Chapter 360
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 360
Chapter Title: 147. Mountain Tiger (2)
Click click.
While snapping photos, I felt a sense of incongruity.
The kind that sparked doubt.
Hunting mutations wasn't our specialty.
It was considered a second-tier mission, something even non-hunters could handle.
With so many monsters to kill, deploying an elite team like Alpha to hunt mutations was a waste of resources.
Yet we'd taken down a significant number of them anyway.
Because the battlefield had been crawling with mutations.
Drawing on that experience, I examined the footprints.
The oversized feline prints grabbed my attention, but so did the spacing between them, the direction, the uniform depth, and their sudden appearance and disappearance.
By my experience and instincts, these didn't fit the usual patterns.
"What do you think?"
Kim Daram had encountered and cataloged more mutation hunts than I had.
After old-school hunters got pushed to the sidelines, her job had been overseeing second-tier hunters who mainly handled mutations popping up in the outskirts.
"Hmm."
She sensed the oddity too.
But maybe due to the difference in our experiences, she didn't question the footprints' existence itself like I did.
Instead, she knelt knee-deep in the frigid snow, pressing her face almost to the ground to scrutinize the prints from every angle.
"..."
That was one reason I liked Kim Daram.
When it came to work, no one was more thorough and precise.
She lacked flexibility and imagination, so she'd never make a great commander, but as a top-tier field operative, no one matched her aptitude.
"As you can see, senior, the depth is unnaturally consistent. See that sloped part over there? Based on the print size and stride, the mutation weighs at least three tons, but even on that slope, the pressure here is the same depth as everywhere else."
She stood, scanning the surroundings with sharp eyes, then added,
"Maybe someone's playing a prank?"
"I agree."
Humans cosplaying as mutations wasn't uncommon.
Even before the war, the world had been chaotic enough for people to exploit the confusion for personal gain or grudges.
I exchanged comms with the drone operator and began a full search.
Our target wasn't the mutation prints this time, but the warlord soldiers' corpses.
Kim Daram pulled the mangled bodies from the snow and laid them out on the open snowfield.
The new hunters and soldiers openly showed their disgust, but she calmly inspected them.
"Yeah, these were definitely eaten by some beast. But look at the bite marks and how the flesh was torn—these don't match the owner of those prints."
"What kind of beast?"
"Probably a wild boar."
"Got it."
The search continued.
After another hour, we uncovered another truth hidden behind the tiger tracks.
"Humans have definitely been here."
Over fifty corpses strewn about, and not a single one had ammo on them.
The number of firearms was suspiciously low too.
What was left were mostly old, beat-up globes.
One decent rifle had its bolt removed.
Probably left as camouflage to fool the eye, but that missing bolt only fueled my suspicions.
"Any smoke rising nearby?"
It started as a hunch, but I wanted confirmation.
The drone operator reported back soon.
"No smoke, but there's a settlement nearby. Checked against pre-war maps—it's a village."
Korea had been a wealthy country before the war.
Even in these remote mountains, they'd paved concrete roads.
A streetlight, long dead and buried in snow, marked the road, and we followed it.
Halfway, the armored vehicle jolted hard.
Backing up and digging through the snow revealed a spike strip barricade.
A regular vehicle would've had its tires shredded.
With evidence of people mounting, we reached the mountain village.
School, community center, beef wholesaler, post office, agricultural co-op branch, and more.
For a mountain village, it had everything on the surface.
When the hunters moved to dismount, I had Kim Daram stop them.
No need to get out.
We had power.
"All residents of this village, assemble at a visible point within thirty minutes. Fail to do so, and in thirty minutes, we'll designate this as an artillery target. Repeating: All residents of this village..."
One lesson from China.
If you have leverage for threats, use it boldly.
The Chinese army hadn't started massacring their own kin from day one.
Countless incidents and casualties had hardened them.
Hostile civilians posed risks beyond dry labels—pure malice aimed to kill.
After a few brushes with that raw killing intent, the word "civilian" fades fast from your mind.
We couldn't assume these folks were hostile, but caution cost nothing.
Our lives came first.
"Gunner!"
Kim Daram ordered the operator, who swung the 20mm cannon toward the village and fired.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Heavy rounds unlike our rifles pulverized a house in a storm of dirt and debris.
Moments later, we saw them.
Pale figures crawling out from the ruins, one by one.
No tigers among them, naturally.
Korea has a few clan villages where people with the same surname cluster together.
This one was one of them.
A few elderly residents had stubbornly held on.
There were a couple young man and woman too, but their foreign looks suggested they didn't share the clan name.
They even seemed wary of the elders' glances—some hierarchy we didn't know about.
I'd discussed it with Kim Daram beforehand.
"There've been cases of clan villagers defying evacuation orders and staying put. Most ended in tragedy, but this place somehow preserved their community."
"Who'd they fend off?"
"More mutations than raiders. Clan villages are mostly rural, and rural areas don't get as much mutation cleanup as cities. Some got wiped out like India—mutations picking them off one by one like snacks from the fridge."
"I see."
Kim Daram furrowed her brow, lost in thought.
"Anyway, it's oddly sparse."
Aside from the foreigners, about a dozen or so.
Post-war data on clan villages was nil for me, so the number meant nothing, but not for her.
"A typical clan village would have at least fifty. And only that many left?"
"Two winters passed."
"Hmm."
We wrapped up the chat and talked to the villagers.
"We're not leaving here."
One elder declared it flatly.
"No one's dragging you away, so relax."
Kim Daram smiled brightly, but even to me, her face looked plenty scary.
In the tense air, the villagers brought out bundles.
"This is everything."
Phones, tablets, notebooks—that was it.
No ammo or guns in sight, showing their honest intent, but we wanted the electronics.
Soon, Kim Daram identified the artillery source.
"Lee Jae-young, Major General."
Didn't ring a bell.
"Get this—he's a civilian military employee turned officer."
"A civvie? Not academy stock?"
"Yeah, had that boss vibe. You know the type? Guys who outshine academy elites on raw talent."
"A natural."
"Bet fanatics pulled strings for his promotions. Small fry before, not flagged as a threat, but he just dropped a big one."
Kim Daram closed the notebook with a sigh.
"We're done here. Mission success."
That's how jobs go.
Even tough-looking ones often fizzle out anticlimactically.
But when it ended too neatly, something nagged.
The tiger.
The troublesome thing that led us here.
"A tiger?"
I asked a villager.
We'd guaranteed no touch on their ammo, weapons, or gear, so their attitude warmed up.
"Who made those tiger prints?"
They exchanged glances.
Not clueless—hiding something.
As one opened his mouth, Kim Daram cut in.
"Ugh, wasting time. We've overlooked plenty we knew about. Come on, spill it quick!"
Infusing such raw irritation into every word—that wasn't the cute Kim Daram I knew.
Anyway, the villagers, even the elders, caved and produced the secret tool.
The prints' secret was revealed.
The villagers had made them.
Using a convincingly massive feline paw, they'd stamped prints all around to ward off intruders.
No raider or scavenger would mess with tracks that big.
"So this is the mountain tiger's secret."
Kim Daram smirked at the "mountain tiger paw" they'd used.
"..."
The expected ending.
I'd half-suspected as much.
But.
"Daram."
"Yeah?"
"This paw. Isn't the quality suspiciously high?"
The texture, pores etched in the pad, tufts of fur visible despite the crude black paint.
Not factory-made—processed from something alive.
"Where'd this come from?"
I shook the tiger paw—bigger than my face—at the elders.
As they glanced around, one man raised his hand.
"There was a tiger."
His speech was halting.
Foreigner, as expected.
He eyed the villagers warily while signaling to Kim Daram that he had something to say.
After a brief talk outside, she beckoned me.
"This guy says he knows where the tiger is."
So there was more.
Click.
I checked my firearm, but Kim Daram shook her head.
"The tiger's dead."
She eyed the foreigner's back with a sly expression.
Some backstory there.
Playing along with her mischief might mend fences between us.
There was a den.
Rusted chain-link fence and a makeshift latrine lay abandoned—old human site.
The moment we entered, a fishy corpse stench hit us.
In the darkness crouched the long-dead body of a tiger.
A mutated tiger.
Its size was terrifying.
"..."
Kim Daram and I stared, dumbfounded for a while.
If that thing ambushed from the dark?
I didn't want to imagine.
No axe would handle it.
You can't block a charging trailer with one.
Click click.
I snapped photos amid the foul smell.
Click click.
"Senior, aren't you taking too many pictures?"
Kim Daram piped up from watching, but I ignored her and kept shooting from all angles.
Then.
Clink.
Something caught my boot.
"?"
A bone.
Flashlight revealed a familiar skull shape.
Human.
Kim Daram looked at the Vietnamese man.
"That was real?"
He nodded.
"Yes."
The story began in now-destroyed India.
A poacher-captured tiger cub flew to a rundown provincial zoo for display.
Given zoos' revenue tied to welfare, it probably got poor treatment.
Pre-war chaos bankrupted the zoo.
Other animals traded hands, but the malformed, stunted tiger found no buyer.
Then a miracle for the tiger.
The mutation blessing—humanity's curse—descended.
I imagine that's when its legend as the mountain tiger began.
But it got wounded.
Some local hunter, soldier, or persistent tracker dealt it a fatal blow.
The injured tiger crawled into this den.
Hungry, it raided the village.
Isolated with no proper firearms, it was prime hunting ground.
Cows first, then people when they ran out.
Villagers resisted, dug traps, but the intelligent beast saw through it, retaliating harder.
Cleverly, it never wiped them out.
One by one, just enough to eat.
They found a solution soon.
"...There used to be lots of foreigners here. Koreans, Thais, Bangladeshis—for the shine muscat grapes; it was lucrative."
They offered sacrifices.
The outsiders they'd brought in, fed one by one to the dying tiger.
The Vietnamese, who called himself Din, got lucky.
The tiger died right before his turn.
He learned the truth much later, from a drunken elder friend.
That was the full tale of the mountain tiger.
No Siberian tiger mystique, no mountain spirit, no superhuman hunter-slayer.
Just a dirty, vile slice of human life.
"Anticlimactic as ever."
Kim Daram handed Din an assault rifle and grenades.
He blinked wide-eyed.
"You sure?"
"Doesn't matter."
Leaving the bewildered Din, we departed the village.
"There was a young woman, right?"
Kim Daram gazed out the window, voice icy.
"The old geezers kept her as a plaything. If they needed more feed, she'd have been next."
"Didn't consider the guy might be lying?"
At my question, she finally looked serious, met my eyes, then turned away.
"...Whatever."
Classic Kim Daram conclusion.
Not our business anyway.
What mattered was confirming the mountain tiger with our own eyes.
A bit unsatisfying, as she said.
As I pondered how to spin today's tale, staring at the snowy window,
"Hm?"
Something flashed through the white woods.
"Ah."
Kim Daram spoke up simultaneously, as if remembering.
"That tiger... they said it was pregnant."
Right after, something massive streaked through the forest.
Black, yellow, white woven in a net-like pattern.
A tiger.
"Stop!"
"Senior?"
"Drone control!"
We halted and scanned.
Nothing around, nothing from above.
Whether what I saw was illusion or real—I'll never know.
"..."
The mountain tiger is a legend.
And that legend isn't over yet.