WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈
Chapter 103: Famous Hunter Kim Geuk - [1]
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Q. Before we begin the interview in earnest, I'd like to offer my thanks. Hunter Kim Geuk contributed more than anyone to resolving this crisis.
Based on testimony from soldiers at the scene and the traces left behind, Hunter Kim Geuk moved from place to place without rest, eliminating more than half of the high-risk Monsters that appeared on his own. Above all, he personally led the successful operation to repel Behemoth.
Many people are even saying that Hunter Kim Geuk defended Seoul. As a citizen myself, I would once again like to offer my sincere gratitude.
- Sorry, but that's not pleasant to hear. I'm not saying this to be humble. You're praising me so excessively that you're diminishing the contributions of the soldiers and Hunters who died, so it makes me uncomfortable in a lot of ways.
As for repelling Behemoth, Hunter Park Juheon, who was with me, also made a particularly great contribution. I offer my condolences to him and everyone who died in battle.
And I would also like to issue a warning to the government.
Q. What kind of warning?
- Above all else, the government must properly compensate the Hunters who died this time. If they think they can hand out a few times the dispatch fee and call that compensation and restitution, I won't sit still.
Q. But the country's current situation is serious, and there are too many citizens who lost their homes because of this incident.
Wouldn't supporting them be the government's priority? Hunters are relatively high-income earners, so wouldn't compensation and restitution for them be a lower priority?
- No. Compensating the Hunters is the top priority.
The Hunters fought, and the Hunters died. Even Hunters who had no obligation to respond answered the call, only to die in great numbers.
That happened because foreign Hunters and Hunters from outside Seoul were dragged in and forced to fight simply because it was a crisis, with no regard for laws or regulations.
At a time like this, if they start babbling about the country's circumstances or how they can't compensate people beyond a certain amount because of the double-compensation prohibition clause, pretending to be reasonable and law-abiding while refusing to provide sufficient compensation, I will never sit still.
Q. You keep saying you won't sit still. What exactly does that mean? Are you saying you would even retaliate against the government?
- Yes, I'm making a terrorist threat right now. Everyone knows I can do it. Carrying it out would be difficult, but even that might change if I get angry enough.
Q. The government's response hasn't even been announced yet. Wouldn't it be better to calm down?
- If Kim Hyeongman, who was set to become the next Association president and spoke up for Hunters' rights, were still alive, he would've handled this much more rationally. But Kim Hyeongman also fought without sparing himself during this crisis and died in battle. I offer him my sincere condolences.
And I'm not Kim Hyeongman, so I don't know how to act like Kim Hyeongman.
I do know how to fire a Hunter Rifle, though. I also know it works on people, not just Monsters. And I know the addresses of the Blue House and the National Assembly Building.
(······)
Q. Hunter Kim Geuk's fighting spirit, captured on camera, was impressive.
Despite losing his entire lower body and nearly dying, Hunter Kim Geuk returned to the front lines as soon as he finished regenerating his body and led the operation to repel Behemoth. Even amid this tragedy, the public response to that scene has been passionate.
Even if an awakened person can restore their body, it couldn't have been easy to decide to return to the battlefield immediately after going through something like that. Was there a reason you were able to show such superhuman fighting spirit?
- I graduated from Bupyeong Hunting Academy, five minutes away from Bupyeong Station. Of course I did it.
Even considering that, I pushed myself a little too hard. But I had to.
Q. Did you have to do it to protect the citizens?
- No, it was to keep the balance of the world. There were people who never even showed their faces in that situation and only looked out for themselves, so I had to work hard on the other side for the world to stay balanced.
Q. Are the people who kept themselves hidden and never showed up the Special Forces?
- That's right. From now on, Special Forces members are Deathclaws that walk on two legs. Nothing more and nothing less. They're definitely Deathclaws.
Q. Special Forces members are Deathclaws? What does that mean?
- If there's a living creature that attacks Hunters, tries to kill Hunters, swings force-field blades, doesn't fight Monsters, and ignores human laws and orders, then anyone can see it's a Deathclaw. How is that human?
Q. When asked why they refused the deployment order, Special Forces members explained that dealing with Monsters was not their duty. What is Hunter Kim Geuk's opinion on that?
- It's ridiculous. If the Special Forces care so much about their fundamental duty, they should've shown some consideration when Hunters were unfairly mobilized and worked like dogs during the Kim Seokhee incident.
Back then, they threw punches first because Hunters weren't actively cooperating with their orders. How am I supposed to look kindly on people who ignore even orders from above when something important happens?
So from now on, if any Special Forces member persecutes a Hunter, I'll consider it a Deathclaw attacking a Hunter and deal with it personally.
Q. What do you mean, deal with it personally?
- If I receive a report that the Special Forces have appeared to target a Hunter, I'll immediately use Spatial Teleportation to show up at the scene and respond. I don't know whether I'll respond with my fists and feet or with a Hunter Rifle and hammer, but I won't sit still either way.
Q. Your statement that you would even resort to violence against the Special Forces is quite shocking. Then again, many people in the same profession whom you must have been close to died in this incident. Are you saying that because you're angry that only Hunters had to risk their lives as the Special Forces did not participate?
- I'm angry too, but there's a bigger reason than that.
Q. Please explain in detail.
- I won't stand by and watch the Special Forces, who disobeyed even their superiors' orders in the most important situation, invoke the law and pretend to be guardians of order in situations that aren't even important.
Especially not when they do it to Hunters. I absolutely won't stand by and watch them do it to former Hunters either.
Even Kim Seokhee, a former Hunter currently wanted on murder charges, fought the Monsters that invaded Bucheon City during this crisis and protected the area. He proved that even a criminal Hunter was better than a Special Forces member. In the middle of all this, what right do the Special Forces have to judge awakened people who committed crimes?
(······)
After reading that far, I frowned.
It wasn't because the interview had maliciously distorted anything. Remembering how I felt during the interview just made me irritated all over again.
Everything I said had been included in the interview as it was.
I had plainly said that I would obstruct the work of the Special Forces, a government agency, and would even resort to violence. Seeing that even those remarks had made it into the interview surprised me a little.
Normally, they could've cut the entire declaration for disrupting public order. Or they could've removed every part where I explained why I would do it and only printed the part where I declared that I would act like an outlaw. But they hadn't done that?
Considering that the media was currently under strict government control, that had to be the government's will.
That showed the government wasn't looking kindly on the Special Forces either.
Also, during the interview's censorship process, my demand that Hunters be compensated first would've been delivered to the government.
I didn't know how seriously the government would take that demand, but at the very least, they would give it serious consideration.
I hoped they would. For my sake or the government's.
The news was covering the incident too.
When I turned on the TV, the National Security Minister was speaking with his head bowed.
「There are truly no words I can offer the people. I deeply acknowledge my own responsibility, and (······)」
I had expected the government to hide the full story behind this incident, but surprisingly, they hadn't.
Various media outlets announced the circumstances that led to Behemoth's appearance, meaning everything that happened before Kang Jun-chi left for Soweol. As a result, many officials, including the National Security Minister, were replaced.
Had the government suddenly realized the scale of its mistakes after suffering such a disaster and decided to reflect on them?
Probably not. They simply knew there was something far more important than saving face.
「Kang Jun-chi complained of suffering due to continued attempts at wiretapping and surveillance, and (······)」
Kang Jun-chi. It looked like the government was taking precautions in advance so nothing would upset him again when he returned.
That was why the media, acting on government orders, was going into such detail explaining that Kang Jun-chi hadn't left for no reason, as if they were his lawyers. I didn't know how much sympathy the people harmed by this incident would have for that defense, but still.
I agreed with the government on this point.
Kang Jun-chi had to return.
Whether I liked it or not, regardless of how I felt about Kang Jun-chi personally, he had to.
* * *
This crisis had truly been horrific. The loss of life and property damage were beyond description.
You could tell just from the buildings near Behemoth's path collapsing one after another, but the ground Behemoth crossed had completely caved in. Even if every collapsed building were demolished, there was no telling whether new buildings could ever be built there.
The air force had supposedly been almost wiped out, soldiers had died in numbers equivalent to several divisions, and thousands of citizens who failed to escape had died. It was all too bleak for me to even want to mention.
What I couldn't accept was that more than half of the Hunters who had deployed had died. Even A-rank Hunters, who should've died less often because they received more protection than ordinary Hunters, had died at a similar rate.
It was simply unbearable.
I had sent my hunter team far to the rear, yet two of them still died. They said my team had actually suffered fewer losses. There were more than a few hunter teams where every single member, including the awakened Hunter, had died.
No experts were currently appearing on broadcasts to talk about what effect all this would have on the economy, national defense, or the ability to respond when Gates opened in the future. Was it because the government was controlling them to keep them from doing so?
Of course, nobody needed to be an expert to predict what came next.
It would be very bleak. Even someone as uneducated as I was knew that much.
No matter how much the country tried to hide it, Koreans weren't idiots. You only had to look around the internet to hear all kinds of information, like some bank being on the verge of bankruptcy because Seoul real estate was collapsing. How could people who had gone to better schools than I had not know how serious this situation was?
Even now, the TV kept praising my exploits in this incident.
I couldn't even imagine how many times they had aired the scene of me returning to the front lines through Spatial Teleportation immediately after finishing my body's regeneration at that damned hospital.
It was obvious that the media and the government weren't doing this because they were deeply grateful to me. No matter how hard they tried to broadcast hopeful news, there was little they could find, so they were propping up a hero to distract people.
Because of the constant broadcasts, far more people recognized me now.
I had been famous before, but I was a Hunter, not an entertainer, so I wasn't at the point where everyone knew me. Now, it was rare to find someone who didn't recognize me.
Look. Even when I simply walked down the street, people all turned to look this way and whispered among themselves.
Thanks to a Body Enhancement user's hearing, I could hear what they were saying.
“Ah, that's Kim Geuk...”
“The guy who raised Incheon land prices all by himself...”
I might have enjoyed that reaction later, but not now. I had come to attend my teammates' funerals. I couldn't even laugh to myself.
Every funeral hall was full. I had to pull some strings myself just to rent a funeral hall for my hunter team.
When I entered, my teammates were already waiting.
“You're here?”
There were several familiar people besides my teammates. Together, we handled the things that had to be done at the funeral.
While we were busy with that, the academy director came to the funeral and bowed.
The director noticed me and approached.
If the director had been planning to say something like, “Including Kim Jinjun, who died last time, that makes three team members dead. Isn't it about time the academy recruited new people?” then no kind words would've come out of my mouth. Fortunately, the director wasn't that much of a psychopath.
“Im Hyeongtaek and I were around the same age, so we often drank together after the academy day...”
Tears welled in the director's eyes as he muttered that. Im Hyeongtaek really had been well-liked in many ways.
“I should've looked after him more.”
I sighed as I said that, and the director responded.
“You think he wouldn't have died if you had? Don't say that, even if you don't mean it. By that logic, the other team members will feel even more responsible.”
After giving me that bit of advice, the director seemed embarrassed and continued.
“Anyway, Kim Geuk? You really worked hard this time. Honestly, even if you had gone to another academy instead of ours, you would've done well. But I'm truly proud that you attended our academy...”
Normally, I would've enjoyed the praise, but as I had said, I couldn't do that now.
I only half listened to the director as I looked around the funeral hall.
I saw Im Hyeongtaek's wife there as the chief mourner. A woman younger than me, and all the more immature for it.
His daughter was with her too. Though she was young, she seemed to understand that her father had died, and her eyes were swollen from crying.
I walked over to them.
Footnotes:
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