WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 60: Special Forces Commander Han Hee-seok - [4]

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Having assessed the situation, I quickly shouted.

“Jangsil, which one of those people down there has an ice ability? Check!”

Seok Jangsil was just as quick. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and immediately shouted.

“Over there, next to Baskin-Robbins! That middle-aged woman running with the others!”

Then Kim Hyeongman shouted.

“That doesn't tell me anything!”

Kim Hyeongman extended his index finger out the window.

A red beam shot from the tip of the Heat Ray user's finger and reached the people below. Normally, it would have been hot enough to pierce straight through a Force-Field Creature and kill it, but he must have lowered the output as much as possible. The people touched by the beam were unharmed.

He was using his Heat Ray ability like a laser pointer.

“Jangsil? Move my finger and point out the ice ability user!”

At Kim Hyeongman's shout, Seok Jangsil did exactly that. Before long, the Heat Ray settled on a middle-aged woman desperately running alongside the others.

I shouted.

“That woman's the ice ability user, right?”

Seok Jangsil nodded, and I used Spatial Teleportation.

After appearing in front of the woman, I saw it.

Even as she ran with the other terrified people, her eyes darted from side to side as she scanned her surroundings. They were not the eyes of a frightened rabbit. They were the eyes of a hawk searching for prey.

A young woman running beside her was caught in her gaze. The light vanished from the young woman's eyes, and she crumpled to the ground.

Another person had died.

There was no doubt about it. This woman was behind the massacre.

Then, in the next instant, Special Forces member Han Hee arrived beside me. He had reached me only about a second after I used Spatial Teleportation, not much slower than Nguyen had been when I saw him before.

Nguyen had likely spent years hunting Monsters and developing his ability as a Hunter. Han Hee, on the other hand, had probably never killed a single Monster, yet he was already this fast. It showed just how incredible his potential was.

For a moment, I thought someone this capable might be able to handle the whole situation alone.

Come to think of it, he was the civil servant here, not me.

Should I stop acting like some cop just because of what I learned at the academy and leave him to deal with it?

But when I looked at Han Hee, that did not seem like a good idea.

His expression was completely frozen. He had gotten here quickly because the situation was urgent, but he had no idea what to do.

It was hard to expect amazing crisis-response skills from someone new to working life who could not even tail someone properly without getting caught.

So I acted first.

I grabbed the woman's face in my palm so she could not see anyone and freeze the blood vessels in the brains of anyone caught in her gaze.

Only then did the woman seem to realize she had been discovered.

She fought back. Unable to see, she flailed around before grabbing my wrist.

Cold spread from where she held me, beginning to chill my entire body. It was the same ability my ring girl used on me when I overheated from overusing my ability.

It was useless for hunting Monsters because it required direct physical contact to use against an awakened person, but I knew it was powerful enough to kill someone.

I desperately held myself back from punching the woman unconscious on the spot. I just endured it.

I had to consider the possibility that she was not the culprit, that she was only acting strangely because terror had driven her out of her mind.

Enduring the cold somehow, I asked Han Hee.

“You don't have handcuffs, right?”

“Uh? No.”

“Where's the nearest police station? Just point the way, quickly. Call the station right now and explain the situation...”

I used Spatial Teleportation repeatedly in the direction Han Hee pointed.

After entering the police station, I gave the officers there a few instructions. Only after the woman was handcuffed and her eyes covered could I finally breathe easy.

When I returned to the bar where I had been drinking with the awakened Hunters, the others were waiting for me.

“So, what happened? There wasn't another ice ability user, was there? The massacre didn't keep going, right?”

Seok Jangsil answered.

“I think the woman you just subdued really was the culprit. I couldn't see any other ice ability users, and the killings stopped after Kim Geuk took her down...”

After that, we left the bar and started chatting.

“How many people do you think died?”

“About eight?”

“Damn. It's awful for the people who died, but it could have been worse.”

“Yeah. There were so many people on the street. Even an ordinary shooting spree would probably have killed far more than that... Anyway, thank goodness everyone acted so fast the second the screaming started.”

“Will this make the news today?”

Someone asked that, and I was about to explain that incidents like this rarely made the news because the government usually buried them.

That was normally how things went, but this time might be different. Considering how the news had recently been reporting awakened person-related stories without holding anything back...

* * *

My prediction was right. This incident made the news.

After parting with everyone and returning home, I found every broadcast network running it as breaking news.

“An Ice Crystal ability user in Suyu-dong, Seoul... The awakened Hunters who happened to be at the scene acted without concern for their own safety, allowing the situation to be brought under control quickly...”

I appeared on screen alongside captions identifying me as Hunter Kim Geuk and so on.

I turned off the television as soon as it showed me appearing through Spatial Teleportation and subduing the woman.

I could not bear to keep watching. Damn it.

Not long after, I got a call. As expected, it was Park Mihyeong.

“You seem to be on TV every time I turn it on lately, Kim Geuk.”

Her excited voice made it sound like she had called to praise me for distinguishing myself again, but I did not have the energy to play along.

“Yeah. I should probably stop showing up so much.”

There was a brief silence on the other end after my sarcastic answer.

After a moment, Park Mihyeong asked.

“Kim Geuk, are you upset right now?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I acted impulsively and think I might have helped the government's crackdown on ice ability users?”

“Oh. I see what you mean. That's what you're worried about?”

The ice ability user I had subdued this time would be found guilty.

There was no doubt. How often had ice ability users been presumed guilty just because they were near the scene, even without physical evidence or circumstantial evidence? This time, there was even clear circumstantial evidence.

It was hard for me to feel happy about catching the culprit.

I had decided the woman was the culprit and subdued her, but there was still a chance that another awakened person had been hiding somewhere out of sight and was responsible.

The woman had only acted suspiciously. I could not dismiss the possibility that there was another real culprit, especially when I had a younger sister with an ice ability who had gone to prison for similar reasons.

As I sat there feeling depressed at the thought that I might have made someone suffer the same injustice as my sister, Park Mihyeong spoke as though she understood how I felt.

“Oh, this time it wasn't an unjust arrest. She really was the culprit.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have connections in that area. Apparently, she has already confessed. They even know her motive.”

Park Mihyeong explained that when ice ability users carried out massacres in the street like a shooting spree, it was usually because they held grudges against society or wanted to express some bizarre belief.

This case was different.

The woman who had tried to massacre people in the street had a clear goal. She wanted to become an elemental.

“The government tried to hide it, but people have gradually found out that elementals don't die of old age, right? That woman wanted to stop aging before she got more wrinkles.

“But she thought becoming a Hunter and killing Monsters until she became an elemental was not very realistic, even to her. So she looked for a safer way to become one...”

“By killing a lot of people, who are far more numerous and easier to kill than Monsters?”

“That's right. She believed killing a few dozen, maybe a few hundred people would turn her into an elemental. Even if she received the death penalty, she thought she might eventually get released after having her sentence reduced. As long as she didn't die of old age, it would be worth it... She really does seem to be the culprit, so you don't need to blame yourself too much.”

“You never know, though. A confession can be forced into sounding believable.”

“That is true. But what else could you have done there? Unless you were going to let a lot of people die, you had to act first. I think you did the right thing, even as a human-rights activist with Korean Awakened Solidarity.”

“What was so right about it?”

“You know how ice ability users overseas have often killed hundreds of people at a time, right? Their massacres operate on a completely different scale, so they have apparently rewritten all the criminal records in the Guinness Book. You stopped Korea from having one of those cases, so it's good for other ice ability users too.”

“What kind of logic is that...”

“You've heard the story of a hunter who said that by putting down a man-eating predator as quickly as possible, they stopped hatred from spreading toward its whole species, right? What you did this time was like that. You stopped something that could have made society hate ice ability users even more...”

Park Mihyeong claimed that, for those reasons, my actions had been admirable even from the perspective of awakened person human-rights activism. Still, I could tell she was only saying it to comfort me.

Back when she was with Korean Awakened Solidarity, she had always taken a hard-line stance that awakened people should not be detained or sentenced without proper evidence, no matter what incident happened or how clear the circumstantial evidence was.

I had inherited that belief as well.

For that reason, even though I had distinguished myself again and received praise from the media, I still did not feel good.

I checked Huntweb just in case, but it was no different there.

Anonymous: Long live Huntweb's pride, BabyMushroom! Long live Huntweb's pride, Stonehead Youth! Long live Huntweb's pride, ElmayaKaeyo!

Ⓐ syberMagneto: BabyMushroom is seriously good at taking down iceheads.

I flinched when I saw my ring girl talking about iceheads again.

Maybe Huntweb users felt vicarious satisfaction whenever its famous members did something impressive. Huntweb was in a festive mood.

Ⓐ Stonehead Youth: Anyway, everyone, including me, acted ridiculously fast, right? If even one of the three people who acted this time had been missing, at least ten more people would have died.

5myJesus: You are all heroes, seriously. Kim Geuk was especially incredible. His temperature dropped so much that all the color had drained from his face, but he endured it to the end.

That festive mood lasted only a day.

* * *

Huntweb was noisy again the next day.

This time, it was not for a good reason.

Ⓐ Stonehead Youth: Has this country actually gone insane?

Feeling exactly the same way, I watched a video posted to the site.

A cabinet meeting? Some other policy debate?

I could not tell exactly what kind of event it was, but it was clearly a place where someone important was explaining policy.

And I knew the person who had come out to explain the policy.

“To address public authorities' recent inability to deal with awakened persons while responding to increasingly serious paranormal crime...”

The guy droning on about policy was Han Hee-seok.

He was Han Hee-seok, the Special Forces Commander, the Nazi bastard who had blocked his own son's promising future.

The subtitles in the video identified Han Hee-seok not as Special Forces Commander, but as the Vice Minister of the National Security Ministry. I flinched when I saw that title.

On Huntweb, people tended to look down on the Special Forces as a coward's refuge for weaklings without the guts to work as Hunters. I had thought its commander was just the head of some unproven unit that could not even fill half its recruitment quota, but he seemed to be much higher up than I had expected.

In the video, Han Hee-seok brought up the Kim Seokhee incident and the recent Suyu-dong Ice Crystal incident one after another.

I finally understood why the news had been reporting awakened person-related incidents without censorship lately.

“...Therefore, the National Security Ministry requests a major additional increase to the Special Forces budget...”

Han Hee-seok, wearing disturbingly pale makeup as though trying to hide the marks Kang Jun-chi had left on him, kept droning on.

“Furthermore, we have determined that increasing the budget alone will not be enough to recruit the personnel required by the Special Forces. The Special Forces must be granted additional authority...”

Then came the statement that enraged everyone on Huntweb.

“...In order to secure the awakened personnel needed for Special Forces operations, the Special Forces should be granted the authority to mobilize Hunters contracted with local governments in emergencies.”

A rebuttal immediately came from the other side.

“So you are saying that you want to legalize the so-called 9th-Grade Call, where awakened Hunters contracted with local governments are summoned and assigned work other than Monster suppression?”

“Yes. Under the current system, there are limits to what local governments and awakened Hunters can be mobilized for...”

“Do you think that makes any sense? Whether they are contracted with a local government or anyone else, Hunters are civilians.”

“That may be their legal status, but the Hunter profession has a public-service aspect...”

“If the Marine Corps cannot fill its recruitment quota, are you going to mobilize nearby fishermen for every Marine Corps operation? I have no idea whose idea it was to mobilize Hunters who have not even received proper training and assign them work the police should be doing!”

“Given the characteristics of awakened persons, we believe they would outperform even trained professionals if mobilized...”

The argument in the video went on.

When someone pointed out that instead of increasing the budget for a small elite unit like the Special Forces, they should first raise police officers' salaries to strengthen local police forces, Han Hee-seok said this.

“During the Joseon era, government officials were paid so little that they could barely make a living, and corruption was widespread. The people of Joseon knew exactly what the problem was. They could not solve it, not because they did not know, but because they lacked the means to raise officials' salaries.

“We are no different. How are we supposed to raise civil servants' salaries? If prices rise tenfold and we also raise their salaries tenfold, do you think inflation will stop at a tenfold increase?

“South Korea is not the only country that needs to save money right now. Do you know how the United States currently operates its Hunter system? Like something out of a superhero comic, awakened people in each region dress in costumes and hunt Monsters as vigilantes. The state government approaches the few who show results from that hero work, gives them Hunter licenses, and signs formal contracts with them.

“It looks romantic, but it is essentially a Hunter internship system. It exists so they can make awakened people work without paying them a cent until they prove their worth.

“Even the United States, which can print huge amounts of dollars and rely on other countries to stabilize prices, saves money like that. How can we spend freely and raise civil servants' salaries? We need to produce the best results with the smallest possible budget...”

No matter how logical Han Hee-seok sounded, the Hunters on Huntweb were never going to accept it.

Everyone was furiously pounding their keyboards.

Anonymous: So now, if you have a Hunter license, the country can call you in and use you whenever it wants?

Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo: Does this mean I have to close my acupuncture clinic and get summoned every time something happens? This is insane...

Ⓢ Kang: Those sea roaches really crossed the line because we let them be. Should I turn the whole thing upside down?

My first thought was that Kang Jun-chi should come out of that underground hole of his before saying anything. Then I sat there seething for a while.

I deeply regretted calming Kang Jun-chi down that day. I also regretted subduing that ice ability user at the scene so much...

I was too angry to do anything when the news began its weather forecast.

“Heavy rain is expected for some time...”

I tried to suppress my anger and forced myself to think.

Come to think of it, the rainy season was about to start, wasn't it?

I remembered the advice the awakened Hunters I had met had given me as seniors. There was someone I needed to pass that advice on to as well.

Ⓐ syberMagneto: Iceheads caused trouble again, and now look at this mess.

I called my ring girl, who was badmouthing her own kind on Huntweb again.

“Hey, Dambi? I have something I want to discuss. The rainy season is coming soon, so...”

* * *

Footnotes:

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