Chapter 25
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 25
Chapter Title: Their Own Stories (1)
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An awkward silence filled the room.
The water in the glass lapped precariously at the rim.
“What should I do?”
“It’s alright.”
I tilted my head slightly and took a sip of water.
The woman was hesitating, unsure whether she should leave or not.
It was definitely the woman I'd seen during the dungeon break.
I didn't know if it was coincidence or fate, but I was incredibly happy to see her.
I quickly spoke to her.
“Excuse me, what's your name? You're a Hunter, right? But why are you working in a place like this? If you don't have a guild yet... Agh!”
Choi Soo-hyun, sitting across from me, kicked my shin.
He kicked so hard my bone throbbed.
“Knock it off.”
While I was clutching my shin, Choi Soo-hyun gave the woman a look, signaling for her to leave quickly.
“Wait…”
I wanted to chase after the woman leaving the room, but I reluctantly sat back down.
Choi Soo-hyun didn't seem pleased with the sight of me resting my chin on my hands, elbows on the table.
“What's this? Are you defying me now?”
“It's not defiance, it's a legitimate complaint.”
“Legitimate, my ass.”
“That woman is a Hunter.”
“I know.”
I could sense a faint trace of mana from her.
There was no way Choi Soo-hyun hadn't noticed what I had.
So this was a clear obstruction of business.
Choi Soo-hyun, who had been watching the woman work through the glass, turned his gaze back into the room.
“Unaffiliated, available, wandering from place to place, unable to give up on being a Hunter, underestimated for her skills... What else was there?”
“It would be good if they also had some pent-up frustration with society.”
But he'd said I was the only one like that.
Choi Soo-hyun wiped his mouth with a napkin.
A brief silence followed.
Only then did I realize why we had needlessly rented a private room at a hotel buffet.
“It's her, isn't it?”
Choi Soo-hyun nodded as if to say, "You're just now figuring it out?"
I had just thrown that out there. I had no idea he would actually be looking for someone like that.
Choi Soo-hyun tapped his fingers on the table.
“Her name is Song Eun-young. She's twenty-seven. Both of her parents were A-rank Hunters.”
“She comes from a Hunter family?”
My question brought a slightly complicated expression to Choi Soo-hyun's face.
After hesitating, as if unsure where to begin, Choi Soo-hyun started to explain.
“You know about the Great Catastrophe that happened seven years ago, right?”
“You mean the S-rank dungeon break in Seoul?”
“Yeah. That one.”
I vaguely remembered reading about it online.
It was the dungeon break that caused the most damage in the history of South Korea.
To make matters worse, several SS-rank dungeon raids were underway at the time.
The incident occurred when the Hunters' forces were much weaker than usual, so the damage was even greater.
“Song Eun-young's parents were the ones who fought on the front lines back then. Though they passed away.”
“Oh.”
“Song Eun-young Awakened a year after her parents died. She seems to have the will to become a Hunter, but the result... well...”
Choi Soo-hyun trailed off.
She wanted to follow in her parents' footsteps and become a Hunter, but after Awakening, all Song Eun-young received was the stigma of being 'unaffiliated'.
Choi Soo-hyun said he thought of Song Eun-young as soon as he heard I was looking for an unaffiliated Hunter.
Not only were there few unaffiliated Hunters, but even after several years, there was no one else who knocked on guild doors as persistently as Song Eun-young.
It seemed she had an underground reputation for being a peculiar woman.
“But why do unaffiliated Awakened Ones even exist?”
Awakened Ones who, despite having Awakened, couldn't serve a god and thus couldn't use their abilities properly.
I couldn't understand why such people existed, or why the gods avoided them.
“Why are you asking me? How should I know?”
I fell silent at Choi Soo-hyun's retort.
“Not many people think about it the way you do.”
Usually, people just think of the unaffiliated as simply unaffiliated and move on.
Even if they did have questions, there would be no way to find answers, and no reason to know.
It's not their problem.
There was no need to ponder and delve into matters that offered no benefit.
Feeling a bit embarrassed, I changed the subject.
“Anyway, you were keeping an eye on Song Eun-young, right?”
“Yeah, though I don't know if she has any complaints against society or not. But how did you know about her?”
Choi Soo-hyun had planned to tell me about Song Eun-young after bringing me here.
But since I had abruptly asked him to find the woman and acted like I knew her, it was only natural for him to be surprised.
I explained what happened during my recent dungeon expedition.
It was a simple story about how a field had formed due to a dungeon break after I came out, and how Song Eun-young had saved a civilian who was about to be attacked by an orc.
“Her flying knee kick to the face was awesome. I just got a feeling, you know? Like, 'This is it'.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Crazy? I'm perfectly sane.”
I was excited at the thought that I might be able to recruit Song Eun-young.
Choi Soo-hyun had said he would join, but he was effectively on hold.
I didn't know if he was testing the waters or what, but constantly nagging him about when he'd join didn't seem right.
For now, I was just leaving him be, figuring he'd join when he was ready.
My mind was already racing, trying to figure out how to recruit Song Eun-young.
“But are you sure about this?”
“About what?”
“Song Eun-young is unaffiliated. Is your god okay with someone like that?”
Choi Soo-hyun's question made me pause for a moment.
Why were the unaffiliated, unaffiliated?
Because no god would accept them.
There must be a good reason why other gods avoided unaffiliated Awakened Ones.
I agreed with that.
The best way would be to send out love letters to newly Awakened Ones, just like other gods.
Who wouldn't know that was the easiest method?
It's not that I don't do it because I don't know how.
It's because I don't know the method, because I can't do it.
‘But seriously, why?’
I couldn't understand why other gods hadn't chosen Song Eun-young.
It was only for a moment, but the Song Eun-young I saw definitely had talent.
Plus, since her parents were Hunters, she would be accustomed to fighting monsters.
Soon, I came to the conclusion that it didn't matter.
“Of course.”
I spread my arms wide and delivered a plausible line, trying my best to act benevolent.
“My god is fair to all.”
“Bullshit.”
Choi Soo-hyun looked at me as if I were pathetic.
Feeling awkward, I brought my outstretched hands back and sat down comfortably.
“By the way, I heard you almost died in a dungeon? Tell me more about that.”
“It's just as it sounds.”
“What? You almost died fighting a queen ant in a C-rank dungeon? Do you think I'd believe that? Especially coming from you?”
Choi Soo-hyun looked at me with suspicion.
It felt good to be thought of so highly, but I didn't understand why the conversation was heading this way.
Choi Soo-hyun was currently part of the Hunter Association.
The Hunter Association, a government agency, handled various tasks.
One of its main duties was monitoring guilds.
However, Choi Soo-hyun wasn't a Hunter in the guild or dungeon management department.
He was in the Hunter training department, so I figured information might reach him more slowly within the Association.
I wondered whether I should tell him or not.
Choi Soo-hyun, noticing my hesitation, spoke.
“You'd better spill it while I'm asking nicely. Now I see why Park Si-woo called you into his office.”
Choi Soo-hyun was already convinced that I knew something.
I finished deliberating and raised my hands.
“Alright, I'll talk.”
Judging that there was no point in hiding things from someone who'd be on my team soon, I told him what I could about the dungeon.
***
A dark alley.
Perhaps because it had just rained, every step made a squelching sound in the puddles.
A woman with her hood pulled down looked around before entering an abandoned building.
The building, once full of offices, was now a ruin where a chilly air lingered.
Room 412.
There was a door lock, but it hadn't worked in a long time.
At the office entrance, the sign of a long-bankrupt company hung precariously.
Ahn Joo-hye pushed the door open with her body and went inside.
A man in a black raincoat was silhouetted against the moonlight from the window.
“You failed.”
“Failed? I did exactly as you said! What the hell was that thing?”
Ahn Joo-hye was a perpetual D-rank.
It usually takes Hunters who start at D-rank about three to four years to move up.
That was the average.
Talented Hunters could escape D-rank within a year, even if they started there.
She had been active as a Hunter since high school.
Contrary to her belief that three or four years would be enough, she had been stuck as a D-rank Hunter for six years.
The god Ahn Joo-hye served wasn't a named one.
She believed things would get better after a few years, that she would improve, but nothing changed.
There was a limit to what she could cover with equipment.
The highest dungeon a D-rank Hunter could clear was, at best, a C-rank dungeon.
While she was struggling like this, Ahn Joo-hye received a secret offer.
An anonymous contact reached out to her through her personal guild mail.
They said they would write her a recommendation for the Raon Guild if she did as instructed.
And what kind of guild was Raon?
Unlike the Aria Guild, which was also in Gangnam but had no specific main god, the Raon Guild was predominantly composed of followers of the god 'Lux'.
The man didn't speak.
Growing impatient, Ahn Joo-hye raised her voice.
“Damn it, you said all I had to do was put the glass shard into the monster.”
He had said to just wound the queen ant with a dagger and insert the shard.
Who would have known the monster would turn into such a beast?
If Kang Han-gyeol hadn't been there, she might have actually died.
She had heard that there had been a lot of dungeon accidents within the Aria Guild recently, and she wondered if this was related.
“How did you get out alive?”
“Why should I tell you that? Just give me my reward... Guk!”
The figure in the raincoat turned and approached Ahn Joo-hye.
The raincoat was shrouded in black mist.
The mist made it impossible to see inside the raincoat.
Mist emerged from the sleeve and wrapped around Ahn Joo-hye's neck.
“What is this…”
Choking, Ahn Joo-hye struggled.
A sound that could hardly be called a human voice came out.
“…it, curse it. Your weakness is your god's weakness. Curse your god…”
The ceiling rattled.
As soon as the words were cut off, a metal plate from the ceiling came crashing down.
The arm of the raincoat-clad figure, which had been choking Ahn Joo-hye, was severed.
The being of black mist quickly retreated.
A man dusted himself off and stood up.
“Who are you? What are you doing?”
The misty being, half-floating in the air, regarded the man with caution.
The man, dressed in black, held a sword wrapped tightly in bandages.
Ahn Joo-hye, barely regaining her senses, recognized the man.
“You're Kim Yoo-han?”
“You've got the wrong person.”
“I don't think I'm mistaken…”
As Ahn Joo-hye narrowed her eyes in suspicion, Kim Yoo-han cleared his throat and quickly pulled on the black mask that was around his neck.
At the same time, the black mist flew towards Kim Yoo-han.