WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Oblivious
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving as a B-Rank Hunter ◈
Chapter 31
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The black vehicle carrying armed men chased close behind.
With them on his tail, Dohyeon glanced at Park Tae-eun in the passenger seat. She had been worrying about his wound, but she spotted the black car following them too.
“W-Why...?”
“Can't you think of any reason? Maybe those punks from before...”
No. It was not them. They could not bother anyone anymore.
After that passing thought, Park Tae-eun spoke.
“Those people... I heard they had an accident...”
“An accident? What-”
At that moment, crack! The right side mirror exploded. Dohyeon checked the rearview mirror and saw a thin-faced man leaning his head and hand out of the black car's passenger window.
Naturally, there was a pistol in that hand.
“Those insane bastards...”
How had things in Korea gotten like this? They were outside the city, sure, but it was not even that late. Shooting guns like this? Would anyone even call the police?
“The police! We need to call the police...!”
Park Tae-eun seemed to have had the same thought. But Dohyeon turned the wheel and spoke quietly.
“By the time the police get here these days, we'll both be dead.”
“W-What...?”
Then crack, crack! Holes appeared in the rear windshield. Dohyeon shoved Park Tae-eun's head beneath the passenger seat and lowered himself too.
Thanks to the turn he had made just before, the used car, now riddled with holes, left the main road and entered a narrow, dark street without streetlights. The thin-faced man's aim naturally went off target.
The men apparently had no intention of giving up. They immediately turned after them. The thin-faced man shouted something at the driver while keeping his gun aimed their way.
Dohyeon glanced at Park Tae-eun, curled up in the passenger seat and half-panicked.
Why would assassins like that come after a woman who only worked part-time at a convenience store?
As he had said before, Dohyeon had expected, at most, the punks he had seen before or perhaps gangsters above them. He had not expected to be pursued by killers with handguns.
If he had known he would be facing guns, he would have prepared differently. If he really needed to fight armed enemies, it was not as if he could not.
Dohyeon could prepare equipment with enough killing power if necessary. Bullets did not fail to fire in reality like they did inside dungeons.
But right now, all he had was one sword. If he jumped out of the car with it, there was nothing he could do except get shot from afar.
So Dohyeon pressed the accelerator harder.
The road narrowed, and the lanes and sidewalks disappeared. Darkened shutters and concrete walls stretched along both sides. On that narrow, unlit road, the headlights of Dohyeon's used car and the black vehicle flashed white against the walls.
When they turned another corner, he saw a wire-mesh fence and a gate. Beyond them stood a dark factory building.
It was too dark to tell what kind of factory it had been. Instead, an old banner hung from one side of the fence, fluttering so worn that its writing was hard to read.
It was probably an advertisement for selling the factory. Pallets and plastic-covered materials were visible beyond the fence.
The gate was chained shut.
Dohyeon stepped on the accelerator and rammed straight through it.
“Eek!”
Crash! The chain snapped, and the fence gate burst open as Park Tae-eun cried out in fright. Broken pieces of chain flew everywhere.
After smashing through the gate and driving deep into the yard, Dohyeon stopped the car. The engine of the used car, which had been screaming as though it were dying, let out a wheezing prrr... and died.
It sounded as though the car's life had drained away and it would never start again.
Clicking his tongue, Dohyeon kicked open the door and said,
“Get out. We'll die if we stay here.”
“What? Y-Yes!”
Even terrified and confused, Park Tae-eun listened to him well. Or perhaps she was so panicked that she could only move as Dohyeon told her to.
Dohyeon grabbed the long sword from the back seat, got out, took Park Tae-eun's hand, and ran. Behind them, the black vehicle crashed through the gate Dohyeon had broken.
The thin-faced man and the buzz-cut man jumped out at once, drew their pistols, and aimed at Dohyeon and Park Tae-eun's backs.
But the two vanished between cover made of materials, scrap, and strange steel frames before the men could pull the trigger.
The thin-faced man frowned as he looked over the factory grounds. The place was broad and sprawling, cluttered with every sort of structure and material.
He cursed under his breath and pulled out his smartphone.
“Fuck. I'll send the map coordinates, so tell everyone to come here. Yeah, you bastards. Tell them to hurry the fuck up!”
After barking at the person on the phone, the thin-faced man gave the buzz-cut man another order.
“Hey, open the trunk.”
“Yes, sir.”
Clunk. A heavy rifle came out of the opened trunk. The thin-faced man inserted a sixty-round magazine and said,
“I don't know who that guy is, but kill the man. If things go bad, kill the woman too.”
“Just kill her?”
“You're going to act like an idiot trying to save that bitch? If we kill Park Kangseok's daughter like he wanted, he won't give us any more shit. It'd be worse if we hesitate and let her get away.”
“Understood.”
The two men pulled back their assault rifles' charging handles with a click-clack and walked into the factory grounds.
“...Crazy bastards.”
Hidden in the darkness, Dohyeon sighed as he looked at the rifles in their hands. Pistols had been bad enough. Now they had assault rifles.
“The police! Call the police...!”
Park Tae-eun, pressed close behind Dohyeon, muttered those words. She even took out her smartphone and tried to call.
Dohyeon grabbed it.
“...Why? Why not?”
Dohyeon nodded toward the two men slowly advancing inward with their rifles.
They aimed their rifles using only their right hands and the slings, while each held a palm-sized device in their left hand.
“Signal trackers. If you make a call, they'll know where we are right away.”
“Then let's just run! It's dark, so maybe they won't see us...?”
Dohyeon shook his head. Outside the factory was open ground. Unless they could cover hundreds of meters in ten seconds, they could not avoid those bullets. If Dohyeon were alone, he could have widened the distance, found cover, and escaped.
The problem was Park Tae-eun. She was an ordinary person. The moment she ran across open ground, she probably could not avoid taking a bullet in the back.
After thinking for a moment, Dohyeon drew the sword he held.
The black blade slid free without a sound of metal.
“Go farther inside and hide.”
“...What?”
“Because I'm going to carve those bastards up.”
Park Tae-eun stared at Dohyeon in shock and froze. It was because of the yellow gleam in his eyes.
Whether it was those eyes or the fact that she was still panicked and only able to follow his orders, Park Tae-eun hid herself deeper in the factory's darkness without another word.
Dohyeon, on the other hand, began moving slowly.
The factory grounds were piled with materials. It seemed to have been a metalworking factory. There were large and small chunks of metal everywhere, and a small crane stood to one side.
Maybe it was the factory of a company that had gone under after the Odin Shock.
The piled materials formed a complex maze deeper inside the grounds. Since the materials were irregularly shaped, the maze was even more confusing.
It would have been manageable in broad daylight, but now, in the dim darkness without even one streetlight, it was simply a labyrinth.
Three men moved through that maze, thick with the smell of plastic sheeting and metal dust.
The thin-faced man and the buzz-cut man moved slowly, holding signal detectors in one hand and using one-handed firing stances. Dohyeon also hid his black blade in the shadows and approached without a sound.
His chance would be very brief. All those men had to do was turn their muzzles toward Dohyeon and pull the triggers.
Then the rifles would spit fire, and Dohyeon would die in pieces. That was what guns did.
Dohyeon silenced even his breathing. He silenced his footsteps and minimized even the sound of his clothes brushing together as he moved. Moving very slowly but without interruption made that possible.
His five senses sharpened. He could not see the two armed men, yet he felt as though he knew their locations by the sounds and smells of their movement alone. Dohyeon moved soundlessly, closing in.
He heard them talking.
“Fuck... Did these bastards run?”
“The phone signals are still here, boss. We can't get their exact locations, but there are four signals in this area. The two of us and those two.”
“Then why can't we hear anything? Are they hiding somewhere?”
“Wouldn't that be better? Once the others get here, we can make them search.”
“It'd be better to keep the woman alive if we can...”
“Heh heh. I think so too-”
At that moment, Dohyeon sprang from the shadows between the materials.
The black blade flashed in an arc.
“You-”
The startled thin-faced man tried to aim at Dohyeon, but the arc of the black blade came first. That flashing black light severed both his right wrist and the rifle.
“Aagh!”
Sparks flew as the thin-faced man screamed, clutching his severed wrist and falling backward.
At the same time, the buzz-cut man's rifle swung toward Dohyeon. Even in that instant, Dohyeon twisted his body as much as possible to evade the barrel's aim. At the same time, he thrust the sword's tip toward the buzz-cut man's chest.
Then rat-a-tat-tat! A thunderous burst rang out as the muzzle spat fire.
At the same time, the sword tip aimed at his chest went slightly off course and pierced the buzz-cut man's shoulder.
“Urk!”
The barrel wavered with his short groan. Dohyeon closed in to finish him.
Despite the pain, the buzz-cut man squeezed the trigger tight, and fire still poured from the muzzle. Bullets flew everywhere. They bounced off the stacked materials with metallic clangs.
Then the black blade split both the rifle's body and his wrist.
Sparks flashed, and the plastic-and-metal rifle split apart with a crack. Naturally, the buzz-cut man's wrist did too.
“Ugh!”
As the man gasped and tried to stagger back, Dohyeon stepped half a pace closer and swung again.
This time, at his neck.
Thump. The severed head floated briefly in the air. Dohyeon felt the strange steadiness and confidence in his skill that he had felt when cutting down the Orphan Horde monster before. He had sliced through not only a rifle's hard body, but a human head in one blow as easily as picking fruit.
As the buzz-cut man's body flopped backward and his floating head fell, Dohyeon stood still for a moment, letting out the breath he had held until now.
He had not avoided every bullet. Blood streamed down from where a bullet had passed through his left forearm. At least it had gone through.
If the bullet had flown a handspan to the side, it would have pierced his heart. Naturally, Dohyeon would have died.
As he frowned at the pain in his left arm, the thin-faced man, whose right hand had been cut off and who had fallen backward, hurriedly got up and began to run.
“Where do you think you're going...”
Dohyeon moved to chase after him and stab him, but the strength suddenly left his advancing leg, making him stop short.
“...Fuck.”
His left arm was not the only place he had been hit. There was another hole high on his left thigh. Blood was pouring out of it. That was the price of charging toward the gun barrel.
Then the sounds of many engines rushed in. Dohyeon looked up sharply and saw five or six black vehicles and more than ten motorcycles entering through the factory entrance where he and the thin-faced man had come in.
The thin-faced man ran toward them while clutching his severed hand.
“Hurry up, you fuckers! Go kill that bastard hiding inside!”
Men in black poured out of the vehicles that had come roaring in.
The men who had entered on motorcycles also grabbed guns wedged into their seats and ran toward the thin-faced man.
“Boss!”
In an instant, the thin-faced man had gained dozens of reinforcements. Looking this way, he grinned through a face drenched in cold sweat, as though he had forgotten that his wrist was severed.
Dohyeon smiled too.
He did not know what was happening or why they wanted to kill a convenience store worker.
He had only impulsively involved himself because he had failed to save a child next door today. And in return, he had to charge at assault rifles with one sword.
But he did not regret it.
Right now, Dohyeon felt nothing but coolness, as though someone had poured ice water over him on a sweltering summer day.
He felt that way even as he looked at the guns and blades in the hands of those men, whether they were gangsters or mercenaries, and knew they would soon be aimed at him.
Death was near, but it was not painful like it was inside a dungeon.
Dohyeon gripped the sword with both hands. A hot heat began to rise along his spine. It felt as though his body temperature was growing hotter through the nerves of his entire body.
His eyes flashed whitely, becoming those of a beast.
“Fuck, what's with those dog eyes? Hey! Shoot that bastard!”
The thin-faced man saw Dohyeon's eyes too. Even while clutching his severed wrist, he shouted furiously at his men.
They also found the target he meant. A large man standing still among the materials. The only unusual thing about him was the black sword in his hands.
Their muzzles aimed at Dohyeon, and Dohyeon gripped his sword hilt with both hands.
Just as their fingers were about to pull the triggers.
A heavy mass fell from the sky between Dohyeon and them.
“...?”
“...?”
Everyone stared at it in shock at its sudden descent. The dust kicked up by the impact settled, revealing it.
No, revealing them.
Several hundred kilograms of protective equipment, which had made a small crater in the ground, locked together with an odd sound. Two small detection drones rose from above the figure's shoulders with a whirr.
In both hands were machine guns better suited to being mounted on gun emplacements.
Their face could not be seen because the faceplate was completely covered.
But when an electronically amplified voice thundered from within, the thin-faced man realized that something had gone terribly wrong.
[Human garbage. You worthless bastards dare threaten me?]
Click. Fully equipped with modern combat gear, A-rank hunter Park Kangseok raised the muzzles toward the gangsters.
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