Obtained End-Game Gear for a Bowl of Ramen - Chapter 37

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 37. Loki
The Korean Hunter Management Agency’s security level was raised two notches higher than usual. Even coffee deliveries and lunch services couldn’t get past the entrance.
The upper floors’ security was severe to the point of being oppressive. The air felt sharp enough to cut if you let your guard down for even a moment. Oh Seung-woo, a director in the conference room, scratched at his tingling skin.
“This is a specialized report of confessions from the Welcomers who attempted escape. South Korea has obtained information that even the United States doesn’t know. With the help of an EX-rank Hunter, Korea is advancing ahead of any nation in the world.”
Jo Yu-cheon, the director, aligned the stack of documents neatly and tapped the edges with his fingertips.
“Director Oh. Do you trust the Welcomers? They’re gate worshippers. Madmen who want the world to collapse.”
“Of course we can’t trust the Welcomers. But we can trust the EX-rank Hunter.”
Oh Seung-woo answered with conviction.
“The Welcomers fear the EX-rank Hunter. They’ve sworn to speak only the truth, with the EX-rank Hunter as their witness. I tested them dozens of times along the way, but I’m certain.”
“EX? No, Director Oh. They weren’t like that when we first captured them. When did this EX-rank Hunter even make contact?”
Oh Seung-woo and Jo Yu-cheon glanced at the documents. Anomalous Gate. The Welcomers’ means of transport. Spatial magic.
“Could it be inside the Anomalous Gate? Is the EX-rank Hunter also in league with the Welcomers?”
“Or perhaps someone with skills that even exceed the Welcomers’. Director, I trust the EX-rank Hunter. I believe we can use this information to our advantage.”
Oh Seung-woo spoke with emphasis. Jo Yu-cheon seemed to have reached a decision after deliberation.
“Very well. We might even be able to attack the Welcomers’ headquarters in Japan. But given how important this is, we should prepare slowly and carefully.”
* * *
‘I went in thinking the Anomalous Gate was some chaos gate like usual, so I didn’t get anything to eat.’
Jung Ho felt disappointed. Still, there was a gain—he’d thoroughly beaten the Welcomers. Vented his frustration and incidentally caught some criminals as well.
‘They seemed to be running away. Can the Welcomers use gates as a means of transport like I do?’
But the Gate Guide Authority was exclusive to Hero’s Tower. In this world, Jung Ho was the only person who’d climbed Hero’s Tower. Dae-young had guaranteed it directly.
Then what about the Welcomers? It couldn’t be that they’d already climbed Trial’s Tower to floor 100. The climbing records for Trial’s Tower are publicly disclosed. The current record is Ronald at floor 64.
‘If I don’t know, I should ask. Entry to Hero’s Tower.’
Whoosh! A soft light engulfed Jung Ho and spat him out into the lobby of Hero’s Tower.
“Hello, Dae-young. I had something to ask you—”
Jung Ho hesitated mid-greeting. There was someone unfamiliar standing next to Dae-young with his back turned. Red hair, small stature, skinny build—yet he emanated an aura far stronger than the blacksmith from the volcano, who was massive.
“Slurp, slurp. This is ramen? Slurp. Oof, it’s spicy. Cough, cough!”

“This won’t do. Dae-young, get me some water.”
‘What? Water? Surely not…?!’
Dae-young withdrew a bottle of mineral water using his tentacles. The scrawny man tossed out a lump of gold and carelessly poured the water into the ramen.
“Ah. That’s better. Not spicy at all now, and the temperature is just right…”
“What are you doing!!”
Jung Ho rushed forward in shock. The man who’d poured water into the ramen seemed even more surprised to see him.
“Who is this guy?! Big Shadow, is there already someone who’s climbed Trial’s Tower to floor 100?”

“Ah. So this is that guy? You startled me. I should be the one scaring you.”
The suspicious man looked Jung Ho up and down. Jung Ho looked back at him. Up close, he was small like a dwarf, but as Jung Ho came to his senses, he realized he was looking upward.
‘Wait? When did he get so tall?’
“Khe-he-he-he. Dae-young! Look at that guy’s face! He’s gaping like a fool!”

The red-haired dwarf grew taller, then shorter, then taller again before settling on a height roughly matching Jung Ho’s.
“Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Loki. Is what I say the truth? Or is it a lie?”
“Huh? That’s a paradox. More importantly, who are you exactly?”
Loki held out his palm. Fire bloomed, and a lump of gold fell with a clink.
“I’m a trickster. A troublemaker. A liar. A walking disaster. But I have no interest in treasure. So who am I?”
‘This madman… or is he Loki from Norse mythology?’
If it was Loki, then he was the one who brought about Ragnarok. No wonder he felt far stronger than the blacksmith from the volcano.
‘Still, even so. Pouring water into a perfectly good bowl of ramen is unforgivable.’
“Huh? Dae-young. That guy is glaring at me.”

“No way. I didn’t pour water! If you don’t believe me, taste it yourself.”
Loki held out the ramen bowl with the most wronged expression in the world. Jung Ho took the bowl with suspicion. For ramen with water poured in, the bowl was surprisingly hot.
‘Did he really not pour water?’
Slurp. The ramen was lukewarm and bland.
“You did pour water in it!”
He’d lit fire in his palm earlier and only heated the bowl with it! Loki grabbed his belly and laughed uproariously.
“Khe-he-he-he! Your reaction is perfect! Big Shadow! Can I take this guy with me?”

Loki snatched the ramen bowl back from Jung Ho’s hands. He slurped it down loudly, gulping down an entire bowl at once.
“Tastes like nothing.”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or lying. My head just ached. I wished he’d disappear somewhere and leave me alone. I decided to ignore him and get back to business with Dae-young.
“Dae-young. There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”

“That’s not what I meant to ask.”

“What’s an Anomalous Gate?”
“A toy I made!”
Loki thrust his face suddenly close. The reek of ash, flame, and sulfur filled the air.
“I made it based on my Shoes of Swift Passage. Punch a hole between spaces, connect them with a corridor, and boom—that’s an Anomalous Gate.”
Loki spouted this plausibly enough. But Loki was a liar, wasn’t he? How much of this could I actually trust?
“Dae-young. Is what he’s saying true?”

“So an item like that exists? And the Welcomers have it?”
They were far more troublesome than I’d thought. That’s why no one, no matter how many from around the world came after them, could capture them. How do you catch someone who tears open a gate and escapes?
“But… Anomalous Gates don’t give rewards, right?”
“No reward? You must’ve met someone there. Beat them up, steal their items or whatever—that’s your reward.”
“Ah. So that’s the system…”
Jung Ho mentally edited his internal notes: Anomalous Gates offer no rewards.
“Anyway, thanks for explaining. I got my questions answered. I should get going now…”
Dae-young’s tentacle and Loki’s hand both seized Jung Ho by the shoulders.

“That’s right, kid. The Big Shadow was just raving about how you make noodles so well. Really! Couldn’t stop drooling! Let me have a taste!”
Rice thieves. No—noodle thieves. Well, noodle muggers, more like.
* * *
“Slurrrp! Ugh. Tastes awful. Ptooey. Never eating this again.”
Loki stacked ten empty noodle bowls into a tower and smacked his lips. Watching it all, I couldn’t even find words to say.
“Have you had enough now? I really need to go.”
Jung Ho stumbled out of Hero’s Tower half-dead on his feet. Making noodles is easy. It’s fun. It’s enjoyable. But keeping up with Loki was absolutely exhausting.
‘That’s why the other gods probably curse him. What kind of cranky deity is he anyway?’
Still, Jung Ho couldn’t bring himself to say a word to a god, even to his face. The moment his retreating figure vanished, Loki’s expression shifted.
“Dae-young. Think that kid’s actually going to make it all the way to the top of Hero’s Tower?”

“The real problem comes after he climbs it. Whether he becomes the key, or the second lock.”

A gurgling sound rumbled from somewhere near Dae-young’s belly. Loki smacked his own lips hungrily.
“So… should we play a little prank on him?”
Loki snapped his fingers together. A ring of fire carved through space and opened an Anomalous Gate. Just as Loki was about to step through, a tentacle seized him.

“I’m not touching the trials. Just tweaking the rewards a little—that should be fine, right?”
Dae-young’s crimson gaze narrowed to slits.

Loki placed a crimson gem slightly smaller than his fist on his palm. Dae-young’s eyes swelled to twice their normal size.
-Living Flame (Legendary): A crystalline entity of flame that lives and moves with its own soul. It can grow without limit and burn without end.

“Did I give them pieces of my sole? I just scattered them around carelessly. They picked them up themselves.”
Loki brushed Dae-young’s tentacle away with a flick.
“I’m not doing anything deliberate. Fire is what you make of it. If he plays with it and burns to death, that’s on him.”
Loki took the Living Flame and vanished beyond the Anomalous Gate. Dae-young made no move to stop him.

* * *
[Skill Activated: Trial’s Tower Entry]
[Entering Trial’s Tower Floor 24.]
[Floor 24 Objective: Escape the Sea of Cloud Jellyfish]
Pop! Jung Ho’s eyes snapped open on a floating island. Island was generous—there was barely enough room to set your feet. Narrower than a seven-person elevator.
Before him drifted jellyfish in pale pink, gently undulating. Most were large enough to take a step or two across, but there were bigger ones too.
Whoooosh—
A jellyfish the size of a house glided slowly past his vision. Cosmic horror. In an instant, a primordial dread seized Jung Ho.
“Wow… wow. Floor 24 is brutal. If I fall from here…”
Jung Ho glanced down at the sea of clouds below. He didn’t even want to imagine what lay beneath.
Of course, even if you slip and fall on Floor 24, you don’t die. You experience something and return to the starting point—he’d already read that much on Hunter Online’s strategy guides.
But nobody ever explained what that “something” actually was. Everyone insisted it wasn’t a big deal, which only made it more terrifying.
‘Don’t fall no matter what. The objective is to reach the other side by stepping on jellyfish and running, right?’
The jellyfish drifted without pause, undulating constantly. Occasional gusts of wind sent them lurching to one side or the other. This was no ordinary floor.
Trial’s Tower Floor 24 — where hunters who’d relied solely on raw firepower or gear found themselves grinding to a halt. Without proper stats and experience, it was impassable.
‘But do I really need to step on the jellyfish? Earth Manipulation.’
[Skill in use: Earth Manipulation (Legendary)]
[Manipulates earth, stone, and minerals.]
[Hero’s Power Stage 4 resonates!]
[Duplicate Technique activates!]
[Skill copied: Earth Manipulation (Legendary)]
Crack-crack-crack!!! A bridge of obsidian extended outward in both directions. Jung Ho bounded lightly across it, even high-fiving a nearby jellyfish as he passed.
[Trial’s Tower Floor 24 cleared!]
[Clear time — 00:00:29 seconds.]
[Clear rank: EX]
[EX-rank reward: Obtained 248 Mana Stones.]
[EX-rank special reward: Obtained 1 Evidence of Hero.]
[Rank 1 reclaimed! Record updated!]
Floor 24 cleared without any real crisis. Jung Ho logged into Hunter Online to look up Floor 25 strategies, and then — wait.
<BREAKING NEWS!! The mythical 1-minute wall on Trial’s Tower Floor 24 has finally been broken!!>
‘Is it really worth making such a fuss over?’
Jung Ho tilted his head. The post focused on the time record rather than the EX-rank clear itself, which struck him as odd. Curious what the commotion was about, he clicked.
└Isn’t breaking the 1-minute record more important than an EX clear?
└It absolutely is. Honestly, the actual time an EX clear takes? S-rank hunters could match that if they retried lower floors. Ronald wouldn’t struggle to clear Floor 1 in a single second.
└But Trial’s Tower rankings can only be updated by hunters at the Appropriate Level, right? So an S-rank re-clear could theoretically post a better time than an EX-rank first clear.
└Floor 24 is different, though. Riwei calculated the theoretical minimum time himself — 1 minute 13 seconds. And that’s under ideal conditions only. Beating that? Literally impossible.
└But the EX-rank did beat it, didn’t they? In under 30 seconds, even?
└So what does that mean? An EX-rank isn’t just that powerful — it means they weren’t going full strength on the earlier floors either.
└They waltzed up the tower and still got EX? They blew past the record Riwei set while coughing blood and pushing himself to his limit, like it was a casual stroll through the neighborhood?
└Riwei, stay off Hunter Online for a while. You’re going to cry when you see this.
Jung Ho let out a hollow laugh. So breaking the Floor 24 record was newsworthy enough for this. He hadn’t realized he’d shattered the theoretical minimum by over thirty seconds.
‘Poor Riwei getting dragged through the mud for no reason. I kind of feel bad about that.’
└I am Riwei. I am not crying at all. In fact, I am smiling. Because the EX-rank will crumble on Floor 25. The core challenge of Floor 25 isn’t how many you can kill. It’s how many you can save. Can you who only know how to kill steal away my blessing? You need me, EX-rank. If you asked me for advice even now…….
Pop! A new comment had been posted. It really looked like Riwei himself had written it, and somehow it read like he’d been grinding his teeth the whole time. Probably just his imagination.
‘Besides, I’ve already done plenty of saving back in the Hero’s Diary.’
Continued in next episode ▶
Got an endgame item from a single bowl of ramen
Author
Haeun Baek
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grae Publishing
Inquiries
[email protected]
Publication date
August 24, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260423069
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※ Pentagram is waiting for your precious manuscript.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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