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After thoroughly reviewing his newly acquired alchemy skills, Se-hyeon turned his attention to the uniquely constructed mechanical apparatus resting alongside the ancient tome.
“Alright, alchemy is taken care of. Now, what exactly is this thing next to it?”
Tilting his head in curiosity, Se-hyeon lifted the intricate device from its velvet bedding.
[A-Rank] Kaltraven’s Elixir Synthesis Apparatus
The dedicated brewing apparatus used by Grand Sage Kaltraven until his final moments.
—Placing specific raw ingredients into the designated chambers of this device and casting Alchemy will convert them into potions and elixirs.
—When using this apparatus, the probability of a ‘Great Success’ increases by 20%.
—When using this apparatus, the base quality of crafted items increases by 30%.
—When using this apparatus, the casting time for Alchemy is reduced by 50%.
—Can only be operated by an individual who has successfully learned Kaltraven’s Alchemy.
The device was a specialized piece of alchemical engineering designed to streamline production. Not only did it offer massive multipliers to quality and critical success rates, but it also halved the base casting time of his crafting actions. Furthermore, because it was strictly restricted to those who inherited Kaltraven’s unique lineage, it was an exclusive asset that would function as a worthless hunk of metal in anyone else’s hands.
“An Elixir Synthesis Apparatus… Using this will make the production loop incredibly efficient,” Se-hyeon murmured, looking over at the corner of the room. “Haa. I guess that means I really have to haul that entire mountain of herbs out of here.”
An enormous stack of preserved flora sat piled high against the wall. Although Se-hyeon’s primary build was rooted in the destructive path of the Chaos Mage, he reasoned that cultivating a secondary production tree could only yield benefits.
“Who knows? If I level it up enough, I might eventually be able to brew my own Elixirs of Awakening. And if I’m lucky, maybe even a mythical Elixir. It’s definitely worth grinding out in my spare time.”
Since Kaltraven had attained the rank of a Grand Sage precisely by synthesizing the legendary Elixir, there was no telling what heights this crafting line could reach. Even if he could only scale the profession far enough to reproduce A-rank Perfect Potions, it would provide an invaluable baseline of absolute safety for his future growth.
“Time to clean up and head out.”
Having secured every high-value asset in the vault, Se-hyeon systematically transferred the massive mountain of rare herbs into his sub-space inventory before finally stepping out of the laboratory. Once back in the main cavern, he pulled the iron key from the slot, causing the iridescent portal to collapse into nothingness.
Unlike his previous dungeon run, where he had been forced to reveal a secret zone out of necessity because Manager Park and the porters were already present, he had managed this entire hidden discovery completely isolated. By closing the portal, the existence of Kaltraven’s laboratory remained completely locked to the rest of the world. Manager Park would likely deduce that something monumental had occurred, but a corporate handler’s private suspicion was a far cry from concrete material proof.
A short while later, heavy footsteps echoed from the entrance.
“Hunter Jang Se-hyeon!” Park Sang-soo called out, running into the chamber completely out of breath.
“You made it, Manager Park.”
“Yes! Jae-gwang, Chang-soo, and Dae-seong have already loaded the adult carcasses from the tunnel and moved them safely beyond the subterranean bottleneck,” Park reported quickly. “We realized that trying to haul them all the way back to the dungeon’s primary entrance would take too much time, so we decided to secure them just outside the tunnel mouth first and handle the final transport systematically. By the way, the timer is still active, correct?”
As expected, Park’s sharp intuition had already cataloged the architectural markers of the zone. He knew this was a historical ruin.
“Yes. We have roughly 40 minutes left before the instance permanently collapses. Will your team clear the rest of the volume in time?”
Park smiled confidently. “Absolutely. For context, the spatial footprint required to transport a single adult spider can easily accommodate six to seven hatchlings. Furthermore, since we’re only hauling them to the immediate exit of this tunnel rather than the overworld gate, we will comfortably beat the clock. Though I have to say… a thousand hatchlings is an absolutely staggering haul.”
Se-hyeon gestured toward the far side of the clearing. “As you can see over there, the nest also contained a boss-tier Queen and an entire escort of elite-tier guards. They dropped a healthy amount of gear as well.”
Sitting in a neat row were the colossal, mountain-like corpse of Queen Peltriana and the ten heavily armored bodies of her Royal Guard.
“Wh-What?! A Queen Spider and ten Elite variants? You dismantled a boss-tier detachment completely solo?”
“Things just happened to play out that way,” Se-hyeon replied casually.
Park stared at the massive carcasses, his mind visibly racing as he calculated the logistics. After a moment of heavy deliberation, his expression turned deeply serious. “Hunter Jang, if we are going to report and liquidate this massive volume of premium carcasses, we will have to officially disclose the existence of this subterranean tunnel to the association. Are you comfortable with that?”
Transporting the bodies of a localized Queen, ten Elites, and over a thousand specialized hatchlings meant the paper trail could not be hidden.
“Go ahead,” Se-hyeon nodded. “Aside from the equipment drops over there, everything I retrieved from this zone is right in front of you. There’s no need to keep the tunnel a secret.”
Se-hyeon had zero intention of ever revealing the existence of the hidden laboratory, and while Park was far too sharp to believe that a standard boss nest was the only thing hidden in an ancient ruin, the loyal manager knew better than to ask questions that would disrupt their lucrative partnership.
It took approximately thirty minutes of intensive, high-speed manual labor for the extraction team to clear the remaining spider carcasses out of the tunnel. Once the final elite body and the equipment drops were safely secured beyond the perimeter, Se-hyeon and Park’s team collapsed onto the grass to catch their breath.
RUMBLE! CRASH!
Right on cue, the structural integrity of the subterranean tunnel gave way, collapsing into a mountain of solid bedrock as the one-hour timer expired. With the physical path entirely obliterated, the secrets of Kaltraven’s laboratory now belonged exclusively to Se-hyeon.
“Well, there goes the tunnel.”
“Indeed,” Se-hyeon muttered, sitting up. “By the way, Manager Park, what’s the baseline valuation for the hatchlings? Given their tiny physical mass compared to an adult, I assume they don’t fetch much on the open market?”
Although the system’s Vitality Absorption had treated the hatchlings and adults as equals in terms of soul essence, Se-hyeon realistically assumed that their commercial value would be negligible. However, Park’s immediate response completely shattered his expectations.
“While they obviously don’t match the price point of a fully matured D-rank adult, they actually command well over half their value.”
Se-hyeon turned to him, genuinely surprised. He had assumed they would fetch 1/10th of an adult’s price at best. “Wait, more than half?”
A standard matured D-rank Giant Spider carcass was locked at a fixed market rate of 800,000 won. If Park’s math held true, it meant a single newborn hatchling was worth a minimum of 400,000 won.
“In the case of insectoid and arachnid monsters, newborn hatchlings possess highly concentrated, specialized glandular fluids that disappear entirely once they reach adulthood. These biological compounds are heavily sought after by major pharmaceutical conglomerates and state-sponsored medical research labs,” Park explained, lifting one of the small, intact hatchling legs. “Because the supply line for unhatched or freshly hatched nests is incredibly volatile and dangerous to harvest, the market premium is remarkably high. Currently, a pristine hatchling carcass trades at roughly 500,000 won.”
Park set the leg down, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Se-hyeon with profound confusion.
“Though… there is something that has been puzzling me for a long time, Hunter Jang. Your primary offensive spell—the Shadow Orb. It’s classified as a high-density explosive element, correct? How is it that these carcasses don’t have a single scratch on them? I can understand the thick armor of an adult absorbing the kinetic impact, but the soft, unhardened skin of a hatchling should have been completely torn to shreds. Why are they entirely pristine?”
It was a striking anomaly. Despite being subjected to a catastrophic bombardment of explosive Shadow Orbs, every single carcass—from the massive Queen to the smallest newborn—was completely unmarred. They didn’t look like they had been blasted by high-tier magic; they looked as though they had simply ceased to breathe, perfectly intact. Standard Fireballs left heavy scorch marks and torn flesh, yet the far more destructive Shadow Orb left nothing but immaculate remains.
“To be honest, I’m still familiarizing myself with the underlying mechanics of the shadow element,” Se-hyeon replied smoothly, offering a half-truth. “I simply deploy the magic available to my profile; I don’t necessarily map out the molecular physics of the spell.”
Once he unlocked higher phases of the ring’s memory transfer, the fundamental laws governing the shadow element would likely be revealed to him. For now, he was content to simply use the tools at his disposal to fuel his rapid evolution.
Park laughed, shaking his head. “Haha, is that so? It truly is a miraculous phenomenon. To witness an explosion of that scale and find the cargo completely flawless… To be frank, this is exactly why the inventory harvested by your hand commands a premium far above other hunters. Finding a carcass in this state of absolute preservation is virtually unheard of in the industry.”
It was an undeniable fact of logistics. Whether a hunter used a sword or conventional elemental magic, structural damage to the target’s body was a mandatory byproduct of combat. Se-hyeon’s harvest, however, was so pristine that it maximized the yield of extractable materials.
Se-hyeon let out a soft chuckle. “Well, it’s a nice compliment, but a clean carcass doesn’t automatically rewrite the association’s fixed pricing tiers, does it?”
No matter how immaculate the cargo was, market rates were strictly bound to a monster’s official rank. However, Park offered an incredibly meaningful smile.
“Under normal circumstances, yes. But you’re forgetting who your account manager is. I looked at the sheer quality of your output and realized it was a crime to process your inventory under standard rates, so I submitted a formal, high-priority proposal to Taekwang’s executive board. I argued that classifying a 100% pristine carcass on the same economic tier as a mangled, half-destroyed remain was bad business.”
Park paused for effect, his smile widening. “After an intensive round of internal review, the board officially approved a corporate policy exception: moving forward, every single carcass harvested exclusively by Hunter Jang Se-hyeon will receive a 10% premium bonus above standard market value.”
This meant that while a standard D-rank carcass paid out 800,000 won to an ordinary hunter, Se-hyeon would pull down 880,000 won per unit. A 10% variance might seem modest on paper, but considering Se-hyeon routinely wiped out entire fields of a hundred monsters per run, the compound interest was staggering. Furthermore, applied to a massive batch of over a thousand hatchlings whose baseline value was already high, that 10% premium transformed into an astronomical sum of money.
“Oh? Really?” Se-hyeon remarked, genuinely pleased. “That’s fantastic news for me, but are you sure this won’t cause any corporate backlash for you, Manager Park? Backing a deal that forces your own company to pay out more capital could be viewed negatively by your superiors.”
“Haha, backlash?” Park laughed out loud, his confidence absolute. “Hunter Jang, if you were to sever ties with Taekwang today and take your inventory to a competitor, our agency’s market valuation would suffer an immediate, catastrophic hit. And as it stands, I am the sole bridge maintaining your exclusive loyalty to our brand.”
While legacy conglomerates could rely on massive, multi-party raid teams to secure hundreds of carcasses a day, late-stage startups like Taekwang struggled to secure even a fraction of that volume. Se-hyeon’s daily solo output effectively accounted for the vast majority of Taekwang’s entire supply line. To put it bluntly, Taekwang’s processing facilities could comfortably stay profitable operating entirely on Se-hyeon’s solo hauls alone.
“If you say so,” Se-hyeon smiled, standing up. “I certainly won’t turn down more money. Shall we get moving? Moving this entire mountain of cargo is going to take a few trips. Let’s finish up fast so I can buy the team a round of drinks. Haha!”
At his call, the thoroughly rested porters immediately sprang into action, loading the pristine carcasses with practiced efficiency.
The final financial liquidation from this single run didn’t just break his personal records—it multi-folded his entire net worth in a matter of hours.
First, the hatchling carcasses totaled exactly 1,150 units, yielding a massive payout of 632,500,000 won. The matured adult spiders numbered 173 units, bringing in 152,240,000 won, while their extracted magic stones added another 227,040,000 won to the pile.
Additionally, the ten elite Royal Guards brought in a combined total of 143,000,000 won across their pristine carapaces and high-grade magic stones. Finally, the boss-tier Queen, Peltriana, was liquidated at 20,000,000 won for her massive body and 30,000,000 won for her specialized boss-rank magic stone.
In total, Se-hyeon’s gross earnings for a single afternoon of combat reached an astonishing 1,204,780,000 won. After accounting for the standard 8% hunter tax bracket, his final, take-home net deposit sat at a staggering 1,108,400,000 won.
After completing the formal paperwork and sharing a quick, celebratory drink with Park and the extraction crew, Se-hyeon headed straight back to his apartment. He had intentionally deferred reviewing the details of his Phase 3 evolution, and more importantly, he needed a quiet, secure space to undergo the next level of magical memory transfer.
‘Eleven hundred million won in a single day…’ Se-hyeon thought as he unlocked his front door, a surreal chuckle escaping his lips. ‘Since when was generating wealth this effortless?’
Not too long ago, he had lived an exhausting, hand-to-mouth existence, sacrificing sleep and skipping meals just to secure a few million won a month to survive. Now, a casual afternoon stroll through a low-tier dungeon yielded hundreds of millions as a baseline. Today alone, he had pulled down over 1.1 billion won. He knew this financial trajectory was entirely enabled by the absolute anomaly of his EX-rank artifact, but the sheer ease of his transformation was nothing short of breathtaking.
“Alright, let’s look at the data first.”
Se-hyeon immediately opened his profile, checking his updated title.
[Title] Master of Xerostan [EX]
The true keeper of the Magic Ring Xerostan, which holds the absolute legacy and life’s work of Zephyrus Kravan.
Under the updated options for Master of Xerostan, his bonus mana pool had skyrocketed from its previous baseline of 6,000 by adding an immediate 8,000 units, bringing the title’s bonus to a staggering $+14,000$. His flat attribute buff had climbed to $+600$, and his base mana had surged to $+1,300$.
It was critical to note that the stat allocations provided by his EX-rank title were applied as an independent layer, stacking cleanly on top of the natural attribute growth he received from his standard hunter awakenings. While he still needed to trigger the live memory transfer to stabilize his build, his raw, unadjusted attributes had already cleared the 1,000-point threshold across the board, and his absolute mana value had comfortably surged past 2,500. He knew the impending memory transfer would inject an even larger stat correction into his soul, pushing his combat efficacy to terrifying heights.
“Before I initiate the memory transfer, let’s verify the new spells.”
Deciding to map out his new active and passive assets first, he brought up the skill logs.
[Passive] Mana Circuit [Max]
An optimized internal network engineered by Zephyrus Kravan designed to maximize the kinetic and structural efficiency of raw mana.
The addition of the passive Mana Circuit was a complete paradigm shift. For a conventional hunter, the ‘Mana’ attribute was a static resource pool—it simply dictated how many times a spell could be cast before running dry. For Se-hyeon, however, this passive transformed his massive mana pool into a direct multiplier for raw destructive damage.
Furthermore, the accelerated regeneration rate ensured his resource downtime was effectively zero, and the flat 30% spell efficiency bonus stacked seamlessly with the 10% modifier on his Velstian’s Magic Gloves, granting him a permanent 40% amplification across his entire magical repertoire.
Next, he examined the newly unlocked active abilities, noting that the system had once again provided a balanced pair of light and dark spells.
[Active] Healing of Divine Light [Max]
Infuse allies with the boundless vitality of sacred radiance.
[Active] Touch of Pasarta [Max]
A specialized dark art engineered by Zephyrus Kravan, named after Pasarta, the mythological deity presiding over pestilence and diseases on the continent of Musvan.
In his light magic tree, he had gained Healing of Divine Light, a colossal, mobile area-of-effect healing domain that covered a massive 1-kilometer diameter. It was a raid-tier restoration spell that could single-handedly sustain an entire army.
Conversely, his dark magic tree had granted Touch of Pasarta, an exceptionally unique utility spell that allowed him to extract illnesses from a biological body and store them to be weaponized later against his enemies.
Looking closely at the mechanics, Se-hyeon realized that depending on how it was used, this dark art could function as a more miraculous act of mercy than even the highest tier of light magic. If he extracted a terminal, incurable illness from a dying patient, that individual would instantly walk away completely cured.
‘This has incredible potential,’ Se-hyeon thought, his eyes gleaming as he closed the menus. He needed to test the practical boundaries of these new abilities as soon as possible.
You think this chapter was thrilling? Wait until you read Before I Ascend the Throne! Click here to discover the next big twist!
Read : Before I Ascend the Throne
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