The Realism You Don't Get to Lecture Me About
To be honest, by the time we'd reached this point, my victory was all but assured.
The laboratory, buried in the deepest reaches of the research wing.
Even if Dr. Pyeong So-woon were to suddenly go berserk, at this range I'd sink my blade in long before she could finish whatever she started.
A warrior versus a mage.
Or more broadly, a hunter versus a researcher — that's simply how the relationship works.
And yet.
Despite all that, Dr. Pyeong So-woon's expression was utterly serene.
Well, it had cracked for a moment when the makeup comment landed, sure.
Bluffing?
It seemed possible.
But if it wasn't a bluff...
Either way, it posed no particular problem.
For me, anyway.
The real question was the other research wing, then.
Once that thought took hold, I decided I'd better think a few steps ahead.
Not that it'd be too late to pin her down if something actually happened.
But that's how people are — when the body falls short, the head has to pick up the slack.
So.
I casually folded my arms.
Spread my ability out beyond the bounds of my conscious awareness.
So that I could respond instantly if anything went wrong.
The power radiating outward from me took hold of the entire underground research wing.
And even then, Dr. Pyeong So-woon showed no reaction whatsoever.
Huh?
There was no way she hadn't noticed.
After all, she wielded the same ability I did.
Which meant that flaunting that kind of composure so openly meant she had something up her sleeve.
Or maybe she'd just given up and was letting it all hang out.
Either way.
Well then, speaking of which — you do realize it's already over for you, right?
Who can say?
Don't act tough or you're getting a knuckle sandwich. Anyway, I figured I'd ask you a few questions, if that's all right with you.
...Hm?
At that, Dr. Pyeong So-woon quietly latched onto my words.
Apparently, it came as quite a surprise.
Saying there was something I wanted to ask in the middle of all this was unusual enough on my end, but Pyeong So-woon's reaction was strange in its own right.
She surely never expected to hear those words from me.
And yet her response was like a white-collar worker watching a colleague raise their hand for questions at a research presentation.
Stop despising people for their brains, brain!!
How unexpected of you.
It's for a question of personal curiosity, you see.
Fine, ask whatever you like. We've got nothing but time between us.
Oh, right — first of all, do you know that Lee Joongoo is playing a part in the suppression operation happening right now?
Huh?
...I was a little surprised.
Because Dr. Pyeong So-woon, who'd been lounging around with total leisure not a minute earlier, suddenly had her face crumple like a sheet of paper.
Hm. That's unexpected.
Lee Joongoo aside, I'd assumed Dr. Pyeong So-woon would hold him in high regard.
That's just the kind of species researchers are.
For her magnum opus — her greatest masterpiece — to appear before her, and for her to react like that...
Well, of course, once Lee Joongoo joined the operation her chances of escape had dropped to absolute zero, so it was only natural.
You're mistaken about one thing.
But Dr. Pyeong So-woon raised an objection to that.
She pulled a cigarette pack from her coat with visible discomfort and drew one out. There was something hard to put into words about the sight of a girl who looked nowhere near her age — a girl who read as roughly the same age as my students — dragging on a lit cigarette.
And yet, housed inside that form was a venerable old fox who had propped up this nation's government from the shadows.
Also, telling someone smoking is bad for them in a situation like this felt a bit much.
We weren't a public service announcement.
Before long, Pyeong So-woon, chewing thoughtfully on the filter as she burned the tobacco down, added a short remark.
He isn't some success story of mine. If anything, he's a wretched failure.
High standards, huh. Is this really the moment for that?
Still, I could understand it.
To the world, Lee Joongoo was humanity's strongest hunter.
In an era where countless hunters met their deaths day after day, he was the one and only person standing at its apex.
That's why people dreamed of the stars just looking at him.
But I knew the truth.
That his power wasn't innate — it was acquired.
The product of a body ill-suited to its own modifications, and of relentless, obsessive refinement to wring every last drop out of an ability that was, frankly, laughable on paper.
Certainly, for a researcher like Pyeong So-woon, it must have been a result beyond her expectations.
After all, he'd delivered performance that deviated from the catalog specs.
Only now did things start to click.
It wasn't that this woman disliked Lee Joongoo for standing in her way.
Not that that wasn't part of it.
The director of mana engineering in South Korea, Dr. Pyeong So-woon, scribbling away in a basement like this — that was all his doing.
Simply put—
It was something far more fundamental.
Dr. Pyeong So-woon simply didn't like Lee Joongoo.
That she hated him for driving her out was part of the same thing.
According to the catalog specs she herself had projected, Lee Joongoo lacked the makings of humanity's strongest.
And yet he ended up being called humanity's strongest anyway — and in the end, he drove out Dr. Pyeong So-woon herself.
That was the part she couldn't stomach.
You dare?
In a nutshell, yes.
Dr. Pyeong So-woon was, first and foremost, a researcher.
The reason she'd manhandled Lee Joongoo and the other test subjects however she pleased was part and parcel of that.
They were test subjects, after all. Nothing more than lab animals.
Something she could never let show on her face.
And then that failure she'd tossed aside had come crawling back to bare its claws at her.
And as a result, she was the one who'd fallen this low.
It was like slapping together a pot of instant ramen to get through the day, only for the broth to come splashing back in your face.
Naturally, that would piss anyone off.
So even a simple fact-check like that one was enough to set her blood boiling.
At this rate, I felt like I was getting answers to my next questions in advance.
Not that I'd mind asking them anyway.
In other words — your grand escape plan has been completely shredded, is what I'm saying.
Hah. I never had any intention of running in the first place.
Whoa, bold words. No, well — I get it. You can afford to say that given the circumstances...
What?
Then why on earth did you join an organization called New World Order or whatever it's called?
Dr. Pyeong So-woon's eyes narrowed.
She looked at me like I was a complete idiot.
Are you stupid? Because that bastard Lee Joongoo drove me out, obviously.
That's exactly it.
I'm sorry, what?
That's not the Lee Joongoo I know.
As it happens, that man is someone who holds himself back.
He's strict about law, order, and justice — but that strictness exists because his own foundation is shaky, so he spends his life keeping himself in check.
Otherwise, he'd never have become a hunter talking about saving people.
He's unforgiving toward the tragedies of others.
Conversely, he's remarkably lenient about his own.
Frankly, how much personal resentment was mixed into his decision to purge those in charge of the Artificial Hunter Development Project?
It wasn't nothing, I'm sure.
Oh, maybe ten percent or so?
That's exactly how it looked to me.
A necessary evil during the Cataclysm.
But now — a settling of accounts, in advance, for the karmic debt of researchers who would become the cancer of this nation.
That was how I couldn't help but see it.
Hadn't he said as much himself, once?
That everyone in charge of the Project had already been stripped of their titles.
Put the other way: despite everything he'd been through, he had never once stained his own hands with blood.
Jesus, if that were me I'd have killed them all~
Oh, probably?
Anyway, that was exactly why I was puzzled.
Had Lee Joongoo really driven her out with genuine malice?
Frankly, malice would have been understandable.
And yet I simply could not picture Lee Joongoo acting that way.
You're talking nonsense.
Indeed, Dr. Pyeong So-woon's answer didn't deviate from my expectations.
What, was I supposed to spend my twilight years weeping and begging on my knees? Please don't cut me?
Wouldn't that be the obvious thing to do?
What? Hey, don't make me laugh. You think I owed anyone an apology?
But.
Apparently, Dr. Pyeong So-woon's thinking diverged from mine.
Tsk, and this is why the young—
Ah, yes, being old is nothing to brag about.
Shut up! What would you know about it, anyway?!
The cigarette she'd just lit tumbled lifelessly to the floor at the feet of the enraged Dr. Pyeong So-woon.
A cigarette — the thing famous for jolting awake even a man freshly laid out flat.
But it clearly didn't register in her eyes at all.
That's what the world loves to say, isn't it! That compared to the Second Cataclysm, the First was a walk in the park!
Hee-h.
And yet the shock the people of that time had endured far outstripped the Second.
Well, of course. Monsters came pouring out of holes that had appeared out of nowhere.
And we were the saviors of that era. We explained mana. We reproduced the structure of magic itself.
As she said it, Dr. Pyeong So-woon looked almost intoxicated by her own words.
We gave countless soldiers the means to fight! We devoted ourselves in the shadows so the nation wouldn't fall!
Well, how moving.
And yet you dare to say that to me? You people, living on the blood and sweat we shed?
Nope. Never owed you a thing, actually.
I thought back to the countryside village I'd lived in before running away from home — back then, you'd have been hard-pressed to find a single monster anywhere nearby.
Just recently, someone there had asked whether I was better at growing radishes or cabbages. I answered broccoli and got an earful for it.
That said, even I understood that nitpicking her word choice from here would be a waste of time.
The laws of society collapsed. Morality and justice crumbled. It was us who stepped up in that moment!!
Touching, truly.
If they call us evil, then we were a necessary evil. If they call us poison, then we were the strongest medicine!! The medicine this nation needed!!
You done reciting?
No one under heaven has the right to condemn us as evil — and yet that little brat has the gall to demand an apology from us!!
She wasn't in any state to hear that even wild beasts make apology-like gestures when their territories are encroached upon.
We set this nation back on its feet. We rebuilt its broken laws and goodwill. We were the law. We were the good!!
Having unloaded that entire monologue in one breath, Dr. Pyeong So-woon began breathing hard through her shoulders.
It was such a stirring speech that I almost felt like applauding.
I had plenty to say in return, but — so what came next?
What?
Your pride couldn't stomach it, so you quit and walked out. Then why did you crawl into some secret society?
It felt a little wrong to say this, but — even after all that, Pyeong So-woon was never the type to devote herself to her country out of patriotism.
She knew that as well as I did.
Which was precisely why I couldn't for the life of me figure out why she'd joined the organization now, of all times.
Loneliness got to her?
Ran out of money?
No — look at what she'd already raked in.
Unless she'd gone and started some brand-new research, there was no way she'd be short on cash at this point.
And if she'd wanted to keep doing research, bowing her head to Lee Joongoo would've been the smarter play anyway.
What on earth had Pyeong So-woon joined that organization for?
Revenge on Lee Joongoo?
Her reaction to that idea had been oddly off, though.
I was just wondering what on earth you were going on about — and it turns out you've asked an utterly absurd question.
Oh, I thought it was a reasonably fair one.
Try again. If I were your thesis advisor, that would be an automatic fail.
Like a professor guiding a student, Pyeong So-woon said this with utter calm.
Why I joined this organization? That's simple.
Hm?
Because it was the right thing to do.
And—
Dr. Pyeong So-woon said it as if she were genuinely grading an assignment.
I'm sorry, what?
No, look at the numbers and it's obvious, isn't it? If you've made it this far, you already know all about the Extra-standard rank.
W-well, yes.
Then why ask such an obvious question?
Obvious question?
The human race, as it stands, cannot defeat an Extra-standard monster.
She appended the remark as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Of course, the two Cataclysms were different. Humanity held the initiative, you see.
...The initiative.
Exactly. That's why we were able to bury the two of them before they were ever released.
You're saying it won't be like that the third time around?
Naturally. Burying them was never really burying them — we just shoved them back into their seal points, that's all.
I could follow that.
In other words, here's the story.
The First Cataclysm.
According to what Moon Youngseok had passed along — Typhon, the "Father of Monsters," awakening beneath Mount Etna.
The Second Cataclysm.
Again, per Moon Youngseok's intel — Tunupa Tarapaca, the Star-Devouring Colossus, rising from the Atacama Desert.
To put it in a metaphor, those beings had merely stuck one arm out beyond their gates.
All humanity had done was prick them with a needle.
Startled, they'd pulled their arms back inside.
So that's the story?
What, did you think there was some other reason?
...Hm.
There couldn't be, right. The politicians simply did what politicians do.
I already knew that.
A good ending doesn't mean the credits roll — the reality left behind still drags its own persistent shadow long after the curtain falls.
And it's not like there's some demon lord or absolute evil out there whose defeat would guarantee a tidy resolution.
So I had braced myself for some of it.
It was true that the politicians had turned their backs on humanity.
But claiming that all of this happened purely for their own petty ambitions didn't quite hold water.
The political world. The corporate world. And the hunter industry.
Everyone supporting the organization across every sector of society — all of them betrayers who set out to betray the human race?
Good grief, the Eulsa treachery only had five traitors in it.
There was no way.
It wasn't that none of them wanted to line their own pockets, of course.
But to commit the mortal sin of betraying humanity, you'd need a motive to match.
Not a justification to wave at other people — a justification to quiet your own conscience.
In other words, that kind of story.
The politicians of South Korea were not fighting for the good of the human race.
They held those seats for the sake of South Korea's boundless development.
Which meant—
They're trying to preserve this country.
Even if it meant betraying the whole of humanity — even if it meant selling out the nation.
...Obviously not something worthy of praise, but at least the question was answered.
Wouldn't it be nice if enemies fell over dead just because your resolve was firm and your heart pure?
...
But, my boy. What's standing here is reality. Cold, rational reality!
Still.
I couldn't bring myself to just nod along to that, apparently.
God, you're insufferably loud, lady.
Wh-what?!
I said you're insufferably loud.
No, I was startled, that's true.
So there was a reason after all — I'd felt a flicker of that, I suppose.
There was even a measure of sympathy for the politicians who'd been forced into that kind of choice.
But.
That might buy you some consideration for the circumstances. It doesn't earn anyone absolution.
Shit. A bad deed is a bad deed — why is it so hard for people to just say that?
And besides.
You don't know your own handiwork nearly well enough, lady.
Excuse me?
Bluntly, that's your problem, not mine.
Whatever their reasons, the group calling itself New World Order had been searching for the descent site of an Extra-standard monster.
And a portion of South Korea's upper echelons had decided to give them the land.
In exchange for a guarantee of safety on the very day the Third Cataclysm would eventually erupt.
But.
Providing the land was one thing — did they honestly believe the people of South Korea would be safe?
Bluntly — an S-rank monster moving at full strength is enough to rattle the heavens, you know.
My guess? The moment an Extra-standard monster descended, at least half of South Korea's population would be swept away.
And more than that—
Oh, spare me the excuses, dear~
Excuses?
Whatever the circumstances were, what you people ultimately did was a bad thing. Got it?
A bad... thing?
At such a childish choice of words, even Dr. Pyeong So-woon couldn't help wearing a slightly dimwitted expression.
But I couldn't help it.
It was the perfect word for it.
Sure, maybe she'd been afraid.
She had no strength to fight with.
Maybe she'd been terrified that she and hers would be the first to die.
Maybe, once the plan was set in motion, it was a desperate grasp at even a second-best future.
Maybe she'd simply panicked looking at the catalog specs those things had handed over.
Or maybe she'd reasoned that with a force this massive involved, her own withdrawal wouldn't change a single thing.
Or perhaps, precisely because of that, she'd thrashed about just trying to save her own skin.
How the hell would I know. Shit.
No strength. Fear.
Terror. Cowardice.
And so you want me to understand people who would stab in the back the ones who'd been fighting in their place?
You're insane. Shouldn't it be you people who understand us?
And besides—
Oh, spare me the "reality" lecture, ma'am. There's not a single person among us who doesn't know that one.
Because there's no reset button — and no credits, either.
Doing well on your own doesn't guarantee a good ending.
And getting a good ending doesn't mean the credits roll right after.
The reality left behind still drags its own persistent shadow long after such an ending.
And there's no demon lord or absolute evil whose defeat would guarantee anything fair or fitting.
Shit, and what's that supposed to mean?
I know.
Is there a single hunter out there who does this job without knowing it?
Even if there were, most of them would quit soon enough.
Which is exactly why—
That's why we chose to fight anyway.
Against the irrational violence.
Against the absurd reality wearing a monster's skin, baring its teeth at every opening.
You think invoking "reality" makes you sound cool or something?
Bluntly — when it comes to that kind of reality, we understand it better than armchair theorists like you ever will.
And even so, we chose to fight.
He did, above all.
Humanity's strongest hunter — the man the researcher before me had dismissed as a failure. Lee Joongoo.
By countless people, he is called the Thunder God.
Stronger than anything else alive.
So that irrational violence could be crushed under a power greater than itself.
Faster than anything else alive.
So that a hand could reach absurd reality before it was too late.
Even so, it's the same for him.
Even arriving like a bolt of lightning and wielding the power of a god, he cannot wipe away every tragedy and every tear overflowing in this era.
But.
At the very least, I refuse to fall behind irrational violence and absurd reality.
Because that's a far more worthwhile pursuit.
It was for that sentiment that I'd written my signature — I simply want to slay monsters.
...Who on earth doesn't know that giving up with an excuse about "practicality" is the easier road?
But what can you do.
Hunters are, as a rule, complete idiots — the kind who know all of that and still can't live any other way.
And for me, someone who'd become a hunter simply because I wanted to kill monsters, that way of living had always looked far cooler.
More than anything—
"It's just not realistic." "The circumstances don't allow it"...
In the end, those are just compromises.
Excuses for hiding the fact that you're compromising — and the ones making them know it, too.
That said, there are certainly reasons people can't help it.
There are unavoidable circumstances. There are stories that can never be told.
But.
At the very least, if that's the road you're taking, you don't get to sneer at the people who refuse to compromise as naive little children.
Especially not the ones fighting for your sake.
Have you no shame, you old woman?
I'm fine, personally.
I kill because I want to kill, that's all.
But watching the perpetrator — Pyeong So-woon — say all this shamelessly to the face of her victim, Lee Joongoo's victim...
God, that pisses me off.
No — really, it's a good thing I came instead of him.
If Joongoo himself had heard this, I can't even imagine how he'd have reacted.
Not that he'll ever get the chance to.
So, granny — do you like rice porridge?
Huh?
You'd better learn to love it, even if you don't. It's all you'll be eating for the rest of your life.
My ability had finished warming up.
The one fact I'd asked about on a hunch now felt like nothing more than a waste of time.
I hadn't come here to listen to a mad researcher's sob story, after all.
With the urge to wash out my ears rising in my chest, I slowly rose to my feet.
Well then — dawn's on its way.
Time to wrap this whole business up.