Then, in that same situation, what might Kim Giryeo have been thinking?
"Someone save me."
Thump, thump.
After running for a while, Giryeo stopped at the end of the alley and struggled to catch his breath.
Unlike Sophia, whose physical abilities had temporarily declined as a penalty for using her skill, this so-called F-rank was simply terrible at running even under normal circumstances.
"Cough."
To put it bluntly, Kim Giryeo couldn't catch up to his opponent because of the limitations of his body.
Even after pushing himself to the limit with enhancement magic, there was fundamentally no way an F-rank could match the speed of an A-rank.
"I feel like I'm going to throw up."
And yet, for some reason, he was reluctant to give up the chase.
At first, he'd only wanted to see what the summoner looked like.
But the Awakened person who had exhausted herself by paying the price for her skill was moving more slowly than he'd expected. It seemed that, with just a little more effort, he might actually be able to catch her.
"Summoners are usually incredibly weak themselves..."
Summoners had obvious weaknesses.
If he could only close the distance, he could quickly subdue the attacker with a combination of [Surprise Box] and [Hydra].
"She stopped!"
A few seconds later, Sophia came to a halt as her stamina gave out.
Seeing his chance, Giryeo straightened up and immediately sprang into action.
He intended to close the gap while his opponent was still catching her breath.
Tak, tak, tak.
Unfortunately, Sophia recovered faster than he could reach her.
The instant she saw the S-rank moving again, her face turned pale, and she forced her exhausted legs back into motion.
"Damn it!"
"Hiiik...!"
Kim Giryeo desperately wanted to discover the identity of the sorcerer who had attacked him.
Sophia was equally desperate to avoid discovering what would happen if an S-rank caught her.
And so their relentless game of tag continued, the two of them alternately stopping from exhaustion and starting again as soon as the other moved.
But after a while, Giryeo suddenly stopped running.
This time, however, it wasn't because he needed to catch his breath.
He had genuinely decided to abandon the pursuit once they reached this corner.
"Cough, ugh!"
In truth, this kind of chase was exactly the sort of thing an impostor of his rank should avoid.
If anyone saw an S-rank moving this slowly, it would inevitably raise suspicion.
"Phew... I thought I was going to die trying to pretend I wasn't out of breath."
He could always make up some excuse about holding back so he wouldn't damage the road.
It wasn't as though he had no plausible explanation.
Still, the fewer suspicious situations he created, the better.
"Besides, my body's reaching its limit too."
Kim Giryeo decided to let his target escape before they reached the main road, where there would be far more people around.
He came to a complete stop.
Sophia, having no idea what condition her pursuer was actually in, continued fleeing in terror and soon disappeared from sight.
Sxaang.
Giryeo concealed his disappointment and slid Hydra back into its sheath.
"Sigh... My whole body hurts."
At that moment, the enhancement magic he'd been maintaining finally dissolved.
Fatigue rushed over him at once, accompanied by a deep ache in his muscles.
Giryeo ignored the discomfort and turned his attention back to the situation.
Su Yehwi.
Park Juntae.
Everyone who had openly opposed him was already dead.
So where in the world had that summoner come from?
"A second terrorist? Or maybe someone seeking revenge on behalf of the organization's remnants?"
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't find an answer.
In the end, Giryeo came to a simple conclusion.
It would be wise to prepare for the possibility of further attacks.
***
A few days later.
"So..."
The United States.
Spectrum Guild.
A woman with silky blond hair sat with her arms crossed, looking down at the sofa opposite her.
Across from her was a short-haired woman whose exposed neck revealed an intricately drawn black butterfly tattoo.
"What were the results of your investigation into Korea's S-class?"
Brooklyn addressed the woman sitting before her.
The moment that particular subject came up, however, the tattooed woman began to tremble.
Her reaction was far from normal.
When she finally spoke, her voice shook with fear.
"That man is a devil."
Sophia muttered the words with a pale, exhausted face.
"What did you say?"
Brooklyn tilted her head as she studied the other woman's expression.
But even as the conversation continued, Sophia's fear showed no signs of fading.
In fact, although three days had already passed since the mission ended, the spy who had returned from Korea was still gripped by an inexplicable sense of dread.
"F-First... I'll give you my report. That man is definitely an S-rank Awakened. I'm certain of it. But he's not just an ordinary S-rank. He's [N O V E L I G H T] extraordinarily, absurdly powerful."
Sophia's expression remained grim.
"Brooklyn, I summoned Kelumineto and attacked him exactly the way you told me to... but there wasn't even any point in counting how many [Soul Strikes] he could endure."
"He defeated the King of the Dead that quickly?"
"No."
"Then what happened?"
"My summon... didn't work."
"What?"
"I-It didn't work at all. Not even a little."
Sophia hurriedly explained everything.
Kim Giryeo had remained completely unharmed despite being struck by the attack.
The boss monster had collapsed before him, bowing its head to the ground.
And Korea's S-rank had even seen straight through her concealment.
"You're saying he detected your stealth from that distance? Wow. That's certainly impressive."
Brooklyn smiled as though she'd heard something fascinating.
Sophia responded with a shrill cry.
"But that's not the problem right now...! Do you have any idea what that insane Hunter did to me?"
Sophia still couldn't forget it.
An S-rank Hunter should have been able to catch an exhausted summoner without the slightest difficulty.
But for some reason, every time she looked back, Kim Giryeo had stopped far behind her.
No matter how many times she fled, the distance between them never seemed to change.
"Ugh..."
Sophia shuddered.
The memory alone sent chills down her spine.
A monster so terrifying that even a boss creature had trembled and bowed before him had seemingly appeared at the end of every alley she crossed.
There was absolutely no way an Awakened person like that could run only a few dozen meters and become exhausted.
Which meant that the Hunter had been doing it deliberately.
So what had that situation actually meant?
"H-How could he... How could he treat an A-rank Awakened like some kind of toy...?"
Sophia had interpreted the entire pursuit as mockery from a top-tier Awakened.
Like a well-fed predator amusing itself with a helpless rabbit.
She believed Kim Giryeo had deliberately allowed her to keep escaping simply because he enjoyed watching her panic.
And although she was convinced that he'd been playing with her, Sophia had been too terrified to stop.
What if she'd let herself be caught?
What if she'd given up running and bored him?
Something deep inside her insisted that, had that happened, she would never have returned home alive.
"How can someone treat another human being like prey... and do it so casually?"
That damned sociopath.
Sophia's fingers curled tightly with fear.
She remembered that cold-faced man approaching with a sharp longsword in his hand.
Come to think of it, Kim Giryeo was said to have finished off his enemy with a single blade during the Inevitable Malice Incident.
Could the weapon she'd seen have been the same one that had cut apart the serpent?
Sophia no longer had the slightest doubt that Korea's fourth S-class was powerful.
And naturally, another thought followed.
If that Hunter had truly decided to fight seriously during the Dragon Raid, then the dragon might have ended up exactly like the corrupted Imugi.
And Sophia herself would have suffered a fate far worse than that mangled serpent corpse with its mouth torn apart and its entire body destroyed.
"Heukh."
Just imagining it made her tremble all over again.
"T-That man sparing me... was nothing more than a whim...?"
Kim Giryeo had toyed with her for what felt like an eternity, only letting her go after she'd been driven to complete exhaustion, nearly crying and sobbing as she ran.
Eventually, Giryeo had stopped pursuing her.
But even after realizing that she had escaped, Sophia remained terrified for hours afterward.
Her mana had been completely depleted.
And because of the nature of her own ability, she would have had no way to sense Kim Giryeo even if he'd suddenly approached from behind.
"Brooklyn, do you seriously feel nothing after hearing all of this?"
Tak!
Sophia slammed both hands against the table as she leaned forward.
"Why do you think Kim Giryeo let me go? Because he didn't even consider what I did worth taking revenge for!"
"Hmm."
"He completely dismissed me—as though an A-rank like me wasn't even worth fighting! And you still think he might be some kind of fake? Seriously?"
An A-rank Hunter was considered an elite in the Hunter industry.
And yet Sophia had been toyed with like a newborn gazelle before another Hunter.
She shivered again as she remembered the nightmare.
Then Brooklyn's clear voice cut through the room.
"Yes. Unfortunately, I still do."
She said it with such effortless calm that it was obvious she had not abandoned her suspicions about Kim Giryeo at all.
"What did you say?"
If she stripped away all the unnecessary emotional elements—Sophia's fear, panic, and shock—the events her subordinate had described could be summarized rather simply.
Kim Giryeo remained almost completely still throughout the confrontation with the boss monster.When the exhausted Sophia fled, he pursued her only in short, regular bursts.Didn't that seem strange?
In fact, Brooklyn had been wondering about this for quite some time.
Korea's fourth S-rank had never once publicly demonstrated his combat ability in any clear, verifiable way.
No matter how unlikely it seemed, even during the events in Japan, or while dealing with relatively minor monsters such as the Siren, he had somehow managed to conceal the true extent of his abilities whenever others were present.
"I even bribed one of the Japanese Hunters to find out what skills he used during the raid, but..."
Brooklyn still found the overall situation suspicious.
Sophia, however, had absolutely no desire to involve herself with that Asian Hunter ever again.
"Then investigate him yourself next time!"
Bam!
Sophia stormed out of the room, her face twisted with frustration.
Left alone, Brooklyn calmly picked up the cup of coffee resting on the table.
"Hmm... How exactly did he suppress that summoned beast?"
Truthfully, Brooklyn now estimated the probability of Kim Giryeo genuinely being S-rank at close to fifty percent.
Compared to the ten percent chance she'd assigned him back at the Gate Star party, that was a dramatic increase.
At this point, however, his actual rank was beginning to feel almost irrelevant.
Even if his Awakening level turned out to be extraordinarily low, Kim Giryeo seemed to possess enough other strengths to make people forget about his weaknesses.
"Interesting."
But what if he really was S-rank?
If that were true, then he could no longer be regarded merely as an unusual Awakened individual.
Judging by everything he'd done so far, that Asian Hunter was likely one of the strongest even among the S-class.
"I wonder what kind of abilities he's hiding."
How powerful would he be if he truly went all out?
Perhaps, for the first time, Brooklyn had finally found someone capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with her.
Humans had always been sensitive to the idea of being 'the best.'
Even before Awakened people appeared, people had ranked martial artists according to their skill.
Humanity had always possessed the desire to clearly determine who stood at the very top.
[World Hunter Ranking]
[1. Brooklyn Morgan]
And according to this new and fascinating standard, Brooklyn naturally found herself at the summit.
She personally attached little importance to rankings like these.
Although no one said it openly, Hunters in the United States had long since reached their own conclusion about who the true ruler was.
"Hmm..."
Four years ago.
During an S-rank dungeon break in Hawaii, the Nuckelavee Killer had suddenly appeared.
The Hunter who killed the Nuckelavee wore a black mask fashioned from elk bone.
Because of that appearance, witnesses had begun calling him "Beast."
Beast.
A mysterious Hunter whose identity remained completely unknown.
Ever since the Hawaii raid, countless people had attempted to track him down.
Every investigation had failed.
Beast appeared only occasionally, and almost exclusively in the most dangerous, highest-difficulty dungeons.
"Who would win if Beast fought this Korean Hunter?"
Brooklyn casually sorted through Sophia's documents while voicing the question like some drunken martial-arts fanatic.
But then something in Kim Giryeo's profile caught her attention.
[179cm]
The estimated height of the Nuckelavee Killer matched exactly.
There was another interesting detail as well.
Beast, a Hunter who normally seemed drawn to high-difficulty dungeons, had remained conspicuously absent during the S-rank gate incident in Japan.
"Oh."
Brooklyn's gaze settled on the photograph printed on Kim Giryeo's file.
A Korean man in his mid-twenties.
"Hmm."
Narrowing one eye, Brooklyn imagined placing an elk-bone mask over the S-class Hunter's face.
"Not bad."
Her clear voice echoed quietly through the office.