Chapter 51

Swish, swish, swish!

Swords, axes, maces.

Dozens of weapons poured down like rain. But I could see every one of them clearly—where each attack was headed and how.

I slipped through the gaps.

Slice—

It started with me taking the head off a C-rank monster, a Lizardman Warrior. As the spearhead swept through a semicircle, blood spurted in every direction.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

System

• You defeated Lv. 40 Lizardman Warrior!

• You defeated Lv. 41 Swamp Lizardman!

• You defeated Lv. 40 Swamp Lizardman…

Keeee…

The survivors hesitated and backed away. The same creatures that had been pouring out killing intent at the enemy of their kin were now trembling with fear.

But that lasted only a moment.

Gwoooaar!

System

• Boss Monster Lv. 52 Lizardman Great Chieftain has appeared!

• The Skill Battle Cry is being used!

It was at least twice the size of the others, with a gigantic mace in its hand. The Lizardman Chieftain’s roar exploded through the air. At the appearance of their leader, the retreating Lizardmen came to their senses and formed ranks.

I was wondering why this was wrapping up so easily.

Team Leader Choi’s unhurried voice came from behind me.

“Can you handle it?”

“Is that something someone who hasn’t lifted a finger for days should be asking?”

“This is different. It’s a C-rank Gate.”

“Then help, why don’t you.”

Team Leader Choi thought it over before answering.

“I don’t think I can. I’m wearing a limited edition today. It’d break my heart if blood splattered on it.”

“……Should I make it hurt for real?”

The longer we talked, the more my gut burned and the back of my head throbbed, as if I were suffering an Internal Injury. I’d rather fight the monsters.

As I took a long stride forward, Team Leader Choi tossed out a single line.

“Retreat is another option.”

The man standing behind me with his arms folded so blood wouldn’t splatter on his limited-edition Equipment had made a pretty good point.

The kind that made me want to hit him.

And then…

“Why bother when there’s a better way?”

Ahead of us, the monsters surged forward like a wave, led by the Lizardman Great Chieftain. C- and D-rank monsters mixed together—a force an ordinary C-rank Hunter wouldn’t even dream of facing.

An ordinary C-rank Hunter, that is.

Status Window, open.

Ding.

The System answered at once.

A week had passed since I’d started working as a Hunter again. On the Status Window, the number 40 and the line at the very bottom shone brightly.

System

• Remaining Points: 100

Since returning to reality, I hadn’t spent a single Remaining Point. Purely out of curiosity.

How far can I go as I am now?

But hoarding them any longer would be reckless.

Assign 30 each to Strength and Stamina. Assign 40 to Agility.

The next moment, my Remaining Points hit zero.

In exchange, new power surged from deep inside me. I was no longer the same Jin Taekyung I’d been only seconds ago.

Yeah. This is it.

I was still trembling with exhilaration when—

Gwaaaar!

The Lizardman Great Chieftain charged with a roar. I thrust my spear toward the gigantic mace casting a shadow over me.

“One Annihilation.”

At the tip of my spear, a path through the wind opened.

“Hah.”

Team Leader Choi—Choi Minwoo—let out a hollow laugh.

A dense fog of blood hung over the wetlands, and beneath it lay the sprawled corpses of the monsters.

What the hell…

Dozens of monsters, including the boss, had been slaughtered in an instant. All of it by the spear of a C-rank Hunter who had reawakened only a few days ago.

Is something like this even possible?

It was a question he had carried since the day he first met Jin Taekyung.

That day, they had gone to an E-rank Gate without much thought. There, Taekyung had overwhelmingly overpowered a Rare Monster that normally took a couple of C-rank Hunters to bring down.

And on top of that, the strength he had shown over the past few days was…

Calling him a C-rank Hunter is a joke.

The reason Choi had begun raiding alone with Taekyung was simple.

He wanted to see how far this fascinating man could go.

And he wanted to keep anyone else from finding out.

But then a thought occurred to him.

Could he be stronger than me…?

No. No.

That was impossible.

Choi Minwoo forced the thought aside. Then Jin Taekyung caught his eye.

He was clutching the boss monster’s corpse—its upper body completely gone—and wailing in grief.

“No! My hide! This was expensive!”

……There was no way a man like that could be.

No. He mustn’t be.

Choi Minwoo suddenly felt cheated.

Burning Friday. Bulgeum, for short.

Other people in their twenties would be drinking in groups and drifting in and out of clubs. I spent it running Gates with Team Leader Choi.

Once in the morning. Twice in the afternoon.

By the time we finished three C-rank Gates and came back out, night had already fallen.

“Thank you for your hard work, Young Master.”

The face was familiar now. Team Leader Choi addressed the rugged-looking man in his forties like this:

“Thank you for your hard work too, Butler Kim.”

Butler Kim. Not a secretary—a butler.¹

The word was so detached from reality that I thought I’d misheard it at first.

I’ve only ever met church deacons.

Back when I was a snot-nosed kid getting a thousand won² a week in allowance, one of them had been the bastard who forced me to hand over a hundred won³ as a tithe.

Of course, he hadn’t called me Young Master. When I dug in and refused to pay, he’d even muttered that I was the child of Satan.

And at seven years old, I was the kind of kid who always asked when something made me curious.

“Mom. Are you Satan?”

“Huh? Satan?”

“Yeah. The church deacon said I was Satan’s child. I’m your kid, so that makes you Satan, right? Right?”

Those words turned my mother into Satan.

I never got to eat the church tteokbokki⁴ again, and the church deacon nearly went to be with the Lord.

Thinking back on it, my life really had been one hell of a variety show.

“Did you have something to say…?”

Butler Kim’s voice pulled me back.

“Nothing. I was just thinking about something else.”

“Let’s call it a day.”

Team Leader Choi had already changed into street clothes. In a lightweight tailored suit, he looked just like a celebrity.

Life is so damn unfair.

I grumbled inwardly as I started taking off my Equipment. Carefully, of course. I’d looked up the price on the first day, and it was…

Never mind. Let’s not go there.

While Butler Kim loaded the Equipment into the car, I asked Team Leader Choi, “What time should I come in tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

Team Leader Choi sounded puzzled.

“Today is Friday.”

“Yes.”

“And tomorrow is Saturday.”

“I know Saturday comes after Friday.”

Does he take me for a fucking idiot?

“No, I mean…”

Team Leader Choi furrowed his brow.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to work this weekend too.”

“……Isn’t that obvious?”

“……”

“……”

Team Leader Choi asked with a shocked look,

“If you don’t take weekends off, when do you rest?”

“Um. When I can’t find work?”

“How often is that?”

“I don’t know. If I get a lot of time off, maybe once a month?”

“You used to belong to a Guild. You worked weekends then too?”

“I did if there was work.”

“Isn’t that a violation of the Hunter Labor Law?”

Even Team Leader Choi, who seemed perfect, didn’t know one thing.

How the world actually worked.

I let out a short laugh.

“What small or midsize Guild follows that to the letter? They all throw in extra pay and send you out on raids. Worked out for me, anyway.”

“Excuse me? You liked it?”

“I go to the day-labor agency on weekends. Getting extra pay from the Guild beats going there. They paid us cash on the spot to keep it off the books.”

“……”

“That’s just how it is.”

Team Leader Choi shook his head in disbelief.

“Our Guild follows the Labor Law. Provisional contracts are no exception.”

That’s a shame. Looks like I’ll have to go to the day-labor agency this weekend.

As I smacked my lips over the missed opportunity, Team Leader Choi gave me that peculiar look of his.

“Why do you push yourself so hard?”

“Why?”

“You’re a C-rank Hunter now. You can afford to take it a little easier.”

“That’s…”

Because I don’t know when the System might disappear.

I caught the words before they burst out of my throat. That was my secret—something I couldn’t tell anyone.

“No particular reason. You have to row while the tide is in.”

“If you keep working like that, you’ll break the oars. Think about the people in the boat with you.”

“The people in the boat with me? You, Team Leader?”

“Well, for example…”

Team Leader Choi paused before continuing.

“Your family, perhaps.”

Family.

It was only one word, but warmth seeped into every corner of my body. We talked on the phone now and then, but I hadn’t seen them in more than two months. Counting the time I’d spent in Murim, it had been three.

Has it already been that long?

Ever since my father died, my life had felt like a car driving uphill.

So I’d had no choice but to keep my foot on the gas. It felt as though I’d roll backward the moment I let up. As though the engine might die at any second.

“Anyway, weekends are off. Don’t even think about going to the day-labor agency. Rest. That would be a contract violation.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Forcing me to rest this hard… Maybe this guy Choi isn’t such a bad person after all…

No.

I couldn’t let myself get taken in by a little emotional appeal. Not after all the hell I’d gone through on my own.

Team Leader Choi is an exploitative employer. An exploitative employer.

It was obvious he only wanted me resting on the weekend so he could work me to the bone starting next week. It was the mentality of a slave plantation owner who didn’t want his worker wasting stamina somewhere else.

What a vicious man.

“Everything is ready, Young Master.”

Butler Kim had returned after loading the Equipment.

That man’s suffering under an exploitative employer too. It’s almost ten at night, and he still hasn’t gotten off work.

“Ah. What about the thing I mentioned?”

“I brought it.”

“Give it to him.”

At the exploitative employer’s command, Butler Kim held out the small box in his hands.

“Please take this, Hunter.”

To me.

“Huh? Me?”

It looked like a box of tonic drinks. I blinked at it until a thought flashed through my mind.

I asked carefully, “Don’t tell me this is money.”

“We contracted for weekly pay. Did you forget?”

I had. I’d assumed I would get it on Sunday.

I took the box, still dazed. It was heavy.

“Do you normally pay in cash?”

“Of course not.”

“Then…”

“You said you preferred cash, Mr. Jin Taekyung. Especially crisp new bills.”

I’d mentioned it in passing yesterday—or the day before. I hadn’t expected it to come back like this.

My opinion of the exploitative employer rose a little.

Of course, the most important part is still left.

Four days of pay, Tuesday through Friday. My first weekly paycheck as a C-rank Hunter.

Of course I was excited to find out how much it was.

I swallowed and opened my mouth.

“Then how much is all of this…?”

“I added a little extra on top of the contracted amount. The settlement details are inside, so check them. We’ll be going.”

“Until next time, Hunter.”

Team Leader Choi and Butler Kim took off in a flash.

It all happened in an instant.

I stared after the receding car lights, bewildered, then opened the drink box. In the faint moonlight, thick bundles of bills caught my eye.

One, two, three…

The count stopped at six.

Six bundles of a hundred bills.

In other words, six million won.⁵

“What is this?”

Scam.

The word flashed through my mind. Just as my legs were about to give out—

“Huh?”

Had I seen it wrong? Why were the bills yellowish?

“Wait. Wait a second!”

I focused internal energy into my eyes, and my vision brightened.

Then I saw her.

A kindly smiling woman in a hanbok,⁶ right there on the bill.

“Shin Saimdang!⁷ Wise mother and virtuous wife! Her son is Yulgok Yi I! Her husband is Yi Wonsu!”

I started speaking in tongues before I knew it.

This was insane. Completely insane.

One bundle held a hundred Shin Saimdang bills. Six of those meant…

“Th-three hundred million!”⁸

This time I couldn’t catch myself as my legs gave out. I dropped to my knees with a thud and stared blankly into the drink box.

Under the bundles, a white sheet of paper lined the bottom.

Right. The settlement sheet!

I unfolded it in a panic.

It contained a complete record of the past four days’ earnings.

Right down to the final amount being paid to me.

The settlement says thirty million won?⁹

What? Had I imagined it?

I was confused. Completely confused.

My shaking gaze froze on the final line.

Bonus: 270,000,000¹⁰

Then I remembered Team Leader Choi’s last words before leaving.

I added a little extra on top of the contracted amount.

Thunder and lightning raged through my head.

I rose on trembling legs. Far off in the distance, the car’s lights were already fading.

They looked like a single ray of light.

“Ahh. Aaaah…”

Team Leader Choi.

No—he was the Light.