WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 9: Rock Spirit - [2]

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As you could tell from the way forty-three-year-old Im Hyeongtaek flattered me, he was the type who could debase himself as much as necessary. Still, he wasn't a sneaky man.

He had his own sense of responsibility as an older member of the group. Even in this hallucination, while everyone else kept silent, he was the only one who spoke.

"Kim Geuk, Spatial Teleportation..."

In the hallucination, I hesitantly answered without taking my eyes off that monstrous concrete creature.

"I can't even evacuate half the people here with Spatial Teleportation."

"That's not what I mean. Use Spatial Teleportation to bring back a Hunter Rifle from the Association. Or at least a rocket launcher."

He was telling me to bring a weapon that could hurt that monster. It was a pretty good instruction, especially because it gave me some direction in a situation where I had no idea what to do.

"If you can, bring a few people with you when you use Spatial Teleportation..."

At Im Hyeongtaek's words, I reached out to him. Physical contact was necessary if we were going to use Spatial Teleportation together.

Im Hyeongtaek knew that too.

Smack.

He slapped my hand away.

He squeezed his eyes shut, bit his lip hard, and shook his head back and forth. It was the kind of gesture only a brat would make, yet it was a mature refusal.

There was no time to admire him or ask if he meant something else.

Keeping one eye on the concrete Monster, I grabbed an academy student and an unknown person beside them.

Then I spread out my mental mesh. It was necessary whenever I used Spatial Teleportation to travel somewhere outside my field of vision.

I tried to do it as quickly as possible, but perhaps because I was tense, or because this area was unfamiliar, it was harder than usual to locate a destination.

One fortunate thing was that the elemental only watched us with a grin. It wasn’t trying to attack us right away.

Maybe it was staying still because it was wary of me. Maybe the instant I left, it would make its move. The thought crossed my mind, but I was too busy using Spatial Teleportation to let it change what I did.

At last, I fixed the coordinates and used Spatial Teleportation.

The scenery around me changed completely.

I was inside the Association building. The two people I had brought came with me.

"Don't just stand there, report the situation right now!"

I ran while shouting, then shouted again as I ran.

"Hunter Rifle! Where's the Hunter Rifle?!"

I needed the biggest weapon possible. A Hunter Rifle heavier than an elementary schooler should be able to tear that concrete monster apart.

After running and shouting in a frenzy, I got what I wanted. A fifty-five-kilogram Hunter Rifle.

I tried to use Spatial Teleportation to return to the abandoned building with it, but it wasn't easy to do quickly this time either.

Still, I somehow managed it.

The inside of the abandoned building came into view again. I struggled to endure the dizziness washing over me.

I looked around to assess the situation.

Then an even stronger wave of dizziness hit me. This time, it wasn't from strain on my nervous system. It was from mental shock.

"Uh."

The first thing I saw was Im Hyeongtaek, his neck stretched long like a deer's.

Next came mangled chunks of flesh, with Jeong Jinyeong's combat boots still attached to them.

Lee Jongho, both arms torn clean off. Kim Jinjun, brain matter spilling out. Seong Munyeong, his entire body riddled with holes as if he'd been blasted by a shotgun at point-blank range.

I took them in one after another.

Then the Rock Elemental that had done all this smiled at me.

Blood and brain matter clung to its concrete face. The instructor, who had once been a Hunter, hadn't been wrong. It was a monster mad for human flesh.

Instinctively, I aimed the Hunter Rifle at the elemental, but it didn't seem to care. It had already finished making its escape route.

Purple energy rippled behind it.

A Gate. It was the first Gate I'd ever seen, but I couldn't spare any attention for that fact, nor for the endless emotions and metaphors spilling out from within it.

I tried to squeeze the trigger with my index finger, but it wasn't easy. The mental shock had hit too hard. Maybe because my hand was shaking too badly, I couldn't put any strength into my finger.

What the fuck are you doing? Pull it. Pull it!

「Thank you for letting me have them, kind young man.」

At the same time my Hunter Rifle spat fire, the concrete Monster's form collapsed.

It wasn't because the thirty-millimeter round was exceptionally powerful.

Something translucent slipped out from between the crumbling concrete. That translucent thing was sucked into the Gate.

The Monster that had succeeded in its hunt was returning home.

In an instant, the elemental's true body vanished beyond the Gate. Then the Gate contracted.

Soon, even the Gate disappeared, leaving only me and the corpses too disgusting to look at.

With a roar laced with infrasound bursting from my mouth, my consciousness was thrown back into reality.

* * *

As always, once the hallucination ended, the emotions I had felt inside it remained. Overwhelmed by rage greater than anything I'd felt before, I tried to take a deep breath.

It didn't work.

Still, I had to stay calm. If I acted without holding back just because I was angry, everything would fall apart. Just as it had during the middle of my life.

I now knew the cause of all the anger and despair I'd felt so far. I wasn't happy about it.

Fuck.

"Kim Geuk? Spatial Teleportation..."

Im Hyeongtaek's voice. I answered shortly.

"No."

"I'm not telling you to run. Go to the Association and-"

He was trying to give me instructions. Most likely, to bring back a weapon that could hurt that thing.

In the hallucination, I had listened to that man's words. Not because I trusted him, but because I couldn't decide what to do myself, so I had needed to follow someone else's decision.

But the result hadn't been good. This time, I had no choice but to decide for myself.

"I said no. If I leave, everyone dies."

At my refusal, Im Hyeongtaek asked in a trembling voice, "Then do you have a plan if you stay?"

Well, was there?

I didn't know.

I looked at the Rock Elemental. The concrete monster stood four meters tall and was just as wide.

Weight classes were absolute in combat sports. That monster had to weigh several tons, no matter how I looked at it. It probably maintained that weight all the time, which meant it was always training with exercise equipment several times heavier than I was.

How powerful would the strength in that massive body be? How destructive would all that mass be when swung with such formidable strength?

I didn't know.

I was a superhuman Body Enhancement user, but did I have a chance against it?

I didn't know that either.

All I could think of was the fact that even a super heavyweight fighter couldn't handle a five-hundred-kilogram grizzly bear.

"While I have a staring contest with that bastard, call the Association. Tell them to send reinforcements..."

To make up for this difference, I needed a weapon. Yet all I had in my hands was a pathetic K-1 Rifle loaded with blank rounds.

Damn it. Im Hyeongtaek's instructions hadn't been completely wrong. The fact that I'd done my best and still gotten the worst possible result made me even more desperate.

Even as I ran through every calculation I could think of, I never took my eyes off the monster.

The Monster did the same. The Rock Elemental stared back at me.

Yeah, keep looking at me, you fucking bastard.

That monster's gaze couldn't turn toward anyone else. According to what I'd learned in class, a Rock Elemental could form stones inside a living creature’s body, whether in a blood vessel in the brain or right in the middle of the spinal cord.

It couldn't do that to me.

The suffocating standoff continued. Neither the Monster nor I could move.

Right. Just as I wasn't sure I could beat it, it apparently wasn't sure it could beat me either. I'd heard that when animals encountered an opponent that wasn't easy prey, they tried to retreat instead of fighting.

I desperately hoped it would retreat first.

Open your damn Gate and leave, please. Or let us keep this standoff going until the Association sent another awakened person.

As I prayed inwardly, I heard footsteps. Someone was moving.

Which bastard was it? What was he trying to do?

I glanced over and saw an unknown examinee. While the elemental and I faced off, he seemed to be trying to escape through a window. We were on the sixth floor. Did he think he could survive if he got lucky?

But animals never let fleeing prey go.

The Rock Elemental turned its gaze toward the poor bastard...

"Uh."

The unknown examinee stumbled after letting out a short cry. It seemed the elemental had hardened something inside his body.

The examinee collapsed, blood pouring from his nose. Then I heard someone sharply suck in a breath.

Next came a gasp, then screams.

"Fuuuck!"

The screams seemed to paralyze everyone's reason. Or maybe they were desperately trying to find somewhere to hide from the elemental's murderous gaze.

Either way, the examinees gathered there began scattering in every direction.

That wasn't good. Their prey-like movements excited the monster.

「Free Hug Declaration!」

The Rock Elemental kicked off the ground.

The time I had spent away in the hallucination using Spatial Teleportation hadn't been long. Yet once I saw how fast that monster moved, I understood how it had slaughtered everyone and opened a Gate so quickly during that brief time.

Chimpanzees could run much faster than humans, around forty kilometers per hour. That was close to the speed of Usain Bolt, who had been the fastest person in human history until a few years ago.

A four-meter-tall, several-ton Usain Bolt sprinted at full speed toward one examinee.

Who was it aiming for?

Seong Munyeong.

Seong Munyeong's eyes went wide as he watched the elemental charge toward him.

"Agh, fuck! Agh!"

He stopped in the middle of his scream, squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. Even while looking at me gripping his arm, he blinked wildly as if he couldn't understand the situation.

I gritted my teeth. Fortunately, the backlash from consecutive uses of Spatial Teleportation was more bearable than I'd expected.

"Stop fooling around and hide behind a pillar, you little shit!"

I shoved Seong Munyeong away and picked up the tool beneath him.

A Sledgehammer, probably left behind after being used in the building's demolition work. It wasn't particularly heavy.

The elemental looked this way. Its smile had vanished, and it seemed angry that it had missed its prey and struck at nothing.

I looked back at it.

I felt the same way. I'd been holding back my fury ever since the hallucination ended.

The standoff was already over. Both of us were worked up now.

"Me too! Me too!"

Ignoring the one person's plea to evacuate them too and the many screams, I tightened my grip on the handle.

Then, for just a moment, I felt as if I were suddenly being pulled somewhere. It was like something I'd experienced once before, when I'd learned how to shoot without aiming...

I snapped back to reality almost at the same moment the elemental lunged.

「Free-」

As the Rock Elemental charged at me, I swung the Sledgehammer in my hand in a wide arc.

To someone nearby, it might have looked as though I'd swung hastily and too early, from too far away to even reach the monster. The Monster had probably thought so too. It must have seen an immediate opportunity to attack.

「-Hug!」

The Rock Elemental reached me. Just as it moved its boulder-like shoulder, I focused my mind.

When using Spatial Teleportation within my field of vision, I didn't need to spread out the web. It was much easier and faster.

At the instant the elemental's murderous punch shot forward, I was standing behind it.

The Sledgehammer I had swung before using Spatial Teleportation completed its arc and struck the back of the knee made of concrete fragments.

Crash!

The impact boomed, and the recoil numbed my hands. Chunks of stone that had broken off its knee struck my face.

I ignored them and struck again.

Crash! Crash!

After two, then three blows, almost none of the concrete making up one of its legs remained.

I felt that one more hit would destroy it completely.

But it wasn't going to let me.

「You're the kind of man who hits his wife!」

The elemental's upper body spun around. It swung both arms, trying to smash me aside. If even one of them grazed me, I'd be crushed.

And as I brought down the Sledgehammer, I used Spatial Teleportation.

With my view shifting, my feet landed on the elemental's shoulder just as it stopped moving.

At the same time, the Sledgehammer, swung all the way through, smashed into its head.

As expected, it was easier to put power into a downward strike.

Crash!

* * *

Footnotes:

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