Capitalist Monster Hunter - Chapter 13

Exciting Random Box (3)

“A bug? Is this a game? What bug?”

Yuseong was taken aback after reading the donation message from the Goddess of Mischief.

Another donation came through from the Goddess as she noticed Yuseong’s reaction.

[The Goddess of Mischief has donated 1,000 points.]

[Goddess of Mischief: Just kidding lol! The system worked just fine.]

“It worked fine? There’s nothing here, though?”

Even after carefully scanning the room, he didn’t see anything. He glanced over at Titania, but she also shook her head, indicating she didn’t know.

[User Han Yuseong.]

“Yes?”

[It seems we found that summon creature.]

“We found the summon?”

[Take a look at this.]

The screen Eve showed him was a colorful, kaleidoscope-like display full of blue, red, and yellow hues.

[This is footage captured by the infrared camera in the drone monitoring the hospital room. Do you see that egg-like object in the center of the room?]

“Oh? Yeah, I do.”

Even though he couldn’t see it with his eyes, a round, egg-like object seemed to be floating in the middle of the hospital room on the screen.

“Is it a transparent egg?”

Yuseong walked over to where the egg was shown on the screen and moved his hands around in the air. Eventually, his hand hit something.

“It’s here.”

He carefully picked up the egg and held it close to his chest.

‘It’s warm.’

Even though the egg was invisible, he could feel a warm sensation from it against his hands.

A system window popped up in front of him.

<Transparent Egg>

A transparent egg. Because it’s transparent, no one has ever seen it before. As a result, no one knows what kind of creature this egg belongs to.
Thankfully, the description appeared, even though the egg itself was invisible. Not that it was all that helpful.

“Yuseong, what kind of egg is it?”

“It’s called a transparent egg. The description says no one knows what kind of creature it belongs to.”

“A transparent egg… that’s a new one for me too. Is it right here?”

Flapping her wings, Titania floated closer and reached her hand toward the invisible egg in Yuseong’s arms.

Swoosh!

“It’s warm.”

Titania looked amazed, clearly feeling the warmth of the invisible egg as well.

“You’ll need an incubator to hatch the summon egg.”

“Let me guess, that costs points?”

“Of course. You can buy an incubator for 5,000 points.”

“You all really know how to make a buck. All right, if I buy this incubator, how many days until it hatches?”

“That depends on the egg. But I’ve never seen a transparent egg like this before, so I’m not sure how long it might take.”

“Can you at least guess?”

“Some eggs hatch in a day, but some take a whole year to hatch, so it’s hard to even make a rough estimate.”

“I see…”

Since Titania didn’t know, it looked like he’d just have to put the egg in the incubator and wait until it hatched.

“I think it’s best to just put the egg in the incubator and store it in your inventory while you do other things. The system will notify you when it hatches.”

“Yeah, that sounds right. Can’t just sit around holding this egg all day.”

Yuseong bought the incubator from the store, carefully placed the invisible egg inside, and then put it into his inventory.

“All right, let’s wrap this up.”

“You’re not buying any other items?”

“I’m still thinking about it.”

In a moment of impulsiveness, Yuseong had bought 50 random boxes. He spent a whopping 50,000 points—almost half of the points he had.

At first, he didn’t realize the impact, but now, looking back, he regretted spending so many points all at once.

“I got some equipment and a bunch of lower-grade potions from donations, right? Plus, there were those techniques called the Samjae Sword Technique and the Samjae Mind Technique. Maybe that’ll be enough?”

“The Samjae Sword Technique and Samjae Mind Technique? Those are some of the lowest-tier manuals in all of Muhwan. Even street ruffians throw them in the trash, calling them worthless.”

“Can’t I just clear F-grade or E-grade dungeons? Then I could save up points and buy something better later.”

“In that case, you’ll have to stick to F-grade or E-grade dungeons only. You absolutely can’t go for anything higher, all right?”

“Got it. I promise.”

“Oh, by the way, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“What’s up?”

“Remember when I said it might take about a month for the dimensional gate to open so you could go back?”

“Of course, I remember! How could I forget?”

He wouldn’t forget something related to his own life. Yuseong was counting down the days, waiting for the gate to open.

“Well, it looks like it might open soon!”

“Didn’t you say it’d take a month? It hasn’t even been a week!”

“There are so many gods and spirits watching your Hunter channel that the interference in this world has significantly reduced! It’s not enough to control this world, but it’s enough to open the dimensional gate for you!”

Titania excitedly waved her little arms. This was the best news he’d heard in a while.

“You mean I can go back in a few days?”

An excited Yuseong asked Titania.

“I think in three or four days, it’ll be possible!”

Finally, he could go home. The thought of returning home put a big smile on Yuseong’s face.

The next day, Yuseong arrived on the parallel dimension of Earth.

He got there quickly thanks to the warp technology, which bends space to enable super-fast travel through the universe.

However, the warp technology was also the source of his troubles.

The culprit: space-sickness.

For people accustomed to warp travel in the parallel world, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But Yuseong, who had never been on a spaceship before, suffered from intense headaches and nausea.

He even threw up a few times on his way to Earth, but fortunately, he arrived without any other issues.

Once on Earth, he was taken directly to a hospital, and while waiting for the dimensional gate to open, he spent time reading the martial arts manuals he’d received.

“Why is this book explaining the obvious in such a long-winded way?”

Yuseong scratched his head as he read the Samjae Sword Technique.

The book was unnecessarily elaborate, filled with overly complicated explanations of simple things.

It was quite a thick book, but Yuseong could summarize it in just a few lines—it was all just fluff.

[Block, thrust, slash. These are the basics of swordsmanship. When the enemy attacks, either dodge or block. If you want to kill the enemy, point your sword at them…]

The only thing written in the Three-Elements Sword Technique was: “If you swing it, you can kill your enemy.”

That was it. Literally, that was all it said.

The only saving grace was that the manual had a few illustrations of the sword stances. If it hadn’t, Yuseong might’ve just thrown the book away out of frustration.

The three-element breathing technique was slightly better. Although it was filled with the same cryptic language as the sword manual, it did describe how to breathe and gather energy at the core, as well as how to circulate internal energy.

Yuseong tried to gather energy by breathing as described, but in this parallel world, there was practically no such thing as Ai, so he couldn’t accumulate any internal energy. He just ended up feeling a faint rumbling in his stomach, and that was it.

Since he couldn’t swing a sword around in the hospital room or gather any energy, all he could do was watch TV all day.

But he didn’t spend all day just watching TV.

Yuseong tried talking to the nurses and doctors who came to check on him. He wanted to have casual conversations and hear about different things, but because he was a noble, they were extremely cautious around him.

For someone like Yuseong, who was completely unused to being treated like this, the whole situation felt way too weird. Eventually, he gave up trying to talk to them because he didn’t want to keep seeing them act all nervous around him.

“Should I go ahead and feed the Weapon Eater some weapons?”

While rolling around in bed, Yuseong pulled the Weapon Eater out of his inventory.

“Didn’t it say you could feed it weapons to make it stronger?”

Yuseong took out a Novice Knight’s Straight Sword from his inventory.

Slurp!

The Weapon Eater stuck its tongue out and licked its lips as soon as it saw the sword.

“So… how exactly do I feed it?”

Chomp!

Just as Yuseong was wondering how to make it eat the weapon, the Weapon Eater suddenly snatched the straight sword out of his hand and bit into it.

Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

Sharp teeth popped out of the Weapon Eater’s mouth, and it started gnawing away at the sword.

With each bite, the sword got a little shorter. Within five minutes, the Novice Knight’s Straight Sword had completely disappeared into the Weapon Eater’s stomach.

Clack! Clack!

The Weapon Eater clicked its teeth together after devouring the sword and looked at Yuseong.

“What? You want more?”

Slurp!

The Weapon Eater licked its lips again, as if asking for another serving.

“Fine, here, have one more.”

Yuseong took out a crude longsword and handed it to the Weapon Eater. It gobbled up the longsword in no time.

Clack! Clack!

“I don’t have any more weapons. That’s all there is.”

Clack! Clack!

The Weapon Eater clicked its teeth in protest when Yuseong said he was out of weapons.

“Well, if you’re really hungry, you can have these broken sword fragments.”

Clatter!

Yuseong emptied out his inventory, piling up all the broken, rusty sword fragments in front of the Weapon Eater.

The Weapon Eater stuck its tongue out and poked at the sword fragments.

“Hey, look at you. Are you hesitating now?”

The Weapon Eater seemed to be debating whether it should bother with the fragments. After a while, it finally stuck its long tongue out and scooped all the pieces into its mouth.

Crunch! Crunch!

“Blech!”

“Tastes bad, huh?”

After eating the rusty, broken sword pieces, the Weapon Eater shook its tongue in disgust, like someone who’d eaten something nasty. Not surprising, considering the fragments were rusty and old.

[Congratulations! The Devourer Jar has eaten the <Unique> grade weapon Ancient Rune Sword and has grown stronger!]

Suddenly, a congratulatory message appeared before Yuseong’s eyes.

“Ancient Rune Sword? What’s that supposed to mean?”

The weapons Yuseong had fed to the Weapon Eater were the Novice Knight’s Straight Sword, a crude longsword, and a bunch of broken, rusty sword fragments. He’d never even heard of an item called the Ancient Rune Sword.

“It can’t be the straight sword or the longsword; the name doesn’t match at all. That just leaves the broken fragments… So if I piece them all together, does that make an Ancient Rune Sword?”