N-Rank Hunter Lim Chae-beom (4)

Choi Jong-hyeok stripped the basalt carapace from his body. The surface, smooth as the hull of some enormous machine, split apart, and black stone and gravel poured off him in a waterfall.

"Haaah..."

He let out a long breath and looked around. From the B+ Magma Earth Wyrm down to the C+ Flame Demons, powerful demonic beasts lay torn to ribbons and shattered where they had fallen. For an A-rank hunter, it had not been particularly hard work. His sigh, then, had nothing to do with the fight just ended. It came from the voices his earth magic had carried to him.

Didn't see that coming.

He had expected them to simply endure — to be stamped flat by force, or to duck their heads and yield. He had expected them to hold out, so that bad luck would not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ripen into real harm. Jeong Jae-ha and Lee Hae-il had not stopped there.

They turned the beasts around and made them proof of their own worth.

They had set a powerful Flame Demon out in front and rendered the unawakened hunters' guns useless, then cut that same demon down themselves and laid the overwhelming gap in strength bare for all to see. At the very end they had even called for help on purpose, and left a gesture of reconciliation behind.

A stitching so clean I couldn't pick a seam loose if I tried.

If the same thing happened again after all of this, and they struck back without so much as a glance his way, he would have nothing to say. More than any of it, what had moved Choi Jong-hyeok was that line.

A truly insufferable thing to say. Not the sort of person Choi Jong-hyeok was particularly fond of.

"...So that was it."

Even so, a hollow smile crossed that face of his, rough and deeply lined, stone-carved as a village guardian.

"Was I the talented one?"

He had never once thought himself superior.

If you are human, is there not a line you do not cross?

How are you any different from the beasts!

If you are human, know shame!

He had only ever held a belief about how a human being ought to live, whatever shape the world took. He simply had not wanted to live like a pack of raiders. He was the man who had awakened as an earth mage in the moment raiders took his family and buried him alive. He simply had not wanted a life of killing, seizing, and crushing others under force. His thinking had not changed. Choi Jong-hyeok still believed he was ordinary. But if it was youths like those two, he did not mind that they were different from him. Sometimes where you were going mattered more than how you got there.

Got me.

Choi Jong-hyeok thought of the branch director and smiled bitterly. He would see her again tonight. He would tell her he would do it. He would unify the Demon Realm, and on the strength of that merit become an executive at HQ once more. And this time, for certain, he would bury Na Ro-un — the man who had betrayed him — in the earth. When that day came, Jeong Jae-ha and Lee Hae-il might well stand at his left and right.

Rehabilitation types, they said. A ceiling on how far they can rise.

Keep them in his shadow, and he could see them treated beyond their station.

But in this guild, rank comes before everything.

Further still — they might not remain beneath his shadow alone. Not if they kept growing as they were now. Listening to the footsteps draw ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠near, Choi Jong-hyeok smiled faintly once more. He might be about to place his trust in someone the exact opposite of himself all over again. Whether he would trust them because they were his opposite, he could not begin to say.

"That's enough for today. We withdraw."

"Thank you for your hard work!"

The hunt ended there. Lee Hae-il and I left the gate with Team Leader Choi Jong-hyeok, Lim Chae-beom, and the other unawakened hunters, and headed back to the branch.

A strange quiet hung over the whole walk back. Lim Chae-beom and the unawakened hunters stealing glances at us and at Team Leader Choi — that, I could accept. That was how it ought to be.

But even Team Leader Choi felt oddly off. A face like something an artisan had rough-hewn, and yet his eyes were fixed on empty air. A little elated. A little startled. A little sorry.

"Today's defense."

"Yes."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Nothing to fault. Well done. Overcoming the violence of numbers could not have been easy."

"Thank you."

"Tomorrow, do not change into combat gear. Wait in the office. There is a matter to brief you on."

"Understood."

It was exactly how an old hardass of a coach reacted when he'd set out to test you and you cleared the bar by more than he liked. Sorry he'd pushed it that far — but let the apology show, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his dignity took a hit; say nothing at all, and his pride took one instead. That whole tangle of feelings. Seen that way, the phrase the violence of numbers sat heavier than it first appeared.

The violence of numbers. Didn't that suit the weak packing together and running wild better than it suited beasts that were strong one by one?

"You must be tired. Buy yourselves some meat on the way."

Choi Jong-hyeok lifted his phone and sent a transfer. A bright chime sounded.

"Team Leader?"

It was enough to buy at least twice as much beef as yesterday.

"The two of you ought to eat that well. Go on."

Nowhere near the price of a meal. Choi Jong-hyeok turned toward the elevator. That car did not stop at Hunting Team 1's office. It ran all the way up to the branch director's office at the top.

"Come on, come on! Numbers first, then we head in!"

"Huh? Uh — yeah..."

Lee Hae-il collected numbers from a few of the unawakened hunters and came back.

"Let's go, hyung-nim."

"Yeah. Let's get some meat. Team Leader gave us the money."

Work was over.

"Hae-il."

"Yes?"

"He already knew, didn't he."

"No other way to explain it."

"And he figured it wasn't his problem to put his hands on."

"Yes."

We talked it over in front of the grill while the beef cooked.

"When we were cutting through the Lava Cavity earlier, you see up high on the wall?"

"Claw marks, weren't they? Didn't look like a demon's nails. Thing that left them had to be three, four times the Amber Wyrm you took down, hyung-nim."

"Not construction, right?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"Starting to feel like we can stop worrying about getting our heads kicked in?"

"Yes. Don't think we have to."

A quiet smile had found its way to my mouth before I noticed. It felt good — running beasts through with my sword, and running Team Leader Choi's prejudice through along with them. Hard to dislike a prospect who's outstanding and actually puts the work in. Same as me. Certain I'd cleared about halfway over that wall of favor even Su Seong-min had worried about, I found the beef tasting better still.

"Take a look at this, hyung-nim."

Lee Hae-il held out the message thread she'd been tapping at for a while.

The name belonged to the unawakened hunter who had gone to his knees first.

"I ran a lot of collabs, so I got an eye for who's headed for the gutter and who's gonna last. This one's all right."

"I thought so too. Be nice if some good news comes in."

He did seem quick to read a situation. That much was certain.

"Anything going up on that Huntranet thing from yesterday?"

"Nope. Quiet today."

Then Jeong Ho-min's news might be worth waiting on, too.

Lim Chae-beom climbed to the unawakened hunters' break room on the second floor of the branch.

"Hey, I just blew four hundred bucks!"

"Dumbass gambling addict. You ever actually win anything at that?"

The cramped room stank of vapes and cigarettes, and of something that wasn't even those — some strange grassy reek. People got torn apart, bitten to death, burned alive at the slightest opening. Not work you faced clear-headed. The unawakened hunters pushed through that age of ordinary misfortune the way they always had, handing their minds over to drink and gambling and shoving every stress behind them. Lim Chae-beom had lived the same way. It was comfortable.

Today was a little different. He had the sense that a gear inside him had slipped out of true. He remembered Jeong Jae-ha charging straight at the great demon.

So what am I supposed to do? I'm just this good.

He remembered that smile — distant, and sharp, and like no one else's. A smile only a person who had never once compromised with himself could wear. He'd thought it was something to admire. Before the Cataclysm, the boy Lim Chae-beom had wanted to grow into an adult like that, too.

"...So what are the other rehabilitation types saying?"

A raspy voice cut through, and Lim Chae-beom jolted out of his thoughts.

"That son of a bitch was really losing it. Fuck. Seok-bin got the shit beaten out of him. He's in the hospital."

"Didn't die, though. Our Ho-min was about the same. Grabbed his sword and was gonna charge — scared the hell out of us — then he saw our grenades and chickened out."

"We eased off, 'cause one more poke and it looked like a real stabbing on the way back. Couple more times and they'll learn their place, yeah?"

Unawakened hunters from each hunting team snickered and compared notes on how the hazing had gone. In some places an unawakened hunter had nearly died under the fists of an enraged rehabilitation hunter. In others a rehabilitation hunter buried in a pack of beasts had nearly died. Not one squad had swept the beasts away themselves the way Jeong Jae-ha and Lee Hae-il had. Then again — who could be like them? Lim Chae-beom thought so to himself as he recalled the task Lee Hae-il had given him.

And right on cue, talk of Jeong Ho-min was starting up.

"That bastard could really fight, though."

"Right? His swordwork was art. Maybe he hits C-rank and picks up sword aura or something?"

"Don't guys like that usually go to the murim? Why'd he come to Saetbyeol?"

"Hell if I know. Anyway, felt like we ought to poke that one a little gentler."

"Why? He got backing?"

"Seems like. Out there."

Lim Chae-beom listened.

"I went and apologized earlier. Told him the seniors are real nasty, and to think of it like athletic-team hazing."

"Fuck, you've squeezed every drop of seniority there is and now you're cosplaying a rookie? You that scared?"

"Shut up. Anyway, I bought him a drink, and he's going on about the Scorpion Crew? Said he already met them again on Pellegram, and he was looking into how to get to their hideout."

"The Scorpion Crew? Fuck. Shouldn't we be reporting that to the NIS?"

"A rookie rehabilitation hunter, tight with an anti-state outfit worse than North Korea? We're all screwed."

"Heard they even fortified the hideout. Hid it in the Pumpkin Patch out toward Seoul. Hanam, or was it Seongnam?"

A handful of words lodged clean in his ears.

Scorpion Crew. The Pumpkin Patch.

The Pumpkin Patch was what people called the cities of Gyeonggi Province near Seoul, the ones the Jack-o'-Lanterns had swallowed whole. Wasn't the theory that even a nuclear strike would have all its heat swallowed up? The worst raider pack of the Ruin Era, the Scorpion Crew, was supposed to have built a hideout somewhere in those fields.

"Gonna have to watch him real fucking close."

Lim Chae-beom slipped the words in as if they had just occurred to him.

"Yeah, no shit. He takes more than a day off, we stick people on him right away."

"Report that and the bounty ought to be pretty fat, right? Human lottery, let's go!"

Fortunately, Hunting Team 2's unawakened hunters were happy to pile on.

"What about you? That Jeong Jae-ha bastard's swagger is unreal. He still think he's a fencing athlete?"

"And Lee Hae-il? Her figure's fucking insane. Why's she crossdressing with a body like that? Flash it once and the tips would paint the whole damn galaxy."

Attention swung to him at once.

"Monsters. The both of them."

Lim Chae-beom let out a theatrical sigh. He tossed off an obscene little gesture of his own, then went on. He had to give them at least that much, or someone would get suspicious.

"The two of them wiped out all four hundred orcs between them."

"What?"

"You dreaming?"

"No bullshit, it's real. Ask the others. We couldn't believe our own eyes."

"Insane. Even a C-rank body enhancement would struggle with that."

"Technique matters, turns out."

Fortunately, the failure itself slid past without much fuss. The meaning was in the attempt. Success or failure wasn't the point. And wasn't it obvious, anyway, that you couldn't win a head-on fight against an awakened?

"So I'm thinking about taking the shot myself."

But Lim Chae-beom had decided to doubt that bit of common sense, just once. As they said, what mattered was the challenge, not the win or the loss. And yet — maybe they had never challenged a thing.

"What?"

"Why?"

"This bastard's a traitor!"

"It's not like being awakened means you only swing a sword. Watching them zip around was pretty cool, I'll give you that."

"You don't know the side effects? Take it wrong and you melt into sludge, or turn into a monster and get hunted. That's what they say."

The reaction was fierce.

"You don't remember Senior Yong-woo from when you were new? Turned into a monster the size of a house and got cut to pieces. His family didn't get a single cent."

"A drug Samjeong makes, designed by Saetbyeol's own VIPs, and you think that's a joke? You think those people are gonna admit a defect?"

"Put me down on the death-benefit list, yeah?"

"Artificial awakening is for those convict bastards. Why the hell would we do it?"

Every word of it was right. But Lim Chae-beom couldn't bring himself to say that they looked even worse than those convict bastards. He couldn't say that those two, at least, seemed different.

"So I get stronger than those convict bastards and go around knocking them flat?"

So he papered over it with that.

"Senior. You free this evening?"

"Chae-beom-hyung. Want to grab dinner?"

On the way off shift, teammates from his own Hunting Team 1 gathered around him one by one.

"Sure."

He thought he knew why they'd come.

"Starting tomorrow — how about we drop the weird games of dominance with Hunter Jeong and Hunter Lee?"

For a moment, no one spoke.

"...Yeah."

They were wearing expressions a lot like his own.