This Isn't How It Should Be
This isn't how it should be.
That afternoon, the same day Seo Yeongcheol was dragged away, Go Jaewan was granted leave — a chance to rest outside the gate, in the garrison zone. It was his reward for clearing more monsters than anyone else in the day's raid.
When the officers he wanted to tear apart started comparing him to Yeongcheol, telling him to work harder if he wanted to keep up, he nearly threw up on the spot. But he wasn't about to throw away a chance at leave.
So he went. The garrison zone's food prices were sickening enough that there was nowhere decent to actually enjoy himself, but the Magic Stones he'd earned risking his life meant his pockets weren't empty.
This is fucking miserable.
He thought about escaping dozens of times a day. If he could have, he would have fled to America long ago.
But outside the gate he was just an ordinary civilian with no power at all. There was no way he could break out of a zone locked down by military units. And going through the gate itself to reach American territory? Without a wyvern, that meant walking an enormous distance on foot.
Crossing the monster-infested wilds beyond the outpost with nothing but a single day's food and water was suicide, pure and simple. He was muttering under his breath about how much longer he had to endure this shit life when he headed toward a barbecue joint run by a woman whose very existence as a living human being he seriously doubted — a place that charged fifty thousand won for a hundred grams of pork belly.
"Out of the way! Move!"
Go Jaewan saw a man being rushed past on a stretcher. A familiar face. Sweat-soaked, utterly wrecked.
"……Yeongcheol?"
It was Seo Yeongcheol. The problem was his arms hanging limp, and the fact that anyone could tell he was in no condition to be called normal.
"What the hell happened to him?"
"He collapsed during punishment drills!"
"What kind of punishment does that?"
"That crazy bitch put him in a forty-kilo full combat pack and made him run laps on the parade ground! Ah, fuck — this guy can't die, he—"
One of the officers carrying the stretcher spotted Go Jaewan and clamped his mouth shut. Go Jaewan rushed forward.
"What the hell is wrong with Yeongcheol? What happened to him?"
"Get back! We need to get him to the hospital!"
"No, fuck that! What kind of punishment leaves a guy like this? Yeongcheol! Hey! Seo Yeongcheol!!"
The officer shoved him back as he tried to push closer, shouting.
"I said move!! Get back inside the gate! We'll handle him!"
"Yeongcheol!!! Yeongcheol!……"
Before Go Jaewan could do anything, the officers hauled him away. He tried to follow, but the military police who'd been watching grabbed him on the spot.
"Didn't you hear? Go back!"
"Ye—Yeongcheol!! What the fuck is that?! Hey! You sons of bitches!! What kind of punishment does that to someone!!!"
Go Jaewan thrashed, but in the real world, without mana, he was just an ordinary man. Three burly MPs piled on and dragged him off, and he was thrown back through the gate whether he liked it or not.
"What's going on? Jaewan hyung. Weren't you on leave?"
"Why are you back already…"
"Yeongcheol got carried out."
At Go Jaewan's words, the mood among the hunters shifted.
"Yeongcheol? Why the hell would he—"
"Wasn't he supposed to be in discipline training? Why would he get carried out?"
Go Jaewan shook his head under the barrage of questions.
"I don't know! Fuck! But his face was burning up and he was pouring sweat……he looked seriously fucking sick."
"What the hell is going on? What is this?"
As the hunters crowded in and the noise of confusion grew, the watching officers approached.
"What are you doing? Go Jaewan, why are you back already?"
At the officer's appearance, the atmosphere among the hunters went ice-cold. Faces they never wanted to see. But the moment they killed or even injured these bastards, the food supply got cut.
As they'd been told over and over — without wyverns, American territory was too far to reach through the gate, and going outside the gate to get there was impossible too. Bottom line: they couldn't touch these low-level pieces of shit.
Go Jaewan swallowed his rage and worry and stepped up to the officer.
"I saw Yeongcheol being carried out. Can you find out what happened?"
"Seo Yeongcheol? That guy? Why?"
"……How would I know? The kid's not right in the head. I want to know why he got carried out."
The officer seemed to think it over for a moment, then turned and walked out through the gate.
And for a long time, he didn't come back.
While they waited, the hunters clustered together and started whispering.
"Fuck, why the hell did Yeongcheol get carried out?"
"Wasn't he supposed to be getting punished at the discipline unit?"
"Did Go Jaewan really see that right?"
"Ah! It's real!! Why the fuck would I lie about this!!"
Go Jaewan lit a cigarette with rough, angry hands.
"Dragging in a headache like Seo Yeongcheol was already insane enough, fuck!…… What the hell did they do to a guy with PTSD that he ends up getting carried out!!"
Seo Yeongcheol.
To the people who'd lived as hunters during their active service years, Yeongcheol had been more than just a comrade.
A guy who'd lost his friends and suffered severe mental illness, yet never abandoned the duty forced on him — who'd somehow kept trying to carry it.
A guy who felt the terror of dying more intensely than anyone else, and still gripped his weapon and charged at the front until the end.
Because of that, the people who'd served alongside him back then held a special kind of affection for him.
And that guy had collapsed and been carried away.
Why?
What happened?
Was he okay?
Even if he was hurt, they'd take care of him properly, right?
The hunters waited, and waited some more.
And three hours later, the officer who'd gone outside the gate returned.
"They say he just collapsed from heat illness. So don't worry about it too much."
Outside, Go Jaewan and the hunters would have had no choice but to believe those words.
But this was inside the gate.
A world where mana existed, where monsters wielded powers that defied common sense and the laws of physics. Extremely trained physical combatants. Average Level 800 monsters who could sense mana and use sixth-sense skills to detect and dodge attacks coming from behind — and those razor-sharp senses caught something.
The position of his eyebrows.
The tone of his voice.
And the strange atmosphere bleeding off the officer's body.
"……Lie."
"It's the truth. So go back and do your jobs!…… Urgh!!"
Go Jaewan shot forward like a bullet, seized the officer by the throat, and hoisted him into the air. The sheer arm strength to hold up a full-grown man's weight with one hand made the other officers flinch and start to rush in — but the other hunters were faster, weapons already drawn, forming a wall around Go Jaewan.
"Go Jaewan! Have you lost your mind!! Put him down!!"
"Don't you fucking lie to me. You think I can't read your vibe? You reek of bullshit, you piece of shit. Seo Yeongcheol. What happened to Yeongcheol. What the fuck happened to him!! Why was he carried out!!!"
"Fine. You're getting a one-year service extension! And your meals will be restricted from now— Gyaaaaah!!!"
One of the officer's fingers twisted at a grotesque angle. Go Jaewan, reason gone, had snapped it.
"Answer me properly. Properly!!!! What happened to Seo Yeongcheol!!!"
"This…… fucking bastard……"
"Fine. Don't talk. You've still got nine left."
"W-wait!…… Aaaagh!!!!!"
Another finger broke. The other officers started shouting. They'd starve them. Service extensions. Life sentences the moment they stepped outside the gate. But those threats had been thrown around so often that they'd lost all their bite.
And more importantly, to Go Jaewan — whose eyes had gone completely blank — the officers' shouting didn't even register.
"Talk, you bastard!! Talk!!!!!!"
The officer thrashed and pounded on Go Jaewan's body, but a low-level Awakened's punches didn't even register against a high-level hunter with absurdly high stamina and defense. When nothing worked and the pain of broken fingers became unbearable, the officer finally spat out the truth.
"H-he's dead!!!"
Go Jaewan froze. So did the officers who'd been shouting.
So did the hunters holding weapons in a standoff.
Everyone stopped.
"Why? Why Yeongcheol? N-no. You said it was just punishment drills."
"I don't know the details either!!! I just heard he died!! They transferred him to the hospital and he died pissing black urine! S-so please, just stop!!"
The strength went out of Go Jaewan's hand. The officer with the broken fingers scrambled desperately into the cluster of other officers.
Go Jaewan sank to the floor and let out a hollow laugh.
Dead?
Fuck?
A guy who'd endured three years fighting through PTSD gets forcibly dragged back in, and on top of that dies during punishment drills?
What the hell happened?
Why was this happening?
"Who? Why? No — how? Seo Yeongcheol's body was already wrecked. His mind was unstable, he couldn't sleep properly, he couldn't eat, his condition was a mess. The officer handing out the punishment didn't even know that?"
"Apparently one of the officers there put him through drills. Then he died. That's all I know."
Go Jaewan sat on the floor and started laughing.
When the rage crossed a certain threshold, it turned into laughter.
All of it felt like some grotesque, fucking comedy.
"If he'd died on a monster raid, it'd be sad, but at least I'd understand. Non-combat loss? Something that could have been completely prevented, and it ends like this?…… No, why the hell…… why……"
Pushing past the officer moaning over his broken fingers, another officer stepped forward. Fighting down his terror with everything he had, he shouted at the hunters.
"It was an unfortunate accident! But nothing has changed! Everyone return to your positions and start personal maintenance!! Given that the earlier incident occurred in a state of agitation, there will be no major punishment! So stop resisting and follow orders!!"
Follow orders.
Go Jaewan rose to his feet.
He gripped his main weapon — his staff.
A terrifyingly massive mass of electric current formed in his hand.
"I'm just going to kill all of you, you fucking bastards. I'll kill every last one of you, and even if I die on the way, I'm going to America. This fucking shit country. What the hell did we do wrong!! What did we do to deserve being treated like this!! You sons of bitches!!!!"
Go Jaewan was crying.
"You can't treat us like this!!!! We're the ones protecting this country, and you fucking can't do this to us!!! So why are you doing this!!! Why!!!"
The atmosphere was volatile.
A moment of absolute crisis — magic, arrows, and cold steel about to rain down at any second.
A thin, cold smile spread across the officer's lips.
"Yeah. Go ahead. Kill us all and run for American territory."
"……"
"You know it's over a hundred kilometers, right? Monster dens packed all along the way. Even if you're high-level Awakened, you think you can handle the sheer number of monsters you'll run into getting there? Huh? With one day's food and water?"
"……"
"Do you have wyverns? Dragons? You think walking that far is even possible? You'll get slaughtered on the way."
There was nothing to say.
The magic, the arrows, the weapons raised in rage slowly lowered.
Sensing his words had landed, the officer finally took a small breath, looking relieved.
"It was an unfortunate accident! The state will provide compensation! So you will fulfill your duties!! If you're soldiers of the Republic of Korea, show some soldierly loyalty!! Accidents happen! Overcoming them is what makes a true soldier!"
The officer pointed toward the living quarters set up inside the outpost.
"Go back. Go reorganize and prepare for tomorrow's rift raid……"
The officer's words stopped.
He looked up at the sky.
The other officers followed his gaze and looked up too.
So did the tearful Go Jaewan.
So did the hunters who'd been dropping their weapons one by one under the weight of humiliation, frustration, and despair.
Everyone looked up at the sky.
Something was coming down from above.
"Miss me, you bastards!!"
A familiar voice.
A legendary hunter with ten years of extended service — someone no one who'd lived as a hunter at this outpost could fail to recognize.
Lee Yeonghak was descending on three wyverns, grinning from ear to ear.