WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving as a B-Rank Hunter ◈
Chapter 10
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The hand axe hunter kicked a Mask Man in the back.
The creature pinning down the spearman rolled aside. Freed, the spearman quickly rose and pounced on the Mask Man that had fallen the other way.
After a brief scuffle, the Mask Man revealed its hollow face and vanished like smoke.
“Get up already, asshole! Quit dragging your feet!”
The hand axe hunter shouted. Two more Mask Men had grabbed both of his arms. Even while gasping for breath, the spearman got up and thrust his spear straight ahead.
The spear tip caught the gas mask and tore it off. Another human-shaped monster vanished.
Having freed one arm, the hand axe hunter swung a fist at the remaining Mask Man. With a heavy Thwack!, it staggered. The hand axe hunter seized the opening, grabbed hold of it, and ripped off its mask.
After dealing with the Mask Men immediately clinging to them, the two quickly looked around. The remaining Mask Men were all gathered near the broken skylight over there. The spearman asked, his face drenched in sweat.
“What about that guy?”
“He’ll show up wearing a mask soon enough. Let’s get out of here first, then take it off at our leisure. Come on.”
Once they confirmed that no monsters remained to hold them back, they began retreating as quietly as possible. As the hand axe hunter backed away, he sneered at the writhing cluster of Mask Men.
“Stupid bastard. This is what happens when you go around alone.”
The hand axe hunter muttered that toward someone whose face he could not see, then turned away.
There was no telling how long the gravity reversal would last.
If they did not find a suitable position, they might suddenly fall upside down and break their necks.
Then a Mask Man came flying through the air and landed in front of them.
“...!”
Startled, the hand axe hunter and spearman quickly raised their weapons. The Mask Man lying on the floor-ceiling twitched limply.
The entire left half of its upper body had been torn away.
“What?”
The hand axe hunter stared at it in shock, then realized something and swiftly turned toward where the Mask Man had come from. No, where it had been thrown from.
The place where the Mask Men were gathered, wriggling together. The place where that troublesome solo hunter had supposedly met his end moments ago.
Someone there was gripping a Mask Man by the throat and holding it high. The Mask Man kicked and struggled to escape, but that hand did not move an inch, as though it were a hydraulic press.
Even more astonishingly, the other Mask Men nearby were crouching down and trying to creep away like frightened animals.
They made Hiss, hiss sounds like wildcats facing a predator they could not defeat, yet they could not straighten their crouched bodies.
Still, one of them suddenly turned and tried to run. The human-shaped Mask Man had become a terrified animal, fleeing on all fours.
At that moment, a streak of light came whirring through the air and lodged in the fleeing Mask Man’s back.
“Hiiek!”
The streak pierced through its back and embedded itself in the floor-ceiling. Dragged along by its force, the Mask Man was slammed into the ground.
“That’s...”
The hand axe hunter stared blankly at the streak of light. A sword hilt protruded from the back of the Mask Man, which flailed its limbs like a spider. It was the hilt of the sword the troublesome solo hunter had been wielding.
“...”
The hand axe hunter looked back and saw the hand that had thrown the sword. It slowly moved to grasp the Mask Man already in its grip near the collarbone.
“Hiiek! Hiiik!”
The Mask Man, held by its throat and collarbone, struggled desperately. But the hand did not budge, and its grip finally began to tighten.
There came a Crack, crack, like bones, muscles, and flesh being torn apart.
That was exactly what it was.
The Mask Man’s body split apart to either side, blood and entrails pouring from it.
The owner of the hand that had torn it apart was drenched from head to toe in that spilled blood. The blood-soaked figure’s face appeared.
Bared teeth growling like a wolf’s. Hair standing on end. Fiercely twisted eyes. Yellow pupils flashing like those of a predator.
It was a face that could have belonged to either a person or a beast.
“What the fuck...?”
The hand axe hunter had entered plenty of dungeons and considered himself someone who would not be surprised or frightened by just anything. Usually, the ones who froze were the first to die. He had survived while others died, so it was not entirely wrong.
But at this moment, he could not insult those fools.
The instant his eyes met those yellow, flashing eyes, he felt cold and terrified, as though he had been thrown naked before a wild beast.
The beast roared, Rrraaargh!
“Fuck, run!”
Frozen stiff until then, the hand axe hunter finally came to his senses at that sound, turned, and ran. The spearman, who had been frozen beside him, quickly followed.
Unlike the fleeing hunters, the Mask Men rushed toward the beast.
It was like rats cornered in a dead end biting a cat.
The monsters that had acted as if their sole purpose was to put masks on others had now become frightened rats.
The beast threw away the Mask Man it held and charged at them. The frame serving as its foothold bent sharply beneath it.
With a flashing punch, it blew apart a Mask Man’s head with a Crunch! The mask and head burst together, and the creature vanished.
Next, a whip-like kick arced through the air and folded two Mask Men at the waist at once. Both were sent flying.
One leaped onto the beast’s back, trying to put a mask on it. The beast caught its hand, bent forward as if collapsing, and threw the Mask Man over its shoulder.
It immediately straightened up and stomped on the fallen creature’s head. Its hockey mask and head shattered together, and the Mask Man vanished.
The remaining Mask Men then began to be literally torn apart by the beast’s hands.
The hand axe hunter glanced back and felt less fear than disbelief at the sight.
Mask Men did not die unless their masks were removed. Even if their limbs were severed or their waists cut clean through, they swiftly returned to normal and attacked again.
Calling it regeneration did not fit. It was as if a single frame had been cut from a film, or as if the moment one looked away, that part had been replaced with an entirely different, intact body.
Proof of that was the Mask Man whose upper body had been split in half and tossed aside like trash. It had regained its original shape and was attacking the beast again.
Some people even claimed that if Mask Men ever escaped a dungeon, they could stand against the military. They were immortal soldiers, so even a modern army would not be able to defeat them.
Watching another Mask Man vanish as its mask and head were destroyed together, the hand axe hunter realized that claim was nonsense.
“Crazy bastard. Does he fire bazookas with his bare fists?”
What did it matter if they could keep attacking after their limbs were torn off? The beast caught every Mask Man and reliably destroyed both its head and mask.
The five or six Mask Men left were dealt with that way.
“...”
After finishing off the one still writhing on the floor with the sword lodged in it, the beast gripped the hilt and pulled it free.
The hand axe hunter glanced back, and their eyes met.
Yellow flashing pupils and teeth bared in a wolfish growl. Yet it was unmistakably a human face. The solo hunter they had encountered before entering this dungeon. The one they had planned to kill and strip of his bag, crossbow, and sword.
“Fuck...”
The shopping mall had originally been a maze of obstacles, alleys, doors, and corridors. There had been plenty of hiding places and ways out.
But not now.
The mall’s reversed floor-ceiling stretched flat and unobstructed before them.
So despite running as hard as he could while the beast finished every Mask Man, the hand axe hunter could still see it.
And the beast could still see him.
The next moment, the beast began to run.
It kicked off so hard that a Crack! appeared in the skylight beneath its feet. The hand axe hunter watched the beast close in like an arrow and went pale.
“Stop. We can’t outrun it.”
“Th-then what?”
“Did you see that speed and still think we can run?”
“Shit...”
The spearman cursed under his breath, then quickly turned and leveled his spear. The long spearhead glinted as it aimed at the beast.
The beast ran straight toward that point like a mounted soldier charging a spearman. Had it torn the Mask Men apart like an animal, only to become as stupid as one too?
But judging by its speed, that spear did not seem capable of stopping its charge.
As that thought crossed the spearman’s mind, he glanced at the hand axe hunter beside him.
“...?”
The hand axe hunter was gone. Startled, the spearman looked behind him and saw the hand axe hunter standing several steps farther back.
“Jangseok, what are you...”
Before he could finish, the hand axe hunter raised the axe and struck the floor. The skylight glass.
Spiderweb cracks spread across the skylight in front of him.
The spearman’s expression stiffened.
“You, Kim Jangseok...”
“Look ahead, idiot!”
At those words, the spearman reflexively faced forward.
He saw the beast leaping at him, as though it would fly through the air and pounce. It looked like a tiger springing upon its prey.
The spearman reflexively raised the spearpoint toward it. The beast’s body was skewered by its incoming force.
No, that was only the spearman’s illusion.
The spearhead passed beneath the beast’s armpit. The hand that had torn apart the Mask Men seized the spearman’s face.
As the two tangled together, the hand axe hunter struck the floor-skylight glass once more.
The second blow finally broke it. The skylight beneath the beast and spearman shattered with a Crash! and fell toward the floor-sky.
In that brief instant, the beast seized the spearman’s head.
Whether it mistook the spearman for one of the Mask Men it had been fighting moments ago, no one could know.
Either way, the spearman’s head was smashed apart like tofu.
At the same time, the beast planted its foot against the spearman’s chest. While the corpse fell toward the sky, the beast pushed off from that chest and leaped upward.
As the spearman’s corpse fell into the sky, the beast leaped once more.
The hand axe hunter had smiled smugly when the skylight broke, but his eyes widened.
The beast, no, the solo hunter came flying at him with a large sword in hand.
Before he could react, the sword pierced his chest.
“Ghk...!”
It had clearly gone straight through his heart. The hand axe hunter’s knees buckled, and he fell to his knees. He looked down at the sword lodged in his chest, then slowly raised his head.
The hunter stood before him, covered in blood and breathing harshly.
The hand axe hunter gave a faint smile at that berserker’s face.
“What the fuck... What kind of artifact... are you using... How expensive is it...?”
Instead of answering, the hunter tilted his head slightly and growled.
“Forgotten... how to speak too, have you... animal bastard...?”
Perhaps the hunter did not like the hand axe hunter’s faintly smiling face. The growling hunter suddenly reached out and gripped his throat. Already half-dead, the hand axe hunter could only let out a short Gack!
Then the hunter’s grip tore out his larynx.
A Gurgle... came from the hand axe hunter’s torn throat as blood poured out. Then he collapsed forward, twitched for a moment, and went limp.
The hunter looked down at the lifeless corpse, breathing heavily, then raised his head and scanned the surroundings.
No enemies remained. Only the barren, upside-down shopping mall could be seen.
After catching his breath for a moment, the hunter stood alone and roared upward.
Rrraaargh!
The roar seemed to shake the entire shopping mall. Even the shadows and darkness seemed to tremble at its sound.
The next moment, the roaring hunter’s body rose sharply into the air.
It was not only the hunter. Everything that had been standing upon the ceiling as though it were the floor plunged back toward the shopping mall floor.
Corpses, glass, plastic, and mannequins all came tumbling down in a Clatter! The hunter also slammed into the floor, rolled over and over, and landed in a corner.
The hand axe hunter’s corpse, which fell beside him, merely landed with a Splat!
“...”
Once the ground began pulling the world toward it again, the shopping mall, briefly filled with chaos, quickly returned to silence.
It was unclear whether that was because every creature capable of making noise was already dead, or because they had all hidden themselves in even darker corners out of fear.
“...”
In that silence, the body of hunter Kang Dohyeon, who had also gone quiet after falling face-first into a corner, twitched.
Dohyeon slowly raised his head. His once-spiked hair now hung limp, and his bloodshot eyes, whose yellow pupils had flashed, were full of exhaustion.
The eyes that had burned with fury and heat until moments ago had now sunk so low they seemed almost gloomy.
“Ugh...”
Dohyeon slowly braced a hand against the floor, then flinched at the stabbing pain running through his entire body. He slowly sat up.
“...”
After sitting there blankly and catching his breath, Dohyeon slowly turned his gaze and looked around.
One corpse caught his eye. A corpse with a sword lodged in its chest and its larynx torn out. The one who had picked a fight before they entered the dungeon.
Its vacant pupils and the blood pooling across the floor showed that its life had ended.
“...?”
Dohyeon’s eyes widened as he stared blankly at the body.
A backpack was slung over the corpse’s back, and something black protruded from its opening.
Though Dohyeon had been in pain just trying to get up moments earlier, he instantly regained his agility upon noticing it.
He rose at once, approached the corpse while sharply watching the surroundings, loosened the backpack’s drawstring, and pulled out the black object.
[Vanas 11X Battery Pack: Remnants of fire and lightning. The heart of its soul is old, yet has not gone cold.]
A battery.
A blue light shone from a small indicator on its side. Dohyeon’s eyes glinted like that blue light.
Then the Valkyrie’s voice sounded beside Dohyeon’s ear.
[The moment you regain your senses, you start picking up loot...? Should I call that adaptability, or say you are overflowing with greed...?]
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