Chapter 8

Chapter 8

This morning began peacefully with the chirping of birds.

Haejin woke up early and prepared to head out.

But he wasn’t alone.

“Pasu, ready?”

“Woof woof!”

“Listen carefully. Just do exactly what we practiced. Your nose is good, so all you need to do is smell for monsters. If one actually appears, warn me. Got it?”

Pasu gave a small nod as though he truly understood.

Perhaps because he wasn’t an ordinary dog, but one tamed through a Hunter ability.

He definitely understood his owner Haejin remarkably well.

“My trusty ride starts up fine too. Okay.”

There was one more special thing about today.

A large four-wheeled ATV stood in front of The Forest Pension’s gate.

Haejin had picked it up cheaply secondhand yesterday.

There were plenty of high-end models, but he deliberately chose a cheap one with the largest cargo rack.

The reason was simple.

Its main purpose was transportation, not recreational riding.

“Cargo check complete. Then I guess it’s about time we headed out.”

All sorts of miscellaneous items were loaded onto the ATV’s cargo rack.

From large sheets of plywood to boxes packed with tools.

Vroom-!

After putting a dog helmet on Pasu and loading him aboard as well, Haejin sped off down the country road.

There was one reason he had gone to such lengths to prepare today.

There was an experiment he absolutely wanted to try.

‘Ownerless houses can be claimed immediately. If I use this ridiculous system properly, maybe I can create a genuine miracle economy.’

As time passed after his awakening, Haejin had gradually deepened his understanding of his ‘God-Tier Landlord’ abilities.

This time, he intended to test an application of them.

The country road was overgrown with grass because no one maintained it.

Letting the rattling ATV carry him along, he drove steadily without stopping until he had gone fairly far.

His destination was an empty lot about two kilometers from the village.

It was nothing special, just flat land covered in thick brush and rice paddies.

But it was perfect for what Haejin had in mind.

“Roughly speaking... I don’t see any monsters. What do you think, Pasu?”

“Woof!”

“No monsters? Good. Then we’ll do it here. Pasu, keep watch. This is important, so don’t mess up, okay? Got it?”

After telling Pasu to stand guard, he began the real work.

“Heave-ho!”

Groaning with effort, he unloaded the huge pile of cargo from the rack.

He spread out dozens of plywood sheets, then began hammering nails into them.

Bang bang bang bang-!

The weather was cool, but the physical labor soon left beads of sweat gathering on the bridge of his nose.

An unexpected woodworking session.

He joined plywood panels together to make a floor, then connected more upward to form a large rectangular structure.

‘For now, let’s aim to make it look as much like a house as possible.’

Exactly.

What Haejin was building in the middle of this empty field was a house.

He had no real experience, so along the way he nearly smashed his finger once and lightly cut himself while sawing.

There were plenty of mishaps.

But after traveling back and forth between the pension and the empty lot countless times to haul materials.

By the time the morning sun was beginning to sink toward evening, Haejin finally managed to finish it.

“Drive this one in, and... done!”

He completed it entirely by himself, without anyone else’s help.

A makeshift structure of roughly six-and-a-half square meters, crudely assembled from plywood.

Even to its creator, Lee Haejin, it looked less like a human house and more like a shabby doghouse for Pasu, but that hardly mattered.

Its appearance wasn’t important.

Technically speaking, this was still a building, wasn’t it?

That was enough.

‘Whew... Now comes the real test. Will this house I built actually register...?’

With a pounding heart, Haejin attempted to register the structure.

What if it failed?

Then all the backbreaking labor he had done throughout the entire day would have been completely wasted.

No, it would have been dog’s work.

‘Please, please, please accept it...’

He stepped inside the makeshift structure and, clutching his pounding chest, attempted to register the building.

And at that moment.

-Ding!

[You have entered an ownerless building!]

[Would you like to acquire this property?]

“Aaaaaah! It workeddddd!!”

Had the system’s ding! ever sounded so welcome in his life?

When Haejin roared in joy, Pasu joined him with an awooooo- howl.

He had suspected it, and sure enough.

It had been close, but the structure had successfully been recognized as a building.

Without hesitation, he immediately selected acquire.

-You have acquired new real estate!

-The list of available properties has been updated!

“Kuuu, nice. Expansion base successfully established!”

He was genuinely so happy that laughter kept escaping him.

His hypothesis had become certainty.

‘Now I don’t need to scrape together money to buy ruined buildings or keep wandering around searching for empty houses. I can just build temporary structures wherever I need them!’

It was a method he had only dared imagine until now.

Setting up makeshift structures like expansion bases.

If he kept repeating this, Haejin could create nearly unlimited bases wherever he wanted and use his Skills there.

Of course, for now, it was limited to Demonic Realm areas where land had no real monetary value.

‘If I tried this in a city, the police would tear it down before I could worry about property rights. Still, who cares? Now I can go looking for the monsters myself!’

Amid his excitement, there was one more drawback.

For now, he couldn’t make the house any larger than this.

Building this one tiny six-and-a-half-square-meter structure had required more than ten trips back and forth to the pension.

And since he couldn’t exactly sleep overnight in this makeshift hut, he still needed to use the ATV for transportation.

To bring the ATV through a doorway using ‘Go Home,’ this size was about the limit.

‘Still, once I make more money, I can get a bigger house. Or I can commit to building a larger temporary structure. As long as I can earn money, every problem can be solved.’

All the monsters around his original area had already been wiped out.

So for now, the most important thing was that he had established another completely safe base in a different area.

‘It may be small and precious right now, but just wait. My dream will only keep growing grander!’

Perhaps the reward after all that effort tasted too sweet.

Haejin even started admiring himself.

Pasu stared blankly at his owner, then stuck out his tongue and turned his head away.

* * *

Once you had established a base, what came next?

Hunting, obviously.

“Hmm-hmm~”

The method itself hadn’t changed.

After bringing over the grill he used at the pension, he began grilling meat in the yard of the makeshift structure just like before.

Perhaps coming this far really had paid off.

“Woof woof! Grrrr... Woof woof woof!”

“Ooh, Pasu. Something coming? Do you smell something?”

“Whiiine!”

Not long after the smell of meat began spreading, Pasu started barking.

The dog, who had been sitting quietly, suddenly sprang up, sniffed the air, and stared warily toward one side of the bushes.

Haejin assumed it would be another Garbage Dog.

After all, he had never seen any monsters around here other than Garbage Dogs.

So he stood there with his long spear, waiting for the monster.

“W-wait? What the hell is that?!”

The bushes rustled, and an enormous creature he had never seen before emerged.

It wasn’t a Garbage Dog.

It was another beast-type monster, but its presence was so overwhelming that it made Garbage Dogs look like trash mobs.

A gigantic lizard over two meters long.

Its entire body was covered in glittering silver scales, and obviously dangerous saliva dripped from its flicking tongue.

Haejin knew this monster’s name.

“A Basilisk... At least it’s not an adult. Is that a juvenile?”

It was one of the named monsters officially designated as a ‘Boss’ by the Hunter Association.

It was so powerful and durable that Garbage Dogs truly looked like trash mobs beside it.

“I heard even Hunters around Level 10 normally form parties of five to raid these things. Even if it’s a juvenile, did something way too strong show up on the first try?”

Despite having an invincibility Skill, Haejin honestly felt a little intimidated by the appearance of something far stronger than expected.

Maybe it had caught the scent of the meat perfectly.

The juvenile Basilisk hissed repeatedly as it began crawling rapidly toward Haejin on all fours.

Of course.

Bam!

Right in front of the grill loaded with meat.

Its head slammed straight into the invincible barrier.

-Screeeech?!

Perhaps shocked by the invisible wall.

The Basilisk let out a horrible cry and hesitated, then began ramming its body against the barrier repeatedly as though refusing to give up.

Boom- Boom-!

As long as ‘Safe Property’ guaranteed it, Haejin and Pasu were literally invincible while inside his property.

But perhaps because the Basilisk was a monster with the title of Boss.

Or perhaps because this wasn’t a proper house, but merely a temporary structure barely held together with boards.

“It’s shaking... Damn, this is making me nervous.”

“Bark bark bark!”

Every time the creature rammed the barrier, Haejin’s makeshift structure shook as though an earthquake were hitting it.

It didn’t seem about to collapse immediately, but the difference in raw strength was obvious.

“I’m not losing to you. What can you even do from out there anyway?!”

Haejin gritted his teeth and thrust his spear.

But.

Clang-!

“Ghk?!”

A completely different sensation from stabbing a Garbage Dog traveled through his fingers and up both arms.

Instead of piercing into the monster, the spear was knocked straight back.

‘What the hell is this? Is it even alive? It feels like I just stabbed a rock...’

Even after thrusting the spear, it didn’t feel as though he had inflicted so much as a scratch.

Basilisks were said to be especially dangerous for two reasons.

The first was their uniquely aggressive and persistent temperament.

Once they marked something as prey, they would keep coming back until they finally killed it.

And the second was their silver scales.

They were only about as thin as a thumbnail, yet supposedly far harder than even diamond.

Thousands upon thousands of such scales.

Covered the Basilisk’s enormous body from head to tail.

He had let his guard down a little because it was only a juvenile, but its defense was still far too high.

‘They say those scales make one worth a fortune if you can kill it, basically whatever price you ask... but how am I supposed to kill this walking pile of money?’

If he could kill it, he would hit the jackpot, but right now it might as well have been a mountain.

Wasn’t there some way?

“Whew...”

Haejin let out a small sigh as he desperately racked his brain.