WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Oblivious

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◈ Surviving as a B-Rank Hunter ◈

Chapter 5

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The hunter with the long sword arrived first. A flower bud growing from one nostril swayed amid his horribly twisted face.

Only an eerie gleam flashed in eyes that already seemed half-mad.

He had probably cut apart a Flower Doll earlier and been drenched in its blood and guts. The seeds in those fluids had already sprouted and were burrowing into his body.

Seeds that dug into the skin, muscles, and organs took complete control of the host's nervous system, turning them into a doll closer to a flower than a person.

That was exactly why you should never enter the flower field.

Graaah!

The long-sword hunter charged Dohyeon, gaping wide as he let out a monstrous cry. With crazed eyes, he drove his long sword straight down at the crown of Dohyeon's head.

It was a simple, clean, destructive strike, fast enough that it needed no deception.

But against Dohyeon, he should have used deception.

Using his right foot as a pivot, Dohyeon spun away from the descending blade and closed in on the hunter. Then he placed the Bowie knife against the arm swinging the long sword down.

Gahk!

The dead crossbowman's blade must have been sharpened to a keen edge. It cleanly severed the long-sword hunter's forearm.

The instant his arm was cut off, Dohyeon quickly leaped back. At the same time, he checked whether any blood had splashed him, and whether it had touched bare skin.

Fortunately, not much blood had sprayed from the clean cut.

The long-sword hunter, whose left arm had been cut off below the elbow, seemed annoyed by Dohyeon's caution. He screamed again and hurled his sword at him.

The distance was short, but Dohyeon flung himself sideways and avoided the straightforward throw.

After rolling once across the dirt, Dohyeon rose and threw his dagger at the long-sword hunter in one fluid motion.

Ghk!

The hunter's head snapped back. The flying dagger cut through the flower bud protruding from his nostril and buried itself deep in his right eye. His violently moving body froze in place.

Raaagh!

The next moment, Dohyeon had to roll across the dirt again. The machete hunter had closed the distance and was swinging a massive jungle blade while roaring.

After tumbling across the ground, Dohyeon suddenly realized that he had dropped his Bowie knife and picked up the sword the long-sword hunter had thrown.

Even as he wondered when he had picked it up, the machete hunter struck again.

Still bewildered, Dohyeon raised the long sword and diverted the attack. Strangely, the sword's weight settled perfectly into both his hands.

The odd sensation did not stop there. It traveled from his fingertips to his arms, then along his spine.

A strange heat. Its source was not the sword, but the ring on his left index finger, burning hot. It was the same feeling he had experienced when breaking the crossbowman's arm earlier.

Feelings were feelings, but the monster swinging a huge jungle blade before him was real. Dohyeon instinctively followed the heat flowing down his spine and swung his sword.

The long sword's path swept over the machete hunter.

Ghk!

The blade entered the machete hunter's left shoulder and emerged from their right side. It split the arm and machete caught in its path as well.

The machete hunter, now divided into several large and small pieces, soon collapsed onto the dirt.

"...What the fuck?"

As the corpse fell, Dohyeon clenched the sword's hilt in both hands and ground his teeth against the thrill running down his spine.

It was not as if he could not use a long sword. But he had never mastered it enough to neatly cut through a human body in one stroke like this. Dohyeon primarily used crossbows and fought at close range with daggers or other short weapons.

Then he heard a crack.

Startled, he looked up. The long-sword hunter, the thing now completely transformed into a Flower Doll with a dagger lodged in its eye, was lunging at him with a hand covered in thorny vines. A dagger in the brain was not enough to disable a Flower Doll.

Normally, Dohyeon would have quickly opened the distance and responded.

But at that moment, Dohyeon pulled the long sword close and charged the Flower Doll head-on.

He cleanly cut off the arm it reached out with, then pushed in deeper and struck the end of the dagger's hilt with the sword's pommel.

Thwack!

The dagger pierced through the Flower Doll's head and flew away.

Part of its skull fell right off.

Normally, Dohyeon would have finished the attack there and retreated.

But his sword moved again. He slashed repeatedly at the Flower Doll's body, though both of its arms had already been cut off.

As if he had no fear of the creature's fluids, which might contain flower seeds, his merciless blade tore through the air.

In an instant, the Flower Doll was divided into five or six pieces and scattered down the hillside.

"..."

When the flurry of slashes ended, Dohyeon lowered his sword while gripping its hilt with both hands. He slowly steadied his breathing.

The muscles that had been tensed during that intensely violent burst of movement gradually relaxed, demanding great gulps of oxygen. Sweat poured from his forehead and back as his suddenly heated body tried to cool itself.

As he regulated his breathing, Dohyeon raised his left hand. A black tattoo wrapped around his index finger.

It was where a ring had rested this morning. Now, the spot felt as hot as if a branding iron had been pressed against it.

The heat that had begun in that finger had briefly filled his head. He could think of nothing else. Only a chilling determination to cut down his opponent remained.

And driven by that will, he had ignored the danger of seeds in the fluids and hacked his enemy apart without restraint, far more than necessary.

"...Should I just cut it off after all?"

As if it had heard Dohyeon's mutter, the heat that had felt like a branding iron quickly subsided.

Once the heat that seemed to scorch his entire nervous system vanished, he even felt a strange chill. The cold after the heat cleared his head and left his chest feeling open and cool.

Then came Yggdrasil's message.

[Vargband.]

"Fucking tree branch."

Dohyeon muttered as he straightened his posture. Then he abruptly changed course and began inspecting every part of his body.

He was checking whether Flower Doll fluid had touched him and embedded its seeds in his flesh. Considering how recklessly he had moved, it would not have been strange if he had been soaked somewhere.

But strangely, he could find no splashes on his skin. Some had gotten on his clothes, but he brushed those off. There was also some on the sword blade, but a quick shake cleaned it off.

Dohyeon stared at the sword briefly, then picked up a sheath from one of the corpses, put the blade away, and kept it.

Afterward, he looked around but saw no other hunters or monsters. The Flower Dolls that had been fighting the hunters earlier had returned to the flower field.

"So useful for making a living..."

Muttering to himself, Dohyeon began gathering the dead people's belongings.

Their weapons and gear, too. He avoided anything soaked in Flower Doll fluids, so he could not strip off their clothes. Not that he wanted to.

Hunters had a superstition that stripping every last thing from the dead in a dungeon, including their clothing, invited dangerous anomalies.

Dohyeon did not think it was merely superstition. Wasn't Odin watching the world inside the dungeon? It was not good to dishonor the dead before a god. Whether that was truly the case or just Yggdrasil's nonsense remained unclear.

He collected the long sword he had been using, the enemy's crossbow lying on the ground, which was at least a compound model, and his Bowie knife. There was nothing else of note. The corpses had no bags.

"They must've hidden them somewhere."

Dohyeon immediately began searching the area. First, he checked the ridge of the hill where they had been running around, then searched the bushes where the enemy hunters had appeared.

Before long, he found the bags they had gathered in one place, along with a poorly arranged camp.

"A camp inside a dungeon..."

They were clearly inexperienced. There was nothing good about staying inside a dungeon for long.

Setting up camp and wasting time just because they had not gathered enough items was an extremely bad choice.

In the end, they had all died. Dohyeon would have left while he still had the chance.

When he opened the bags, he found assorted junk, several energy bars that seemed to be food, water, and beverages. Judging by the packaging, which he had never seen outside, they seemed to have been obtained inside this dungeon.

Dohyeon took everything and folded up the empty bags as well. The bag that had held fabric and still had plenty of space was now full. With the long sword and two crossbows slung over him, the weight was manageable, but inconvenient.

Strangely, it did not seem that any other anomalies or hunters remained in the dungeon. He could not smell any sign of them.

"What am I talking about, smell? It's not like I'm a dog."

Feeling oddly at ease, Dohyeon shook his head and dismissed the thought. He had considered it before, but he was not particularly confident in his sense of smell.

It was strange for him to relax just because he could not smell people. His nose merely seemed unusually sensitive today.

Still, his intuition was not wrong. Dohyeon encountered no further threats until he found the exit. Flower Hill was as quiet as a peaceful hill in the woods, with only a cool breeze blowing.

The way to find a dungeon exit was simple. There would be a sign reading "Exit" in one form or another, and wherever that sign pointed, there would be a door. Opening it revealed a gate identical to the one seen when entering the dungeon.

Passing through that gate returned you to the place where you had entered.

Today's exit was a bunker entrance marked EXIT. Dohyeon adjusted his bag once, opened the door, and saw a gate that looked as though glowing paint had been brushed across empty air.

With a soft sigh, he stepped inside.

* * *

Jang Gyuchan did not ask what had happened, even when he saw Dohyeon emerge with an armful of hunter equipment and bags.

What happened inside a dungeon stayed inside a dungeon. That was an unspoken rule among hunters.

Of course, like most unspoken rules, it was often ignored. You could not apply such rules to people like human hunters, after all.

After leaving the piano academy and heading down to the shopping complex's underground parking lot, the two checked for a Vanaskelium reaction in Jang Gyuchan's truck.

The detector gave a modest response from the assorted items. Jang Gyuchan bought all of them, including the fabric. Dohyeon kept the hunter gear: the crossbows, long sword, bags, and the rest.

"Thank you for the transaction, hyung. SB Management serves its customers with the lowest commissions, always. Please come again."

Dohyeon confirmed Jang Gyuchan's farewell and the transfer into his account, then turned away. Jang Gyuchan called after him as he headed for the parking lot exit.

"Dohyeon!"

"...?"

"How about pork belly and a drink? We should grease the old throat."

"...Some other time."

Dohyeon gave a vague wave of refusal and walked out of the parking lot.

Once outside the shopping complex, he reached the car he had parked nearby, tossed the equipment into the back seat, and only then sat behind the wheel and let out a deep sigh. Both hands gripping the steering wheel trembled faintly.

Today alone, he had killed four people, perhaps five. And he had nearly been killed by them.

"..."

Dohyeon stared at his trembling fingertips with sunken eyes, then started the engine, shifted gears, and drove away.

The real world outside the dungeon had grown dim with nightfall.

Traffic began to clog on the outskirts of the city, and cars crawled like grubs. Helicopters and personal flying vehicles, or PAVs, Personal Air Vehicles, occasionally flew overhead.

They were probably for the rich or corporate executives.

Soon, it began to rain. The air grew damp as the wipers moved slowly, and rainwater streaked the windows.

The city lights beyond the rain-streaked glass blurred and flickered gloomily. There were countless cars, countless homes, and countless people, yet every one of them was a stranger to the others.

The road was packed with vehicles, and each vehicle held at least one person. Hundreds of people were sharing this single stretch of road.

Yet all of them were trapped in their own cars, blankly killing time beneath the falling rain of a dark evening.

A place where more people gathered than almost anywhere else, yet everyone hid alone in their own separate space. The gridlocked road seemed like a symbol of modern city dwellers.

As he blankly watched the slow-moving road, Dohyeon raised his left hand before his eyes. He saw the tattoo engraved on his index finger.

Its shape was no different from when the tattoo had been a silver ring. The pattern of a beast that might have been a dog, a wolf, or a bear. Looking closely, it seemed a little closer to a bear.

"...What are you?"

[Vargband.]

I'm screwed.

Dohyeon muttered to himself, but his expression did not change. Whatever this ring or tattoo was, he had no intention of telling anyone about it.

At best, he would end up in a corporate laboratory. At worst, someone would put a bullet in the back of his head in an alley and take only his finger. Dohyeon had to resolve or understand his situation through his own ability and effort.

Fortunately, he was a man deeply familiar with dungeons and anomalies. A man who had entered dungeons since his late teens and was now thirty years old. That was Kang Dohyeon.

At some point, the traffic cleared. Dohyeon pressed the accelerator and drove through the rain.

When he arrived home shortly afterward, Dohyeon hauled out the equipment he had tossed into the back seat. Going up and down twice was too much trouble.

With no hand free to hold an umbrella, he was drenched from the brief walk between the car and the apartment entrance.

As a result, the reflection in the elevator mirror he rode alone looked no different from a rain-soaked dog. Dohyeon glared at the mirror and made a growling expression like a real dog.

When the elevator arrived and its doors opened, a long corridor appeared before him. As he adjusted his wet body and passed a neighboring apartment, he heard shouting and the sound of something breaking inside.

The people there had moved in recently. Their marriage apparently was not going well. He could only hope they would not disturb his rest as well.

Dohyeon opened the lock with his key, then the password lock, and finally entered his home. Damp air from the rain greeted him.

An empty home. It was furnished with a sofa, desk, computer, bookshelf, and more, but it was a cold place without a trace of warmth. Dohyeon's fortress of solitude.

"..."

Standing there soaked through, with various pieces of equipment piled across his arms and shoulders, he could not help feeling pathetic.

A home was a symbol of safety and comfort, but it could also be a place filled only with sorrow and emptiness.

Loneliness and crushing gloom hid in the apartment's shadows, waiting for him. This place was safe, and that made it all the emptier.

Dohyeon stared into one dark corner of the apartment with sunken eyes, then gave a small hmph through his nose and stepped inside.

After carelessly tossing the equipment into the armory room, he took off his shirt and headed to the bathroom. He turned on the faucet and splashed water over his face again and again.

Leaning against the sink, Dohyeon looked into the bathroom mirror. His gloomy face stared back, dripping with water. Something dark blue seemed to be trickling down that face.

As he stared at himself, his eyes widened.

"...What is this now?"

Beside Dohyeon, another being appeared in the mirror.

Tall, clad in a breastplate and a long white skirt. The spear in her right hand rested against the floor, while her head was covered by a winged helmet spread wide on both sides.

The helmet hid half her face, but her chin, full lips, and thick reddish-brown hair were unmistakably clear. Above all, there was the pair of wings neatly folded behind her back.

Dohyeon quickly turned around. But all he saw was his ordinary apartment.

Yet when he looked back at the mirror, the tall woman, a woman who could only be called a Valkyrie, still stood behind him.

Dohyeon let out a hollow laugh.

"...I've finally gone insane."

[Helisbyorn. My warrior. You are not mad.]

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