“Ah, that’s… ”

“Don’t worry about this dog. It’s a well-behaved child.”

“Woof! Woof!”

I commanded Semo, who seemed to be excited.

“You shouldn’t bark at anyone. As punishment, don’t come inside, stay here!”

“Kiing~”

“Sir, why don’t you come inside and talk.”

He must have had a reason for coming to see me in the middle of the night. I was no longer interested in the students of Alpha Academy or their parents, but I was curious about why he came all the way here. As far as I remember, Kim Yeon-seo hardly ever mentioned her parents. Even on the days when her parents came to visit, she was often alone.

“Grrr… ”

Semo growled at something. But it was looking at the car, not Kim Kyung-soo. Seeing its ears perk up, I thought it might be listening to something.

Kim Kyung-soo came to the door, avoiding Semo.

Kim So-mi, as if she knew the situation, yawned and went inside.

“Talk amongst yourselves. I’m going to sleep.”

Watching her disappear, Kim Kyung-soo asked me,

“Is that Kim So-mi, the hunter?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Ah~ I didn’t know the two of you were like this.”

“It seems you’re misunderstanding. It’s just that we’re staying together temporarily due to certain circumstances.”

“Professor, you’re more open-minded than I thought.”

Kim Kyung-soo seemed to misunderstand until the end, but it wasn’t a major issue, so I decided to let it go.

I brought him into the living room and sat across from him with a table between us. I had just fallen asleep a short time ago, but once I was awake, I wasn’t that sleepy anymore.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“It’s alright. I have something more urgent to discuss.”

“Was it urgent enough to come see me in the middle of the night?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not good at driving. I got lost and ended up being late.”

“What is it that you want to discuss?”

“Professor! Alpha won’t release my daughter!”

“Yeon-seo? What are you talking about?”

Kim Kyung-soo told me what had happened in the past day or two. Listening to him, I could understand why he was frustrated.

“I see, there’s a situation like that. But I think you’ve come to the wrong person. I’ve resigned from my professorship, so I can’t help you.”

“I don’t want to leave my daughter in Alpha without you, Professor. I’ll do anything, but could you please give my daughter private lessons?”

“I’ve stopped teaching. I don’t want to make any exceptions for anyone.”

“There’s no one else I can turn to. I can’t explain this any other way, but I have a feeling that Alpha is up to something bad. They’re so determined to keep the students at the academy, and I think it might be related to that.”

“I’ve told you repeatedly that this isn’t my business. You shouldn’t waste your time here, sir. You should try to find other ways.”

“Don’t be like that… ”

It was at that moment. I heard Semo barking again outside.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!”

I felt the creature loitering in front of the door, not knowing what to do. It probably couldn’t force its way in because I told it not to come in. It could easily break the door with its strength.

“I need to go out for a minute?”

I felt like there was a reason for Semo’s suspicious movements.

When I opened the door and went out, Semo jumped on my leg, “Woof! Woof!”

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Kiing, Kiing~”

It didn’t seem normal, so I asked,

“Something’s there, right? Let’s go.”

“Woof!”

Semo lowered its body in front of me. I was wondering why, but it looked back at me and shrugged its shoulders.

“You want me to get on your back?”

“Woof!”

“Oh, well.”

Even though Semo had grown bigger, I hesitated to get on its back. But it seemed to want me to, so I cautiously put my leg up.

“Whoa!”

Before I could adjust my posture, the creature dashed forward like a bullet. It ran down the hill and entered a small path leading to the forest.

“Slow down!”

It was only after I ran for a while that I understood why it acted this way. I heard animals groaning in my ears, and I even listened to the unpleasant laughter of human men.

“Woof! Woof! Grrr!”

The scene that appeared as we turned the corner was shocking. Several small wolves were being caught with nooses, and several men were trying to load them onto a truck. They were big, tough-looking men.

They were surprised to see Semo and me suddenly appear.

Silence fell as they faced each other.

“Hey, look at that!”

One of the hunters said, looking at Semo.

“It’s big and its eyes are bright. It seems we can get a lot of money for it.”

“Oh, really?”

They started to get greedy for Semo as if I was invisible.

I got off Semo’s back.

“What are you doing?”

“Us? And who are you?”

“Don’t interfere with our work, get out of here!”

I scanned the five hunters with my tutoring ability.

‘There’s not a single hunter.’

As expected, they seemed like the type of group who hunted weak monsters wandering around abandoned dungeons.

“Woof!”

The hunters flinched when Semo growled, and then they each pointed their guns forward.

“This one will be hard to capture.”

“Even if we get just the organs, we’ll get a lot! Shoot!”

“Semo, it’s okay. Don’t hold back.”

I patted Semo’s butt. The reason it hadn’t acted yet was simply because it didn’t want to act recklessly in front of its owner. I, its owner, knew that its anger level had been rising for a while now.

“Woof! Woof!”

“Aack! What?!”

“Shoot! Shoot quickly!”

Bang! Bang! Bang! None of the hunters’ shots hit Semo. Not only that, but Semo scratched them with its claws, one by one, making them cry out in pain and fall to the ground.

Just as Semo was about to bite one of them on the neck, I shouted.

“Stop it, Semo!”

“Kiing~”

The creature backed away when I stopped it. Instead, Semo went to the small wolves caught in the nooses and helped them. The nooses were easily torn by its sharp teeth, and the wolves, already covered in blood, crawled out.

“Wal! Wal!”

“Kiing, Kiing!”

Even though it wasn’t even a year old, Semo licked the wolves’ wounds as if they were its own cubs.

I asked the men lying on the ground.

“Who’s permission did you get to hunt here?”

“Who’s permission?! It’s not a crime to hunt in unowned land?”

“More than that, sir, you’re the owner of those wolf pups? Please make them stop!”

I took out my sword.

Sreung-

The sharp edge glittered in the moonlight.

“Oh my god!”

“I, I can’t believe this!”

Hunters work outside the domain of hunters. They’re basically the creatures that pick up the scraps left by hunters. For them, meeting a hunter in the area around an abandoned dungeon would be an unexpected story.

They gathered themselves up and knelt in a row.

“W, we’re sorry!”

“We didn’t know it was the hunter’s domain. We’ll leave those wolf pups.”

“Please forgive us! We were just following orders.”

“Wait, orders?”

At that moment, a car came up behind us with a sound of “Boo-oo-oo-ng”.

People got out of the driver’s seat and the passenger seat.

Kim Kyung-soo and Kim So-mi came.

“What’s going on?”

“Hunters came in. They thought this was unowned land.”

“Oh my! Are those the pups?”

Kim So-mi went over to the little wolves that Semo was licking. She looked back at me and asked,

“Are these pups also the same as Semo?”

I confirmed the identity of the two baby wolves. Both of them were D-rank Awakened Beasts. It confirmed that there were other subspecies of Awakened Beasts in this place, besides Semo.

“Yes.”

Kim So-mi took something out of her inventory when she heard my answer. It seemed she was going to feed it to them and treat them, just like I treated Semo with potions.

“Let’s continue where we left off. You said you were following orders?”

The hunters looked at each other.

“Huh? I’ve seen that man.”

Unexpectedly, Kim Kyung-soo spoke.

“You know these guys?”

“I saw that guy sitting there when I went to the SG research lab. There was someone who didn’t belong in the lab, so I asked about it, and they said they were outsourcing monster and by-product collection. I couldn’t understand why SG, a place like that, was making a contract with hunters who weren’t officially registered, but at the time, I just thought, ‘Well, okay’ and moved on.”

“Oh, so you’re saying you came here on an assignment from SG?”

“Are you the owner of this land?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. We came in thinking the land was unowned. We caught a wolf in this area a few months ago. We weren’t sure if it was a monster or just an animal, so we investigated, and somehow SG found out and contacted us. They said they would pay a lot if we brought them the same ones. We kept striking out, but today we finally caught these two.”

Awakened Beasts.

They were such peculiar creatures that even I and Kim Mi-so didn’t know about their existence. If SG had figured out that these creatures existed, it was understandable why they would be greedy.

“Why would a big corporation like SG give you an assignment?”

“Where something is caught is a secret among us hunters. There’s a big reason why we don’t want to share good hunting grounds. Even if we have a contract, do we have an obligation to tell them about my livelihood hunting ground? We said we’d catch them ourselves.”

“That’s a little different.”

Kim Kyung-soo, who was listening, spoke.

“If SG wanted to know, they could easily find out where these hunters caught the wolves. They didn’t want to make a big deal out of it before the investigation was conclusive. If they knew that the SG research department was moving aggressively, others would notice and jump in. That’s how fierce the competition is in this field.”

By this point, I was curious about Kim Kyung-soo’s existence.

“How do you know so much?”

“I’m contracted with SG. The scholarship for my daughter I mentioned before comes from them.”

I had heard about Kim Kyung-soo’s circumstances, but I didn’t hear that he worked at SG.

“Do you work in research? What is your field of expertise?”

“I study anything related to dungeons. Monsters, plants that grow in dungeons, the soil inside, things like that.”

“Ahh~”

I felt that Kim Kyung-soo’s visit was a kind of fate. Because he knew this land was special. A while ago, I saw a tree grow from the hunter’s body that I dumped in the dungeon. Awakened Beasts were also found. I knew this place was special, but I still didn’t know the exact reason.