WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
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◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈
Chapter 95: Guardian Deity of the Korean Peninsula Kang Jun-chi - [1]
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Had I told Seok Jangsil, when he came to see me, that it did not matter when I quit being a Hunter?
That was a lie. How could I quit now, when I found so much fulfillment in this work?
I looked at the post I had made on Huntweb.
It was a post about BabyMushroom's morale-boosting performance or whatever. I had posted it the day after taking down Tungtung on Ganghwa Island, and I think it was not until several hours later that news came out about what I had done there.
It seemed Huntweb users were only able to interpret my post after seeing that news, because the comments kept pouring in afterward.
Anonymous : So this lunatic killed a Monster tougher than a building, then posted this crap??
Ⓐ Justice1994 : Kim Geuk, is he a god?
Ⓐ syberMagneto : Kim Geuk aside, it is getting embarrassing to call that woman Baek Dambi an icehead. At this point, she seems far superior to most A-ranks... Shouldn't we track down every bastard who joined in smearing her back then and send them all to the gas chamber?
↳ 5myJesus : For real.
Anonymous : This guy kills every Monster he comes across without caring whether it is a Flame Elemental or has building-level specs? Then he goes online and posts crap. Terrifying.
Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo : I have felt this way since this guy first debuted, but his growth rate is absurd, and there is no sign of it stopping. He has gone beyond being unmatched. Could Korea actually be getting another S-rank at this rate?
Every line of those comments sent dopamine surging through my brain.
I took immense pride in all that praise, in every reaction.
I felt that pride not just when I saw reactions online, but whenever I saw the older men and women who came out to cheer for me during hunts or pack lunches for the Hunters.
My work was having a positive effect on so many people, and everyone reacted to every single thing I did...
Ever since I became a Hunter, I had truly felt that everything was going well. The thought of quitting this job was horrifying.
Maybe that was one of the key differences between the Kim Geuk in those hallucinations and me now.
The Kim Geuk from the hallucinations had watched his comrades die in droves from the day he debuted as a Hunter, then had malicious articles spread about him. He probably had no attachment to being a Hunter.
That was why the hallucination version of me could go around causing trouble that might be exposed at any time, but I could not.
I could not throw away the honor and accomplishments I had now, so I could not bring myself to cross the line like that version of myself.
Urges to overthrow the country or set off a nuclear bomb in Seoul remained nothing more than fantasies...
Thinking about it, the incident with Jin Beom the other day had been a pretty close call.
Me causing a scene at a police station? If another Hunter had done that, their license would have been suspended immediately, and the Special Forces would have been deployed right away.
I still felt exhilarated by the victory I had won that day, but at the same time, I felt uneasy.
Even I thought what I did at the police station had been excessive. Normally, I would not have acted so violently. Why had I suddenly done that?
I did not know whether I had naturally acted that way because I was angry that day, or whether the repeated hallucinations had influenced me.
I knew those hallucinations were clearly affecting me. I had consciously tried several times not to let hateful words like non-awakened trash enter my mind, so that I would not be influenced by the hallucinations, but I also knew it had little effect.
No matter how hard I tried, that term flashed through my mind whenever something happened. It could not be helped when the non-awakened trash did such horrifying things, though.
To keep enjoying everything I had achieved, maybe I needed to be more careful for a while.
As I sorted through my thoughts, I opened Huntweb.
One post with especially high views caught my eye. As expected, it had been posted by one of Huntweb's biggest names.
Ⓢ Kang : When the hell is Behemoth leaving?
When the hell can I go back to Busan?
I came to Seoul because the government asked me to. I figured the situation would be over after I spent a month or two holed up in a hotel.
But it is already mid-September, and it is still like this. Behemoth has not left, and I am trapped underground instead of in a hotel.
I am dying from the heat, dying from frustration, and I am seriously going insane. What have these Hell Joseon sea roaches put me through?
Fuck Behemoth, national defense, and all that bullshit. I seriously want to just leave... Or should I flip everything upside down while I am at it?
I clicked my tongue. Kang Jun-chi was making empty threats again.
I knew his behavior patterns well by now. Based on that, I was certain that no matter what he said, Kang Jun-chi would never leave Korea or rebel against the country.
It was a judgment made with the instincts of a prophet who could glimpse the future, so there was no way it could be wrong. It was as certain as Naito being non-awakened trash.
This post was clearly just another attempt to get comfort from his followers, so there was no need to take it seriously. Still, one Hunter's unusually serious response caught my attention.
Ⓐ Stonehead Youth : Are you still holed up underground, Jun-chi?
Ⓢ Kang : Yeah...
Ⓐ Stonehead Youth : And there is still no electricity or running water?
Ⓢ Kang : Yeah... ;_;
Ⓐ Stonehead Youth : Oh, man...
Ⓐ Stonehead Youth : Why are you choosing to suffer like this, you idiot?
Ⓢ Kang : How is this me choosing to suffer? Fuck.
Ⓐ Stonehead Youth : If you are not choosing to suffer, then what are you doing?
Ⓢ Kang : Are you seriously joking right now? Those sea roaches got caught trying to bug me, so I am suffering because I cannot let it happen again. How is this my fault? I am already frustrated and pissed off enough to explode, so please stop needling me for no reason. Seriously.
Ⓐ Stonehead Youth : You really must be in bad shape. Damn.
Ⓐ Stonehead Youth : Wait there. I am coming.
Watching that conversation, I wondered what Seok Jangsil planned to do by going there. Was he going to persuade Kang Jun-chi to come back to the surface? Or was he going to comfort him in person because he seemed so full of resentment toward the government?
Now that I suspected Seok Jangsil might be a government spy, even his attempt to help Kang Jun-chi, an older friend he was close to, looked suspicious.
Come to think of it, if he really was a government agent, had he not achieved perfect results? He had maintained close friendships with Kim Geuk and Kang Jun-chi, Korea's first- and second-strongest awakened people.
Maybe he had deliberately approached important awakened people and befriended them as part of his work as a spy...
Still, it was not certain that he was a spy.
It was not simply that I disliked assuming someone was guilty and chose to withhold judgment. I had my own reason to believe he might not be a spy.
After all, in that previous hallucination, it had been Seok Jangsil who helped me and opened the Gate the awakened soldiers and non-awakened slaves would cross through...
* * *
At the end of September, the hunt on Ganghwa Island finally ended.
It took longer than expected to clear the place out. Maybe because it was where the first Gate had opened, but the situation there was worse than I had thought. Monsters swarmed in every sparsely populated area, and human remains lay scattered everywhere. There must have been far more casualties than I had expected.
I only learned all that after working directly on Ganghwa Island. The government had clearly kept the media from reporting it to hide how serious the situation was.
Even that was over now.
There were no wild Monsters left on Ganghwa Island. Of course, they could always burst out of a Gate and reproduce again, but still.
In early October, the Hunters I led resumed hunting on the Incheon mainland.
We mainly cleared out Monsters holed up inside Gates.
I expected the number of Monsters inside the Gates to have increased since I left for Ganghwa Island. Monsters following Behemoth must have grown tired of it and moved around inside the Gates, with many reaching Incheon's territory.
But that was not the case. There were fewer Monsters inside the Gates than I expected.
It even seemed like there were fewer than before I went to Ganghwa Island. Why?
Baek Dambi, who had entered a Gate alone to properly check the situation, told everyone what she had seen.
“The Monsters inside the Gates... were actually running away?”
“What? What do you mean?”
Baek Dambi explained in a bewildered voice.
“I mean exactly that. The Monsters are running away. More precisely, to places far away from where Kim Geuk is...”
As I wondered what that could mean, Jeong Jinyeong's eyes widened as if he had realized something. He spoke excitedly.
“They are running away because of Kim Geuk, right?”
Im Hyeongtaek picked up the thought.
“Because of Kim Geuk? Ah... Now that I think about it, there is no other explanation.”
“Exactly! You know how Gate Monsters cannot come out where Kang Jun-chi is? It is like that! And from the perspective of most Monsters, Kim Geuk is much scarier than Kang Jun-chi because Kim Geuk drags out even Monsters hiding inside Gates and kills them...”
“Then the Monsters must be reacting that way because they are scared after seeing him do that inside the Gates, right?”
“Yes! Other Monsters must have witnessed it again and again inside the Gates!”
Naito's cameraman was recording that conversation. It looked like the title of Naito's next YouTube broadcast would be something like, “The Man Who Terrifies Even Gate Monsters.”
As you can see, things got off to a good start. Throughout October, I thoroughly cleared out Monsters both inside and outside the Gates. Even in places where the hunt was already finished, if a missing-person case occurred, I went back and searched for Monsters in the area before eliminating them.
I did that all across Incheon. Considering Incheon's land was so vast that, when you spread out a map, it was hard to tell whether Incheon or the United States was bigger, it was truly exhausting work. Still, I somehow managed it.
And so, at the end of October, the Incheon Recovery Project finally ended.
I did not know whether it was because reducing the number of Monsters had paid off, or because, as Jeong Jinyeong had guessed, the Monsters inside the Gates had become frightened of me and all left. Either way, no Gates opened in Incheon until November came.
Not once.
Thus, in early November, Incheon was in a festive mood.
* * *
Whether it was on TV or the internet, people were talking about me everywhere.
‘Incheon Recovery Project Ends After Exceeding Initial Goal by 300% (...)’, ‘A Peaceful October in Incheon, Hope Blossoms in One Region (...)’, ‘Hunter Kim Geuk, One Year of Miracles Since His Debut (...)’
Several major news channels were covering the matter even now. They said that, five years after the Gates first opened, it finally seemed like there was hope the situation would end. They said the contract money given to Hunter Kim Geuk next January would be the highest amount in history.
Considering the media was under the government's strict control, and that the government had probably marked me because of recent events, the media's passionate praise of me was strange.
The government clearly disliked me, but whenever I performed noticeably well, they always made sure to air the results on the news.
From the government's perspective, they disliked me, but they probably did not want to miss the chance to give the people hope that the situation was improving.
Huntweb was probably full of posts praising me right now. Unfortunately, I could not immediately turn on my smartphone and search for them.
“A toast to Hunter Kim Geuk!”
The mayor of Incheon called out the toast, and everyone in the hall shouted similar words.
“To Hunter Kim Geuk...”
Then the mayor of Incheon strode proudly toward the other civil servants and city council members before speaking with pride.
“When I first worked out the contract offer to send to Kim Geuk… Honestly, I never imagined he would achieve this much! I heard he was one of only two people in the world with Spatial Teleportation, but I did not really know what was so amazing about that. I just thought, he is a former UFC fighter, so he must have plenty of fighting spirit. That was about it when I sent him the contract.
“So I figured he would not take the money and slack off like that fucking Nguyen bastard. You know, for an awakened Hunter, that is enough to be worth the money.
“Instead of firing missiles worth hundreds of millions of won, using awakened Hunters is far cheaper. I was going to sign him because I thought it would be enough if he went out once or twice every few months, did not run away, and actually fought properly.
“But look at this now! I have done quite a lot for Incheon and worked my ass off trying to contribute, but out of everything I have done so far, sending that contract to Kim Geuk was the greatest thing I have ever done...”
Listening to that clearly delighted voice, I happily drank another glass of cola. The mayor of Incheon hurried over and immediately poured me another, which I drank heartily as well.
It truly was the best day.
* * *
“Jun-chi, that is not what I meant...”
“What do you mean it is not, you fucking spy bastard?”
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Footnotes:
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