The Mutant
Hunter Oh Hyeon-seong. He belonged to a special unit so classified that its very existence was a state secret — a man with no public name to speak of. And yet, among the first generation of hunters, anyone who had gone deep enough into the field couldn't possibly have been unaware of who he was.
But that was the industry's legend. Here in Changyeong-ri, he was just an ordinary young man.
Thanks to the steady stream of newcomers like Gwon Gyeong-min and his wife, or the Yoo siblings, Changyeong-ri — unlike the many villages where young faces had all but vanished — enjoyed a healthy cycle of arrivals and renewals.
Because of that, Oh Hyeon-seong blended right in, no more remarkable than any other young man in the village.
Today, however, Heo Deok-soo sensed something off about the easygoing younger brother he thought he knew. Ever since he'd witnessed that scene, the man's eyes had changed entirely.
As if he had become a different person altogether.
"...Nothing here."
Oh Hyeon-seong murmured the words with one knee bent to the ground. The house was a wreck of trampled weeds and shattered rooms. He had searched every corner in case something had been missed, but there was no trace of anything noteworthy. Considering how violently the buildings had been torn apart, it was astonishing how little there was.
No bodies, no bloodstains — not even a sign of resistance.
Either they'd been dragged out without the chance to fight back, or they had walked out on their own two feet. Either way, the homeowner hadn't been found dead yet, which meant he needed to move quickly.
But there was something he had to confirm first. Scattered among the footprints were tracks far too strange to belong solely to the dairy cows that had bolted from the barn.
"Did the person who lived here ever keep anything besides cattle?"
"Ah... now that you mention it. Boru, I think it was called. He had a dog — looked like nothing more than your average mutt, but good grief, it was enormous. Just standing on all fours, its back came nearly up to my chest."
"...It was that big?"
"Yeah. I already thought it looked off, so I told him to get rid of it unless he wanted me reporting it. But he kept insisting his dog was gentle and would never bite anyone. That damn fool... went and did everything the country tells people not to do."
Heo Deok-soo frowned, clearly frustrated. At his words, however, Oh Hyeon-seong's expression turned grave.
It was already well-established research that beasts exposed to miasma over long periods tended to grow larger. But that growth only went so far, always within the natural limits of the species. A transformation that dramatic was all but unheard of.
...Could it be.
Oh Hyeon-seong rose sharply to his feet.
"Wh-where are you going?"
"To find your friend, of course."
Oh Hyeon-seong set off, following the trail Merz had uncovered. Heo Deok-soo followed right behind him, but before long he was forced to a halt.
"Khack! Khack!"
Coughing violently, Heo Deok-soo swayed where he stood. His body was instinctively rejecting the miasma, which was thickening by the step.
"Ugh... this'll be the death of me..."
"That's enough. Go back to the truck."
"And what about you?"
"The Management Bureau only hires staff with miasma resistance for field positions. Even non-awakened can build up a certain tolerance to it."
It wasn't a convenient lie told just to persuade him. As far as field work went, it was the truth.
No matter how unlikely it was for a non-awakened employee to step inside a gate, exposure to environments like monster carcasses or nests — the very sources spewing out miasma — was bound to happen eventually. Among all non-awakened people, no group had higher resistance to miasma than the Management Bureau's field staff.
After a bit more back-and-forth, Heo Deok-soo was finally persuaded, and he handed over his shotgun.
"Take this. You've fired one before, haven't you?"
"...A few times."
"I'd rather nothing dangerous happens at all, but... if something's happened to that fool Young-do... then make that damn beast regret what it's done. I'm counting on you."
Oh Hyeon-seong accepted the shotgun, offered in a slightly trembling hand, and nodded. He watched Heo Deok-soo's retreating back as the man coughed his way home. The strain might lay him up for a few days, but at this distance it shouldn't leave any lasting damage.
This was still only the periphery of the miasma's influence, after all.
Let's hope I never have to use this.
Oh Hyeon-seong stared at the shotgun for a long moment, then slung it across his back and set off. If his hunch was right, then regardless of Heo Deok-soo's request, there would be no sparing the animal that had fled from this place. A beast that had once tasted human blood would inevitably come looking for more.
After brushing his fingers once over the dagger at his chest, he pressed on, following the trail. Several minutes must have passed when—
Rustle.
Oh Hyeon-seong stopped dead at the presence stirring directly ahead.
"Grrrrrr."
From between the bushes emerged a dog. But no ordinary one. Its massive frame had surpassed every limit of its species, its features wolf-like yet strangely wrong, alien in a way that defied description.
...A mutant.
His suspicion, faint as it had been, was right on the mark.
A mutant — unlike the otherworldly beings that poured out through gates, this referred to Earth-native creatures that, through mutation, turned hostile. Rare as such cases were in Korea, in China, where miasma saturated the environment, he had seen countless examples.
"It's buried under the smell of beast, but I can smell human blood. Looks like that thing's done some feeding."
Perched without warning on Oh Hyeon-seong's shoulder, Blea sniffed at the air. A mutant was, for all intents and purposes, already a monster. There was no reason whatsoever to let it live.
And yet as the standoff stretched on, Oh Hyeon-seong felt something was off.
Why isn't it attacking?
The creature had completed its transformation fully, and still it made no move to strike. Then—
Yip!
The thing spun around and bolted. Acting on reflex, Oh Hyeon-seong kicked off the ground and gave chase.
But contrary to his expectation of an easy catch, the creature's movements were astonishingly agile — faster than he'd anticipated. Enough to surprise even Blea.
"What the hell is that thing?"
"...No ordinary beast, that's for sure."
As a rule, mutants were far weaker than monsters. Yet this one, mutant though it was, was moving with an ease that left any run-of-the-mill boss-class monster in the dust. Even Oh Hyeon-seong, who had seen more mutants than anyone in China's polluted zones, had never encountered a specimen like this.
All the more reason he couldn't let it escape. He raised his speed in earnest — but the moment he closed the distance, the creature veered sharply and vanished into a cave. Through Merz, he confirmed the cave was shallow and practically a dead end.
Shing.
Dagger drawn, Oh Hyeon-seong stepped inside. No way out, no escape — he meant to finish this here.
But a rank odor of blood assailed his nose from the very entrance, and a few steps deeper in, he found its source: carcasses of dogs sprawled in every direction.
Those are mutants too.
Like the creature from moments ago, they were mutated dogs — but these had been torn apart, mauled to a gruesome death. Blood spattered the walls and every surrounding surface, the clear aftermath of a savage fight. Raising his blade, he pressed further in and came face to face with the yellow-furred mutant that had fled from him.
Yet there, slumped beside the exhausted creature, Oh Hyeon-seong discovered the body of a man.
...It's him.
Drawing close, he confirmed the man's identity. The face matched the ID photo he'd found in the house perfectly. It was Kim Young-do — and the body hadn't been dead long. A slight onset of decay had begun, but nothing severe, and there wasn't a single wound on him. Nothing to suggest he'd been killed or devoured by anything.
Only the traces of violent coughing up of blood remained.
"Did you lead me here or something?"
Oh Hyeon-seong spoke to the creature. The mutant, breathing in slow rasps, only blinked at him in silence. Looking at it up close, he saw deep wounds scored across its body everywhere. It kept a listless vigil at the corpse's side, as if its strength had abandoned it.
"..."
Oh Hyeon-seong looked down at the mutant. A cornered monster would thrash and lash out. But this one showed no aggression at all — it simply gazed up at him with eyes full of sorrow.
"Blea, could you run back to the truck for a second? There's a bag I left in the passenger seat."
"...What a pain."
"I'd appreciate it."
"If my master asks, I suppose I must."
Having grumbled for appearance's sake, Blea sprang from his shoulder and scampered out of the cave. She returned moments later with something sizable held in her jaws.
"Thanks."
It was a round something wrapped in foil — the rice ball he'd meant to bring back for Yoon Seol-ha when he'd gone down to the village. Peeling it open, Oh Hyeon-seong held it out toward the mutant.
Blea watched with a doubtful eye, half expecting the thing to snap at his hand — but the creature dragged itself forward, sniffed gingerly at the offering, and ate. Hungry as it clearly was, it devoured the food eagerly, all the while taking visible care that its sharp fangs never so much as grazed his fingers.
When it had finished every last grain of the rice ball, it returned to its spot, curled itself into a ball beside the body, closed both eyes, and promptly fell fast asleep.
So the effect's already kicking in.
The rice grown in his fields was, in itself, as good as a perfect treatment for trauma. Combined with the formidable vitality of a monster that a mutant possessed, even wounds like these could be recovered from quickly.
"You're really not going to kill it?"
"...By the book, I should."
Mutants, once Earth-native creatures, shared the identity of monsters from the moment of their transformation. One of this caliber was effectively an S-Rank monster, and as an uncontrolled one, there was no telling what kind of disaster it might cause.
Yet it was precisely because of that — a mutant that didn't attack humans had never once been documented. The first instinct carved into a monster's mind was the extermination of mankind. Even Special Species, with intelligence rivaling humanity's, could not defy that instinct in any fundamental way.
And here stood a being that broke that law.
Ending the life of that defenseless creature would be simple enough — but to close the book on such an extraordinary case just for the sake of protocol felt like a waste.
"...Let's go."
Oh Hyeon-seong gently lifted Kim Young-do's body into his arms.
Once back, Oh Hyeon-seong helped arrange the funeral. As Heo Deok-soo wished, they laid the man to rest in a simple graveyard at the edge of the village. His stubborn friend, he insisted, would never have wanted to leave this place even in death.
By the time the burial was done and he returned to the cave, the mutant was gone without a trace.
"Back in the day, that would've earned you a disciplinary hearing."
Choi Jeong-il remarked as he listened to the story. Two men, casting their lines into the old reservoir.
"I didn't expect it to wake up from sleep that fast. Honestly... treating it like that may have been going a bit far."
"And yet it seems to be a remarkable case regardless. A mutant that doesn't attack humans — that's practically proof of the argument that monsters and mankind could coexist."
Truthfully, had anyone but his senior Oh Hyeon-seong said it, Choi Jeong-il wouldn't have believed a word. The case overturned every research finding accumulated to date.
"Still, I suppose I'll have to look into it separately. If it causes a major incident somewhere else, that's on us."
"That's the sensible call."
They reeled in their lines and rose from their spots. Questions still lingered. Where had the cows that bolted from the barn gone? Where had the mutant been trying to carry the dying Kim Young-do?
After all, if it had kept going in the direction it was headed, it would have led straight into the heart of the Restricted Area — the zone where the miasma ran thickest. That could only have worsened the patient's condition, so it could hardly be called an act of care. Perhaps it simply hadn't thought that far. Expecting profound reasoning from a mere animal was asking too much.
Cre-eak.
Oh Hyeon-seong and Choi Jeong-il trundled down the hill behind the house and opened the front gate. But the moment they stepped into the yard, they froze where they stood.
"Hm...?"
To their bewilderment, a dead rabbit lay right in the middle of the yard.
As if a beast were sharing its kill.