CH 74

Thirteen minutes could feel long for some people and quite short for others.

"Hmm... I should get started.” Mr. Guy sighed after he saw Yu-Seong struggling alone in the distance. Looking at the man catching rabbits and numbering them, Mr. Guy muttered, "That's too bad. This evaluation could be a good opportunity for him since it’s a special test. But well…rules are rules.”

With his long legs, Mr. Guy strode in the opposite direction that Yu-Seong was running in.

'You are barking up the wrong tree, Mr. Choi. Unfortunately, you must have run out of luck.’

When you're just trying to make great content at bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

In fact, even Mr. Guy thought that this rabbit-hunting—the actual thief-catching test—had a harsh level of difficulty.

If Loki—a fairly powerful god—was not involved and there was no support of the Karma points for the other god who had yet to reveal itself, it would have been impossible to create such a difficult test in the E-rank promotion evaluation.

‘I can see why the Joke-loving Prankster participated, but I didn’t expect even ‘him’ to be interested in Yu-Seong already.’

In any case, it was natural for the difficulty of the test to significantly increase since compensation would be excessive with the intervention of two deep pockets. Normally, even if it was considered difficult, the promotion evaluation should have already ended once the armored knights were knocked down.

"Let's see. Where are you, my cute Tory?” Mr. Guy walked forward with his big ears pricked up and his nostrils flared. He found quite a few small groups of rabbits, but his pet bunny wasn’t there.

"It's roughly this way..." Mr. Guy's eyes glistened as he followed the trail of a familiar scent. A group of about ten bunnies was gathered together less than 300m to the east. Among them, he could smell a familiar and lovely scent. He cried out, "Hong Hong, my Tory. There you are. Hurry up and come into my arms. And now, I only have to go and keep my "promise" to the player Choi Yu-Seong. The test is now over…”

Mr. Guy got excited and approached the rabbit herd while waving his arms. At that moment, a flash of light appeared to envelop him.

Then, Yu-Seong popped out of the gap with a startled expression.

"Oh..." Yu-Seong pondered for a bit, then saw a group of rabbits located not far from the changed landscape. He ran forward after checking about five white rabbits. He murmured, "It worked."

It was obvious that Yu-Seong had purchased not only a single pen after summoning Ping Pong, the dimensional merchant.

‘Spell, the promise of a double-sided mirror. I didn’t have enough Karma points to buy something to hunt the armored knights, but this was affordable.'

In fact, the promise of a double-sided mirror was one of the most common spells sold in the dimension store. It was priced at around 500 karma points per use.

The method of use was rather simple. After invoking the spell book and hanging the thread that linked the pinky fingers, the user had to set the agreed keyword with the opponent as "Promise." Finally, they had to physically pinky promise as a token of promise.

The effect was that, if a promise was made through this process, the two could reverse each other's position through a single spell. It would be as if they were located on the other side of the mirror only in agreed circumstances.

The important thing here was that the opponent had to clearly say the keyword, that is, the word "promise." In a way, the invocation itself was simple, but it was quite tricky to secretly apply it to the opponent. The promise of a double-sided mirror was basically an invisible spell, but once activated, the thread linking the pinky fingers would flash pink and a strange sensation would bubble up. In the meantime, the user had to secretly make a pinky promise with the opponent and have them utter the keyword.

Therefore, originally, this double-sided mirror's promise spell was often used between the allies in the original novel to confuse the enemy by changing their positions.

‘Of course, such methods were only used after the double-sided mirror's promise spell was revealed to the world…’

The promise of a double-sided mirror was a spell that was yet introduced to the world.

‘According to the novel, it first came out to the world about a year later…’

However, this was a spell book that no one on Earth had ever looked for before then. Thus, after he heard that Mr. Guy was participating in the test, this was the first method that Yu-Seong had thought of.

‘It's almost impossible for me to find it myself. I had to use the other person's ability again this time.’

In fact, it was a strategy that could have failed if the opponent was not a rather talkative judge like Mr. Guy.

‘And I guessed that Mr. Guy would spit out the word in a fatal situation at least once.’

In other words, Yu-Seong had assumed that Mr. Guy would surely spit out the word, “promise” upon finding Tory. His prediction was absolutely correct. Of course, it would have been better if it was just before catching Tory, but the current situation was not bad.

"Did you see? It's my victory. Loki. No matter how hard you create a situation, I have a way to overcome it."

Listening to what Yu-Seong had to say, the silent Loki sent a message as if he had been waiting all this time.

-The Joke-loving Prankster laughs.

It was a bit strange, though.

"Did you just laugh?" Yu-Seong wondered if Loki was proud of him or something. Feeling doubtful, he turned the first rabbit over to look at its tummy, which had no star-shaped dot. He marked it with a pen and anxiously ran toward the second one.

Feeling suspicious as he ran toward the second bunny, Yu-Seong quickly flipped it over and marked it as well. There was no star-shaped dot. He was starting to feel anxious.

'Maybe I won’t get through, but the distance between the fields is quite wide, so it will take Mr. Guy a while to come here.’

The ability of the judges in charge of the promotion evaluation widely varied. Some were like monsters jerking around with even the Earth's S-rank hunters, while others couldn’t even deal with D-rank hunters.

‘But from the look of Mr. Guy…’

Just in time, something ran toward Yu-Seong from beyond the horizon. It kicked up a huge cloud of dust like a whirlwind… The ‘something’ was no surprising guest.

‘He’s a monster.’

"Hong hong hong! Player Choi Yu-Seong! How dare you deceive me!" cried Mr. Guy with a gravely hardened expression. He seemed to be speaking quietly, but his voice still rang and rattled Yu-Seong’s mind.

Naturally, the rabbits around Yu-Seong also freaked out and started running in all directions. Yu-Seong was surprised, freaking out like the bunnies when he saw Mr.Guy. Still, he continued to check the second rabbit's belly.

‘Not this guy either!’

Yu-Seong naturally turned to the third bunny.

"Where is he?!”

As if to disprove that he has been somewhat lucky so far, Yu-Seong was definitely struggling.

"Hong hong, although I’ve been careless, I admit that you did surprise me! But if you fail the promotion evaluation, you know, everything would be meaningless after all!"

Mr. Guy was just around the corner. He jumped up and flew in the air as if he was a fish swimming in water.

During that short time, Yu-Seong barely caught the fourth bunny. A bright smile spread across his face when he lifted the rabbit and realized that his last chance worked out for him after all.

-A Joke-loving Prankster is suffering from extremely sour grapes due to the player Choi Yu-Seong’s luck.

‘Did you see that?! This is the luck of the employee of the Korean game company, no, a son of a conglomerate family!’

Yu-Seong quickly stuck out a bunny at Mr. Guy, who was falling toward him. He yelled, "Tory! I found it first!"

Boom-! With a stiff expression, Mr. Guy fell down on the ground with a huge cloud of dust. His facial expression began to twist little by little. Then, his eyes drew a bright smile and his pupils drew a heart.

"Oh! My love, cute little Tory! There you are!" Mr. Guy took Tory from Yu-Seong's hand at once, held it in his arms, and began to rub his cheeks against it. "Hong hong hong…!"

Yu-Seong breathed a sigh of relief while looking at Mr. Guy smiling happily. He did manage to find Tory at the very last moment, so he didn’t worry too much.

《Catch the Thief! Difficulty level ++ version

You’ve recovered half your lost soul from a very bad, nasty bunny thief (Tory)! Congratulations!

Player Choi Yu-Seong will be promoted to D-rank!

Promotion reward will be given after settlement through the system.

The user’s consciousness will now return to Earth.》

Yu-Seong did it.

While Mr. Guy was arrested for losing his pet bunny, Yu-Seong was delighted to see the golden flashing message. Before he knew it, some vague energy from Tory surrounded him and permeated into him.

'By the way, Mr. Guy, he really seems to care about Tory...'

Apart from that, the white bunny Tory was actually really cute.

Mr. Guy looked at Yu-Seong, who was gradually losing consciousness, after taking his eyes off of Tory. He commented, "Wow, the promise of a double-sided mirror? How did you know something that no one has used yet? Well, you're not in a situation to answer. Anyway, I will never make a promise to you ever again, player Choi Yu-Seong. Since I have been upsettingly beaten by your wit. See you again, player Choi Yu-Seong. Hong Hong."

The last thing Yu-Seong heard was Mr. Guy's rather sulky but warm voice echoing from somewhere.

- A Joke-loving Prankster offers a reward with a somewhat happy expression.

- The gracious blue-eyed god received his proposal. He thinks for a moment and agrees to the reward.

- Under the agreement of the two gods, the hidden... - piece occurs. The Special skill is forcibly passed on to the player Choi Yu-Seong.

Following that, there were more messages that Yu-Seong would have been surprised to look at.

***

As if he were immersed in deep sleep and was completely relaxed, Yu-Seong's consciousness slowly rose from a very low place into a higher space. He opened his eyes and looked around, then breathed a sigh of relief.

'It’s my bed. I’m back to the exact place where I first entered the promotion.'

When a player entered the promotion evaluation, the body in the earth disappeared without a trace. After the test, it returned to the location where the player originally entered. What was surprising was the fact that there was no manifestation of any abilities or traces of magic in the process. Some scholars fell into research because they became curious about such miraculous effects, but it had yet to be revealed how the player disappeared and appeared.

‘Even in the original novel, only a few hints were given.’

It was the movement of consciousness through the system maker’s absolute power. There were two things that could be inferred from this.

‘First, the promotion evaluation itself took place in a different dimension.’

And secondly, perhaps during the promotion evaluation, the player’s body itself may be hidden somewhere on Earth. Of course, the exact answer was not found.

'Also, in the first place, those above reasons were made by Kim Do-Jin.’

Choi Yu-Seong shrugged his shoulders and decided to leave the difficult problem behind.

‘It's not something I can find out for now, anyways.’