Even Today, the Ranker Dreams of Retirement

[Warning! You have encountered extreme nothingness!]

At the moment when Glitch used ‘Extreme Nothingness’ on Habin.

“…What’s the point of this now?”

Surprisingly, Habin wasn’t particularly affected. She broke free from its effects in less than a minute.

[You have escaped from an unknown error!]

[Skill effect reduced due to similar attributes!]

[Due to an extremely high ‘Luck’ stat, you minimize damage by breaking through terrible odds!]

[You have successfully overcome Extreme Nothingness!]

Crackle-

Sporadic notification windows appeared with static. Along with them, her wavering vision stabilized.

[Hyun Habin! Are you alright? The connection was briefly severed! What on earth-]

“Ugh……”

Habin lowered her head.

Hearing a crackling sound, she looked down at her hand. The aftereffects of ‘Extreme Nothingness’ seemed to linger, as her hand was still wavering like an error.

Habin grimaced at the residual pain. After a few seconds, the error remaining on her hand returned to normal.

“Bleurgh.”

Habin dry-heaved into the air. ‘Extreme Nothingness’ was an incredibly unpleasant experience.

The feeling of one’s very existence scattering and disappearing. Vision flipping, ears ringing, nausea rising-

“It feels like forcibly eating ten sticky ice creams, then riding a roller coaster at triple speed a hundred times, and then diving off a cliff.”

[What on earth is that supposed to mean?]

“It means it sucks.”

Habin gritted her molars.

She knew it had been extremely dangerous, if only for a moment. Perhaps it was the first ‘crisis’ she had experienced since her awakening.

Although she had emerged unscathed, the notification windows had said things like ‘broke through terrible odds’ and ‘reduced skill effect due to similar attributes.’

In other words, while someone of her caliber could overcome this skill, if anyone else had been hit by it, they would have been annihilated without a trace.

“So you did something this dangerous to me?”

She raised her head. Glitch had already left the balcony long ago.

“…And you just ran away after doing that?”

Habin looked around with an incredulous expression. Glitch’s cup ramen and wooden chopsticks were left behind, untouched.

She shouted with an expression of disbelief.

“You didn’t even clean up before leaving! A senior who leaves all the cleaning to their junior is the absolute worst!”

[Is that really what’s important in this situation?!]

“Of course it’s important! Someone might accidentally eat this and get sick. Looks like everyone here is a bit of a wimp when it comes to spicy food, huh?”

[Who on earth would pick up and eat cup ramen off the street?]

Ignoring Ahezar’s words, Habin neatly packed Glitch’s cup ramen into her inventory.

“Hmm……. I thought things were going well until just now. Why did Glitch suddenly do this?”

Just because he didn’t like Hyun Habin?

It didn’t seem like that. He had consistently shown an attitude of being impressed with her as a potential successor, saying he would hate to lose her. They had even become somewhat close(?), sitting quietly and toasting with cup ramen.

“Then, was this his aim all along?”

Habin looked at the notification window floating beside her.

Different from the ones that appeared right after escaping Extreme Nothingness, these were shimmering rainbow-colored notification windows.

[You have overcome Extreme Nothingness!]

[Your understanding of errors has greatly increased!]

[Related skills have grown significantly!]

‘Growth of skills.’

Habin checked her changed skills.

An act of deceiving the system’s judgment. Ignore one of the target’s stats of your choice. (Usable twice per day)

Removes the restriction on one of your currently inactive stats. (Usable twice per day)

The ‘Void Contagion’ and ‘Deactivation Release’ skills she had been using well had each gained an additional use.

Moreover.

You can enter interdimensional space through nearby errors.

(Companion limit removed)

“What?! The companion limit is removed?!”

Habin covered her mouth with a shocked expression.

“Th-then how many people can I bring? Surely I can’t bring an unlimited number into Kill Screen, right?”

Considering the size of the hole that could be opened at once, there might be physical limitations… but this was a big deal in many ways.

“If someone finds out about this, they really won’t let it slide.”

Previously, there was a limit of only one companion, so this time she had only brought Chae Jiseok.

But now, at this rate.

She could bring enough people to form a team.

“When Fides said he was bringing a 50th floor expedition team, the world was turned upside down. If this gets out, everyone will surely go crazy. I’ll have to keep it a secret.”

Habin sighed, “Ugh,” and turned her head.

The last notification window remained.

[You hav3 obt@ined a n3w sk!ll.]

“Hmm……”

A new skill, huh.

Habin furrowed her brow.

The last notification window. One newly acquired skill.

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From now on, you can create errors in desired locations.

A strange skill with part of its description distorted. Moreover, that was the entire explanation for the skill.

‘……It says I can create errors wherever I want.’

Habin looked around at the crackling errors nearby.

Until now, she had discovered existing errors and squeezed through them to enter interdimensional space. But now, being able to create errors means-

Habin reached out towards the gap in the balustrade.

As she used the skill, a crackling, wavering effect appeared between the stones.

It was an error.

“……So I can create this at will?”

Habin stared at it for a moment, then grimaced, “Ugh.”

‘Using it makes me nauseous.’

If she had to calculate, it made her feel about one-hundredth as bad as experiencing ‘Extreme Nothingness’.

“It’s not a skill I can use continuously.”

Tap tap. Habin dusted off her hands and shook her head.

“So this is what you were aiming for?”

Hyun Habin’s growth.

Barely containing the queasiness in her stomach, Habin bit her lip as if finally realizing the truth.

‘But don’t you want to know how to get stronger here?’

‘Sorry, junior. I guess I’m an old fogey after all. I just can’t leave a promising junior alone.’

Glitch had definitely said that.

[So, you’re saying this attack was all intended for your growth?]

Habin shook her head.

“……Even if that’s the case, I absolutely can’t forgive this.”

A forced extreme growth route, pushed through with lies and surprise attacks, when Hyun Habin herself had declined.

“Ignoring my wishes and putting my life on the line.”

Habin tilted her head. No matter how good the results, this was unforgivable.

“You really like your junior, huh? Who drives someone they care about to the brink of death?”

The Demon God’s sugar-coated words of ‘precious’ and ‘junior’. The clumsy appearance of not being able to eat cup ramen and the consistently bright smile.

But Hyun Habin remembered that even amidst all that, his eyes had looked chillingly cold.

That’s the behavior of beings who see everything around them, including themselves, as chess pieces.

“He gambled with my life on his own accord.”

It would be nice if she grew stronger, but if she died by mistake, oh well. That was clearly the logic.

Having reached a conclusion, Habin gripped Ahezar.

[So, what are you going to do? Are you going to antagonize the Demon God? I welcome you revealing your power in a way, but…….]

“……”

[Didn’t you hate troublesome things the most?]

-Kwaaang!

Just as Ahezar finished speaking, they saw the roof of the Demon King’s castle flying off in the distance.

“What’s going on over there now?”

Habin groaned, “Ugh,” and got up. She trudged over and flung open the balcony door with a bang, looking out at the banquet hall.

Right at the most conspicuous spot in the banquet hall, Demon God Glitch was sitting ostentatiously, holding the ring. Seeing the Demon Kings fighting chaotically around him-

“Looks like he’s stirring up trouble again.”

Just as Habin opened the door, she felt Glitch’s expression change slightly to one of surprise.

‘Kim Jaljal, you asked what I’m going to do now?’

She spoke provocatively, looking at him.

“It’s only natural to repay an old fogey senior with insubordination.”

As if he had heard her words, Glitch smiled brightly at her. It was an irritating smile that made her want to hit him.

Habin took slow steps towards the banquet hall.

“Senior? You really like your senior, don’t you? What kind of karma did I accumulate in my past life to keep running into situations like this?”

Glitch’s eyebrows rose as if he had heard her words. Habin didn’t stop speaking.

“I treated you respectfully because you’re indeed much older, but you don’t know when to stop, do you? I even gave you my precious cup ramen, and this is how you repay me?”

This goes against all business ethics.

“……You really are extraordinary.”

Glitch opened his mouth upon hearing those words. His voice was so low that others couldn’t hear it properly due to the fighting, but Hyun Habin heard it clearly.

“To survive that… honestly, it was a gamble.”

“What? A gamble?”

A gaa-amble?

‘Did he just say gamble?’

[That’s right!]

‘Did he just admit with his own mouth that he gambled with my life?’

While Habin’s expression was rapidly turning fierce, Glitch stubbornly continued speaking.

“Seeing that you seem unaffected, could you possibly be even stronger than me? That makes things more interesting.”

At those words, Habin cracked her joints.

‘Ha, interesting?’

How can you be so relaxed right now?

She smiled a savage smile.

“I don’t know why you’re deliberately getting on my nerves, but you’re going to regret what you just said.”

Habin reached into her inventory with a brightly smiling face.

And then-

She pulled out the Nuclear Spicy Chicken Stir-fry Noodle sauce.

“Prepare yourself, old fogey.”

“……!”

For the first time, a visible crack appeared on the face of the Demon God, who had been composed throughout.

◆◇◆◇◆

“De-Demon God-nim!”

“To think the Demon God-nim would step forward!”

“That guy took the Demon God-nim’s ring! Please punish him!”

The demons shouted upon seeing Hyun Habin.

They were cheering for Hyun Habin, who was a fake demon, not a real one.

‘How ironic.’

This side is the real one.

Glitch briefly wore an expression of disappointment, but soon he had no time for even that.

Keeeng-

“Kuk……!”

Hyun Habin’s attacks came without a moment’s gap.

‘This is really beyond what I expected.’

When he had tested her while eating cup ramen, Glitch had judged that Hyun Habin would be equal to or below his level.

No matter how strong, a human is still a human.

Compared to that, Glitch held the status of a constellation. He had been training for countless ages before that.

Logically, there was no way she could win-

Bang!

‘……Or is there?’

Feeling a chilling sense of crisis from the attack that grazed him, Glitch moved his hand.

Crackle-!

Wavering errors were generated around them. The errors, after hesitating for a moment, changed shape into sharp spears and surrounded Hyun Habin as if attacking.

Crackle-

However, just before the attack could reach her, it disappeared again with a hand motion from Habin.

Glitch wore an expression of disbelief.

‘She already knows how to handle errors to this extent?’

He had thought about attacking while holding back in case she might die, but it seems that’s not necessary.

‘Well, the fact that she overcame ‘Extreme Nothingness’ so easily in the first place shows she’s cut from a different cloth.’

Though he didn’t say it out loud, ‘Extreme Nothingness’ was his most powerful skill, his trump card.

It had been briefly misused as a ‘special attribute Spartan training method for his junior’, but still.

Glitch changed his attack pattern. Although utilizing errors was his greatest weapon, it wasn’t effective against Hyun Habin, who had the same attribute.

As Glitch extended his hand, magical power rose up like pitch-black vines.