WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Martial Arts Survival Guide ◈
Chapter 21: If It Were Me
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Lee Seok-cheon had no idea who the guy was. He couldn't even tell which monarch's power the man had been using in the battle so far. But what did that matter? He put off judging Baek Hyun for now. He could give up the other monsters, painful as it was, but he had no intention of giving up the boss monster too.
“Stop!”
Lee Seok-cheon shouted at the top of his lungs and reached toward Baek Hyun. Baek Hyun heard him clearly. But he had no intention of stopping just because someone told him to. He knew who Lee Seok-cheon was, at least. Heavenly King's guild leader. The man his friend Seo Min-sik had warned him about.
‘He's pretty strong.’
Strong enough to call decent, anyway. With the shouting still coming from behind him, Baek Hyun leaped as high as the scorpion. Its huge tail moved with a speed that seemed impossible for its size. A viciously large stinger hung from its tip, but instead of stabbing with it, the scorpion lashed out with its entire tail.
Baek Hyun easily avoided the attack by jumping a little higher. Lee Seok-cheon, who was chasing him, couldn't manage the same aerial trick.
“Shit...”
Lee Seok-cheon's face twisted as the huge tail swept toward him. Baaang! With a tremendous crash, he collided with it. He flew backward and fell to the ground. Thanks to the Battle Aura wrapped around him and his high level, he wasn't injured, but he couldn't avoid landing flat on his back.
“Guild Leader!”
Lee Seok-cheon sprang to his feet amid his guild members' cries. While he was doing that, Baek Hyun was already dropping toward the scorpion's back. He bent both knees in midair. His body took on a weight far beyond a thousand geun.
Crrrunch! Baek Hyun fell like a pitch-black meteor. The ground sank. The scorpion's four pairs of legs bent sharply, its feet driving into the earth. Baek Hyun straightened from his crouch and looked down.
“Oh.”
He thought he'd put quite a bit of strength into that, but the scorpion's back was only slightly dented. Its shell had looked tough, but it was even harder than he'd expected.
Skreeee!
And it still had plenty of energy. The enormous stinger at the end of its tail stabbed toward Baek Hyun from behind. A sting that size wouldn't leave a little puncture wound. Poison or no poison, the moment it hit, it would leave a hole bigger than his body.
He was starting to feel that he really was fighting a monster rather than a human, and he was enjoying it. Baek Hyun turned halfway around on the spot and threw a punch. The force aura of the Heaven-Shattering Divine Transformation Art covering his fist burst forward the instant he punched, before his fist even touched the stinger.
Fwoom.
Black light flashed with the bursting sound. Lee Seok-cheon, who had been charging at the scorpion again while swearing, froze on the spot.
The scorpion's enormous tail had vanished without a trace. Its legs thrashed wildly. Standing on its body, Baek Hyun kept his balance as it swayed, opening and closing the hand he'd punched with. He felt a little disappointed. It was so tough that he'd thought it would withstand this attack too.
‘This makes it too easy.’
With that thought, Baek Hyun hopped down from the scorpion's body. An enormous pincer swung toward him.
Crack!
His fist collided with the pincer in midair. The shell around it split with a crack, and the huge pincer was knocked backward. When the other pincer came swinging after it, Baek Hyun grinned, spread his other hand, and caught it barehanded.
His hand didn't budge when the pincer struck it. Instead, the scorpion's pincer twitched and trembled before an explosion erupted inside it. The internal energy Baek Hyun had sent into it on contact had exploded within. Green bodily fluid sprayed in every direction, but before it could wet his body, it struck the protective force aura surrounding him and evaporated. Baek Hyun wrinkled his nose at the foul stench and muttered.
“So that's all you've got.”
A boss monster that crawled out of the Abyss on the last day of the month. Apparently, he'd expected too much. He'd thought he might have a little fun, but this wasn't enough. At this level, it wasn't even a proper warm-up. Disappointed, Baek Hyun looked at the scorpion's huge body.
It was just big, that was all. Fighting a monster instead of a human was interesting in itself, but the fight wasn't any fun. Baek Hyun remembered the smile he'd worn while meditating that morning. He'd been far too quick to smile in anticipation of today. He clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“Come to think of it, I heard the monsters that crawl out of the Abyss get stronger every month.”
In that case...
“Something stronger than you should come out next month, right?”
Its one remaining pincer swung at him again. With an expectant smile, Baek Hyun summoned his force aura. Once again, the pincer failed to reach him. Still moving forward at the speed of its swing, it vanished in its entirety. That wasn't the end. Baek Hyun slowly swept his hand.
Pitch-black light burst out in a flash. When it faded, there was nothing there. The enormous scorpion had disappeared completely, without leaving even the smallest trace.
Feeling the eyes on him, Baek Hyun glanced around.
So many people.
A great many people were staring at him, looking utterly stunned. They wore all sorts of expressions, but every face shared the same emotion: shock. Baek Hyun looked at them with satisfaction, then suddenly remembered the employee he'd argued with earlier. That employee must have seen how the monster hunt had gone too.
‘I hope they didn't throw away my autograph.’
From now on, he wouldn't have to put up with people treating him like that because he had no contract, no level... That alone made this grand display of strength worthwhile.
“You... Just what...”
Lee Seok-cheon stammered. He couldn't bring himself to approach Baek Hyun and instead pointed at him from a distance.
“Who the hell...”
“My name is Baek Hyun.”
Before Lee Seok-cheon could finish, Baek Hyun drew a deep breath and spoke. His voice rang out loudly. He wasn't shouting, but his voice reached not only every hunter around him, but also the helicopters overhead and the reporters beyond the glass wall.
“I'm twenty-six this year. I entered the Abyss for the first time a few days ago and became a hunter.”
Lee Seok-cheon's jaw dropped. The television cameras were no longer filming him or the Heavenly King guild. Ever since Baek Hyun had landed among the monsters and begun slaughtering them, every camera had been trained on him. It was true that Heavenly King had lobbied the broadcasters, but even so, they couldn't pass up filming Baek Hyun's performance.
“I haven't contracted with a monarch, so I don't have a level either. I'm not lying. Why would I tell a lie that'd be so easy to expose?”
“What kind of bullshit is that?!”
Lee Seok-cheon roared at him. A lie that would be easy to expose. Baek Hyun was right about that. This really was a lie that would be easy to expose. How could someone without a contract or a level do something so ridiculous?
“If you don't believe me, ask the Abyss Administration Bureau.”
At Baek Hyun's indifferent reply, Lee Seok-cheon's eyebrow twitched.
“Show me your status window!”
“Can you see it if I open it?”
“Of course I can! Why wouldn't I?”
“I didn't know other people could see it.”
He really hadn't known. As if he couldn't show it when asked. With a chuckle, Baek Hyun opened his status window. Lee Seok-cheon strode up to him. Glaring into Baek Hyun's face, he spat out his words.
“Didn't you learn you'd pay in blood if you got caught bluffing?”
“I've heard that somewhere before. Isn't it a line from a movie?”
“What, kid? Haven't you seen that movie?”
“I have.”
“Anyway, if you're bluffing, I'll take a sledgehammer and just... just...”
Stopping in front of Baek Hyun, Lee Seok-cheon couldn't finish. He stared wide-eyed, foolishly repeating the same word.
Name: Baek Hyun.
A status window that showed nothing but a name. Lee Seok-cheon knew exactly what that meant. He looked at Baek Hyun in disbelief. Meeting his eyes, Baek Hyun grinned.
“Cherry blossoms, huh?”
Lee Seok-cheon couldn't play along. Everything he thought he knew was falling apart. A hunter without a monarch's contract or a level, someone who, by his standards, would never amount to anything, had wiped out hundreds of monsters alone and even killed the boss monster by himself. And it wasn't just that he'd killed it. Lee Seok-cheon recalled how Baek Hyun had hunted the boss monster.
Could that even be called hunting?
He swallowed hard.
Wiping out hundreds of small-fry monsters alone.
Lee Seok-cheon could do that too.
But killing a boss monster that size with such overwhelming strength, the way Baek Hyun had?
‘I can't.’
Absolutely not. In all of Korea, probably only Park Jun-hwan, an apostle candidate of Martial Spirit, one of the thirteen monarchs, could do something like that.
“Mister.”
Lee Seok-cheon's shoulders flinched at Baek Hyun's voice. He looked up at him in alarm, while Baek Hyun watched him with curious eyes.
“Are you mad at me?”
His voice was quiet enough that the people around them couldn't hear.
“...What...?”
“I think I'd be mad if it were me.”
“What's this all of a sudden...?”
“You said it earlier, didn't you? That boss monster was yours.”
What was he getting at?
Lee Seok-cheon couldn't understand the question. He stared at Baek Hyun in confusion. Baek Hyun smiled at him without a trace of malice.
“It's not like monsters belong to anyone, but since you said it was yours... Let's say it was. Then I took something that belonged to you. That'd make you mad.”
“You... What are you talking about?”
“I'm saying you can come at me if you're mad.”
Lee Seok-cheon's expression went rigid. He realized his palms were wet with sweat. And that the hunters of his guild, Heavenly King, were too far away. In truth, they weren't that far. Given his guild members' physical abilities, they could reach him in less than a minute. Likewise, he was confident he could flee to his subordinates in just a few seconds.
Yet, strangely, his feet refused to move.
“Oh, I'm not planning to kill you. People are different from monsters.”
“Uh...”
Baek Hyun's voice was still quiet. Lee Seok-cheon barely managed to force out a sound. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd felt like this. Entering the Abyss, becoming a hunter... So much had happened since then. Four years. It might have been only four years, but those four years as a hunter had held far more than the rest of his life put together.
An unknown world where he couldn't predict what lay an inch ahead. A land of monsters that could spring out at any time, from anywhere. He'd faced death more times than he could count. Monsters had nearly killed him on many occasions. He'd often been attacked by members of nonhuman races he couldn't even identify. Other hunters, not monsters, had nearly killed him too. He'd thought he'd grown used to fear long ago.
But the fear he felt now was completely different. That face, telling him, “I'm not planning to kill you.” That smile without a hint of malice. He couldn't begin to understand what was going through Baek Hyun's mind.
“This won't work.”
Baek Hyun muttered as he watched cold sweat pour off Lee Seok-cheon. Hearing those words, Lee Seok-cheon gasped. His frozen feet moved, and he backed away several steps. Through the hair that had become drenched in sweat in an instant, he stared at Baek Hyun and swallowed hard.
“Wh... Wh-what did you say?”
“I said this won't work.”
Baek Hyun smacked his lips.
“You're scared, mister.”
Footnotes:
A geun is a traditional unit of weight, roughly 600 grams in modern Korea.
The exchange about bluffing, a sledgehammer, and cherry blossoms references the Korean gambling film Tazza: The High Rollers. “Cherry blossoms, huh?” refers to a flower card revealed during its famous showdown.
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