What Comes After the Ordeal
The North Korean territory was a no-man's-land, a region overrun with monsters.
Hunters from the Special Operations Command had pushed forward to contain the threat, but no matter how tightly the military dotted the area with bases, reclaiming complete control over the entire region — as one could within the border proper — was simply impossible.
Realistically, they couldn't respond to every gate, and the same went for nests. When a large nest was discovered, it was eliminated as a top priority, but the countless small nests hiding here and there were another matter entirely.
As a result, erosion phenomena cropped up all across the North Korean region. And even setting the erosion aside, the miasma rising from monster corpses meant that miasma contamination was inevitably severe as well.
Because of that, no amount of state-of-the-art equipment made it possible to grow food there, and even the water flowing in the streams was undrinkable. Within South Korea, food exposed to miasma merely tasted bad — but up here, in the North, contamination had reached levels that could put an ordinary civilian's life in danger.
Of course, hunters possessed a baseline resistance to miasma, so unless an area was truly severe, it rarely came to that. But no matter how high one's resistance, the long-term damage was obvious. It was precisely for this reason that the military stationed in the North received all its food and drinking water through strict external supply lines.
"Alvern."
Naturally, Oh Hyeon-seong had no need for such worries.
When he held out an empty pot, clean water materialized out of thin air and splashed down into it, filling it to the brim. It was water purer than any found anywhere else in the world — not a speck of miasma remained in it.
Sizzle!
The pot went onto the gas burner. While waiting for the water to boil, he finely sliced some scallions.
I spent longer combing through the seed vault than I expected.
If nothing else, Oh Hyeon-seong had full confidence in his knife work. In the beginning, he'd had to consciously hold back for fear of slicing straight through the cutting board and the sink along with the ingredients, but his serious cooking career had now stretched into its seventh month or so. When it came to knife skills, he was certain he wouldn't lose to a first-class chef.
He finished the scallions in no time and pulled out the secret weapon he'd been saving.
My carefully hoarded eggs... Today's the day I splurge on them.
Oh Hyeon-seong gingerly lifted three glossy eggs.
When it came to farming, he had long since established himself, but animal products like meat remained precious even to him. Thanks to Alisa, the spirit of light, and her purification abilities, he could at least secure pork by hunting the wild boars in the back hills — but that was still his only reliable source.
Wild crops still grew even in today's countryside. What had all but vanished were the people working in livestock.
With crops, selective breeding had pushed miasma resistance as high as it could go. The trade-off was reduced yields and worse flavor, but once planted, they still grew obediently enough. Livestock, however, had no such luck.
Breeding programs had failed to meaningfully raise miasma resistance in animals, and a host of unavoidable side effects had come flooding out instead. Loss of flavor from miasma was only the baseline. With weakened immune systems came constant disease, and the livestock turned violently feral — attacking people, no less, and tearing apart the barns themselves. Running a normal operation was, in effect, impossible.
And so, by the present day, nearly all the meat humanity consumed had been replaced with synthetic meat. Instead of raising animals in traditional barns and harvesting from them, meat had become one more mass-produced industrial product, cultured and stamped out in factories.
That was why, for Oh Hyeon-seong as well, wild game was the only realistic source of meat. Even if he purified factory-made synthetic meat with Alisa's power, there was no way it would ever taste like the real thing.
If there's one silver lining, it's that the livestock let loose during the chaos of that era managed to carve out a place for themselves in Korea's ecosystem.
After the gate crisis hit in earnest, society fell into turmoil, and there was a period when the barns all collapsed into abandonment at once. The livestock abandoned back then fled into Korea's mountains and forests, settling into an ecosystem already thrown into disarray by the miasma. That was why Oh Hyeon-seong had been able to stumble upon wild chicken nests in the past.
Their aggression had climbed since then, turning them into a public nuisance that occasionally attacked people — but for him, they had become a precious source of meat and other animal products. In any case, he was more than willing to invest his very rare eggs today.
Plop!
As the ramyeon burbled along, Oh Hyeon-seong cracked the eggs in. Just as the noodles reached that perfect, slightly-firm doneness, he swiftly killed the heat and rose from his seat.
"There we go. Perfect."
He nodded to himself, then turned his gaze. Three chairs had been set out in advance, and all three sat empty.
"They're probably done by now."
"Hah... hah..."
Jang Seo-jun, sprawled flat on the ground, panted heavily. His ragged breathing had gradually steadied, but the lingering horror of those sensations still had cold sweat trailing down his face. He stared blankly up at the sky, as if part of his soul had left his body.
"How are you feeling?"
Baek Ji-soo walked over and sat down beside him.
"I'm... perfectly fine, ma'am."
"Doesn't look like it."
Jang Seo-jun's face was drained deathly pale. He had pushed himself until Baek Ji-soo, watching from the sidelines, judged it genuinely dangerous — and given his capabilities as a hunter, it was obvious he'd been running far beyond his limits.
"This is the first time I've ever been the one to break someone during training."
"I-is that so?"
"Why push yourself that hard?"
"Any hunter wants to grow stronger. It's instinct."
"That's all?"
She glanced at him sidelong as she asked. It was true that hunters instinctively chased greater power. But a desire everyone shared was precisely the kind that produced no real driving force.
Jang Seo-jun, having caught his breath for a moment, spoke up.
"I'm from Pyongan Province."
"...What?"
"Like the other defectors from the North, I came down to South Korea six years ago."
The Queen's army, having devoured all of China, had launched its invasion of North Korea within mere months. The North had possessed no ability to counter a force of that magnitude, and the regime collapsed in the blink of an eye.
With the Queen's legions pouring down from the north that very moment, mass refugees erupted across the entire country, and South Korea had no choice but to mount an immediate response.
"Do you know of Unsan, ma'am?"
"How could I not? It was one of the most fiercely contested battlegrounds on the entire Northern front."
she said. Baek Ji-soo had fought in the Northern Defense War herself. As a former black-ops operative, nearly her entire record remained classified — but the fact that she had been a war hero of that era was something everyone knew.
"I was in Jeongju at the time, but I know the evacuation operation was underway with the refugees flooding in."
"I was there. Not just me — my whole family. Our retreat route was cut off and we were trapped, and the monsters came swarming in from every direction. No matter how many shells we fired, the tide of monsters just filled the gaps right back... We were simply standing before a scheduled death."
Six years ago. Jang Seo-jun had still been a minor then, not yet even Awakened. Even with his parents and his little sister beside him, all he could do was tremble in helpless terror, waiting for death to come.
"But then... someone appeared. All I saw was a distant figure, too far away to even make out a face — but I saw it. I saw it. The way that person annihilated the monsters filling my entire field of vision in a single stroke."
Jang Seo-jun's eyes shone as he spoke. Even now, that moment played before his eyes with perfect clarity. It was a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life — and the driving force that had carried him this far as a hunter.
Someone who would have been in the Unsan or Yeongbyeon area at that time...
Baek Ji-soo mulled it over, and as one particular person came to mind, the corner of her mouth twitched. She'd had no idea he was from up north — his accent carried not a trace of it. Who would have guessed fate would pull a coincidence like this.
"I was supposed to die that day, but I was given a second chance instead. So I want to grow strong and become someone this country can lean on. I want to become a hunter who can give someone else that same chance. And... if it's possible... I want to stand beside that person from back then, as an equal."
Jang Seo-jun spoke with utter sincerity. He didn't know the face or the name — but a hunter of that caliber, he believed, surely hadn't perished even in that ferocious war. And if he ever climbed close enough to the summit himself, there would come a day they met.
Baek Ji-soo let out a small laugh.
"Is that so."
For an instant, Jang Seo-jun flinched at her laugh. He might be a Rank 7 hunter whom no one would dare dismiss, but in the end he was just one soldier on the front line — and here he was, flat on his back, barely able to move, earnestly pouring his heart out to the living legend in front of him. His cheeks burned with embarrassment.
Then a hand thrust suddenly into his field of view.
"Up."
"Y-yes, ma'am."
Jang Seo-jun took Baek Ji-soo's outstretched hand. Her touch — which he'd braced himself to be as cold as ice — was surprisingly warm. Hauled to his feet in one motion, he wobbled and steadied himself.
"That's it for today's training. Let's head back."
Before anyone noticed, the sky had gone dark. As Jang Seo-jun walked toward the vehicles, his stomach let out an audible growl. He hadn't eaten a single thing since linking up with Oh Hyeon-seong. Honestly, he was hungry enough that it was getting hard to bear.
Skipping a meal for a day or so was normally nothing he couldn't handle. But today had packed in far too much, on top of the most brutal training of his entire life. Exhausted in body and mind alike, he was so hungry he felt like he could eat a whole cow.
"Oh, sunbae."
"Perfect timing."
They crossed paths with Oh Hyeon-seong after only a short walk.
"When did you get back?"
"A while ago — I could tell you were in the middle of training. I already have dinner ready."
Oh Hyeon-seong looked back and forth between Baek Ji-soo and Jang Seo-jun. Judging by their expressions, the training had gone well enough.
"Dinner... right."
Baek Ji-soo blinked, remembering something she'd forgotten entirely. Just then, as the distance closed, the smell drifted over to them.
An overwhelming aroma that seized the nose. Baek Ji-soo immediately picked up her pace, and by the time she stood before the table, a gasp escaped her lips without her meaning to let it.
"Snnnff..."
On pure reflex, Baek Ji-soo wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she stood staring blankly at the ramyeon, as though something had cast a spell on her. Jang Seo-jun, trailing in behind her, gawked at the sight of her.
Ra... ramyeon?
Ramyeon was a food even the military handed out freely. Then and now, it was cheap, easy, and filling enough to count as a full meal. There was just one decisive difference — ramyeon these days tasted like absolute garbage.
The noodles were made from bottom-shelf synthetic grain, so it was impossible for them to taste good; in practice they were treated as barely a step above standard combat rations.
Gulp!
But why, then? Enchanted, he took his seat and swallowed his spit. It was true that exhaustion made food look more appealing — but this was something else entirely.
Thud!
Oh Hyeon-seong slid a bowl toward him. The aroma washing over him in a wave made Jang Seo-jun's mind go blank for a moment.
"Don't just stare at it. Try a bite."
"Y-yes, sir...!"
With a slightly trembling hand, he carefully picked up his chopsticks.