Eighty Percent Off — Today Only
"Eighty percent off — a revolutionary sale! This price is for today only. Miss this chance and you'll regret it. Use it and the pounds are guaranteed to melt away."
"Did you take the bribes, or didn't you? The evidence is all right here — how long will you keep denying it?"
"The man arrested on charges of rape and murder received a recommended sentence of twenty years today."
"A citizen walking down the street was killed in a battle between hunters. Struck by one hunter's skill, the victim is in critical condition and fighting for their life."
The home shopping ad had aired a few days ago. It was on again today.
The political world was too busy fighting and stoking outrage to notice anything else.
Twenty years, recommended. The actual sentence would probably be lighter.
Hunters, free from the reach of the law, swung their power however they pleased.
Lee Hocheon, thirty years old this year, turned off the news and poured himself a glass of water.
Watching news like that did nothing but breed stress. There was nothing he could actually do about any of it.
"Maybe I'll go get some exercise."
A weekend morning. Exercise was the only thing on the agenda.
He had no friends to meet, and no parents, either.
He readied himself in no time and started running.
"Hoo... hoo..."
He'd been at it for about an hour when his heart began pounding far faster than usual. His face burned crimson with rushing blood, and he stopped to catch his breath.
What's going on?
His heartbeat grew faster and more violent until it thundered in his ears like a storm. With each heavy, pounding beat, his consciousness began to swim.
And he had been so meticulous about his health.
Beep. His heart stopped.
I'm dead?
What an absurd way to go. Fortunately, his heart began to beat again, slowly, and after a few moments everything returned to normal.
Lee Hocheon has awakened.
Skill Instant Death has been unlocked.
All physical abilities have increased.
Check your status window.
A strange voice echoed in his head, and a blue holographic window bloomed before his eyes.
Awakening...
Humanity awakened like this, by pure chance. It was a phenomenon that had appeared in the wake of the monster-spewing gates.
Awakening turned a person superhuman and granted them the profession of Hunter.
It was the kind of thing that ought to call for celebration, but he didn't feel particularly joyful.
His emotions rarely moved much, one way or the other.
He sat down on a nearby bench and examined his skill.
Instant Death
— Grade: Beyond Classification
— Instantly kills a living being.
— The type of instant death can be designed.
— The criterion is death within one minute.
— If the target does not die within one minute, the skill is cancelled.
— Mana Cost: 200
— Activation Condition: Target Perception
A skill that killed living beings instantly.
Its grade was Beyond Classification, and its mana cost was 200.
He checked his mana right away: 1,000.
There's a grade called Beyond Classification?
He searched the internet. Awakening occurred at random, granting three to five skills graded from F all the way up to SSS.
One skill, and it's Beyond Classification.
There was no precedent for it anywhere.
He looked around him — people, animals, insects. Every living thing registered as a valid target for the skill.
That's a broken skill.
The kind protagonists in stories got.
Which made his next step obvious.
Become a hunter. Protect humanity from monsters, become a hero, and reap wealth, fame, and beautiful women.
Where's the fun in that?
He started running again. A workout deserved to be finished, after all.
His body was so absurdly light that even after five kilometers, not a drop of sweat had formed.
"Yip!"
He was walking slowly to cool down when he saw a middle-aged man dragging a puppy along by its leash. The puppy couldn't keep up with its owner's pace, tumbling across the dirt path as it struggled along.
The leash was too short for it to breathe properly, either.
"Sir. The puppy can't keep up with you."
Unable to watch any longer, a woman had stepped in.
"What? It's my dog. I've always walked it like this."
"What kind of walk is that? Its neck's been scraped raw and it's bleeding — look at its paws. Its nails are cracked and torn clean off."
The puppy was panting hard, and it was clearly not well. The marks of abuse were all over it.
"He likes this, I'm telling you. What's it to you? Mind your own business."
"Then why even keep a dog? You're keeping it just to torment it."
"Goddammit, what do you want me to do? It's my dog. So what?"
Their voices rose higher and higher, until at last the man swung a hand at the woman. She flinched back and scrambled out of reach.
"Sir. Are you insane?"
"Crazy bitch. Unbelievable."
Once the woman fled, the man went looking for something to take his anger out on.
He kicked the puppy.
Yipe! The puppy went rolling across the ground.
"Oh my. Oh my goodness!"
People had gathered around before anyone noticed.
Maybe I'll give it a try.
He had been watching from a distance. Now he used the skill.
The moment he formed the intent, the mana pooled in his heart drained away, and a window bloomed before his eyes.
Design the type of instant death.
If no design is made within one minute, cardiac arrest will be applied.
So it could be cancelled, too?
The moment that intent took shape, the skill deactivated. He tried again.
The same message appeared. Without waiting out the minute, he set the death to cardiac arrest.
The basics had to be verified first.
"Urgh... kh—khak."
The man suddenly clutched at his chest. He pounded his fist against it, as if something were crushing him from within.
"Sir... what's... what's wrong?"
People asked, but the man couldn't answer.
Thud. He dropped to his knees.
His face had gone ghost-white, slick with cold sweat.
"Haa... haa..."
When his breathing began to fail, the crowd finally understood that something was truly wrong and rushed toward him.
"Sir! What's happening?"
"Is it a heart attack?"
"Somebody call 119!"
The crowd closed around him until the man was no longer visible. Hocheon stepped closer through them.
Dead.
The man lay with both eyes open, not breathing.
The skill had worked.
He quietly withdrew and looked at the puppy. It sat perfectly still, whether it understood it had lost its master or not.
Somehow, a hint of freedom seemed to glimmer in the animal's eyes.
Back home, Hocheon sank into quiet thought.
How was he going to use this ability?
He was a man with no interest in money, fame, or women.
He had grown up an orphan, needing only to keep himself fed; fame was something he had never once considered. He had given up on women this lifetime, too.
There has to be a reason I was given a power like this.
Everything happens for a reason. All he had to do was accept his fate and carry it out.
He turned on the TV.
Targets on video count, too.
Even the violent criminals shown with their faces obscured registered as targets.
The rapist-murderer from that morning's news.
He designed the man's death on the spot.
[When no one is around, he will strangle himself to death.]
His mana drained away. Three targets remained.
He looked up a photo of the CEO of the company that ran those home shopping ads. It registered, as expected. The man had been raking in a fortune by deceptively overselling products that did nothing at all.
[When no one is around, he will strangle himself to death.]
Two left.
Finally, he found the two hunters whose street battle had killed an innocent passerby.
It made no difference that they were national assets. That they were A-rank.
[When no one is around, they will strangle themselves to death.]
Every last point of mana, spent.
Would they truly die?
There was no way to know yet. If it had worked, the media would be reporting it soon enough.
And after that?
He would need to find tomorrow's targets in advance.
There are more than enough.
He wouldn't even have to look far. He drew up a list — politicians first, then other public figures.
The next day, South Korea was in an uproar.
The suicides of the two A-rank hunters dominated every headline. It was a staggering loss for the nation.
With gates spawning monsters that had to be suppressed at all times, the deaths of two high-ranked A-rank hunters delivered a violent shock to the entire country.
At first, the public simply questioned why the two men had died.
But soon, they began questioning how.
The media churned out article after article, hungry for ratings and attention.
"Ruled Out as Double Suicide — Times of Death Differ"
"Experts: Self-Strangulation Is Not Physically Possible"
"Hunter Association Raises Possibility of Foul Play"
It was utter chaos. From morning onward, the whole country talked of nothing but the suicides.
By afternoon, the ranks of those crying murder had grown considerably.
There were too many strange things. Everyone had died by the same method. Every death had occurred at night. The method itself was supposed to be impossible.
As it became clear that these were no coincidental suicides, the media went into a frenzy, and the public began to grasp how serious the situation really was.
Satisfied?
Hocheon combed through every last news report.
By evening, the media was insisting that this was neither a simple suicide nor an ordinary murder.
It was exactly the reaction he had wanted.
They won't be certain yet.
The debate over suicide versus homicide raged on without resolution. What he wanted was a single thing: to make his existence known.
Six today.
After a night's sleep, his mana had grown by 200. Enough to kill six people.
There was no telling why it had increased. All he could do was put the power he'd been given to use.
[When no one is around, they will strangle themselves to death.]
He killed the six he had researched in advance.
Politicians, criminals, hunters, journalists, celebrities. The criterion for selection was simple: had they harmed others to enrich themselves?
Utterly simple.
If asked whether such sins deserved death — he wouldn't know.
He wasn't a god.
"The same incident has occurred again."
"Politician Jung and five others have strangled themselves to death. The deaths of a famous celebrity and a hunter among them have sent shockwaves across the nation."
"The government has ruled the case a homicide and has decided to take immediate action."
South Korea shuddered once more.
Once it became clear that the first day's event was no one-off, the fallout spread across society as a whole.
When foreign media began to take notice, the markets wobbled. And there were early signs of something darker still — factions forming around the killer, ready to follow.
"Five of the six victims from yesterday died in bathrooms."
The government had handed the case to the Hunter Crime Investigation Division, under the Hunter Management Bureau. The culprit, they had concluded, was an awakened.
Kim Woocheol, chief of the Crime Investigation Division, was receiving the briefing.
"Ambiguously, five? And the sixth?"
"The sixth died in the living room of his own home."
"Signs of forced entry?"
"None found."
"How is that even possible?"
Kim Woocheol had investigated countless hunter crimes, but he had never seen anything like this. Awakened or not, crime left evidence, and it happened within the bounds of common sense.
"It's physically impossible. Every victim was in a different location. Two of them died at nearly the same time."
"Nearly the same time?"
"Yes, sir. Victim A died at 3:14 PM. Victim B at 3:15 PM."
"Then that's where we should start the investigation."
The reporting officer shook his head.
"Victim A died in Seoul. Victim B died in Busan. In the bathroom of an event venue."
"Insane..."
No hunter alive could cross more than three hundred kilometers in a single minute.
Kim Woocheol felt a headache building behind his eyes.