Chapter 134
Chapter 134
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 134
Chapter Title: ACT.24 Hunters (4)
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“He’s always like this.”
Seong Woo-hyeon, who had been watching the speech, approached with a troubled expression.
“He steers the conversation to his advantage and then vanishes at the perfect moment. It’s so no one can catch any flaws in his argument.”
“He’s clever.”
“Before, people knew he was a player, so his act didn't have much of an effect. But now that it's been revealed he's not, the situation will change. We know what he's doing, but we're still forced to play along… Ugh, I feel my stress levels rising by the hour.”
“That’s one thing, but can you take a look at this for a moment?”
Lee Min-hwa came up beside Seong Woo-hyeon and pointed behind her with a grim face.
“Take a look? ...No, don't tell me it happened again in that short time?”
“That’s right. There are more victims. A lot more this time.”
Where Lee Min-hwa pointed, there were figures that looked like people.
They had been carried in, their faces covered with white cloths.
They were still in the clothes they’d been wearing, as if they’d been moved as soon as they were found.
Someone spotted one of them and cried out, their face contorted in shock.
“Seung-hyeon! Seung-hyeon! You... you bastards! Why! Just why...!”
His wails, as if the sky itself had fallen, cast a somber mood over the onlookers.
Jeong Ha-yeon, who had been watching with a complicated expression, suddenly spotted something and froze like a statue.
“Senior…?”
Before anyone could stop her, she drew closer and, with a trembling hand, slowly lifted the cloth covering the face.
It was Lee Do-hyeon, lying still with his eyes closed as if asleep.
Jeong Ha-yeon’s face went pale, her mouth opening and closing wordlessly.
*If it's good enough to fool her, then its quality is assured.*
I turned my head to the side.
The real, living Lee Do-hyeon was desperately trying to stifle his laughter, his nostrils flaring.
“Jeong Ha-yeon-ssi. From now on, just listen to what I have to say.”
I quietly approached her side and spoke softly enough for only her to hear.
Lee Do-hyeon followed close behind.
Jeong Ha-yeon was staring blankly, her eyes unfocused, but as she heard my next words, her focus snapped back.
“Lee Do-hyeon-ssi is alive. That's a fake, created to make it look like he's dead.”
Lee Do-hyeon, who had been holding his breath nearby, quickly took off his mask and put it back on.
Others would still have trouble recognizing him, but this should be enough for Jeong Ha-yeon to realize it was him.
Jeong Ha-yeon's startled expression hardened frighteningly.
“…Se-hyeon-ssi. Are you playing games with someone's life right now?”
Her tone was filled with suppressed anger, but she kept her voice as low as possible.
A foolish person would have raised their voice here.
“That's not it. It was to protect Lee Do-hyeon-ssi.”
“To protect him… you say?”
“He was attacked by the Hunters. It wasn't a simple hunt for coins; it was the kind of targeted assassination you'd expect for a key enemy figure. I managed to save him, but if they knew he was alive, they would have kept coming after him.”
Lee Do-hyeon nodded.
Only then did Jeong Ha-yeon fall silent.
“You did a good job making this. Good enough to fool me.”
“If it fooled you, Ha-yeon-ssi, then our enemies won't notice either.”
Making a fake corpse wasn't a difficult task.
After all, the Hongryeon Guild has a very skilled doll-maker player.
I just had to gently prod a weakness I knew about, and they panicked and granted my request without any questions.
“Only you should know, Ha-yeon-ssi. We plan to keep it a secret from everyone else for now.”
“Alright. So, what do you want from me?”
She was quick on the uptake, as expected.
There had been times I found that annoying, but this time, I liked it.
I answered with a grin.
“You just need to act as if Lee Do-hyeon-ssi is dead. With fury.”
The fewer people who know the truth, the easier it is to deceive the enemy.
Ideally, it's best when even your allies are deceived, but this wasn't a good situation to trick our side as well.
I have my own lines, and I try not to cross them.
Lee Do-hyeon was a fairly important person to Jeong Ha-yeon. If I had deceived her too, given her personality, she would have hated me immensely when the secret was revealed.
It was better to just tell Jeong Ha-yeon the truth.
“…Alright. The fact that those people tried to kill my senior is enough to make me angry.”
Jeong Ha-yeon let out a long sigh.
As if she'd released all her emotions in that one breath, her expression seemed much calmer.
“Thank you for saving my senior, Se-hyeon-ssi.”
“I only did what had to be done.”
I gave a faint smile and stood up.
With this, all the preparations were complete.
Choi Nam-hun would fall hard, tripped up by his own scheme.
“…I can't just stand by and watch this any longer.”
Meanwhile, many others had gathered around the other bodies, each grieving or raging.
This was the vicious cycle Seong Woo-hyeon had mentioned.
A bottomless hell where, as time passes, they only come to hate each other more.
The devils were probably cackling with laughter at this sight.
Seong Woo-hyeon spoke in a low voice.
“Completing the mission within the time limit is important, but we can no longer overlook this situation.”
“Does that mean…?”
“We will push the Hunters out first. After seeing this tragedy, I'm sure the other three who aren't here will agree with my decision.”
Seong Woo-hyeon had made his decision.
The guild masters took turns fending off the monsters that attacked the residential area.
Just as Seong Woo-hyeon said, Choi Dae-han, Kim Hyo-jong, and Seon Woo-jin weren't the types to just preach ideals.
It was safe to assume they would share the same opinion.
Those playing the 'good guys' might object, but public opinion was already overwhelmingly in favor.
Even Jeong Ha-yeon was staying quiet.
“But first, we need to find out where their base is.”
As if wanting to move things along quickly, Lee Min-hwa got straight to the point.
She took a rolled-up map from her thigh pouch and spread it on the ground.
“They've hidden themselves in the shadows and never show themselves, and we haven't been able to find them even by sending people out… We essentially have zero information.”
“They're probably over here.”
“Se-hyeon-nim?”
Without hesitation, I pointed to a spot on the map.
Seeing where I pointed, Seong Woo-hyeon's eyes glinted sharply.
“This location is…”
“I planted something with a tracking effect on them beforehand. I can feel its power in this vicinity.”
“That's a rather plausible location. It was heavily damaged during the virus incident and is no longer used as a residential area.”
The original residential area had been about half-decimated by the virus gate, rendering it unusable.
Fortunately, while the Red Zone had swallowed up much of the unusable territory, it hadn't consumed all of it.
Plus, with the virus resolved, there was no longer an issue with people living there.
It was the perfect place to live while avoiding the areas people frequented.
“Hyung, you can track people too?”
“Abilities are all about application. Depending on how you use them, they can be used in all sorts of ways.”
“Hmm, I don't have any utility skills. Maybe I should get one.”
“No. You could end up being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Don't stray from your path. You're more than enough as you are.”
*After all the effort I put into raising you.*
I couldn't let him suddenly ruin his build after coming this far.
I was able to do this because I got an all-rounder trait from the start, but Jo Min-woo's power was specialized in pure damage.
*‘All-rounder’ is just a nice way of putting it.*
To put it badly, being an all-rounder means you're a jumble of everything with no outstanding strengths.
But everything depends on how you use it.
Low investment, low efficiency; high investment, high efficiency.
Lord of Darkness had a low floor, but its ceiling was just as high.
“Then we'll split up and attack from all directions. Since the area has practically become a slum, I expect they've made many secret passages we don't know about.”
“There's bound to be a lot. They might also try to lure us toward monsters.”
“Yes. Since their forces are weak, they'll use every trick in the book to fight us. It may be small in scale, but it's still a war between people.”
“People are the scariest monsters, after all…”
“If we only gather people who have time to spare from their missions, our own forces aren't that plentiful. We have to be fully prepared.”
“It's a shame that Hwang Chan-jin-nim's whereabouts are unknown.”
Hwang Chan-jin.
Hearing that name, a thought occurred to me, and I opened the ranking board.
[Rank]
1st: Hwang Chan-jin (10)
2nd: Kim Se-hyeon (9)
…….
Hwang Chan-jin had already reached the 10th mission.
It seemed my feeling that he was obsessed with being number one, more than anything else, wasn't wrong.
*The 10th mission is different from the ones before it.*
If he speedran the missions with the goal of clearing them in first place, rather than collecting as many tokens and coins as possible like me, he'd need some extra time to clear the 10th mission.
The more I looked at it, the more questions arose.
The reward for clearing all missions in first place was good, but it wasn't worth missing out on all the hidden dungeon rewards.
In fact, I could confidently say my method was several times better.
Hwang Chan-jin couldn't be unaware of that, so why was he so fixated on being first?
“They'll be in a hurry too. They may have awakened, but they probably haven't made much progress on their missions. Many of them likely haven't even cleared the first mission because of the Red Zone. If we target that weakness, we can gain the upper hand.”
While I was lost in thought, the conversation had nearly concluded.
Seong Woo-hyeon had accurately identified a key advantage for our side.
The existence of missions.
Awakening was all well and good, but the power they gained was merely E-rank.
Considering that most E and D-rank gates were swallowed by the Red Zone, they weren't much different from before they gained their powers.
If anything, the burdens of missions and usage fees probably felt even greater.
“Do not let your guard down for a second.”
With those final words, dozens of players began to move, following the instructions of Seong Woo-hyeon and Lee Min-hwa.
The main forces that were supposed to be reinforcements for the Hunters had already been eliminated by me.
There was no way they could win this fight with their remaining personnel, especially with the guild masters on the move.
“Oppa, what about us?”
“You two…”
I didn't want to teach the twins to kill just yet.
But I couldn't protect them from it forever.
This wasn't a kind world. The time would come when they would have to.
“Can you handle subduing people?”
“Yes!”
The twins answered spiritedly.
They already had the strength.
All that remained was the psychological factor, but the two of them seemed ready.
“Let's split up the routes. Ha-yeon-ssi, please go this way.”
I pointed in one direction.
One of the places where I could feel the darkness I'd attached.
It was the place where Choi Nam-hun and the most aggressive player hunters had gathered.
“Got it. What about you, Se-hyeon-ssi?”
“I'm going to take a different route. I'm getting a strange reaction from the tracker I planted. Min-ah, Min-woo, the two of you will follow Ha-yeon-ssi from a distance. Think of it as a vanguard and a rear guard.”
“Yes!”
They answered immediately without any questions, which actually took me by surprise.
I thought they would ask why we weren't going together and were splitting into a vanguard and rear guard.
Did this mean the kids trusted me that much?
The thought brought an unconscious smile to my face.
“Then, I'm counting on you, Ha-yeon-ssi.”
“Yes. You too… I'm counting on you.”
Jeong Ha-yeon nodded, glanced at Lee Do-hyeon for a moment, and then vanished into an alley.
Although Jeong Ha-yeon's stats weren't that high yet, she was by no means weak enough to be taken down by an average player, even with traps.
I had sent her down what was relatively the most dangerous route, but that was one of the roles she had to play.
I turned my gaze to the remaining Lee Do-hyeon and Choi Yeon-su.
They each had a job to do as well.
I took out a mask and put it on.
“Choi Yeon-su. You'll disguise yourself as me and stay here.”
“Disguise myself as you?”
“Make a point of showing yourself in various places. As if I'm still here.”
“…You've come up with another interesting idea.”
Choi Yeon-su gave an incredulous laugh and used his disguise.
He instantly transformed into my exact likeness, making Lee Do-hyeon jump in fright.
Choi Yeon-su gave a puzzled look, as if he thought he'd misheard, and then left.
“Lee Do-hyeon-ssi. I told you before there would be many ways you could help me, right?”
“…I-I seem to recall that, yes.”
Lee Do-hyeon answered hesitantly, a strange sense of unease on his face.
To ease his worries, I put on what I hoped was a reassuring smile and said,
“It's time to help.”