Chapter 62
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 062
Chapter Title: A-rank Hunter Baek Dam-bi - [1]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
There are people who worship nature.
According to them, nature is perfect in and of itself, brimming with self-sustaining vitality, and humans are the only impurities incapable of restraint, the ones who ruin this entire harmony.
In my view, their claim is flat-out wrong.
As everyone knows, bacteria are one of nature's most basic lifeforms. And if you culture them in a sealed container, they don't hold back to conserve the limited air in their environment—they multiply endlessly until they've exhausted every resource and wiped themselves out.
That shows other creatures besides humans don't preserve nature because they know restraint. They simply lack the ability to destroy it, no matter how faithfully they follow their instincts.
Just look at how feral cats released on a remote island devastate the local ecosystem. Give nature's animals sufficient power, and they too can easily wreck the natural order.
Sword World is a world that proves this fact.
The desolation of Sword World isn't some result of the Sowol people overdeveloping nature.
The monsters beyond the gates... Those things that are just part of Sowol nature, commonplace animals, acted purely on their instincts to fatten their flesh and survive as long as possible. They devoured everything that moved without restraint and holed up inside the gates without returning those nutrients to nature.
Over time, Sowol's nature lost its regenerative power. That's how the deserts and barren wastelands were born.
Just like that, the monsters of Sowol—who long ago laid waste to their own world—are doing the exact same thing here on Earth.
You can see it even with the spirits, which are nature itself.
"Ah, I'll be right back."
We hadn't reached our destination yet, but I teleported ahead first.
There were people down there who needed help.
I teleported out of the helicopter and looked below.
Bupyeong-gu was suffering severe flooding right now. Every visible road was submerged.
When water floods a city like this, it gets dangerous.
Because the rivers and surface water connect directly.
And through that water, all sorts of aquatic spirits—sea spirits, river spirits, and every other water spirit imaginable—launch assaults on the land.
Thanks to those damn spirits and ocean monsters, it's been three years since the gates opened, and our marine resources have been halved.
With prey running scarce in the oceans, water spirits hunt surface-dwelling intelligent life whenever they get the chance.
A wave crashed onto the roadside.
The wave engulfed the passenger cars stranded on the curb, unable to budge. The cars, with their windows tightly shut, survived being swept up unscathed, but this wasn't a natural phenomenon—the wave was filled with intent to hunt them.
The water spirit that had crashed over the cars didn't just flow away; it changed direction and surged back at them again.
That spirit would keep pounding until the car windows shattered, exposing the people huddled inside. Once they surfaced, it would drown them and devour their souls.
It was one of the hunting tactics for water spirits that veteran hunters had taught me—something the association never covered.
As I fell, I raised my hammer high.
Once gravity had built up enough acceleration in my body, I teleported again.
"Incheon—!"
The next instant, my hammer strike slammed into the wave that had been about to engulf the vehicles once more.
It was a gravity-accelerated hammer blow.
Since it was against a fluid, there wasn't a thunderous boom. The feedback didn't feel great either.
But there was a strange thrill. The satisfaction of piercing through a massive obstacle and finally reaching the target...
"Hooray—!"
My hammer, having tunneled through the enormous mass of water, finally struck the concrete ground.
A shockwave erupted from the hammer, scattering the spirit's water in all directions.
One more swing, and a peculiar pleasure seeped into my mind. That told me the spirit was dead.
"You okay?"
As I approached the car and asked, the window cracked open slightly. The man inside blinked at me.
"Uh... Hunter Kim Geuk?"
"That's me. Come on out. I'll get you to safety."
Being famous for good reasons has its perks. If some no-name hunter had given the order, he might've refused, but not in my case.
I went around shouting at the water-trapped cars a few times, and all the passengers followed my lead.
Nine people gathered, eyeing the splashing water warily. I looked at them and said,
"Everyone here? Good. Everyone hold hands. Let's chant the spell: Incheon hooray!"
"Incheon hooray—"
Then I teleported. Taking the two people holding my hands, and the chain of people linked to them.
Back in the day, two or three people was my teleport limit, but not anymore. Repeated hunts had massively increased the mass I could carry along.
I teleported the nine of us into an empty building—a place the water couldn't easily reach. Only then did joy light up their faces.
"We're alive, fuck yeah!"
I flashed them a grin and teleported back. Into the helicopter flying ahead.
Baek Dam-bi came into view again. I grumbled as I sat back down in front of her.
"My arm's killing me from the drop impact. Regeneration kicked in, but man, it still hurts. Ugh... Makes you realize how unfair the world is."
"How is the world unfair?"
"All I've got for combat is physical enhancement, so every fight leaves me sore. If only I had a force field exoskeleton on top like that Kim Seok-hui jerk. Why'd I get stuck with just physical enhancement?"
I trailed off mumbling and gave an awkward laugh.
Baek Dam-bi—behind her sunglasses, I could see fury rippling in her hidden eyes. She must've taken it as me bragging.
Luckily, my round girl always aimed for that cool ice queen image and never got heated. Her voice trembled just a bit, but no cyber-magnet rage leaked out.
"Wouldn't you be happy with two abilities, including teleportation...?"
"I'm greedy like that. I saw a guy rocking three recently, and now I'm thinking, maybe I can awaken one more? Just checking—I've really got two, right? Not three?"
I wasn't trying to show off; I genuinely wanted to double-check. But Baek Dam-bi eyed me like she suspected my Naver Cafe post history.
"Looks like two. Sorry to disappoint..."
She said it in a voice that wanted to smack me, but I just brazened it out.
"What a tragedy."
No point tiptoeing around her feelings.
She was the one self-deprecating as a loser on HuntWeb. Sugarcoating things out of pity for her weak ice powers would just make her feel worse.
Treat her as an equal ability user, no pity for the "loser"—that was my call.
Thankfully, she wasn't too offended. My round girl let out a small sigh and played along.
"If you're awakening a new one anyway, wouldn't a force field blade be better? You'd be the ultimate assassin, teleporting around slicing everything..."
"Force field blade isn't bad, but if I awakened that, one friend of mine would lose it. Can't say who, but he's a Kang-something with the name Jun-chi..."
The helicopter stopped. The radio announced we'd arrived, ending the chit-chat.
I grabbed Baek Dam-bi's wrist.
"Ready?"
"Yeah...!"
Baek Dam-bi swiftly removed her sunglasses and set them aside.
Then I teleported us both.
To the subway below, toward the flooded tracks.
We materialized to see the submerged subway train and rails.
The train had stopped, half-flooded with water.
Part of one car's wall was sliced clean off like with a sharp blade, and blood-mixed water poured from the hole.
The implication was clear. Dead people.
My blood started pumping. I let go of Baek Dam-bi's hand and charged forward.
Inside the train, I saw seven corpses half-submerged. Blood flowed from them.
Too late, damn it.
And there was the water spirit that killed them.
Its form wasn't fixed, but I could tell it was way bigger than the last one.
The spirit seemed to be trying to breach the tightly shut door of another car. A jet of water from its body had already sliced halfway through the door...
Then the water spirit spotted me.
True to form, it recognized me as an awakener—a fellow hunter.
"Sh—"
Before I could close in fully, it attacked first.
A jet of water shot from its body without warning.
I'd trained specifically to dodge bullets at their speed—it wasn't pure reaction time.
The water jet wasn't quite bullet-fast, but fast enough that my reflexes couldn't dodge it perfectly.
Cold water pierced my cheek and out the other side.
A high-pressure water jet that punched through a physical enhancer's tough body. If it'd hit wrong, my brain would've been drilled.
Sense of crisis and adrenaline surge drowned out the stinging pain.
I bit my lip and counterattacked. Swinging down my raised hammer scattered part of the spirit.
But not all of it. And with the whole area soaked, maybe? It hadn't taken real damage.
The water spirit regenerated its lost body. It sucked in the overflowing surrounding water, instantly refilling the missing mass. Clear verdict.
Ah, can't kill this one solo.
I shouted for my round girl, prepared for this scenario.
"Dam-bi!"
I'd never seen her go all-out, so I didn't know her exact power level, but the blizzard that took down the flame spirit had been impressive.
Since then, she'd absorbed souls from flame and rock spirits too, so she had to be even stronger now.
That's why I'd figured freezing part of the water spirit's body would help enough to bring her along.
But the result when she unleashed her power blew past my expectations.
My reaction in that moment was simple.
"Huh?"
It happened in an instant. All the surrounding water froze solid.
Inside the subway car, the water up to my knees froze completely.
The windows showed the outside tracks frozen too, stretching into the dark distance.
Not just the surface—deep-frozen. Thick enough that even me, four times a normal person's weight, could skate on it safely.
The rampaging water spirit in front of me froze along with the rest.
Its entire fluid body locked in ice, revealing its fixed shape. I could guess its original sea creature form—probably a cephalopod. Must've awakened mid-swim. The tentacles extending from its body gave it away.
Ah, now ice tentacles, though. Time to call it an ice spirit.
And from what I knew, ice spirits were the easiest type to kill among spirits.
I brought my hammer down, shattering its ice body into powder scattering everywhere.
Two more swings, and the frozen water spirit lost all form, dispersing into death. Feeling the euphoria seep into my mind, I confirmed it and quickly spoke up.
"Dam-bi? If your power was on this scale, you should've said so earlier..."
Mid-sentence, I turned to Baek Dam-bi and shut my mouth.
I'd planned to chide her cool-character-style for hiding her strength, but her expression made it unnecessary.
Baek Dam-bi—eyes wider than usual, mouth agape.
After working together over half a year, this was a reaction I'd never seen. Clearly, she was way more shocked by her own handiwork than I was.