WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 38: S-Rank Hunter Kang Junchi - [1]

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Ⓐ BabyBerserker: BabyMushroom's Sky Castle construction is starting, nya!

BabyMushroom is finally building a nest, nya! Until now, BabyMushroom had been freeloading at the house of Incheon City Councilor Park Mihyeong. Apparently, she is aiming for the mayoral seat in the upcoming Incheon election, so if you live in Incheon, please give her your precious vote when you get the chance. Candidate number 2, office number 032-XXX-XXXX. But now BabyMushroom is finally becoming independent, nya!

Does that mean BabyMushroom has grown into a proper young lady now, nya? Should BabyMushroom stop wearing her beloved teddy bear panties and start dressing sexily instead, nya?!? BabyMushroom is so embarrassed. //∇//

But even if BabyMushroom changes her panties, BabyMushroom is still tiny and young, so she has no idea how to build a house, nya!

BabyMushroom was crying her eyes out in frustration, but then the mayor of Incheon came over, wiped away BabyMushroom's baby tears, and said he would have the civil servants look into whatever they could, so BabyMushroom should stop crying right away, nya!

Only then did good little BabyMushroom stop, but sniffle... BabyMushroom already cried so much this year that Santa grandpa will not give her a present anymore, nya...

In the end, poor BabyMushroom got sad and started crying again, nya. Big sisters and brothers, hurry up and pat BabyMushroom until she stops crying. Sniffle, sniffle, sniffle...

Ⓐ Stonehead Youth: Ms. Park Mihyeong, please let that poor friend go. I beg you. Hasn't that friend already done enough for Incheon and for you, Councilor?

Ⓐ syberMagneto: Why are you writing something this horrific about such a touching project...? Can't you stop this atrocity, if only for the poor iceheads paying attention to this project?

I'd posted an update on Huntweb, but for some reason, hardly anyone overreacted anymore. Most people were reading my post seriously.

Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo: So basically, the mayor of Incheon is personally pushing that high-rise apartment construction plan? I was worried it would just waste money, but this is great.

5myJesus: Kim Geuk spends his precious fortune without hesitation for the socially disadvantaged. I have nothing but respect for him. Praise the ever-great Kim Geuk!!

Anonymous: I thought an apartment taking in iceheads would get treated like some hated facility, but this is unexpected. Does Incheon City think well of it too?

Anonymous: He's earned tens of billions of won, all of which he is spending in Incheon City. He's building the apartment in Incheon too, and declaring that he'll spend the rest of his life here. There's no reason for them to dislike it. Apparently, the nearby residents are reacting well too.

The situation was actually better than I'd expected. After I announced the high-rise apartment construction plan, the protests in front of the awakened person accommodation facility stopped.

It seemed people figured that a project a successful Hunter was seriously funding with his entire fortune, and which the city openly supported, would turn out well. Maybe they also expected the risks posed by ice ability users to be contained because I, an extremely famous Hunter, would be living there.

I even heard that with Incheon City officials personally visiting the construction site, construction oversight was stricter than ever. Apparently, nobody could dare cut corners on even a single steel bar. Since I'd spent money without knowing much about construction, that was a relief.

Still, it wasn't all good news.

My hunter team had its first death. In the five months since I started working as a Hunter, not a single person had died.

Kim Jinjun.

He was one of the trio of punks on our team, alongside Seong Munyeong and Lee Jongho. Calling him a punk didn't mean he dumped work on others and loafed around. He was confident in his strength, and whenever there was hard labor to do, he was always the first to eagerly step up.

He died.

An ugly lion Monster killed him.

We were conducting another extermination operation. I told every Hunter gathered there what I'd learned through my mental net.

“It's a Manticore.”

Seong Munyeong immediately recognized the name.

“A Manticore? That's that fake lion, right?”

“Yeah. There are seven gathered together. Looks like the whole pride is resting.”

The Manticore of legend supposedly had a lion's body, a human head, bat wings, and all sorts of strange things attached to it.

The Manticores that came through Gates looked far less impressive. They just looked like lions born from inbreeding. Other than being seriously ugly, they weren't very different from Earth's lions. They were even genetically similar enough that they could breed with them.

The one thing that set Manticores apart from lions was their tails. Actual lions also had hidden spikes beneath the fur on their tails, and Manticores had sharp spikes hidden in their tail fur as well.

Unlike lion tail spikes, whose purpose nobody could understand, Manticore tail spikes were fired at eighty meters per second. They also contained a powerful neurotoxin, so if one struck any part of your body, you couldn't be sure whether you'd live or die. Their maximum range was thirty meters, which was threatening, but that was all.

Those spikes weren't some incredible weapon compared to Hunters' assault rifles. They were slower than you'd think, so as long as we pulled the trigger first, Manticores were Monsters we could hunt easily.

Unlike Deathclaws, Manticores weren't awakened either, so ice ability users like Baek Dambi could wipe them all out just by looking at them. If they had been as numerous as Deathclaws, ice abilities would never have been deemed unsuitable for Hunter work.

So Baek Dambi stepped forward confidently, acting cool. She was probably happy inside to finally have a chance to shine.

“I'll handle it.”

Kim Jinjun cut in.

“Let me join you. I'll provide fire support!”

“Do you really need to?”

“No, but shouldn't we be careful? Manticores stand out too much in a city to hide well, so they usually get wiped out quickly. If they've managed to survive this long, doesn't that mean they aren't ordinary ones?”

Kim Jinjun had probably been itching to do something.

Normally, nobody on my hunter team besides Baek Dambi and me got many chances to distinguish themselves.

As you know, the members of an awakened Hunter's team were there to guard the awakened Hunter. Body Enhancement users and force-field ability users worked with their hunter teams around them, like tanks moving with infantry.

In my case, as a Spatial Teleportation user, I often operated independently of my hunter team. They hardly ever had to protect me. During extermination operations, the non-awakened people on my team usually just waited safely in the rear.

For that reason, the non-awakened people on my hunter team rarely even fired their guns. Baek Dambi, who had little reason to worry about dying, was the only one who usually went out front and shot things. I'd heard the non-awakened members of my team were talked about behind their backs for having it too easy.

That probably didn't sit well with passionate Kim Jinjun.

“Jongho, Munyeong, you two come too! Porters or whatever, you should fire your guns once in a while...”

With Baek Dambi leading the way, the trio of punks followed behind her.

I stayed back because there was no need to take risks just to deal with such insignificant Monsters. I kept my mental net spread out, ready to help if an emergency occurred.

“Jinjun!”

A scream rang out.

I used Spatial Teleportation in a hurry, but it was already over.

Bodies filled my view. The ugly lion Monsters, the Manticores, had all been pierced by bullets and killed...

Then I saw Kim Jinjun lying there with a burned hole in his chest, as though something other than a poisoned spike had pierced him. Beside him was Baek Dambi, who had an even larger hole through her torso but, unlike Jinjun, was still perfectly alive.

When I asked what had happened, Seong Munyeong explained through tears.

“From the Manticore's tail... a Heat Ray...”

A Heat Ray was that thing Superman fired from his eyes. A high-temperature beam that could pierce steel plating.

Lee Jongho explained more calmly.

“Looks like one of the Manticores had awakened to a Heat Ray ability. Before we could even fire our guns, something like a laser shot out... Fuck.”

He said everyone might have died if Baek Dambi hadn't noticed that one of them was awakened, fired quickly, and taken the Manticore's Heat Ray with her whole body.

Even so, the Heat Ray had pierced through Baek Dambi's torso and struck Kim Jinjun, killing him.

It was very rare, but not impossible. Just as it was hard to look at a human and tell whether they were awakened, or what kind of awakened person they were, unless they were an Elemental, the same was true of Monsters. Sometimes, a Monster that looked ordinary had awakened to an unpredictable ability.

In this case, the awakened ability happened to be Heat Ray. Since I couldn't detect something traveling at the speed of light, my mental net couldn't catch it.

It wasn't anyone's fault or mistake. All I could say was that we'd been unlucky.

Even so, I felt terribly depressed.

I felt so depressed that I wanted to quit everything.

* * *

That day's hunting operation ended immediately. At the funeral afterward, not only my hunter team but every Hunter who had been on the operation attended.

“My deepest condolences.”

I was so depressed that even Naito-sama didn't seem irritating today.

Kim Jinjun's bereaved family bowed before me. His parents and siblings.

After bowing back to them, I returned to where my hunter team was. I stayed up all night with the chief mourner, and only a few days later did I gather with my hunter team again.

We were drinking again to mourn his death. Im Hyeongtaek took a shot of soju and asked me.

“Come to think of it, Mr. Kim Geuk, I heard you gave a large condolence payment this time too...”

“I gave some.”

“How much...?”

“1.4 billion won.”

I didn't know why he was asking, but I answered anyway. Im Hyeongtaek blinked.

Seong Munyeong muttered, “You gave that much? You're building an apartment too...”

“That's why I couldn't give as much as I'd expected.”

“You don't have much money right now. Is it okay to spend it so freely?”

“I won't starve to death even if I spend that much. His family could starve to death like this, though. I gave what I could.”

“If I die, will you give my family that much too?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck, that's reassuring enough to kill me.”

“Don't actually get yourself killed just to receive it.”

We had all been drinking, and when men gathered, the conversation naturally turned to politics. Before long, we were suddenly cursing the country.

“Shouldn't the country be taking care of a Hunter's family instead of Kim Geuk paying out of his own pocket? Why doesn't the country give Hunters a single penny even when they die fighting? I get that they created the Hunter Association separately so they could treat us like mercenaries and avoid paying compensation, but why go that far just to refuse compensation?”

At Lee Jongho's angry words, Im Hyeongtaek spoke up.

“I looked into it, and apparently they're doing it because they need to save as much money as possible.”

“Why are they saving money on people who died for the country?”

True to his background in a general trading company, Im Hyeongtaek suddenly began explaining economics.

He said that when a country printed money, prices didn't always rise because trading nations exchanged currency with one another. Even if one country produced too much currency, other countries absorbed it.

Since the Gates opened, though, international trade had been in bad shape. Marine Monsters and Water Elementals that had taken over the sea even attacked container ships, so one out of every thirty ships crossing the ocean sank. Ships had to take longer routes to avoid waters crawling with Elementals, dramatically increasing transportation costs and insurance premiums.

Some countries had even collapsed entirely under those conditions, so countries could no longer flexibly absorb one another's currencies like before.

Besides, supplies of everything had already become scarce. Now, every bit of money the government produced could cause prices to rise.

To prevent that, the government was trying to produce as little currency as possible and spend as little money as possible.

“If the government spent money like it did before, we'd be in serious trouble. The price of rice and ramen, which the government is barely keeping down with everything it has, could rise not twofold but two hundredfold...”

When he explained that denying compensation to Hunters who died in battle was also part of the government's effort to save money, Seong Munyeong recoiled.

“Who asked you to defend the government? So what, are you saying they should never give us money?”

“Ah, um. Sorry. I can't tell what I should and shouldn't say when I'm drinking.”

I didn't join the conversation. I just listened to them with a heavy heart.

I still felt depressed. Knowing it wasn't my fault didn't comfort me much.

Because it felt like it was.

I remembered what Usori, the awakened Soweol person I had met before, said.

He had said it was cruel to put weapons in the hands of non-awakened people. Combat was the awakened people's role, while non-awakened people should stay still like gentle sheep.

Maybe I should have listened to him.

Poor Kim Jinjun. If I'd just left him in the back to cheer me on and stepped up myself, he would have lived. Maybe even if that Heat Ray had hit me, I would have survived...

As the drinking continued, only Im Hyeongtaek and I remained.

I wondered why he wasn't leaving, then saw that his face was red. I was just thinking that I should use Spatial Teleportation to take him home.

“Mr. Kim Geuk is a good person.”

I reacted to Im Hyeongtaek's sudden comment.

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm saying Mr. Kim Geuk is a really good person... When I first saw you at the academy, I was worried some gangster bastard had come to become a Hunter. But the more I saw you, the more I realized you were a good person... You don't know how much the academy director praises you whenever he drinks with me, do you?”

“Why are you suddenly saying this...?”

“You looked awful. You feel responsible, don't you? As the team leader.”

I nodded silently.

“I feel pretty awful too,” Im Hyeongtaek said. “I feel guilty.”

“Why do you feel guilty?”

“I'm in my forties, aren't I? I've lived twice as long as Mr. Jinjun, but I held back to protect myself and let that young man die first...”

“You said you have a family you're responsible for, Mr. Hyeongtaek.”

“That's right. I have a wife and a daughter. But my wife is so young. I seduced her when she was a girl working part-time at a convenience store after graduating high school. Since then, I've just kept her as a housewife, so she's never had any social experience beyond working at that convenience store.”

I wondered why he was suddenly bragging about his young wife, but Im Hyeongtaek continued.

“I was crazy for seducing a girl young enough to be my daughter, but living with her feels less like having a life partner and more like raising another daughter. I worried whether my two girls could survive if I died. So I thought I absolutely couldn't die, but...”

The hallucination I'd had before suddenly came back to me. Im Hyeongtaek had urged me to move another teammate first instead of taking him to safety from the Rock Elemental. Thinking of that, it couldn't have been empty talk when he said he felt guilty for surviving instead of the younger people.

Im Hyeongtaek said, “If there's ever a time when someone has to be sacrificed... don't hesitate. Sacrifice me without holding back.”

“What?”

“It's better than sacrificing kids who haven't lived even half as long as I have. And seeing how much you do for a fallen teammate's family and affairs, I think I've let go a little of the thought that I absolutely can't die. Seeing you take care of the people a fallen teammate left behind makes me feel reassured...”

It seemed he had brought up his family so suddenly because he wanted to ask me to look after them after he died. He must have been so worried about them that he'd taken a great interest in the condolence payment I gave.

I didn't say yes or no. I dropped him off in front of his house, then returned home.

* * *

I still felt bad when I woke up.

To shake off the gloomy feeling, I decided to watch the Kang Jun-chi video that had gone up on Huntweb the day before.

For once, Kang Jun-chi had caught a villain who actually deserved it. His force-field ability worked like telekinesis. He lifted a pickpocket who had tried to steal a middle-aged woman's bag, motorcycle and all, into the air and began punishing him.

「It hurts, fuck, it hurts! Stop! Please, stop!」

Maybe he wanted to make sure the pickpocket would never try stealing again. Kang Jun-chi broke not only the pickpocket's fingers but all four limbs, drawing screams from his mouth without pause. In the end, a severely injured man, whose expected recovery time couldn't even be guessed, lay on the ground trembling.

Then came the video's highlight, the moment public authority became meaningless.

The police soon arrived and started acting like they would handle the situation, speaking aggressively and informally.

The moment they recognized Kang Jun-chi, though, their attitude completely changed. Polite speech flowed from their mouths.

「Ah, Mr. Kang Jun-chi? So it's true that you came to Seoul. It's an honor to meet you...」

The two officers didn't even spare a glance for the pickpocket lying on the ground. The video ended with them bowing to see Kang Jun-chi off as he left.

I replayed that part again and again to soothe myself.

Then I received a Huntweb message.

Someone had sent me a message. If it was some nobody trying to act friendly, I should ignore it.

But when I pressed the notification button, my eyes widened.

Ⓢ Kang: Is BabyMushroom there?? If you are, answer me quickly, please.

Kang Jun-chi, the star of the video I'd just watched, had sent me a private message. I immediately replied.

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: ?

Kang Jun-chi's next message arrived just as quickly.

Ⓢ Kang: Can you help me? It's urgent, seriously, please.

Footnotes:

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