I Just Want to Live!
I just wanted to live!
There were largely two paths to becoming a hunter. The first was Post-natal Awakening. Born as an ordinary human and living an ordinary life, only to one day suddenly open one’s eyes to superhuman power. After the external existence known as dungeons appeared on Earth, humanity’s bodies had been producing awakeners at regular intervals, as if creating antibodies to fight a virus. The majority of currently active hunters belonged to this category.
The second was Pre-natal Awakening. Born from a mother who was already a hunter, emerging with powerful hunter factors from the moment of birth. Simply put, it was the elite course. After all, hunters were beings with bodies and mana that transcended humanity. As such, pregnancy itself was extremely difficult, with overwhelmingly high failure rates not only for natural conception but artificial insemination as well. But if it succeeded, the story changed. A child awakened from the moment they were born. An existence whose mana circuits grew along with their body’s development. With that rare probability came the innate potential for pre-natal awakeners to grow faster and stronger than ordinary hunters.
And Jang Mihyeon belonged to the latter.
“Damn it… Who would’ve thought it was that bitch, the Geumseong Guild Chairman’s ‘youngest daughter’?”
“Is that the Geumseong Guild—the strongest hunter guild in Korea?!”
“Yeah. I knew she looked familiar. Saw her in a hunter magazine once.”
A ripple of unease spread through the Reproductive Agency employees. The Geumseong Guild Chairman’s youngest daughter. Another monster from the Jang family following in her older sister Jang Songhui’s footsteps. A B-class hunter at twenty years old who had simultaneously earned the title Red Wind, Asia’s super rookie.
That was the kind of hunter Jang Mihyeon was.
And her specialty was none other than boxing—an Earth martial art. The most primal striking technique, created purely to hit people and refined under the name of sport. But in Jang Mihyeon’s hands, boxing was no longer a sport.
Ratatatatatatata!
Fists laden with red mana tore through the air. It was less a punch and more a barrage. Short. Fast. Precise.
Every time the Reproductive Agency staff swarmed her, Jang Mihyeon’s body seemed to sway. Or rather, it only looked that way. In reality she was dodging—stepping back to drive a fist into a jaw, slipping inside half a beat to explode an abdomen, twisting the elbow of a side-charging opponent and slamming them straight into the ground.
The sight resembled a butterfly flitting through tall grass. But its true nature was a ruthless giant hornet beating its wings to mimic one.
“Urk!”
“Stop her! Don’t let her through!”
“We’re the ones who can’t get through, you idiot!”
The International Reproductive Resource Management Agency was the most powerful international organization in modern human society. Under the banner of male protection and the continuation of humanity, it intervened in national governments and even guild disputes. Naturally, it needed personnel who could control scenes, secure protected targets, and suppress situations with force when necessary. That was why so many of its employees were former hunters—women who had chosen uniforms over dungeons.
Yet right now those very women were being pushed back by a single person.
Kwon Doyeon had no choice but to acknowledge it.
So the talent is real.
Even she, once called a prodigy, had not been at that level at the same age. But talent alone could not overturn every situation.
The opponent’s focus was locked on the staff in front of her. Probably because of the man behind her back.
Seo Jihou. The target she had to protect.
Kwon Doyeon did not miss that single fleeting gap.
Srrrrrk.
Red mist flowed beneath Jang Mihyeon’s feet. Mana as sticky as blood. It spread across the ground, then sharp thorns erupted upward.
Thud!
“Urk…!”
Jang Mihyeon twisted on pure instinct. The thorn that should have pierced her back barely missed. But she could not avoid it completely. The red spike grazed her side, tearing her combat suit and drawing blood.
“You put a wound… on my body?”
“Why not, little girl?”
Kwon Doyeon staggered upright. Blood stained the corner of her mouth and her missing teeth made her lisp slightly, yet she only smiled in an ugly way.
“The world keeps calling you a genius, genius, genius—so you really thought you could flip this whole situation by yourself?”
“…!”
Before the words even finished, red tentacles surged from every direction.
Swishswishswishswish!
Jang Mihyeon stepped instantly—left, back, right—lowering her body, twisting her shoulders, dodging by the narrowest margins. But the tentacles kept coming. The entire barrier was Kwon Doyeon’s domain. Inside this red space, the floor, the air, everything could become her weapon.
“After all, you’re just a rookie who only just hit B-class… I was originally an A-class hunter!”
“D-Deputy Director? Weren’t you B-class?”
When a nearby employee asked in confusion, Kwon Doyeon’s face twisted.
“Fuck! Does it make any goddamn sense that my rank was stripped just because I touched a male staffer at the Hunter Association headquarters during my A-class promotion test?!”
On official records, Kwon Doyeon was a former B-class hunter. The truth was different. She was an awakener who had once stood at the threshold of A-class. But after a male harassment incident, a red stamp was slapped on her file and she was expelled from her guild. Just as her hunter career was about to be cut short, one place had taken her in: an international organization that ignored past careers as long as you produced results. The International Reproductive Resource Management Agency.
Outwardly, a noble institution protecting males. In the shadows, a notorious laundering service where problem hunters put on uniforms and had their records cleaned.
It was there that Kwon Doyeon had regained power. And now, watching Jang Mihyeon—who was younger than her yet walking the path she herself had failed to climb—jealousy, rage, the stinging pain in her mouth, and the fresh humiliation of being ignored by a man who should only be loved and protected all boiled together.
“Stop watching and charge! Kill that bitch!”
“B-but she’s the Geumseong Guild Chairman’s youngest daughter!”
“It’s just a domestic guild name!”
Kwon Doyeon screamed, voice thick with malice.
“We’re an international organization! By our standards they’re interfering with official duties right now!”
At those words the employees’ eyes changed.
Jang Mihyeon swung her fists while weaving between tentacles, but the situation was slowly worsening. Agency staff pressed from the front while red tentacles erupted endlessly from below. Whenever Kwon Doyeon restrained her movements with the barrier, the subordinates exploited the openings. No matter how genius a B-class hunter she was, holding out alone against this formation was too much. If things continued, defeat was only a matter of time.
Just as she bit her lip—
“Surgery complete.”
A low voice rang out.
Jang Mihyeon. Kwon Doyeon. Every agency employee. All of them turned at once toward the voice.
There stood Seo Jihou, a blue scalpel in one hand.
Crash!
At the same time, the red barrier covering everything shattered into pieces.
“My barrier…?”
Sunlight poured down. Wind rushed in. The noise of the university district flooded back to life.
“Huh? What are those people?”
“Didn’t you hear something break just now?”
“Wait, is that blood?”
“Kyaaaaaaaak!”
The university students outside the barrier finally registered the situation. Screaming students. People pulling out phones. Security guards running from afar. The reality hidden by the red world crashed over them in an instant.
In the middle of that chaos, Seo Jihou walked forward.
“Let’s stop here. It’s all over now.”
“All over…?”
Kwon Doyeon muttered in disbelief.
“Are you saying you did this? That a mere man broke my barrier?”
“‘Broke’ sounds rather violent. Though if we say I returned something painful to its ‘normal’ state, that might be more accurate.”
“What?”
It made no sense. She herself was still standing. The caster had not fallen. That left only one possibility: someone had located the barrier’s core and dismantled it directly.
But the core was the heart of the spell. Its location was normally hidden so only the caster could know it, and even if discovered it was protected by multiple layers of defensive formulas. Forcibly destroying it required output at least equal to the caster’s. Otherwise it would take dozens of people peeling the defenses away one by one. It was not for nothing that the Hunter Association maintained a dedicated barrier dismantling team.
Yet that man had done it alone. In just a few minutes.
What the hell is this?
It was then.
“Not yet! Deputy Director!”
One employee shouted.
“The opponent’s strongest combatant, Jang Mihyeon, is already exhausted!”
“That’s right! Since we’ve already declared the Male Resource Emergency Preservation Zone, retreating now means it’s over for us!”
“Even if we can’t secure Jang Mihyeon, we can still secure Seo Jihou!”
At those words several employees readjusted their weapons.
In truth Jang Mihyeon’s condition was poor. Her combat suit was torn in multiple places and blood still flowed from her side. Seo Jihou’s face was pale too, likely from the backlash of dismantling the barrier. He looked drained, like a doctor who had just finished major surgery.
The agency employees saw a chance of victory.
But Kwon Doyeon did not.
“We have to run…”
“Deputy Director?”
“Withdraw immediately… All personnel withdraw!”
“What?”
The barrier was broken. The incident had been exposed. Right in the middle of the nation’s top medical university campus, after arbitrarily declaring a Male Resource Emergency Preservation Zone. On top of using hunter abilities in a non-dungeon location against a male. There was no way those women would not learn of a disturbance this large.
The Ministry of Male Family Affairs. A bitter rival to the Reproductive Agency and a pack of insane women who turned any male-related incident scene into a bloodbath.
There was an old saying inside the Reproductive Agency: “The Ministry of Male Family Affairs rips women apart.”
Kwon Doyeon had experienced those words firsthand once. It was the worst trauma, one she never wanted to recall again.
Therefore—
“Retreeeeeeeeeeat!”
“Huh?!”
“Deputy Director! Together!”
“Shut up and run!”
Kwon Doyeon turned and fled before any of her subordinates. The missing teeth, her shattered dignity, even her deputy director title—none of it mattered anymore. She had to survive first. Before the Ministry of Male Family Affairs arrived. Before those crazy bitches set foot on the scene.
She sprinted desperately toward the Reproductive Agency branch.
White uniforms swarmed after her in a frantic wave.
The Male Resource Emergency Preservation Zone—the grandiose restricted area personally declared by the deputy director of the Korean Branch of the International Reproductive Resource Management Agency—collapsed just like that, leaving behind the fastest display of tail-tucking the world had ever seen.