WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
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◈ Surviving as a B-Rank Hunter ◈
Chapter 1
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Kang Dohyeon was a B-rank hunter who worked alone.
These days, anyone who entered a dungeon and came back alive was considered B-rank. Kang Dohyeon had been a B-rank hunter long before that became the norm. Even so, he could not compare to a genuine A-rank.
Whether ten years ago or now, if he ran into those tanks in a dungeon, the only answer was to run without a second thought.
Still, surviving alone in these shithole dungeons for so long was something to be proud of. Even among A-rank hunters, it was hard to find anyone who had been active as long as Kang Dohyeon.
Of course, that was because most of them retired once they made enough money, or became bodyguards for corporate boards.
Anyway, Kang Dohyeon was clearing another dungeon today.
Today’s dungeon followed the Kowloon Walled City pattern, named after a slum that had once existed in Hong Kong.
True to its name, the dungeon looked like a conglomeration of insane buildings sprawling upward, sideways, and downward without any plan whatsoever.
Every passage was narrow, while buildings were layered upon buildings overhead. Countless windows, corridors, doors, and cracks filled the gaps between them.
Black wires like strands of noodles hung between old, stained concrete. Bits of broken trash rolled across the floor.
The tightly packed buildings blocked the space above, leaving only a bright sliver of sky visible through a narrow gap. It looked less like the sky than a crack in a ceiling.
The light pouring through it was so bright that the darkness within the Kowloon Walled City seemed all the deeper. Day and night were meaningless inside a dungeon, but that was how Kang Dohyeon felt.
Moving through those cramped, suffocating passageways, he would hear footsteps or coughing from somewhere impossible to pinpoint. He could not focus too closely on those sounds.
If he did, the footsteps and coughing turned into whispers that were hard to understand. If he focused any further, he would lose his sense of direction.
That was how people got lost in this filthy maze.
But he could not block out all sound either. Covering his ears in a dungeon was no different from saying he wanted to kill himself.
The only way was to consciously avoid paying attention. Not to focus on the strange sounds.
Then a message from the Yggdrasil system appeared before Kang Dohyeon’s eyes.
[Beyond countless windows, gazes are converging.]
Kang Dohyeon stopped and looked up. Countless windows had been cut into the gaps between buildings rising dozens of stories high, like honeycomb cells. Every window was pitch-black, revealing nothing inside.
Kang Dohyeon stared coldly beyond the black windows. As always, Yggdrasil’s message was unclear. It was impossible to tell whether it was a warning, merely an explanation of a phenomenon, or encouragement.
But one thing was certain.
Something was about to happen.
As Kang Dohyeon stood still and glared at the black windows, he heard a faint sound. Amid the footsteps and coughs came a slap, slap, slap, the sound of something striking the ground. It was flesh hitting concrete.
“Fucking pattern.”
It was the Orphan Horde. Pale-skinned monsters the size and shape of children, naked and swarming forward as they flailed their skinny limbs.
They had no eyes or noses, but their gaping mouths and saw-like teeth were threatening enough.
The monsters were coming from beyond those windows. There were probably hundreds of them.
Maybe thousands.
He could not fight those things head-on. Only A-rank hunters, and even then only the truly monstrous ones, could barely manage that.
And those monsters usually became entertainers or bodyguards for corporate chairmen instead of exploring dungeons.
It was much safer and paid far better than strutting around in a dungeon and dying.
After that brief thought, Kang Dohyeon quickly turned around. If he stayed there, he would become the Orphan Horde’s target. He had to move before it was too late.
Kang Dohyeon took a small human-scent bottle from his waist and flung it far down the corridor railing. The bottle sailed through the air before striking the concrete floor and shattering. The liquid inside burst out, spreading an intense human scent.
As he moved away from the shattered bottle, Kang Dohyeon’s eyes swept his surroundings. The Orphan Horde would follow that scent first. In the meantime, he needed to get as far away as possible and hide somewhere safe.
He could not leave the dungeon yet. His bag was still more than half empty, and there was nothing particularly wrong with him physically. The Orphan Horde was dangerous, but Kang Dohyeon judged that he could avoid it.
A narrow, dark corridor stretched ahead. Ignoring the growing noise of the Orphan Horde, along with the coughs and whispers mixed into it, Kang Dohyeon headed into the darkness.
A heavy crossbow rested in his hand.
After taking several turns through the complicated corridors, he stopped before a door.
It was an old wooden door that looked as though it would splinter with one kick. Instead of kicking it, Kang Dohyeon pressed close and listened.
There was no sound inside.
Instead, the Orphan Horde’s air-leaking roar came from behind him.
Kheeeeh!
It seemed they had found the broken bottle.
The situation was not good for moving farther. If Kang Dohyeon tried to move too quickly, he would sweat, and the Orphan Horde’s sense of smell, which the human-scent bottle had worked to disable, would pick him up. So, while aiming the crossbow, he carefully pushed open the wooden door with its tip.
Contrary to its aged appearance, the door opened smoothly.
Kang Dohyeon quickly checked the view beyond it. There was a kitchen littered with an old table, refrigerator, dishes, and other things.
The kitchen and living space were combined into a cramped room, like something that might have existed in the real Kowloon Walled City.
Then, he spotted a black figure lying facedown on the kitchen floor beyond the open door.
The figure spotted Kang Dohyeon too.
At the same time, it pulled the trigger. With a low, heavy thunk, a crossbow bolt flew through the air.
But Kang Dohyeon had not been standing directly in front of the doorway to begin with. He had hidden beside the door and only peeked his face around it. A blindly fired bolt from someone panicking could not hit such a small target.
As the bolt brushed past Kang Dohyeon’s ear and embedded itself in the concrete wall, he pulled the trigger at the black figure.
Thunk. Whoosh!
A short groan followed.
“Ugh…”
Kang Dohyeon did not give his opponent any more time. He tossed aside the empty crossbow and rushed at the black figure, which was trying to rise. A white-glowing knife was in his hand.
“W-wait…”
The other person tried to speak in a strangled voice, but Kang Dohyeon did not hesitate. He pounced on the figure trying to stand, pinned him down with his body, and drove the knife in his right hand into him without hesitation.
He did not stop after one strike.
He stabbed him twice, three times, more times than could be counted on one hand or even two, until the strength drained from his body, so that he gasped in vain and could not scream.
The hand that had struggled to shove Kang Dohyeon away slowly went limp. With choking groans, the man barely lifted his head.
His eyes met Kang Dohyeon’s.
Life and death.
The gaze of the dying and the gaze of the survivor reflected one another.
He was a middle-aged man in a black beanie and scarf. A face that must normally have looked worn down by exhaustion now held pain, emptiness, rage, grief, and countless other emotions.
Even as Kang Dohyeon looked directly into that face, he twisted the blade buried in him.
Soon, the man released a long final breath, as though setting down a heavy block of iron, then slowly slumped beneath him.
Why had he entered the dungeon?
To feed his family? To pick up Vanaskelium and make money? Or because he was addicted to the dopamine rushing through the gap between life and death?
Was today his first time? Had he lived as a hunter for years?
Kang Dohyeon watched the middle-aged man’s fading face without expression.
In any case, the man had fired at him first.
He only tried to talk after his own bolt missed and a new shaft had sprouted from his back. In other words, he had only done so once he was at a disadvantage.
In this dungeon born of chaos, that was enough reason to kill someone.
Kang Dohyeon pulled the knife from the dead man’s body. Despite the thoughts passing through his mind, he moved quickly and efficiently. He wiped the blade on the dead man’s clothes and searched his body.
A small bag lay beneath the corpse.
Opening it quickly, Kang Dohyeon found several odds and ends.
[Old Pen: No ink remains. Perhaps it wishes to hold black liquid again and draw someone’s soul.]
[Bag of Nails: Filled with sharp nails. Since they are old, they are fleeting lumps of rust that can no longer fasten anything.]
[Broken Cellphone: It can no longer produce sound or images. All that remains is old hand grime and someone’s memories.]
As he read Yggdrasil’s nonsense, Kang Dohyeon examined the objects quickly. Whether someone could detect a Vanaskelium reaction through sight alone was a heated debate on the Dungeon Integrated Board. At least Kang Dohyeon was on the side that said it was possible.
Having survived countless dungeon patterns for more than ten years, Kang Dohyeon trusted his senses all the more.
He discarded the bag of nails. Along with his senses, words like memory, soul, hand grime, and old were highly likely to indicate a Vanaskelium reaction. That was another topic people argued over online, but still.
The old pen and the early twenty-first-century cellphone, shattered in several places, went into his pocket.
Then something gleamed deep within the bag.
Kang Dohyeon’s cold eyes widened slightly.
It was jewelry. A ring.
A thick silver ring embossed with the image of some unidentifiable beast. As soon as Kang Dohyeon picked it up, Yggdrasil’s message appeared.
[Vargband]
“…Nothing else? You fucking alien tree branch.”
This was unusual. Yggdrasil usually attached a nonsensical explanation to every object found in a dungeon.
That meant there were two possibilities.
Either it was an artifact with incredible abilities, or it was one of the dungeon’s pranks with motives impossible to guess.
Kang Dohyeon’s answer was simply to put it in a pocket of his bag.
“Today’s pay is covered.”
He had no intention of playing along with either possibility. Whether it was an artifact or a prank, it would be refined into Vanaskelium once it went into the furnace.
Never use an artifact with uncertain effects and side effects.
Only carry unknown things outside unchanged.
Do not directly interact with things whose nature is unknown. Its identity could be determined outside.
Those were rules Kang Dohyeon always tried to follow while entering and leaving dungeons, and things every hunter had to know.
Though B-ranks these days did not seem to follow them.
Now he had to get away as fast as possible. The smell of blood would spread, and then the Orphan Horde would gather here.
The ones that found the corpse would fight among themselves over who got to eat it. If that could be called fortunate, it meant Kang Dohyeon would escape their threat.
He adjusted the sling bag strapped across his front while picking up the crossbow he had thrown aside earlier with his other hand. Thanks to the way he had tossed it, it did not seem damaged.
Leaving a human corpse behind, Kang Dohyeon rose with a feeling of satisfaction.
“…?”
His eyes widened.
A silver ring gleamed on the index finger of his left hand, which had just finished arranging his bag.
It was the ring he had put away moments ago.
Why was it on my finger?
Had he absentmindedly put it on while placing it in the bag? But the ring had been extremely large. There was no way he would not have noticed.
Did the ring grow legs and put itself on his finger?
But Kang Dohyeon had felt nothing in that brief moment.
Furthermore, he had never seen an artifact move on its own and put itself on someone. He had never even heard of one on the Dungeon Integrated Board.
Setting aside those lightning-fast thoughts, Kang Dohyeon moved the instant he noticed the ring. He threw aside the crossbow and tried to yank it off.
“What the fuck…”
The ring fit his finger perfectly and would not come off. It did not budge at all.
The moment he realized that, Kang Dohyeon felt an uncontrollable sense of dread.
Dungeons were filled with incomprehensible phenomena. He did not know what this meant, but it was not a good sign.
As he strained to remove the ring, Kang Dohyeon’s right hand grabbed the handle of the knife sheathed at his waist.
It was better to cut off a finger than die because of an unidentified artifact.
He had somehow survived the past ten years without losing any part of his body, but lucky days could not last forever.
“No… What the hell is this…”
But before he could cut off his finger with the drawn knife, his vision turned black and white and the surroundings darkened.
Kang Dohyeon clenched his teeth and tried to hold on to consciousness, but with a snap, his awareness went dark.
As the Orphan Horde’s roars echoed from afar, Yggdrasil’s message appeared through his fading consciousness.
[Rage. Rage and rage, lost warrior.]
* * *
When Kang Dohyeon regained consciousness, he was surrounded by a sea of blood.
Torn flesh and entrails, broken bones, and crushed skulls lay scattered everywhere. Corpses and blood filled the cramped space.
He stared blankly at the scene before suddenly seeing his own hands and body.
He was naked, his hands and body soaked in blood.
Something squishy was being chewed in his mouth.
Flesh and blood.
“…Bleurgh!”
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