WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

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◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 30: The Eolregis - [4]

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And that was the end of it.

Before long, the protesters dispersed.

There was nothing particularly strange about that. They couldn't exactly come at me hard. The fact that people who had come to protest were acting so submissively around me made that obvious.

The fact that everyone was scared of a blood-soaked Body Enhancement user who proudly bragged about his violent record in an interview was probably only the second reason they couldn't stand up to me.

“They backed down because they were scared I'd threaten to cancel our operations around here, right?”

Park Mihyeong nodded.

“Probably.”

“Those devious Seoul spies...”

As I muttered that, Park Mihyeong shook her head.

“Don't hate them too much. They're pitiful people.”

I looked at her as if asking what was so pitiful about them, and she clicked her tongue.

“The problem is that the government built a containment facility right in the middle of the city to begin with. The awakened-person containment facilities in other regions were built as far from residential areas as possible. Yet this one was built right in the middle of Incheon.”

“Because all the residents left because of the Monster problem?”

“Exactly. Since nobody lived nearby anyway, the government decided it didn't need to worry about what residents thought and built an awakened-person containment facility here. I'm a building owner too, so I can understand their position. The owners around here must be going crazy from frustration.”

Park Mihyeong went on to explain that these days, not every landowner or building owner was rich. They hadn't come out to protest because rich people wanted to get richer. They were just people living like beggars, trying to escape that life.

In my heart, I granted those pitiful people Incheon citizenship again.

“Anyway, call me right away if something like this happens again. If I'm not working, I'll get here as quickly as I can, whether I use Spatial Teleportation or take a taxi.”

“No, Kim Geuk. How can you expect me to ask that of you? I do have a conscience. I already feel terrible that you came out today...”

“Why are you talking like this has nothing to do with me? Anything involving ice ability users involves my younger sister, so it involves me too.”

I wasn't just saying that. This situation truly felt like my own problem. I didn't know exactly why, but it didn't feel like someone else's business at all.

Still, Park Mihyeong seemed to think I was just saying it to be nice. She laughed in disbelief.

“Honestly, Kim Geuk, you're too good a person. I heard you even lent Yang Taegyu 240 million won last time? There's only so much help I can accept. I feel too bad to keep relying on you like this.”

“Feel bad if you want, but call me if this happens again, okay?”

After I stressed it several times, Park Mihyeong sighed.

“I'll think about it when the time comes... For now, I should set out a bowl of cold water and pray that no Gate opens here for a while.”

“You're worried the protesters will start yelling again, saying the Gate opened because of this facility?”

“That's right. But if another Gate opens, this area is the most likely place for it, isn't it?”

And ominous predictions never failed to come true.

The next day, a Gate opened in Incheon, less than three hundred meters from the awakened-person containment facility.

* * *

My phone went wild again. The dedicated app, text messages, and KakaoTalk were all calling for Hunters.

“Everyone board the vehicles! Everyone board the vehicles!”

The Hunters conducting operations at Manwol Mountain headed out immediately.

The location wasn't far from our operation zone, so our team didn't take a helicopter. We set off in an official vehicle.

During the ride, I got impatient and spoke up.

“I'm going ahead. Tell me your location when you get there.”

Seong Munyeong looked startled again.

“Are you going alone again, bro?”

I didn't answer. I used Spatial Teleportation.

I hadn't teleported somewhere at random. I appeared where I was needed.

On the third floor of a commercial building, a man was desperately fighting a Deathclaw trying to break through a window, armed with nothing but a mop.

As the man tried to shove the Deathclaw away, its hooked claws sliced the mop handle clean through, and the Deathclaw finally stepped inside.

I appeared just as the man screamed, then brought down my hammer and crushed the thing.

Even then, the man kept screaming for another two seconds before he finally seemed to understand what had happened. He looked back and forth between the Deathclaw, now a mangled lump of blood and flesh, and me.

His eyes widened when he saw me.

“Hunter Kim Geuk?”

“Long live Incheon.”

Back then, hardly anyone responded when I chanted that victory slogan. Things were different now.

Finally realizing he was alive, the man grinned, clenched his fist, and shouted back.

“Long live Incheon!”

I grinned at him, then teleported onto the road. Once again, I had moved to the right place.

I raised my Hunter Rifle and shot a Deathclaw crawling along a distant high-rise building.

I was about to shoot another Deathclaw running down the road when I stopped. Another Hunter was already aiming at it.

Bang!

A gunshot rang out, and the charging Deathclaw rolled across the ground, bleeding.

A silver motorcycle sped past the fallen Monster's body and raced ahead.

It was Naito-san, a man awkwardly cosplaying as a knight. That bastard must've left his teammates behind and rushed here alone too.

He looked absurdly skilled as he fired a shotgun from atop his motorcycle, as if he were some kind of dragoon. Loud military music that sounded like it belonged in the Middle Ages blasted from the bike's speakers. I could see why he was so popular, even aside from his skills.

Still, it was ridiculous for a non-awakened person to ride around on a flashy motorcycle and contribute more than me.

Without waiting for any radio instructions, I spread out my mental net.

After assessing the situations caught in it and teleporting around, I killed five Deathclaws in a row within five minutes and saved two more Incheon citizens who had nearly died.

“Hunter Kim Geuk, thank you so much for coming to Incheon! I've never felt this proud to pay taxes!”

“Thank Councilor Park Mihyeong, who lured me into coming to Incheon. Make sure to give her your vote if she runs in the next election...”

“Yes, if I ever meet her, I'll thank her for brainwashing you, Kim Geuk!”

The dangerous situations seemed to be over, so I was chatting with the people I had saved.

Then an urgent radio call came through.

After going back and forth with the person on the other end for a while, my eyes widened.

“So you're saying Otherworlders seem to have come out of the Gate?”

「Yes! If possible, could you capture them alive? Of course, don't force it if you think you might get hurt!」

The person on the radio kept saying something, but I couldn't focus.

The moment I heard the word Otherworlder, I could hear my own heartbeat.

I remembered the vision I had seen before. I remembered myself being pathetically defeated by the Otherworlders in that vision.

I had to steady my breathing, which had become ragged with tension.

As I carefully took deep breaths, my hunter team arrived.

“Bro! Did you hear the radio call? They said there are Otherworlders!”

Whether he understood how I felt or not, Seong Munyeong seemed excited. I looked away from him.

Instead, I looked at Baek Dambi, who appeared as expressionless as usual. The moment I saw her, I knew what I had to do.

I tightened my grip on my hammer.

* * *

Some people think the monsters pouring out of Gates were born and raised inside them, but that wasn't true. Gates were nothing more than a kind of highway rest stop.

Beyond the Gates was another world, and the Monsters came from that other world.

Sword World.

It was a name coined by some American politician who refused to believe the information that another world existed beyond the Gates. Apparently, he had scoffed, “There's another world beyond the Gates? I suppose it's some fantasy world, so it must be a world of swords and magic. Should we call it Sword World?” That mockery became so famous that it ended up becoming the name for that world.

Sword World's defining trait was simple: desolation.

Sword World people were poorer than North Koreans, lived in harsher conditions than North Koreans, and apparently even their ruling class lived that way.

Just as the Monsters beyond the Gates rushed at the richness of our world like mad, Otherworlders frantically pursued Earth's goods.

When Otherworlders first came out of a Gate, they attacked us without hesitation instead of trying to communicate or sending diplomatic envoys.

The first place attacked by Otherworlders wasn't the Blue House or the National Assembly building. It was a neighborhood hardware store.

The reason they raided a place like that was absurdly simple. Metal goods were precious to them. This was confirmed after they somehow established communication with the one raider they managed to capture.

Iron had supposedly been more precious than expected on Earth before the modern era, and even iron farming tools hadn't been cheap. In that world, technology and resources were both lacking, so metal goods were even scarcer than they had been in our world's premodern era.

For that reason, Otherworlders attacked hardware stores again. Then they attacked hardware stores and butcher shops. Later, they raided rice shops and large supermarkets too, looting metal goods and food.

The Korean government tried saying it would give them all the metal goods and food they wanted for free, so they should just talk. It didn't work on the Otherworlders. They acted as if the concept of negotiation didn't exist. Every time Korea tried to talk to them, people ended up getting hurt or killed.

Even so, the Korean government hadn't entirely given up on speaking with them yet.

That was why they were now trying to take prisoners alive and talk to them, and there was a reward for capturing them alive.

“It's at least one billion won for every Otherworlder captured alive, right? I heard an international organization pays the reward, not the government!”

“That's right. We need to capture Soweol people to get information about Soweol.”

Soweol, Soweol people... It sounded like the name of some Chinese ethnic minority, but it was short for Sword World and Sword World people.

It had come up often in the news for four years, so it was a pretty familiar name by now.

That was why my first encounter with Soweol people, who had come to seem like unsightly neighbors in the same way as North Koreans, wasn't as mysterious as I had expected. Nor were they as fierce as I had imagined.

“There, a Soweol person...!”

Seong Munyeong pointed at a man looking around a deserted street.

There was a Soweol person.

A short, skinny Otherworlder wearing rags that barely passed for clothes.

The Soweol person was holding a K-1 Rifle and seemed to be looking for a store to loot, but there wasn't a single hardware store or butcher shop open for business, and he looked flustered.

There was none of the amazing atmosphere I associated with the phrase another world. He just looked pathetic and shabby.

“Goblins and Soweol people both carry K-1 Rifles everywhere. Is that some kind of standard-issue weapon in the otherworld?”

He looked so unimpressive that even Lee Jongho didn't seem tense. He was talking nonsense. I turned to Baek Dambi.

“Dambi, can Elementals tell whether someone's awakened or not?”

“Yes, I can tell too.”

“Then check him for me.”

Baek Dambi closed her eyes, then opened them.

“He's not an awakened person.”

“He's not?”

That was strange. The Otherworlders in my vision had definitely been awakened people. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for them to cut off my legs like they had in the vision. A non-awakened person couldn't cut through my legs, which had so much muscle that even a guillotine blade wouldn't go through them, no matter how hard it came down.

Did that mean this wasn't the moment I had seen in my vision?

As I considered that inwardly, my hunter team moved first.

“Shall we talk?”

Baek Dambi approached the Soweol person. The man shouted something in an incomprehensible language and pointed his gun at her. Then, as if he suddenly no longer had the strength to hold it, he lowered the weapon and began trembling.

I didn't know exactly what she had done, but it was clearly Baek Dambi's work. It was an awakened person's ability, enough to subdue a non-awakened person with nothing more than a glance.

“We caught one!”

Seong Munyeong and Lee Jongho rushed over excitedly and immediately tied the man up.

He was captured so easily it was almost disappointing for someone worth one billion won, and the next Soweol person we found was the same.

This time, Baek Dambi didn't step in. The Soweol person she had subdued earlier had looked like he was suffering terribly, so I thought doing it again might kill someone. I handled this one alone.

This Soweol person, who had also been looking for a shop to loot, was carrying only a club instead of a K-1 Rifle. He wasn't an awakened person either. He didn't even seem worth using Spatial Teleportation to ambush.

I just walked toward him.

Soon, the Soweol person noticed me too. I awkwardly spoke to him.

“Hello?”

The Soweol person neither charged at me nor fled from me. He did something completely outside my expectations.

The moment he saw me, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open. Then he suddenly lowered his head, dropped to his knees, and bowed.

He prostrated himself before me.

Even if I had precognitive ability, I couldn't have expected that reaction. If I had hit him hard with a body blow, maybe, but why would he do that the moment we met?

While I stood there confused, Seong Munyeong came over and tied him up. Even then, the Soweol person didn't resist at all, as if that was simply what he was supposed to do before me.

“Why's this Otherworlder acting like that?”

When Lee Jongho voiced his confusion, Im Hyeongtaek answered.

“Maybe he's scared because Kim Geuk obviously looks like an awakened person? He's ridiculously muscular, and he's even carrying a Hunter Rifle. Anyone would think he's a Body Enhancement user.”

“He came here to loot, but he's scared because my bro Kim Geuk looks awakened?”

“Probably.”

“If he's scared, shouldn't he at least run away?”

“Mm, maybe he thinks it's disrespectful to dare flee from an awakened person?”

When I asked what that was supposed to mean, Im Hyeongtaek explained.

“I read a book about Soweol a while back. In Sword World, awakened people are lords and kings. They're not just stronger than ordinary people. They're an entirely different class.”

“Then non-awakened people are basically commoners?”

“No. They're even lower than commoners... Slaves or livestock, something like that? Anyway, they're in a position where they wouldn't dare attack or flee from an awakened person.”

So the moment that Soweol person recognized that I was awakened, he had decided to lie flat before me.

I looked at the Soweol person, who was still prostrated on the ground despite having both ankles tied. He muttered something as if begging me, but naturally, I couldn't understand it.

Even so, his attitude toward me was clear.

Complete submission...

Bowing was a gesture of submission in any culture. It meant he wouldn't dare look at someone of noble status whom he should obey, and that he would accept it if that noble person stepped on or kicked his defenseless back.

The moment I realized that anew, something inside me began to tingle. Was I moved, or was it exhilaration?

Either way, it felt like one of the desires inside me had been fulfilled...

It was downright electrifying.

Footnotes:

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