The Return of the Wheelchair Butcher (1)

When I got to work that morning, the air in the Civil Affairs Office felt wrong.

The employees who usually treated me like I was invisible kept sneaking glances at me today.

One of them even kept alternating between his phone and my face like he couldn’t decide which was more unbelievable.

The section chief beside me, a man who normally didn’t bother with greetings, actually said hello.

That was the same guy who had been so fuzzy on my name just yesterday.

The article had broken.

I sat down, made myself a lukewarm pack of mocha, and idly turned on my phone.

The view count had already blown past ten million.

Seo Jingyeong. That reporter.

She’d said she was going to dig for a week, and she really had gone and done it properly.

No, maybe telling me she only had a week from the start had been a trick to lower my guard.

Honestly, I was a little surprised.

The fact that she hadn’t been swayed by threats or bluster, and had eventually gotten her hands on even sealed records, was impressive in a way that had nothing to do with force.

It was the kind of persistence you couldn’t shut down with strength.

Something you couldn’t crush, stop, or simply wait out.

I let out a small sigh and began reading.

The first paragraph was all about the first generation.

To the present generation, the first generation was a joke.

A symbol of inefficiency, reduced to cripples by reckless brute force.

Washed-up relics who died or lost limbs fighting without even a status window to guide them.

But the article turned that belief on its head.

Seo had dug up early Gate footage and testimony from military survivors and written that, in those days, when there were no status windows, no levels, no cooldowns, they had torn through disasters using nothing but their senses and their bodies.

They were true monsters, she said—real monsters who crossed hell itself with nothing to protect them but their own flesh.

I gave a short snort through my nose.

Monster was a bit much.

We were just struggling not to die.

Still, she wasn’t wrong.

Back then, without the System, there was nothing to trust except your body and your instincts.

So we honed them to the absolute limit.

The same sense I used now to fling pebbles at my disciples—that was something we had learned each day with death hanging over our heads.

The article also covered what the first generation had paid for that power.

Because they’d shoved mana into their bodies without the System’s safeguards, their nerves and bones had been shattered, leaving most of them crippled.

Docheol’s prosthetic leg. My wheelchair. Those were the scars left behind.

But mana saturation came with a strange side effect.

As cells became soaked in mana, aging essentially stopped.

The article pointed that out too.

Every surviving first-generation hunter looked much younger than their actual age.

Being crippled and preserving youth were two sides of the same cause.

At that part, I scratched my white hair.

That this face—thirty-nine years old, but looking like I was in my late twenties—wasn’t a badge of honor, but the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠byproduct of a ruined circuit.

She’d gotten that far.

The next section was about the Grand Hall.

The massive Gate outbreak that had erupted in the heart of Seoul twenty years ago.

Official history said that the major guilds of the time had saved the city.

That was what the textbooks said, the memorial hall said, the annual remembrance ceremony said.

The hero of that day was always written as an early hunter from the modern System era.

They’d even put up statues.

But Seo, using confidential military records she’d somehow obtained, painted a different picture.

The scale of the beasts pouring out of that Gate had been beyond anything in the System era.

Even artillery from the regular army couldn’t stop them, and the city center was instantly paralyzed by an evacuation stampede.

And in that chaos, the one who had actually held the last evacuation route by himself for three days was a first-generation hunter erased from the record.

I took a sip of coffee.

Three days, my ass.

It had been two and a half.

I’d been half unconscious for the last half day, and when I woke up, it was already over.

Still, that woman had nailed the broad strokes.

The article even included the hunter’s alias.

Baekjeong.

The name earned by cutting down countless beasts as though he were butchering livestock.

The first-generation hunter who had blocked the evacuation route for three days behind an invisible wall.

Because of that wall, hundreds of thousands of citizens had escaped.

The article also carried testimony from a survivor at the time.

A white-haired man had been standing between collapsing buildings, and when he raised a hand, an invisible wall had stopped the beast tide dead in its tracks.

As if the sea itself had split apart.

At that line, I let out a dry laugh.

The sea split apart, sure.

I’d just pressed the space shut with mana.

Human memory was always like that.

Given enough time, everyone inflated what they’d seen.

The truth hadn’t actually been that grand.

For two and a half days, I’d been starving.

My mouth had gone dry from wringing out mana, and on the final day I’d been holding that wall up while chewing on a military biscuit that had rolled in from who-knew-where.

If someone had handed me a warm cup of coffee back then, I would’ve had no complaints left in life.

A legend, to the people inside it, was usually just miserable labor.

Up to that point, it was still only at the level of a legend that floated around galleries and forums.

The problem was what came next.

Seo had taken it one step further.

Right after the incident ended, the name Baekjeong was erased from all official records.

Then it was sealed away as a national secret.

And the reporter asked: why would the nation erase the hero who saved its city?

I set my phone down for a moment.

She’d actually dug that far?

Honestly, I still didn’t know exactly why I’d been erased.

Back then I’d been on the verge of death, and by the time I came to, I was already being treated as someone who’d died.

I never bothered to press the issue.

Being left out of the hero list had actually been a relief.

I didn’t need hero treatment.

All I wanted was a hot cup of instant coffee and a corner where nobody bothered to look for me.

So when they erased me, I didn’t even protest.

They processed me as dead, and I quietly hid away in a corner of the Civil Affairs Office.

That had been what I wanted then, and it was what I wanted now.

The final paragraph of the article was the kill shot.

Seo lined up the sealed birth records and physical characteristics of the erased Baekjeong beside one of the clerks at the Civil Affairs Office.

Birth year. White hair. Aging that had stopped.

All the evidence pointed to one person.

It wasn’t conclusive.

Smartly enough, she ended it as a suspicion instead of a declaration.

The sealed legend might be sitting in the Hunter Association Civil Affairs Office right now.

If she’d stated it outright, I could’ve hit her with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a defamation suit.

But since she ended it as a suspicion, there was nothing to pin on her.

That woman had thought through the law and wielded her pen accordingly.

Come to think of it, a pen really was dangerous.

I put my phone down and finished the now-cold mocha.

There was something I needed to point out here.

What exactly were first-generation hunters, and what exactly was Baekjeong, that the whole world was making such a fuss over them?

The reason was simple.

If this article was true, then the heroic narrative the world had worshiped for the past twenty years would collapse wholesale.

The major guilds had been built on the legend that they had held the Grand Hall.

That legend was their authority, and the legitimacy of the money funnel called the System meta.

Think about it.

Guilds made money through flashy skills and System-driven combat.

But if the greatest disaster in history had actually been stopped by an obsolete first generation with no System at all—

Then it would mean it had been proven possible to stop a catastrophe without relying on the System.

That was a truth that negated everything the guilds sold.

Twenty years ago, the nation had erased the name Baekjeong entirely.

And in the vacuum left by a government that had lost its grip, the guilds had piled their own heroic narratives on top of it.

In other words, the guilds had built their statues right on top of the erased first generation’s grave.

And if that grave was opened again, the statues would start to shake first.

This wasn’t just a scoop.

It was a bomb that could rattle the pillars holding up the whole establishment.

So of course everyone was losing their minds.

Some people were thrilled by the truth, and others were trembling because of it.

I was sitting right in the middle of all that, just making coffee.

Honestly, I didn’t care whether the heroic narrative was true or false.

Whether the guilds claimed they’d stopped the Grand Hall or not, it had nothing to do with me.

Whether the city was saved by me being praised or forgotten.

That had all ended twenty years ago.

There was only one thing that bothered me.

This commotion had actually forced its way ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into my quiet little corner of the Civil Affairs Office.

I was passing on the hero business.

All I wanted was to drink my coffee before it went cold.

My phone started vibrating nonstop.

The gallery was already on fire.

It says here the Grand Hall was supposedly stopped by our guild’s predecessor, and yet the truth is that one first-generation hunter held it back alone for three days?

LOL is this for real?

When I scrolled down, the next best post had already appeared.

Word was all three guilds were planning emergency statements this afternoon, and there were already rumors that the higher-ups’ group chats had exploded.

The companies built on heroic narratives were going to take a hit to their stock prices if this turned out to be false.

I paused at that last comment.

The question everyone was asking.

The truth was, even I didn’t know the answer.

Who had erased my name, and why?

Back when I’d clawed my way out of death, I hadn’t had the strength to ask.

And after I came back, I hadn’t even wanted to ask.

Being buried quietly had suited me just fine.

While I was blankly scrolling through the posts, my phone vibrated again.

Yu Seoa.

The moment I answered, she asked me in a panicked rush, “Senior. I saw the article. That… thing about Baekjeong. Is it true?”

Her voice was trembling.

Facing the possibility that the teacher she served might be the figure from legend.

“The article said it was a suspicion, didn’t it? A suspicion is a suspicion.”

“That’s not an answer. What I’m asking is…”

“Seoa.”

I cut her off.

“Whether I’m Baekjeong or not, what does that have to do with you taking pebbles to the head? Just don’t skip training.”

There was a brief silence on the other end.

“…Whether it’s true or not, it doesn’t matter.”

Yu Seoa spoke slowly.

“Whether senior is the hero of the Grand Hall or just the old man in Civil Affairs, the person who taught me how to throw pebbles at people doesn’t change. The article can’t erase that.”

I was briefly at a loss for words.

This kid sometimes hit straight at the weak spots.

“…Fine. Hang up. I’ve got a meeting to get to.”

“If anyone lays a hand on you, Senior, I won’t just stand by.”

For an S-rank hunter, it was a threat delivered in a voice that sounded far too sincere.

The second I hung up, Docheol called too.

Not a call, actually—a short text.

Saw the article.

No idea how that reporter woman got through the sealed records.

The higher-ups are going to move soon.

Be careful.

That seal had been locked down directly by the nation twenty years ago.

It wasn’t the sort of lock one reporter could pick through persistence alone.

That meant the answer was obvious.

Someone inside had opened it.

People who had access to those records and stood to gain from the world seeing them.

One possibility came to mind.

A guild that wanted someone else’s heroic narrative to collapse, or wanted the Baekjeong card in their own hands first.

It had to be one of the guilds that had started splitting apart over the past few days.

Thinking that way also explained why that reporter was still running around and doing her job in one piece.

If a guild was backing her, nobody could touch her casually.

As for which guild it was, I had no idea.

And I didn’t want to know.

If I started digging, I’d end up getting involved, and I was the sort of person who hated that more than anything in the world.

I didn’t reply.

If I replied, the work would only multiply.

And Docheol’s warning came true in less than ten minutes.

The Civil Affairs Office phone rang.

It was the Association secretary’s office.

The voice on the other end was packed tight with tension.

“Section Chief Kang Taehyun. The Association President wants you upstairs right now.”

For the first time in twenty years, the Association President had called for me directly.