The Hunt
An unfamiliar ceiling. A cockroach crawled along the faded wallpaper. Dokseon, lying on the bed, stared blankly at it for a while, then sat up.
The blanket slid away and bared a stark-white naked body. It was not even a hot day, yet she was damp with sweat—the traces of having satisfied, the night before, a curiosity about the female body.
Squish, squish. She kneaded her breasts in both hands and smiled, satisfied.
That breasts were still hanging off her chest felt awkward. At the same time, having a pair she could grope anytime, anywhere, was deeply satisfying.
To a creature called a man, breasts were nothing short of happiness pouches. Dokseon was a man, so she was no exception. She went about carrying happiness pouches she could touch whenever she pleased. Set aside a few trivial problems, and was this not the finest situation a man could ask for?
The advantages of a female body were not limited to happiness pouches. There was the pleasure of the body itself. It was good—absurdly good. And unlike when she had been a man, she could keep enjoying it for a long, long time.
So this is why they all turned into women just to have their fun.
The other True Immortals had not become women and indulged for nothing. Taste it once, and it was addictive enough that you could never forget.
Keep this up and my bones are going to rot.
Even so, she could not spend all her time probing the female body. Dokseon got up, washed, and made ready to go out.
She had not spent the interval exploring only the female body. After completing the Lower Vehicle of the Essence Condensation stage, she had studied the world as it was now. She had to know something before she could make any plans at all.
What she looked into most carefully was the flora and fauna that had newly appeared, superhumans and monsters included. The internet offered nothing but superficial knowledge, yet even that was help enough.
First, superhumans might pose a threat to Dokseon as she was now. The one she had faced last time, she could have handled without trouble—but there was no chance that sort ranked as a high-grade superhuman.
A 1-Star, most likely.
A 1-Star Superhuman was the weakest of the superhumans. Gather a whole company of 1-Stars and they still could not face a single 2-Star. Likewise, a 2-Star could die and wake again and still never beat a 3-Star.
The ceiling of what she could face right now looked to be a 2-Star Superhuman. From 3-Star upward, she would have to steer clear as much as she could. It was a judgment built on internet knowledge, so she could not put full faith in it. Caution, though, beat carelessness.
This was the extreme of self-preservation possessed only by those who had climbed to the realm of immortals in the brutal Cultivation Realm. Even the safest stone bridge, you tapped before you crossed. Fail to do even that, and you could die and be reborn without ever becoming an immortal. That was the Cultivation Realm.
Its ways were beaten into her bones, so on Earth too she meant to move with care. For the moment she would carry the awareness of a weakling and quietly grow her strength. Do that, and someday there would be no one left who could stand against Dokseon.
Superhumans. Strong as they like to think they are, they're weeds. No immortal bones, no spiritual roots.
Superhumans and cultivators had different ceilings. Before one who possessed immortal roots, a being without them was destined only to fall among the weak. She did not even need to climb all the way to True Immortal. Break through the Daoist realm and reach the True Person realm, and she was confident she could stand against even a 5-Star Superhuman.
But right now Dokseon was nothing more than a cultivator at the Essence Condensation stage of the Daoist realm—a weakling who could never overcome a 5-Star Superhuman. And so she meant to bide her time, as a weakling should.
After superhumans, she looked into the plants and animals, monsters included. People usually lumped them together under the name otherworld beings. In the narrower sense, that name meant the plants and animals that were not a threat, while the dangerous ones among them were called monsters separately.
To Dokseon's eye, both monsters and otherworld beings looked usable as materials for elixir pills and spirit medicines. She had grounds for thinking so. The pharmaceutical companies of this age were already manufacturing medicines from monsters and otherworld beings, and among those medicines were things that resembled elixir pills and spirit medicines.
Dokseon, who had more than a little skill in pill refinement herself, could develop elixir pills and spirit medicines from otherworld beings if she put her mind to the research. With the rough survey finished, she set her course.
Lie low, study otherworld beings, and find a method for making elixir pills. Nothing mattered as much as elixir pills. A cultivator was called a cultivator precisely because they loved elixir pills with a pathological devotion—raw material: humans.
Don't eat elixir pills, and you still call yourself a cultivator?
Pill material.
She meant to research spirit medicines as well. Unlike elixir pills, a spirit medicine could not grant cultivation progress, but it was a medicine with a special effect. Cultivators needed them too, yet ordinary mortals needed them even more.
Dokseon had no foundation at all. To gather funds for cultivation, she would have to sell spirit medicines. It wounded an immortal's dignity—but looked at another way, was it not an immortal personally bestowing grace upon mortals?
Always be grateful, mortal. That spirit medicine of yours—be grateful before you yourself get swapped in as the elixir pill.
This much, anyway, preserved an immortal's face.
Before she began researching monsters and otherworld beings in earnest, she planned to gather a rough store of information. Conveniently, near the lodging where she was staying, there was a shop that dealt in otherworld beings.
Dokseon took out the bodysuit she had bought at a clothing store, put it on, gathered her weapons, and stood before the mirror. Thanks to the efficacy of the Tendon-Changing Bone-Forging, her proportions had improved, and the beauty reflected there had grown still more alluring.
Damn. She really is pretty.
Beneath the pretty face was a body honed clean. The black bodysuit laid every feminine curve bare.
Figure's nice, too.
Just looking was a feast for the eyes, and now she could feast them whenever she wanted.
So this is why people get off staring at their own reflection.
The immortal enjoyed a spell of ogling herself.
Unlike the past, present-day Seoul was not a safe city at all.
"Eeehee! Heehee! Heeheehee!"
"Where the hell do these junkie bastards keep crawling in from?!"
Step even a little outside a Safe Zone like Gangnam, and you could easily find junkies swaggering down the streets.
"Ah. They swiped it again."
Pickpockets lifting things was all too common.
"Why the hell did you even bring that?! Aaagh!"
So even someone who had lost something precious was expected to blame themselves for failing to watch their belongings, rather than the pickpocket.
"You see the knife? Don't need me to spell it out, do you?"
"Yes, here it is. Please, take it."
Meet a knife-wielding robber, and they gladly offered up the wallet.
"Didn't get cleaned out for much today. Lucky me."
If the amount a robber took was small, they even counted the day as lucky.
"This is our turf, you fuckers!"
"The fuck are you saying?! This is our strip! You little punks!"
Now and then thugs swarming in for a brawl counted as a dynamic local event.
"Boys~ only pretty girls in here~ come quick~"
"Tons of huge tits! Crazy huge tits! We've got bombs, too!"
In a city like this, if half-naked prostitutes solicited on the street, people did not so much as frown.
"Dad, a brothel opened here!"
"Looks like this neighborhood's finally fit to live in."
They were pleased, even, that an organization had appeared to manage their district.
"If I had my pick, I'd want the Yongsik Faction."
"I wanna grow up fast and whore for the Yongsik Faction!"
That prostitutes had gangsters at their backs was basic common sense to the sharpies of Seoul. And yet, ironically, this crime-friendly city was the safest city in the country.
"H-heehee. M-money. Hand it over."
This is a safe city?
A man with gaps between his teeth—whether he had rotted them snorting, or what—held out a kitchen knife. Amazingly, it had not even been an hour since she left the lodging, and the robbers Dokseon had met, counting the one in front of her now, already numbered more than ten.
This garbage is the safest city in the country?
She had been cutting through back alleys because they were shortcuts, but even so she had met far too many robbers. Yongsan, a single bridge away from Gangnam, was in this state. If this counted as safe, she could not even begin to guess how far gone the other cities were.
What, are the other cities shooting an apocalypse film?
Even the Cultivation Realm had not been this much of a mess. Reach the capital of a nation, and it was under the protection of a True Person or a True Immortal. From a mortal's point of view, at least, you did not meet robbers in the capital. Of course, if you were a cultivator, that was another story. The ones who ate cultivators were always other cultivators.
"Hurry up and hand over the money, you bitch!"
This is why weeds don't make the cut.
No manners. Cultivators were different. Every cultivator came equipped with a manners-injector, so if you failed to keep manners, manners were injected into you by force.
"I wasn't going to listen even if you asked nicely. And 'you bitch'? Watch your manners."
Thud. She drove manners into the junkie the cultivator's way. He would not be failing at them again.
"Ugh, got blood on me. Fuck."
Dokseon wiped the blood from her hand, looked quietly down at the corpse whose occupation had just changed from bottom-tier junkie to elixir-pill material, and clicked her tongue.
Ruined. Totally ruined.
It was such a mess she could not even use it as pill material. The soul was broken, and the essence-blood had rotted.
Couldn't make an elixir pill out of this if I wanted to.
Every junkie robber she had met so far had been in the same state, so there was not even disappointment in it. One thing, though, sat wrong. The junkies' condition was too far gone to dismiss as a mere side effect of the drug.
Did somebody make them like this on purpose?
If any of the drug remained in them, she could have checked at once, but she found none—used up, perhaps, every last bit. Dokseon left the unrecyclable trash behind and walked on.
Word must have spread in the meantime that she had dealt with more than ten junkie robbers, because from then on none came sniffing after her. Before long she reached her destination, a building she had stopped by a few times in the past. Back then a café famous for its interior had stood there. Not a trace of it remained.
Beneath the dry sign, the place where a clear glass window ought to have been had been replaced with thick iron plate. The door was a lump of iron as well.
Creeeak. Dokseon opened the iron door and stepped inside, and a sharp medicinal smell stabbed her nose. Then a shout.
"Hand over the money! Hurry up and hand it over!"
Another robber. Is this the kingdom of robbers?
"Do I need to deal with the body?"
"No. We'll handle it on our end."
Troublesome trash had just appeared, and the shop owner did not so much as blink. He did not even make a show of calling the police.
"The police?"
"It's only one junkie dead. No need to call them."
He gestured, indifferent, for an employee to clear the corpse away.
"We can make fertilizer out of the body."
Truly the nerve of a resident of the kingdom of robbers. To keep a shop in that kingdom, you apparently needed a spine like this. A truly wild Republic of Korea. Dokseon felt it all over again: the country had gone wild.
"So, what brings you in?"
The owner asked. Dokseon recalled why she had come and answered.
"Wanted to know what you buy."
"......A hunter, then. I thought you'd come for something else."
"Something else?"
"You're from Gangnam, aren't you?"
Why's he suddenly asking if I'm from Gangnam?
She could not follow the turn of the conversation, so she simply looked at him and answered.
"I've never lived in Gangnam."
True in the past as well, and judging by how this body had rolled through life as a prostitute, it had not been a fate that lived in Gangnam either.
"Yes. I thought you'd say that."
Even so, the owner had the air of a man who was certain.
"Still, the moment something happens, looking for the police first—that's a Gangnam softie's trait. Pardon me. A Gangnam person's. Watch that from now on, and it'll help you hide where you're from."
She was being treated, start to finish, as a softie. Dokseon started to pull out a rebuttal, then let it go. Argue, and nothing would change. Never fighting a fight you could already see you would lose—that was a cultivator's way. And what was the point of jawing with a weed? It would only make her mouth hurt. It would only cheapen an immortal's dignity.
"Enough. Can you tell me what you purchase here?"
The dealer in otherworld beings also provided information on monsters and otherworld beings. That way hunters gathered what was needed and brought it in. The service had surely begun out of necessity, but thanks to it a hunter at least knew where to hunt what before setting out.
"Tell me where you'll be hunting, and I'll give you a list."
"Bukhansan. For now I want to build some experience somewhere close."
"One moment, please. I'll bring it right over."
Not long after, the owner returned with the purchase list.
"The gathering methods are written down, so follow them as written. And the otherworld beings I've marked—we pay well for those. Be sure to sell them to us."
"I will."
As she answered, Dokseon ran her eyes down the list. The detailed effects were not given—secret, perhaps—but the fact that the shop bought these things meant they had some use. Researching from a list like this was far better than researching blind. She tucked the list into a pocket and left the shop.
It was time to go hunting.