Chapter 50
Chapter 50
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 50
Chapter Title: Alma Mater (1)
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I remember my first day at school.
I recall sitting alone in a shady spot where few people gathered, watching the new students laughing, taking photos with their parents and siblings, and chatting about their futures, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Someone was already there in that spot.
A boy who shared my solitude.
Was he a new student too?
"What's your name?"
I spoke first.
I wasn't outgoing myself, but the guy who sat next to me looked so timid and gloomy that I couldn't help it.
He glanced at me with eyes full of fear, barely making eye contact before quickly looking away, and mumbled his name in a voice that barely rose above a whisper.
"......Kang Han-min."
Whether it was intrigue at his timidity or that false sense of superiority boys feel in their youth, I momentarily forgot my own miserable reality and smiled at him.
"That's a strong-sounding name. I'm Park Gyu. Park's the family name, Gyu's the given."
That was the first connection I made at school.
Unlike his name, Kang Han-min had a weak will, and his stamina and skills were below average.
I tried to help him at first, but perhaps because of the Spartan atmosphere pervasive in the school, he showed no improvement, and I eventually turned away from him.
Maybe it was my mentor's teachings that had just begun to take root in my young self, influencing me strongly.
"People can make mistakes. Perfect humans don't exist. But we Hunters cannot afford mistakes. Our enemies aren't human. To face non-human entities, we must shed some of our pathetic humanity."
Jang Gi-yeong was a first-generation Hunter, like many others a former soldier, with a flashy career that earned him the title of hero.
Drawn by his fame, countless students wanted to be his disciples, but Jang Gi-yeong was a picky, irritable instructor.
He demanded perfection—an virtue hard for humans to attain.
Over-the-top training and excessive scolding were standard, and any student he deemed below par was ruthlessly driven out by any means necessary.
"Kang Han-min. You again?"
"Kang Han-min. Don't you feel sorry for your teammates? They got penalized because of you."
"Kang Han-min!"
Kang Han-min was the constant target of Jang Gi-yeong's attacks.
To him, Kang Han-min was a defective product unfit to bear the Hunter label.
Eventually, Jang Gi-yeong issued an ultimatum in front of everyone.
"Kang Han-min. You're not needed in my class. If you have any conscience, any heart, walk out yourself."
Kang Han-min didn't leave.
He was tougher than he looked.
Maybe he hated monsters as much as I did.
Jang Gi-yeong's harassment and rebukes intensified, but Kang Han-min endured steadfastly until we advanced to the next grade.
I can't forget Jang Gi-yeong's expression or the words he said when Kang Han-min barely passed his final exam.
So, when Kang Han-min feinted a shot at the holographic necromancer type, charged into the force field range, and split the necromancer type in half with a high-powered shotgun, Jang Gi-yeong unfolded his anxiously crossed arms, shook his head slowly, and muttered,
"That guy's gonna cause us trouble someday! Mark my words!"
I doubt Jang Gi-yeong had precognition.
He couldn't even predict his own fate, after all.
"That Jang Gi-yeong principal."
Time passed to my days in China.
While I was busy accumulating data under the watchful eye of the Chinese government, Woo Min-hee—who was still fine back then—suddenly handed me a separated shotgun shell and said,
"You hear his heroic career's all a big fat lie?"
"What?"
"His old comrades who fought with him spilled the beans. That guy Jang Gi-yeong didn't swing an axe at monsters—he sat down bawling and buried his head like an ostrich."
The reason Jang Gi-yeong could be so harsh to Kang Han-min was because he was a hero.
Because he had the credentials, he could berate, belittle, and cast out others with a clear conscience.
Even the axe I used as my main close-range weapon owed much to Jang Gi-yeong's hero tales.
Now half-legend, the story went that when a rift opened in Gochang County, North Jeolla Province, Jang Gi-yeong and other soldiers stood against the monsters to protect the people.
Facing monsters that reflected bullets, the soldiers were slaughtered helplessly, and to make matters worse, the dead soldiers rose as zombies attacking their comrades.
The defense force was annihilated in an instant, and when two tanks were destroyed by reflection fields, the survivors fled in panic.
In that hellish scene, Captain Jang Gi-yeong made a decision.
Abandon his gun, play dead, and wait for a monster to approach.
Staring intently at the fire axe lying within reach.
When the monster finally drew near, Jang Gi-yeong grabbed the axe, rose, and felled it with superhuman valor—"logging" it, as he put it.
That was the start of Jang Gi-yeong's heroic legend.
The tale spread widely through the media, and no one really doubted it.
Jang Gi-yeong was a typical elite soldier who aced the grueling North American special forces training, and he even had flashy anecdotes like knocking out a giant black soldier 40cm taller than him in a bar.
Above all, when reinforcements arrived, the monsters from the rift had vanished cleanly.
All that remained was Jang Gi-yeong and several zombies he'd chopped down with the axe.
Even as reinforcements arrived, he took down two more zombies in succession with the same prowess that floored that burly American.
Doubting his feats in that situation wouldn't have been easy.
"The monsters didn't attack him probably because he'd lost the will to fight and did nothing. As you know, seniors, monsters read human hostility and react to it. Didn't you sense that? Guess you're a bit different from me."
Back then, I took Woo Min-hee's usual trash-talk extending from her colleagues and Chinese to my distant mentor as just that.
She wasn't as hated by him as Kang Han-min, but she was one of the students Jang Gi-yeong disliked.
His prized disciples were me and Kim Daram.
He praised Kim Daram more than me in front of others, but that was likely because she'd reached the pinnacle attainable by an ordinary person.
The one he truly saw as his successor was just me, Park Gyu.
"That's right. Swing the axe like that."
In the past, the weapon for fighting monsters inside reflection fields was high-explosive grenades.
They had more destructive power than axes, were easier to use, and less risky.
But monsters adapted, unveiling new abilities to detonate Hunters' gunpowder weapons in close quarters.
This so-called "detonation" power.
Countless Hunters fell victim, fingers torn off, chests holed, or twisted into unrecognizable shapes, dying miserable deaths.
Humanity countered with separated propellants—non-explosive until ignited—but even those weren't safe from detonation.
Monsters timed their detonations for the moment separated propellants fused and exploded.
This spurred development of faster-fusing, more powerful, responsive, and convenient Hunter gear, but at least cold weapons—humanity's traditional arms—were free from that cat-and-mouse game.
Jang Gi-yeong was the fiercest advocate for cold weapons.
He especially revered the axe that made him a hero as the supreme weapon.
"The axe is the superior weapon. Like 15 years ago, when I did."
I learned everything from him.
Though a cold, strict, picky instructor, his vast knowledge and superior skills undeniably shaped who I am today.
But insisting on the axe for close combat was a questionable choice.
With so many better weapons, why the axe?
Unlike the many techniques he taught me, his axe skills had gaps, seeming more like fanciful acrobatics imagined rather than practical, making them extremely hard to use in real combat.
In practice, I realized his axe work wasn't suited for monsters.
He assumed monsters in close quarters were incredibly fast, agile, and relentlessly aggressive, but the ones I faced were more like moving trees than animals, as he himself described "logging" them in his prime.
When word spread that I'd logged my first monster with an axe, Jang Gi-yeong was the first to call.
"So, Park Gyu. How was it? My techniques? Was axe-based close combat viable?"
I was exhausted then, many comrades dead on the battlefield, and had an interview with Chinese investigators, so I brushed it off vaguely.
"Seemed fine."
Jang Gi-yeong seemed thrilled at the time.
The last time I saw him was after the old-school Hunter era ended and controversies over his past misdeeds forced him to step down.
The once-hero lived in a cramped rental apartment.
He could've preserved his wealth by retiring quietly from principal, but he waged lawsuits, got entangled in many, and lived far from affluent, as litigious folks do.
He had a wife and kids, but he seemed as harsh to family as to students.
No trace of anyone else in that tiny space, obvious at a glance.
"Park Gyu, that you? Come in. It's humble, but there's space for a cup of tea."
Only one chair at the table, so he dragged over one from his computer desk.
While he brewed coffee, I glanced at his screen.
He had a word processor open, typing a long piece.
Too far to read, but the mark in the bottom right was clear.
[Genuine WINDOWS]
[Please go to Settings and verify your genuine WINDOWS]
"......Right."
Jang Gi-yeong brought the coffee.
"Were my techniques effective?"
I hesitated briefly.
Should I tell the truth, or comfort my mentor with kind words?
Suddenly, Kang Han-min's face flashed before me.
Cornered by Jang Gi-yeong's relentless targeting, he'd often stand before me heading to the dorms with a pleading look, seeking salvation.
What did I do then?
Right, tossed him some soulless reassurance.
"You'll be fine. Work a bit harder, and Instructor'll see you differently."
It wasn't pure coincidence that I gave Jang Gi-yeong similar platitudes.
"Yes. Seemed that way."
Even soulless praise delighted him.
Moisture glistened in those stern eyes.
And it seemed pretty tough for him.
"I think I've figured out how to awaken someone."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. Zombies. Aren't they human mutations? When human life stops, mutation factors adsorb to the corpse, infusing otherworldly energy, right? Use that. Put one person in a coma—nearly kill 'em. Trick the mutation factor into activating as if they're dead! Then! Perform resuscitation! Infused with otherworldly power, maybe even mental resonance like Awakeners, birthing an immortal human!"
Seeing my tiger of an instructor spout such madness casually told me plenty.
I rose with deep disappointment, but he continued.
"......People call me a fraud, but I've seen it. The true nature of monsters. They have a leader. Something issuing commands!"
"General type, you mean?"
"What's a General type?"
He didn't know about the new breed.
Makes sense—I discovered it two months ago. No way he'd know, retired a year prior.
My unintended revelation hurt him.
"No! That can't be! It isn't! You must've seen wrong. It's just a hypothesis, right? Hypothesis means nothing confirmed."
"Could be."
"Right! There was one singing! Inside the rift, couldn't see it, but it sang something like a song! As if it was their language! I heard it clearly playing dead. It commanded, and monsters all retreated into the rift...... No! One stayed! The one I axed!"
I made up a promise and left.
As I turned to go, Jang Gi-yeong hesitantly asked,
"D-do you keep in touch with Han-min?"
Understanding his intent, I replied coldly.
"No."
Jang Gi-yeong lost lawsuit after lawsuit.
The hero once interviewed by major networks now appeared on no-name YouTube streams, criticizing government policy and begging for Super Chats.
When he boasted of raising Kang Han-min—his discarded disciple turned era's savior—I closed the video.
Now Jang Gi-yeong is dead, and the school he devoted everything to faces demolition.
I pondered briefly.
Should I go to the site or not?
Better not.
The world was dangerous enough.
One transmission changed my mind.
Personal ID: REDMASK
A message from Woo Min-hee.
"Heard about the school demolition this weekend? Think it'd be good if you went, senior."
"Me?"
"Far away?"
"......"
"Don't wanna say. Makes sense—nothing good comes from telling someone like me. But I think you should go."
"Why?"
"Kang Han-min hoped so too."
"Kang Han-min?"
"Yeah. Said you'd be the most fitting person there."
"......"
I thought for a moment.
Was what he told Woo Min-hee mockery or respect for me?
In the silence, I heard Woo Min-hee smack her lips.
Now for the main point.
"Oh, and one more thing. Heard about Jang Gi-yeong?"
"Instructor Jang Gi-yeong? Thought he died. Heard the funeral's with the demolition."
"He's alive."
Woo Min-hee laughed.
"Alive and desperately waiting for you to come."