Chapter 33: Monster Handling (1)

“Ngh…! Haa…”

It took a whopping three days to calm Cutie♡Angel down.

“Are you feeling a bit better now…?”

…Woong.

Cutie♡Angel, with her blade half-turned away, was still clearly showing that she was sulking.

It took three days to calm Cutie♡Angel down, but that didn’t mean her anger had subsided.

In the old days, she would have been puffing her cheeks and turning her head away from me.

I hugged Cutie♡Angel and slowly stroked her to soothe her.

Her blade was still not facing me, but I could feel her heart gradually softening.

What should I do to completely dispel her anger?

With just my fingertips, I gently, slowly, brushed the center of the blade, almost touching it.

Woowoong…!

When I stroked Cutie♡Angel’s most sensitive part with a feather touch, she trembled.

“Shall we do some proper maintenance tonight?”

Woong…?

Cutie♡Angel asked with a voice that was both questioning and mixed with a bit of anticipation.

When I returned to Earth from Grandia, all the maintenance tools I had were lost.

Since coming to Earth, I had only touched her with my hands or wiped her with a towel.

I hadn’t been paying as much attention to her as before.

For Cutie♡Angel, maintenance is like s*x.

Cutie♡Angel used to pester me to have s*x at least once every two days.

She doesn’t show it, but her s*x toys (maintenance tools) are all gone, and I haven’t been able to take care of her, so she must be quite frustrated.

It would be good to spend a day calming Cutie♡Angel’s anger and, incidentally, having a hot night.

For Cutie♡Angel, maintenance is like s*x.

Just as people buy lube, dildos, and anal beads for a more stimulating and pleasurable relationship with their partner.

Various abrasives and leather were needed to maintain Cutie♡Angel.

Now that I had some money, I was thinking of spending some on Cutie♡Angel’s maintenance tools.

With that in mind, I put Cutie♡Angel in my inventory and visited an adult shop (weapon maintenance tool shop).

But.

‘…This isn’t very good either.’

It wasn’t easy to find tools that would satisfy both Cutie♡Angel and me.

Come to think of it, the abrasives Cutie♡Angel used to use were of the highest quality in Grandia, made by the most skilled craftsmen.

I was a fool to think that a mere local tool shop, not even a world-renowned workshop, would have abrasives that Cutie♡Angel would be satisfied with.

I sighed and walked out.

I had boasted so much to Cutie♡Angel, but what should I do now?

Could this be the hardship of a married man avoiding s*x with his wife, as they say? No, in this world, it’s a married woman’s…

Honk honk!

While I was walking down the street, pondering about my night with Cutie♡Angel, a horn honked from the nearby road, interrupting my thoughts.

“Su, Suhyeon-ssi?!”

Yeom Haneul’s head popped out from the back seat window of a black sedan.

I met Yeom Haneul by complete chance.

“Wh-Where are you going? Would you like me to give you a ride?”

Yeom Haneul asked me in a fast voice, her face slightly flushed.

“Unnie. The book said that when you make a move on a man, you should do it with a more composed voice, showing confidence. And that suggestion just now was a bit too out of the blue. The important thing in a relationship with the opposite s*x is the atmosphere…”

“No! Women must always be spirited! You have to dominate brother-in-law with your charisma, unnie!”

In the front seats, Go So-hye and Jeong Hana were giving Yeom Haneul questionable advice.

The windows were closed, so ordinary people wouldn’t have been able to hear, but I could hear them clearly.

I turned my gaze away from them and looked at the road conditions.

The traffic light was green. The car behind them wanted to step on the accelerator, but the car in front was a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

The three women in stylish suits inside were distracted by a man walking normally on the street and had no intention of moving.

They couldn’t honk the horn, and the stopped road was screaming silently.

I quickly got into Yeom Haneul’s car.

“Let’s start by driving. Can’t you see the cars behind you?”

“Ah, yes!”

Jeong Hana finally stepped on the accelerator and drove the car.

The air inside the car was very quiet.

I got in, but what should I do now?

After pondering for a moment, I decided to greet Yeom Haneul first and ask why she called me.

But her answer made me embarrassed.

“I-I saw you suddenly… so I said hello because I was happy to see you…”

Yeom Haneul, with a stiff expression, peeked at me and spoke hesitantly.

“Ah. It’s not like that~ Actually~”

In a soft, calm, and pleasant voice, Go So-hye explained the reason for the situation a little while ago.

Yeom Haneul, who happened to see me while she was going to work, ordered the car to stop.

And what followed was the situation a little while ago.

Yeom Haneul nodded her head, agreeing with Go So-hye’s words.

This person… somehow her image gets weirder every time I meet her…

Where did the image of a strong woman in a suit, the first time I met her, go…?

“A-And. If you were going somewhere, I was thinking of giving you a ride…”

I paused for a moment at Yeom Haneul’s words.

I wasn’t going to a specific destination.

It seemed impossible to find maintenance tools for Cutie♡Angel right now…

Since things went wrong, I decided to finish the remaining work.

I’m sorry for being this kind of man, Cutie♡Angel.

But now it’s a gender-reversed world, so please bear with me. You’re a woman, Cutie♡Angel.

With a slightly memey thought, I answered Yeom Haneul.

“I was going to the monster processing center.”

In order to exchange the corpse of the Dire Wolf stored in my inventory for money, I had to go to the monster processing center.

Originally, I was supposed to go with Park Hyena and her group, but since it came to mind, I decided to deal with it now.

Yeom Haneul’s face brightened at the words “monster processing center.”

“You were going to the monster processing center too, Suhyeon-ssi? We were just on our way there!”

Manager Eun sat in his office chair, rubbing his tired eyes from the hard work.

Recently, there had been a series of incidents in the country.

The number of suddenly appearing gates had increased significantly, and because many gates opened compared to the available manpower, gate backflows also occurred frequently.

Most of the backflows were quickly resolved before they engulfed the city, but it was not a good situation.

But this was okay.

Historically, there were often times when gates appeared unusually frequently.

In the short history of Korea, there had been four or five such periods.

But the real problem was.

The appearance of high-level monsters, which occurred once or twice every six months, had occurred 14 times in the last two weeks, increasing the number of mid- to high-level hunters who died during gate raids.

The difference between hunter ranks was quite large.

To defeat a C-rank hunter, ten D-rank hunters were needed.

To defeat a B-rank hunter, ten C-rank hunters were needed.

It wasn’t an exact standard that applied to everyone, but generally, there was a difference of about ten times for each rank increase.

The monster’s rank was also a similar criterion.

Each time the rank increased, the monster became about ten times stronger.

Large guilds that participated in expeditions with many hunters were okay, but the damage was even greater for parties or small guilds that conducted gate raids with about five to eight people.

Hunters are national power.

They shouldn’t be lost so meaninglessly, not even taken by other countries.

In addition, the unidentified monsters eroded by black energy that were recently discovered simultaneously all over the world…

While pondering over various countermeasures and racking his brains, Manager Eun came to his senses at the sound of a knock on the door.

The subordinate who opened the door and entered immediately got to the point.

“Manager. We received a call from the monster processing center.”

“Huh? Is there something they need to contact us about? What’s wrong?”

“About that, the Incheon gate backflow the other day. The incident where the Ogre appeared.”

“I know. We worked our asses off to clean it up.”

“When we were cleaning up that incident, we received help from D-rank hunter Han Suhyeon-ssi and collected the monster corpses, right? And we sent them to the processing center before.”

Manager Eun briefly recalled the memories of that day.

The man, Han Suhyeon, who somehow treated the association staff like his subordinates.

With a miraculous skill called Inventory, he showed a miracle by finishing in just half a day what would have taken weeks.

Moreover, for some reason, Yeom Haneul was protecting him, so he had to keep paying attention to him for a while after the incident was settled.

Then, one day, he found out about his iTube channel.

Manager Eun knew that he had no intention of hiding his Inventory skill, but he didn’t think he would use it so casually.

In addition, judging from the contents of not only the E-rank gate video but also the Ogre video, his martial prowess was considerable, so he finally understood why Yeom Haneul was protecting Han Suhyeon.

Who wouldn’t covet someone with an Inventory skill and enough martial prowess to exchange blows with an Ogre, even for a moment?

By now, wouldn’t Han Suhyeon’s iTube mail be filled with inquiries from numerous guild officials who have seen that video?

Of course, it was unknown whether he had checked it or not.
Manager Eun, who had already neatly given up on Han Suhyeon and decided to remain in a business relationship, quickly dismissed the thought.

“That’s right. But why?”

“The monster corpses we were working on first didn’t have any particular differences from other corpses, but the monster corpses that Han Suhyeon-ssi stored in his Inventory skill are… strange.”

“What? Why?!”

Manager Eun jumped up, shouting without realizing it.

The monster corpses that Han Suhyeon stored in his inventory included low-level monsters, but most of them were heavy monsters such as Orcs, Trolls, and Ogres.

As a matter of course, the higher the rank of the monster, the higher the price, and the price varied greatly depending on the condition of the corpse.

Corpses that were scorched or had many wounds had a lower value, and the better the original shape was maintained, the higher the value.

The corpses of Orcs, Trolls, and Ogres that Han Suhyeon had transported were C-rank, B-rank, and A-rank, respectively.

In Manager Eun’s experience, saying that the corpse was strange was mostly a roundabout way of saying that the condition of the corpse was f*cked up.

But the words that came out of his subordinate’s mouth were completely different from Manager Eun’s expectations.

“The… condition of the monster corpses is too good. Strangely so.”