WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 17: Ice Ability User Baek Dambi - [2]

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Every messaging channel, from text messages to Hunter-exclusive apps, was broadcasting the same message.

‘Citizens, evacuate. Hunters, assemble.’

“Yes, we’re ready. We’re on our way!”

Seong Munyeong immediately called an Association employee and reported that our team was ready.

When we ran to the designated location, a dedicated helicopter was waiting for us.

We’d even completed helicopter boarding training in preparation for a day like this, yet a few team members still gasped in awe. Even Jang Byeonggon, a veteran.

“I never thought I’d get to ride a helicopter while working as a Hunter...”

The helicopter carrying us headed for the destination.

Up to that point, nobody seemed too nervous. Beneath the roar of the rotors, we even had room to chat.

“Are you nervous?”

Seong Munyeong shouted, and Jeong Jinyeong shouted back.

“Yes, a little...!”

“I’m excited, though. It’s our first operation! What should I buy first when we get paid? Just imagining it makes my heart pound like crazy!”

Lee Jongho laughed and asked if that pounding heart wasn’t from nerves instead.

Then a strange sound mixed in with the rotors.

It sounded like sirens. Looking down through the window, I saw cars fitted with flashing lights racing noisily in one direction.

A few years ago, I would’ve assumed they were tow trucks. Not anymore.

“They’re Hunters.”

They acted just like tow trucks too. Every one of them had flashing lights on and blaring sirens, forcing nearby cars to get out of their way. A few were even driving onto the sidewalks, apparently desperate to get there as fast as possible.

They said Hunters had inherited tow truck drivers’ terrible reputation these days, and it looked like that was true. Jang Byeonggon clicked his tongue.

“I heard places outside Seoul get completely clogged up by Hunters whenever something happens. It’s true. What a fucking mess...”

Was this bastard putting Incheon down by comparing it to Seoul?

“What makes Seoul so great that its Hunters supposedly deploy in an orderly way?”

When I snapped at him, Jang Byeonggon hurried to explain.

“It’s not that Seoul is great enough to have proper discipline. They don’t have a choice. Seoul has a huge population and plenty of money to hire Hunters, so they can assign Hunters to individual districts and send them out.

But places like Incheon have fewer people and less money to hire Hunters, so they can’t do that. Hunters have to treat the whole area as their territory and respond wherever they’re needed. That’s why it always turns into this kind of mess. The conditions are bad, so it can’t be helped. Of course everyone wants to leave places like this and go to Seoul...”

For the same reason, Jang Byeonggon added, each awakened person in a place like Incheon had to cover a far wider area than in Seoul. That was why awakened person Hunters especially avoided contracts outside Seoul.

I turned away, irritated. My eyes stayed fixed on the Hunters below.

Looking at that chaotic scene, one thought was taking root in my mind.

Whether they carried guns or had years of Hunter experience, non-awakened people still couldn’t be trusted.

They were all trying to reach the scene as quickly as they could, but they looked like such an undisciplined rabble...

Of course, it was too cruel a thought to have with my companions right beside me, so I forced it away.

Besides, I soon lost even the time to continue that thought.

“Uh, fuck...?”

My chatting companions fell silent and groaned.

I stopped thinking entirely and squeezed my eyes shut.

It felt like an abstract video was playing in my head. Emotions that weren’t mine and metaphors for every kind of concept ran wild through my mind.

Jang Byeonggon frowned and muttered.

“We’ve entered the Gate’s area. Shit, I’ve never felt one this intense before... You’ll get used to it after a while, so don’t worry too much.”

I’d learned that the stronger a Gate’s effects were, the larger the Gate that had opened. Usually, that meant more Monsters would pour out from inside.

This Gate already seemed quite large. I had a bad feeling about it.

I glanced at Baek Dambi. Baek Dambi alone looked calm among our group. When I tried to act unfazed too, I gradually did start to feel better. My head had just about cleared when...

“Uh, over there!”

Seong Munyeong shouted and pointed out the window. I looked outside and my eyes widened.

A small apartment complex made up of twelve-story buildings.

People stood on every rooftop.

Below them, Monsters targeting the people on the rooftops were visible, tiny from this distance.

With a Body Enhancement user’s superior eyesight, I could make them out. They were hyena-like Monsters.

They were climbing the walls toward the twelfth-floor rooftops. Even from this far away, they were climbing at an unnaturally fast speed.

At this rate, they’d reach the rooftops within tens of seconds. I didn’t even want to imagine what would happen to the people who had fled there.

“Tell me where our assembly point is over the radio later.”

Seong Munyeong’s eyebrow twitched at my words.

“What?”

There was no time to explain.

I flung open the helicopter door. Then I looked at the apartment building where a Monster was about to reach the roof.

Ah, one had just climbed onto the rooftop. It lunged at the residents backing away...

“Kim Geuk?”

I jumped out of the helicopter. Hunter Rifle in my left hand, the combat hammer specially made by the city in my right, I gave myself to gravity.

“Kim Geuk!”

I didn’t need a parachute. As my body accelerated in an instant, I brought my hammer down.

The moment I used Spatial Teleportation, the hammer struck its target with all the speed and weight of my fall behind it.

‘Boom!’

“Ah! Ah! Ah, uh...”

The middle-aged man who had been screaming stared at me with wide eyes. More accurately, he was probably staring at the Monster corpse that had been crushed beyond recognition beneath my hammer.

To ease the tension, I opened my mouth.

“Long live Incheon.”

“What?”

“Long live Incheon!”

“What? Y-yes, long live Incheon...”

That was enough of a victory chant. I stood up and lowered my hammer to the ground.

Then I raised the fifty-five-kilogram Hunter Rifle.

A pack of hyena-like Monsters was climbing the wall of the apartment building across from us too. I aimed the Hunter Rifle at them and fired without even lining up the sights.

The 30mm autocannon rounds burst forth with flashes of flame and began tearing them apart. One shot shredded one Monster. The sound of their bodies exploding rang out almost in time with the gunshots.

The dying monsters couldn’t even let out final screams. There was only the repeated sound of gunfire and bursting flesh.

* * *

A Gate could open anywhere. It could open inside an abandoned building, deep in the underground parking lot of an apartment complex, or even beneath the sea or inside a reservoir.

That made it extremely difficult to find exactly where a Gate had opened, but it was very easy to notice that one had opened nearby.

A Gate held the accumulated thoughts of sentient beings that had lived on this land. It was a place where all sorts of metaphysical things, including emotions, concepts, symbols, and more, had gathered.

The moment a Gate opened, all those things poured out.

Nearby sentient beings were swept up in a tide of emotions, concepts, and symbols. Even people who were asleep suddenly woke up as the information flooding their brains formed bizarre nightmares.

It took a while for a Gate to expand enough for Monsters to escape through it. That meant people had time to flee once they noticed a Gate had opened.

But not enough time.

People who hadn’t escaped the neighborhood screamed from the rooftops of apartment buildings, commercial buildings, every building in sight.

Everywhere I looked was chaos.

Another piercing scream rang out from the roof of a building. Monsters were scaling the wall to attack the people there.

Every Hunter knew those Monsters well.

Deathclaws. The most common type of Monster.

But common didn’t mean weak. Excluding gigantic Monsters on a supernatural scale, Deathclaws were infamous for killing more people and more awakened persons than any other Monster.

Long hooked claws extended from their feet, wreathed in heat-haze-like energy.

Force-field blades.

They were monomolecular cutters formed from concentrated force fields, capable of cutting through anything.

There were no exceptions to what they could cut. Titanium, concrete, anything that even brushed those blades would be sliced apart. They went beyond the concept of ordinary monomolecular cutters. We’d learned that even the force fields of exceptional force-field users, capable of stopping missiles, could be cut through without issue by the force-field blades of the weakest Deathclaws. It was enough to make someone wonder if they could cut space itself.

Naturally, those claws would cut a Body Enhancement user's muscles more easily than a kitchen knife cuts tofu.

If the Deathclaws got close, the civilians and I would inevitably die. Keeping that fact firmly in mind, I fired the Hunter Rifle again and again.

‘Bang!’

I blew apart a Deathclaw that was just climbing through a window. With the fire control selector set to burst fire, I shot repeatedly and shredded several of them in an instant, but there were still far too many Deathclaws climbing the walls of every apartment building.

As I kept firing, I roared at them at the top of my lungs.

“Look at me, you fucking bastards!”

I wasn’t some tank from a game. My roar didn’t have a taunt effect that could pull all nearby enemies’ aggro.

Still, the infrasonic waves in it made them hesitate for a moment.

Then several Deathclaws running across the ground turned their eyes toward me. They charged.

The fact that I was on the roof of a twelve-story apartment building meant nothing to them. They leaped once, clung to the wall at the height of the second floor, and began climbing.

Like an adventurer climbing an ice wall with ice axes in both hands, they drove their claws, capable of cutting anything, into the wall and twisted the embedded claws to hold themselves in place. Then they drove their claws in higher up and climbed the wall in an instant.

No, climbed wasn’t the right word. They were practically running up the wall.

I stood at the rooftop railing and poured bullets into them, but it didn’t feel like I was leisurely pouring oil on soldiers climbing ladders toward a castle wall.

As I’d said before, those bastards ran up walls almost as fast as a human could run. They were reaching me faster than I could shoot them apart.

At the same time, the mental net I had spread out warned me of danger. It caught the presence of Monsters approaching from my blind spots.

Deathclaws that had reached the roof in an instant leaped at me from every direction.

Then I used Spatial Teleportation to go to the roof of the apartment building next door, not too far away because the people I had to protect were gathered behind me.

The moment my view changed, I pulled the trigger again.

That shredded the Monsters gathered where I had just been.

“Over here! Over here!”

People shouted behind me. They were calling to a rescue helicopter.

Soon, the rescue helicopter began taking the survivors aboard.

Ah, it wasn’t just a rescue helicopter. A gunship had arrived too. Look at that steel raptor flying overhead with the majestic roar of its rotors.

The Deathclaws seemed to find it threatening too. A pack scattered to avoid the gunship’s barrage of machine-gun fire.

I was just thinking that one helicopter might be enough to protect the whole area when...

“Uh?”

Someone groaned.

I saw the scene that had shocked them too.

A Deathclaw running across the ground. At a glance, it didn’t look much different from the others. Then it kicked off the ground and leaped.

No, it would be more accurate to say it shot into the air.

Its leap reached the helicopter flying higher than a four-story apartment building. It drove a hooked claw into the helicopter’s outer hull, then forced its way inside.

The gunship lurched wildly.

I used Spatial Teleportation to enter the gunship.

My view changed sharply.

“Ah! Ah!”

A machine gunner whose stomach had been split open, their intestines spilling out, came into view. So did the helicopter pilot, helpless before both their companion’s condition and the fate waiting for them.

And one huge, fat Deathclaw.

The moment it saw me, I grabbed the surviving pilot and the dying machine gunner and used Spatial Teleportation.

On an apartment rooftop, before the people gathered there waiting to be rescued, I shouted.

“When a helicopter gets here, tell them to take this person first!”

As I lowered them to the ground, a thunderous explosion rang out. I glanced in that direction and saw the helicopter crash.

What about the Deathclaw inside?

It survived.

And it was perfectly fine. Neither the impact of the crash nor the explosion and flames that followed had harmed a single hair on its body.

The Deathclaw sprang from the burning helicopter and looked around. Then, as if it had found prey, it started running somewhere, so fast it almost looked like Spatial Teleportation.

Rescue helicopters arrived one after another. While they loaded the people from the rooftops and flew away, I guarded the area nearby.

“Thank you so much!”

Their words of gratitude faded into the air as they flew away, and my radio crackled.

「Kim Geuk! We’ve assembled! The location is...」

Footnotes:

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