Chapter 317 – Part 2 – Support

When Choi Seong-min arrived at work at the Association, there wasn’t much for him to do.

He just had to quickly handle his duties as Hunter Management Department Team 2 Leader within 2 hours.

After that, he would boredly kill time until he filled the regular 4 hours and then leave work.

Having left work earlier than others, Choi Seong-min met with his group members at the dormitory Song Chi-hyeon had prepared.

“As you all know, Group Leader Moon Yong-taek passed away in an unfortunate accident the day before yesterday.”

“……”

Even at the mention of the group leader’s death, the group members showed no signs of sadness.

Except for Choi Seong-min.

“Therefore, I will be taking over as the leader of Team Covert Group C. It may be awkward, but please take care of me from now on.”

Although someone with 20,000 combat power had taken the leader position, everyone had no complaints.

He had been promoted to C-rank in just one day and had easily defeated Moon Yong-taek with 80,000 combat power in sparring, so it was inevitable.

Moreover, they knew from what Song Chi-hyeon had told them.

That Choi Seong-min’s actual combat power was 60,000.

Therefore, no one could raise complaints.

In fact, there were no complaints.

Choi Seong-min was much more gentle than Moon Yong-taek, who had constantly cursed and used abusive language every other day.

Rather, there was a quietly welcoming atmosphere.

“Then shall we go? To conquer the dungeon?”

Choi Seong-min and two group members entered the C-rank Tarantula dungeon.

Since only three people could enter, the number was just right.

There was no need to bring a supervisor.

From C-rank dungeons onwards, they could enter without a supervisor.

‘To monitor C-rank hunters, B-rank supervisors would need to be deployed, but most B-ranks don’t want to do supervisor work.’

If you’re B-rank, you can get a team leader position in any department the Association wants.

They’re not at the level to chase after other hunters’ tails and monitor items.

‘Besides, if you’re good enough to become B-rank, no matter how terrible your trait is, hunting directly would be more profitable.’

Therefore, the ratio system wasn’t applied from C-rank dungeons onwards.

There were no supervisors to bring either.

So if you belonged to a team, you could freely enter and exit anytime.

‘I’d like to go soloing if I had my way, but going in with group members is the team’s policy.’

That didn’t mean soloing was impossible though.

“Since moving together actually slows us down, let’s split up and hunt separately.”

Even if you enter as a party, you can just split up and do individual play.

Of course, it would have to be a dungeon where group members could hunt alone.

Pop pop pop pop pop!

Choi Seong-min’s dagger moved faster than usual, slaughtering the Tarantulas.

‘As expected, S-rank traits are good.’

Thanks to the Fierce Attack trait he got from killing Moon Yong-taek, his attack speed had increased threefold.

The downside was that all 10 stacks would disappear after the 1-minute duration.

‘I just need to find hunting targets again within 1 minute.’

Since the time reset when attacks hit, he could maintain it continuously as long as he found hunting targets.

[You have obtained a Health Rune.]

[You have obtained Spider Poison.]

A smile appeared on Choi Seong-min’s lips as he killed the Tarantula.

‘Finally got the item I wanted.’

The reason he had been killing Tarantulas that only gave Health runes was purely to obtain Spider Poison.

‘To make poison that can melt anything.’

When he opened the combination window and combined the Fang Poison he had obtained before with the Spider Poison.

[Combination successful!]

[You have obtained Poison That Can Melt Anything.]

He was able to obtain powerful poison.

‘If I used it to unseal rings in my previous life, this time I’ll have to use it for assassination.’

If he used Poison That Can Melt Anything as material, he could make deadly poison.

‘For that, I need to learn poison skills when I become B-rank. Not stealth.’

Originally he planned to learn stealth when he became B-rank, but since he obtained poison, he needed to modify his plans.

‘I should poison Song Chi-hyeon first before killing him. That would make assassination easier.’

Since he could change skills anytime if he had money, learning stealth afterwards wouldn’t be a problem.

After hunting in parties on weekdays like that, when the weekend came,

Song Chi-hyeon, who didn’t know he was planning to assassinate him, gave Choi Seong-min special treatment.

“I’ve told the dungeon managers so you can use them freely on weekends, so do as much soloing as you want.”

“Thank you for your consideration, Great Hero-nim.”

Originally he should have moved with the team, but Song Chi-hyeon allowed only Choi Seong-min to go soloing.

Although he was only given two days, if he went hard he could raise his Agility by over 60.

After a week of hunting with team members on weekdays and soloing on weekends.

‘My combat power has already exceeded 90,000.’

Only a week had passed, but he achieved results of 120 Agility and 90,000 combat power.

‘B-rank next month is a sure thing.’

Since you become B-rank when combat power exceeds 100,000, only 10,000 combat power remained.

He would probably achieve B-rank within a few days.

‘If I go from D-rank to B-rank in one month, Song Chi-hyeon will be quite surprised, won’t he?’

The influence of S-rank traits was significant in raising combat power quickly.

‘If I keep growing like this, I can move up the assassination timing a bit.’

But not everything went so smoothly.

“What? You want me to go provide support?”

-Yes, our Team 1 is also short on supervisors. You know that support from other teams is possible in unavoidable cases, right? That team leaders are no exception to this.

“Yes… I know.”

Since he had memorized the entire team leader’s work response manual recently, he knew well.

If other teams requested support saying they lacked supervisors, you had to respond to the request once a month.

Even if you were a team leader.

‘Team 1 consists of C-rank supervisors. Since I’m also C-rank as Team 2 Leader, they’re requesting support like this.’

As Team 2 Leader, Choi Seong-min couldn’t refuse Team 1’s support request.

It was written that you had to provide support once a month if requested, and he wasn’t particularly busy either.

‘If you don’t like it, become Team 1 Leader. Something like that.’

He had no choice but to agree.

-I’ll send the work details by text.

“Yes, thank you for your hard work.”

After hanging up, Choi Seong-min made a disgusted expression.

‘A support request from morning. Today’s hunting is ruined.’

The plan to leave work quickly and hunt with group members had to be regretfully shelved.

While sending a text to group members saying he had work today and couldn’t participate in hunting.

A message came from Team 1 Leader.

It contained detailed work content including the team name, dungeon, location, etc. where he needed to provide support.

‘Damn… Today is completely wasted.’

Thinking he had to follow someone else’s party around all day, Choi Seong-min was already sighing.

* * *

Vrooooom-… Having arrived in front of the office mentioned in the message by sports car, Choi Seong-min looked at the text with work details once more.

‘Team Reference…’

It was a D-rank team composed of three men and one woman.

‘Somehow reminds me of Team Crush.’

Yang Jo-young’s team that he once belonged to had a similar composition.

‘I’ll never see them again now.’

Occasionally Do Eun-jeong contacted him asking to have a meal, but he was thoroughly ignoring her.

‘I don’t have time to waste on useless things.’

For assassination, he had to become stronger as quickly as possible.

So this wasn’t the time to be doing this, but.

‘Can’t be helped.’

Choi Seong-min got out of the car, sighed, and entered the office.

He could see three men and one woman.

“Is this Team Reference’s office?”

“Who…?”

“I’m C-rank Hunter Choi Seong-min, here as Team Reference’s supervisor for today.”

He spoke informally to show dignity as a supervisor, but no one in the office found it unpleasant.

Rather, there was a welcoming atmosphere with mouths agape.

“Oh, welcome! You look so young we didn’t think you’d be the supervisor. Haha!”

“Who are you?”

“Ah, sorry. I should have introduced myself first… I’m the team leader, Go Chang-sik. These are our team members, let me introduce them one by one…”

There was no way the team members’ names would register in Choi Seong-min’s ears.

He just wanted to finish this tedious work as quickly as possible.

“Are introductions done?”

“What? Ah, yes…”

“Then let’s depart right away.”

“Ah, excuse me… Could you spare us a moment?”

“…?”

While Choi Seong-min looked puzzled, team leader Go Chang-sik sent all team members out with eye signals.

When only the two remained, Go Chang-sik spoke in a subtle voice.

“If you search for names in the rankings, you’ll see our team is quite lacking. Our combat power is all in the early 10,000s, barely D-rank. Plus this is our first time entering this dungeon.”

“You mean the Giant Wasp dungeon?”

The Giant Wasp dungeon was a D-rank dungeon that allowed 5 people to enter, with difficulty between Mantis and Little Snake dungeons.

“Yes. The Mantis dungeon didn’t match our numbers, so we applied for the Wasp dungeon one level higher.”

“I don’t care about your application motives, so what are you trying to say?”

When he asked directly, the team leader hesitated before speaking.

“Well… this is shameless, but we’d like you to look after us while supervising. Since we’re beginners, we’re quite clumsy.”

In other words, he was asking to protect them when it was dangerous.

It would be easy as pie for C-rank Choi Seong-min.

“Of, of course we’re not asking empty-handed.”

“Then?”

“Do you happen to like women?”

He wanted to frown as soon as he heard that, but maintained a poker face for now.

“You might have seen earlier, but there’s Sae-bom, the only woman on our team, and we’ll give you that girl around the end of the dungeon.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you can do whatever you want with her.”

“Is this agreed upon with the woman?”

“Not exactly… but if we men keep our mouths shut, there won’t be problems, right?”

“That means the other team members except the woman also know about this?”

“Yes. Everyone agreed to my words and decided to do it that way, so you don’t need to worry about the aftermath. Ah, except for Sae-bom of course.”

“……”

Although Choi Seong-min maintained an expressionless face, he was dumbfounded inside.

‘Offering a woman as a bribe. Isn’t this similar to the situation with Jigoro?’

It was similar to when Do Eun-jeong almost suffered.

‘To think such a thing would happen as soon as I became a supervisor.’

Such things would probably be commonplace.

There might be people who couldn’t quit being supervisors for this taste.

His teeth ground at the character of offering a female team member as a bribe without her knowledge, but Choi Seong-min didn’t show it.

Rather, he grinned as if satisfied with the bribe.

“Good, let’s do that.”

“Thank you. Haha.”

The team leader, who had been worried he might not like women, laughed with relief.

Choi Seong-min also smiled back, but the meaning was different.

‘Trash bastards. I’ll kill you all.’

It was a smile from being pleased at the thought of gaining traits.