It was Friday again.

People were nervous, but n.o.body became afflicted with abnormal narcolepsy. Still, people were not happy because of the monster areas and the waves of monsters that came from those areas.

Junhyuk was watching the news while moving the living spirit through his body. He couldn’t simply forget about the problems on Earth and train, so he turned on the news from time to time to check on what was happening around the world.

He checked through the information Ganesha gave him regularly. From the time the monster areas appeared, they had only increased once. On a Friday afternoon, five days after they had appeared, their radii became longer. They all had a radius of three kilometers initially, and all increased by a kilometer.

The monsters rushed out suddenly from their territories, and the armies protecting the areas took enormous damage.

The news was covering the increase of the areas continuously, and people seemed to have forgotten about abnormal narcolepsy.

Junhyuk knew that n.o.body would get hit by it for four weeks in total because they were preparing for the new season, and lizardmen, not humans, were the ones called to the Champions’ Battlefield.

As he watched the news, Junhyuk smacked his lips. He wanted to craft new equipment, but it wasn’t an easy task. Making new equipment out of the dead bodies of monsters wasn’t an easy thing to do.

Junhyuk felt the living spirit gathering at his fingertip. The compressed energy pushed back quickly, leaving traces of it behind. He could see the mana gathering at his fingertip and balled his hand into a fist.

Through diligent training, he was approaching his goal. At first, he couldn’t possibly have dealt with two A-ranked monsters, but he was getting used to it now. So, now he was fighting without using his force field.

Acceleration had become faster and now lasted longer, but dealing with two A-ranked monsters was still difficult. His Spatial Slash had not improved.

A single Spatial Slash couldn’t take out an A-ranked monster. Even if he delivered a critical hit on a monster’s weak spot, it wouldn’t be enough to bring down its ma.s.sive health pool.

To deal with monsters like that, he had to improve his Spatial Slash, and to do that, he had to focus more on enhancement over acceleration. However, the biggest problem was creating a single-point explosion. It took a long time to gather the energy for it, so he was training in order to simplify the process.

He wanted to be able to create a single-point explosions with two stacks of energy, and for that, he had to be able to control the amount of mana involved.

He had also started training the single-point explosion with the Spatial Slash, but it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy to gather the necessary mana to his fingertip with only two pa.s.ses of the living spirit through it.

When he tried to leave larger amounts of mana on his fingertip, the living spirit stuck around, attached to it. So far, due to his training, he had been able to decrease the stacks to five. Although five wasn’t a lot, it would still take too long for it to be viable at the Dimensional Battlefield.

Junhyuk focused more on it, but then his phone rang. When he checked on who it was, he saw that it was Eunseo. He picked it up, and she greeted him calmly.

“How are you?”

It’d been a week since he’d last seen her.

“I’m fine. Why did you call?”

“I want to see you. Is that possible?”

“Do you want me at Guardians HQ?”

“No, meet me at Restaurant Chungil.”

“The sashimi place in Seoul?”

“Yes, I will make a reservation under your name.”

“Sure.”

Junhyuk was curious about her invitation, so he got up and got ready. While putting his clothes on, he kept on controlling the living spirit. Junhyuk had thought he had grown with the living spirit, but after talking to Vera, he knew he’d been wrong.

He was far from completing his training.

Heroes were faster than him in their own dimensions than he could be while teleporting on Earth. That meant that he still had a long way to go to become a hero.

“I will work harder.”

Junhyuk walked out and drove to Chungil. The restaurant was very famous for its high-quality sushi. He went in, told them his name, and they guided him deep into the restaurant. Because he didn’t see Eunseo, he went ahead and took a seat. While he wiped his hands with the wet towel, Eunseo walked in.

She smiled at him. n.o.body else was following her, which shocked him.

“You came alone?”

“Yes.”

Eunseo took a seat, wiped her hands with another wet towel, and said, “I’ve ordered, OK?”

“Certainly!”

He did not mind. She looked over at him and then poured some water into his cup.

“Did you hear about the monster areas becoming larger?”

“I heard.”

“The military forces have already been defeated, and people are looking at us for help.”

Guardians was now the center of attention.

Eunseo continued, “Everyone’s realized how serious the problem is, so they are all gathering novices. Because South Korea didn’t experience any monster waves this time, the novices will come here.”

Up to that point, South Korea had been the country with the greatest number of monster attacks, but this time, things were different. There were no monster areas, and there had been no monster sp.a.w.ns. Therefore, other countries had decided to send their novices there.

“That’s good to hear.”

Eunseo took a sip of water and said, “So far, we’ve confirmed 232 novices.”

“Officially.”

Junhyuk thought there could be more, but previously, only one out of a hundred thousand became a novice.

She nodded.

“Unofficially, I think it’s double the official number.”

“That’s still fairly high.”

Eunseo fixed her gla.s.ses.

“Due to the monster areas, there’s been an increase in novices, and the monster sp.a.w.ns on Wednesday probably generated even more novices.”

“That means that none of them are strong enough.”

There were differences between newly-activated novices and novices that had survived the battlefield.

Eunseo nodded heavily in agreement.

“I am not sure if these novices can stay alive or if they can even survive the Dimensional Battlefield.”

Becoming a novice didn’t solve anything. Their survival rates were extremely low. Novices seemed powerful, but in the Dimensional Battlefield, they only served one purpose: bait. That is, unless a novice developed a power of the highest rank.

Junhyuk frowned deeply.

“They won’t be called to the Dimensional Battlefield for another two weeks, so they won’t be weeded out.”

It was the first time Eunseo was hearing that. He hadn’t planned on keeping it a secret from her, so he told her about the legends and the fact that the battlefield was preparing for a new season.

Eunseo frowned.

“So, there will be more abnormal narcolepsy cases.”

“They are in recess.”

“Sigh… Is there anything we can do?”

Junhyuk knew that things wouldn’t change just because they were gathering novices.

“How is the development of the new equipment going?”

“Elise is working diligently on it. A research team came to Korea, and they brought new machines to make the new equipment. We are building a factory inside Guardians.”

There was a limit to what humans could make. To make the equipment efficiently, they needed to automate the process. It would take time and investment to make better equipment, but it was necessary.

Junhyuk took a sip of the water when the food came out. Then, he waited until the servers left and said, “Because the novices are from all over the world, they might not agree on which monster area to attack first.”

Novices had to get rid of tears, and they would try to focus on the ones in their own countries first.

Eunseo stared at him and said, “I have a favor to ask.”

“What is it?”

She felt nervous about it, but she went ahead and asked anyway, “For people to trust Guardians, we need the Dark Knight who destroyed the first dimensional tear.”

Junhyuk had been about to raise his chopstick, but he froze when he heard her.

“I have to step in?”

“If you do not, no one will listen to us.”

He took a moment to think. Eunseo was being honest. He had to step in. But if he did, people would focus their attention on him.

As he thought, she whispered to him, “You don’t have to show your face. But you have to show your Dark Knight armor and your powers.”

Junhyuk took a piece of sashimi and chewed it.

“I can’t, but you could film me.”

Eunseo smiled at him.

“I’ll be grateful if we can do it!”

It would be good enough if Guardians had a relationship with the Dark Knight. That would be effective.

Junhyuk didn’t know it yet, but people around the world wanted to see more of the Dark Knight. The leaders of the world were especially interested in him.

He didn’t tell Eunseo about Vera’s gift. He would do so after he had received it. Junhyuk had to prepare first, so he would wait some more.

Still, he had to give Eunseo some hope.

“If I attack a tear, it’ll be after next Friday.”

“I’ll make a list of novices and send it to you, and I’ll find out our first target tear.”

He took another sashimi.

“However, Elise must complete the new equipment before that. Without the new equipment, an operation isn’t possible.”

Without it, novices wouldn’t survive B-ranked monsters, or even C-ranked monsters for that matter. The equipment should be ready before anything could happen.

He chewed the piece of sashimi.

“You should eat and talk.”

She smiled and picked up a piece for herself, eating it.

“Are you training?” he asked, looking at her.

“Yes, I am.”

She only had her counterattack power, so she couldn’t practice it alone, but she had been training her combat skills.

“I can take you to the training facility,” he replied.

Her attack stat had increased, but her defense had taken a ma.s.sive leap. Junhyuk could take her attack and also train her.

She stared at him gladly.

“Does that mean I can train with you?”

He nodded and answered, “The monsters are even stronger than before, so you can’t hunt with me. But I will spar with you.”

Sarang didn’t have to be there since they had the regenerative basin, and she nodded.

“It’s been difficult trying to train properly, so this will help me.”

He stared at her and asked, “Did you find any new items on Earth?”

Smiling, she placed her hand forward. She was wearing a gold bracelet he hadn’t seen before.

“I got one.”