WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 7: Academy Student Kim Geuk - [5]

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Yang Taeja wasn't just my strength-training coach. He was also my shooting instructor.

I stepped into the shooting range with him again today. After practicing a few things, I asked him during a break.

“Coach Yang? You’re an awakened person, so why aren’t you a Hunter? Why are you a trainer?”

It apparently wasn't a welcome question. Yang Taeja frowned slightly, let out a sigh, then answered.

“I was a Hunter for a little while.”

“How long is a little while?”

“About a month? Most of that was training, honestly, and I only went on one hunt. Calling myself a former Hunter would be a joke. Still, I make more than the other instructors just because I'm a Body Enhancement user, so it's a little embarrassing.”

When I asked why he had quit so early, Yang Taeja sighed again.

“This isn't something I should say to a student who came here to become a Hunter, but... ugh, I couldn't handle it.”

“What do you mean?”

“All of it. I didn't know people would die so pointlessly. When they said Monsters, I figured they'd be something like stronger wild boars. They weren't. People didn't die fighting them in some dramatic, heroic way. They just got killed, one after another, without being able to do anything. The person walking in front of me got their stomach sliced open, and all this stuff spilled out before they died. I didn't throw up like in a comic, but I just froze up...”

His voice began to shake. As I silently cursed myself for asking, Yang Taeja continued.

“Fuck, I couldn't move a single step. I really couldn't move at all, but people on both sides were screaming at me, asking what the hell I was doing... In the end, I just stood there the whole time and quit.”

Yang Taeja forced a joke, saying I couldn't end up like that or the academy director would cry, then told me to get back to shooting.

I was getting decent at aimed fire now. Point Shooting was the problem. Apparently, attaching something called a laser sight made it easier to shoot without aiming, but I shouldn't rely on it too much in fights against Monsters. Engagement distances with Monsters were farther than expected, so the laser dot was hard to see. That was why he made me practice without it.

“Fuck, I can't hit shit.”

I fired at the target without aiming again and missed, nearly letting out a stream of curses. Yang Taeja, who had been watching from behind me, tried to comfort me.

“You don't need to rush. From what I can see, you're making good progress. I guarantee it. Just keep this up.”

No. I had thought the same until recently, but things were different now.

As I gritted my teeth, a brief headache pulsed through my head.

I thought I was about to see another hallucination, but this time, that wasn't it. Still, it felt like I was being pulled somewhere.

Like being sucked into a dream, then coming back out. I had brought something out of that dream with me...

“Wait a second.”

I closed my eyes, then opened them.

When I focused, a mesh spread out before me. It was the mental mesh that appeared when I tried to use Spatial Teleportation. Using Spatial Teleportation somewhere within sight put less strain on me, and the mesh also put less strain on me when I kept it within my field of vision.

I looked at one line in the mesh. It extended in a perfectly straight line from the muzzle of my gun. The heightened synesthesia that came with using this ability told me so.

I fixed my gaze in that direction.

Then I pulled the trigger...

“Oh, I hit it!”

I hit the target without aiming, with Point Shooting. Still, there was no reason to get excited. I had gotten lucky and hit it a few times before.

I fired again and again without aiming.

Every shot hit.

“Oh!”

As Yang Taeja cheered, I decided to try from farther away.

First, at fifty meters, I hit it with Point Shooting again.

“Huh?”

Then, at one hundred meters, one hundred fifty meters, and two hundred meters, I hit every target in succession without aiming. Yang Taeja muttered, looking completely dumbfounded.

“What? Why did you suddenly get so accurate?”

“I figured out the trick.”

“What kind of trick turns you into a deadeye all of a sudden? Besides, hitting targets at one hundred fifty and two hundred meters isn't something you can do just because you figured out some trick...”

It was hard to explain how I had figured out that method just now.

Put simply, the me in my dream could do it. I had remembered how.

Of course, I didn't bother explaining all that. It would sound more impressive if I just said I could do it.

After that, I kept shooting from as far away as I could without aiming. Almost every bullet hit, and Yang Taeja was baffled every time.

“What is this? What the hell is this?”

Couldn't this guy stop being surprised and praise me a little? Maybe all the nutrients that were supposed to go to his brain had gone into his muscles. He really couldn’t take a hint.

After testing the new shooting method for several dozen more minutes, I returned to the academy.

It was time for strength training again. Yang Taeja asked me,

“It’s the final workout. You'll do some running, then bench presses like usual, right?”

I didn't answer. I just stared at him.

Yang Taeja was a skilled trainer with a professional sports instructor certification. Since he was a Body Enhancement user himself, he was an excellent trainer capable of teaching other Body Enhancement users with methods he had used to train himself. He was even diligent enough to read several foreign research papers because he wanted to teach me properly.

Still, he had never given me any particularly radical or astonishing training routine. It wasn't because he was lazy. A responsible coach didn't throw out advice carelessly, worried that it might ruin an athlete.

And from now on, I was going to train in a radically different way.

I was going to take a risk. I said as much.

“Coach Yang? Help me train differently today.”

“Differently? How?”

“I need to overtrain today.”

“Overtrain?”

“I'm a Body Enhancement user, aren't I? And I have Super-Regeneration.”

Yang Taeja grinned and nodded.

“So you want to train harder today... Wow, I like the motivation. What exactly are you planning?”

“I'm going to work out until my muscles tear and my cartilage gets wrecked. Watch me bench press, and if it looks like my arms are broken, lift the barbell off me.”

“What?”

I repeated myself to the stunned Yang Taeja. He looked dumbfounded again.

“No, why?”

“I've been having bad dreams lately.”

“What?”

I showed him an overseas case I had found during the break: a Body Enhancement user who had explosively built muscle in a short time through reckless training that would have left ordinary people disabled. I explained it all using my smartphone.

I told him I intended to follow that example.

Naturally, Yang Taeja looked uncomfortable.

“Do you really need to?”

His point was that my current routine was enough, so why was I trying to do something so strange?

I answered, “I've been having bad dreams lately,” one more time, then began the workout I had warned him about.

First, dumbbells... I used the heaviest weight I could lift, maintained proper form, and repeatedly raised and lowered them as fast as I could. If I had pulled something like this during my days as an athlete, my coach would have cursed me out and punched me in the head.

Yang Taeja watched me anxiously. Then, after more than ten minutes, something felt like it snapped, and I had to put the dumbbells down.

“Hiss...”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. It'll heal if I leave it alone.”

“If you're going to get injured this quickly and rest, wouldn't it have been better to work out normally?”

“No. I'll rest for a bit, then do it again.”

I was sitting down to rest.

My eyes met those of another student resting across from me.

I knew him, more or less.

He was the one from this hallucination.

Jeong Jinyeong, thirty-four years old. At a drinking session with the other students, he had apparently gotten drunk and, wearing the expression of a man carrying every hardship in the world, confessed that he had been unemployed and living off his parents until this age.

When the economy became such a mess that even his parents lost their jobs, he came to the Hunter academy determined to support them himself.

Maybe he couldn't afford sneakers, or maybe he thought being a Hunter was basically like being a soldier. Either way, the combat boots he always wore were distinctive.

Jeong Jinyeong died, leaving those combat boots behind. He had been flattened into a bloody mess, with none of the dignity owed to the dead, like something out of a B-grade horror movie.

The meat that had once been Jeong Jinyeong was spread thin and wide across the concrete floor like pancake batter.

It looked like everything from his upper body to his thighs had been completely crushed.

Only the part from his shoes to his knees remained intact. I had recognized him not because any part of his face remained, but because of the combat boots he had said he brought home when he was discharged from the military.

After coming out of the hallucination, I gasped for breath again.

Should I at least warn him? Should I tell the man whose death had just been foretold that he would die if he kept being a Hunter?

But even if I told him, he probably wouldn't be surprised. What idiot didn't know being a Hunter was a high-risk job?

I didn't know exactly how he would die, so I couldn't give him any real advice. At most, I could yell at him to quit being a Hunter. And it was hard for me to actually do that... Fuck.

As always after a hallucination ended, vicious anger began spreading through my nervous system. My body temperature rose, and the urge to smash something took over my mind.

Using that anger as fuel, I picked up the dumbbells in both hands. Yang Taeja freaked out.

“You're going again already?”

I didn't answer. I began raising and lowering the dumbbells again and again.

The muscles that had torn a little earlier regenerated, and they seemed tougher than before. The workout somehow felt easier than it had a moment ago. Of course, that could have been because part of my arm was numb, but I decided not to care.

“Spot me for a few sets.”

Next came the bench press...

When I began lifting a barbell so heavy it seemed like the floor might cave in, the other students working out around me gathered closer.

The students surrounding me watched my workout.

“Oh...!”

Some simply exclaimed in admiration. Others recorded me with their smartphones. There were all kinds.

Among the students around me was Jeong Jinyeong, who was destined to become a pile of blood and flesh at the age of thirty-four.

We weren't close. He had strong shut-in tendencies and was naturally introverted. Maybe he was scared of me because I looked big and bad-tempered, since he never spoke to me first.

Still, he seemed to find the academy's only awakened person fascinating. Whenever I shot a Hunter Rifle or lifted exercise equipment only a Body Enhancement user could handle, I could feel him glancing at me.

It was the same now. Jeong Jinyeong stood among the crowd, staring at me with his mouth hanging open. He seemed pretty impressed.

I really liked that honest reaction. The other students' enthusiastic cheers and reactions around him felt good too. Just being surrounded by them thrilled me.

I liked hearing their praise. I liked these ordinary men around me cheering at my insignificant actions.

I loved it!

As I raised and lowered the barbell, they began chanting something like encouragement.

“One more! One more!”

The truth was, I had never had any meaningful emotional exchange with those students. They only flattered me or made a fuss over me because I was an awakened person, while I pretended to be indifferent and enjoyed their praise.

So how many of them would die? How horribly would they die?

I didn't know how their deaths would happen, or what their deaths would have to do with me.

But there was one thing I knew for sure.

I wanted to keep receiving their praise.

And if I wanted their praise, they had to keep living. If they died because I failed to protect them, that would be even more horrible.

Then I wouldn't receive anyone's praise.

I didn't want that.

Until the muscles in both arms tore and my cartilage was destroyed, I continued working out to everyone's cheers.

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Footnotes:

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