WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Oblivious

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Surviving as a B-Rank Hunter ◈

Chapter 13

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A cold gaze behind a smiling face. As Dohyeon looked into Yoo Ahyeon's eyes, he gave a faint snort.

Of the dungeon teams he had recently wiped out, only one had seemed professional enough to work for a major corporation. The team led by the man with the hand axe.

Naturally, he couldn't admit it, not even as a joke. No real-world nation or corporation acknowledged dungeon lawlessness. At least, not on the surface.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come on. I stayed up all night looking for you. Do you know how exhausting it is to sift through the Dungeon Integrated Board and monitor everything listed on the market? Especially at dawn, when all sorts of horrible people post all sorts of horrible pictures..."

She trailed off, then squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered as though something had suddenly come to mind. Soon, she shook her head briskly, brushed the thought away, and smiled at Dohyeon again.

"That's not important, anyway. Is that nickname really yours? Scrap Iron?"

"I'll say it again. I don't know what you're talking about."

Yoo Ahyeon's eyes narrowed slightly. She released his hand.

"Ah. So you're going to deny it completely?"

Looking at her pretty face, Dohyeon gave a faintly bitter smile.

It had been only a day, not even twenty hours, since he wiped out the hand-axe team. Yet within that brief time, this woman had uncovered his personal details and come here alone to face him.

The driver and errand runner waiting outside the dungeon could have described his appearance.

But identifying Dohyeon on the Dungeon Board from that vague description and a rough guess at what had happened inside the dungeon was remarkable.

And checking the market to predict that he would sell the artifact? Did she have clairvoyance?

Or perhaps his information was simply easy enough to find.

"How did you find the phantom called Scrap Iron?"

"Hmm. You don't want to admit it, but you are curious how I found you. Why should I tell you?"

"If you don't want to, forget it."

At Dohyeon's firm reply, Yoo Ahyeon blinked with a slightly blank look.

"...Are you always this blunt?"

Dohyeon silently looked at her. Meeting his gaze, Yoo Ahyeon tilted her head as though she found him strange.

"You're an odd person. Then again, expecting someone who's spent ten straight years going in and out of dungeons without a break to be normal is even stranger. Fine, I'll tell you as a special favor. I'm trying to get a little closer to you right now, Dohyeon."

She lightly shrugged as if she alone understood him, then returned to her bright smile.

"I heard about your appearance from the people on the outside team. But your face wasn't important. Your actions were.

"When a solo hunter encounters a team in a dungeon, there are usually only a few things they do. They run far away or try not to stand out as much as possible.

"Everyone enters to make money, so most people don't go looking for a fight."

Yoo Ahyeon's eyes sparkled. She seemed to enjoy explaining the situation to Dohyeon.

"Some people claim that a solo can use a dungeon's variables to hunt a team, but that isn't easy. Dungeon variables don't discriminate. Someone trying to use them against a team could end up falling over and cracking their head open instead.

"Team hunters know that too, so teams that hunt people are usually very experienced or high-ranked hunters. Genuine B-ranks, or, rarely, A-ranks.

"Or... just insane bastards."

The eyes that had seemed to sparkle held a chill. Like gleaming ice.

"My field team wasn't made up of those insane bastards. They were a little aggressive, sure, but they were skilled enough to justify hiring them. Their basic policy was to rob any solo hunters they met, but they weren't crazy enough to hunt every solo in the dungeon. Yet none of them came out of that dungeon. And only one solo came out immediately afterward."

Her lips still held a bright smile, but her eyes no longer smiled.

"Now, shall I sketch out a scenario? When an experienced hunter team and an experienced solo meet, they usually just go their separate ways rather than fight. But what if there were another reason?

"What if there was something worth risking their lives for rather than safely pretending not to see each other? An artifact, for example? Then they could fight. That's why I searched the Dungeon Board for your story while monitoring the market at the same time.

"I expected whoever wiped out my field team and robbed them to put their goods on the market right away."

She spread her hands in a ta-da gesture.

"Honestly, just watching the market would have been enough. I might have had a few false leads, but eventually I would have ended up standing here. Though I wouldn't have known your name then."

"You're clever. And talkative."

"Wha, I talk too..."

Yoo Ahyeon, who had been wearing a serious expression, looked wounded. Her expressions were varied. Since she worked for a foreign-affiliated company, Dohyeon wondered if she might be a black-haired foreigner.

"How did you get my number?"

"...Hmph. That's a secret. I can't tell you everything I have. Of course, if you and I became a little closer..."

"You bought it on the black market. They couldn't have found you first... You spent the middle of the night searching the Dungeon Board for stories about a hunter who's been B-rank for ten years, so someone must have offered to sell you information first."

"......"

Yoo Ahyeon closed her mouth and widened her eyes. Looking at her face, Dohyeon sighed softly.

He couldn't immediately confirm exactly who had sold his number, how many people could connect that number to the hunter called Scrap Iron, or what exactly they knew about him.

It was an age where a person's private information sold for a few dozen won. An age where a person's digital fingerprints did not merely remain on the vast communications network, but practically dripped from it.

Even though he had spent the past ten years using his own methods to leave as few traces as possible, someone seemed to have caught on. It couldn't be helped.

To buy dungeon information from Observers and occasionally trade information on unusual dungeons or specific artifacts, he had no choice but to leave traces in that world. Still, he hadn't expected one of the numbers he currently used to be compromised.

Then Lee Seongbaek spoke.

"Huh. Looks like you don't know what Dohyeon was like ten years ago."

Leaning back in his chair, he watched Dohyeon and Yoo Ahyeon with a relaxed posture. Yoo Ahyeon's eyes immediately sparkled.

"Ten years ago? What happened to Dohyeon then?"

"Heh. It's not really my place to tell you. Look into it yourself, if you can."

Grinning, Lee Seongbaek pulled out a cigarette. Yoo Ahyeon looked between the cigarette and Dohyeon in confusion.

Dohyeon spoke toward the lighter.

"Doesn't your wife hate it when you smoke in the office?"

"That's why I don't let her come to the office."

"Aren't you about old enough to worry about your health?"

"Who, me? Bullshit. If my lungs stop working, I can just replace them. What is there to worry about these days, Dohyeon?"

"I'm worried your wife will complain to me."

"She's my wife, not yours. Mind your own business."

"Then handle things properly so I can mind my own business."

Lee Seongbaek gave a breathy laugh, then took a long drag from the cigarette in his mouth. He exhaled a plume of smoke and rose from his seat.

"Did you bring the goods?"

Without a word, Dohyeon held out the bag he had brought. Lee Seongbaek took it and placed it on the table in the middle of the office. The Vanaskelium detector was on that table as well.

With the cigarette still in his mouth, Lee Seongbaek took the items out of the bag and checked them for a Vanaskelium reaction. After inspecting the things Dohyeon had picked up in the dungeon, he finally took out the battery.

Examining its smooth surface, he spoke.

"What did the Yggdrasil message say again?"

"Remains of fire and lightning. The heart of its soul is old, yet has not grown cold."

Lee Seongbaek whistled. He brought the detector close to the battery, and its light turned red. Seeing the light, he spoke to Yoo Ahyeon.

"Even if you just extract the Vana, you'd easily get a few hundred grams from a reaction like this. Of course, considering the Yggdrasil message, you won't handle it that crudely."

"...Of course not. The condition is that the battery be handed over exactly as it is, without touching it in any way."

Yoo Ahyeon shifted only her eyes between Lee Seongbaek and Dohyeon with an odd expression. Then she frowned slightly and spoke again.

"But I'm dealing with Dohyeon right now, aren't I?"

"Dealing with me is the same as dealing with Dohyeon. I manage him."

"Of course, I can include a referral fee for the management side as well... but I was thinking of dealing directly with Dohyeon."

As she said that, she looked at Dohyeon. But he slowly shook his head.

Yoo Ahyeon put a hand on her hip.

"I don't understand why you'd willingly pay a fee. To repeat my title, I'm an assistant manager in Cartain Energy's Field Talent Procurement Team..."

"I've already heard it. You said you wanted to get close to me. It seems you want to hire me in place of the field team that was wiped out by the hunter called Scrap Iron."

"Th..."

Dohyeon raised a hand to stop Yoo Ahyeon.

"I'll answer first. I won't work with you. I work alone."

"...But you work with this person."

At her sulky remark, Lee Seongbaek burst into loud laughter. Dohyeon smiled faintly as well.

"He doesn't work with me. He handles my goods for me. What you want is for me to work under Cartain Energy."

"Hmm... May I ask why you don't want to? From my perspective, making this offer after losing the company's field team is an extremely generous offer."

"I don't want to work under a corporation."

Disbelief appeared on Yoo Ahyeon's face.

"What do you mean... Are you one of those people, Dohyeon? An anti-corporate activist?"

"I just prefer working alone."

Despite her doubtful gaze, Dohyeon only met her eyes with an impassive expression.

Yoo Ahyeon stared at him for a moment, then sighed and shook her head. She tore a yellow memo sheet from Lee Seongbaek's desk and began writing something.

"Honestly, hunters are all such strange people. I'm already exhausted from staying up all night... and now I'm hearing strange things..."

She roughly set the memo sheet down in front of Dohyeon and Lee Seongbaek with a bang.

"This is my final offer. No negotiation."

A price was written on the memo. With a cigarette in his mouth, Lee Seongbaek looked at Dohyeon, who nodded. Lee Seongbaek looked back at Yoo Ahyeon.

"Let's make the deal."

Everything afterward ended quickly. Yoo Ahyeon seemed to have more authority than her title as assistant manager suggested, because she immediately transferred the money to the account. Then she put the battery in Dohyeon's bag and picked it up.

"It's fine if I take the bag too, right?"

"Do whatever you want."

"I'll contact you again to return the bag. That's fine, right?"

"...You won't be able to reach me at the old number."

"Then give me a number where I can reach you."

"......"

Their eyes met.

A pretty, pale face. But behind it was a cold corporate manager who handled hunters who thought nothing of killing people as easily as chess pieces.

After looking at her face for a moment, Dohyeon wrote down a number on Lee Seongbaek's memo sheet. Yoo Ahyeon took it, smiled, winked at Dohyeon, and left the office.

As Dohyeon wore an uneasy expression, Lee Seongbaek laughed loudly.

"Are you finally getting married too?"

"Are you insane?"

"Heh. I was just saying. Anyway, I'll calculate the rest of the smaller items separately and send the money with the payment for the battery."

"I'll check the market prices, so don't skim anything."

"No trust built over ten years. You're a cold one."

After their brief exchange, Dohyeon turned toward the office door. But with his hand on the doorknob, he paused.

"...It looks like Cartain Energy is moving into Korea."

"They're already here. Their contracted hunters are still pathetic, so they're using vermin that hunt people and making recruitment offers to B-ranks like you."

"Korean companies won't just stand by."

"And if they don't? Politicians have spent ten years pulling every kind of bullshit to keep corporations out of their reach. What regulations are they going to impose now?"

"If words don't work, they might use force."

"You think corporations will wage war against each other?"

Lee Seongbaek chuckled as he took out another cigarette and put it in his mouth. Then, as if it were nothing, he said,

"That would be even better. Whether foreign corporations or Korean ones, if those bastards want to tear each other apart, who's going to stop them? Right?"

He took a long drag, then exhaled smoke. With a cynical expression, he looked at Dohyeon. Dohyeon wore a similar smile.

"...I'll be going now."

"Sure. Go on. See you next time."

Leaving Lee Seongbaek surrounded by cigarette smoke behind him, Dohyeon opened the door and left the office.

Even after he was gone, Lee Seongbaek kept the cigarette in his mouth and stared into empty space for a long while. Only he knew what he was seeing there.

Outside Lee Seongbaek's office, a dim shopping arcade corridor greeted Dohyeon. As he walked through the empty, shadowy hall, a soft voice spoke beside his ear.

[It feels as though I caught a glimpse of your past today, Warrior.]

"You can sit in my head and read my thoughts, but you can't read my memories?"

[As I have already said, you are free to believe that I dwell within your mind. But I merely exist here, now.]

Dohyeon glanced at the glass wall that stood in place of one side of the shopping arcade corridor. Beyond the glass, the faint reflection of a tall female warrior with folded wings was visible.

[Then it is time to rest. What do you do while resting? Hiking? Reading? Movies? Movies would be nice as well. I have always wished to visit a cinema myself.]

"......"

Dohyeon did not answer. He merely walked out of the shopping arcade.

When he reached the first floor and stood at the entrance, a light rain was falling from the gloomy sky. Looking up at the writhing gray clouds, Dohyeon suddenly took out his phone and checked it. A message had arrived.

[Was that the cute-looking woman from earlier?]

No. The message was from the black market. The sender was a113, an Observer.

[a113: Reply by 11. If there is no reply after that, other customers will be prioritized.]

He replied immediately. Perhaps having seen the message, the Valkyrie's voice sounded beside his ear.

[Again? You are going into a dungeon again? Without resting?]

Dohyeon put his phone away and stepped into the light rain.

"...That's my job."

It was what he had done all his life, and what he would do until he died.

Entering dungeons, searching for artifacts, and escaping.

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