The S-Class Hunter's Miscalculation
It wasn’t particularly surprising that Park Seryong had learned of the new S-class hunter’s emergence this way.
One of only two—now three—in the entire nation, he occupied an exceptionally important position and played a central role in the Great Rift. Information like this was something he needed to know. The presence or absence of another S-class hunter could shift any number of strategic calculations.
Or perhaps he had simply found out on his own before the Ability Management Bureau could even make a decision. How could anyone dismiss the power of the personal network he had built over nearly twenty years as an S-class hunter?
Without needing to check, there were surely many people inside the Bureau who maintained friendly relations with Park Seryong. Some of them had probably delivered the information about the new S-class hunter straight to him.
Or maybe both?
A man in a position to receive reports naturally, who could also dig up finer details through private connections inside the Bureau, while possessing the authority to force such matters forward.
The situation is still unclear in many respects. Still, since the story has already reached the news, I believed it best to inform you first.
“...Yes, I understand. So it wasn’t a mistake after all.”
It felt awkward to call it the result of sheer incompetence. This was Park Seryong, a powerful figure, essentially firing the first political shot.
“You still don’t know why he did it?”
That is correct. Ah, one moment…
The duty officer seemed to have received an urgent message. After exchanging a few quiet words with someone else, she spoke to Han Yujin again, her voice clearly flustered.
Park Seryong has just confirmed the location of your safe house and is heading there now. He says he wants to apologize in person for this incident. This is…
“......He can access information about the safe house? He may be S-class, but he isn’t even affiliated with the Bureau, is he?”
I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. I have no excuse, even if I had ten mouths. I don’t know how this happened… It appears to be connected to Vice Minister Kim Jae-hoon of our Bureau.
The duty officer’s voice trembled faintly across the line.
The tremor seemed to stem from guilt toward Han Yujin and the shame of being unable to stop anything. Frustration and anger at the situation spiraling beyond control were likely mixed in as well.
“The vice minister must be quite close to Park Seryong, then?”
While feeling some sympathy for the duty officer’s position, Han Yujin couldn’t suppress his irritation and asked in a low voice.
At that moment, the clear chime of the intercom rang out.
“He got here fast. Must have left quite a while ago.”
If you don’t wish to meet him, I can immediately—
“No, it’s fine. When a vice minister has gone out of his way to help, how could a mere duty officer stop him? I’ll handle it myself.”
With those words, Han Yujin ended the call. He let out a small sigh and glanced at Mu-yong beside him.
“Want to hide in the room for a bit?”
“Jj ik!”
Mu-yong answered with a small squeak, immediately darting into one of the rooms and vanishing from sight. Han Yujin walked into the living room with an expressionless face and checked the wall-mounted intercom.
It really was him.
The man he had only seen on the news or in passing—the second S-class hunter of South Korea. The one who mainly operated inside the Great Rift, accumulated considerable achievements, and was regarded as a hero by most citizens.
Yet seeing his face in person today gave off an entirely different impression.
Han Yujin didn’t even ask who it was. He simply pressed the button and opened the door. The middle-aged man on the screen looked slightly surprised that the door had opened without any questions.
Soon after, the sound of someone entering the entrance hall reached him, and the man appeared in the corridor leading to the living room.
In the flesh, his build felt even more imposing. He stood over 190 centimeters tall with solid muscle to match, and his meticulously maintained hairstyle gave him a refined, dangerous, yet tightly controlled aura.
The custom-tailored suit only enhanced the effect. His cold, calculating eyes reminded one of a mafia boss from some movie.
“First time meeting you. Regrettable that our first greeting has to be like this. You’re Han Yujin, I presume?”
“I heard you came to apologize?”
“You receive news quickly as well. Well, that explains why you opened the door immediately.”
He glanced around the living room, then looked at the guest sofa.
“May I sit?”
“Go ahead.”
Having operated as an S-class hunter for a long time, his speech and mannerisms carried a weight that felt anything but ordinary.
Once seated, he watched Han Yujin sit across from him and began to speak.
“First, allow me to apologize for acting on my own. I’m sorry for exposing you to the public without your permission.”
“Why did you do it?”
“To put it simply… it was to relieve some pressure inside the Great Rift. There was still an embargo in place, so you probably didn’t know, but a level 7 mana stone mine was discovered just a few days ago. It’s large-scale, and what’s more, it’s an open-pit mine.”
He studied Han Yujin’s reaction for a moment before continuing his explanation.
Mana stones were simply Earth’s term for what the cultivation world called spirit stones. Minerals containing spiritual energy, they possessed tremendous utility both in the cultivation world and here on Earth.
Measuring exactly how useful they were was almost meaningless. Their energy conversion efficiency was more than double that of fossil fuels—an impressive feat on its own—but they were used in construction, manufacturing, medicine, military defense, information technology, agriculture, and even environmental protection. It was harder to find a field where they weren’t applied.
It was precisely because of this that hunters could enjoy such enormous incomes.
At any rate, returning to the main point.
Level 7, as far as Han Yujin knew, belonged to the mid-grade spirit stone category. It was also a grade that could only be obtained from the Great Rift.
The discovery of a level 7 mine—especially a large open-pit one—was undoubtedly a massive event. Han Yujin could naturally understand what Park Seryong was getting at.
Although the Great Rift in the former North Korean region was extremely dangerous and had forced a reluctant cooperation between Korea, China, and Japan, nearly thirty years had passed since North Korea’s collapse. For that entire long period, they had successfully defended against fatal crises.
Now they had moved beyond simple defense and were gradually pioneering the interior of the Rift.
It was the perfect time for conflicts to intensify as each side began thinking only of its own interests. If the United States and the European Union added their various schemes to keep the formidable Korea-China-Japan East Asian alliance in check, the situation would only grow worse.
The tension among the three nations’ hunters over that open-pit mine had reached its peak. There had simply been no time to wait calmly for the announcement of a new S-class hunter.
“So there wasn’t even enough time to say a single word to the person involved? Even though you could come here in person like this?”
“This breathing room only exists because I hurriedly revealed your ability. Of course, it’s barely enough to catch our breath, but since I caused the problem, I have to clean it up, don’t I?”
“You’re not even the foreign minister, yet you’re mediating conflicts at that level?”
“The Great Rift… if you go there yourself, you’ll understand. Legal order tends to blur somewhat inside. A significant portion operates purely on the logic of power.”
“Even in a matter this serious?”
“When the situation is advantageous, the state itself sometimes encourages that very trend.”
It was an astonishing story, yet somehow immediately believable. International diplomacy had always been far more blatantly ruthless than most people imagined.
“Well, I roughly understand.”
Han Yujin continued.
“If it really was for that reason, then please hold a short press conference and apologize before you return to the Great Rift. I wasn’t trying to keep it secret without reason either. Since it was for the nation’s benefit, I’ll respect that patriotism and treat the whole thing as if it never happened.”
“......”
“Why the sudden silence? It’s not that difficult a request.”
Han Yujin gave a small, dry laugh.
In short, he was asking:
Did you truly commit this rudeness purely for the sake of national interest?
Did a member of the established powers like yourself truly have not even the slightest intention of checking a new powerhouse and displaying that he stood above him in order to protect his own authority?
“Is this personal apology insufficient?”
“It’s not so much insufficient as it feels dirty. It looked like you were showing off that you could manipulate a twenty-something rookie however you wanted, S-class or not. Coming to the safe house without any prior contact also seemed like an attempt to apply pressure.”
“......”
“If it’s all my misunderstanding, then a short press conference shouldn’t be difficult for you.”
Park Seryong looked slightly upward with an expression of disbelief and let out a small but unmistakable sigh.
“Quite bold for such a young friend.”
“Hahaha.”
The line was far more stereotypical than expected, and Han Yujin couldn’t help but laugh.
“Does that mean you have nothing to say? Your tone sounded exactly like it.”
“Is it because you’ve only just become S-class… that you feel the need to take such a sharp attitude? Toward me, of all people?”
At that moment, a purple glow flashed deep within Han Yujin’s eyes.
The intelligence of a Dharma Soul stage investigator far surpasses the imagination of any criminal.
It could instantly detect contradictions in the other party’s words and actions during conversation and strike at them. It was more than enough to comprehend a single dharma technique, twist part of it slightly, and apply it in a new way.
Park Seryong could not have known that fact.
The instant their eyes met again, he felt a chilling sensation as if he had been stripped completely naked.
What kind of eyes…?
The thought that he might have taken the matter too lightly crossed his mind.
Then, for the first time since becoming S-class, a wave of dizziness washed over him. Reality seemed to recede sharply, and his mind went blank.
A dream?
The thought appeared out of nowhere, but Park Seryong shook his head to dispel the delusion.
He had no idea why he had felt that way. Before he could even properly examine the sense of wrongness, something truly terrifying occurred.
The Han Yujin sitting across from him launched a surprise attack.
Park Seryong reacted on pure instinct. Without the countless battles he had experienced inside the Great Rift, he would never have been able to respond in time.
A single golden ray of sword energy shot forward with terrifying sharpness.
Gray energy erupted from his body, wrapping around him and forming a defensive barrier. At the same time, he kicked the low table forward to obstruct his opponent and flipped backward along with the sofa. A single golden beam of light grazed past the bridge of his nose by a hair’s breadth.
The sharpness of that dharma technique could not be stopped even by Park Seryong’s S-class abilities. Yet the evasive movement taken on pure instinct had saved his life. Although the barrier he had deployed was pierced, it had bought him a fleeting moment.
“Have you lost your mind—!”
Park Seryong rolled swiftly to his feet and shouted. He immediately counterattacked. The best defense was offense, and the surprise attack had been threatening enough to demand nothing less than his best.
The gray energy, flowing like water, suddenly accelerated and shot forward like spearheads. There were multiple of them, occupying even the space where his opponent might try to dodge.
A cluster of purple and gold light appeared, effortlessly blocking the attack.
Shockingly, Park Seryong’s attack was stopped cold by that radiance. In the meantime, his opponent leisurely extended a hand and created a fireball.
A horrifying heat washed over him. The moment he registered the heat, survival instinct triggered the gray energy to erupt with greater power than ever before, forming a spherical barrier.
Immediately afterward, the orb of flame exploded with a brilliant flash.
The blast was like the entire world shattering.
When Park Seryong regained his senses after being flung by the shockwave and tumbling helplessly, the entire floor of the apartment had been reduced to nothing but pillars. Ominous rumbling erupted from every direction as though the building might collapse at any second.
“You…! No matter how angry you are, this, this is truly…! How dare you do something like this in the middle of the city?!”
“Hmm. So this is what an S-class is capable of.”
“Are you actually insane?! This is terrorism!”
“The terrorism is what you did to me.”
With that absurd statement, the opponent extended his hand once more and launched another attack. Park Seryong realized that the twenty-something named Han Yujin was a complete psychopath.
I touched the wrong person!
But the regret came too late. From the outstretched hand, the familiar golden rays of light shot out in rapid succession.
The gray energy Park Seryong ejected embedded itself throughout the building. Using the elasticity of those strands, he performed an acrobatic series of evasions and quickly fled outside the apartment that looked ready to collapse at any moment.
As he rapidly descended toward the ground by stabbing gray energy into the outer wall, cold sweat drenched Park Seryong’s face.
He’s not just crazy. What the hell is that golden light? There was nothing about it in the reports I received.
It was so fast and sharp that he didn’t even dare to confront it directly.
Even setting that aside, the purple-gold radiance barrier that had blocked his steel-piercing attack was shocking enough.
For now, he had to escape.
Rather than facing such a monster one-on-one, it would be far wiser to report the terrorist act the man had just committed in the city center and confront him together with others.
But at that exact moment—