Bunny Girl Heading for the Summit (2)
The Anomaly Management Bureau periodically recruits for regular patrols.
From the start, the odds of landing a “regular patrol” assignment were already halfway out the door—but still.
At the very least, they kept putting out recruitment notices on a schedule.
As you might have already guessed, regular patrols were not exactly a popular gig.
Traditionally, government budgets existed for the sole purpose of funneling money to connected contractors.
So every other job came with five thousand years of wage-crushing tradition baked in.
Only the regular patrols—conducted purely for the sake of saving lives—drew the first number ticket.
Then as now, a human life had always been dirt cheap.
And regular patrols were the system that kept running because there were still people willing to stake their lives even on that dirt-cheap price.
The fact that rescue work was even possible because human lives were so inexpensive left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Even so, the will to save a life could never be cheap.
I believed that as I took my first step onto the hiking trail.
Surprisingly, the trail itself is pretty well maintained.
For all its infamous reputation, simply climbing the mountain didn’t look all that hard.
If this place still had daylight, I could almost picture the usual aunties and uncles thronging the path.
But letting my guard down was out of the question.
Hoewolsan was a place even regular patrols avoided.
They said you were safe as long as you followed the rules—but in a ghost-story space, anything could happen.
Think about it. This was a mountain, first and foremost.
Not some ordinary mountain, either—one that had once ranked Danger A.
And the only truly safe zones on Hoewolsan were the stretches connected to the hiking trail.
Given how vast this mountain was, everything we knew about it was a drop in the ocean.
So why was its danger rank E now?
Basically because the frequency of abductions was low, and once people figured out the rules, the death rate had dropped.
If you happened to run into an anomaly you’d never seen before… well, that would just be unfortunate.
Even before the world went sideways, people said foreign mountains had bears roaming around.
The current meta was basically: treat it like you just got killed by a wild animal and move on.
The Praising Goddess urges you to be careful. Every beast here—and even the trees and the tiniest insects—counts as an anomaly.
A constellation warning, right on cue.
I already knew. That was why I was carefully stepping around every tree root.
I was even avoiding fallen leaves so I wouldn’t make noise.
The moment you stepped on a root, the anomaly would grab your ankle and drag you off.
Honestly, I figured I could overpower it with raw strength if it came to that, but there was no need to poke the bear.
More importantly, I had a clear goal for this climb.
This time I’m going to clear a ghost story without relying on physical enhancement!
An Awakener’s physical enhancement was mostly a matter of amplification.
The stronger your original body became, the higher your potential climbed.
Half the reason I’d chosen Hoewolsan for this job was for the exercise.
Hike a mountain, save people, and get paid for it?
Peak efficiency. I’d always liked hiking anyway.
Besides, the last incident still left a pretty deep scar.
You know—the time I lost a verbal sparring match to an anomaly at Daon Mart.
I’d never thought of myself as particularly clever… but getting completely outplayed by an anomaly?
Me? Lee Hasol, the top ace of the rescue squad?
If only to rebuild my shattered pride, I was going to solve this one with my head.
Right as I made that resolution, a high-pitched weeeeing sound tickled my ear.
Even a mountain this cursed still has mosquitoes, huh.
And not just any mosquito—one the size of my palm was buzzing around.
It tried to land on my arm like it was testing the waters, so I swatted it away.
The classic way to kill a mosquito was a sharp smack!
One clean clap and send it packing.
But I, Lee Hasol, was not about to fall for a temptation that cheap.
On Hoewolsan, you did not make unnecessary noise.
Clapping your hands and drawing every anomaly’s attention would be peak stupidity.
Heh. I’m not that dumb.
So I cranked up my reaction speed and agility and—
snatched the mosquito out of the air in a fist and crushed it.
Wiping my hand with a wet wipe I’d packed in advance completed the delivery of justice.
Mosquitoes were the root of all evil even in the real world, so they might as well be anomalies.
And a mosquito that actually was an anomaly?
Absolutely unforgivable.
The Praising Goddess asks whether you just used physical enhancement.
Ah.
Clear a ghost story without physical enhancement.
…Failed at the starting line.
No, no, no!
This was different!
Mosquitoes were an exception. Yeah. Mosquitoes alone got a free pass.
Even the most devoted philanthropist who loved all living things could never love a mosquito.
It was common knowledge that even monks who followed Buddhist teachings kept mosquito repellent stocked at the temple.
And just think of all the other mosquitoes that would be born from this one.
Mosquitoes were demons that spread disease and ruined summer nights of rest.
Sparing this single one might only create a greater disaster later.
So if I let a mosquito go for personal reasons, that would mean I lacked the qualifications of a Hunter—and further, that I was doing harm to all of humanity…
Therefore: clear a ghost story without physical enhancement.
Starting over from now!
The Praising Goddess lets out a deep sigh.
Starting over!
The path to the summit went surprisingly smoothly after that.
No unknown anomalies jumped out, and I didn’t use physical enhancement.
The Praising Goddess looks at you with a complicated expression.
…I only used it once.
The Praising Goddess smiles. Honesty is a beautiful virtue.
Except for that one unavoidable time.
Up until now I had been climbing purely on my own natural strength.
It was definitely a lot harder than when I’d been a man.
Back then I could climb twenty floors in five minutes while wearing a heavy oxygen tank.
In rescue work, speed was always life itself.
There was a reason I’d been called the ace of the rescue team.
My stamina had clearly ranked near the top even among field firefighters.
And yet that same me—
the me who used to run up and down neighborhood hills for fun—
“Haa… haaagh.”
was already breathing hard before I even reached the halfway point.
I refused to accept it and pushed a little farther, only to end up collapsed on the ground, gasping for air.
I couldn’t even bring myself to take another step until I’d completely caught my breath.
Maybe…
just maybe…
without physical enhancement, the current me was a total scrub?
My body had never actually been that strong to begin with.
The Praising Goddess urgently cheers you on. Stamina can be rebuilt. If it’s the strong you of before, you will definitely succeed.
So I really was a scrub, huh.
My sky collapsed today.
Still, I couldn’t just sit here forever.
I scraped together the tattered remains of my mental state and kept walking for who knows how long.
Eventually I arrived at the shrine mentioned in the guidebook.
Four stone towers total. Place as many coins as there are towers and bow, right?
Just like the rulebook said: four coins total, six bows.
I’d been nervous something would go wrong, but thankfully the path opened without any trouble.
Yeah. It was about time I got to resolve a ghost story the normal way.
The irregular incident with the “Haunted Video.”
“No Jaywalking,” which spawned weird community rumors because of a whip.
And “Daon Mart,” which ended in terrorism and arson.
Even granting that my Awakening ability attracted anomalies, this was getting ridiculous.
Somehow every ghost story I got tangled in refused to proceed by the book.
I would’ve liked to handle a job the easy way just once…
The second I think that, an anomaly appears. It’s blocking the path completely out in the open?
Not even five minutes past the shrine.
A spider bigger than I was had built its web right across the hiking trail.
There was still some distance, so it hadn’t spotted me yet.
But this was inconvenient in every possible way.
According to the Bureau’s intel, its name was the Human-Faced Spider.
As the name suggested, it had boldly replaced its eight-eyed head—already plenty grotesque—with a human one. A true avant-garde artist of our era.
Since ancient times, humanity had been a species held back by its naturally frail bodies.
In other words, the only useful part of a human was roughly the head.
By combining the strengths of both species, the Human-Faced Spider was fulfilling the long-cherished Korean dream of “owning a home.”
With this, the Korean Peninsula’s storied real-estate mythology would finally meet its end.
The Praising Goddess says this is not the time for ridiculous thoughts.
Ah, right.
Having a human head just sitting there kept making my mind wander in weird directions.
I must have gotten too used to anomalies after clashing with them a few times.
Fortunately, the Human-Faced Spider wasn’t a specimen that demanded some complicated strategy.
Sadly, it still had too many shortcomings to qualify as the next stage of humanity.
In the process of swapping its head for a human one, it had made a few mistakes and focused more on appearance than intelligence.
In short, it hadn’t really improved much from its spider days.
Basically, as long as you didn’t touch the webs, you were fine.
The gaps between the strands were wide enough that you could slip through carefully.
But that’s a method only someone like me can pull off.
I had no way of knowing whether the next person to enter Hoewolsan would be an Awakener.
Clearing out hazards like this ahead of time was also part of a regular patrol’s virtues.
Time to use my head a little more.
Conveniently, my bag still held the chunk of human flesh issued by the Hunter Management Division.
Lure it far away, tear down the nest, and it would just set up shop somewhere else.
I rummaged through my backpack, pulled out the meat, and then…
the Human-Faced Spider was staring straight at me.
For some reason its expression read to me as either “Whoa, what’s that? Looks delicious,” or “A snack is holding a snack.”
“Looks like I’m not really the type who uses my head after all.”
The Praising Goddess agrees with extreme enthusiasm.