Close Your Eyes
After killing a little more time at home, Jisu timed his departure so he'd arrive right on schedule, and finally stepped outside.
City Hall was a subway ride away. He came down the hill, boarded Seoul Subway Line 1, and once he got off, hurried onward according to the coordinates on his receiver.
The closer he drew to the point Seyeon had marked, the thinner the traces of people became. It was quiet — as if everyone already knew a gate would open here and had gotten out.
He was probably right. He still remembered it himself: the evacuation order, the running, back when he hadn't been a Hunter at all.
Jisu pulled the radio from his pocket, fitted it to his ear, and switched it on.
"Um, can you hear me?"
"Ah, Jisu! Hello! Did you make it to the site okay?"
The miniature in-ear radio seemed to be working just fine — Seyeon's voice came through remarkably clear. Clearer than a phone call, even, which was a pointed reminder of the Hunter Association's technical resources.
"Yes. I've arrived. Has the gate opened yet?"
"Not yet. It should open in about three minutes. Jisu, is there anything I can help you with?"
"Help me?"
"Yes! I can assist you with all sorts of things in real time, so… if you need anything, you're welcome to just tell me to do it!"
She'd told him to put her to work, but nothing in particular came to mind.
"I see. What would that look like, specifically?"
"It's simple! Things like which way a monster is moving, what a given monster's weak point is, that something's attacking you from behind — that kind of thing. Of course, some people tell me not to do any of that because it breaks their concentration. How would you like to handle it?"
"Hmm. Then could you go ahead and talk me through it for now? I think I should try fighting once before I decide."
"Understood!"
Huh. I might actually be able to get a lot of use out of this.
He'd signed an Operator contract, but after asking her every basic question he could think of about the Hunter industry, he'd been left wondering what he was supposed to do with her. Now, though, it seemed more useful than he'd expected. He didn't have much real combat experience, so even just being told where an enemy was coming from, or what the thing in front of him actually was, would probably help more than he'd thought.
That was when a message window bloomed in front of his eyes.
You have entered the raid zone: KRSE-02-CHF-2
"The gate is open!"
Her voice had dropped from its usual slightly over-bright, high-strung pitch into something more urgent. She kept going.
"What's come out is a ground-type monster — Amoregon! Three behind you, four… wait, huh?"
"What's wrong?"
"Six… h-hold on a second!"
BOOM.
Before Seyeon's panicked voice had even finished, a roar vast enough to shake heaven and earth drove itself into Jisu's eardrums.
BOOM.
That's a hell of a noise.
"Jisu, can you hear me! Twelve of them! Twelve came out! Can you handle this alone?"
"Huh? Why wouldn't I be able to handle it alone?"
He'd asked it as a genuine question — he honestly had no idea how strong an Amoregon was — but Seyeon seemed to take it a different way.
"Ah, come to think of it, you're SS-rank, aren't you, Jisu! I'm so sorry. I absolutely wasn't trying to look down on you. Right! Let's wipe out those twelve Amoregons in no time!"
"Huh? No, I, that's not—"
BOOM.
Before he could finish the sentence, a massive reptile filled his vision.
A dinosaur?
To call it a dinosaur would have been a kindness. Its eyes were savage in a way that didn't belong to this world, and a foul liquid ran from fangs that looked ready to butcher everything in sight, streaming down in sheets like a waterfall. The mottled scales, more than anything, felt like they had come from somewhere else entirely.
Not a dinosaur. A monster.
And that monster was opening a massive maw right in Jisu's face.
KRAAAAAH!
"Ugh, so loud!"
Jisu carefully reset his grip, curling his fingers into a fist. He'd solved everything with these fists so far. If he was going to put this high Strength stat to proper use, he didn't see much point in learning a weapon.
The stat fluctuation range shouldn't be that big, right?
A few hours had passed since he'd invested, but the market these past few days had been peace itself — as if everyone had quietly agreed not to cause any major coin-related incidents, and not to place any large buy or sell orders, for the time being.
What worried him now was Stamina and Mental. He'd bumped Stamina up a little, but taking a hit was still dangerous.
That was when another Amoregon appeared right beside him, red light burning in its eyes as it locked onto him.
Hideous teeth. Eyes slit to cruel points. A face that was simply unpleasant to look at.
Why…
Jisu felt the strength drain from his legs before he even knew it was happening.
Why? The thing was ugly, sure, but it wasn't that frightening. And Jisu had never been the type to scare easily.
So why now?
Why is this so terrifying?
Looking at the Amoregon's savage face, he was, honestly, afraid. An impulse to turn and run surged through him. The wyvern he'd fought last time hadn't looked anywhere near this frightening.
He couldn't make sense of why this was happening all of a sudden — and then something occurred to him. He shut his eyes.
…That's way better.
Grrrrrr…!
BOOM. BOOM.
One more closed in, hemming him in. Before he knew it, three Amoregons were watching him — as if the moment he so much as twitched, they would grind him into the pavement. And through all of it, Jisu kept his eyes closed.
It gets this much better just because I can't see their faces? If I were actually that scared, closing my eyes shouldn't help. If anything, it should still be terrifying. Don't tell me…
He found himself thinking back to the wyvern hunt — coughing up blood, the extreme fatigue crashing over him. Even allowing for how low his Stamina had been, he'd blacked out at a speed that didn't make any sense.
Once you entered a raid field, four stats took hold of your body.
It's the Mental stat!
The inference was that his Mental was so low everything felt excessively frightening. Put like that, it sounded almost reasonable.
KRAAAAAANG!
"Jisu, attack incoming from the front!"
"Uh—!"
He managed to slip sideways. His eyes were still shut, but he could read the movement from the sound. He hadn't originally had an ability like that, so it was probably the stats at work.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine. Please keep talking to me like this!"
He could sketch the movements in his head, but it was the first time he'd used the ability, so he couldn't trust it completely. And if it was tied to his stats, there was no guarantee it wouldn't dump on him at any moment — which meant Seyeon's callouts were going to be genuinely useful.
"Ah, yes! Left side!"
Left!
This time, he didn't just dodge. He twisted his body just enough to slip the incoming attack, then drove his fist straight into it.
Thud!
Something dull and damp — like a slab of massive keratin — surged forward and packed itself against his knuckles. His eyes were closed, but the monster was large enough that landing a hit wasn't particularly hard.
KIEEEEEEK!
A ragged roar, and the sensation of something flopping and tumbling away into a corner. But the feeling was distinctly different from when he'd thrown a punch with everything he had. There was weight in it, and a measure of recoil came back through his arm — but the shockwave didn't hit anywhere near as hard as it had then.
Affected by the Stamina stat, after all.
"Did I get it…?"
He cracked his eyes open a fraction. One blow had sent the thing flying a good distance, but it hadn't burst apart the way they used to. He wanted to check properly whether it was dead, except the mere fact of those things entering his field of vision made the strength go out of his legs, and that made it less than trivial.
Then, with almost comical timing, the advice came in.
"It's not down yet! But it looks like it's about to die!"
All right, then!
He was just thinking that having an Operator was more helpful than expected when—
"Above you!"
BOOM.
"Aaaagh!"
Jisu let out a strangled yell and barely rolled forward out of the way. With his eyes shut he had to guess the enemy's trajectory from the sound of the wind, but for the Jisu of right now, that wasn't particularly difficult.
"Left side again!"
Thud!
Still prone, he used his left leg to throw a roundhouse kick. Something dull caught against his foot. The hit had landed clean.
KUEEEEEEK!
The sound of something whipping away in a wide arc — and then a crashing boom as it slammed into something in the distance, soaking the quiet city in noise.
"The one you just hit… I think it's out cold!"
It's helpful, but this is way too inconvenient!
Seyeon talking him through it was useful in its own way, but he was starting to get irritated at doing all of this with his eyes shut. Between the nagging fear that his ability to read the wind might be stripped away at any moment, and that bizarre terror he'd felt before closing his eyes, his mental fatigue had stacked up considerably.
Terrifying or not, he still had to take them out. Not that he was trying to brag, but from where Jisu was standing, monsters of this level looked like they could be cleaned up without much trouble. Scared or not, he wanted to finish this quickly, go home, and get some rest.
Carefully, he opened his eyes again.
Beyond his vision, those hideous things resolved into view.
And the inexplicable terror did not come.
…?
He blinked once more.
What waited beyond his eyelids was a knockoff dinosaur that looked like a trash mob from a video game, glaring at him in a frankly unconvincing attempt to be threatening.
?
He'd been scared of that?
That didn't make any sense.
Jisu stared at the monster in front of him. It looked about as crudely made as a balloon with some air pumped into it.
I actually froze up because of these things?
No. No, that wasn't it. A moment ago — before he'd closed his eyes — these things had looked terrifying enough that anyone would have frozen. More precisely: their appearance had changed.
"Jisu, behind you!"
Dodging was easy enough even before the Operator said a word. That wasn't the problem.
That indescribable terror from before wasn't there at all. That was why he'd thought their appearance had changed — but no matter how he turned it over, something still felt off.
Do they even change appearance?
Jisu sank into thought. A shift in outward form wasn't completely unheard of, but it didn't seem likely either. As a combat skill, it wouldn't have helped a monster much.
And that was when a keyword flashed through his mind.
Don't tell me…!
KRUAAAH—
Thud!
—Aaaargh-urk-urk-urk!
Jisu drove his fist, with everything he had, straight into the face of the Amoregon lunging at him. The monster took the blow and was flung away without ceremony, slamming into a large building behind it with a heavy crash.
"It went up!"