WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
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◈ Martial Arts Survival Guide ◈
Chapter 23: Fussy
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Lee Seok-cheon lay sprawled on his bed, glaring at the ceiling. The news blaring from the TV was loud as shit. He jumped up and swore at the screen. After all the money he’d fed them, every channel talked about nothing but Baek Hyun.
It wasn’t hard to understand. Someone who hadn’t even contracted with a monarch had pulled off something like that. Of course people would talk. Just what the hell was he? Lee Seok-cheon recalled Baek Hyun’s smiling face and chewed on his lower lip.
The guild leader of Heavenly King.
Lee Seok-cheon wanted for nothing. He had a great deal. He might not have had the highest level in a small country like Korea, but his level was respectable anywhere. Money? He had so much it was a problem. Power? Since ancient times, money and power had naturally followed strength.
But human greed had no end. No matter how much people had, they wanted more. Lee Seok-cheon, in particular, could never stand having someone else take what he’d already called dibs on.
That didn’t mean he was stupid enough to act without thinking. He’d seen Baek Hyun’s strength. He knew perfectly well that neither he nor the full might of Heavenly King could do anything about it.
‘How can a human who hasn’t even made a contract have that kind of power?’
That was the biggest mystery. He’d heard some bullshit about learning from an immortal, but of course he hadn’t believed Baek Hyun.
“This is a problem.”
A serious problem.
The balance of power.
At the top of Korea’s hunter society stood the three strongest hunters: Park Jun-hwan, Seo Min-sik, and Jeong Su-a. Then there were the two leading guilds, Blood Alliance and Heavenly King.
A single person had overturned the balance of power everyone, including Lee Seok-cheon, had taken for granted. It was absurd. If it had been someone already famous, like Seo Min-sik or Jeong Su-a, he could at least have accepted it. But this was one hell of a bolt from the blue. Some guy who hadn’t even contracted with a monarch had appeared out of nowhere and turned everything upside down. It would have been better if a foreign hunter had suddenly moved to Korea and stirred up trouble. Not that such a thing could happen in the first place.
‘Should I leave him alone?’
He had to do something. But what?
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
Remembering the face that had smiled as it said those words sent a chill down his spine. This wasn’t someone he could handle with force. And he didn’t think he could pressure Baek Hyun through other means, either. He knew that instinctively.
Lee Seok-cheon had a great deal, but none of it gave him a way to pressure Baek Hyun. In the end, all he could do was turn off the noisy TV and open an expensive bottle of liquor to ease his shitty mood. Drinking alone at home might have been more pathetic than going out, but it was the best way to cool his anger.
‘Next month will be a problem.’
As he poured whiskey into a glass filled with ice, his phone rang. He glanced at it irritably, then his face froze.
“...What?”
[Park Jun-hwan]
The name on the screen was enough to shock him. Why was the man who’d become Martial Spirit’s apostle candidate and shut himself away in the Abyss suddenly calling him? They’d exchanged numbers before, but they hadn’t really contacted each other privately since then.
Lee Seok-cheon put down the whiskey bottle and hurriedly picked up his phone. Should he answer or not? He hesitated for a moment. They might both have led one of the two major guilds, but he and Park Jun-hwan were on different levels. In truth, Heavenly King fell short of Blood Alliance in many ways, too. That was why he’d been so determined to use this opportunity to expand Heavenly King.
“...Fuck.”
Lee Seok-cheon let out a short curse and steadied his breathing.
He’d answer first.
His fingertip moved across the screen.
* * *
“That’s a lot.”
Baek Hyun checked the amount deposited into his bank account and murmured in a trembling voice.
The monster hunt had taken place just yesterday. The coins he’d earned had gone straight into his inventory, and he’d visited the currency exchange counter at a bank designated by the Administration Bureau to exchange them.
But the amount he received was beyond anything he’d imagined. Baek Hyun started counting the far too many zeros, then gave up. It wasn’t just the money from exchanging his coins. The Bureau had also sold the useful parts of the monster corpses for him and deposited the proceeds.
‘I shouldn’t have blown it away.’
It wasn’t as though Baek Hyun had no greed. More money was always good. If he hadn’t destroyed the boss monster’s corpse yesterday, he could have received an even bigger payment. Some monster remains were highly valued as new materials, and boss monster remains were worth even more.
“Excuse me...”
The teller looked up at Baek Hyun, her eyes shining.
“Um... you’re Baek Hyun, aren’t you? From TV yesterday...”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I knew it!”
The teller fussed excitedly over recognizing him. She hurried to say something else, but Baek Hyun quickly left the bank before things could get noisy.
‘They did say hunters made a lot of money.’
He’d heard it plenty of times, but seeing the money actually arrive still left him amazed. Of course, not every hunter made a lot.
Yesterday, Baek Hyun had practically handled the entire hunt alone. He’d killed every last monster that had crawled out of the Abyss himself, including the boss monster, so all the coins and proceeds were his. That amount alone was equal to several years of an ordinary office worker’s salary. A few more hunts would leave him with money to spare even after repaying Seo Min-sik for his hospital bills.
‘No, wait. I have to pay him for the house, too.’
He’d received so much that he had a lot to repay. Baek Hyun smacked his lips and concealed his presence. Seo Min-sik had warned him to at least wear sunglasses or a hat when he went out from now on if he wanted to avoid a commotion. But Baek Hyun didn’t need a disguise like that. He walked right down the main street, yet the people passing by didn’t notice him.
The streets were peaceful.
Just yesterday, monsters had poured out of the Abyss in Hwacheon, but Seoul remained perfectly peaceful. The people here never imagined the walls of the Hwacheon Abyss Entry Station collapsing. Some of them might have been hunters who entered the Abyss, but to them, the real world was a peaceful place far removed from monsters.
They’d grown used to it.
Only four years had passed since the Abyss appeared, but people adapted quickly and forgot just as quickly. Four years ago, everyone had feared that the monsters crawling out of the Abyss might destroy the world. Now, people no longer feared such things.
The hunters would handle it. There were apostles, too. The monarchs would do something.
They simply went about their lives with those vague ideas in mind.
But even if the real world was peaceful, the Abyss was a terrible place. Monsters were the only things that grew there naturally. Of course, being a monster didn’t mean having no intelligence. Some were intelligent enough to speak with humans. But hunters never tried to communicate with or understand them.
There had already been more than enough attempts, and every one had failed.
The Abyss wasn’t a world for humans. The intelligent monsters living there weren’t friendly toward the hunters who entered and wandered through it. To those monsters, hunters were enemies to be hunted down without question. Prey.
The world was partly connected to such a place. People could enter and leave at any time, and monsters crawled out on the last day of every month.
Yet the world was far too peaceful.
“Believe in Pure Saint!”
Someone shouted as Baek Hyun passed a subway entrance. He glanced over and saw a group holding signs, shouting at the top of their lungs.
“She is the true god who appeared to save humanity from the monsters of the Abyss!”
“When the Abyss appeared in this world, what did the gods we used to believe in do for us?!”
“They did not save us!”
“We must believe in a new god! Believe in Pure Saint!”
They were outright fanatics. But it was nothing new. Over the past few years, religions worshipping the Abyss’s monarchs as gods had sprung up everywhere. The established religions remained strong, but their inability to answer the question, “What did God do when the world ended up like this?” was a serious blow. Whatever else people might say, it was only natural to feel drawn to someone who’d offered a hand in a crisis.
“Pure Saint wasn’t the only one who helped humanity.”
A young person passing by spoke in a disgruntled voice.
“I contracted with Blood Lion. If the monarchs are gods, then my god is Blood Lion, not Pure Saint.”
“Then you should look to Blood Lion for salvation.”
The reply came from a middle-aged man holding a sign.
“Though I don’t know whether Blood Lion intends to save the faithful.”
“Hey, mister. Are you looking down on the monarch I contracted with?”
“Has Karpago, Blood Lion’s apostle, ever spoken about what happens to hunters after death?”
The middle-aged man snorted.
“Pure Saint’s apostle, Drave, made it quite clear what happens to believers after death! If we cannot escape the apocalypse, all who believe in Pure Saint will enter her Sanctuary and enjoy eternal happiness!”
“Fuck that apocalypse bullshit!”
The young person’s voice grew harsh. But all they could offer was swearing, not an argument. Baek Hyun stood still and watched.
An apostle was someone who had met a monarch in person. Apostles were the only humans who had spoken with monarchs. After Drave became the first apostle, serving Pure Saint, the whole world had tried to communicate with the monarchs through Drave.
But it hadn’t gone well. Several more apostles had appeared after Drave, but they hadn’t simply communicated with the monarchs whenever the world wanted them to. The world couldn’t control the apostles. Still, Drave had been the first to speak of the afterlife, and thanks to that, the number of people hoping to contract with Pure Saint had risen sharply.
Watching the scene, Baek Hyun suddenly wondered.
Suppose what they said was true. Suppose the monarchs really were gods, and they guaranteed an afterlife. Suppose there were no gods in this world.
‘Where do I go when I die?’
Where would Baek Hyun, who hadn’t contracted with any monarch, go after death? Would he cross the River of Three Crossings and enter the Underworld, as he’d heard in the Peach Blossom Realm?
‘I don’t even know if they’re really gods in the first place.’
If they were gods, weren’t they awfully fussy ones?
‘If they’re going to help anyway, why not give us some proper help? Why pick and choose which humans get their power?’
There were thirteen of them, too.
Baek Hyun walked past the arguing people. If he fully mastered the Heaven-Shattering Divine Transformation Art, he could become a god. His master’s words flashed through his mind. He also recalled the monsters he’d fought in the Abyss yesterday. They’d been far weaker than he’d expected. The Abyss was full of monsters stronger than those.
‘There’s no need to think about the afterlife already.’
He had a bright future ahead of him. It was far too early for thoughts like that.
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