WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈
Chapter 92: Soldiers - [6]
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Not long after, the situation was resolved.
The Gate inside the ammunition depot closed. Perhaps the elemental that had opened it saw Tungtung's end and got scared, because it never showed itself outside the Gate.
Despite how serious the situation had been, there were no casualties. Not even a single injury. Everyone had reason to smile and celebrate.
Sure enough, as I crossed the base, the soldiers around me shouted.
"I'm actually a BabyMushroom fan!"
"Kim Geuk! Kim Geuk!"
"I'll buy three BabyMushroom T-shirts!"
That was how the military base took on a festive mood the next day.
The colonel canceled all duties, laid out festival food and beer, and let the troops eat and drink.
The festival food consisted of frozen meals that had apparently cleaned out the entire post exchange. The frozen chicken barely had any breading, and the chicken inside was pitifully small, but apparently even this was not an easy meal to come by these days.
One soldier bit into the chicken with the satisfied expression of someone cutting into a thick steak, then praised the commander who had provided this precious food right in front of me.
"Wow, it couldn't have been easy to buy all this with unit funds! I bet the regiment commander spent a lot of his own money too, huh?"
The regiment commander here was probably that colonel.
"You must like your regiment commander."
"Of course I do. Making us work and train our asses off can't be helped, but still, he's pretty good..."
I put a few pieces of frozen food in my mouth and halfheartedly enjoyed the festival too.
Then I entered the command center and found the colonel talking to his officers.
"No, looking at the footage, the 800 kilograms of C4 was properly attached and went off properly, but it survived that? Then it took an anti-tank high-explosive round head-on and got caught in the ammunition depot explosion, yet it lived? What the hell..."
The colonel seemed to be watching footage from the hunt, so I waited for a while. Only after some time had passed did he notice me.
"When those North Korean bastards built tactical nuclear weapons to control awakened people, I thought they were seriously overdoing it. Turns out there was a reason? If someone has abilities like that and goes wild, how the hell are you supposed to subdue them... Oh, Hunter Kim Geuk, you're here?"
"Yes. Long live Incheon."
"Welcome! I don't know why you're here, but come sit down! You know how grateful I am to you this time, right?"
The colonel made a big fuss, then kept making a big fuss.
He said that after seeing it for himself, sinking an aircraft carrier would have been far easier than catching that Ogre. He said he had no idea how they could have killed that Monster without me. He asked whether I knew how many people Tungtung had hurt, then specifically praised me for saving countless lives.
It did not look like he was just trying to flatter me. He seemed genuinely happy, and I hesitated for a moment.
I felt bad about ruining that smile, but I had come here to bring up something that soldier would not like.
After pausing for a while, I spoke.
"I heard you were originally planning to mobilize the awakened soldiers. You were planning to send them in near the end of their service to kill Tungtung..."
The colonel looked slightly flustered, then nodded.
"I don't know where you heard that, but that was roughly the plan. That's why we had them follow the Hunters around, to gain hunting experience."
This crazy bastard. I had not expected him to admit it so readily.
"Isn't that too much? If you had really done that, they would have all ended up as Tungtung shit."
The colonel only smiled awkwardly at my accusation. Then he explained.
"If I may defend myself, the Hunter Association's earlier analysis said our personnel could handle it. It was a four-meter-class Ogre, so they figured its force field would be roughly that strong too. There would have been casualties if we went after it, but it wasn't considered something we couldn't even attempt to hunt. And..."
"And?"
"There was no other way to kill it with minimal losses. Operation Eagle proved that throwing a huge number of troops at a Monster hunt doesn't work. It's also already been proven that even heavy bombardment is useless against creatures that usually stay inside Gates... In the end, we had to send in a small number of people..."
"Even so, awakened soldiers are just young people who lived ordinary lives before being dragged into the military. Isn't it discrimination to send only them into a dangerous mission where casualties are inevitable just because they're awakened?"
The colonel calmly answered this accusation as well.
"Someone had to be sacrificed eventually. And if someone had to be sacrificed, it was right to sacrifice the fewest people possible."
"You think it's right to make them suffer through military service, then send them somewhere to die near the end of it?"
"Yes. I know it's dirty and cowardly to suddenly make them do something like that near the end of their service, but what can I do? I'd rather take the blame. It was the cheapest option with the fewest repercussions."
If we kept talking, we would probably fight. And whether they were non-awakened scraps or not, I did not want to fall out with comrades who had fought beside me, so I nodded obediently and left the command center.
Of course, nodding did not mean I accepted what he said.
I crossed the base with a stiff expression. When I ran into the awakened soldiers, they recognized me first.
"Ah, Kim Geuk!"
They were immediately happy to see me, so I gave them a grin.
"Come to think of it, you've all got another line to add when you sign A-rank Hunter contracts. 'Caught the Terror of Manisan, a Monster tougher than an aircraft carrier'..."
"Calling it catching it together feels like a stretch, doesn't it? It looked like the stuff we fired didn't even scratch it. We just made it hesitate a little..."
"That counts as catching it together. And how valuable is the experience of shooting at something that big? Even A-rank Hunters who have worked for years probably haven't shot at a Monster like that. You all didn't panic and shot well, so that's enough."
I held out my palm, and a soldier immediately understood what I meant and slapped it.
After high-fiving all eleven of them, I said, "You haven't thrown away the business cards I gave you, right? Contact me if you want to become Hunters after you're discharged. If you want to learn about the industry ahead of time, you can access Huntweb from the military internet room! I'm active there too..."
"Come to think of it, someone said you're a famous Huntweb user named BabyMushroom or something. What the hell is that?"
"There's something like that. A sacred second self."
"What are you even talking about? Anyway... thank you for this. Seriously."
"Hm?"
"When I first got the order to climb Manisan with the Hunters, I thought, 'What kind of bullshit am I going to go through now?' But after following you around, I think I'll remember what I saw and experienced forever. I've really come to admire Hunters."
I looked over to see who was saying something so embarrassing. It was the kid whose life I had saved once, the one who had almost died to a Deathclaw.
I grinned at that kid and everyone else, then parted ways with them.
As we rode home in an official vehicle with the other Hunters, everyone rested with satisfied expressions.
Baek Dambi seemed especially happy. At some point, she had started humming that damn tune again. She probably thought her contribution this time had brought her closer to the Golden Arrow Award.
Seong Munyeong, sitting beside me, spoke.
"That thing we caught this time was legendary, right?"
"It was seriously horrific. If we had gone after it ourselves like originally planned, a few people would have died."
"It ended well, so that's what matters. So how do you feel after killing it? Do you think you got stronger?"
"Yeah."
"How much stronger?"
"A lot."
"Exactly how much?"
When Seong Munyeong asked that, I felt almost everyone in the vehicle looking at me.
I knew they felt a kind of vicarious satisfaction from their boss doing well. I answered in a voice full of pride.
"About as much as the length of Bupyeong Underground Shopping Arcade."
"What the hell does that mean?"
What kind of Incheon man couldn't understand that? Idiot.
Instead of explaining it with words, I decided to show him.
I lifted the hammerhead that had broken off from its handle after being damaged while I swung it this time.
Then I pressed my index finger against the hammerhead and poked it...
"Are you Superman?"
Seong Munyeong muttered that as he looked at the hole in the hammerhead, as deep as my index finger. Everyone else stared at it wide-eyed for a while as well.
I clearly saw even Baek Dambi, who had been pretending she had no interest in the men's conversation as she hummed to herself, glance over and rapidly blink.
What a cute bitch. I smiled in satisfaction.
* * *
After returning home, I wrote a post on Huntweb in a pretty little tone. This was what it said.
Ⓐ BabyBerserker : BabyMushroom's first troop morale show after debuting as an idol!!
BabyMushroom has gone and gotten a troop morale show at a military base on Ganghwa Island this timee!
At first, BabyMushroom was scared and nervouss! They said soldier uncles haven't seen girls in forever, so they're starving males who would be extra vulnerable to BabyMushroom's charms, right? T_T
But BabyMushroom couldn't disappoint soldier uncles! BabyMushroom was scared and embarrassed, but put on pretty clothes and went up on stage anyway...
Then a bad uncle named Tungtung crashed the stage and started screaming at the top of his lungss?
BabyMushroom's precious performance was interrupted, so BabyMushroom got angry even though BabyMushroom was scared! BabyMushroom was full of professional pridee!
BabyMushroom immediately sent out Big Sis Baek Dambi, who's just as tone-deaf as Uncle Tungtung, to fight him! The two started a sonic martial-arts duel!!! (...)
I enjoyed the comments underneath it.
The people whose identities were obvious at a glance stood out in particular.
Ⓐ syberMagneto : ......
Anonymous : I asked who BabyMushroom on Huntweb was, and the guy beside me at the military internet room showed me this. I got tricked, right? This isn't Kim Geuk, right?
Ⓐ Stonehead Youth : Regrettably, this really is Kim Geuk.
Anonymous : Stop talking shit and tell me it isn't, hurry up.
Ⓐ SoulOfTheKoreanPeopleIsHan : I heard about what you accomplished first, you know? So I clicked this to praise you, but why are you acting like this again;;
It's fun when new people come in and give fresh reactions. I wouldn't need to raise the threshold any further for a while.
Once it got dark, my activities this time made the news. People realized what my post had to do with my activities and left even more comments under it.
Anonymous : You killed a Monster that was supposedly as tough as an aircraft carrier, then posted this kind of shit? Are you insane??
Seeing reactions like these always gave me a thrill. They made me feel that my hard work had been worthwhile.
Thanks to those passionate reactions, I was able to peacefully fall asleep while looking back on what I had done.
* * *
But as always after I started having that damn dream, I couldn't sleep peacefully.
* * *
Ah...
As always, I woke up gasping for breath.
I was drenched in cold sweat as I went over what I had seen in the dream.
I had the usual dream. The one that always ended in a nuclear explosion...
This time, I had glimpsed the middle of it. I saw what happened after the hallucination I saw last time.
In the dream, I opened a Gate with the help of a like-minded comrade.
A Gate leading to Soweol.
In the dream, I finally succeeded in sending the awakened soldiers and non-awakened scraps to Soweol. I think I was happy, believing I had finally made the non-awakened scraps live lives suited to their station.
But less than three months later, the awakened soldiers I had sent to Soweol returned to Korea. They came back with the non-awakened slaves I had sent along with them, including officers, noncommissioned officers, and their families.
In the dream, I thought that if I sent mentally weak awakened people to the harsh Soweol, they would adapt to the environment on their own. In other words, I expected the awakened soldiers to eventually behave like the lords of Soweol, while the non-awakened scraps sent with them would act like Soweol slaves.
That prediction was wrong. The awakened soldiers sent to Soweol could not freely abuse the hundreds of non-awakened people or treat them like slaves.
Instead, it seemed the soldiers had been persuaded by the non-awakened people sent with them as slaves. I didn't know exactly what they were told, but it was probably something along the lines of, "Let's stop this insane shit and all go back together."
And I guessed that a nearby Soweol person lord, who did not want a group of unfamiliar awakened people wandering around near their territory, had ordered an Ice Crystal ability user from their court to open a Gate to Earth.
Everyone I sent returned through that Gate.
And those who had returned from Soweol did not hide why they had been sent there.
"We went to ask Hunter Kim Geuk, who was famous as a Spatial Teleportation ability user, for help. Then that bastard forced us to go to Soweol, and it wasn't just us..."
"I came home from work and was resting at home. I had definitely locked the door! Then this ridiculously huge, muscular man suddenly appeared in my room..."
For several days in a row, my face was on the news. Sensational headlines read, "Kim Geuk, an awakened-supremacist ideological criminal who kidnapped hundreds of people."
Naturally, I would have been wanted and unable to continue working as a Hunter. Left with no other choice, I would have changed careers from Hunter to terrorist.
After experiencing that entire process, I had only one thought.
What a pathetic, disgusting bastard.
Seriously, what kind of idiot acts while believing everything will happen according to his delusions?
At the same time, I had another thought.
The mental state of the hallucination version of me was seriously fucked up, but Korea's situation at the time must have been just as serious.
Those awakened soldiers had gone to that kind of lunatic and ultimately accepted an offer like that. That meant nobody other than that lunatic had helped them.
And if I had not intervened this time, those unfortunate eleven awakened people would have met miserable deaths. Driven by that damn logic that it was better for a few awakened people to be sacrificed than the overwhelming majority of ordinary people, they would have nearly exited through a Monster's asshole.
Nobody helped those awakened people. Not Korean reporters, politicians, or ordinary citizens.
What needed to be done to stop this suffocating situation?
Active voting and political participation would not be enough.
Among the disgustingly numerous non-awakened scraps, we awakened people were only a minority. We could not raise a voice loud enough to match those non-awakened scraps. Then what?
I should not follow the methods of the Kim Geuk from the hallucination, but by some other method...
Shouldn't I at least help my own kind?
If Kang Jun-chi, the strongest among us, wouldn't step up, then shouldn't I?
As this incident proved, we were clearly being oppressed because there were so few of us. Like Jews suffering among Nazis, we were being driven into camps and dying in pogroms.
I had not even realized that strong members of our kind, like Body Enhancement users and force-field exoskeleton ability users, were in that situation too. As I had experienced during my time in the Korean Awakened Solidarity, I thought only weak members of our kind, like ice ability users, were suffering. I had not known the rest were no exception.
If my people were going to survive among those Nazis, someone had to step up and change all of this.
If it was truly necessary, even if it meant raising a mushroom cloud in the middle of Seoul...
While I was deep in thought, my phone rang.
The caller was someone I knew.
"Mr. Jin Beom?"
It was that police officer. The police officer with the ice ability.
"Mr. Kim Geuk? It is you, Mr. Kim Geuk, right? Can you help... help me?"
His voice, which had been booming even during the suicide incident at the detention facility, was not like that now. Jin Beom pleaded in an utterly powerless voice.
"I think you said you were with the Korean Awakened Solidarity, some kind of awakened-person human-rights organization... right?"
Just from the way he spoke, I could tell the situation was serious. He was the kind of old man with a strong condescending streak who had spoken informally to me from the moment we met because I was younger. And now he was begging so abjectly?
I asked, "What the hell happened?"
* * *
Footnotes:
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