Cooperation — And Being Treated Like a Monster
They cooperate. He gets treated like a monster.
BRRRRRRRRT—!
BRRRRRRRRT—!
BRRRRRRRRT—!
Rumble…!
Two full days had already passed since Kang Yul sealed himself inside the Gate and threw himself into the mining work.
He kept at it with the quiet hope that something would turn up the way the amber had last time — but so far, nothing worth mentioning had surfaced.
"Hoo…! It's hot. So damn hot!"
Only two days remained before he had to report for Management Bureau duty. Ideally he would scrape together something today and put together the funds for proper hunter gear — but Kang Yul decided not to let himself get impatient.
There was a reason for that.
Wriggle—
"There you are, Worm."
He wasn't alone anymore.
Wriggle—!
: Feels a deep fondness toward you.
: Thinks it will help you.
"I'd be grateful if you helped out again today."
For the past two days, every mining session had been a joint effort with Worm.
Not that Worm did the actual digging. It could have tried, but the efficiency would have been abysmal. A worm the size of a finger could only swallow so much at a time.
So Kang Yul had asked it to handle something else entirely: eating the loose dirt piled on the floor and clearing it away.
Crunch— crunch— crunch— crunch—
It didn't sound like much, but for Kang Yul it made an enormous difference.
He mined; Worm ate the dirt. While Worm was busy eating, he set up support beams to keep the tunnel from collapsing. Removing just that one step — hauling the dirt himself — sent the overall efficiency soaring.
Maybe it's because I'm not working alone? Somehow it feels more manageable than before.
Thanks to that, his mining hours had doubled. Four hours used to leave him drained; now he could push through eight without much trouble.
And when hunger hit, he simply scooped up a handful of the surrounding soil and tossed it into his mouth for a meal.
This dirt-eating ability is surprisingly handy.
Saving on food costs was nice enough, but there was something else — eating soil seemed to fill him with energy. The fatigue eased, just a little.
Well, it's probably more thanks to cutting out a whole step in the process.
Either way, the routine was set: mine, eat dirt, cool down the overheated rock drill and rest a bit, then mine again.
Wriggle—!!!
"What is it, Worm?"
Worm came wriggling over at tremendous speed, tapped his shoe as if it had something urgent to say, then looked toward a spot slightly off from the direction he'd been mining.
Wriggle—!
: Says it smells delicious dirt from this direction.
: Thinks it wants to eat the delicious dirt.
"Delicious dirt, that way?"
Wriggle—!
: Feels a deep fondness toward you!
"Is that so…?"
Kang Yul lifted the heat-radiating rock drill and started cutting in the direction Worm had indicated. He had no idea what "delicious dirt" meant to a worm, but a different taste meant a different stratum — and that raised the hope that he might find some new mineral worth money nearby.
BRRRRRRRRT—!
So he carved into the wall and set his supports, while Worm ate the dirt and backed him up.
Crunch— crunch— crunch— crunch—
BRRRRRRRRT—!
BRRRRRRRRT—!
BRRRR… KRUDDDDD—!!!
Twelve hours into the dig, the sound of the drill striking the rock face finally changed.
"!"
Wriggle—!
Kang Yul and Worm glanced at each other as if on cue, then carefully approached the wall. Beyond it, a stratum utterly unlike anything they'd hit so far was revealing itself — pitch-black, as though it had drunk an entire bottle of ink.
Wriggle—!
: Is delighted to have found delicious dirt!
: Thinks it wants to eat the delicious dirt.
"You're calling this dirt…?"
He didn't want to rain on Worm's parade, but Kang Yul was fairly sure that black layer wasn't soil. It might look like dark earth at a glance, but if you dug just a little deeper—
KRUDDDDD—!
Glint—!
—a deep black sheen, smooth as glass, came into view.
Kang Yul ran his fingertips along the glassy black stratum and thought aloud.
"Isn't this… coal?"
Wriggle—?
: Feels a deep fondness toward you?
"No, I'm not complaining. I was just wondering if you can eat this too, even though it isn't dirt."
Then again, Worm had cheerfully chewed through amber, so dirt clearly wasn't its only menu. With an epithet like "the mountain-eating worm," it might well be an omnivore. He was simply curious whether coal counted as "delicious dirt" in Worm's book.
But for an omnivore, it still won't touch the bones in the cavern.
That had been yesterday. On a hunch, Kang Yul had pointed at the bones in the hollow and asked if Worm wanted them.
Wriggle…
: Thinks it is not delicious dirt.
: …….
Worm had refused. And it hadn't felt like a simple "I don't want to" so much as a firm "I must not eat that."
Just what are those bones, anyway…
He turned the question over for a while, then gave up. Some truths were better left buried — and if even Worm was carefully avoiding those bones, this was probably one of them.
Wriggle—!
: Thinks it wants to eat the delicious dirt!
"Ah, sorry. Coming right up."
KRUDDDDD—!
Snapped back to the present by Worm's prodding, Kang Yul broke off a reasonable chunk of coal with the drill and set it down in front of his companion. He packed some of the rest into the box and opened a trade with Hogamsangin, figuring coal had to fetch a better price than plain dirt.
A short while later, he and Worm were sampling the freshly mined coal while they waited.
"Coal tastes like cinnamon…? Wait — more importantly, I can eat minerals too? Is that actually okay?"
Wriggle—!
: Thinks it is delicious dirt!
"Mm… fair point. I'm already shoveling dirt by the handful. A little mineral on top isn't going to change much."
Click—!
"Ah, a note."
Kang Yul took the familiar white slip confirming the deposit, stepped out of the Gate, and checked his phone. And then he was certain.
"Ha — three million in one go—?!!"
His era had finally arrived.
A certain psychologist once said that reaching world-class expertise in any field required at least ten years. Of course, simply letting ten years pass didn't make anyone an expert. Those years had to be filled with relentless, high-intensity immersion and practice.
Naturally, the pattern stood out all the more in professions where competition was fierce and a single mistake could cost a life. In the present day, one occupation had risen as the prime example: the people who dealt with the supernatural.
Among them, the ones who faced those phenomena head-on, managed them, and studied them — the hunters.
"Team Leader Myo. That one showed up bare-handed. Zero sense of danger. Won't last long in this business."
"…."
"And that guy over there — what's with all the layers? Mental contamination is the real killer in the Suraksan Gate, and he clearly hasn't even checked the Hunter Gallery. He's not long for this world either."
"…."
Twenty years had passed since the supernatural first appeared in the world. Twenty years was more than enough time for an industry to stagnate — and among the old hands, a saying had been handed down.
You can't always pick out who'll survive. But the ones about to die are easy to spot.
Spend long enough in this line of work and you learned it whether you wanted to or not. Running into yesterday's acquaintance as today's corpse was hardly rare. Bad luck left them as unrecognizable hunks of meat; worse luck meant you never found them at all.
So the longer a hunter stayed active, the more sensitive they became to death. For them, relationships weren't measured by personality or looks or any other rational standard. There was only one thing that mattered.
Could you cling to life — or not. That was it.
"Hey, Team Leader Myo. Am I the only one with a working mouth here? Say something."
"…."
"You tight-lipped bitch. We've known each other for years and you won't even give me one word? Say something!"
"Speak."
"Crazy bitch. Do me a favor and die after I do, yeah?"
That was why veteran hunters kept their connections going even when personalities clashed. Someone who wasn't about to drop dead. Someone who'd stick around long enough to trade information. A welcome face you ran into again after forgetting they existed. Someone you could swap idle gossip with when you crossed paths.
That was enough.
"If you die before me, I won't leave your corpse alone. I'll work it until the day I drop."
"Yes. As you wish."
"Ugh… so boring. What am I even supposed to talk about with a stuck-up cat like you."
Of course, there came a point when even that stopped being enough. For veterans who'd had a few screws rattled loose by years in the field, daily life was nothing but tedium — and that tedium itself became the reason they kept living the hunter's life instead of walking away.
"I just want to get into the Gate already, but these rookie brats are dragging their feet, making their glorious seniors wait… Ugh, this is pissing me off. Should I just turn them all into corpses and go in?"
"…."
"…Hey. Team Leader Myo. Say something, you bitch. I'm seriously about to cause a scene."
"Speak."
"Ha, you sly little cat. Fine — today it's you or me!"
Crash—!
"T-Team Leaders! If you fight here, we'll all die!"
"Kyaaaaah—! Help! Please! Somebody help!"
Most hunters who earned the "old hand" label never had to worry about money again. In theory, they could retire on the spot and live comfortably — which meant the smart move was to stay far away from Gates that might kill them and enjoy the rest of their lives.
Yes. In theory.
"Team Leader Oh! Please calm down! There are rookies down there!"
"Let go of me, you bastards! You all want to die?!"
"Kyaaah! Team Leader Myo! Please say something!"
"Speak."
Veteran hunters had usually walked too far down the road. By the time they looked back, they'd already stepped one foot outside the realm of humanity — or, without realizing it, gone so far that they'd become something that was no longer human at all.
And so those veterans reacted more sharply than anyone to others of their own kind: the ones who no longer quite belonged.
"Fine! I'll turn every last one of you into corpses and parade you around naked… Hm…? Hey. What the hell is that?"
"I don't know."
The two team leaders, who'd looked ready to tear into each other, turned their heads in unison toward a single point. At the end of their gazes, a thoroughly unremarkable man was opening the auditorium door and walking in.
"Hey, alley cat. You know anything? Nowon-gu is your district."
"I don't. I've never seen that being before."
"You're telling me something like that has been walking around in broad daylight and you didn't notice?"
"That's correct."
"Proud of yourself, huh."
Even as they talked, neither team leader took her eyes off the man who'd come through the door. The way he showed his hunter's license at the entrance and received a name tag reading Kang Yul. The way he pinned it to his chest and sat in the assigned seat. The way he hung back awkwardly, unable to join the chatter of the other rookies, watching from a distance.
Every bit of it looked like an ordinary new hunter.
And yet neither of them looked away for even a second.
"It's pretending to be human…?"
"Quite naturally, at that."
"Right? If you didn't know better, you'd think it was the real thing. What the hell is it?"
Having already stepped outside the bounds of humanity themselves, they knew it by instinct. The man wearing the name tag Kang Yul was no ordinary hunter. He was something that had crossed the line long ago — something that was no longer human.
"The mana density I'm sensing is at least B… no, A?"
"Either way, it's not a density a rookie hunter should have."
The two team leaders dissected him with sharp eyes. Whether he was deliberately suppressing it or not, the raw quantity of mana was extremely faint — but the density was ominous enough that any seasoned hunter would catch it in an instant.
"Was it trapped in an A-rank Gate for about ten years? What kind of density is that?"
"It may well be true."
They stared him down, tongues clicking. They had every reason to. A hunter's internal mana density thickened according to how dangerous the Gates they'd survived were, and for how long. And that density was a direct measure of strength. High density meant you'd lived through Gates that should have killed you — like the growth rings of a tree.
But not many hunters knew this. Most hunters and civilians couldn't sense differences in mana at all. They never registered density, and judged strength by the rough quantity they could roughly gauge instead. Among veterans, someone with oceans of mana but worthless density was dismissed as empty husk. Quantity could be padded with drugs or byproducts. Density could not.
"So what do we do? If we poke it for no reason, we're the ones who get screwed."
"Do you think we'd lose?"
"You crazy bitch, picking a fight now?"
"Answer the question."
"…."
The woman called Team Leader Oh stared silently at the presence seated in the auditorium. An unfamiliar fear she herself didn't understand sat in her eyes.
"…Honestly, I don't like my odds. The density is one thing, but — how do I put it. It feels fundamentally dangerous. I don't know why. I just get the feeling that if we touch it, we're genuinely fucked."
"Is that your skill warning you?"
"No. My skill's quiet. That's what makes it worse. The fact that it's calm while looking at something like that is already wrong."
The woman called Team Leader Myo answered with a brief "Understood," and closed her eyes. A moment later her bright yellow irises flashed open, and she continued.
"I share Team Leader Oh's assessment. We'll leave that being alone."
"You sure? I'm not even in my district, so I can just pretend I saw nothing and bolt. You've got a lot more riding on this."
"Is there another option?"
"Call the Association President, or get a corporation involved…?"
"Do you believe that would improve our chances?"
"Uh…."
Team Leader Oh turned her head and looked down over the auditorium. Before long her face had gone pale, and she shook her head.
"…No. The 'we're fucked' feeling just got stronger. Past the point of no return."
"Same here."
Team Leader Myo shifted her gaze to the presence. The man with the Kang Yul name tag was looking around the room with open curiosity.
"For now, we have no choice but to trust the goodwill it's showing toward humans."
"True enough. There are plenty of freaks who get so deep into their roleplay they hide what they really are. If it's one of those, it'll keep playing rookie as long as nobody pokes it."
Don't provoke the man performing as Kang Yul. Leave him free to maintain the act of a freshly awakened rookie hunter. The two team leaders settled on that conclusion.
"Ah — but who's going to escort that thing?"
"Will you take it?"
"Like hell. It's your district, so you deal with it."
"Understood."
And so, at the very moment two of Seoul's representative veteran hunters concluded that the rookie hunter named Kang Yul was "something that merely resembled a human"—
—Kang Yul himself, completely unaware of any of it, was thinking only one thing:
I want to wrap this up and get back to mining. How long is this going to take…?
He was itching to finish digging out the new resource Worm had found for him the other day.