For Solidarity (1)
I gave the briefing in front of the Busan team.
“The size is estimated to be over forty meters. We’re looking at a weight of roughly one hundred and seventy tons. As for its appearance...”
Heo Da-young hurried over to my side at once.
Then she started sticking A4 sheets to the whiteboard with all the enthusiasm in the world.
A beam projector would have been nicer, but given how poorly equipped this place was, she was making the best use of what she had. In the end, nine sheets of paper went up in all, and once they were arranged together, the full shape emerged as if a puzzle had been completed.
A giant octopus.
The Dirty Kraken.
I pointed at the whiteboard with a broom handle as if it were a commander’s baton.
“That bastard octopus, the Dirty Kraken, has super-regenerative abilities that let it heal its own wounds.”
I tapped one of the tentacles with the baton.
“And if a tentacle is detached, it can move independently.”
Team Leader Mun Dal-su tilted his head.
“Detached? Like a robotic arm or something?”
“Exactly.”
That was one of the Dirty Kraken’s key traits.
Like a lizard shedding its tail, it could rip off all eight tentacles on its own.
“What’s more, each tentacle obeys the main body’s orders and moves separately.”
“Hah. That’s a fucking nightmare.”
That was how tens of thousands of people had ended up dead in my previous life.
The Dirty Kraken had sent its tentacles ashore to attack civilians while its main body ran wild in the sea. Because the damage spread simultaneously across multiple locations, both the city and the coastline were turned to ruin in no time at all.
I had prepared myself to some extent. Stopping a sea monster that could appear anywhere, anytime, like a flash of lightning, was almost impossible.
Still.
Last time, it had taken tens of thousands of lives.
This time...
I’ll keep the damage to a minimum.
I got to the point.
“All right. Here’s your assignment. Exterminate any Dirty Kraken tentacles that come ashore. As for me...”
The broom handle swung toward the sea.
“I’ll take the main body.”
For the past three weeks, I had led the Busan team through hellish training.
There it is.
The eyes of every team member sharpened at once.
Fighting spirit burned in their pupils.
“I like that. Clear objective.”
“I’ll fry those tentacles—whether they’re tentacles or whatever the hell else they are. Just leave it to me!”
Mun Dal-su asked, “When’s D-day?”
“A week from now.”
“Okay. Then we just keep up the special training until then?”
Training was important, but before that, we needed practical preparation.
It’d be good to have one last inspection.
The Dirty Kraken was still sleeping in the sea.
There was no way we could jump straight into a real engagement yet.
We need a rehearsal.
Real battles were impossible to predict.
When, where, how.
No one knew what would happen.
That was why this job couldn’t be a one-man show.
How well my team and I meshed together—that was another variable.
“Let’s send you all to the site soon and make sure everything clicks before the real thing.”
After the briefing, I went outside.
Heo Da-young followed behind me.
“Hunter Choi. What should we do about the fan meeting?”
At a time like this, every second mattered.
And here she was, asking about some leisurely fan meeting.
There was no way to cancel it.
After all, that excuse was the very reason I had come down to Busan in the first place.
“Carry on as scheduled.”
“Yes.”
Then I realized I was curious.
This was supposed to be a large-scale event with as many as a thousand people showing up. How many had actually signed up so far?
“How full is it?”
“Well...”
Heo Da-young stumbled over her words.
“About twenty-five people.”
“...”
Not even one-tenth of the expected turnout.
They had been making such a racket about the hero of Gangnam and the savior of Busan, but it looked like most of it had just been propaganda articles the Dio Guild had forced into circulation for publicity.
As time passed, people had clearly started to forget the incident.
Refusing every interview, photo shoot, and variety show appearance the Dio Guild had lined up probably hadn’t helped either.
So my name really doesn’t carry much weight after all.
Heo Da-young’s shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry. I think I got too excited and overdid it.”
She had been full of confidence at first, but as the date drew near, even she had started to look anxious.
The ever-positive, clumsy rabbit had gone a little timid.
“Should we move it to a smaller venue now?”
Come to think of it, this fan meeting was important work too.
The hunter’s real job was fighting monsters.
Most guilds kept themselves afloat by clearing monsters and Gates.
But once public attention began to gather around hunters, the hunters themselves became a source of revenue for their guilds.
Take the long-haired warrior who walked around carrying a golden bow, for example.
Vulkan, the S-class hunter of the Superior Guild.
He had countless female fans.
He also worked as an advertising model and got offers from the entertainment industry.
He had a talent for singing too, so whenever he held a concert, even massive venues sold out in the blink of an eye.
For the Superior Guild, Vulkan was more than just a hunter. He was a true golden goose, a treasure that kept on giving.
And then there was the problem child of the Dio Guild.
The troublemaker, the mad dog, the psychopath...
S-class hunter Taros. The one they called Narak. Na Sang-min.
What could I even say about him?
Need I go on?
He was a hundred-thousand-strong anti-fan magnet who got death threat letters on the regular.
From the Dio Guild’s point of view, he was undeniably strong, but also the kind of asset they couldn’t quite throw away. A nuisance, and yet indispensable.
It felt like standing at a crossroads.
What kind of hunter would I become?
Would I be some half-hearted hero spouting convenient lies, or would I walk my own path even if people hated me for it?
Putting the complicated plans aside for the moment, there was one road I needed to take first.
I need a mask.
If I was going to keep doing hero work.
If I was going to hide the identity of the Purple Devil.
Then I absolutely had to become a hunter the public would love.
I looked down at the flustered Heo Da-young.
“Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”
“Really?”
It was confidence with no basis at all.
I knew the future, yes, but not the details.
Still, as always, I would pull it off.
Whether it was killing monsters.
Or turning Choi Yongki into a brand.
Whatever it was.
“Trust me.”
Heo Da-young stared at me, mouth hanging open.
Then she nodded furiously, up and down.
“Yes, sir! Hunter Choi! I trust you!!!”
There was no need to throw your arms out and shout hallelujah, though.
“I’ll do my best to support you, just like you’re doing your best for us!”
Before I knew it, Heo Da-young had gone right back to being that optimistic, clumsy rabbit.
WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!
Then, out of nowhere, a siren went off.
Beep—beep-beep—
A signal at regular intervals. An alarm that changed according to the situation.
This is...
It was the signal that a Gate had appeared.
The team gathered at once.
“Heo. Where is it?”
Mun Dal-su came running over.
Heo Da-young pulled out her phone.
“There are three places. Nampo-dong, Dongnae, and Banyeo-dong.”
“Let’s move out now.”
“Which one should we take?”
“Hmm.”
Mun Dal-su stroked his chin.
When a Gate opened, every guild was contacted. The Gates were assigned in the order that each guild managed to grab the call.
You could think of it as a kind of call taxi service.
The difference was that taxis made money by carrying passengers.
Hunters gambled with their lives.
As team leader, Mun Dal-su thought things through more carefully than usual.
“What’s the rank for each area?”
“Nampo-dong is Collapse, Dongnae is Crisis, and Banyeo-dong is Ruins.”
According to the order of Crisis, Collapse, Ruins, and Apocalypse, Banyeo-dong was the highest.
The stronger the monster rank, the higher the value of the magic stones.
The rarer the remains, the more money there was to be made from them.
Though it’s not as simple as that.
Reality wasn’t a game.
When you faced a high-ranked monster, the odds of dying went up too.
Hadn’t we seen that already?
Back then, a single Bullet Bird had nearly wiped out half the Busan team.
“What do you think, Hunter Choi?”
Mun Dal-su asked me for advice.
His rank and career were both above mine, but I was the one who had been training the team and effectively leading them all along.
“Heo. Pull up the map.”
“Yes. Right here!”
I studied the geography closely.
Then one place caught my eye.
“Where is this?”
A strip of water ran beside Banyeo-dong.
It was also one of the places where a Gate had appeared.
“That’s the Suyeong River. It runs through the eastern part of the city.”
If Seoul had the Han River, Busan had the Suyeong River.
Heo Da-young tapped at her phone and added, “The investigation team just sent an update. According to the dungeon expert, there’s a high chance the Gate contains aquatic monsters.”
In that instant, something flashed through my mind.
It was time for the long-awaited rehearsal.
“Let’s go here.”
I tapped the screen myself and accepted the call.
Bold red letters appeared on the display.
Dio Guild has been assigned.
We arrived at the site quickly.
As soon as we got out of the car, Mun Dal-su started giving orders.
“Check your gear, and loosen up however you need to.”
Everyone tightened the straps on their protective equipment and gripped their weapons.
A few hunters jogged in place, breathing hard.
Some shook out their hands or stretched to loosen their stiff bodies.
They all looked tense.
Experience really couldn’t be ignored.
Compared to the multi-Gate incident at Gangnam Station, I was much calmer now.
“Follow me.”
With Team Leader Mun Dal-su in front, we walked along the riverside path.
Beside me, one set of breathing grew especially rough.
“Haa. Huu!”
It was the youngest member of the team, Jang Na-ik.
He had only recently joined the Dio Guild.
I’d heard he had just come off internship right before I was transferred here.
He was twenty-one years old.
Rank: E-class.
He had awakened at nineteen, but after joining another guild he failed to produce any real results and kept causing trouble, so they kicked him out. In the end, he had nowhere else to go and drifted into the Dio Guild.
For Jang Na-ik, a Ruins-class Gate was objectively too much to handle.
“Hey. You all right?”
“...Ah.”
Jang Na-ik swallowed hard.
“Y-yes. I’m fine.”
His hands were trembling, and he was sweating buckets. There was no doubt he was terrified.
He was the sort of kid who made small mistakes all the time and got scolded by the seniors for it.
Maybe that was why he looked even more shriveled up than usual today.
This won’t do.
Inside a Gate, every sense had to be razor-sharp.
But that didn’t mean you had to be locked up tight like a block of ice.
If you were too stiff, you couldn’t show your real ability when it mattered most.
For hunters too, strength came from knowing how to relax.
“Na-ik. What was your talent again?”
Hunters didn’t usually share their unique traits with one another. That was an unspoken rule.
But when you were a team that entrusted one another with life and death, things were different.
I already knew what Jang Na-ik’s talent was. I was asking on purpose, just to ease his nerves.
“It’s Gravity.”
A telekinetic-type attribute that used gravity like a magnet.
Jang Na-ik’s level was still low, so he could only control objects weighing ten kilograms or less.
“You saw how I fought back then, right? Even a Ruins-class bastard was nothing to me. Am I wrong?”
“...R-right.”
I deliberately put on a bit of swagger to reassure him.
“Stick close behind me. You’ll be safe that way.”
Only then did Jang Na-ik’s ragged breathing start to settle.
“Understood, Hunter Choi.”
I placed a hand on his shoulder.
“And if I end up in danger, you make sure you save me. All right? You can do that, can’t you?”
Would a low-ranked hunter ever have to save a high-ranked one?
I believed so.
Because no matter how strong an S-class hunter was, unless he was a god, he couldn’t do everything alone like some lone wolf.
No matter the difference in strength, hunters had to live together.
Jang Na-ik clenched both fists tight.
“Hunter Choi. No matter what happens, I’ll definitely save you.”
The trembling stopped.
He wasn’t no longer afraid of death, but at the very least, there was a determined resolve in him now—a will to stand up and fight against it.
“Good. I’m counting on you.”
The leader at the front came to a stop.
“There it is.”
Jang Na-ik pointed to a spot ahead.
Something was floating above the river.
An oval-shaped object let out a strange, wailing sound.
The Gate rippled across the surface of the water, making its presence known with alarming clarity.
Judging by the way it swelled and shrank, it looked like something would burst out of it any second.
We’d better hurry.
Mun Dal-su spoke.
“We’ll divide into an extermination unit and a combat unit.”
The former would go into the Gate itself.
The latter would deal with any monsters that escaped outside if the extermination failed.
“Hunter Choi. Which one do you want?”
The best option was to infiltrate the Gate and shut it down early.
“I’ll take the extermination unit.”
“Good. From here to here, combat unit—five people.”
Mun Dal-su drew an invisible line and divided the team.
“Yoon-jae, Hyeong-geun, and Hun-jun. Plus Hunter Choi and me. Five people total. Extermination unit.”
“Team Leader Mun. I...”
Someone raised a hand in a voice so small it was almost a squeak.
Mun Dal-su’s eyes turned to Jang Na-ik.
“You stay in the car.”
During the Seo-myeon incident, Jang Na-ik had failed to report a monster appearing behind them in time.
Because of that, two team members had been injured.
Jang Na-ik bit his lip.
“But...”
“That’s an order.”
Even Mun Dal-su, who usually seemed like a decent, friendly guy, was unyielding this time.
That was what real combat meant for hunters.
A reckless choice made on emotion could become the knife that stabbed a teammate to death.
“...Yes, Team Leader Mun.”
Jang Na-ik turned away with heavy steps.
The sight of his back was pathetic.
What was solidarity?
It meant being tied together as one mass.
And no matter what happened...
We share the burden together.
Before the showdown with the Dirty Kraken, I had a duty to bind this team together.
I stepped in front of Mun Dal-su.
“Team Leader Mun. Take Na-ik too.”
“What?”
“I’ll take responsibility.”
Short. Hard. To the point.
And because every second counted, Mun Dal-su didn’t hesitate for long.
“I’m the team leader, not a babysitter. If Hunter Choi says you’ll take responsibility, then I’ll trust you.”
As soon as he said yes, Jang Na-ik’s face brightened.
“Thank you! I won’t make a mistake this time, I swear.”
“That alone isn’t enough.”
I cut him off firmly.
“You need to be useful to the team.”
The youngest member nodded with solemn determination.
“Yes, Hunter Choi.”
Mun Dal-su took the lead.
“Enough talking. Let’s go fight.”
And so we headed toward the battlefield with grim resolve.