WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
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◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈
Chapter 37: Sowolin U Sori - [1]
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Once you leave Incheon, it's all barbarian land. A spiritual wasteland without so much as a trace of civilization or intelligence, a chaotic mess of tribes jealous of Incheon's wealth and honor.
What I'm saying is, I came to Seoul.
The official car carrying me sped along. I turned to look out the window, where the Han River flowed grandly as ever, eager to swallow up even one more Korean.
Soon, I spotted a grocery store. Seeing the lettuce and watermelons on display made me frown without realizing it.
Wasn't Incheon in the middle of becoming a food desert? In Incheon, vegetables and fruit were things you could barely find even at a large supermarket, yet here in Seoul, some tiny hole-in-the-wall shop was selling them?
No wonder everyone was so desperate to live in Seoul.
“Welcome, Mr. Kim Geuk! I feel terrible for calling you in when you're so busy.”
When I got out of the car at our destination, some suit greeted me. He was obviously a Seoul breed and non-awakened dreg, so I could hardly see any value in talking to him.
I only nodded instead of answering, but the suit continued.
“Come this way. That arrogant Soweol person is waiting.”
We passed through a hallway brightly lit by electric lights despite it being broad daylight. I didn't even want to look at that. Buildings in Incheon didn't turn on lights in the middle of the day anymore. Eventually, we arrived at a room sealed behind a heavy iron door.
A man was visible through the door's glass window. Both arms and legs were restrained by what looked like extremely thick shackles.
“You recognize him, right? That bastard...”
Of course, I recognized the captured Soweol person immediately.
He was the one I'd defeated in a fight last time. That huge awakened Soweol person.
“As you know, we've tried talking to those bastards who came here to raid us, but it's never worked. I mean the awakened Soweol people who rule Soweol...
We've never once successfully held talks with them. Whether we raised a white flag or brought gifts, they ignored us all. They just snatched the gifts we'd prepared. We couldn't even exchange a single word with them.”
The suit frowned as he continued.
“That bastard refused to talk even after we captured him.”
Yet after analyzing the fight at the detention facility through CCTV footage, they said that awakened Soweol person had tried to speak only with me.
He'd even accepted my request to put down our weapons and fight with our fists, so it seemed he recognized only me as someone worth talking to.
“Maybe they only consider someone worth talking to if they're obviously awakened? If you don't look awakened, do they ignore you because they see you as some lowly slave?”
If that was really the case, he was an arrogant lunatic. The suit looked as if he was waiting for me to agree, but I didn't consider him worth replying to and kept my mouth shut.
“Anyway, that's why we called you, Mr. Kim Geuk. You're obviously a Body Enhancement user, and it seems that bastard might recognize only you as someone worth talking to, just like last time. Ah, the interpreter is here. Let's go in.”
The iron door opened. The suit, a Soweol person interpreter, and I went inside.
The huge Soweol person looked at me.
There was no need to make an effort to get him to open his mouth. He spoke right away.
“Ah, the master of martial combat? It's good to see you again.”
That was what the big man said. I understood his Soweol language even before the interpreter beside me translated it. Good lord.
It was astonishing, but I decided not to show it. Otherwise, people might suspect I wasn't from sacred Incheon. I only guessed to myself that it was an ability I'd gained from the aftermath of seeing that hallucination.
“Tell him I'm glad to see him too. And tell him it's unfortunate to see him captured like this.”
Before long, I began talking with the big man, with the interpreter and the suit on either side of me.
It was a strange conversation. The suit whispered questions into my ear, I said them aloud, and the interpreter translated.
“What is your name?”
“Usori.”
“How old are you?”
“Four hundred and fifty. I stopped counting precisely after four hundred, so I might be a little off, but somewhere around there.”
The big man claimed he'd lived for several centuries. Did that make any sense?
I wondered if a year over there was different from one here, so I asked how long ordinary people usually lived. This was the answer I got.
“They generally die in their twenties?”
That confirmed the huge Soweol person really was a monster who had lived for centuries.
When I asked how he had lived that long, the big man answered.
“Among awakened people like you and me, those who also gain the ability to heal quickly stop aging. If they've already aged, they can even return to how they were before they grew old.”
The suit whispered to me.
“He seems to mean Super-Regeneration. Apparently, aging stops if you have Super-Regeneration. Well, we had already suspected that, so it isn't exactly a surprising discovery...”
I nodded, feeling both pleased to have confirmed that I possessed an immortal body and proud that I had defeated a powerful awakened person who had lived for centuries.
Before the suit could continue with his questions, I spoke.
“I have a question too. Do Elementals not age either? More precisely, if someone was human but became an Elemental, do they not age either?”
“Of course they don't. Their true bodies aren't made of flesh.”
No wonder my round girl had looked just as young in photos from years ago as she did now. It hadn't just been makeup. That was good news too.
I grinned, and the big man asked me a question.
“Master of martial combat, how old are you?”
“I'm not even thirty yet.”
“You're young. Yet you're so strong. I was deeply impressed. You had that cowardly but powerful weapon, yet your suggestion that we put it down and fight barehanded was quite admirable. Though I did lose...”
“You too. Even while you were losing the fight, you never drew the dagger at your waist. Regardless of who won, that was very admirable.”
Maybe the suit didn't like seeing the big man and me exchanging compliments. He urged me to convey his questions instead.
A non-awakened dreg who didn't know his place dared to...
I didn't like it, but I went along with his demand.
“Do you intend to defect to the Republic of Korea?”
“No.”
“Why don't you want to defect?”
“Because this is a strange world where the owner of the flock doesn't act like an owner.”
“What do you mean by sheep?”
“These and these.”
The big man pointed at the suit beside me and the Soweol person interpreter.
Apparently, he considered non-awakened people to be sheep. They said non-awakened people were treated as livestock among awakened Soweol people, and it seemed that was true.
That fact came out in the next exchange as well.
“Why have you ignored every attempt at talks from this side until now? Why did you ignore all requests for negotiation and only raid us?”
“Because talking with sheep is strange.”
“You mean you have no reason to speak with non-awakened people. Why is that?”
The big man's answer did not even carry the implication that non-awakened people were too lowly for him to speak to.
“When there is a flock of wild sheep and you want to take a few away, trying to talk to the leader of the flock is strange. Of course, if they weren't wild sheep but sheep with an owner, you would have to speak with their owner.”
The big man literally seemed to consider talking with non-awakened people simply strange. Not something beneath his dignity, not something a noble shouldn't do, just strange.
Like how we don't talk to livestock not because we consider them lowly, but because they're not worth talking to in the first place.
“Are you really a lord who rules a territory?”
“Of course.”
“How many do you rule in your territory?”
“Two thousand sheep.”
“Fifty million people live here in Korea. One million eight hundred thousand live in Incheon.”
The big man asked calmly.
“That is quite a lot of sheep. So?”
The suit seemed flustered by that response. He must have been trying to intimidate him by showing how impressive the Republic of Korea was compared to the small territory that bastard ruled, but it had not worked at all.
“Do you think I'm lying? You don't believe me?”
“I believe you. But that many are wild sheep, not sheep you own. No matter how many there are, they have no value.”
“Why do they have no value? Isn't land stronger when it has more people?”
“What do you mean, sheep make you strong?”
When I explained countries, population, and mobilizing troops based on that population, the big man scoffed.
“You use sheep in battle? Why would you do something so wasteful and cruel?”
Then I turned on my smartphone as the suit had instructed. I showed the big man pictures of groups of soldiers that would seem overwhelmingly powerful to premodern people, such as a tercio formation and a phalanx formation. The suit probably wanted to ask whether even after seeing that, the big man thought ordinary people gathered together were useless.
Yet the big man only scoffed again.
“You give pieces of iron to sheep? What a strange waste of iron.”
“Why? Don't they obviously look strong?”
The big man shook his head.
“From what I can see, one swing of my sword would kill them all. Since they're gathered together, it would be convenient to cut them all down at once.”
He added that if they were made to fight separately, they would become something not even worth swinging a sword at, so giving pieces of iron to sheep was strange either way.
“That ignorant bastard, seriously...”
The suit voiced his frustration, but I agreed with the big man.
Hadn't packed formations become a foolish relic of the premodern era as firepower increased?
And the awakened person before me wielded three-meter force-field blades. A single swing probably had more power than a grenade.
So in Sword World, a packed formation against awakened people had no tactical value, and dispersing soldiers would likewise be useless against awakened monarchs whose individual combat power was overwhelmingly strong.
I suddenly thought of the great warriors of this world, Xiang Yu and Richard I. Xiang Yu, said to be a match for ten thousand men, had eventually died fighting countless cavalrymen. Richard the Lionheart had been killed by a crossbow fired by a mere boy soldier.
Nothing so unpleasant would happen in Sword World.
Hadn't that Soweol person from before casually wiped out even soldiers armed with modern weapons? If modern firearms made it difficult to defeat an awakened person, there was no way arming non-awakened people with bows, spears, and blades, weapons inferior even to a single rifle, would have any use against superhuman awakened people.
For that reason, it seemed that arming non-awakened people as soldiers in Sword World was understood to have no tactical value at all. Combat was entirely the awakened people's role, and the very concept of an army made up of countless soldiers seemed not to exist.
To my ears, it sounded truly wonderful.
A world where great heroes and warriors weren't brought down by masses of ordinary people? How could such a wonderful world exist...?
For the same reason, the idea that a country was stronger and superior if it had more people did not work on that awakened monarch either.
That was why the attempt to persuade him to defect by emphasizing how impressive and livable the Republic of Korea was did not work on him at all.
“If you defect, we'll treat you better than you can imagine. You'll be allowed to eat anything you want, and you'll be given ample property...”
“Enough. With only the sheep I already have, I can get everything I want. More than enough.”
Similar conversations continued afterward, but there was no sign that he was being persuaded. Just as you couldn't win over Kim Jong Un by arguing that South Korea was richer than North Korea and he would have a better life if he came south, it seemed the same was true for that fellow.
“I've answered everything you asked, so may I leave now?”
I conveyed the suit's words to him.
“This guy says absolutely not.”
I gestured toward the suit as I said that, but the big man did not even look at him.
“I did not ask the sheep. I asked you. Let me ask again, may I leave now?”
“You're asking me to remove your restraints?”
“No. I intend to leave on my own. Still, I believe I've paid the price for raiding your territory without permission to this extent. May I leave now?”
“If you can get out, go ahead. Just don't hurt anyone while you're doing it.”
The suit recoiled in horror at my answer. He glared at me, then instructed the interpreter.
“Tell him absolutely not.”
But the interpreter was also a Soweol person. He knew whose words to follow between a non-awakened dreg and an awakened person.
The interpreter translated my words rather than the suit's, and the big man smiled in satisfaction.
“I may leave, but I must not harm the sheep while doing so? I will not. But I have one question. Is the one who came with me dead?”
He seemed to mean the force-field exoskeleton user I'd killed with one kick, so I said yes. The big man grinned.
“Impressive. He was extremely powerful, yet you defeated him! In that case, would you consider crossing over to our land?”
I blinked at the unexpected offer.
“To Sword World?”
“Yes. Since he is dead, the sheep he raised have lost their owner. If you cross over, you can tend those sheep and live without needing to fight anyone.”
“It is an appealing offer, but... I refuse.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to protect my land.”
That ended the conversation. We left the iron door behind, and the suit sighed.
“He really doesn't understand reason. It looks like we'd need Park Mihyeong instead of someone like me to make that bastard defect. We'd have to use that hypnotic brainwashing ability that supposedly works even on awakened people and make him loyal to Korea...
But it looks like that bastard plans to escape, doesn't it? What a dreamer. If we suppress him when he escapes, maybe he'll lose his spirit and become more obedient?”
But it was very difficult to imprison a powerful awakened person, even if all four limbs were restrained.
That night, the news reported the awakened Soweol person's escape.
CCTV footage from the escape was released as well. The restraints binding his limbs were cut apart by the big man's fingers as though they were made of tissue paper.
In the footage, the big man's fingernails glowed faintly as he freed himself from his restraints in an instant.
It seemed he could use force-field blades through his fingernails as well as a sword. Just as I hadn't used Spatial Teleportation, he apparently hadn't made use of that ability.
Until then, he had pretended he couldn't escape, quietly eating the food provided by this side. Then, when a Gate opened in Seoul, he sensed the sign and immediately escaped before entering the Gate.
It was incredible. Truly.
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Footnotes:
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