[Residential Zone]

POV – Overworked Assistant Guild Manager, Zach.

He was expecting excitement… adventure.

After all, he had been summoned to another universe.

Initially, it was exciting... adventurous even!

Fighting monsters… utilizing his ability, clairvoyance, to warn and save people.

Eventually, teaming up with people he saved and creating a guild.

He’s clearly the one who saved everyone from monsters constantly…

Yet, the group got named the ‘phoenix’ guild… just because one of their member’s (now the guild-master), earned herself the name ‘the phoenix’ and became popular.

But... No, Fine.

She saved everyone from that ice-dragon, so that doesn’t matter that much.

No, what bothers me is… I’M CRAMMED UP HERE DOING PAPERWORK!

Why am I the one doing paperwork?

What was it they said?

‘Oh, Zach… Your ability is extraordinarily valuable, we can’t possibly risk losing you~’

‘It’ll be great, Zach! You’ll be the assistant guild-master, it’s an honor.’

UTTER BULLSHIT.

I’m just the only moron who was willing to listen to those flimsy excuses!

No! They just didn’t want to do paperwork themselves.

Now… I’m stuck in this position, everyone I’ve tried pushing it onto avoids it like the plague.

All because those idiots decided to create a government.

Interrupting my complaining, one of my guild-members entered my office.

Excellent, an excuse to stop working!

Quickly, tell me the city’s about to be destroyed… maybe… maybe that apocalypse the natives are constantly speaking about is finally happening!

“Sir, someone’s come out of the Hell Difficulty level temple.” The guild-member declared…

Damn. No apocalypse… yet.

What was his name? Steven or something?

“Excellent job, Steven. You’re promoted!” I excitedly declared.

Promoted into assistant guild-master, who’ll do all the paperwork… and I’ll get to go adventures again, instead of dealing with everyday mundane problems.

Steven swiftly responded, “I refuse… and my name's Jonathan… Sir.”

It appears people have wised up to my tactics… Damn, I’m losing him.

“No! This news is very valuable, I must insist... Stev…Jonathan.” Attempting to projecting my words with the full might and authority of an assistant guild-master.

Sadly, Steven… Jonathan wasn’t convinced and refused once again, “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Sir… I’m simply not worthy of promotion.”

*Sigh…* Another failed attempt. That’s the twentieth refusal this week.

What was the news, again?

Something about someone coming out of a difficulty level?

Why would they report that anyway?

Wait… Slightly astonished, I confirmed, “Did… did you say that someone came out of the Hell Difficulty level?”

“Yes, Sir.” Jonathan stared straight at me and answered.

What?

At this point, it’s already been more than a year since everyone has arrived here.

Meaning that it’s basically become common knowledge that everyone who entered Hell Difficulty is dead.

After all, it only took a month for people to clear the second zone of Hard Difficult. Even with a rapid increase in difficulty, taking an entire year is absurd.

The most probable outcome was everyone in Hell Difficulty was dead.

Yet, someone survived? How strong are they?

More importantly, Where are they?

Exploiting my ability to answer the last question… My vision flew out of my body.

Flying about in disorienting third person perspective, until it finally settled in the room outside my office.

I was astonished to discover, it settled on a Korean dark-haired man… just outside my office.

Wha… How? He shouldn’t be here.

Random strangers aren’t allowed to be poking around in our guild-base.

There’s enough security here to stop an army… wards, guards, and more importantly anonymity.

Nobody outside the high ranks of our guild should even know this place exists.

Not to mention, he should have arrived here… “James… How long ago did he arrive again?”

James exasperatingly replied, “Around thirty minutes ago… and it’s still Jonathan, Sir…”

Yeah… definitely shouldn’t be here.

POV Swap – Hansoo

Hansoo needed to fix the residential zone’s problems, otherwise... if humanity continued onward being weak, it would be impossible to purify the corruption in the mana from this universe.

They’d learned that the hard way last time. Even if monstrosities were defeated, corrupted mana still builds up.

Unless enough humanity can survive to continuously purify the corruption, when the zone collapses monstrosities will constantly be reborn.

This leads him to the problem.

The residential zone needs change. It’s stagnated.

People have stopped trying to conquer the zones.

The Hell Difficulty's people might be able to deal with the monstrosities… but, without support, it’s impossible to sustain long-term.

Meaning change is needed. Not merely preferable. Needed.

Considering Zach’s personality and knowledge known about him from the future… it should be easiest to have him to begin to implement change.

Entering Zach’s office, Hansoo gazed around the room... noting the messy desk fully of papers.

Zach seemed shocked at my appearance and his comrade pulled out a magical pistol immediately.

Hansoo supposed that it made sense, he had shown up without prior warning in a secured facility.

Still, this needed to be done… Otherwise, Zach’s won’t be leaving this base for another nine months.

Change needs to begin happening immediately, they only had ten years before the safe zones began to collapse.

To do that he needs to begin 'convincing' people… through any means necessary.

[Day 366, the next day... Second Zone]

POV Swap – Tobias

Rin and I have reached the Beacon’s location. It’s a rather large clearing, there is a circular stone foundation.

Descending from that foundation are stairs, which lead deep into the earth.

If everything goes according to the story, people will begin to gather here.

Rin will then lead everyone to attack a rather terrifying fire monster, which is guarding the teleportation sigil and everyone will head to the residential zone together.

Rin though immediately headed down the stairs, which I decided to question, “Wait, you’re just going down?”

Rin stopped descending and stared at me with a perplexed expression replying, “Why wouldn’t we?”

I… don’t really have a valid response to that. Rin's stronger than the story… but, the fire monster isn’t that easy to deal with.

It took nearly everyone to beat it. That’s the way it was designed, extremely strong and dangerous.

*sigh*… Well… alright, maybe I can petrify it.

If not… well, next time Rin will wait… I guess.

Gesturing for Rin to continue downward, I followed after her.

Into… an empty room?

What? Where’s the giant fire monster?

Giant flames, black smoke, large temperature change, it should be unmistakable.

This doesn’t make any sense?

Did I misremember this place?

What about the great final battle to complete the zone?

Rin continued onward to the teleportation sigil, on the far end of the underground room.

Following behind her, she grabbed my hand and used the sigil to teleport the both of us…

... and we disappeared in a flash of light.

Reappearing in a modern looking room, Rin immediately headed toward the wooden door.

Indicating for me to follow, before opening it.

Two men stood outside, who seemed extremely surprised at our appearance.

The tall one of the duo, immediately backed up… while the other simply stared at Rin.

“Who are you? How'd a kid like you get in here?” The shorter one asked.

Rin simply ignored him and wandered past them.

Right… well, I’m going to just follow behind her.

Nether of them seemed to be brave enough to stop us… or more accurately Rin.

I don’t think they even noticed me… So, that was rather simple.

I don’t have too much time to stay in this zone.

Unfortunately, now that I have God-hunter, I have to constantly feed her.

…and I can’t really do that in this zone.

While there are many methods to acquire food and basic supplies on this planet…there aren’t any monsters in this zone.

Meaning that, unless I want to start feeding people to God-hunter, I’m limited to 7-8 hours in this zone… which isn’t much time.

Rather sad, considering it’s basically a futuristic modern city that takes care of the needs of the residents.

It should even have some rudimentary Internet and games… All the conveniences of modern society… and I won’t even be able to stay here for more than a day.

Whatever, several hours should be enough time. I might be able to find some artifact with fire resistance.

Wait, is Rin planning on leaving immediately?

She’s heading toward the next zone’s teleportation sigil.

Calling out to her, “Rin, wait.”

Stopping, she sent me a ‘what do you want?’ expression.

 I hesitated and almost stopped myself from asking… but, I’d really prefer to have some type of fire resistance before heading to the next zone, “… Can’t we look around this place before leaving? It shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Before eventually nodding and gesturing for me to heading out the front door.

Alright, destination market place… Once I figure out where that is.

[Several hours of searching later…]

I managed to find a market place… Well, more of a bargaining location… there’s no money being trading merely the swapping of artifacts.

Rin, at this point, is getting impatient.

As we've walked around people have been staring at Rin… for, well… for several reasons.

Firstly, she’s an extremely cute girl. Something of a rarity judging by the other people walking around.

Secondly, she has the inhuman traits of wolf-ears. Something that definitely stands out among the mostly human streets…

Although, there are several other people with non-human features as well… I suppose they also could just be strangely mutated human or something similar… I wouldn’t have a clue.

Finally... well, Rin projects an impressive amount of mana…

I believe it’s something I mentioned earlier… but, other people can literally feel the amount of mana you’ve collected.

… and it can be rather intimidating, especially to people who’ve never experienced something like that before.

I mean, I probably do the same… but, I think my ability covers up the effect to some extent.

So, nobody will be affected by my mana level… until they notice me.

All this means, we’re attracting a lot of attention (well, I’m not… Rin is)…

Something... not particularly good... Deciding to try to quickly search for an artifact that meets my requirements.

Honestly, it’s possible anyone of these people could have an extraordinarily dangerous ability.

Preferably, it'd be best to have simply avoided them all… but, that isn’t really an option.

Searching through the various catalogs of goods available for trade, it didn’t take long to find an artifact that I was looking for.

A brooch in the shape of fire, which provides fire resistance.

Good... it probably won’t be particularly powerful… but, I should be able to trade one of my artifacts for it.

Checking the location on the catalog, I headed in that direction. Rin keeping pace with me simply gazing around the city as we walked.

After doing some discussion with the merchant, we reached an agreement.

*Cough*… Although, after negotiating took more than 5 minutes, I had to dissuade Rin from simply stealing the artifact to speed up leaving.

However, through my mediocre negotiating skills, I managed to obtain <Brooch of Fire Resistance> and a <Magical Pistol> in exchange for the <Glove of the Hated One>.

I mean, it’s the <Glove of the Hated One> is, technically, one of the best artifacts I have…

So, theoretically… it’s actually a pretty terrible trade… but, he didn’t want any of the other artifacts…

... and while the glove’s useful... I sorta haven’t been wearing it anyway.

It’s just too ugly to wear regularly… and not particularly useful to me because my ability allowing me to almost always get the first strike.

Its main use is avoiding initial ambush damage from enemies.

… Trading it for a method of ranged attack and needed fire resistance makes it kinda worth it.

The quality of the artifacts isn't as high as Hell Difficulty's artifacts... but, it should strengthen my weaknesses and at least give me some ranged options.

Alright… Well, that all I really needed to do here.

We probably should leave before the Hard Difficulty guilds realize we're in the city anyway.

“I suppose… we can leave now.” I informed Rin, who was clearly becoming uncomfortable and agitated with the idea of staying here any longer than necessarily.

Next stop, planet of fire and brimstone.

I'm sure everything will go... wonderfully.