Chapter 6. Hero Hunt (3)
Chapter 6. Hero Hunt (3)
"Gurk— ...ugh, urgh......!"
People awaken when death is staring them in the face.
That old folk belief had been passed down in the hunter industry for ages. Put yourself through a life-threatening crisis, they said.
Maybe it wasn't just a folk belief. At least it sounded more plausible than awakening a skill because your jealousy was historically ugly.
Therefore, I did not let my guard down.
Without letting my guard down, I swung my sword properly.
"Hik......!"
So that the psychopath in front of me wouldn't awaken, not even by a one-in-ten-thousand chance.
"Grrk... kuh......."
Die.
"Ugh......."
What had enraged me most. More than the fact that this psychopath had burned me without a second thought, more than the pain and the injustice, there was something else that made my fury boil over.
'He said his name.'
Before regressing to the past.
Before grabbing my head and burning it to a crisp, Flame Emperor had smiled and said this:
-But you know I'm Flame Emperor, don't you, pal? You saw that the Saintess died by my hand too.
-So you've got to die.
-My name is Yoo Soo-ha. Farewell.
It all sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. But there was exactly one part. One truly strange part. I couldn't stand it—it was infuriating and disgusting.
The very last line.
'He said his own name.'
Why would he suddenly reveal his name while killing me?
Did he think I wouldn't know Flame Emperor's name?
No. That wasn't it.
'He was showing off.'
Flame Emperor.
That bastard... was showing off, murderer that he was.
As if warriors facing each other in a sacred duel revealed their names to one another. Flame Emperor must have thought to himself at the moment he killed me:
-Still, I kill while openly declaring who I am.
-So at the very least, I am honorable.
How dare he.
"Scum like you......."
How dare a psychopath like you.
"Scum like you, pull that kind of crap......!"
A man who killed a bystander just happening to walk down the road. A man who set the fire himself, came back, and shamelessly acted as if he'd done nothing wrong. A man who wasn't even human, a person who wasn't even a person. A beast. A demon worse than a beast.
And he had the nerve to show off as if he were noble.
"Don't make me laugh!"
Thunk!
My sword pierced Yoo Soo-ha's throat.
"......."
Yoo Soo-ha no longer said anything. There was no scream. Not even a groan. A hunting ground empty of people, with no one coming or going. Lying among nameless weeds, Yoo Soo-ha stared up at the sky with unfocused eyes.
He was dead.
"Haa, huff... haa......."
Maybe it would be inappropriate to simply say he "died." He was no ordinary hunter, and his death was even less ordinary.
The man who would one day become Flame Emperor. The legend who would reach rank 1 in the world. The one who would single-handedly break through the Tower's 10th floor, which no one had conquered for years.
He died by my hand.
"Hoo."
I let out a sigh.
"Now I'm finally coming back to my senses......."
I started to say, but stopped. Had they come running at the smell of blood? Wolves. Large wolves were prowling around the area.
-Grrrr.......
They weren't ordinary wolves. Black fur traced patterns on their bodies, like tattoos etched by human hands. They were monsters called prairie wolves, and the more complex the pattern, the stronger they were.
The ones before me had simple patterns, but... they weren't opponents an F-rank hunter like me could recklessly challenge.
"......."
First, I retrieved the wallet that Yoo Soo-ha had taken from me.
Cautiously, I stepped back.
"You want to eat this guy, right?"
I said, pointing at the corpse.
"I don't need it. Take it."
And I backed away.
-Grrrrrng.
The wolves approached the corpse. Riiip! Beast fangs tore through the coat on the corpse. When one bit down, the other wolves swarmed in. Riiip, riiip....... Hidden behind the wolves' massive bodies, the corpse was no longer visible.
"Eat well."
I hurriedly retreated.
'Is it over?'
I buried the clothes stained with Yoo Soo-ha's blood. Deep in a pit I had dug beforehand. I washed my whole body with water I'd brought in plastic bottles. Even as I pulled fresh clothes from my backpack and put them on, it still didn't feel real.
'Is it really over?'
If my new clothes were too clean, that might actually draw suspicion. I deliberately rolled around on the bare ground. Once I felt sufficiently dirtied, I returned to the city on the Tower's 1st floor—to Babylon. A Vigilante Corps member was standing guard. The Vigilante Corps member glanced at me, but... soon yawned and turned his head away.
'Ah.'
No one knew.
'It's over.'
When I entered a bar and ordered a glass of beer, and when I emptied that glass and ordered another, not a single person paid me any attention. No one knew what I had done.
On the bar's television, stale news simply droned on.
-Today, the 10th-floor assault team was thwarted once again.
-World ranks 2 through 7 all mobilized together to break through the 10th floor, but.......
-Amid all this, criticism of the world rank 1, Sword Saint, grows louder by the day. It is due to Sword Saint's attitude of not joining the assault team despite being rank 1.......
No matter how long I waited, no breaking news appeared about "a hunter gone missing in the Tower's 2nd-floor hunting grounds."
It was only natural. Rookie hunters losing their lives happened every day. Just as no one paid attention to me, no one cared about the disappearance of a nameless hunter.
In other words.
'It's over!'
Yes.
I had succeeded in hunting a monster.
5
"Kheu."
I raised my empty glass high.
"One more draft beer over here!"
"Sir, you're drinking a lot. Had a good hunt today, I take it?"
"Yessir, it went well. Very well!"
My chest felt so light it couldn't possibly feel any lighter.
For two or three hours, I filled my refreshingly hollowed-out heart with beer. Only when the sunset began to glow outside the bar did I slowly start thinking about reality.
'What do I do now?'
There was plenty to do.
'I could win the lottery, or sell the strategy for the upper floors that no one else knows for money. Heh, my life has opened up. It's opened up!'
I pulled up my status window.
The status window visible only to the hunter themself.
+
Name: Kim Gong-ja
Rank: F-rank
Skills (2/4)
1. I Want to Be Like You (S+): Passive
2. Regressor's Clockwork Watch (EX): Passive
3. None
4. None
+
"Kyaa, I don't even need bar snacks."
My status window was the most delicious snack in the world. One S-rank skill. One EX-rank skill I'd never even heard of. In meal terms, wasn't that like steak with caviar on top?
'Wishing for anything better than this would be greedy. Yep.'
But the satisfied smile on my face lasted only a moment.
"...But I don't have any combat skills."
Ah.
Is the human heart always like this?
The things I lacked began to catch my eye, one by one.
"No matter how well I earn money, a hunter should be a hunter....... If I only have money and no power, I'll get robbed someday anyway......."
Society inside the Tower was harsher than the outside world.
Put nicely: survival of the strong. Put plainly: the law of the jungle.
It wouldn't matter if I could just run away to the outside world like this, but.......
'Once you set foot in the Tower, you can never leave.'
That was the law.
Not even an S-rank hunter with spatial teleportation abilities could move outside the Tower. It was simply impossible.
In Babylon, there was only one person who could interact with the outside world. The Merchant Alliance guild master. A hunter who went by the alias "the Count."
'They say even the Merchant Alliance Master can only send goods out and bring goods in, and can't personally leave for the outside world.......'
Literally, you could enter as you pleased, but leaving was another matter.
Only those who entered prepared to abandon the outside world entirely became hunters.
Only those who threw away their wealth, their relationships, their status and nationality.
Perhaps... even their humanity.
"Yeah."
Of course, I was the same.
"Sink or swim, I've got to make it in the Tower."
I muttered, buoyed by the alcohol. Success. I truly, madly wanted to succeed.
Why had I idolized Flame Emperor as a hero in the first place? Because I was charmed by that bastard's character? Did that bastard even have character? The reason was far simpler.
I envied the dazzling achievements, the success, that Flame Emperor had won.
"Let's succeed, Kim Gong-ja. Yeah, what can't a guy who's died 4,090 times do? Let's definitely succeed......."
Then.
-Jingle.
A bell rang at the bar's front door.
6
At first, I didn't pay attention to who had come in.
How impressive could a hunter be who came to drink from early evening?
But instead of me, the other drunks began to murmur.
"Hey, that person over there......."
"Huh? It really looks like him?"
"Why would he be in a place like this......."
Soon after, the bar fell strangely quiet. Everyone held their breath. At this point, I couldn't help but turn my head out of curiosity.
There stood an old man dressed in a black suit.
"Hm."
An outfit so neat he looked ready to walk into the office at any moment.
He wore a plain, vivid red tie. Watching him, you could almost mistake him for an ordinary office worker and think, "Huh? When did I get back to the outside world?"
Except his shoes weren't dress shoes—they were sneakers. Red sneakers.
'Wow. What kind of fashion sense is that?'
It was wildly unbalanced.
But the oddity wasn't just his clothes.
"Milk."
"Pardon?"
"Warm milk, with just a touch of vodka and sugar mixed in. If you have honey rather than sugar, that would be even better."
The bar owner looked flustered by the absurd order.
"Uh... sir, I'm not a bartender, so......."
"I'll pay properly. Don't you worry."
The bar owner nodded reluctantly. The other patrons were still stealing glances at the old man in the suit and whispering. He seemed to be quite famous.
'Who is he?'
I quietly furrowed my brow.
'Strange. I know the faces of most famous hunters.'
It wasn't a boast, but there was probably no one who envied top-tier hunters as much as I did. Flame Emperor went without saying, and I could rattle off world ranks 2 through 100 one after another. They were all targets of my jealousy, after all.
And yet... strangely, that odd old man in the suit was unfamiliar.
'I feel like I've seen him somewhere. Where did I see him? Where?'
Only after some time passed did it come to me.
'Ah!'
It was none other than my studio apartment.
The newspaper scraps plastered all over the wall.
Among them, exactly one article had a photo of that old man.
「Sword Saint, day 22 of disappearance. Is the worst chaos in the hunter industry upon us?」
'It's Sword Saint!'
That was it. Before Yoo Soo-ha made his name as Flame Emperor, he had been the most famous.
He was a hunter from so long ago that I'd forgotten. After all, even I couldn't instantly recognize a hunter who'd been active more than ten years ago.
And for whatever reason, he was also someone who would soon go missing.
'Ah, right... it's 11 years in the past now.'
It hit me anew that I really had regressed to the past.
'To the people of this era, that old man—not Flame Emperor—must be the strongest in the world.......'
It was fascinating.
Even knowing it was rude, I kept sneaking glances at Sword Saint's profile. How should I put it? It felt like seeing a great figure who had died long ago standing right before my eyes. Anyway, it was strange.
'Heh. That old gentleman must have an S-rank skill too, right?'
I smirked and sipped my beer.
'Not a weird skill like mine, but a proper combat-type skill.......'
That was the moment.
"Huh?"
My hand stopped without my realizing it.
Suddenly. Truly suddenly, my S-rank skill came to mind.
+
[I Want to Be Like You]
Rank: S+
Effect: Automatically activates when you are killed by an enemy. Copies 1 skill from the enemy who killed you and makes it yours. You cannot copy from the same opponent twice. Which skill is copied is determined randomly.
※However, you die!
+
'Wait.'
A lightning bolt struck my mind, and for an instant everything went white.
The same sensation I'd felt when I thought of the way to kill Flame Emperor swept over my entire body.
[I Want to Be Like You]. It's an incredible skill. If I set my mind to it, I could die to any hunter and copy their skill. Except the fact that I have to die is too big a drawback.
But.
'I... don't die anymore, do I?'
Because I now had another skill.
+
[Regressor's Clockwork Watch]
Rank: EX
Effect: Automatically activates upon death. Regresses to 24 hours before the moment of death. Memories and stats are preserved even after regression.
※However, the higher your hunter rank, the stronger the penalty imposed.
※This skill was copied from Hunter Yoo Soo-ha.
+
'Then.'
A chilling current ran up my back.
'No way—can I just copy everything? As long as I pick any hunter and die to them?'
It was an utterly obvious fact. But the tension and pressure of having to kill Flame Emperor quickly had kept me from realizing it until now—and now it finally dawned on me.
'...Even Sword Saint, the current rank 1 of this era?'
Gulp. I swallowed the beer left in my mouth.
Flame Emperor, who would become rank 1 in the future, possessed the cheat ability of a regression skill. Then what about Sword Saint, before he disappeared somewhere? What kind of ability did the hunter dominating this era possess?
Didn't he have a skill just as incredible as Flame Emperor's?
'If only I could copy that.......'
I stared at the old man's back.
'Jackpot.'
It seemed.
My hunt was not over yet.