Evolution Theory of the Hunter

“Learn it anyway. It’s better than not having a skill at all.”

“Then you really bought this for me to learn?”

“You’ll probably thank me later.”

Jung Sooah was lost in deep thought. This was a skillbook worth a couple thousand dollars. She was wrestling the idea of whether she should sell it or learn it.

“I’ll learn it.”

“So you’ve decided?”

“Yeah. I’m sure there must be a reason why you want me to learn it…so I’ll do it.”

“Well, the skill that I learned is a level 0 too.”

“Oh…didn’t you say that you put it up on the market?”

“It didn’t sell.”

“Then your physical ability must because of that skill..”

“I got more upgrades than that…”

“So you can get even more powerful?”

I nodded my head and she began digging into the backpack for the skillbook. She brought out a thin paperback looking book and stared at me with a frown after looking at the weird words.

“What the heck…what language is this…?”

“I don’t know either. It was the first time I ever saw anything like it when I saw it in mine. But when I just read it, it popped into my head. Even though I didn’t know the meaning still.”

“Hm…I see. Are all skillbooks like this?”

“Nope. From what I hear, all the other skillbooks are written so people can understand it. But if you keep reading it, you’ll learn it. Oh…wait.”

I remembered one thing. But she was in the zone and didn’t hear me. I didn’t want to break her concentration. If I broke it, the skillbook might end up disappearing before she could fully gain the skill.

Flash!

A burst of light exploded out of the book.

A moment later. I saw Jung Sooah’s head collapsed into the empty ramen bowl. She must have fainted just like I had done. I passed out for about 10 days…the same would probably be true for her.

“This annoying girl…”

It would have been fine if it was just one day…but if she ended up missing for 10 days, her family would probably file for missing persons. The problem was, I didn’t know where this girl lived. I tried to look through her phone, but there was a passcode on it. Arg.

All I could do was wait for a call to come through.

I cleaned off the remnant ramen soup off her face and placed her on the bed. Since she would be out for so long, I couldn’t let her lay on the ground. I don’t know if it was because she was so muscular, but she was pretty heavy for a girl.

I cleaned up a bit and went on the internet. I wanted to see what happened with the irregular event from yesterday. But there was nothing out of the norm. There wasn’t even one line of news referring to an irregular.

Then that means it only happened at the Baekoonsa dungeon?

I guess it’s not impossible. Because irregulars had appeared once in a blue moon before that incident. That one incident was the only time irregulars had popped up all over the country. It seems the Baekoonsa irregular was an isolated one this time.

But I still had some questions.

Why did the irregular appear at the same time the level 0 skillbook did. If these two events happened independent of eachother, I would have crossed it off as nothing out of the ordinary. But for them to happen at the same time…it couldn’t be chance.

“Hmm…”

Click. Click.

I clicked the mouse while thinking.

Level 0 skillbook. Irregular.

What was the meaning of these two?

I went into the hunter market. I went to check if there was anyone trying to sell a level 0 skillbook.

No one.

From my experience, it would seem that the drop probability of a level 0 skillbook were high. I mean, I had hunted just twice and both times I got a level 0 skillbook. Even if I had ridiculously good luck, there should have been at least 1 level 0 skillbook up on the market.

Or maybe level 0 skillbooks drop only for me?

Nah. It’s probably all in my head.

***

There were no calls for her over the next 10 days. I guess she was just as much of a loner as I was.

“Water!”

Sooah drank a crapload of water as soon as she woke up. When she finished off an entire 2 liter bottle of water, she stared at me dumbly and said.

“Hungry.”

“Jesus.”

She finally seemed to get it together after eating a piece of bread and two ramens. Then she said to me.

“Ha? Did I eat too much?”

“Yes. You even ate my share.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll make you food.”

“It’s fine. More than that, how do you feel?”

“Eum…now that you ask, what happened? Last thing I remember is reading the skillbook.”

“You fell asleep while learning the skill.”

“How long?”

“Ten days.”

“Haaa?”

“Didn’t I tell you last time? That I fell asleep for days while learning my skill.”

“You were telling the truth then? I thought you were making that up after ignoring my calls.”

“I don’t lie unless it makes me money.”

“Wow. Ten days.”

She checked the time on her phone then suddenly whipped her head to face me.”

“Did you by any chance do any naughty things to me while I was asleep?”

“No.”

“You should have.”

“Don’t think so little of my honor. You brat.”

Tap.

“Ow. Why’d you hit me.”

“Be thankful I’m just letting you off with this. Anyway, you should check for your skill, no?”

There was no information on her new friendship skill. We just needed to find out if she actually got the skill properly by having her close her right eye.

“I just see two zeros.”

“One is your level and one is your proficiency. Since you only have two numbers, it seems you don’t get any reward points…then could it be a skill you have to activate? I guess it could also be a passive skill.

“Explain please.”

“I’m saying I don’t know what it is. We need to figure it out slowly.”

“Is it going to be useful though?”

“You don’t trust me?”

“I trust you. Almost too much.”

She said this and followed up with a big sigh.

Why is she sighing like that?

***

Now that she was awake, I made a round of calls to all the members of the party. Even though they had all experienced the dangers of an irregular, all of them responded to my summons. Most likely none of them were able to find any other job and were doing nothing at home.

We decided to go to Baekoonsa dungeon once more. The deciding factor was because of the cheap admission fee and because we were used to it. We were a bit worried about an irregular appearing again, but you couldn’t be a hunter without taking on that kind of a risk.

That didn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared. Just in case, I packed some chains and pepper bombs.

The raid was going well. We fought against wolves, goblins, kobolds, and even ran into a rare slime monster. But everyone did their job, and every monster died easily against my blade – so we were getting through the dungeon fairly quickly.

“It’s way easier than the last time we came.”

Glasses girl nodded her head with a grin. I answered back.

“Thanks to manager Kim doing so well.”

“Hm. Who said I ever skimped on my job.”

“Naah. It’s not because of manager Kim. It’s thanks to our party head being so good at attacking.”

Cho Youngoo said with a small smirk. Seeing that the ever prideful manager Kim didn’t say anything to that, it seemed all of them thought I was pretty strong.

My level up in focus helped in one other area aside from having stronger reflexes. I was able to fight and get rid of the enemy one by one before they could even start attacking.

Since my fights all started with going up against one enemy and then the next, winning was that much easier.

But even taking that out of consideration, there was something else that made my battles so ridiculously easy. I turned at looked to Jung Sooah. Could it be because of the ‘friendship’ skill?

I went to her and said.

“Check your skill.”

“Hm…it went up one.”

“Is it because of that?”

“You mean the monster being weak?”

“It might just be that we got stronger.”

Every single one of our party’s abilities had increased. The one who got noticeably stronger was glasses girl. In the last raid, she was able to hit her mark 1 out of 4 times, but she was not able to hit 1 out of 3 times. You could say that she got better in the 10 days, but if that were possible then she wouldn’t have been suffering all this time. From what I knew, she was a crappy archer for the longest time.

“Now that you mention it, I feel like I got a bit stronger.”

She said while she pointed to her bag. She had about 12 ores in her backpack. It was probably over 130 kg, but she didn’t look like she was breaking a sweat at all.

“That could be true. A passive skill that increases the teammates’ abilities…it’s definitely a worthwhile skill.”

“Oh. Then shouldn’t you give me more distribution money?

“I’ll give you something extra from my share this time.”