The Hero's Proposal
Ever since the first gate had torn open, South Korea had steadily flaunted its standing as a major power.
How on earth had that been possible? To be fair, even before the gates, Korea had earned a reputation as a regional power. With great nations of every stripe encircling it from all four directions, it had never been small or weak enough, objectively speaking, to be dismissed as a minor state before the Cataclysm.
But monsters hadn't considered any of that when they invaded.
Countless countries had been shattered beneath the monsters' claws — including nations far larger than Korea had been at the time. Yet while the so-called great powers crumbled one after another, Korea had only tightened its grip on its position.
Ask ten different people why, and you'd get ten different answers. Some would bring up the peninsula's geographic potential, or point to China's fragmentation into a dozen squabbling states and argue that Korea's small territory had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Others might cite the country's superior science and technology, or the Defense Ministry's rapid-response protocols.
But it wasn't as though no other country shared the peninsula's geographic advantages, and small nations hadn't been spared out of hand, either. It was true that Korea led the field in what people called mana engineering, but it hadn't built a lead so overwhelming that no other nation could hope to compare. Above all, it was emphatically not the case that every country with a stronger military had prevailed against the monsters.
The truth is, there was no clean answer to that question. If you pressed hard enough, you'd have to say Korea got lucky — or perhaps that it simply rode the current well.
And yet, even so, the vast majority of hunters would give the same answer.
That Korea had stood unshaken through so many crises was, above all else, thanks to the fact that this country had Lee Joongoo in it.
He'd earned the right to hear that said about him.
Ten years after the first gate appeared, there came a period when monster sightings abruptly plummeted.
With no warning whatsoever, the anomaly set people arguing endlessly over nothing, while self-proclaimed experts appeared on television day after day to lob competing theories at one another. And through it all, public attention converged on a single question.
Had humanity finally succeeded in conquering the gates?
Or was this, too, nothing more than a passing phenomenon?
The Second Great Incursion.
That was what the international community came to call what followed — a second catastrophe, after the First Great Incursion that was the gates' initial appearance.
The nations that had kept their vigilance toward the gates and continued to treat them as an unknown enemy managed, somehow, to endure the damage that came afterward. But regions like Western Europe — which had toasted humanity's triumph and let optimism run unchecked — were driven to the very brink of annihilation.
An unprecedented eruption of gates on a scale never seen before, followed by a massive, coordinated assault from the monsters. Faced with a disaster no single nation could hope to handle, people were utterly powerless. Governments caught off guard weren't even an obstacle to the advancing hordes.
The problem was that most countries — Korea included — leaned far closer to the Western European model.
Perhaps the fruit called peace, dangling so tantalizingly before their eyes, had simply looked too sweet.
Either way, every nation that thought that way paid the price. China, unable to contain civil unrest and clinging to baseless optimism, disintegrated on the spot. Russia was forced to abandon Eastern Europe entirely.
And in that era, there was Lee Joongoo.
The Thunder God.
Or, if you preferred — living lightning in the shape of a man.
The hunter of the same age as me, who would one day be celebrated with that title, strode across battlefields wrapped in thunder from head to toe long before anyone thought to call him that. With those hands he saved countless lives, charted the course for a Korean government already counting down to national ruin, and — above all — became a new hope for people who had all but abandoned hope, discarded it, and been discarded by it in turn.
And so.
When humanity finally overcame the Second Great Incursion and reaped the fruits of its counterattack,
people didn't hesitate to call him a hero.
Doesn't suit him for shit.
And said hero was just now arriving at this out-of-the-way café.
I'd said it as a joke, but I meant it. Even a hideout this quiet couldn't help but pale before the gaudy title of "hero," but more than that, the sight of him walking through the door was the real problem.
Immaculate — nothing like the Lee Joongoo who usually clanked around in steel armor. A crisply tailored suit, hair slicked back in a pompadour. The rough hands that used to crush monsters' skulls carried a sleek leather bag, and a face once spattered in monster blood was so clean it looked made up. Frankly, it was unpleasant to look at.
But stranger than any of that was the gold badge pinned to his chest.
…Right.
Park Woochan, twenty-seven.
While I — his age, technically — had retired from hunting and turned into a professional layabout spending my days scraping bottom, the bastard had managed a career change of his own: from retired hunter to sitting member of the National Assembly.
When I'd seen it on TV back before I smashed the thing, I'd wondered what honor he thought he was chasing at this point, and watching it now, it was still a pretty absurd sight.
Though I'll admit, if he were in the opposition party, he'd never manage to stall the National Assembly the way he does.
"You call me out here after ages and then pull this? Seriously, man."
"What's too much is what you did to my retinas. So? Did you check?"
"Checked, sure."
"On my way back from dropping it off for the autopsy, actually."
"Good to hear. Access control? Those kids would have a stroke if they saw it."
"Done. I did it — but couldn't you have told me sooner? Would've saved some trouble."
"Sooner? It was practically the first thing I did. First thing, I said."
The topic at hand was, of course, the lizards I'd butchered yesterday. Part of the reason he'd called me out in the first place was to talk about this, and while he was at it he'd dumped the cleanup on me too — and it seemed he'd handled it all without a hitch.
Politicians really are at their best when they work like oxen. I was nodding along in satisfaction when he let out yet another sigh and slid a sidelong glance toward the seat beside me.
"…So? This is the girl?"
"Yep."
And only then did she — Ja Hayeon — begin to react as well.
Perhaps startled by the sudden appearance of someone so famous, she attempted something resembling an introduction, but it came out so faint and mouse-quiet that I could barely make out a word.
Can't blame her, I suppose. If some stranger showed up saying he was here to handle the cleanup and dragged a National Assemblyman along, I'd probably freeze up too.
"You remember? A civilian got tangled up in it."
"I heard. That's exactly why I came — I figured I needed to hear the details for myself."
Even so, there wasn't much I could tell him. The report I'd given him over the phone had been the whole of it, more or less.
After all, I didn't know the details myself — not well enough to explain anything. I went out to take out the trash, found a monster, killed it, and there was someone lying next to it. That's the entire story.
Which was precisely why he'd come in person, I supposed.
Because this whole affair was, frankly, far too serious to ignore.
Three A-rank monsters — appearing from who knew where, in an era when every last gate on the planet had been sealed shut.
And as it happened, he was constitutionally incapable of letting something like this slide.
Let alone when it came from me.
Not once in my life had I ever lied about anything monster-related, after all.
Of course. Disappear for years, show up out of nowhere asking for a favor, and it turns out to be another migraine like this.
I grumbled like that to myself, but for a while I just watched the two of them talk. Like me, this guy was a fighter by nature. Three years in politics now — which, looked at another way, meant only three years. His questions weren't the crafty coaxing of a seasoned statesman so much as a fact-check of what I'd already told him, and her answers lined up accordingly.
"What do you think?"
"Well… I'll need to look into it a bit more, but…"
He trailed off, but I'd already guessed the answer.
There were simply too many things that didn't add up.
For one, there'd been no encounter with the hunters still tracking those lizard bastards right up to the end. No — according to what I'd confirmed through him, there weren't even any small-scale gates in the area to begin with. Which meant the creatures I'd skinned yesterday had quite literally dropped out of the sky or crawled up from the earth, with no explanation at all.
With the Second Incursion generation still active in the field, that was not a story you could wave off.
Then there was the girl sitting in front of me. If this were just a case of her running around later telling everyone she ran into an A-rank monster and it was soooo scary, that'd almost be cute. The problem was if those monsters had been chasing her.
A simple grudge.
Or the kind of idiots who ambush hunters for their high-quality mana.
Either way, such things had happened often enough in the past.
But now was different.
In this age of peace, with every gate conquered by humanity — three A-rank monsters of unknown origin, and a girl?
Perfect witch-hunt material, if anyone decided the girl had been luring monsters in.
And far worse was the possibility that it didn't end as a witch-hunt.
Say, for instance, that she really did have an ability that drew monsters to her?
It was a deeply inconvenient thought — but not an impossible one. What people called a Bait ability. Powers that emitted scents monsters liked or disliked, controlling the behavior of those half-witted beasts, had been reported a handful of times before.
Of course, even the active hunters who could shakily steer a monster's behavior were exceedingly rare, and a hunter capable of manipulating multiple A-rank monsters had never been discovered at all.
But in this era, with every gate sealed shut, three A-rank monsters suddenly appearing and trailing a girl with no powers at all? The Bait theory was far more plausible than that. Hayeon herself didn't seem to have any awareness of being a hunter, but that too was something an examination would settle.
Truthfully, that was exactly the angle I was playing.
The Hunter Association had something called the protective custody system. Protective custody in name — in practice, it was surveillance or bodyguard duty for persons of interest. In other words, they assigned an association hunter to a specific individual.
VIP security, or personal protection for important figures. Back when North Korea still existed, I heard it had even been applied to defectors a time or two. Rumor had it there were hunters who did this kind of work professionally — full-time bodyguard hunters.
And in this case, the girl had more than enough grounds to qualify for protection.
The association didn't protect only the high and mighty. Witnesses and persons involved in hunter-related incidents could fall under the same system — for the very practical reason that a hunter gone feral with rage might try to kill everyone connected to their crime.
Fortunately, no hunters were lunging at this girl to kill her. But monsters had. And unless the Hunter Association had somehow decided to dismiss three A-rank monsters appearing without a gate, the odds were overwhelmingly good that protective measures would be ordered for her. They'd need to investigate whether some power lay dormant in her — and if they simply sent her home and other civilians got caught up in a monster attack because of it?
The fallout would be beyond anyone's control.
Well, that was the association's problem to think about.
They'll at least be in touch, right?
And if she really did have the power to draw monsters in?
Then maybe — just maybe — I'd get to butcher monsters on a regular basis again.
Either way, I was effectively the first discoverer of the incident. That meant the association would have to call me in periodically to confirm the details, and every time they did, my odds of contact with her climbed considerably.
Granted, it was a hasty bit of speculation. Pure pattern-matching with nothing concrete behind it — at most, that strange wrongness I'd felt from her at the scene, and even that had faded away completely by now.
But so what?
Keep living like this, and I'd never so much as glimpse another monster again. In which case, with nothing better to do, investing a little here couldn't hurt.
There were practical considerations too. Frankly, it was lucky it had been me. If some other hunter had been in my place — no, wait. With Lee Joongoo himself retired, was there anyone else around who could butcher three A-rank monsters?
So: we go all in on helping you. And that's the pitch. No money required. Happy to hand over the materials, if she wants. All I need in return is the chance to hunt monsters — unpaid, year-round, no benefits, take it or leave it. Try finding another deal like that anywhere. The association doesn't have to pull staff off other work, and the girl gets to live a comparatively normal life. Wasn't that a win for everybody?
"You'll need to be placed under protective custody, I'd say."
"Right?"
"Yes. The problem is your status."
"The what?"
"I mean — you're not even a rookie. No, that's not it. It's this incident. The incident itself."
"Hm?"
"An A-rank monster appeared. So you killed it. That's what you'd have to say — and you still haven't registered with the association, have you?"
Now that he mentioned it, no, I hadn't.
Obvious, when you thought about it. In an era where registering with the association was the expected first step of becoming a hunter, an unlicensed hunter like me had no real place to stand. All right, not no place — but someone who hadn't even registered couldn't exactly make use of the association's systems.
Listening to us, you'd think this was some cozy politician-crony backroom deal, but there was no real problem. Registration these days could be done online, even. Pick a date, drop by the neighborhood civil office, get your abilities verified — the hunter's license was that easy to pick up. Any village kid who awakened could get one in ten minutes.
The problem was that I didn't have one.
"Ah, for fuck's sake. Those goddamn ads…"
"Can't you just register under your own name?"
"Assembly members can't hold outside occupations."
"Then ditch the badge."
"Are you insane?"
"Tch. Fine, fine."
Calmly, I closed my eyes and steeled myself. So the moment had finally come for me too… Yeah, with a little practice I could probably get through the application without seeing those ads. The real obstacle was the civil office's operating hours — but with a properly laid-out plan, even that seemed doable.
No, wait. Before any of that — couldn't I just use this bastard's influence? Rather than sneaking through untimely stealth missions to dodge those revolting ads, wouldn't it be far simpler to borrow the name of Lee Joongoo, once the pinnacle of the association, even if he had gone off to the National Assembly?
I was happily fantasizing about leveraging the authority of the most famous hunter-turned-assemblyman in South Korea to snag a license any village kid could get in ten minutes when he, apparently having arrived at a thought of his own, looked at me and slowly opened his mouth.
"So… there's a proposal I've been wanting to make…"
Ah. There it is. Years of political seasoning, right on schedule.
He looked like he'd finished preparing everything already. The sly little — he's grown so much. Yes, let the grand era of political corruption begin—
"Would you try being a teacher?"
"Huh?"
But the document he slid across to me — as I sat there rubbing my nose — wasn't a Hunter Association registration form at all, but something far stranger. A certificate of some kind.