It Went Up!
"W-wait, what?"
Seyeon's voice came through the receiver, baffled by all this talk of something suddenly going up. But Jisu, practically vibrating with excitement, couldn't hear a word of it. He was too busy drowning in pure, unfiltered joy.
He wasn't scared anymore.
His Mental Strength stat must have risen. The creature that had looked, mere moments ago, like a demon too hideous to even describe now resembled nothing more than a cheap knockoff dinosaur.
I was scared of that?
The more he thought about it, the more absurd it became. If a monster like that showed up in a video game, he'd be first in line to flame the designers for that pathetic excuse of a model. And he'd actually frozen up over that?
Even knowing it was the stat's doing, he couldn't help getting pissed.
"These things are nothing!"
And since he was already pissed, he might as well go wild. Jisu, who until now had done nothing but dodge and counter, charged in first this time and unleashed a roundhouse kick.
Thwack!
Kuek— kueeeeek!
The Amoregon took the kick square and went flying into the one beside it. With a dull thud, the second creature was sent sailing helplessly into the distance, like a bowling pin struck by a bowling ball. To Jisu, it looked exactly like kicking one of those flailing inflatable tube men they use to flag down customers on the street and watching it go tumbling away.
CRASH!
That massive body slammed into a towering building with a thunderous roar. A long, splintering crack ran up the facade. He'd heard there were hunters who specialized in nothing but restoring fields that had been wrecked like this, but Jisu was in no state to consider any of that.
"I mean, these things are nothing! Come on!"
He'd already been irritated enough by all that pointless, wasted terror. Now he started working that resentment out of his system for real. With no weapon at all, laughing out loud, he began cleaning up the Amoregons with his bare hands.
"Getting spooked by trash like this! Ha! The second it goes up, they're nothing!"
Wham!
He tore through them with ease. As their numbers dwindled, something like the orbs he'd seen after killing the wyvern began to drift into view, one after another. They were finally starting to die off, one by one.
"See! Once your stats go up, they're nothing at all! ……Wait. If it went up?"
If it went up.
Where had he invested his Mental Strength?
I put Strength and Agility into something that looked reasonably safe. Which means Mental Strength and Stamina definitely went into…!
He remembered now. He'd put Strength and Agility into the major coins on the main screen. And he'd dumped Mental Strength and Stamina into a shit coin. And right now, the fact that his Mental Strength stat had risen was as good as confirmed. Which meant—
The shit coin… went up?
Wham!
KUEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!
Even in the middle of that thought, Jisu casually elbowed an incoming Amoregon and sent it flying with terrifying force. The realization hit him, and for a moment he just stood there, stunned speechless.
Whether it was his current stats bearing down on them or sheer intimidation, the remaining Amoregons froze in place, cowed by his presence.
Right. The shit coin had gone up. The shit coin.
"Hahahaha! They said it was a shitshow, they said it was a mess—and it really is a mess!"
A disbelieving laugh spilled out of him as he finished the rest with his fists. People had always said the coin market was a bigger circus than anyone could imagine, and it really was an insane place. With a string of dull, heavy thuds, the hideous knockoff-dinosaur Amoregons bid farewell to the living world one by one.
The sight of a man cackling as he cleaned up monsters was, to any third party, more than a little grotesque.
"J-Jisu…"
Seyeon couldn't get a single word out. The way he was mercilessly butchering the Amoregons could only be described as the work of an asura. How many people in the world would have the guts to casually strike up a conversation with him in a situation like that?
In later years, hunters would look upon this legendary scene—passed down by a certain operator—with awe, and they would call him the merciless Strongest Hunter on Earth, who slaughters his enemies with a smile.
Bitstorm's chat window started scrolling faster than it had in a very long time. A bull market, arriving at last after quite the drought.
Jisu checked the shit coin's price.
SHIT : 0.00072 Equilium
I definitely bought at 0.00003 Equilium, so that's gone up more than tenfold.
He had no idea why a coin like this had risen, but since it had, dumping the whole position seemed like the smart move. And it wasn't just the shit coin, either. All kinds of obscure junk coins on the relatively unknown Bitcoin and Equilium markets were posting some seriously high gains. As always, nobody had the faintest clue why.
Sold all SHIT at 0.00072 Equilium per 1 SHIT.
With that, he'd recovered a decent chunk of the Stamina and Mental Strength that had crashed. The irony was that Bitcoin Meso and Leftcoin—the ones he'd bought as the "safe" play—had actually dropped some. He had no idea what they'd do from here, but for now he decided to cut his losses and pulled his invested Strength and Agility back out as well.
Sold all Bitcoin Meso (BCM) at ₩1,034,228 per 1 BCM.
Sold all Leftcoin (LFC) at ₩193,030 per 1 LFC.
There. Stats recovered, more or less!
SS+ rank, back again. It was a little frustrating that Strength and Agility had gotten carved up, but this was still an excellent recovery.
If I'd known this would happen, I would've just dumped everything into the shit coin! What's it called again? Right. All-in. I should've gone all-in on shit.
"All-in on shit" was a little funny even to him, but results spoke for themselves. It was a shame, but what could he do? This experience would go a long way toward killing his fear the next time he put money into coins.
If even a nobody shit coin could go up, what coin wouldn't?
But excitement always faded fast.
No. There's a limit to riding on luck. I should hold off on these sudden all-ins from now on.
With Justice, with the shit coin—he'd just gotten lucky, that was all. He was still settling that thought when Seyeon called.
"Hello?"
Something about her voice on the other end of the line was off. It wasn't her usual high-energy tone. She sounded, if anything, a little frightened.
"Did something happen?"
"……Ah."
Come to think of it, he didn't remember turning it off. It had been dead when he got home, so he'd figured the battery had died—but it must have been running just fine the entire time he was hunting.
What a ridiculous misunderstanding. Honestly, though, explaining the whole thing felt like it would just be more exhausting.
"That's not it. You can just be comfortable with me."
A woman whose attitude could flip on a dime.
He hung up.
That's as far as I'm relying on luck.
It might have sounded a little ridiculous, but he headed home having decided he should at least study how to read a chart.
The office of the Hunter Association President.
A woman with long, straight white hair and a bust so spectacularly enormous that no other woman could possibly compare sat with her fingers laced together, reviewing a hunter's data. Her name was Yoo Chaerin. She was known as the most powerful hunter in the Republic of Korea.
Hyun Jisu.
SS-rank hunter.
Ability unknown—but a hunter with extraordinarily high stats.
………….
She stared at his profile in silence for a long time.
If his stats are this high… then perhaps my ability…
A high-ranking hunter of S-rank or above, appearing for the first time in a very long while. All of Hunter Association President Yoo Chaerin's attention poured onto this storm of a new existence.
If that's possible…
And so, without even realizing it, Jisu had captured yet another person's gaze.