Chapter 6: Hunt the Hero (3)
“Gah… Hah. Hooo…!”
It was commonly said among Hunters that the way to acquire a Skill was to face death. Perhaps it was true. At least, it sounded more plausible than receiving a Skill for the world’s ugliest jealousy.
“Huff…!”
That was why I swung my dagger again. I couldn’t let my guard down; I had to stop the slightest chance of the psychopath in front of me Awakening his Skill.
“Gasp… huff…”
Die. I gritted my teeth.
“Whoo…”
What made me the most angry wasn’t the fact that this psychopath had burned me to death as if I were nothing.
He told me his name.
It was what Yoo Soo-Ha had told me with a smile before he had grabbed and burned my head to a crisp.
“But you know I’m the Fire Emperor and you also saw me killing the Saintess. So you have to die. My name is Yoo Soo-Ha. Goodbye.”
Only a maniac would talk like that. The last part of his remark, though, was really strange.
He told me his name.
It was very sudden. He couldn’t have possibly thought that I didn’t know his name.
He wanted to show off.
That made me unbearably angry and disgusted. He was a killer, but he believed he was a warrior stating his name before a sacred duel. The moment he had killed me, he had probably thought,
—I don’t hide my identity when I kill. Therefore I’m honorable.
How dare you… How dare a psychopath like you think like that…!
It was only a coincidence that I had witnessed his crime, but he had killed me anyway. He had shamelessly pretended to be innocent in front of the fire he had started. This inhumane thing was an animal. No, he was worse than that. He was a devil, but he acted like he was noble.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” I stabbed Yoo Soo-Ha’s neck.
Yoo Soo-Ha had already gone quiet. He didn’t scream or moan. He lay on the grass, staring up at the sky of the remote, empty hunting ground with blank eyes. Yes, he was dead.
“Huff, huff… Huff…”
Maybe that wasn’t an accurate description. He wasn’t an ordinary Hunter, and his death was far from normal. The man would have become the legendary Fire Emperor, the first place in the official Hunter ranking. The Tower’s tenth floor remained uncleared for years, but he was going to clear it on his own. And I killed him.
“Phew.” I let out a sigh. “I can finally come to my—”
I was going to say I could finally regain some composure, but I had to stop talking. Big wolves were roaming around nearby after getting a whiff of Yoo Soo-Ha’s blood.
Grrrr….
They were no ordinary wolves, they were monsters called Plain Wolves. Each of them bore a black symbol resembling a tattoo. The more complicated the symbol was, the stronger they were. The ones in front of me had rather simple symbols, but I still couldn’t take them lightly as a Class F Hunter.
I first got back my wallet from Yoo Soo-Ha. Then, as I cautiously retreated, I pointed at the body.
“You want him, right? I don’t need it, so take it.”
And I kept backing away.
Grrrrrrr.
The wolves approached the body. One of them bit the jacket off the corpse and all of the other wolves followed suit.
I couldn’t see the body anymore with the big wolves covering it.
“Enjoy yourselves.” I quickly left the area.
Is it over?
My clothes were drenched in Yoo Soo-Ha’s blood, so I buried them deep in the hole I had dug in advance and washed myself using the water bottles I had brought. Even after I pulled new clothes from my backpack, everything still felt unreal.
Is it really over?
Since people would get suspicious if my clothes were too clean. When I’d gotten them dirty enough, I headed back to Babylon, the city on the Tower’s first floor. A guard from the Watchmen League was standing at the entrance and glanced at me…but he soon looked away with a yawn.
Ah.
No one knew what happened.
It’s really over.
I went inside a pub and ordered a beer. I gulped it down and ordered another one, and no one cared or knew what I did. I quietly closed my eyes and listened to the news on the pub’s old television.
「Hunters from Rank 2 to 7 gathered and set out to clear the Tower’s tenth floor. However, the team has been brought to their knees once again…
「...The criticism toward the Sword Star is getting stronger every day because he never takes part in a Tower Raid Team even though he’s the Rank 1 Hunter…」
No matter how long I waited, breaking news of a missing Hunter in the Tower’s second-floor hunting ground never arrived. It was only natural, really. There was nothing new about rookie Hunters’ deaths. Just like no one cared about me right now, they weren’t interested in learning about an obscure Hunter’s disappearance.
It’s over!
In other words, I had succeeded in hunting the monster.
***
I held up my empty glass. “One more draft beer please!”
“You’re drinking a lot today. Did you have a lucky hunt today?”
“Yes. Yes, I did! It was awesome!” I shouted delightedly.
I’d never felt more free than I did right now, so I spent several hours filling up myself with beer. Only when I saw the sun setting outside the pub was I brought back to reality.
What should I do now?
There was a lot I could do.
I can win the lottery. No one knows how to clear the higher floors, so selling them that information is also an option. Mannnn, my life is going to be smooth sailing!
I looked up at my Hunter Status Window, which only I could see.
Name: Kim Gong-Ja
Class: F
Skills(2/4)
1. I Want To Be Like You (S+): Passive
2. Returner’s Clockwork (EX): Passive
3. Empty
4. Empty
“Yeah, I don’t need snacks to go with my drink.”
I giggled. I was practically having steak and caviar. My status window came with a Class S Skill and a Class EX Skill, and I was sure that most people had never even heard of a Class EX Skill.
I’m a greedy pig if I want things to be better than they are right now. I smiled contently.
“...But I don’t have an attack Skill.”
Maybe humans were all greedy pigs. What I didn’t have began to bother me.
“Even if I can make good money, a Hunter has to be strong… Otherwise, someone will rob me one day…”
The Tower’s society was much more menacing than the outside world’s. If I put it in a cool way, the rule of the jungle prevailed—basically, only the strong survived. It wouldn’t matter if I could run off to the outside world, but…
…You never leave once you enter the Tower.
That was the unbreakable law. Even a Class S Hunter with a teleportation ability couldn’t travel outside the Tower. The leader of the Merchant Association, known as the Countess, was the only one who could communicate with the outside world from Babylon.
Still, the Countess can only send and receive goods. She’s stuck in the Tower too...
People may enter the Tower at will, but leaving the Tower wasn’t up to them. Their identity, assets, social connections, nationality… only someone who had given up everything of the outside world could enter the Tower and become a Hunter. Perhaps…their humanity was also part of the cost.
“Yeah.”
It was the same for me.
“I should be successful in the Tower even if it’s sink or swim,” I muttered, my courage buoyed by beer.
I desperately wanted to become successful. There was a good reason why I had idolized the Fire Emperor, and it wasn’t because of his astonishingly fucked-up personality. My reason was very simple: I had been envious of the Fire Emperor’s incredible accomplishments.
“Let’s become successful, Kim Gong-Ja. You’ve already died 4090 times, so nothing is impossible for you. Let’s become successful…”
Just then, the bell on the pub’s door rang.
***
At first, I didn’t bother looking to see who entered the pub. It was still early in the evening, so whoever entered the pub couldn’t possibly be a renowned Hunter. But then the other drunkards began to chatter among themselves.
“Hey, did you see him over there…?”
“What? It really looks like him.”
“Why would he come to this pub…?”
Everyone tried not to make noise, leaving the pub oddly quiet. At this point, I had to turn and see who it was.
An old man in a fine black suit was standing there.
“Hmm.”
A plain red necktie neatly circled his neck, making him look ready to go step into an office right away. He surprisingly looked like an average office worker, so looking at him made me feel like I was back in the outside world.
Whoa. What kind of fashion is that?
However, he was wearing red sneakers, not leather shoes. It was a very odd combination, but it wasn’t the only strange part of him.
“One cup of milk,” the old man curtly said.
“What?”
“Give me one cup of milk mixed with a little bit of vodka and sugar. It would be better if you could use honey instead of sugar.”
The pub owner looked perplexed by the absurdly specific order. “Umm… Sir, I’m not a bartender…”
“I’ll pay the right price. Don’t worry.”
The pub owner nodded reluctantly and started working on the man’s order. On the other hand, the pub’s other occupants kept stealing glances at the old man in a suit. They kept whispering about him. It seemed that the old man was really famous.
Who is it? I narrowed my eyes. Strange. I can recognize most famous Hunters.
I wasn’t particularly proud of it, but not many people envied those famous Hunters more than I did. I could state every Hunter on the ranking from the second to the hundredth place because I was jealous of all of them. Yet…strangely, I couldn’t recall this man in a suit.
It feels like I’ve seen him from somewhere though. Where was it? Where?
It took me some time to remember.
Ah!
One of the newspaper clippings that used to cover my studio walls had the man’s photo.
“It has been twenty-two days since the Sword Star went missing. Could this be the start of the greatest chaos the Hunter industry has ever seen?”
It’s the Sword Star!
Yes. The Sword Star used to be the most famous Hunter before Yoo Soo-Ha had made a name for himself as the Fire Emperor. The Sword Star had been active too long ago, so I had forgotten about it. Even I couldn’t recognize a Hunter who hadn’t been active for more than ten years. Besides, he was going to go missing soon, although I didn’t know what happened.
Ah, yeah. That will happen eleven years later, actually.
I realized again that I had returned to the past.
That old man is the strongest man in this generation, not the Fire Emperor...
I knew it was rude, but I couldn’t stop myself from glancing at the Sword Star. How should I put it? I felt like I was meeting a historic figure who’d died long ago. It was amazing and weird at the same time.
He probably has Class S Skills too. I sipped on my beer with a grin. And not something weird like mine. It’s a proper attack skill…
“Huh?” I put down my beer.
The Class S Skill I had crossed my mind all of a sudden.
I Want To Be Like You
Class: S+
Effect: It will automatically activate after an enemy kills you. You will be able to copy and turn one of their Skills into yours. The Skill you copy will be chosen at random, but you can’t copy your enemies’ Skills more than once.
※ However, you will die!
Hold on.
Another light bulb moment struck me, much like when I had thought of a way to kill the Fire Emperor.
I Want To Be Like You was a remarkable Skill. I could get killed by any Hunter if I wanted their Skill. The fact I had to die was the biggest flaw.
But I…don’t die anymore.
Because I had another SKill.
Returner’s Clockwork
Class: EX
Effect: It is activated automatically upon your death. You will return to twenty four hours before your death. Your memory and ability will be preserved even after your return.
※ You will receive a penalty after the Skill activation.
※ The higher your Class is, the stronger the penalty is.
※ The Skill has been copied from Hunter Yoo Soo-Ha.
Goosebumps slowly spread all over my body.
Can I really copy any Skill?
The obvious truth hadn’t crossed my head because of the pressure and anxiety driving me to kill the Fire Emperor as soon as possible.
...Will I also be able to copy the current generation’s Rank 1 Hunter?
I gulped down the beer in my mouth.
The Fire Emperor, the Rank 1 Hunter after the Sword Star’s disappearance, had the cheating ability to return to the past. In that case, what kind of Skills would the Sword Star have? They must be as great as the Fire Emperor’s.
If only I can get that… I looked at the old man’s back. …Jackpot.
It looked like my hunt wasn’t over yet.
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