Tadersen
The target was Tadersen.
"You received the goods, I trust?"
"Received them, Won-goo. They were in fine condition."
"I told you I handle my contracts cleanly. Now it's time to settle the rest of the payment, isn't it?"
With that, Kane pulled a stack of cards from inside his coat and tossed them over.
"As promised. And let me say it again — watch your mouth. You absolutely have to."
"No need to worry about that. That's why we agreed to split the payments by date, remember?"
"I trust the way you do business, Won-goo."
After finishing his meeting with Kane, Won-goo moved on to Sanghae's restaurant. Every Named who had taken part in the hunt was already gathered there, waiting to receive their cut. Naturally, Won-goo stepped up to the front of the room.
"Good work, everyone. The coins we promised will be handed out as you leave."
With that, Won-goo set a large box down on the table.
"We'll be drawing lots with these."
He pulled out the card stack he'd received from Kane. Each card had a number inscribed on it in magic ink.
"The order you draw determines the order you enter the warehouse. That's written into the contract, so I expect everyone to honor it."
He dropped the cards into the box, and people came forward one by one to draw. There had been some dispute over who would draw first, but that had all been settled by lottery in the meeting held before the hunt. Each team pulled a card in turn, and the room filled with alternating cheers and groans. Only after every last team had drawn did the Cham Frog hunt officially come to a close.
Pacific dropped by Won-goo's office.
"Hand everything off to the other teams? Everyone was hauling Angler gear in."
"The bastard we dealt with didn't have a thing on him. The clothes he was wearing had some functional enhancements, but nothing worth writing home about."
"Was it Kim Yang-cheon, by any chance?"
"Yep."
"Kim Yang-cheon's got a penalty that keeps him from wielding weapons."
"Which is exactly why we had nothing to hand over."
"Makes sense. But wait — if it was Kim Yang-cheon, he should've had a Seal, shouldn't he?"
"A Seal?"
"Yeah. Kim Yang-cheon was a Seal user too."
"Never saw one. Hey, Hyun-sung!"
Won-goo called for Lee Hyun-sung at once.
"Yes, Hyeong-nim!"
"Did we get rid of Kim Yang-cheon's body?"
"No, Hyeong-nim. I brought it back with us."
"You brought the whole thing?"
"I had a bad feeling about him. You know I never just walk past bastards like that."
"A bounty?"
"Figured there'd probably be one on him."
When a survivor died out in the Field, the usual practice was simply to leave the body where it fell. The monsters and the ever-shifting climate took care of erasing the evidence on their own. Most of Won-goo's crew handled bodies the same way. The exception was when a bounty seemed likely to be attached — those corpses tended to come home with them.
"Don't people usually just bring back the head?"
"That's when you're short on cargo space. As you well know, ours is a bit roomy."
Sizable teams really did haul around a mountain of Subspace Backpacks. Won-goo's crew carried them too, but they owned less than a tenth of what other teams kept stocked. That was because Won-goo's Trailer doubled as a subspace storage itself, so hauling back Kim Yang-cheon's body whole wasn't any trouble at all. If they'd been in a situation like the Ralph job, where they had to clear out of a dungeon, it might have been different — but under normal circumstances, bringing it back intact was standard practice.
"It hasn't been processed yet, Hyeong-nim."
"Good. Then we can take a look."
"You actually thought about a bounty? He was the head of a Fishing Ground, for crying out loud. Honestly……" Pacific shook his head. "Well, the man was a street thug in how he operated. And there's no law saying you can't have a bounty just because you stroll in and out of a shelter on the regular. Anyone can post a bounty privately, for any amount. You knew that already."
"True enough, but…… Fishing Ground types don't usually end up with bounties. They don't involve themselves in Field business."
The body of Kim Yang-cheon, sealed in plastic, made its appearance. It had been kept in subspace, so decomposition had barely begun — but now that it had been pulled out, rot would set in properly. Lee Hyun-sung, unprompted, began examining the corpse with meticulous care.
"Nothing here."
"There's got to be. I'm telling you, he was a Seal user."
"Any bounty posted on him?"
"Not that I know of. There was one guy worth putting one on, but I heard he got dealt with."
"Wang-ko?"
"That's the one."
"Was Wang-ko a Seal user too?"
"Right? And Wang-ko's Seal was the better one, I hear. That's exactly why he could go toe-to-toe with Kim Yang-cheon on even footing."
"Goddamn it…… What a waste. Am I supposed to strip every corpse from now on?"
"That's a horrifying thing to say."
"Hyeong-nim. Found it."
Lee Hyun-sung bowed his head with crisp formality.
"Where?"
"On the sole of his foot."
"The sole of his foot?"
"Yes, Hyeong-nim."
Won-goo drew a dagger from his belt and carved the Seal cleanly out of Kim Yang-cheon's skin himself. It was skill fit for a professional butcher and then some.
"Nice work."
"Standard practice. So Kim Yang-cheon doesn't even have a bounty on him? Annoying. Other teams walked off with proper loot."
"That Seal's probably a decent grade, no?"
"It's the size of a foot sole, what grade could it—"
"You can't judge by size. A Seal is—"
"I know, I know. What ability it grants matters more than how big it is. I'm just saying it stings, is all. We took down the man who ran a whole Fishing Ground and this is what we get."
As he spoke, Won-goo gestured, and Lee Hyun-sung and the rest of the crew rewrapped Kim Yang-cheon's body in plastic and carried it out.
"Just dispose of that. Hyun-sung!"
"Understood, Hyeong-nim!"
"Anyway, thanks. I was about to toss him out with the trash."
"We've known each other long enough for that much, haven't we?"
Won-goo snorted a laugh, and Pacific laughed along with him. But as they sat there chuckling at each other, blood suddenly trickled from Pacific's nose. He noticed it and scowled.
"The meds are wearing off. Mind giving me another shot? You don't mind, right?"
"You still haven't kicked that?"
Won-goo stared at him with narrowed eyes.
"Kicked what? If I had, would I be going door to door doing sales calls like a why-sam?"
"There it is again — that weird accent."
"Ah, right. Thanks for the correction."
Pacific skillfully drew up the syringe and injected it into the IV line, and as if by magic, the nosebleed stopped.
"Anyway, we've got nothing to dispose of. Just throw in more of what you showed me last time."
"Which was?"
"Barrier shields."
"I've got those. But hey, Director Gong."
"What?"
"Now that you've taken down a Cham Frog — how was it?"
"How was what? I caught it. That's all."
"No, I mean — that went pretty smoothly, didn't it?"
Won-goo's eyes thinned.
"Don't push your drugs on me. I've got no intention of becoming an Angler."
"I'm telling you, there's a good job on the table."
"Forget the job."
"It's the one up on Mt. Yuhyang. Your skills would be a perfect fit, Director Gong. Just go with a team like you did this time."
"Ugh, drop it. Besides, Mt. Yuhyang is Ganjeol Point territory."
Territory boundaries were drawn around Black Shelter as the reference point. The area where the Ganjeolgot Coalition operated was under strict control — even their shelters couldn't be entered by just anyone. Shelter Slow admitted only coalition members, and no one else.
"You can get in with an invitation. And after the Black Shelter business, Ganjeol Point is going to rate you pretty highly, Director Gong."
"My reputation would be fine, sure. But Ganjeol Point and we walk different roads. Those people build up their factions too much."
"Who said anything about joining them? You go, you hunt, and you build a closer relationship with Ganjeol Point while you're at it. What's not to like? The Black Shelter that sat between you is gone now, so you're bound to get more entangled with them anyway — smoother relations beat sour ones, no?"
"If there's a Large Species in their territory, can't Ganjeol Point handle it themselves?"
"Who was it that wrecked the Fishing Grounds around here, huh?"
"They blew themselves up fighting each other. I just got caught in the blast radius."
"You did contribute, though."
"And you're making that my responsibility?"
"Not blaming you — just telling you to think it over. It's a good opportunity. The Ganjeolgot Coalition, for all its size, is still just Field survivors. Not Anglers. Which is exactly why they're tearing their hair out over the Large Species that's appeared on Mt. Yuhyang."
"……"
Won-goo could have asked how the man knew the situation in such detail, but he didn't. He'd known for a long time that Pacific was razor-sharp when it came to this kind of information.
"One question. Were you the one who brought me this Cham Frog job?"
"The Cham Frog had nothing to do with me. The Mt. Yuhyang matter, though — I'd been talking with Ganjeol Point about it. I'd already lined up a next schedule with Wang-ko."
"So that's why you followed us all the way out here?"
"Partly. Tagging along after the Anglers is my job anyway. So? Any thoughts?"
"On what? What exactly am I supposed to catch?"
"Tadersen."
"Ah — fucking hell."
The curse came out of Won-goo's mouth the instant he heard the name.
"It can be taken down. You know that."
"It's a whole different size class from a Cham Frog."
"It's still small. I'm telling you it's fine."
"……"
The armored monster. Tadersen. One of the most infamous of all Large Species.
And Won-goo knew far more about Tadersen than the world at large did. Strictly speaking, Tadersen wasn't a Large Species at all — and yet it was classified as one. A monster that was a Large Species and yet wasn't.
It earned the classification because it grew continuously, starting from just over two meters and swelling to full Large Species bulk. It lost the classification because Tadersen possessed a handful of traits so rare among the monsters of the apocalypse that they defied the category entirely.
Humanoid. Tadersen bore a shape eerily close to a human being. Its size and savagery put it beyond any comparison to mankind, but it walked upright and used its hands and feet freely — and that form was almost unheard of among Large Species monsters.
On top of that, it was a growth type. Tadersen was highly intelligent, capable of learning and growing without end. It wasn't the absolute worst case — like other growth-type monsters that simply devoured prey to gain strength — but its endless growth carried real weight. Given enough time, it would mimic survivor techniques, and it would even acquire and use items.
And then the final trait. It was this last feature that often earned Tadersen its place among the worst monsters in existence.
Resurrection. This was a different concept from the reset phenomenon, where a dead monster simply reappeared. Given time, a slain Tadersen would rise again — carrying over, intact, every memory, every will, every ability it held in life — stronger than before.
"I'm not hunting Tadersen. Get another Fishing Ground involved or something."
"Think it through. Taking down Tadersen is just a brute-force contest. It doesn't have any special abilities, right?"
For a heartbeat, Won-goo's mouth opened — then shut again. He'd been about to protest that the thing most certainly did have special abilities.
He swallowed the words because so little information about Tadersen had ever been made public.
'It was never something they released to be caught in the first place, after all……'
Leave it alone and it grew. Kill it and it came back bigger. What made it even more infuriating was that Tadersen remembered, with perfect fidelity, whoever killed it. Recognizing a face would have been one thing — but it remembered the abilities and techniques its killer had used, and adapted to them. That was the most maddening part of all. Which was why Won-goo's conclusion had always been simple: avoid entangling with it as much as possible.
'It carries one hell of a cursed trait, but the rewards are guaranteed…… still, in its current state?'
Won-goo ran a rapid simulation in his head. It wasn't a monster he'd be incapable of taking down as things stood — but nothing about it drew him in. He could grow plenty without gambling on a threat like Tadersen.
"Hmm……"
"Done calculating?"
"Still no."
"Ah — why not?"
"Just be careful around Tadersen. The moment you enter that territory, a warning pops up, doesn't it? This is the domain of Tadersen."
"Its territory isn't exactly small. It's swallowed most of Mt. Yuhyang. You'd just leave that sitting there? If you were the head of Ganjeol Point, would you?"
"He'd have tried something, sure. But…… no. I can't take that offer."
"Hmm……"
"But one question."
"What?"
"Did Tadersen show up before or after the Black Shelter business?"
"Before, I'd say?"
"So that's why the response was slower than I expected."
"Slower than what?"
"The Black Shelter business. Ganjeol Point took part in that too, remember. But their reaction was weaker than I figured it'd be."
"……"
"Tadersen's out. Setting foot in Ganjeol territory doesn't sit right with me either. And it's not like Mt. Yuhyang is the only place Ganjeol Point operates — they've got plenty of territory already, and they're still greedy for more."
"Can you blame them? Yuhyang is the plum, after all."
"Honestly. Then tell that old man Ganjeol to step onto the field himself. Ever since he became Supreme Leader he's been hiding behind his walls. What is it, some rich-man's disease?"
"Who knows? Am I a Ganjeol Point official? I do what I'm asked to do. Hah…… how am I even supposed to put it?"
"Truthfully. That's how you put it. Say the Anglers fought each other to mutual destruction."
"That's not exactly what happened, though?"
Pacific grinned wide.
"Then throw my version in too. Tell them a man named Gong Won-goo landed the killing blow."