Chapter 13
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 13
Chapter Title: I'm Pretty Awesome (1)
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So that's why the reaction was so strange. It seems Choi Soo-hyun pulled some strings.
“Things went well with the higher-ups. It also helped that you're unaffiliated, so you didn't have a plausible motive to kill other Hunters.”
“Do Hunters from different affiliations really kill each other inside dungeons?”
“Why would you think they wouldn't?”
This time, I was the one who fell silent.
Just because dungeons and monsters appeared didn't mean human selfishness had vanished.
Even I had to admit it was a foolish question.
To some, it might be a terrible nightmare, but to others, it wasn't a nightmare but a dream—literally, an opportunity.
That opportunity wasn't fair to everyone.
If there's an enemy, you simply eliminate them.
In that sense, a dungeon that left no traces was the perfect place.
As long as there were no witnesses, no one could tell if someone died at the hands of a monster or a person.
As always, man's greatest enemy is man.
Nothing had changed.
Choi Soo-hyun uncrossed his legs, making a show of taking credit.
“You owe me one.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and’?”
“Weren't you unaffiliated?”
As far as I knew, Choi Soo-hyun was currently an unaffiliated Hunter.
“I am.”
I thought unaffiliated Hunters couldn't use skills.
But a Key?
“So how do you have the Key skill?”
At my question, Choi Soo-hyun's mouth fell slightly open. “Ah…”
“First off, the fact that I can use the Key skill is a secret. Got it?”
“I don't have anyone to tell.”
“It just… works, for some reason.”
“Huh?”
I tilted my head in confusion, but Choi Soo-hyun just scratched his cheek as if he had nothing more to say.
“This skill wasn't from the god I originally served, but from a different one. I don't know if that's the reason, but anyway, I can use it.”
“Are you sure you're not lying about being unaffiliated?”
“Wanna die?”
Choi Soo-hyun raised a fist, telling me to stop talking nonsense.
I might need Choi Soo-hyun, but I had no intention of being dragged along blindly.
Now, I really wanted to hear why he had invited me to his home.
“So, what's the reason you invited me over?”
In response to my question, Choi Soo-hyun suddenly held up a hand.
He stared at his vibrating phone with a serious expression.
His reply was absurd.
“Hey, hold on. The pizza's here.”
Choi Soo-hyun turned and went outside to get the pizza.
As he vanished in an instant, I pressed my thumb firmly against my forehead.
“Damn it, way to ruin the mood.”
This is why people who march to the beat of their own drum are a pain.
A moment later, I was sitting on the sofa, eating the pizza Choi Soo-hyun had brought back.
It wasn't exactly the best situation for a meal, but I hadn't eaten anything since morning and was starving, so I forced the pizza down.
Choi Soo-hyun took a bottle of soju from the fridge.
Pizza and soju. I couldn't for the life of me figure out that combination.
He filled a paper cup with soju and downed more than half of it on the spot.
Koreans really do need a drink to get a conversation going.
Choi Soo-hyun pointed a finger at me as I washed down the pizza with a Coke.
“The reason is simple. I called you here because I have a question.”
“A question?”
What on earth could he be so curious about that he'd invite me to his home?
Choi Soo-hyun gave a slight nod.
“How are you alive?”
For an invitation to his home, it was a remarkably simple question.
Unable to grasp his intention, I was genuinely baffled and tilted my head.
“Huh? I'm alive because… I'm alive.”
How am I alive?
What kind of nonsense was this?
Choi Soo-hyun petted Syong-syong, who was resting on his lap.
“Do you know how many days the Hunters were in that dungeon?”
“I heard it took about ten days.”
“Right. And you were discovered on the tenth day. You were found right before they went to fight the boss.”
“I've already told the Association that story until I was sick of it. I said I was scared and hid in a cave deep inside the canyon.”
A corner of Choi Soo-hyun's mouth lifted.
“One of the Hunters who entered that fake dungeon is a pretty close friend of mine. I couldn't go in because I'm a Key. I asked him, and he said the cave you were found in had already been searched as soon as they entered the dungeon.”
“Wait, I never heard anything about that.”
I was told the cave was an unexplored area.
Thanks to that, my excuse about hiding there for ten days worked.
No wonder everything lined up so damn perfectly.
“Damn it. Wow, doesn't that count as falsifying an official document?”
“If they had written it as it was, you'd be the one in trouble.”
“That's true.”
I never imagined they'd be kind enough to alter the report for me.
For someone who said things went ‘well with the higher-ups,’ he seemed to have stirred up a lot to clean up the mess.
“How did you survive the Dimensional Rift?”
“Huh?”
I blinked, hearing the term for the first time in my life.
The place I went wasn't a Dimensional Rift, it was the Tower of Trials.
Unable to bring myself to say it, I awkwardly scratched my cheek.
Instead of another slice of pizza, I took a sip of Coke from my paper cup.
*Not yet.*
His standing as a Hunter, his skills, his flawless personality… as a mentor for the newly awakened ‘Kang Han-gyeol’ to grow, there was no one better than Choi Soo-hyun.
However, in my opinion, that was a separate issue from this.
I wanted to keep the matter of the Tower of Trials a secret for now.
The problem was this ‘Dimensional Rift’ that Choi Soo-hyun was talking about.
Instead of answering, I posed a question of my own.
“Why do you think I fell into a Dimensional Rift?”
“Because I've fallen into one myself. Though in my case, it wasn't a double dungeon.”
Choi Soo-hyun poured more soju into his cup.
Contrary to his appearance, Choi Soo-hyun was a man surrounded by rumors.
The internet was flooded with all sorts of stories about him.
Regardless of whether they were true, I had searched for and read them all.
Among the stories about Choi Soo-hyun, one was particularly talked about: the story of his retirement as a Hunter.
To be precise, it was about the event that led him to sever ties with the god he served and become unaffiliated.
“I read on the wiki that you survived after an accident in some dungeon.”
“Turn off that damn Woodwiki.”
“The entry on you is huge, though.”
“More than half of it is bullshit.”
“So the other half might be true.”
“At least say you saw it on the news. A wiki? A wiki! So uncool.”
Choi Soo-hyun scolded me for my source of information, but he didn't seem to genuinely mean it.
He didn't really care whether I'd seen it on a wiki or the news.
I leaned forward slightly and tapped my fingers on the glass table.
It was ten seconds later that Choi Soo-hyun began to speak.
Saying he couldn't go into detail, Choi Soo-hyun briefly shared his story, which went something like this.
During a dungeon expedition, he fell into a trap and fled deep into the dungeon.
His enemies, unable to pursue him, cleared the dungeon and left through the exit gate.
Just like the dungeon gate, the exit gate vanishes a certain amount of time after the first person passes through.
Officially, there were no cases of a regular Hunter—someone who wasn't a Key—surviving a dungeon after the exit gate had disappeared.
A dungeon whose exit gate has vanished is set to disappear, and it seemed to be the stuff of legend that if you disappeared with it, you would fall into a space called the ‘Dimensional Rift’.
*So that's what a Dimensional Rift is.*
I was bluffing to an extent, but in truth, I couldn't be sure if the Dimensional Rift Choi Soo-hyun was talking about was the same place as the Tower of Trials I had been to, so I couldn't speak carelessly.
Choi Soo-hyun continued his story.
At the time, Choi Soo-hyun wasn't a Key, and he said he was so badly injured that his life was on the line.
Expecting to die, Choi Soo-hyun woke up in an unfamiliar place.
When he mentioned that he first suspected he'd been summoned to another world, I couldn't help but feel a strange sense of empathy.
There, Soo-hyun met a strange man. Meeting him was a stroke of luck for Soo-hyun.
“The man said that the god he served would surely save the world.”
While telling the story, Choi Soo-hyun had nearly finished the bottle of soju.
He drained the remaining soju in his paper cup and caught his breath.
“Soter. That was the name of the god that guy served. After I escaped that place, I tried to find the god named Soter, but I couldn't.”
He said the reason he joined the Association while being powerless was to find the god called ‘Soter’.
The moment the name Soter left Choi Soo-hyun's lips, I quickly put on a poker face.
Because that name was the ‘Title’ I currently possessed.
I never imagined I'd hear those words from Choi Soo-hyun of all people.
But something was strange.
Very strange.
Before I could sort out my unease, Choi Soo-hyun stated his opinion.
After the fake dungeon incident, I gained an affiliation.
For a man with enough influence to make deals with the Association's higher-ups, solve cases, and even edit parts of official reports if necessary, finding out the name of the god a rookie Hunter served was child's play.
Choi Soo-hyun said something unexpected.
When you awaken, your ‘affiliation’ is determined within a week to a month. It's normal to get an offer even from some no-name god.
“Do you know why the powerless are called powerless? It's because even after awakening, they can never serve a god.”
“During my training, they said you have to wait and see for a year.”
“That's bullshit.”
Choi Soo-hyun dismissed it flatly. Even if they're powerless, an Awakened One is still an Awakened One.
All Awakened Ones must be registered with the Association.
The government was sensitive about crimes committed by the Awakened.
If someone learned they were powerless and couldn't serve a god, then refused to register with the Association or engaged in antisocial behavior as a result, it could become a major problem.
They might have the title of ‘powerless,’ but the fact remained that they were still an Awakened One.
From the Association's perspective, the powerless Awakened were a thorn in their side.
“So, to summarize, it's false hope.”
“But no one would be surprised if an Awakened One who was once powerless suddenly announced they had found a god to serve.”
The Hunter Association's goal, after all, was to keep the Awakened within their framework.
Anything beyond that wasn't really their concern.
Because as long as they were registered with the Association, there would be grounds to punish them.
“You, who couldn't be found even after a ten-day search of the fake dungeon, suddenly appeared inside it. And with a new god to serve, no less. A god whose name no one has ever heard of. With all that, isn't it fair to say it's proof you've been to a Dimensional Rift?”
Seeing Choi Soo-hyun speak with such confidence, my mind grew complicated.
“Give me some time to think.”
“How long?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Make it ten. What are you, Buddha? Thinking for thirty minutes?”
Ah, that personality of his.
I crossed my arms, leaned back against the sofa, and glared at Choi Soo-hyun.
“You don't have any friends, do you? That's why you give a dog a cutesy name like Syong-syong and drink soju by yourself. Do you buy it by the crate?”
“Nine minutes and ten seconds left.”
Choi Soo-hyun showed me the stopwatch on his phone, which read exactly nine minutes remaining.
I had no idea when he'd even started the stopwatch.