Chapter 14 - Snow in Summer
A burdensome superhuman who claims to be my direct combat personnel in the next-door apartment.
A burdensome superhuman who suddenly appeared to protect me in the downstairs apartment.
A very burdensome superhuman who tried to rob our house, was caught by the police, then got her physiognomy read by me once and survived, and is now clinging to me annoyingly in the upstairs apartment.
Moreover, all three of them are high-ranking superhumans.
…I really feel like I’m going to lose it.
“How… How did things end up like this?”
The next-door superhuman comes by every day to report things I don’t even understand…
The upstairs thief keeps coming over almost every day, always trying to do something…
The downstairs bodyguard doesn’t come that often, but apparently visits once a week or so…
Ah, I really feel like I’m going crazy…
I want to say something, but the ordinary citizen’s heart inside me shrinks back, and I can’t speak.
If it was just one person, it might be okay, but with three overlapping, this is really hopeless.
Unlike Heukmyo, those two, Ricone and Baek Young-hoon, are disgustingly strong, and I feel like I can’t do anything even with the ring I have, which makes it even worse.
Moreover, last time, that upstairs thief… I mean Heukmyo, showed me a report saying they had cleanly dealt with the organization that was supposedly monitoring my house to chase her…
The content I heard was so absurd that I remember it very well… or rather, I still remember it well because it wasn’t long ago.
Anyway, the content was…
The reason for chasing Heukmyo was because their main organization in China was robbed by Heukmyo + They attempted to steal Heukmyo’s assets due to the organization’s recent financial difficulties.
By the way, the organization’s name is Black Dog Society (黑犬會).
They knew I was an executive of Bargr Fang but committed rudeness due to the organization’s urgent circumstances. They are extremely sorry. (Handwritten apology letter enclosed.)
They recognized that Heukmyo had entered under me. They swear not to target Heukmyo in the future.
As compensation for the apology and oath, they swear to offer 10% of the Black Dog Society’s Korean branch profits to the executive every month.
…That was roughly the content.
Hmm, now that I think about it, I remember it in great detail…
Well, that aside, the problem was that the handwritten apology letter was written in blood for some reason, which was very creepy, and they even brought the arm of that branch manager or whoever, saying they were sincerely apologizing.
When I asked why they brought such a thing, Ricone’s answer was quite a sight…
She answered, ‘What? You said you preferred the moderate approach, so I handled it as peacefully as possible…?’
No! If you handled it peacefully, why cut off an arm! And why are they offering me money and apology letters written in blood?!
Argh! I really feel like I’m going to lose my mind!!
Ugh…! I want to just throw everything away and run, but if I did that, I’d probably be caught soon and might end up living an even worse life than now!
In the first place, those amazing superhumans wouldn’t be unable to find me just because I hide a little, right…?
“Ah… I’m earning money and my life seems to be improving… but… Sigh… Why does my heart feel so desolate…”
These days, I can only sigh…
No, why are all the fortunes I see coming true… Damn it, be wrong sometimes…
“Phew… Right… At this point, it’s all about the money…! Money is the only means of mental recovery…!!”
I feel like I need to do some forced financial therapy to feel a bit better.
In reality, I’ve accumulated several hundred million won just from doing fortune telling for a few months… On top of that, the money coming from the Black Dog Society’s Korean branch into my bank account is no joke. Just receiving that monthly is enough to live without any problems.
Add to that the expensive high-grade artifact… the executive position in a huge underworld organization… a bodyguard and direct subordinate…
My life has changed so drastically that it doesn’t even feel real. It’s even burdensome…
Anyway, I needed healing time to recover my mental state now.
“Right, shall I spend some money?”
And maybe this could be a brilliant method?
I’ve just been accumulating money without really spending it… If I do things I couldn’t do before because I didn’t have money… Wouldn’t that be not bad?
“Hmm… This is really not bad?”
Even just the money I’ve gathered now is enough to buy two or three sports cars… If I save a bit more, I might even be able to buy a house.
Moreover, since my money will only increase from now on… It seemed like it would be good to recover my tired body and mind while spending some money.
“Let’s see… I’ll watch some movies, eat some expensive meals… Anyway, I should do various things.”
Thinking positively seemed to make me feel a bit better.
“Ah, and if I don’t say anything, all three of them will follow me out… I should compromise and have only one person come along.”
After gathering and selecting from those three, Yuri Ricone ended up coming with me, and after some preparation, I went outside with Ricone.
Although there was an uninvited guest beside me… It seemed like it would be quite an enjoyable time.
Meanwhile, in the evening when the sun had set and the moon had risen. At the time when Dam Han-ul, who had been playing without realizing how time was passing, was eating a late dinner.
In the basement of a building on a large private property owned by Cheong So-ha, she was sitting quietly with two objects beside her that were emitting such cold energy that it was freezing the surrounding area.
“As expected, the fortune teller teacher’s reading was accurate.”
The identity of the objects she had brought were the two items that appeared in the card reading Dam Han-ul had done a few days ago: the heart of the boss monster and the ice crystal that appeared when she destroyed the snow mountain.
The location where the dungeon would appear, the place where she could obtain the ice crystal, and the characteristics of the dungeon… So far, all of Dam Han-ul’s readings had been correct.
Then she should follow the content of his last reading well.
This place is Cheong So-ha’s vast private property far from the city, and inside a villa built on that property.
It’s built so solidly that she sometimes visits for training purposes.
There’s no one here but her, so it’s the safest place among those she could visit right now.
“…Now all that’s left is just one thing.”
To consume simultaneously the heart of the White Snow Giant, which was the boss monster of that A-rank dungeon, and the ice crystal that appeared when she destroyed the largest snow mountain in that dungeon.
If she accomplishes this, she will be able to surpass the wall currently blocking her and take one step further forward.
“I’ve finished processing them into bite-sized pieces… Now I just need to eat them.”
Since they were items that could be called elixirs with cold energy similar to Cheong So-ha herself, it wasn’t too difficult to adjust their size to be swallowable in one bite.
Now the preparations are complete.
So, after taking a deep breath and calming her mind to prepare for consuming the two elixirs, she swallowed them both at once without hesitation.
Gulp!
And the energy of the two elixirs that entered her body instantly began to intertwine and combine, gradually increasing their power, then started to spread throughout her entire body.
“Ah…!”
Her body floated into the air due to the intense magical energy.
There was no need to try to suppress the energy. She instinctively knew that this phenomenon wouldn’t harm her.
However, she couldn’t resist being entranced by the gradually strengthening feeling of becoming a being that had advanced beyond her current state, as if shedding a shell.
And as it slowly spread through her body, rotating around her entire body and changing it to be more suitable for using abilities, and as her innate ability engraved in her core evolved, at that moment when the aftermath caused the entire surrounding area to freeze solid white, Cheong So-ha realized something strange.
‘Th-this… This isn’t just surpassing a limit, a wall…!’
Although she had never surpassed a wall before, she could tell that what was happening now wasn’t simply surpassing the commonly accepted limit of superhumans.
‘This is… something beyond that…!!’
This was… far surpassing that…!!
Usually, the wall that commonly applies to superhumans, the wall that superhumans encounter when they feel the limit of their growth, is a distant and enormous ‘Great Mountain’.
A Great Mountain that seems impossible to overcome, but is not actually impossible to surpass.
What Cheong So-ha wanted was to surpass this Great Mountain once, but what Dam Han-ul understood from her story was different.
Being an ordinary person, he doesn’t know about the world of superhumans, nor does he know about the limits of superhumans. He was even tired and annoyed when doing the fortune telling.
Therefore, the method Dam Han-ul told her to surpass her limit was not simply a method to surpass that ‘Great Mountain’.
Not the Great Mountain that is impossibly high and enormous but not impossible to surpass, but the absolute law that only a very few geniuses can surpass, an insurmountable wall. The limit of rank.
The method Dam Han-ul suggested was to create a highway that could rush towards that rank limit and to lower the difficulty of surpassing that rank limit.
In simple terms, he suggested a method to make Cheong So-ha close to one of those very few geniuses.
And Cheong So-ha, who faithfully implemented the method Dam Han-ul suggested, underwent a truly enormous change.
She couldn’t immediately surpass the rank limit. The rank beyond S-rank is a realm that only a very few beings of a completely different dimension have reached.
However, the path there has been opened. Her ability evolved, and her physical body strengthened.
Saa…
Finally, as the absorption of power completed and her body settled down,
Kaa-aaang!!!!
The power emanating from her enveloped the whole of Korea, and even beyond that range.
This message displaying her power to the world, and a celebratory salute to herself who had become stronger and to the teacher who had shown her the method, soon caused a massive anomaly.
Whoosh… Shaa…
Snow began to fall across the entire vast land within the range of her power! And it was a heavy snowfall in this hot summer!
While many people would shed tears of blood at this strange phenomenon, she, who had shattered her limit, didn’t care about such things.
“…I received too great a gift…”
Right now, the person filling her mind was the fortune teller teacher, Dam Han-ul.
“The gift I was planning to give originally would be far from enough. I need to prepare more compensation.”
Cheong So-ha quietly smiled with satisfaction, savoring her strengthened power, and at that time, Dam Han-ul, who was blinking in surprise at the suddenly falling snow while eating delicious food, shivered from a sudden chill.
“What’s this…? Somehow it feels ominous…”
But because the food he was eating was so delicious, he didn’t pay much attention to it.