WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 64: Veteran Sergeant Kim Yo-han - [1]

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When I went to visit my younger sister for the first time in a while, she said this.

“Brother, can't you get me out of here?”

What was that supposed to mean all of a sudden?

“How?”

“With Spatial Teleportation... You don't have to buy me a Porsche, so please?”

My facial muscles stiffened. My sister was asking me to break her out of prison.

What a selfish bitch, making such a troublesome request.

I barely swallowed the curse that nearly slipped out and chose my words carefully.

“If you had a life sentence or were on death row, I might really have gotten you out, but that's not the case. Helping you escape is a little hard to justify when you've only got a year and a few months left on your sentence.”

“Still...”

“Besides, your lawyer said your sentence was reduced again recently. Sounds like you've been behaving yourself in there. Right?”

“They only did that because the prison's full and they need to clear out cells.”

“So what? The important thing is getting out sooner.”

I smiled, but my sister did not.

“Brother, this is really hard for me.”

She whined, and I let out a deep sigh.

“Even if I got you out, what would you do? Live in hiding forever as a wanted escapee?”

“I could go abroad. Apply for asylum because I was unfairly imprisoned...”

Another curse nearly burst out of me. Asylum in this day and age? What bullshit.

Living locked up in prison must have left her completely unaware of how the world worked. Did she really think a foreign country would care about her human rights just because she went there?

There was a limit to being naive. At this point, it was just frustrating.

“No country, including Korea, will ever accept an ice ability user as an immigrant. Even if you went abroad, you'd have to hide for the rest of your life. Are you really going to ruin your life because you can't endure one more year and a few months?”

I told her to hold on a little longer, that a luxurious life would be waiting for her after one more year and a few months, but she did not seem convinced.

She was clearly resentful that I would not grant her request.

When I left after the visit, she did not say goodbye.

Anyway, she had always been the same selfish bitch. A girl who had apparently forgotten everything she had done and saw herself as a flawless victim. She had repeated years in middle school, then spent more years rotting in prison, so she was practically an adult now, yet her mentality was still that of a middle schooler going through puberty...

I barely held back my anger and thought about it.

Why had she made that request? Had she seen the news that I beat up more than a dozen people and did not go to prison, then started believing her brother existed above the law?

If that was what she believed, she was wrong. I had no intention of being branded a complete outlaw just to get my sister out of prison a year and a few months early.

For me, since I wanted my current life to continue, her request was too much of a burden.

It made me feel suffocated.

I realized that I was ultimately nothing more than a Jew trapped under Nazi law. It was almost embarrassing that I had celebrated as if I had defeated public authority after beating up Kim Seokhee and a few gangster bastards.

I still had not escaped the law or society.

To truly escape, I had to become stronger. Like Kang Jun-chi, I had to become a genuine superhuman who could ignore the law and everything else.

The explosive growth my ring girl had shown, despite being nothing more than an icehead, gave me hope.

Over the last few months, Baek Dambi had grown tremendously as an awakened person, and so had I. If I kept killing Monsters again and again, maybe I could keep growing like this...

The fact that the Special Forces had called me in made me even angrier.

I barely had enough time to hunt as it was, and they wanted to summon me somewhere like that?

It was infuriating. I was reaching the point where I could no longer just sit back and watch things unfold like this.

* * *

When I got into the government vehicle, the shrill cries of several middle-aged men and women rang out behind me.

“Don't take Kim Geuk away, you fucking bastards!”

“It's not like Kim Geuk just sits around collecting money! Why the hell are you taking him?”

They were Incheon citizens.

The protest signs they held explained why they had gathered.

‘Oppose Kim Geuk's Special Forces Summons’

The people of Incheon had gathered to protest my being summoned by the Special Forces.

Of course they had every right to be angry. I was employed with their taxes and should have been working for Incheon, yet a special unit from Seoul suddenly wanted to take me away and use me?

It was just as absurd for Incheon's citizens as it was for me.

It was awkward to say it myself, but wasn't I the busiest and most important Hunter in Incheon?

In an emergency, I was almost always the first to respond, and even in normal times I was busy with the Incheon Recovery Project.

Just having someone like me, who worked for Incheon every day, dragged off to the Special Forces for several days was a major loss for Incheon. If I got seriously injured or even died while working for them, it would be a catastrophe for Incheon.

The moment news of my Special Forces summons spread online, after I subtly hinted at it on Huntweb, Incheon City Hall and the public had naturally erupted.

Of course, the Special Forces did not take the people of Incheon's protests into account.

The government vehicle carrying me eventually reached its destination.

As I got out, a Special Forces member who had come to meet me greeted me. He was a young man with a sword hanging at his waist.

“Kim Geuk? Wow, you're even scarier in person. Nice to meet you!”

If some rude non-awakened scrap had acted like an agent, I would have ignored him. But this guy was clearly an awakened person just from the sword at his waist, and he was polite too, so it was hard to treat him badly.

“Yes, nice to meet you too. And you are?”

“I'm Kang Junman, a rookie in the Special Forces... Though I'd rather introduce myself as a fellow Huntweb user. Do you know Justice1994?”

“Oh, sure. You're Justice1994?”

“Yes, that's me!”

Ah, then it made sense that he was acting so friendly.

He had the same A badge as me. He was a big name on Huntweb.

Justice1994. When Kim Seokhee's gang was running wild and the police seemed helpless, leaving everyone on Huntweb stunned, this guy had appeared.

Trying to explain the situation, he introduced himself as someone who had joined the police through awakened-person special recruitment. If I remembered correctly, he claimed that he was so dissatisfied with his low pay that he had lost all motivation.

At the time, hadn't he said that even if he got a resident report about a Deathclaw appearing, he planned to take a leisurely walk and come back?

Everyone on Huntweb had gotten so angry at that statement that they dug into his personal information.

Once they found out where he worked as a police officer and what he did, everyone started sympathizing with him. He only talked like that, but in reality, he had killed more Monsters than most Hunters.

Dealing with small-scale Monsters was also one of the police's duties these days. Since he was awakened, his police station had assigned every Monster-related dispatch to him alone.

So he had been risking his life hunting countless Monsters for a monthly salary of only four million won.

“On Huntweb, you said you were a police officer. Did you transfer to the Special Forces?”

Kang Junman gave an awkward smile and nodded.

“Yes. I wanted to quit everything and become a Hunter too! But I had too much mandatory service left with the police, so I couldn't... Then I heard recently that I could transfer to the Special Forces. And since the Special Forces pays three times what awakened-person special recruitment police earn, I had no choice but to accept...”

So working for the Special Forces was unavoidable for him.

Following his lead, I headed toward where the Special Forces members had gathered.

I looked around to see if I recognized anyone among them, then asked.

“Where's Han Hee?”

“Oh, you know Han Hee? That guy isn't part of this mission.”

“Why not? His ability looked incredibly powerful.”

“Even so. This is a mission where people could get hurt or killed, right? That bastard Han Heeseok isn't sending his own son into a mission like this.”

“Because he cares about his son?”

Kang Junman snorted at my question.

“Who knows? Maybe that's it. Or maybe it's more like how a king keeps his elite royal guards by his side even when a war breaks out. He probably wants to save him as much as possible because the loyal man he planted in the Special Forces can't get hurt or die...”

It seemed he did not respect his commander, the Special Forces Commander. That made me like him even more.

“Then why did they call me in? I'm busy enough just hunting.”

“Well, this operation is extremely important to the Special Forces, so they probably called in the strongest people they could. You're the one who beat down Kim Seokhee's whole group. With just you here, success is basically guaranteed... And apparently they decided you were the best person to call in from outside.”

“Why me?”

“Who knows? It seems the senior officers think you're a very cooperative sort.”

“Are those senior officers out of their minds?”

“They do have some basis for it. Didn't you comply with the police's request when you got hit with a 9th-Grade Call, then ask why they had called you only afterward? Maybe they saw that record of you cooperating with the police without complaint and decided you're very cooperative...”

I had agreed to the police's request without resistance back then. But I had been too tired to think about anything complicated, and they had been Incheon police, so I went along with it.

And now? My mind was clearer than ever, and the people who summoned me were non-awakened scraps from Seoul, not Incheon citizens.

That was a huge difference, truly.

“I should let them know their judgment was wrong.”

Kang Junman did not seem to dislike my rebellious words.

“You absolutely should! I'm sincerely looking forward to it...”

Kang Junman grinned, then suddenly asked me.

“By the way, Kim Geuk, you really seem full of complaints.”

“Would you be happy about this?”

“Fair enough. Still, I'm surprised. I thought you'd just refuse to come if you were unhappy.”

“If I refuse a summons, I have to pay a fine.”

“I thought you'd pay a fine without a second thought. Your signing bonus alone was over fifty billion won, wasn't it? I heard next year's contract will be on a far more massive scale...”

Kang Junman spoke enviously, and he was right.

I could have ignored the summons entirely, but I did not. Why was that?

The target the Special Forces had summoned even Hunters to capture this time was Kim Seokhee. The man who had been the Marquess of Gyeyang-gu.

The so-called Kim Seokhee Incident was also what had led to the Special Forces being given this absurd authority.

That meant wiping out Kim Seokhee and his group was probably as important to the Special Forces Commander as an election promise. Han Heeseok wanted to destroy an awakened-person gang that even the police could not touch and prove that granting such authority to the Special Forces had been the right decision.

And I wanted to interfere with that proof.

No matter what authority the Special Forces received, I wanted to show everyone that public authority could not dare control awakened people.

Besides, Kim Seokhee was now the Baron of Bucheon. He was my vassal, the man I had granted territory and sent there. Naturally, as the Duke of Incheon, I had to protect him.

That was roughly why I had come here to interfere with this operation.

Han Heeseok might have included me because he thought I was easy to use, but I would thoroughly betray that expectation.

Naturally, I would drag my feet throughout the operation, and if necessary, I was willing to do even more than that...

There was one more awakened person who seemed to have come here with thoughts similar to mine.

“Yohan, where's your Hunter Rifle?”

At a female Special Forces member's question, a middle-aged man answered in a voice that sounded tired of everything.

“I didn't bring something like that. Why?”

“When I called, you said you brought everything you needed!”

“I did bring what I needed. Three phone batteries.”

“Wait, are you planning to just play on your phone through the entire operation?”

“Yes.”

It was easy to guess who that middle-aged man was.

He had to be SeoulTobagi from Huntweb. The man who had declared on Huntweb that if they called someone who was practically a veteran sergeant like him, he would never listen to them.

SeoulTobagi, who had been arguing with the female Special Forces member, met my eyes. I smiled pleasantly at him, and he grinned back.

He was a comrade who had come here with the same intention. I was sure of it.

* * *

Footnotes:

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