Junhyuk went to see Elise for another reason. He pulled the body of the Doppelganger King from his Spatial Bag.

When Elise saw it, she asked, “I’ve never seen this monster.”

At that moment, the body of the Doppelganger King was translucent and formless. It did not look like Junhyuk anymore, but its regular self.

Elise was inspecting it carefully, and Junhyuk said, “This is a Doppelganger King. It’s an A-ranked monster. I met someone in the Dimensional Battlefield that told me that the heart of a Doppelganger King carried dimensional error energy.”

“Really?!”

Her eyes widened as she stared at it. The words dimensional error sounded important and interesting, and she smiled.

“Do you want me to research it?”

He nodded.

“It’s an A-ranked monster, so we could use it for other purposes as well.”

“OK. The research value is extremely high.”

Then, Junhyuk pulled out a B-ranked ghost tiger from his bag.

“And this is a ghost tiger, which has the ability to hide by disappearing from view. I want to know where that power comes from.”

“I was going to ask you to get me one of those.”

People were always after invisibility powers, and Elise was also interested in it.

“Then, please, do your thing.”

“I’ll be very busy.”

Junhyuk nodded and said, “I also have a lot of work to do.”

“Tomorrow is Friday. Are you going to the Dimensional Battlefield?”

“No, I go every other week.”

“OK. When I discover something, I’ll call you.”

“Sure.”

They were done talking, and Junhyuk exited her lab. He teleported away from Guardians, heading to his house in Seoul. Sarang was already there.

“Long time, no see.”

Sarang smiled at him.

“When did you get back?”

“I got here around noon. I had to go see Guardians and Elise.”

She smiled.

“Was stopping the j.a.panese dimensional tear hard?”

“It was hard, yes,” he answered as he nodded. “I had to deal with three A-ranked monsters at once.”

“Is that possible?!” Sarang asked, shocked.

He answered, “It is.”

It hadn’t been easy. It would be more correct to say that he had almost died. If the combination of monsters had been different, he might’ve been killed.

While Sarang was stunned, he said, “Let’s eat!”

“Sure!”

She had brought three-minute instant curry with her. After they ate together, they headed into the training facility.

There was still time before the next monster wave, so he asked, “How was your battle?”

Sarang shook her head and answered, “I died three times… I suffered like a dog.”

“Was it that hard?”

“Yes, without you.”

He continued, “What about your enemies?”

“We won all the same.”

Sarang had impressive powers now. She’d started equipping herself with defensive items, and her attack was outstanding. She could use her electric blast to paralyze enemies and she could also heal.

Her powers were different from his, and she would compliment him. When he was a champion, he only had one attack power. He had had mostly defensive powers, but Sarang already had two attack powers. She might end up more powerful than him.

However, she had died three times, which meant the enemies had been stronger than he had expected.

As he talked to her, he pulled out the core of the dimensional tear, and Sarang stared at it curiously.

“What is that?”

Inspecting the core, he said, “This was inside the dimensional tear, at the heart of the tower core. It doesn’t make dimensional tears, but the monster area was filled with energy from this device.”

Looking at it, he murmured, “So, I wanted to check on something.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

Junhyuk held the core with both hands and focused his thoughts on it. His own energy coalesced with the core’s energy. If the energy had been mana, he would’ve been able to absorb it, but it wasn’t mana.

“What is it?”

It expanded s.p.a.ce, like the monster area expansions, but it was totally different from mana. He kept feeling the energy, something he felt when he crossed the border to the monster area.

As Junhyuk focused on it, Sarang distanced herself from him and started absorbing mana. She knew what she had to do to get stronger. She was still learning from Vera, but she could absorb mana and create mana circles around her heart.

Both of them forgot about the pa.s.sing time. As Junhyuk opened his eyes slowly, he felt something. There were beings in front of him.

“There are three now?!”

He could deal with them alone, but he would have to use his ultimate to kill the A-ranked monsters, and even then, he would barely be able to do it.

Junhyuk turned to Sarang, and she smiled at him.

“You were telling the truth. The number has increased.”

He summoned all of his equipment and said, “Let’s kill them first and do more meditative training after.”

“OK.”

He ran forward, and Sarang shot her electric blasts.

—

It was a good thing that more A-ranked monsters had shown up. He needed more materials for magitek gear. However, while different types of A-ranked monsters had shown up, none of them had been Doppelganger Kings.

After killing them all, he clicked his tongue. He was grateful for the variety, but the Salamander did not drop anything.

He had to destroy its core to kill it, and once he did, the whole monster exploded, leaving nothing behind. He knew of no other way to kill it.

After they killed the monsters, Junhyuk talked to her about what would happen the next day. They knew about their enemies’ powers, but they didn’t know about their enemies’ equipment.

Junhyuk had one attack power and one support power. His ultimate was also an attack, but his equipment was better than most tanks, which meant his attack was better than most damagers.

The enemies could have someone as strong as him. He also had to a.n.a.lyze his own powers and worry about forming a team of his own.

Junhyuk talked about his own experiences, and as he did, Sarang thought about different situations, running simulations in her head.

He felt her simulations were accurate, so he agreed with her. He trusted her to come up with the best combination for herself and her team.

They also talked about battle locations that would be advantageous to her. They had already fought on the Champions’ Battlefield, so they could come up with strategies for her.

After sending her home, he entered the training facility again. There, he pulled out the core. He had heard that management wasn’t able to produce them easily, which meant that management couldn’t easily control them either. He thought the core might contain secrets that management was hiding.

He held the core and focused on it. The core itself was extremely valuable. He had acquired it easily, which had him with conflicting thoughts in his head.

It was Friday, and he felt the world turning sharp white. Then, Ariel appeared in front of him. She was smiling brightly.

[Welcome to your viewing box!]

“This is the viewing box?”

He sat down comfortably.

[There are two ways to watch the match. You can have a bird’s eyes view of the battle, or you can look through a partic.i.p.ant’s viewpoint.]

“That’s interesting.”

[We are in a separate timeline from the Champions’ Battlefield, so you may rewind and fast forward the battle as you watch.]

Junhyuk shook his head.

“That’s funny. I talked to Artlan before during one of my battles…”

[Conversations are possible. You may use your device to do so, but you can’t give the partic.i.p.ants any advice. Their timeline is different from ours.]

“Advice…”

It was meant to prevent him from letting Sarang know about her enemies’ movements since he could rewind the battle.

Junhyuk turned to Ariel and asked, “Can I listen to them?”

[You cannot hear voices, but you may hear other sounds.]

He smacked his lips.

“OK. I’ll watch through the eyes of the Champion Sarang.”

[I’ll get everything ready.]

He rested back on his chair, and his vision changed. The place was mostly silent, but he could hear footsteps. Sarang was meeting Gongon and the other champion.

The elf was smiling with his eyes. He looked similar to Diane. The elf was very handsome, and Junhyuk felt Sarang’s heart pounding.

He laughed very hard at that.

“I can’t hear her voice, but I feel her heart pounding. She is too focused on people’s faces.”

He couldn’t hear their conversation, but he could feel the battlefield through her heartbeat, which piqued his interest.

They grouped up and started moving. Gongon and Sarang were moving together. They did not know how good the elf was, so they decided to stick together.

They headed out, but Junhyuk did not want to watch them walking for hours.

“Fast forward.”

Suddenly, the images of the battlefield zoomed across his eyes, and he saw the enemies on a watchtower.

“The minions are buffed just like the ones on Nightmare Mountain.”

[Yes, they are.]

They had planned accordingly for the minions, he and Sarang. Heroes couldn’t ignore minions now, which meant that champions couldn’t either.

The enemy forces kept the minions ahead of them as they advanced. When they closed in, Gongon stepped forward. The lizardmen attacked Gongon, but Gongon dodged all of their attacks, swinging his tail at them calmly.

The tail whack was a light attack, but the lizardmen died as they got hit. Sarang was shooting her electric arrows at them from a distance.

The enemy champions started moving, a tank and a damager. The tank attacked Gongon, while the damager did the same but from a distance. As expected, the damager’s range was about thirty meters.

Gongon transformed to take down the tank. The tank got launched away, and Gongon used his firebreath to sweep the battlefield. Through Sarang’s eyes, Junhyuk saw the enemies become larger.

An electric blast hit the damager, paralyzing him, and suddenly, thunderbolts crashed down on his head.

The damager faded, and Gongon punched the tank on the head.

The enemies could have had great damaging capabilities, but they hadn’t had a chance to attack.

Junhyuk murmured to himself, “Nice!”