How To Survive as a Class a Hunter

39. S-Class Hunter Kang Joon-chi – [2]

Even though I didn’t know the exact situation, it seemed really urgent. I quickly wrote back, suppressing my usual cute tone.

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: Location

Ⓢ Kang: Bukhansan, entering through the Eunpyeong course.

Kang Joon-chi sent various details about his current location, and finally, he sent this message.

Ⓢ Kang: And bring a weapon. Not something too conspicuous. It shouldn’t stand out too much.

I didn’t know why it shouldn’t stand out, but I followed his words without question.

I packed a battle hammer and a pistol and teleported outside.

I grabbed a taxi and hurriedly said,

“Break the traffic signals if you have to, I’ll pay you triple, just get there as fast as possible!”

And while the taxi was speeding, I thought. Why did he call me?

Seeing that he asked me to bring a weapon, it might be an urgent situation. Should I have brought a hunter rifle?

But carrying an automatic weapon capable of rapid fire is illegal in Seoul. Unlike hunters in Incheon who throw their guns at home after hunting, hunters in Seoul have to leave their guns at the police station after each hunt and retrieve them before the next hunt (legally, it should be the same in Incheon, but both the police and hunters there are too lazy to follow the rules).

And well, isn’t there an S-Class Hunter there in the first place? If it’s a situation that even he can’t handle, it might not make much difference whether I bring a hunter rifle or a BB gun.

As I tried to calm my anxious mind, the other side also showed their impatience.

Ⓢ Kang: Are you coming?

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: On my way!

Ⓢ Kang: Come as fast as you can, please.

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: Can you explain the situation? If I know what’s going on, I can prepare better!

Ⓢ Kang: No. Someone might see the message. I’ll explain when you get here, just come.

Several more messages came asking how far I had come. It was clear that he was very anxious.

But without knowing what was going on, there was no way for me to prepare.

To calm my anxious mind and kill time, I turned on YouTube.

When I typed in Kang Joon-chi, many videos popped up.

There were videos about how Kang Joon-chi might be the strongest awakened being in the world, videos filled with national pride about how such a great Kang Joon-chi is Korean, and promotional videos about military operations he participated in…

One video title caught my eye.

‘A Man Stronger Than a Hydrogen Bomb’.

As if possessed, I clicked on the video, and the background was the sea.

On a warship, a gigantic wave crashes over the container ship that Kang Joon-chi is aboard. It was a wave large enough to overturn the 40,000-ton container ship, but as Kang Joon-chi glanced at it, the water composing the wave stopped moving. As if frozen mid-wave, it lost its energy and unnaturally fell down.

And then the entire sea captured in the video started to move.

The vast area of seawater surged and receded, as if an invisible dam had formed.

A void that the seawater could not invade appeared in the middle of the sea.

And in the space where the seawater disappeared, a gigantic sea monster emerged. It was a creature so enormous that it could swallow a kilometer-long shark or a giant whale in one bite, but it could only flap its fins helplessly without water.

Kang Joon-chi looked at the sea monster with indifferent eyes. He merely looked at it, but in the next moment, as if skipping the intermediate process, the absurdly gigantic body of the sea monster was compressed.

It became flat, as if it were from a comical cartoon…

As the video ended, my heart pounded.

Even I, who am a superhuman among superhumans and ranked A++ in the upper echelon of A-class, could easily see that S-class was on a different level. Just by watching this video, it was clear.

Something that transcended the difference in class, like the difference between a living being and a natural phenomenon. A true supernatural being was alive and breathing in the form of an awakened one in the video.

Could I become like that? If I continue hunting and training, could I also…

Non-member123: Water is really heavy, so there are many cases where a small pool on the roof collapses the roof in summer. Even the water in the cute swimming pool at a kids’ cafe is said to be 5 tons.

Non-member123: But to move the entire seawater area shown in the video, how on earth…?

Super★Great★Korea: Just by looking at it, the energy of the phenomenon in the video seems much larger in scale than that of a hydrogen bomb, right? Since the output and durability of a force field are directly proportional, our pride of Korea, Kang Joon-chi, could easily withstand a hydrogen bomb ^^

Non-member145: Sir, are you talking about an eco-friendly hydrogen bomb without radiation?

KimChumjiDeath: Do you think a nuclear bomb is a joke? Is humanity’s ultimate weapon a laughing matter?

Maybe because the video title had ‘hydrogen bomb’ in it, there were many comments related to hydrogen bombs.

As I read each one with interest, the taxi stopped.

Bukhansan. They said Kang Joon-chi was there, hinting that Seoul might also be North Korea.

And like a lost hiker, Kang Joon-chi himself didn’t know his exact location, so he only gave a rough location, but of course, it didn’t matter.

I spread my mental net from the rough location Kang Joon-chi provided, and as soon as I detected him, I teleported.

“Kang Joon-chi?”

And so I saw him. Korea’s only S-class hunter, Kang Joon-chi.

Kang Joon-chi also opened his eyes wide when he saw me.

“Oh, you came? Fortunately, you’re not late. Thank you so much…”

And the moment our eyes met, I was engulfed in a sensation of being sucked in somewhere.

The hallucination began.

I see the mushroom cloud rising beyond.

This is what I have done.

To be precise, it is the tactical nuke I detonated.

Regret for having done something irreversible and a sinister pleasure at having finally made a mushroom cloud bloom on Korean soil intersect.

In that explosion, not even an ant would have survived. Cockroaches are said to survive nuclear explosions, but those within the blast range would not have left even a trace…

However, a large mammal, neither a cockroach nor a crustacean, reveals itself in the space where the mushroom cloud has dissipated.

It is a human. An awakened one.

Leaving behind the enormous devastation created by the nuclear explosion, he walks towards me.

At first glance, he looks like an ordinary man. His face is not very handsome, but not ugly enough to be turned away at a club, and his height is about 176 cm, making it hard to say whether he is tall or short.

This ordinary-looking man, who appears slightly above the average for Korean men, is the only S-class in Korea.

‘This crazy b*stard.’

It’s Kang Joon-chi. Even though it was a nuclear bomb that I detonated directly in his bedroom while he was asleep, it seems not a single hair on his head is burned.

Suddenly, I recall a video I saw before and the comments on that video.

‘A man stronger than a hydrogen bomb,’ I remember people debating whether Kang Joon-chi could withstand a nuclear bomb in that video. Most predicted that no matter how superhuman he was, he would not be able to withstand a nuclear explosion as he is just one individual.

At this moment, it has been revealed that they were all wrong.

Looking at him now, Kang Joon-chi is just fine. There doesn’t seem to be a crack in the solid force field surrounding his body, nor does it seem like his lungs have been cooked in the heat of the nuclear explosion, or that his cells have collapsed from radiation.

They say that the force fields of exoskeleton ability users are not only solid but also often have a filter function that purifies various harmful elements to the human body. It seems Kang Joon-chi’s force field is the same. But to think it could block heat and radiation as well.

I shiver. Isn’t this a truly moving scene? The formidable nuclear weapon created by all of humanity’s science, technology, and intelligence could not harm this one ordinary-looking man at all.

This is a victory of the superhuman over the civilization built by humanity, and a victory of one individual over the human species itself.

And also, it is a moment of despair. The man standing before me is akin to a natural disaster.

‘Just to be sure, did you do this?’

Kang Joon-chi asked, but I did not answer. I tried to teleport and failed.

‘Did you target me on purpose?’

Failed to teleport again. Why?

It is difficult to teleport when the body is firmly stuck somewhere. It seems this is such a case.

Is it his doing? But the abilities of the awakened cannot be used directly on each other, so how?

Looking down, I see that the concrete floor has swallowed my ankles. I couldn’t even feel him doing something from over there, it happened in an instant without a chance to detect it.

‘I don’t remember ever harming you… Why would someone I’ve never met hold such a grudge against me, huh?’

Only then do I open my mouth.

‘Because of you, Behemoth can’t come to Seoul even if it wants to.’

Kang Jun-chi’s expression contorts. It seems he has a lot to say, as his lips twitch for a while before he bites them and speaks briefly.

“Your mother’s dead, you terrorist b*stard. You’re finished.”

His ordinary height and appearance, along with his voice and threatening tone, all seem just plain.

Yet everything he does is anything but ordinary.

Even the mere act of sending a glance carries weight.

Kang Jun-chi glances at a building. It’s a high-rise that feels utterly empty.

That building, which would require an enormous amount of explosives to blow up, floats in the air.

Literally “floats.” It seems impossible to pull out even a weed from a field with such ease. Would it really be that simple to lift something tied with string like that…?

And once something is easily lifted, it’s also easy to throw.

The roof of the building is aimed at me, and soon the building comes flying toward me at the speed of an arrow… No, that’s not right. The mental web I’ve spun has determined that the building is approaching me at a speed close to the speed of sound.

Kang Jun-chi, that author, doesn’t seem to be exerting himself, yet the result is that.

As the building covers my field of vision, I find myself lingering on my last thoughts for quite a while, thanks to the development of my nervous system.

Thoughts like how I saw something magnificent before dying, how that building looks far more dangerous than any meteor impact, and the impending aftermath that will surely be catastrophic…

Anger at not achieving the desired outcome, despair at accepting death, and the sorrow that my life’s end has come in the worst possible form fill my mind.

Then, the faces of my younger sister, Baek Dam-bi, and Ms. Park Mi-hyung, along with other dear ones, flash through my mind.

And that’s it.

There is no pain.

My life, which ended without even a single tear shed, has expelled me from this hallucination.

*

I gasped for breath. The reason I paused for a moment was that the anger and sorrow I felt now were all too familiar.

It’s a dream I’ve been having every day lately… When I wake from that dream, I always feel this terrible anger, despair, and sorrow.

So, the hallucination I just witnessed must have been the final scene of the dream I always have. I thought I would die caught up in the nuclear explosion that always ends my dreams, but it seems there was more to the scene afterward.

I wiped away the tears that had slipped out and looked at Kang Jun-chi. It was hard to see him with ordinary eyes after witnessing such an astonishing scene.

So for a moment, I failed to notice the abnormality in his body.

Only later did I realize the state Kang Jun-chi was in, and my eyes widened.

“Kang Jun-chi? There’s blood…”

Kang Jun-chi was covered in blood. His T-shirt was completely soaked red, and the ground bore clear signs of having absorbed blood. Why?

Looking to the side, I saw a gruesome corpse of a Deathclaw sprawled out, the circumstances of its demise utterly unclear.

Kang Jun-chi gestured toward the Deathclaw’s body and said, “That b*stard… got slashed by a Deathclaw.”

I doubted my ears for a moment. What is this guy saying now?

“What? To the Deathclaw?”

“No, damn it, I clearly broke all its limbs! I don’t know how, but that b*stard suddenly jumped up and slashed me…”

For a while, there was a stream of gibberish and curses. As I listened in a daze, Kang Joon-chi seemed to have finally finished speaking.

Kang Joon-chi sighed and spoke in a serious voice.

“I’ll die like this.”

“It seems like you’re bleeding a lot, but it’s not life-threatening…”

“No. I think it cut deep inside.”

“You’re exaggerating…”

“It’s not an exaggeration. The reason I look fine now is because I used a force field to hold my internal organs together! I managed to survive somehow, but I really think I’m going to die like this, okay?”

Kang Joon-chi continued to babble, saying that a very important organ, whether it was his lung or heart, had been severely cut. He said that it was currently held together by a force field, and the moment his concentration wavered, the force field would disappear, and he would die.

I tried to grasp the situation.

“How did you end up alone in the mountains and get entangled with a Deathclaw? You didn’t come here to exterminate it, did you?”

“I know this will sound crazy, but I relieve stress by tormenting things…”

“I know. I’ve seen all the videos you posted.”

Kang Joon-chi blinked at my words.

“Really? Oh, I’ve read all the posts you put up on Huntweb too. It’s funny and entertaining because it’s obvious that a muscular guy like you is doing it. I had a hard time holding back laughter at the recent post about teddy bear panties, but anyway…

I wanted to relieve stress and shoot a new video. But maybe because I’ve become too famous lately, or maybe I was just unlucky today, I couldn’t find anyone to torment. I thought about punishing the street smokers I saw, but…”

“Haven’t you already posted eleven videos of punishing smokers? Even the viewers seem to be getting tired of it, as the comments on the recent smoker punishment videos have significantly decreased.”

“Oh, you really have seen all my videos… Yeah. Maybe it’s because many of my viewers are smokers, but the smoker punishment videos aren’t popular anymore.”

“So…”

I have no idea what kind of situation this is.

Just a few minutes ago, I was shivering at the sight of that man, who had remained unscathed even in a nuclear explosion, and now he’s whining about how he feels like he’s going to die at the hands of a Deathclaw right in front of me. How am I supposed to process this?

*