The Hunters' Nest
Outside the city, the slums were broadly dominated by three organizations.
First were the militia — those who guarded the pockets of the slums where people still had some property, or skills worth keeping.
Second were the criminal organizations operating across the entire district.
Third were the hunters who ventured into the White Shriek Forest and brought back animals to sell.
The criminal outfits and the militia were hostile to each other, but the hunters belonged to neither side. They simply hunted animals, sold them for money, and left it at that. When the hunting got thin, they casually switched to mercenary work — which is why they could fairly be called neutrals.
You might wonder whether people who grabbed the powerless and used them as bait weren't criminals themselves. But to the hardscrabble residents of the slums, the value of a life was vanishingly low. Was there anyone who filed a theft report over a pebble picked up off the street? That was about the level of a slum dweller's worth.
Even so, these hunters had never managed to form any particularly large organization. Partly because no one among them had the ability for it — and partly because it simply wasn't a profession that made real money. Those who wanted serious coin joined the criminal organizations. Those who wanted something stable, moral, and aboveboard joined the militia.
And because of the special magnetic fields of the White Shriek Forest — which covered two-tenths of the planet — the hunters were limited to picking off the scraps pushed out to the edges. The animals of the White Shriek Forest were cunning enough that when outsiders arrived in force, they would temporarily go to ground and become nearly impossible to hunt.
Once, someone had tried to expand the hunters' ranks and establish a base so they could go after the rich game deeper inside — and the White Shriek Forest had simply swallowed them whole. Once a month the forest locked itself in a dense fog, and that was when the White Shriek itself — a spider-type beast standing ten meters tall — began its hunt. The animals worth selling for good money hid themselves so thoroughly they were hard to find, and anyone who stayed too long ended up dead at the White Shriek's hands. So the hunters had neither the leisure nor the reason to organize on a large scale.
"So — munch munch — killing those bastards is, gulp, no problem. That it?"
"Yes."
Jincheon, who had been exploring a building that looked like several shipping containers welded end to end, talked as he wolfed down synthetic rations alongside Kunlo.
"Gulp. Damn, this stuff tastes absolutely filthy. At this point it's a crime, isn't it? Minimum life sentence."
"I told you it tasted bad."
Jincheon had been about to move out and deal with the hunters when hunger hit him so hard his stomach cramped, forcing him to make do with the synthetic rations Kunlo carried. The bar was about twice as thick as a normal calorie stick and a bright, aggressive pink. One bite produced the sensation of chewing soap, and the taste could only be described as disgustingly bad. If you had to put it another way: it would still qualify as "food" on the day the universe ended — but it would never, under any circumstances, make it into the "cuisine" category.
But it has all the nutrients and calories I need. Just need to fix the taste and texture.
Forcing it down because he would starve otherwise, Jincheon surveyed the hunters' building he had marked as his target. The structure, converted from empty shipping containers, was large and spacious enough for twenty people to live in. And as if marking their territory, they had driven out the surrounding slum dwellers and put up a wide fence. What happened to anyone who approached was made clear by the dilapidated houses standing about ten meters out from the fence line.
Inside the fence, various aliens could be seen maintaining a few bikes and vehicles. Seven outside. Nine life signatures inside. And four patrol drones the size of human heads floating through the air, circling the fence.
The ones outside look busy with maintenance. I'll infiltrate inside and take them out one by one.
If he could get into the building without being spotted by those patrol drones, he could deal with the hunters while their guard was down.
"There might be a firefight, so don't hang around and catch a stray grenade. Find somewhere to hide."
Concealing himself behind a tent made of old rags while watching the hunters, Jincheon offered Kunlo some advice.
"Mister!"
"Yeah?"
"P-please come back alive!"
Only if Jincheon came back alive would Kunlo himself avoid dying as bait. But sensing that half of Kunlo's voice carried genuine concern, Jincheon showed an easy smile.
"Don't worry. I didn't go through all the trouble of coming to this world just to get killed by the likes of them."
Giving Kunlo's head — which came up only to his waist — a light pat, Jincheon headed for the hunters' territory with a single pistol.
"This world?"
Kunlo tilted his head at Jincheon's choice of "world" rather than "planet."
Having erased his presence, Jincheon moved carefully, staying close to the wall.
Can't get spotted by the drones.
Whether they were AI-controlled or remotely operated by someone, he couldn't tell. What mattered was that, in the end, he just needed to stay out of their field of view. The round glass set in the center of those head-sized spheres was clearly a camera — so he just had to avoid that. They might have sensors that would sound an alarm the moment something entered a certain zone, but if they were that kind of drone, there would be no reason to patrol in the first place.
And even if they are sensor types, I just need to stay outside their range.
Tap. Tap.
Jincheon rapped on the wall. They had put up a wall and nothing else — no special devices.
Now.
Jincheon timed his leap for the moment the two drones patrolling his side weren't looking at the wall. A standing vertical jump from lifelong sports professionals might clear about a meter; the truly gifted went higher still. But Jincheon, briefly channeling his Tushinryeok, jumped over fifteen meters, kicked off the wall, and soared even higher — landing inside the fence.
Thud.
Even landing bare on bare ground from a height of at least twenty meters, his footsteps sounded no heavier than a light walk. Moving in ways that ignored the laws of physics through martial arts, Jincheon first caught a powerful reek of ammonia.
Ugh. No toilets, huh.
Apparently there weren't any separate facilities. The ammonia stench and the murky stains dried onto the wall were proof enough.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM~~
From inside the building, music built on a heavy beat was blasting. No killing intent — they hadn't noticed him. For a sci-fi world, the infiltration had been almost too easy — but that was only possible because these were slum dwellers outside the walls. Inside the city, he never would have gotten in this cleanly.
Shall we begin.
Exploring the rear of the container building closest to the wall, Jincheon found a window cut for ventilation. White smoke was drifting out of it, as if something were on fire. Perfectly suppressing his breathing and presence, he carefully peered through the window — a bare hole with no glass.
"Plus one."
"Minus three."
"Ha, fuck. I fold."
The first thing that caught his eye was a variety of aliens gathered around a table, gambling with thin sticks that looked like they were made of wood. Four of them.
"Krrr— krrr—"
On a sofa some distance away, one alien — face half lion, half human — was sleeping, making sounds like a rough engine.
Bubble. Bubble. Bubble—
And four more hunters were visible, sucking on hose-like tubes plugged into an oval transparent glass vessel. Inside the glass, something like blue flowers was boiling with water.
"Pwah—"
One hunter pulled his mouth from the hose with a dazed look and exhaled, white smoke billowing from his lips. White smoke was also rising in lazy curls through a hole at the top of the glass. Clearly the blue flowers in the boiling water were producing it.
Having identified the source of the smoke drifting inside, Jincheon frowned.
Drugs.
Even a slight whiff of the smoke made his whole body go languid, a dirty kind of euphoria trying to settle in at the end. Driving the drug's influence out with Tushinryeok, Jincheon checked a bit more carefully just in case.
So these are all the ones inside.
Four high on drugs. One sleeping. Four focused on gambling.
Simpler than I expected.
Even the gamblers would be more sluggish than usual from the smoke. And with the drones on patrol, they would be that much more at ease. Jincheon holstered his pistol and climbed in through the window.
"Plus seven."
"Plus one."
If you're going to gamble, you should be concentrating every nerve — and they're using a drug that makes them drowsy. Classic live-for-today types.
Jincheon's first targets were the hunters at the gambling table. Common sense said he should approach quietly and finish them fast —
There are several rooms, but no doors. Too lazy to install them?
He was looking around, surveying the interior of the container building. Remarkably, he neither crouched nor hid — walking around openly with his hands clasped behind his back, completely at ease. And yet no one noticed his presence. The drugs had loosened their nerves, yes — but more than that, Jincheon had completely erased his presence. Between the gambling, the drugs, and the sleep, not a single person registered him.
Tsk. Disappointing. I came to a future world expecting something different.
But for all that effort, the only special things Jincheon found were a rack for tools, a large metal box roughly the size of a small room, and a place for processing meat. Apparently, if he wanted a real taste of sci-fi, he would have to get inside the city.
Time to clean up.
Having fully mapped the interior of the container building, Jincheon drew his knife. The aliens half-stoned and enjoying their gambling still had no idea anyone was approaching, entirely focused on their hands.
Jincheon leaped lightly.
Thud.
"Huh?"
"Uh?"
Seeing Jincheon's feet land softly on the table, the aliens looked up, wondering what this was.
Whoosh—
At the same moment, Jincheon's body spun smoothly, and a blade of sword-qi longer than the knife itself swept through all four heads in a single stroke.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
The four heads split in half, blood pouring onto the table.
"Krrr— krr…"
His breathing changed.
The regular breathing of the lion-faced hunter sprawled on the sofa had stopped. As expected, the lion-faced hunter bolted upright and raised a pistol of a different design from the one Jincheon had scavenged. Unlike Jincheon's pistol, this one had a bizarre muzzle shaped like a glue gun.
CRUNCH!
But the moment the lion-faced hunter aimed, the knife's edge drove into his head and shoved it backward.
PITCH!
"Ugh!?"
Then something unexpected happened. The dead lion-faced hunter's finger had been about to pull the trigger. The finger, clenched by a death spasm, squeezed — and a mass of red light shot from the glue-gun muzzle, lost its target, and punched through the ceiling.
…Huh?
Jincheon was startled at first, then felt a wave of absurdity. That it had fired a mass of red light rather than a normal bullet meant this was clearly a laser pistol. Which meant the dead lion-face had been the leader of this hunter group.
But why is it so slow?
The optical weapon called a laser was slower than he had expected. Faster than his own pistol, certainly — but at a level the current Jincheon could dodge anytime if he took it seriously.
"Wh-what the hell are youuu?"
But seeing the ones who had been smoking drugs startle and scramble awkwardly to their feet, Jincheon decided to solve that question later.
Bang bang bang!
He put three rounds through three heads in rapid succession with his pistol.
"Heh… heh hee… heeheeheehee…"
The one left alive was trembling, face caught between laughing and crying. Terrified by his comrades' deaths, yet his brain still swimming in drug-induced happiness — that was how such a bizarre expression came about.