Chapter 8
Chapter 8
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: To Escape Fate
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Oh!”
“What? What is it?”
When I peeked over, Suiel shrugged her shoulders and scribbled out the numbers with her pen.
“No, the calculation was wrong. I’ve always been bad at arithmetic.”
Hold on. The person who’d been bragging about numerology just moments ago was bad at math?
A sigh escaped me naturally.
“If you’re going to use stroke counts, why not use Hanja names? Hanja has more strokes, so it looks more impressive.”
“Oh, that. Suiel’s too dumb to know how to write Hanja.”
“......”
She was an angel who wrote Hangul in kindergarten-level handwriting.
Hanja was probably too much for her.
While I didn’t hide my pitiful gaze, Suiel diligently kept recalculating in her own way.
“The principle of numerology is this: specific numbers appear repeatedly in a person’s life. And from those numbers, we can infer your fate.”
Trying to get serious now wouldn’t fix the ruined atmosphere.
But arguing would only drag things out, so I decided to stay quiet.
“There are primary and secondary numbers in those specific figures. I’m going to calculate them now. Tell me your birthdate.”
“June 14, 2011.”
“I see. So your birth day is the 14th. 1+4 makes your primary lucky number 5.”
She still seemed stuck in childish play.
But I’d come this far, so I was curious to see if Suiel could really set up shop on the roadside.
“The secondary number is a bit more complex. You have to add up all the digits in your birthdate. There’s a special numerology rule for adding: all numbers are reduced to their lowest value.”
The formula for the secondary number went like this.
Month + day + year.
First, the month is 6. The day is 14, broken down to 1+4=5.
The year is 2011: 2+0+1+1=4.
Add them all up finally.
6+5+4=15.
But according to the numerology rule Suiel mentioned, reduce 15 to its lowest value: 1+5=6.
“There, now we know your primary is 5 and secondary is 6. Put them side by side and you get 56. That’s an exception to the reduction rule. We call this a pillar number. But we also need the reduced result of the pillar number. 5+6=11. Then 1+1=2. So from now on, I’ll calculate your fate using all these numbers: 5, 6, 56, and 2.”
I’d been watching it like a kid’s game, but when light exploded in front of my eyes, I startled back in surprise.
Suddenly, glowing numbers swirled around Suiel.
Wooong.
A loud noise like a fan on a CPU filled the air as sparkling numbers flew and churned everywhere. Then, from within the numbers, my fate numbers—5, 6, 56, 2—emerged. Those numbers wildly pulled in others, arranging them in orderly patterns.
“This is!”
Suiel was completely immersed, serious.
Her beautiful eyes flashed with pure white light. Amid the mystical arrangement of numbers, she was seeing something.
“No way! This can’t be!”
What on earth was she reading?
Shock was evident on her face. Sweat beaded on her forehead.
“Such a fate!”
That was her final exclamation.
The storm of light vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Suiel’s hair, which had been whipping around, settled calmly back into place.
“Whew......”
Suiel looked at me with a deeply complicated expression, then leaned back. In that short time, she was drenched in sweat.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
I was dying of curiosity. Ignoring me, Suiel observed me intently.
“I knew you were extraordinary. Honestly, it’s a waste for you to be a hyena. But how did you end up with this fate? No matter how I look, you don’t even have the aptitude to become a Hunter.”
“Even if you say that suddenly, it’s hard to understand.”
“In short, no matter how hard you try, you can’t become a Hunter.”
“Ugh.”
She hit a sore spot.
For someone who’d lived on jealousy and resentment, wasn’t that too harsh?
But I felt no malice, so I held back.
“However.”
“......”
“I saw a fate so grand it was majestic. In a vision, a blade blazing in flames appeared. And that sword pierced the hearts of kings.”
“Kings?”
“Yes. The ones we only theorize about conceptually. The existence we haven’t confirmed.”
Just as angels took on different forms on the moon, monsters had changed too.
They adapted to Earth’s environment and were reborn as fiends.
Like angels taking names and ranks from Earth’s myths, they’d formed a hierarchy similar to medieval feudalism.
The problem was we hadn’t fully grasped their class structure.
Lord-level monsters were our limit, and we only assumed there were kings above them.
“Haha......”
It was so absurd, only a dry laugh came out.
The most wretched hyena killing a king that no angel or Hunter had reached?
Ridiculous. And this topic dug painfully into my heart.
“Thanks for the entertaining story. How’d you know I like fantasy novels?”
As I stood to leave, clearly done listening, Suiel quickly grabbed my arm.
“Sit down. And listen more. I’m not joking.”
“......”
“You’re probably going to die soon.”
“Die and reincarnate or something?”
Suiel shook her head firmly, adding that death was the end.
With a sigh, I sat back down.
Suiel nodded lightly and began her explanation.
“You’re undoubtedly born with the fate of a Kingslayer. I don’t know how a hyena like you could achieve it. But here’s the thing. With such a great fate, the odds of you dying soon are high. Not just high—insanely high. 95%? 97%? No, maybe 99%?”
Like a steel beam falling from the sky while walking down the street.
“You have to break through that desperate probability for your fate to unfold. This is truly harsh......”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“Is there a way to overcome it?”
“There’s no such thing. But we can prepare a little. It might lower your death odds by just 1-2%, but that’s huge right now. And you’re surprisingly calm after hearing such a bad prophecy?”
“Oh, am I?”
Now that I thought about it, yeah. I probably couldn’t really feel it yet. And over the past ten years, death had always been close. I never forgot it could come suddenly. So even with 99% death odds, my honest feeling was just, “It’s finally here.” Nothing new about it now.
Plus, since an angel said it, the prophecy couldn’t be false. If some random person said it, I might’ve snapped at them for jinxing me. I wouldn’t have believed it easily. But because it was an angel, my thoughts simplified instead. “Oh? I see.”
My only worry was my one blood relative, my sister. But I wasn’t unprepared. Long ago, I’d written a will and arranged my assets to go to her. If I died or passed the legal missing period, my lawyer would execute it. Then all my wealth would go to her.
Sad, but that was that.
“A young kid with such an enlightened attitude isn’t great, you know?”
Instead of answering, I gave a light smile. Suiel shook her head and fell silent, lost in thought. The quiet stretched long; she seemed troubled. Suddenly, she stood and paced the room alone for a while.
Finally, her face showed resolve.
“Yeah. I’ve decided. Suiel may be dumb, but being dumb makes her bold.”
“Huh?”
“I’m investing in you. In you, Yoo Je-a. Honestly, jumping into something with such low success odds is foolish. I know that. But now that I’ve seen your fate, I can’t just leave it be.”
Suiel said I’d face death soon.
I couldn’t know what situation, and it’d be extremely hard to avoid.
“You mustn’t avoid it. If you do, you’ll never reach the Kingslayer fate.”
Even so, that put me in a tough spot. A brush with death—who wouldn’t want to dodge it?
Besides, I was a hyena, not a Hunter. When enemies came, normal was to flee, not fight. When I said that, Suiel wagged her finger.
“With that mindset, you’ll never become a Hunter your whole life. I know it—you want to be a Hunter more than anyone.”
My heart suddenly pounded hard.
“How did you...?”
“You’re more famous than you think. You’re the most renowned hyena in the country. That day, my subordinate picked a fight at the bar out of jealousy. A low-rank Hunter envious that a hyena like you was doing better. You’re a hyena, but you draw envy from low-rank Hunters, Yoo Je-a. Plus, after that city fight, your fame grew. People were buzzing that a hyena took down a monster even Hunters couldn’t. Didn’t you see the internet? It was huge.”
Even archangels knew of me now, she said.
“...I didn’t know.”
I’d gone home, eaten pizza, and read fantasy novels.
“Finding out about you was easy. Your flashy actions were typical of an angry young man who couldn’t become a Hunter. Your reckless past feats as a hyena—how else do you explain them?”
“...Didn’t you say Suiel was dumb?”
Pouting as I asked, she burst into clear laughter.
Her serious face finally returned to that of a girlish one.
“Dumb, yes. But a bold, intuitive dumb one.”
“Really troublesome kind of dumb.”
We both chuckled softly.
The mood lightened a bit more. Suiel came closer and sat right next to me. A sweet scent teased my nose.
The adorably pretty girl leaned in close and whispered.
“I’ll help you.”
“The reason? In case I become a Kingslayer, it’d benefit the angel side?”
“Of course I won’t deny that. But.”
Suiel gripped my hand tightly.
Her small, cute hand held strong resolve.
“If you see a fate facing death up close, you can’t help but feel compassion. I’m an angel.”
“Not even a real one.”
“But what’s the difference from a real angel?”
I couldn’t answer that.
They were copies of angels. They thought like angels, acted like angels.
Suiel liked shopping and was disappointingly immature, but she was undoubtedly kind. Her eyes were filled with worry for me.
“Will you let me help you? Yoo Je-a.”
“...Sure. I’ve always acted rationally. I won’t throw away this chance over pointless pride.”
“Good thinking!”
But how would she invest in me? When I asked, Suiel’s conclusion was simple.
“Not hard. I’ll pour money into you. Arm you with full gear. Hunter equipment on a whole other level from your hyena stuff, from head to toe. That should lower your odds of dying a bit.”
Simple conclusion.
There was just one issue.
“The downside is most Hunter gear works based on the Hunter’s abilities. It’d be a waste for you. And you can’t even see the gear’s stats.”
Angels borrowed a lot from games to grant power, so Hunter gear showed exact stats to them: defense +11, evasion +2%, etc.
The problem: non-Hunter me was as good as blind.
“But it’s not hopeless. There are gear types that don’t demand much ability and perform well. Like this: normal Hunter armor balances defense and special abilities. But you can strip specials and max physical defense. It’s for beginners who can’t draw out abilities yet, boosting survival. Or for high-rank Hunters focusing on unique traits.”
Sure, games always had quirky builds ignoring meta.
Like pumping defense obsessively.
“You could use those. They run on the gear’s inherent power, so even non-ability users can handle them.”
“Sounds expensive. You okay with that?”
“I said I’m investing in you. No shopping for a while. Gotta cancel those earlier approvals too. Sniff.”
Suiel looked genuinely down, and I felt a bit sorry.
She soon led me to another room. A large magic circle was drawn on the floor.
“What’s this?”
“You really know nothing about Hunters? This is the summoning room. Where we angels call magic items from our original world. You know we came from a special place. We can’t make those items here, so we summon them. Needs monster cores for power.”
Monsters rank 6+ had barriers and mana-clumped cores inside. Commonly called mana stones. Give them to angels, and they summon from home.
Most potions and magic items Hunters used came via angels across dimensions. Not business—pure service. Mana stones spent only powered summons. Stronger items resisted dimension travel more, needing more stones, raising prices.
“Here, I’ll open the shop window.”
Suiel stood in the magic circle’s center and activated her power. A holographic window appeared in the air.
Identical to in-game item shops.
“Wow! It’s exactly like a game.”
“Of course. The system’s based on human games from the start. See the money up top right? Summon within that limit. It’s really mana value, but.”
12.9 billion won.
Matched Korean currency directly. My full hyena gear was worth about 100 million; 12.9 billion left my jaw dropping.
“Insane.”
“Not that impressive. I’m just a regular angel. Archangels have absurd wealth.”
“How much can I use here?”
Suiel answered generously.
“All of it! Spend it all. Might bump survival by 1%? You’re really doomed.”
Should I laugh or cry?