WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving as a B-Rank Hunter ◈
Chapter 2
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Dungeon History Research Society: [Excavated Materials] A Compilation of Early Records on Dungeon Appearances
Opinions differ on where the first dungeon appeared. In the early days of the crisis, humanity knew nothing about dungeons. There were no detection devices or experienced hunters' instincts to rely on as there are now.
The dungeons did not give humanity any grand greeting, either. They likely opened quietly in a corner of a city alley or a dim valley deep in the countryside. Since they went undiscovered, they caused no harm.
The first dungeon to claim casualties, however, is certain. January 31, 2020. The men's restroom inside Seoul Station.
A dungeon gate appeared as though paint had been brushed across empty air. Before measures could be taken to control the scene, a civilian who touched it out of curiosity and more than ten nearby people were sucked inside.
Most of those first entrants died. There was one survivor. He emerged from the dungeon naked, holding a single dagger. That dagger was the first artifact, Morning Star’s Edge, and the survivor was the first hunter, Choi Sangguk.
Within days, dungeons appeared not only across Asia but in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. One thing all those appearances had in common was that every attempt to deploy each nation's military forces ended in failure.
Nothing but a living human body could enter a dungeon. Not even clothes or glasses could be taken inside.
Every human entering a dungeon was forced to survive with nothing but their bare body.
At the same time, every human who entered a dungeon encountered mysterious text floating in the air that identified itself as the Yggdrasil System. Yet contrary to its claim of being a system, it described every object in a dungeon through metaphorical, poetic sentences.
The first message the system gave to first-time dungeon entrants became so famous that Asatru, once a small pagan group, grew into a global cult.
“Odin watches over you...”
The world fell into chaos with the arrival of messages whose origins could not be identified and phenomena no one could understand. Yet the chaos did not last long.
That was because the abnormal phenomena and monsters inside dungeons could never emerge into reality, and because of the potential of the material called Vanaskelium found inside dungeons.
Vanaskelium brought humanity a new revolution. The so-called Odin Shock. With astonishing efficiency ranging from tens to hundreds of times that of conventional batteries, it became a new current driving industry...
......
Anonymous1: Fuck, this asshole's at it again lol. Why are you writing a dissertation by yourself on the Dungeon Board lol
Anonymous2: Fucking long, boring, pretentious bullshit. Why don't you just have the whole board to yourself?
Anonymous3: Didn't Choi Sangguk die ages ago? I heard he was supposed to become the first A-rank.
⤷EyeOfHorus: He was one of the state-aligned hunters common in the early days. There are even rumors that corporations looking to grow the Vana industry had him assassinated.
⤷⤷Anonymous1: Bullshit lol. Assassination? You're suddenly going full conspiracy theorist lol
⤷⤷⤷EyeOfHorus: An unusually large number of state-aligned hunters died in the early days of the crisis.
Especially around the time it became obvious Vanaskelium would make the battery, energy, data center, and AI industries grow like crazy. Can't you see what the world's like these days?
It's a world where corporations suck hunters dry to mine Vana and fatten themselves with it. People are hungry and out of work, so they crawl into dungeons and risk their lives...
* * *
A stream of hot water fell over Kang Dohyeon's head.
The warmth washed away the bloodstains drying in his hair and across his body. It revealed the scars covering him from head to toe.
Dohyeon stood beneath the water, blankly staring at the bathroom wall. His eyes were unfocused.
“...Fuck.”
The briny taste and soft texture still lingered in his mouth.
Dohyeon felt sick. He might have been a hunter who routinely killed people and monsters in dungeons, but that did not mean he was fine with chewing on their corpses like gum while drenched in blood.
There was a bigger problem, too. When he regained consciousness, he had been naked. His equipment, bag, weapons, outer clothes, and even the chainmail he wore beneath them had all vanished.
Every piece had been made with dungeon materials so it could be worn inside dungeons.
Had he thrown all that equipment away and fought the Orphan Horde monsters barehanded?
If so, his body showed no sign of it. It was covered only in old scars, without even a small scratch.
As he stared blankly at the bathroom wall, Dohyeon suddenly raised his left hand. On his left index finger was a black tattoo circling it like a ring.
The last time he had seen that finger before losing consciousness, it had borne a thick silver ring.
“What are you?”
[Vargband]
“Fuck...”
As though answering his quiet question, Yggdrasil's message appeared. That only irritated Dohyeon more.
Since the Odin Shock, Yggdrasil's messages had only appeared inside dungeons. No one had ever seen a message outside one.
He could not even remove it now that it had become a tattoo. Did he really have to cut off his finger this time? He had not hesitated back then because it had been urgent, but cutting off part of his own body was not so simple.
Frowning at his index finger, Dohyeon scrubbed away the remaining blood and left the bathroom. After roughly drying himself, he first picked up the smartphone he had left on the table. There was one missed call.
The other person answered almost immediately when he called back.
“Yeah, Dohyeon. I saw your message. Are you okay?”
“Yes, sir. More or less. I'm not hurt.”
Lee Seongbaek was the president of a small hunter management company. Though Lee himself bitterly said he was more like the head of a labor agency or a mining office manager than anything so respectable.
Lee and Dohyeon had known each other for years and worked together for a long time.
“You really don't remember anything about what happened?”
“...No. I barely got out of the dungeon.”
In truth, he had escaped without facing any particular danger. There had not been a single living creature in sight, so he had only needed to watch out for the abnormal phenomena and make his way to the exit.
At least the dungeon gate had appeared somewhere secluded. If he had come out naked and covered in blood in the middle of the city, the police or a corporation would have rushed in to find out what had happened.
“Ha. So insurance won't cover it either?”
“I wasn't expecting it to.”
They called it insurance, but it was effectively a tax imposed on hunters.
“Still, how much gets taken out for your premiums every month... How much was all that equipment worth?”
“Around ten million won.”
“Ten million? What the fuck... Because of the crossbow?”
“That, and the chain vest.”
“Do you have anything you can use right away?”
“I do.”
“Right, with as long as you've been active...”
Lee hesitated mid-sentence.
“...No, forget it. I was rambling and nearly put my foot in my mouth. So you're physically fine?”
“Yes.”
“Then want to enter a dungeon?”
“Now?”
“Flower Hill pattern. It's a typical pattern, and it doesn't seem to have any particularly unusual abnormalities.”
Flower Hill. Its real name was longer, more complicated, and more bureaucratic. But as with other dungeon patterns, it was hardly known by any name other than the slang hunters used among themselves.
It was a dungeon made up almost entirely of rolling hills, shrubs, grass, and flower fields. There were monsters, but as long as one avoided the flower field, its danger level was low compared to other dungeons.
The rewards were modest as well, but for beginners entering a dungeon for the first time or hunters looking to take it easy, there was no better dungeon. This was probably Lee Seongbaek's way of looking out for him.
“If you just want to rest, do that. But knowing you, I don't think you'll just lie around at home. What do you say?”
“I'll go. Send me the location.”
“Really?”
Dohyeon snorted.
“You brought it up first. Why are you acting like that?”
“No, I just... Forget it. You'll handle yourself fine. I'll send the location. Gyuchan will be managing the entrance, so I'll let him know in advance.”
When the call ended, Dohyeon tossed his phone onto the table and slumped into a chair.
Normally, he did not enter dungeons like this. Usually, he bought information from the Dungeon Integrated Board or dark-web Observers, then tracked down dungeons shortly before they opened.
Few people knew in the early days, and even now it was something only those in the know understood, but dungeons showed faint signs before opening.
Strange distortions in empty space, bizarre animal behavior, electronic malfunctions, small flashes of light in the air, faint changes in atmospheric pressure, and so on.
Each sign was minor, but by following them carefully, one could locate a dungeon gate just before it opened and enter first.
And entering a dungeon first meant finding more and better items.
Of course, a dungeon could have several entrances. That was why corporations and the government could not control dungeon entry itself. So even if someone entered the moment it opened, they could still come away empty-handed that day.
Still, in most cases, the earlier one entered, the more Vanaskelium one could obtain.
But Dohyeon was in no state to search for and follow such signs. If an ordinary person, or even a veteran hunter, experienced something like today, they would normally rest for several days. Some would quit being hunters entirely.
Dohyeon could not rest. Incomprehensible phenomena became routine when one worked as a hunter anyway.
His head was spinning, and the loss of his equipment made his stomach ache, but that was precisely why he had to enter a dungeon. Dohyeon found that easier.
At least there, he would think of nothing except what was right in front of him.
Leaning his head back against the chair and staring at the ceiling, Dohyeon soon straightened up and picked up his smartphone. He wanted to see whether anyone online had experienced something similar.
“...”
He searched for tattooed rings, loss of reason, memory gaps, and more, but found nothing useful.
More precisely, artifacts with side effects such as losing one's mind or memory did exist occasionally. But there was no case where one became an irremovable tattoo like Dohyeon's, or where all those side effects appeared together.
He did find a few posts with similar claims. But as always with the internet, or rather, with the Dungeon Integrated Board, commonly called the Dungeon Board, they were either complete nonsense or bullshit meant to bait someone.
“What a bunch of shithole bastards...”
Stories about dungeons and artifacts were not mere internet rumors. Someone could genuinely lose their life because of them.
Yet the Dungeon Board was always flooded with such garbage and distorted information.
There were old hunters who hated new competition, people trying to verify information without getting their own hands dirty, corporations, and those who simply wanted to screw someone over.
Whether because those people held influence, or because of the bribes fed to them by corporations, the government left the board alone.
Perhaps the government monitored and used the Dungeon Board, too.
After frowning at his phone screen for a moment, Dohyeon tossed it back onto the table. He then rose and headed for the small room in his home, an armory where he kept his hunter equipment.
* * *
“Hey, Dohyeon-hyung. You made it?”
Jang Gyuchan was an employee under Lee Seongbaek. He had briefly worked as a hunter in the past, but quit soon afterward.
He held out his raised right fist. Dohyeon bumped it with his own and glanced at Jang's mechanical prosthetic arm.
Apparently noticing his gaze, Jang grinned.
“Cool, right? It's a newly released model. They say its maximum grip strength goes up to 150. Just tell me if anyone gives you shit, and I'll break their arm for you. Hehe.”
Jang had been laughing, but upon seeing Dohyeon's faint smile, his expression changed as if he had realized something.
“Ah, maybe you can manage that much too? I heard A-ranks can tear off a car door barehanded like opening a bag of chips.”
“I'm B-rank.”
“Haven't you been active for a really long time? People say hunters get stronger the longer they survive.”
“Bullshit. And even if you get a little stronger, a bullet will still kill you.”
“Come on, there is still a difference. That's why hunters can't compete in the Olympics or martial arts, right?”
It was not that they could not compete at all. The leagues were simply separated. Anyone who had entered a dungeon even once was placed in that league, so it was not much different from an ordinary league. The upper limit might be higher, but that had been true before dungeons as well.
Dohyeon ignored Jang's chatter and turned his gaze away. A piano academy occupied a small shopping building in the suburbs, and the dungeon gate had appeared in a corner of the academy director's office.
The gate looked as though white glowing paint had been brushed over empty air. A faint floral scent drifted from it.
“The director here is my relative. We normally only see each other once during holidays, but he contacted me after the gate opened.”
“How many went in?”
“Two people went in and came out through this entrance. You can tell from the color that it seems the other side has been open for a while. Pick up what you can and come out soon, okay? Don't stay until the gate closes and get stranded.”
Dohyeon adjusted the straps of his backpack and sling bag, then picked up his small crossbow for one final inspection. His usual one was a compound crossbow worth several million won, but this one was a recurve. It was difficult to draw and fairly heavy.
Still, he felt more at ease with even this. Especially in an open dungeon, he needed a ranged weapon.
Dohyeon preferred a crossbow that he could aim and fire immediately once it was loaded.
After completing his final checks, Dohyeon glanced back at Jang just before entering the gate.
“...Your arm looks cool.”
Jang flashed a broad grin.
“Right?”
Leaving Jang behind, Dohyeon stepped into the gate. Bright light and an intense floral scent stung his nose.
It was time to work.
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