A True Menace

It would surely go down as the happiest day of her life since she'd first started playing games.

Because this time, she had stood her ground not only in games, but in reality too.

She had shoved through her resolve — that no threat would make her bend, that she would walk her own path — all the way to the end.

A sudden emergency had blindsided her the moment she stepped outside, but in the end, it had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I'm not some clown who postures in games and nothing more!

Seyul shouted proudly to herself — and then,

So... now what?

With her goal achieved, her surroundings belatedly came back into focus. It was all well and good that she'd asserted her will in the real world, but everything except that will was a problem.

She had swung her power around freely in front of a crowd and beaten down kaiju with it. The witnesses numbered more than one or two — and among them were Hunters.

That woman... don't tell me she's figured out what I am?

Seyul tensed as she looked at Haeri, who was staring at her in a daze.

If anyone finds out my identity from a Hunter, I'm in trouble. One exception aside, that is.

With bad luck, she could even end up classified as a kaiju herself. If they were enemies, she could simply erase them and be done with it — but if they came at her under the misunderstanding that she was some new species of kaiju, even that became awkward. And at worst, if only she herself suffered for it, she could shrug it off; but it would drag her family down with her, and that was a real problem.

It would be a hassle in every possible way, so the identity had to stay hidden — yet today, entirely against her intentions, she had shown a sliver of her strength. As Seyul agonized over what to do about it, Haeri was agonizing far harder, to the point of nearly losing her mind.

A monster?

The first word that surfaced from her barely-recovered mind was monster.

Only moments ago, Haeri had hurled every attack she had at the Giant Red Kong. Even attacks that could smash a tank to pieces had left the creature without a single wound. And now — a monster that manhandled that thing like a toy. A true monster had appeared, one that dispatched an estimated B-rank kaiju in a single blow.

A human...? Is it human?

Power beyond anything she had ever seen or heard of! Haeri wasn't even sure the other party was human.

A human capable of facing kaiju could only be a Hunter, but this — this was on another level entirely. She was so strong that doubting her very species was unavoidable.

Haeri recovered first, and the viewers recovered a beat later.

There wasn't a single joke or quip among them. Everyone was so stunned that they were talking in complete earnest. It was a gravity Haeri had never seen from her chat before.

It was one of those messages that snapped Haeri back to her senses.

Right, I need to find out who they are!

A person of impossible strength, head to toe concealed in an unidentified outfit. If she let them slip away now, she suspected she'd never learn who they were.

And besides, this person had saved her life.

"Excuse me, thank you—"

Haeri tried to offer her thanks while subtly probing for their identity, but the attempt fizzled out. Seyul had vanished with a pop.

Well, I just needed to get away, that's all.

Seyul, now a good distance from the park, had returned to her own neighborhood in the blink of an eye. It was worrying, but it had already happened — for now, the smartest move was to get away from the scene.

So she'd moved out of the park at a speed Haeri couldn't even have registered.

I took care of the cleanup with magic too, after all.

Just in case, she had tampered with the surrounding CCTV before leaving, and erased every trace that could be used to track her — all with magic. Thoroughly enough that even a high-rank Hunter with dedicated tracking abilities, searching with full intent, would find nothing.

So there should be no chance of her identity being exposed, she reasoned, forcing down her unease as she headed home — when something caught her eye.

"That's..."

Seyul had suddenly spotted a certain shop. She browsed it with interest, stepped inside, looked over the merchandise for a moment, and picked out one item.

"Hmm."

Should I buy this?

She eyed it dubiously, then soon decided to purchase it. After paying, she stepped back outside — but as she headed home again ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with her purchase in hand, a voice came from behind her.

"Freeze. It's the Hunter."

She spun around, and there stood, in fact, a Hunter.

"...You. What are you doing?"

She'd been worried about Hunters just moments ago, and now a Hunter had come looking for her — but Seyul wasn't startled. Because while the person before her was indeed a Hunter, she was a Hunter Seyul knew.

"What kind of joke is that, coming from someone over twenty years old calling me oppa?"

"Did I crack a joke? You're definitely a Hunter, though."

The one answering so breezily was Seyul's younger sister, Han Semi. The sister she'd run into on the street was dressed in a way that drew the eye straight to her chest — a tank top and dolphin shorts. She'd come out exactly as she'd been lounging at home, and it put her incomparably mature figure on full display in front of her oppa-turned-little-girl.

"Why are you dressed like that?"

Semi was the type to doll herself up to the nines every time she went out. That she'd come outside in loungewear struck Seyul as odd.

"I had to leave in a hurry, no time to change. This message came in, see."

Semi, wearing a sour expression of her own, held her phone out to her sibling.

That was the message displayed on the phone. Han Semi, Han Seyul's little sister — whose actual occupation was, in fact, a Hunter.

I was shocked back then, alright.

Seyul recalled the whole thing. Right up until she left, Semi had been an ordinary human — and when Seyul returned, her sister had become a Hunter. Apparently she'd awakened by chance around the time the kaiju began appearing, just like all the other Hunters. At first Seyul had been stunned, but she soon accepted it without any trouble.

Her own oppa had turned into a female dragon in another world, after all. Compared to that, her little sister becoming a Hunter was nothing at all.

And so Semi was the only Hunter Seyul knew personally — and at the same time, the only Hunter who knew Seyul's true identity.

"So I'm rushing out the door, and the moment I get outside, this is what pops up."

Semi showed the phone again. The new message read: Incident resolved. An unidentified individual has slain the kaiju!

"That was you, wasn't it, oppa?"

Semi had known the instant the message arrived. The place Seyul said she was headed before going out was exactly where the kaiju had appeared — and she was hiding her identity to boot, so it would have been stranger not to figure it out.

"What happened? You told me there was no need to worry about you."

"Like I knew a kaiju would show up there?"

Seyul gave a rough explanation. A kaiju had suddenly popped out, and since going straight home felt wrong, she'd taken care of it on the way.

"Plenty of people saw it, Hunters included, but I erased the traces with magic, so there shouldn't be any risk of getting found out."

"Are you sure?"

"...Probably."

"Aigoo."

She could've just gone home, but no, she had to be stubborn and cross a dangerous bridge.

Semi found it pitiful, yet she couldn't very well scold her either — thanks to her, the kaiju had been dealt with early.

"Fine. Then there's nothing left to do, so let's head back together."

Semi moved to walk alongside Seyul and hooked arms with her. The moment she did, the prominently swollen mounds of flesh attached to Semi's chest drew close as well.

"...."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. It's nothing."

Seyul glanced briefly back and forth between Semi's chest and her own, then lowered her head.

"About that kaiju from before. You took care of it fast, so I'm guessing it wasn't all that strong?"

"Nope. It was a minnow."

As the two chatted and walked along, Semi suddenly noticed the item in Seyul's hand.

"What's that?"

"A new game. I played the one you bought me, and it turned out to be more fun than I expected, so I thought I'd see what else ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was out there. What do you think — you figure this one will be fun too?"

Seyul showed her sister what she'd just bought at the game shop. On the game she'd chosen after much deliberation, a gun was elegantly illustrated alongside the title Untouchable.

Yet another ripple swept through Phantom, the community for God's Warrior.

The cause, naturally, was Seyul. The event she had unearthed, hot on the heels of the new route: the discovery that an event existed where you turned hostile against the very god guiding your playthrough had set everyone on fire.

Related posts sprang up all over the place.

As the posts piled up, even people who hadn't cared began to take interest.

The viewers who had always watched, and the newcomers who'd come to watch for the first time — everyone waited, anticipating the next broadcast.

After one more day passed, the stream finally began. Those who had been waiting scrambled to pile in.

Over 2,000 in total! Roughly a thousand were the existing viewers, and the rest were the flood of newcomers drawn in by word of mouth. With both groups combined, the count had reached this figure the instant the stream went live.

But then —

They had rushed in all excited, only to be met with bewilderment. Because against the backdrop of the sky, a helicopter of all things could be seen flying about.

A helicopter. A machine of modern civilization — something that had no business existing in a fantasy world. What that fact implied was simple.

Viewers one after another sat there in stunned disbelief. Just before, she'd delivered the most legendary development in the game's history. Everyone had been dying to know what would come next after defying a god.

And after a single day of rest, she was booting up a different game?

It felt like taking a sucker punch to the back of the head from a glass bottle of soju.