WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

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◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 32: The Eolregis - [6]

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I opened the fight by landing a counter on their face, but it didn't feel like a good start. I glared at them.

The large Soweol person had put some distance between us and was smiling.

They wore the confident expression of someone asking, ‘Is that all you've got?’ It wasn't just an obvious taunt. My punch really did seem to be little more than something they could take. Even a Body Enhancement user should've had their face crushed or neck broken after taking one of my punches to the face. Yet this bastard was only bleeding from the nose.

This wouldn't be easy.

What mattered wasn't winning some fair fight. It was rescuing the ice ability users, so I called for backup first.

“Come to Haedong Villa, Number 27. As fast as you can...”

I kept an eye on them as I secretly spoke into the radio. A dagger that looked like a backup weapon hung at their waist. Seeing it, I decided not to use Spatial Teleportation during the fight.

Not for the sake of a fair victory, either. If I pulled some “sneaky” move like Spatial Teleportation, they looked like the sort to draw that dagger and start swinging it.

The big bastard snorted blood from their nose and took their stance again. As they approached, they bent their knees and lowered their body.

A classic tackle stance.

I thought they were going for a level change, but apparently not.

Like an enraged tiger, the big bastard openly charged at me. With both arms outstretched, they tried to grab and hug me.

They moved incredibly fast, but they came at me so directly that countering them wasn't difficult.

I slipped my arm under their armpit and threw them down.

Thud!

I kicked their side as they hit the ground. Rather than the slap of flesh striking flesh, the impact sounded like a hammer smashing into concrete.

Their face twisted after being thrown and kicked, but they didn't lose consciousness or freeze up from pain.

“Yak!”

They roared and slammed both palms into the ground.

Their huge body shot into the air. Their legs swept violently through empty space, and they immediately landed back on their feet.

It was a cartoonish way of recovering their stance that only a Body Enhancement user could pull off, something impossible in taekwondo or wrestling. I didn't have time to be surprised.

The instant they regained their stance, they attacked. Their waist and legs moved sharply.

Just from the setup, I knew what they were about to do.

I brought my elbow down on their middle kick as it tore through the air. Then I smashed their jaw, forcing them back again.

Their expression became serious as they backed away.

They looked like they were thinking, ‘Fuck.’

I looked calm on the outside, but I felt exactly the same.

Seriously, fuck.

Whether it was a kick, elbow, or punch, none of my strikes seemed to be doing much. It felt like I was attacking a boulder instead of flesh.

Meanwhile, they seemed horrified that every attack they'd tried had been shut down. They must've felt the difference in skill between us.

No matter how much they'd trained in fighting, I doubted they'd competed against as many fighters as I had or sparred with the same passion. Before I could even judge the level of combat sports in another world, this bastard had clearly never stood on the kind of stage I had.

In other words, they were just an amateur.

Still, weight classes were everything in combat sports. A featherweight champion couldn't guarantee a win against a heavyweight amateur.

And after exchanging a few blows, I decided that despite being shorter than me and having visibly less muscle, their weight class was far above mine. They seemed to be the stronger Body Enhancement user.

Then again, I'd awakened less than five years ago. They were probably an older monster, one who had trained longer and hunted more monsters.

I didn't let the tension running through my body show on my face. I didn't roar, either. I just muttered,

“Come on, amateur.”

They didn't understand the words, but they seemed to get that it was a provocation. They roared in my place.

Then they charged.

My middle kick, meant to stop their rush, failed.

They caught my ankle.

That was fine. I didn't even need Spatial Teleportation.

The moment they grabbed my ankle, I spun my entire body. My spinning back kick, carrying my full weight, landed squarely on their neck. This time, even they seemed unable to take it.

The grip around my ankle loosened.

I rushed in to finish off the staggering bastard. Pinning them to the ground, I hooked my thick arm around their equally thick neck.

They seemed to have briefly lost consciousness, then belatedly realized they were being choked.

Their fists desperately hammered my body as they tried to escape. The blows hit with an impact that was hard to believe from someone deprived of oxygen, but I endured them.

As I kept choking them, they twisted their whole body and rolled. Tangled up with them, I rolled across the ground too, and it became clear that they were much heavier than me.

Just as guards and clinches were useless when a multi-ton truck ran you over, I was swept up in their horrific weight and strength. As the stronger Body Enhancement user, they seemed superior in bone density, muscle density, and the like.

If they'd used that advantage to pin me down, I might've been the one in trouble. But they didn't.

The moment we stopped rolling and ended up lying face-to-face, they violently shoved me away to break free from the choke. Then they scrambled across the ground to put distance between us.

Only after getting quite far away did they get to their feet.

I rose slowly and casually, though in truth I was struggling to endure the pain, and watched them.

Fear and shock were written all over their face.

A gorilla was afraid of a human fighter.

I couldn't let them realize that all they had to do was give up on technique, grab my neck, and beat me senseless. Never.

So I rushed them.

I threw a jab. They stepped back to avoid it, but their back hit the wall.

Cornered, they threw a punch with their face twisted in fury. I parried it with my left hand and smashed them in the face.

Of course, they didn't budge.

We kept hitting each other.

I leaned back with only my upper body to avoid the fist they swung at me, then countered. My punch landed cleanly on the bridge of their nose, but they still didn't even sway.

That meant they could throw a punch the instant they got hit.

I guarded with my left arm, but their fist slipped past it and grazed my forehead. Blood ran from the cut.

The light blow also tore the neck muscles that had been severed earlier and reattached. My skin split too, and blood ran down my neck. If I'd taken another hit like that, I probably would've died, but they didn't notice.

If I created distance, they might realize it.

I pretended to pull back slightly, then moved forward. My uppercut struck their jaw, and only then did they stagger. When I hooked their leg, they fell.

I climbed onto their fallen body and hit them several times with both fists. They stopped moving.

They weren't dead. Just unconscious.

I leaned close to their ear and whispered,

“I'm saying this in place of the referee. I won, you bastard.”

After slapping their cheeks a few times to make sure, I trembled with exhilaration.

This wasn't simply one fighter beating another.

I'd overcome the future I saw in that vision, that miserable future.

I felt the value of all the hunting and training I'd done with everything I had. If my reflexes hadn't developed this much, that blade wielder would've killed me long ago. If I hadn't worked myself nearly to death building my body, the difference in skill wouldn't have mattered. I would've died in an instant...

I barely held back the urge to shout in victory.

I got to my feet and looked at the spectators.

First, I looked at the two Soweol people. They were probably underlings of the large bastard lying there. They really had done nothing but watch. From beginning to end, neither had interfered with the fight.

Now that it was over, they stared at me with terrified eyes.

“What are you looking at?”

The moment my gaze fell on them, they flattened themselves against the ground, just like the Soweol person I'd met earlier.

Then I looked toward the female ice ability users.

One of them screamed.

Following her gaze, I saw a Deathclaw's foreleg emerge from the purple Gate.

I didn't flinch or panic. My mental net had already warned me that my underlings were approaching.

Footsteps thundered.

I turned and saw my hunter team sprinting toward us at full speed.

As always, Baek Dambi was running at the front.

The Deathclaw that had just emerged from the Gate went limp the moment 5.56mm rounds from her light machine gun struck its head.

Another Deathclaw that cluelessly came out of the Gate couldn't withstand Baek Dambi's gunfire either. Not a single bullet missed. As though she wasn't afraid those claws might touch her, she fired right in front of the Gate.

Two Deathclaws that came through one after another died to that point-blank gunfire.

Even I thought it looked unbelievably cool.

Seriously.

The three ice ability users who had been trembling the whole time couldn't have looked more different from Baek Dambi. I asked one of them, almost scolding her.

“Why didn't you restrain those two Soweol people and run while I was fighting? Looking at them, neither seems to be an awakened person.”

“Restrain them? With our abilities?”

She'd said something so obvious that I just stared at her. She hesitated before answering.

“I don't really know how.”

“Don't you all instinctively know how to use your abilities?”

“Even though we knew, we tried to forget. We even practiced not using our abilities unconsciously.”

“You practiced not using your abilities? Why?”

“We can't go around accidentally killing people, can we? So...”

Come to think of it, during my time with Korean Awakened Solidarity, hadn't I heard that awakened people in containment facilities were forced not to use their abilities and put through some strange training?

I closed my eyes, opened them again, and said,

“I said something unnecessary. I'm sorry. You aren't hurt, are you?”

“No... Thank you so much for saving us. And you already look badly injured. Your neck and T-shirt are covered in blood...”

“I'm tough. I'll be fine after sleeping.”

I shrugged and stared blankly at the Gate.

The purple Gate that no longer had Monsters emerging from it, the Gate I'd seen in that vision, stood right there. In that vision, after both my legs were cut off, I crawled into that Gate.

I didn't need to do that anymore.

I didn't need to crawl on the ground or enter the Gate...

I was thinking that as I looked at the large bastard still lying there, unable to move, when Baek Dambi's voice cut into my thoughts.

“Um, should we go into the Gate?”

Horrified, I looked at her.

“Why would we go into the Gate?”

“You know. If you get a chance to enter a Gate, it's recommended that you go in and gather information about the Monsters inside. I heard reporting what you see in a Gate earns you major recognition and rewards...”

I almost told her neither of us needed to suddenly get greedy over rewards, but stopped myself.

I'd confirmed this when the Flame Elemental appeared last time, but my ring girl secretly didn't want to miss chances to earn merit.

She seemed to want to prove her usefulness to the world again. At the same time, she seemed too scared to go in alone.

“Sure.”

Then Baek Dambi and I stepped into the Gate together.

A purple world welcomed us.

* * *

The two of us came out of the Gate around ten minutes later.

“Ah, they're out!”

“How was it? Are there really Monsters swarming in there?”

Lee Jongho, Seong Munyeong, and the others kept asking questions, but I ignored them. I wasn't in the mood to focus on what they were saying.

Then I spotted Naito-san, who seemed to have arrived late.

That fucking bastard, practically the representative of those impure non-awakened people.

Looking at him, I forcibly swallowed the words that nearly came out of my throat.

Those fucking non-awakened scum...

* * *

Q. Hunter Kim Geuk's achievements in this incident have become a major topic for many reasons. What stands out most is that despite the appearance of at least twelve Deathclaws, there was only one civilian death. Within only five minutes of the dispatch signal being sent, Hunter Kim Geuk had cleared every Monster in the area alone.

- The location was nearby, and I got lucky in several ways. Also, I didn't clear all of them myself. That Matsumoto bastard killed a few too. In the end, one civilian died, and even more non-civilians died, so it's hard to be purely happy about it.

Q. Are you referring to the soldiers guarding the awakened-person facility?

- That's right. They all died with weapons in their hands. They were fine sons of Incheon who died defending Incheon.

Q. As I understand it, they weren't from Incheon. They were from the Seoul Infantry Division.

- Don't insult the war dead.

Q. As is well known, Third World countries are currently ruled by awakened people. Among them, force-field exoskeleton ability users above a certain level are especially powerful. Since they are difficult to subdue with personal firearms or mortars, they are notorious for easily subjugating Third World militaries and their leadership, whose air forces tend to be weak.

And according to CCTV analysis, one of the Soweol people who appeared in this incident was far stronger than the awakened people notorious for ruling the Third World. The assessment is that attempting to subdue such an individual would normally be considered impossible.

- You seem to mean force-field exoskeleton ability users, but didn't I subdue one?

Q. That's right. Which is why it's so remarkable. After the Force-Field Creature from the Incheon Gate incident, you have now defeated another formidable enemy. These incredible achievements have attracted attention not only domestically but internationally. What's your secret?

- The secret to beating that bastard who died from one of my kicks? He was so pathetic that I've already forgotten how I fought him.

Q. CCTV footage shows that your neck had been cut halfway through.

- Since you're claiming you saw such an absurd scene, they must've had an illusion ability too. Naturally, it didn't work on an awakened person like me.

Q. I see. (Laughs) After subduing that awakened person, Hunter Kim Geuk immediately moved to rescue the kidnapped Ice Crystal ability users despite his neck having been cut halfway through. You were also known for showing fighting spirit despite your injuries in the last Incheon Gate incident. Where does that indomitable will to fight come from?

- I learned well at Bupyeong Hunting Academy. It's five minutes from Bupyeong Station. (...) Of course, Super-Regeneration made it possible too. Still, I hope people don't get the idea that every Body Enhancement user has to be like this and feel pressured. I'm special because I learned well at Bupyeong Hunting Academy.

Q. After rescuing the Ice Crystal ability users, Hunter Kim Geuk entered the Gate. According to Hunter Baek Dambi's testimony, Behemoth, the supernatural giant Monster known for devastating Australia, has approached the Korean Peninsula and is heading toward Seoul. Is there anything you would like to add?

- I don't care. Whether it's Behemoth or Lotus, it just shouldn't come to Incheon.

Q. Did you receive the Dungeon Fighter title?

- I did. I'd like to take this opportunity to offer my heartfelt thanks to NeXple and the citizens of Incheon. And to Councilor Park Mihyeong, who suggested I become an Incheon Hunter... (...)

* * *

Footnotes:

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