The Strongest Hunter on Earth
"This is a scoop! A total scoop!"
"Then slow down and actually explain it."
Inside a newspaper office.
The place had the same restless energy as any newsroom — reporters gearing up to head out on assignment, editors hunched over copy — and in the middle of that bustle, a junior reporter barely out of orientation was making a scene in front of the editor-in-chief.
"Just look at these photos."
The pictures the junior reporter shoved forward captured the raid at Gwanghwamun Plaza. Strangely enough, every famous hunter of S-rank and above seemed to have gathered in a single place. Among them, one could even make out the legendary SSS-rank Hunter Kim Heeyeon, who had scarcely shown her face since retirement.
"Whoa, what on earth is all this? Did some ridiculous monster show up?"
"From what I heard, three wyverns."
"Huh? Wyvern raids aren't even newsworthy these days. They pop up all the time. Three at once is impressive, I guess, but still."
"No, Chief, that's not the point. Look closely!"
"Hm?"
The reporter pointed at a man in shabby clothes.
"Who's this? Never seen him before."
"That's why I shot video. Watch this!"
Only after watching the footage did the editor-in-chief understand why the junior reporter had been making such a fuss.
A man who looked, at a glance, like nobody special nimbly dodged the wyvern's attacks. Dodging was one thing. Then the man threw a punch at the wyvern.
What followed was a scene so absurd the editor could barely believe his own eyes.
"The monster… exploded?"
"Well?"
He had never in his life heard of a hunter who could put down a monster with a single punch. Wyverns had once been objects of terror, but these days they appeared often enough, and the methods for dealing with them were well enough known, that they were treated as relatively manageable monsters. He had never, however, heard of anyone pulverizing one in three seconds.
"Hey! We're running this as breaking news right now. Push it to every portal site! The headline is, uh…"
"How about The Strongest Hunter on Earth Finally Appears in Korea?"
The editor slammed his desk.
"You little shit — 'strongest on earth'? That's tacky as hell. Wait, though…"
He trailed off, then scratched at the barely-there stubble on his chin, as if the thought had turned over in his mind.
"Tacky… but it kind of works, doesn't it?"
"What the hell is all this."
Heeyeon buried her face in both hands.
There had been a reporter there? She had been so careless — assuming a wyvern raid wouldn't draw any press interest at all — and now she wanted to kick herself for it.
Nothing good comes of that ability getting famous right now.
As a rule, government-affiliated hunters were better off keeping their faces and identities under wraps until they were assigned a public mission. Covert work was one problem, but in an era when hunters were national power, putting that power on full display never paid off unless you were overwhelmingly strong.
"Ugh… I'm going to lose my mind. I really am."
"It was going to come out eventually. Why are you making such a fuss? When are you heading back to the exam center?"
A beautiful woman appeared in front of Heeyeon, her long yellow hair tied neatly back, carrying an air of cool intelligence. The black suit she wore gave her something of a model's poise. Her chest — far larger than Heeyeon's, large enough to strain the fabric to tearing — swayed without rest every time she moved.
"Ayeon, what the hell do we do about this."
"A hunter with that kind of power was never going to stay hidden forever. Now that it's out, you might as well use it."
"…Think Chaerin would see it that way too?"
Chaerin. President of the Hunter Association, the woman who oversaw the entire Korean hunter industry. The same age as Heeyeon, and the one who had climbed even higher — the pride of Korea's hunter world, the woman who had once stood at the absolute peak of every hunter in the country. Yoo Chaerin.
"How would someone like me know what the President thinks. And would you please not throw her name around so casually?"
"Oh, come on. You weren't like this when we all hung out together."
"Shut up before I kill you."
"…"
Heeyeon dropped the teasing and stood.
"Anyway, I'll leave Jisu to you. Even if the money thing comes out, if you sweet-talk him enough you should be able to paper over it. He doesn't seem like the type whose head works all that fast."
"…"
Ayeon said nothing, but Heeyeon had known her long enough to recognize the silence for what it was: agreement.
"I'm heading out. Tell Chaerin I said hi."
With that, Heeyeon left the Association. That Jisu's ability held a potential even more enormous than she had imagined was something she would only come to understand much, much later.
Of all the luck. A reporter just happened to be there.
Jisu splashed water on his face in a hurry. The cold shock of it against his skin felt startlingly, almost newly, real. Then he checked the internet again.
It wasn't just the Coinler boards. Korea's most popular portal site already had Jisu's image up. The figure in the video was small enough that you couldn't make out his features with the naked eye, but he knew. The person in that footage was definitely him.
Honestly, even I think it looks photoshopped.
Even to the man himself, the hunter in the video was strong beyond all common sense. Some tiny guy dodged every attack from a wyvern twice his size. Then he threw a single punch. And — boom. The wyvern exploded like a bomb. After that the camera tilted up toward the wyvern, and the video ended. Apparently they hadn't caught him coughing up blood.
At least it came out blurry. If my face had gotten out, this would've been a real headache.
The sudden flood of attention was one thing, but more than anything he was worried about his mother. He hadn't even told her he'd become a hunter yet. If she found out like this, she would be beside herself — that much was obvious. He would have to tell her properly someday, but for now, the thought of her worrying was what sat heaviest on him.
I want to tell her myself. It would've been a mess if she'd found out some other way first. Thank god she won't.
A video this fuzzy was fine. Even if his mother watched it, she would never think her own son was standing there. And just looking at the comments, plenty of people were already calling it fake, unable to believe power that absurd. It seemed like it might blow over without much of a storm, which was a relief.
Nothing else is going to happen… right?
Something else was happening somewhere else.
On the quiet plaza of the Association's twenty-third floor — emptied now that the S-rank hunters had all dispersed — a few people who rarely showed their faces had gathered, and they were arguing.
"Jisu is joining our Seongwolhoe guild. Not many people turn down an offer like the one I'm going to make. And how many guilds in Korea are even authorized to operate concurrently under government supervision? So I'd appreciate it if you took your interest elsewhere."
"You think he'd want to work under you? That kid's not the type to sit under anybody — you can tell at a glance. He looks soft on the outside, but there's a feral stray living underneath. You can see it on his face that he hates taking orders."
A woman with striking red hair, dressed in something so revealing it was practically a bikini, and Jeong Siyun, guildmaster of Seongwolhoe, were going back and forth over the future of a man who wasn't even in the room.
"The best way to reel in a man like that is a young, firm woman's body. I guess a woman who's about to have a three in front of her age wouldn't know that."
"How vulgar. You think a man of that caliber would fall for a walking flesh-toilet like you?"
"Aw, thanks for the compliment. Hearing it from an ajumma who isn't even fap material is just so sweet."
The two women were having an extremely vicious conversation.
After what had happened at Gwanghwamun, Jisu had become the hottest blue-chip in the industry. With power like that, what couldn't he do? And given that he'd coughed up blood at the end, it was obvious he would need a faction in his corner. Anyone who could do basic math understood that the first person to build a relationship with him would hold the advantage.
"So? Where is he?"
"No idea. I came because I heard he was here. Doesn't look like it."
They had rushed over the moment they heard he was recovering inside the Association, but it seemed he had already left. Too late.
Once they realized Jisu wasn't there, wasting any more time sniping at each other was pointless. Both women shut their mouths at once and hurried off in their own directions. They barely gathered in the same place to begin with; there had never been any bond between them worth speaking of. That, if anything, was only natural.
A few of the S-rank hunters who hadn't even been present had apparently started their own quiet groundwork to connect with Jisu as well.
And so, without knowing it himself, Jisu had become the biggest catch in Korea's hunter industry.
Whether people did that or not, Jisu was back on the Bitstorm site.
Coin prices were in a lull, drifting slowly downward. The overall flow looked a lot like that moment not long ago when someone had argued the kimchi premium was bleeding off into a healthy correction.
If I throw money in blindly in this state, I'll just take losses again.
The Gwanghwamun incident had burned the uncertainty and terror of the coin charts into him. With his stamina and mental energy scraped to the floor, desperate to recover even a little, he had no desire to stake his stats on something that uncertain.
So what was certain?
Jisu picked up his phone and scrolled through Coinler's list of open chats.
If I can't get into Wildcat's room, I should at least check the other signal rooms.
His answer was the signal rooms. He figured he would scatter bait the same way he had when he'd dangled a hook for Wildcat. A search turned up a staggering number of them besides the one Wildcat had made. Most were at capacity and wouldn't let him in, but rooms with open slots were easy enough to find too. Jisu picked one at random and joined.
The mood in here's not great.
There weren't many people in the room to begin with, and once that one user left, a few more followed him out. Still, useful information might turn up, so Jisu left the chat sitting open and went looking for another.
There's a room like this too?
What caught his eye was a HODL room. A gathering of people who had bought the same coin and refused to sell it — whether it crashed or ripped. Of course, the ones holding through a crash into penny-stock territory vastly outnumbered the ones sitting on gains.
As he browsed, a familiar name jumped out.
What? There are still people who haven't sold Justice?
Jisu joined that one too. The scene inside was a spectacle.
That many people were still clinging to Justice, a coin whose price had already fallen past the point of no return. Even to Jisu's untrained eyes they looked truly pathetic — but just in case, he kept this room open too. The more information, the better.
He added a few more HODL rooms and a few more signal rooms the same way. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. But it was still better than doing nothing.