How To Survive as a Class a Hunter

38. S-Class Hunter Kang Joon-Chi – [1]

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: The construction of BabyMushroom’s Sky Castle has begun!

Finally, BabyMushroom’s nest is being built! Until now, she had been living at the house of Incheon City Councilor Park Mi-Hyung (who is aiming for the position of Incheon Mayor in the upcoming election, so if you live in Incheon, please cast your precious vote for her. Candidate No. 2, office number 032-XXX-XXXX), but now she is finally becoming independent!

Independence, and now BabyMushroom is becoming a grown lady? Should she stop wearing her cherished bear panties and start dressing s*xily?! BabyMushroom is shy //∇//

But even if she changes her panties, BabyMushroom is still small and young, so she doesn’t know how to build a house at all!

BabyMushroom was crying out of frustration! The Incheon Mayor came and wiped BabyMushroom’s tears, telling her to stop crying and that he would have the civil servants look into everything for her!

Only then did the good BabyMushroom stop crying, but she had already cried a lotㅠ This year, she won’t be able to receive Santa Grandpa’s gift······!

In the end, poor BabyMushroom became sad and started crying again. Brothers and sisters, please comfort her and tell her to stop cryingㅠ

Ⓐ StoneheadYouth: Ms. Park Mi-Hyung, please let that poor friend go. That friend has already done enough for Incheon and the councilor, hasn’t she?

Ⓐ syberMagneto: Why do you write such terrible things about this touching project······ Can’t you stop this horrible act for the sake of the poor people who are paying attention to this project?

I posted an update on HuntWeb, but the reactions are not as enthusiastic as before. Most people are reading my post seriously.

Ⓐ ElmayaKayo: So, to interpret, the Incheon Mayor is personally pushing for the construction of that high-rise apartment? I was worried it would be a waste of money, but it seems to be going well.

5myJesus: Kim Geuk-Ham, who generously uses his precious assets for the socially disadvantaged, is truly admirable. Praise the great Kim Geuk-Ham!!

Anonymous: I thought the apartment accepting the poor would be treated as a hate facility, but surprisingly, it seems to be viewed positively even by Incheon City?

Anonymous: Considering he’s spending hundreds of billions of won in Incheon and building a house there, declaring he’ll bury his bones in Incheon for life, there’s no reason to dislike it. The reactions from nearby residents seem positive too.

The situation is actually better than I thought. After I announced the high-rise apartment construction plan, the protests in front of the awakened person accommodation facility stopped.

A successful hunter is seriously investing hundreds of billions of won, and the city is openly supporting it, so they must have judged that the outcome would be good. Perhaps they expect that the presence of a famous hunter like me will also mitigate the risks posed by ice ability users.

I heard that Incheon City officials are directly at the construction site, and the supervision is more thorough than ever. They say it’s an environment where you can’t even skip a single rebar, which is fortunate for someone like me who spent money recklessly without knowing much.

However, not everything has been good.

Since I started working as a hunter, my team had not lost a single member for five months, but we had our first casualty.

Kim Jin-Jun.

He was one of the trio of ruffians in our team, along with Sung Moon-Young and Lee Jong-Ho. Despite being called ruffians, they never shirked their duties or acted arrogantly. He was confident in his physical strength and was always the first to step up when there was heavy lifting to do.

He died. He was killed by an ugly lion monster.

We were conducting a sweep operation. I conveyed the information I gathered through my mental net to all the hunters present.

“It’s a manticore.”

Sung Moon-Young immediately recognized it.

“A manticore, that fake lion, right?”

“Yes. There are seven of them gathered, it looks like the whole pride is resting.”

Wasn’t the legendary manticore a monster with a lion’s body, a human head, bat wings, and all sorts of strange things attached?

However, the manticores that come out of the gate have a much more mundane appearance. They just look like lions born from inbreeding. Except for being quite ugly, they aren’t much different from Earth’s lions, and they are even genetically similar enough to interbreed.

The main difference between manticores and lions is their tails. Real lions have hidden spikes in their tails, and manticores have sharp spikes hidden in their tail fur as well.

But unlike the lion’s tail spikes, whose use is unknown, the manticore’s tail spikes are fired at a speed of 80 meters per second. Moreover, these spikes contain a potent neurotoxin, making it uncertain whether one would survive if hit, and their maximum range of 30 meters is threatening, but that’s all.

In any case, those spikes are not a better weapon than the hunters’ assault rifles. The firing speed is slower than expected, so as long as we pull the trigger first, we can hunt them down.

Moreover, unlike deathclaws, manticores are not awakened beings, so ice ability users like Baek Dambi can wipe them out just by looking at them. If there were as many manticores as deathclaws, ice abilities would not be deemed unsuitable for hunter duties.

So Baek Dambi, pretending to be cool, probably happy inside for the chance to shine, confidently stepped forward.

“I’ll handle it.”

Then Kim Jinjoon intervened.

“Don’t do that, let me join. I’ll provide fire support!”

“Really?”

“No, you shouldn’t be too careless. Manticores are monsters that stand out too much in urban environments, making them easy to spot and quickly eliminated. The fact that they are still surviving means they aren’t ordinary creatures, right?”

Kim Jinjoon must have been itching to do something.

Usually, in my hunter team, except for Baek Dambi and me, the other members rarely get a chance to shine.

As you know, the team members of awakened hunters are there to escort the awakened hunter. For physical enhancers or force field users, it’s like a tank escorting infantry. They lead their hunter team like an escort.

However, in my case, as a teleportation ability user, I often act independently, away from the team’s escort. They rarely need to escort me. As a result, during cleanup operations, my team’s non-awakened members usually wait safely in the rear.

For this reason, my team’s non-awakened members rarely shoot their guns. Only Baek Dambi, who doesn’t have to worry about dying, steps forward and shoots. Because of this, I’ve heard that my team’s non-awakened members are sometimes criticized for “slacking off too much.”

This must have bothered the enthusiastic Kim Jinjoon.

“Jongho and Moonyoung, come here! Even if you’re just porters, you should shoot sometimes…”

With Baek Dambi leading, the delinquent trio followed behind.

I stayed back, thinking there was no need to risk dealing with such insignificant monsters. I was ready to help in case of an emergency, spreading my mental net.

“Jinjoon!”

A scream echoed.

I teleported urgently, but the situation was already over.

I saw the corpses. Ugly lions, manticores, all pierced by bullets, already dead…

And Kim Jinjoon, with a burnt hole in his chest as if pierced by something other than a poison spike, lay fallen, while Baek Dambi, with a much larger hole in her chest, was still alive.

When I asked what happened, Seong Moonyoung tearfully explained.

“From the manticore’s tail, a heat ray…”

A heat ray, like the one Superman shoots from his eyes. A superheated beam that can pierce even steel plates.

Lee Jong-ho explained more calmly.

“One of the manticores seems to have awakened to the ability of heat rays. Before we could even fire a bullet, something like a laser was fired… damn it.”

He said that if it hadn’t been for Baek Dambi, who quickly recognized the awakened manticore and took the heat ray with his whole body, everyone might have died.

However, despite his efforts, the heat ray that penetrated Baek Dambi’s body reached Kim Jin-jun, and he died.

Although very rare, it was not impossible. Just as it is difficult to recognize an awakened person or what kind of awakened person they are just by looking at them, it is the same with monsters. There are often cases where a seemingly ordinary monster is in an awakened state with an unexpected ability.

And in this case, the awakened ability happened to be a heat ray, and since it was impossible to detect the speed of light, I couldn’t catch it with my mental net.

It was just bad luck, rather than anyone’s fault or mistake.

Still, I was very depressed.

Terribly, so much that I wanted to quit everything.

*

The hunting operation was immediately terminated that day. At the funeral held afterward, not only my hunter team but all the hunters who were in the operation that day attended.

“My deepest condolences.”

I was so depressed that even Naito-san didn’t seem annoying today.

I saw Kim Jin-jun’s family bowing their heads in front of me. Kim Jin-jun’s parents and siblings.

After bowing to them, I returned to my hunter team’s place. After staying up all night with the chief mourner, a few days passed, and I gathered with my hunter team again.

It was a drinking session to mourn his death once more. After taking a shot of soju, Mr. Lim Hyung-taek asked.

“By the way, Mr. Kim Geuk, I heard you donated a lot of money this time too…”

“I did a bit.”

“How much…?”

“1.4 billion.”

I didn’t know why he was asking, but I answered anyway, and Mr. Lim Hyung-taek blinked.

Sung Moon-young murmured.

“You donated a lot? I heard you were building an apartment…”

“So I couldn’t donate as much as I wanted.”

“You don’t have much money now, can you afford to spend like that?”

“I won’t starve to death spending like that, but the bereaved family might starve to death. I donated as much as I could.”

“Will you donate that much if I die?”

“Yes.”

“Damn, that’s reassuring.”

“Don’t die just to get that money.”

In the midst of this, everyone had had a bit to drink, and as is often the case when men gather, the topic suddenly shifted to criticizing the country.

“Originally, it shouldn’t be Kim Geuk who takes care of the bereaved families out of his own pocket, but the country. Why don’t they give a penny to hunters who die fighting? I know they treat hunters as mercenaries by creating a separate Hunter Association because they don’t want to pay compensation, but why go to such lengths to avoid it?”

At Lee Jong-ho’s angry words, Mr. Im Hyung-taek opened his mouth.

“I looked into it separately, and they said it’s because they need to save as much money as possible.”

“Why save money at the expense of people who died for the country!”

And true to his background in a trading company, Mr. Im Hyung-taek suddenly started explaining the economy.

He said that the reason prices don’t rise every time the country prints money is that various trading nations exchange currencies with each other, absorbing the excess currency produced by one country.

However, since the gates opened, the current state of international trade has not been good. With marine monsters and water spirits attacking container ships, one out of thirty ships crossing the sea sinks, and as ships take longer routes to avoid areas swarming with spirits, transportation costs have skyrocketed, as have insurance premiums.

In such a situation, some countries have even gone bankrupt, making it difficult for countries to absorb each other’s currencies as flexibly as before.

Moreover, isn’t it a time when all resources are scarce? Now, there is a concern that prices will rise every time the country produces money.

To prevent such a situation, the government is trying to produce as little currency as possible and spend as little money as possible.

“If the government spent money like before, it would be a disaster. The prices of rice and ramen, which the government barely managed to suppress, could easily rise not just twofold but two hundredfold…”

And the explanation that not giving compensation to fallen hunters is also part of the government’s effort to save money made Sung Moon-young grimace.

“Who asked you to defend the government? So, are you saying they should never give money?”

“Ah, um. I’m sorry. I can’t tell what to say and what not to say when I’m drinking.”

Meanwhile, I listened to their conversation gloomily without joining in.

I was still gloomy. The fact that it wasn’t my fault didn’t comfort me much. It felt like it was my fault.

I remembered the words of Woo Sori, the awakened one I met last time.

He said it was a terrible thing to arm non-awakened people. That combat is the role of the awakened, and non-awakened people should stay quiet like gentle sheep.

Maybe I should have followed his words.

Kim Jin-joon, that poor guy. If I had just let him cheer me on from behind and stepped forward myself, he would have lived. Maybe even if I had touched that heat ray, I might have survived…

As the drinking session continued, only Mr. Im Hyung-taek and I were left at the table.

I wondered why he wasn’t leaving, and when I looked, his face was red. It was time to think about teleporting him home.

“Mr. Kim Geuk is a good person.”

I responded to Mr. Im Hyung-taek’s sudden words.

“What are you talking about?”

“Mr. Kim Geuk, he’s a really good person… When I first saw him at the academy, I was worried, thinking some gangster had come to become a hunter, but the more I saw him, the more I realized he was a good person… You don’t know how much the academy director praises Mr. Kim Geuk every time we drink together, do you?”

“Why are you saying this all of a sudden…”

“You looked too upset. You feel responsible, don’t you? As the team leader.”

When I silently nodded, Mr. Im Hyung-taek spoke.

“I also feel quite uncomfortable. I feel guilty.”

“Why do you feel guilty?”

“I’m in my forties, right? I’ve lived twice as long as Jinjoon, but I was cautious and let that young friend die first…”

“Hyeongtaek, you have a family to take care of.”

“Yes, I have a wife and a daughter. But my wife is too young. I seduced a girl who was working part-time at a convenience store after graduating from high school, and since then, I’ve made her a full-time housewife, so she has no experience in social life other than working part-time at the convenience store.”

While wondering why he was suddenly bragging about his young wife, Hyeongtaek continued to speak.

“It’s crazy that I seduced a girl young enough to be my daughter, but living with her feels more like raising another daughter than living with a life partner. And I worried about whether my two daughters could survive when I die. So I thought I absolutely couldn’t die…”

I suddenly remembered the hallucination I saw before, where Hyeongtaek urged me to move another colleague to a safe place first instead of himself while escaping from the rock spirit. Thinking about that, it wasn’t an empty statement when he said he felt guilty for surviving instead of the young ones.

Hyeongtaek said,

“If later… if someone needs to be sacrificed, don’t hesitate and sacrifice me confidently.”

“What?”

“It’s better than sacrificing kids who haven’t even lived half my life. And seeing how Kimgeuk takes care of the dead, I feel like I shouldn’t die. Seeing Kimgeuk take care of the dead colleagues makes me feel reassured…”

It seemed that he was talking about his family out of the blue because he wanted to ask me to take care of his family after he died. It also seemed that he was very interested in the condolence money I gave.

Without saying anything, I sent him off in front of his house and then returned home.

*

I still didn’t feel good after waking up.

To relieve this gloomy feeling, I decided to rewatch the video of Kangjoonchi that was uploaded on Huntweb the day before.

This time, Kangjoonchi caught a villain who was truly villainous. Kangjoonchi’s force field ability was displayed like telekinesis. He started punishing a pickpocket who tried to steal a woman’s bag by lifting him into the air along with the motorcycle he was riding.

“It hurts, damn it, it hurts! Stop! Please stop!”

Was he trying to make sure the pickpocket could never attempt it again? Kangjoonchi broke the pickpocket’s fingers and limbs, making him scream continuously. Eventually, the pickpocket, who was now a severe patient with injuries that would take weeks to heal, lay trembling on the ground.

And the highlight of the video, the moment when law enforcement became meaningless…

Soon after, the police arrived and started acting as if they were going to handle the situation with a coercive tone.

However, as soon as the police recognized Kangjoonchi, their attitude changed. Polite honorifics flowed from their mouths.

“Oh, Mr. Kangjoonchi? I heard you came to Seoul. It’s an honor to meet you…”

Now, the two police officers didn’t even glance at the pickpocket lying on the ground. The video ended with them bowing to Kangjoonchi as he walked away.

I was watching that part repeatedly to calm my mind.

A message from Huntweb arrived.

Someone had sent me a message. If it was some random person pretending to be friendly, I had to ignore it.

But when I clicked the notification button, my eyes widened.

Ⓢ Kang: Do you have baby mushrooms?? If you do, please answer quickly, please.

The protagonist of the video, Kang Joon-chi, just sent me a note. I immediately replied.

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: ?

And Kang Joon-chi’s next message was also sent quickly.

Ⓢ Kang: Can you help me? It’s urgent, please.