I Opened the Final Boss with My Own Hands – Ch. 2

I Opened the Final Boss with My Own Hands

Chapter 2

— — —

It had already been seven years.

Now that time had passed—a duration that could be considered short or long depending on how you looked at it—she wasn’t exactly wallowing in fresh grief.

Gi Yeon-hwa’s memories of the day her parents died were hazy.

A building had collapsed due to a Monster, and her parents had been buried under the rubble. Gi Yeon-hwa had been there too, bleeding and injured.

Usually, such an intense memory should be vivid in one’s mind.

Yet, Gi Yeon-hwa couldn’t recall the specific details of that time. This had been the case since the very day after she lost them.

It felt as if the memory itself had been tightly sealed by something, preventing it from surfacing. It was like a locked door that wouldn't budge, no matter how much she grabbed and shook it.

Psychiatrists had diagnosed it as a defense mechanism, warning that forcing herself to remember would be detrimental, but she still harbored some lingering doubts.

Furthermore, strangely enough, her parents' bodies—which should have been under the rubble—had gone missing, so she hadn't even been able to hold a proper funeral.

Perhaps because of these reasons, her grief had cooled relatively quickly.

After all, she had lost the context and the narrative, receiving only the final result….

So, right now, she was merely stirred by a bit of longing and a great deal of curiosity.

And by curiosity, she meant:

‘Come to think of it, I haven’t tried this with a book.’

Gi Yeon-hwa was obsessed with web novels, but she didn’t collect physical books. That was why she had never tried inserting the Key of Babylon into a book and turning it until now.

‘I did want to buy and collect the physical volumes, though.’

But where would she get the money for that? She was too busy saving every penny to unlock even one more chapter of a new series.

Between the government’s Monster damage compensation and her part-time job at the convenience store, she couldn’t afford to collect physical copies or merchandise.

…Besides, she wasn't the type to save money anyway; she preferred to eat whatever she wanted, which left her even shorter on cash.

Uuuuugh.

Gi Yeon-hwa groaned with a piece of salmon in her mouth. Then, as if to steel her resolve, she untied her hair—which was already tied up—and tied it back again for no reason.

Since her life had already turned into a modern fantasy novel, why not go for it one more time?

Such thoughts began to poke their heads into Gi Yeon-hwa’s mind.

For starters, Gates existed in reality. It had been proven that other worlds definitely existed and that one could travel between them once a door was opened.

And if this followed the usual clichés, wouldn't an analog method be more effective?

Perhaps the reason she had failed to open a door to another world before was because she had tried it on an electronic device like a smartphone.

[Key of Babylon]

A navy-blue key with gold trim appeared in mid-air and landed firmly in her hand.

It was an object with a sacred appearance that might have inspired awe, as if it belonged in a myth, but Gi Yeon-hwa, who had been using it to seal snack bags, felt no particular emotion toward it.

She hooked her index finger through the wide ring of the key and spun it around a few times for no reason.

Snap!

Gi Yeon-hwa suddenly gripped it tight.

‘What if I try it and fail again….’

Damn….

It would be so embarrassing….

No one was watching, but still!

Traumatized by the awkwardness of her previous failure, Gi Yeon-hwa chewed on her salmon seriously.

It’s not like I can’t eat while I’m worrying. I have to eat what’s delicious.

Nom. After popping the last piece into her mouth, she finally stood up and picked up *Heavenly Demon Hwasan*.

“This is my first time reading a martial arts novel.”

Gi Yeon-hwa’s knowledge of the martial arts genre was quite shallow for someone with seven years of experience as a web novel reader.

Isn’t it just guys in Eastern-style clothes learning martial arts and fighting each other?

That was exactly the extent of what Gi Yeon-hwa knew.

Martial arts, righteous factions, evil sects, the Demonic Cult… she had only heard the words, so it was embarrassing to even claim she knew anything.

“Should I test it?”

Gi Yeon-hwa muttered, looking a bit uneasy.

Hey, how dangerous could a person be just because they know martial arts?

It’s not like they can drop meteors from the sky, right? This place is already overflowing with people like that.

Above all, there are no monsters that eat people here. No matter who comes out, at least you can talk to them, right?

Gi Yeon-hwa stared at the book in her hand, then eventually put it back down. She felt a little uneasy about messing with a book when she didn’t even know the world-building.

‘*Heavenly Demon Hwasan*… surely there’s at least a review if I search online?’

She quickly tapped on her smartphone.

[Search results: 0, Results for similar terms: approx. 152,000]

Seeing the results on the blue search engine, Gi Yeon-hwa tilted her head as if her neck had snapped.

Out of all those results, there wasn’t a single piece of information about *Heavenly Demon Hwasan*.

‘There’s no way a work that even had a physical release could have flopped this hard, right?’

So she tried the green search engine and even scoured web novel sites, but it was the same.

Only other martial arts novels with similar titles flooded the results, and *Heavenly Demon Hwasan* was nowhere to be found, no matter how hard she looked.

‘Father….’

Just how obscure were the novels you were into?

Gi Yeon-hwa almost shed a tear out of empathy. She knew all too well how painful it was to be a fan of something obscure.

‘No fan art, no one to talk to, and dreaming of a long side story is out of the question.’

Anyway, this meant she couldn’t easily learn the plot of the book.

But reading this thick thing from cover to cover felt like a waste of time. Gi Yeon-hwa was conflicted.

It felt like a waste to buy a new book just for this. With that money, she could unlock 200 chapters of a new series.

Impulsively, Gi Yeon-hwa just shoved the key into the book.

‘Hey, there’s no way it’ll actually work, right?’

The key, which had momentarily turned translucent, stuck right into the center of the book. A sky-blue aura shimmered where the book and the key met.

[Lock] [Unlock]

[■■■ ■■■■■■■■?]

A translucent status window floated above the novel.

The black characters below that looked like they were being censored had been there for a long time, but Gi Yeon-hwa didn’t pay them any mind.

Those things, which had also appeared on her Hunter profile, had never been revealed, and she had never had any trouble using her skills while ignoring them.

[Lock] [Unlock]

Gi Yeon-hwa focused only on the characters that required a choice.

Turning it to the left would lock it, and turning it to the right would unlock it.

[Unlock]

Naturally, Gi Yeon-hwa turned the key to the right. Then.

Whoosh!

The light grew increasingly intense until it began to glow so brightly she could barely open her eyes.

“W-what?”

Nothing like this had ever happened before!

Flustered, she dropped the book, but the light showed no signs of fading.

Gi Yeon-hwa covered her eyes with her arms and stepped back. She could feel a gust of wind rushing past her shielded vision.

“What is happening….”

Thud, crash!

‘…Thud?’

Hearing the ominous sound, Gi Yeon-hwa lowered her arms slightly. Struggling to open her eyes, she saw a person sprawled on the floor.

Judging by the state of him, it looked like he had been launched into the ceiling before falling to the floor. There was even a crack in the ceiling from how hard he had hit it.

“Crazy….”

But the bigger problem was that blood was spreading across the man’s black martial arts uniform.

* * *

Gi Yeon-hwa sat leaning against the wall with a blank expression. Directly opposite her, a grown man sat in the same posture as her.

After throwing her body to close the book first, Gi Yeon-hwa had struggled to sit the unconscious man up and began to assess the situation.

‘First of all, the blood isn’t from the impact he just took.’

The wounds were mostly on his upper body, and they were all marks from being stabbed by something sharp, like a sword. To Gi Yeon-hwa’s relief, they didn’t look deep.

And when she had checked him while dragging him to a sitting position, he was in better shape than he looked.

The way she, not a doctor, judged that was simple. In fact, she couldn’t have missed it even if she wanted to.

Because the man’s mana was too full for someone who was dying.

For a high-level Hunter, checking the remaining mana of an opponent was nothing. You could tell just by touching them.

Even though Gi Yeon-hwa lacked combat ability, her level was high. That was why she could immediately sense the mana concentrated in the man’s lower abdomen.

If his life were fading, there was no way that amount of energy could exist. It seemed he had already consumed a lot, but even judging by what remained, he was at least in the S-rank tier.

‘Usually, Awakened store mana in their heads… this is unusual.’

Anyway, that wasn’t the point!

Gi Yeon-hwa began to worry about what she should do from here on out.

Normally, whether the person came out of a book or had shallow wounds, she would have taken him to a hospital.

But there was a really big problem.

“Ugh, why did you have to be a Hidden Powerhouse!”

Gi Yeon-hwa grabbed her head and screamed. The current situation was dire. The unconscious man was covered in wounds. Gi Yeon-hwa was an SS-rank Hunter, but she was hiding it.

On top of that, was the world a bit dangerous these days?

It had been on the news—people had been going missing frequently lately. There had even been cases suspected to be the work of Hunters.

Because of that, anyone involved in incidents like murder or assault was measured to see if they were a Hunter or not. After all, no one could do such things as easily as a Hunter.

So, to sum it up.

“This is so damn suspicious.”

A handsome man covered in blood found in the home of an SS-rank Hunter who hides her power.

‘Even I think this looks suspicious enough to make me look like the culprit.’

Yeon-hwa felt like she wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if the police came and slapped the handcuffs on her right now.