely swallow him alive.

"Divine Light!" the woman from the couple chanted from the rear.

A brilliant flash of holy energy erupted from her hands, cutting through the crystalline blue water and temporarily blinding the liquid guardians.

Their semi-transparent forms rippled and became unstable under the influence of the divine magic, which slowed their movements significantly.

The archer also fired a steady barrage of green aura-tipped arrows.

Even though the arrows passed right through the watery bodies without dealing fatal physical damage, the green acid explosions inside them disrupted the mana density of the monsters.

The entire team was working as a single, flawless unit.

Every Hunter was bleeding, exhausted, and pushed to their absolute limits, but nobody was giving up.

They were fighting for their lives, completely placing their faith in the mysterious warning given by the boy in the paper bag.

Seok crossed the final distance. His chest was heaving as the massive pressure of the altar’s mana field rolled against his skin.

The glowing core was right in front of him. It was spinning rapidly and radiating a heavy, suffocating aura.

He looked back down the dark pathway, thinking about the paper bag couple who were currently facing the final boss all by themselves to buy them time.

’You told us to plant it to reverse everything,’ Seok thought to himself. His expression turned fierce as he raised the black trident above his head. ’I don’t know who you really are... but I am holding up my end of the deal. You better survive down there!’

"YAAAA!!!"

With a loud and desperate shout, and with a force that sent a massive spiral of bubbles into the water, Seok drove the sharp prongs of the obsidian trident directly into the center of the altar’s glowing core.

CRACK!