A Severed Head Sits in His Palm
"Still haven't found him?"
"Oh, Section Chief Kim."
"Give it up already. The higher-ups throwing tantrums is a daily routine, not some special occasion."
"I'm going to keep looking anyway."
"Ugh, fine. Who am I to stand in the way of your stubbornness."
Choi Ah-in, who had been hunting for the new Hunter day after day, was in a thoroughly foul mood.
The Hunter Administration Bureau had gotten as far as coordinating with the community the new Hunter frequented — these days, a single fresh login would pinpoint his address — and yet they still couldn't catch his tail. And what soured his mood even further was Section Chief Kim's attitude: the way he feigned concern while subtly pushing him to give up.
If Choi Ah-in had actually done something wrong, fine. But the reason that bastard kept nursing this quiet jealousy toward him was nothing more than the fact that Ah-in had been promoted far too quickly.
Yeah, he's definitely here just to rub salt in the wound.
Why were the higher-ups in such a frenzy to find the new Hunter?
Because that Hunter had just cleared the Tower's second floor, that's why.
One might ask what clearing floor two had to do with anything. Ah-in was a Hunter himself, and news of a floor-two clear wasn't exactly earth-shattering — but that wasn't the point.
"Section Chief Choi, Paraguay has cleared floor three."
"Again? Today?"
"Yes. Under five minutes again."
"So that would be B-rank."
"No, sir. This time it's A-rank."
"What?"
That was the problem — the way he cleared the Tower.
There was nothing wrong with an ordinary Hunter clearing floors one and two. The problem was that a regular twenty-first-century citizen who had never fought a real battle in his life suddenly Awakened one day and turned out to be very, very good at fighting for his life.
And the fact that doing so required slaughter didn't exactly help matters.
"This is driving me insane."
"Would you like to see the footage?"
"Obviously. Play it."
Contrary to what most people believed, a Hunter's Tower climbs and scores were all on record. His subordinate carried in a strange stone slab that looked entirely out of place in an office and began operating it against the wall.
Like a projector beaming onto the surface, footage of Kim Namwoo clearing the third floor played before them.
And yet, even with a device like this, the reason they couldn't find Kim Namwoo was none other than—
"Still nothing, huh."
"Nope. Is there no way to break that perception interference?"
"Break the Tower's magic with what, exactly? You know even viewing combat footage like this is already pushing our budget."
"That's true, but still."
This was, without question, footage of Kim Namwoo's floor-three clear, yet his figure never once appeared warped or distorted by the recording.
Thanks to the Tower's perception interference, they couldn't make out his face, couldn't even tell whether he was a man or a woman, or how tall he was.
The only silver lining was that they could see how he fought — but even this consumed a considerable amount of magic stones, so the Bureau generally didn't watch clear footage this way unless the person in question was a person of significant interest.
"Whoa, he's fast. Isn't that literally teleportation?"
"He's just leaping fast and cutting."
"Still doesn't make any sense."
"More importantly, look at that. There's a bird in the sky."
"Huh. There really is."
Something that hadn't appeared during his floors one and two was now flying above Kim Namwoo's head.
"A bird... is it?"
"It certainly has that shape."
"But it looks way too plant-like to be a bird."
"Must be magic."
Kim Namwoo's current situation: surrounded by two goblin warriors and three goblin archers.
He'd just cut down one goblin warrior, but five monsters remained. Unless he had eyes in the back of his head, there didn't seem to be any way to turn this around.
But then Kim Namwoo started doing something bizarre.
He dropped into an extremely low crouch, as if about to lie flat on the ground.
Then, with an instantaneous burst of acceleration, he slipped past a volley of incoming arrows, carved through the throat of the nearest goblin warrior, and immediately retreated three steps back. The moment his steps ended, he dashed sideways, drove a blade into the heart of a lurking archer, and ducked forward again —
And in the same motion, leapt upward and severed the neck of the last goblin warrior as it came running along a tree branch.
It had all happened in a blink. Both Choi Ah-in and his subordinate were left utterly speechless.
"Does he have eyes on the back of his head or what?"
"...He's sharing that bird's vision."
"I'm sorry, what?"
The man who couldn't dodge a single arrow on floor two had started dodging them the moment he stepped onto floor three. Considering the newly appeared bird, that explanation was the most plausible one.
When Choi Ah-in said as much, his subordinate apparently found it convincing enough and nodded.
The footage ended not long after — the remaining goblin archer, thoroughly terrorized, was simply captured alive. There wasn't much else worth watching.
But Choi Ah-in's expression refused to smooth out.
From his old community posts, he was clearly a massive show-off.
Ah-in had somehow managed to recover and read the posts that had already been deleted, but of course there was nothing in them that hinted at his real identity.
Still, certain things revealed themselves regardless.
For one, Kim Namwoo was a shameless braggart. He had an overwhelming urge to boast about everything and bask in praise, and as if to compensate for never receiving recognition in real life, he deliberately wrote provocative posts to grab people's attention.
A man with that kind of personality doesn't change overnight. Unless something truly replaced that outlet, his tail would show itself again.
When that time comes, I'll find him. Without fail.
Having finished that calculation, Choi Ah-in never suspected — because as fate would have it, Kim Namwoo had already found his replacement.
Getting the nature magic safely passed down to me by the Druid had truly been a stroke of luck.
Of course, I'd already been plenty lucky with the skill stones, but I could proudly say the single greatest fortune to befall me lately was learning nature magic from the Druid.
And for good reason—
I could sense a genuine will to communicate in there somewhere, but I simply did not possess the translation capabilities for whatever that was.
Amid all that nonsense, the one thing I'd barely managed to learn was the bird with shared vision.
According to the Druid, it was supposedly the absolute most basic of basic nature magic — but honestly, I was terrified to find out whether learning the next thing was even possible.
Wrong.
This guy's sense of time had become absolutely, irreparably warped.
And somewhere along the way, his unit of time measurement had ballooned into double digits — a hundred years here, ten years there. It honestly fascinated me.
Wait, isn't this Druid guy the one who looks like a grandfather well past ninety?
As a mere human, I couldn't help but wonder exactly what kind of absurd life choices it would take for me to live on that timescale.
What on earth was that supposed to mean?
Don't tell me the whole time talk was a joke this entire time?
You know how it is. There are always those grandpas who mess with you over prices — "rice cakes are fifty million won at the market, I tell you!" — when everyone knows they're five thousand.
Apparently the Druid, having grown old enough to be thoroughly senile, had developed a taste for that kind of gag.
So that explained the love of plants and the absurd lifespan. He was an elf.
No, hold on a second.
If he'd been born an elf, doesn't that make him a literally flawless beautiful boy?
DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!