Chapter 25: 25

[Translator – DualDark]

Chapter 25 – Personal Circumstances (1)

An awkward atmosphere filled the room.

Water lapped precariously against the edge of the glass cup.

“Do something.”

“It’s okay.”

I lowered my head slightly and took a sip of water.

The woman was pondering on whether she should leave or not.

I was certain it was the woman I saw at the time of the dungeon break.

Whether it was a coincidence or fate, I didn’t know, but it was a welcome sight.

I quickly spoke to the woman.

“Excuse me, what is your name? You’re a hunter, right? But why are you working at a place like this? If you don’t have any affiliation— Agh!”

Choi Soo-hyun, who was sitting in front of me, kicked my shin.

The kick was so strong it sent aches throughout my bones.

“Enough.”

Choi Soo-hyun gave the woman a signal to leave quickly as I was cradling my leg.

“Wait…”

I was about to chase the woman who had just left the room but reluctantly sat down.

Choi Soo-hyun rested her elbows on the table and showed distaste towards the appearance of me with my hand on my chin.

“Oh? Are you rebelling?”

“It’s not rebelling, I’m just genuinely dissatisfied.”

“Dissatisfaction my ass.”

“I’m a female hunter.”

“I know.”

It might have been slight, but I felt magic power coming from the woman.

There was no way Choi Soo-hyun wouldn’t have noticed something that even I had.

Therefore this was an obvious obstruction of business.

Choi Soo-hyun, who had been looking at the working woman through the glass window, turned her gaze towards the inside of the room.

“Unaffiliated, free, refusing to give up the desire to become a hunter and roaming back and forth, being underestimated… What else was there?”

“It’s good if they have some dissatisfaction built up against society.”

But you said something about how I was the only person that was like that.

I wiped Choi Soo-hyun’s mouth with a napkin.

A moment of silence passed.

At that moment I finally realized why we were even at this buffet.

“It’s that woman?”

Choi Soo-hyun nodded her head as if saying ‘have you finally realized?’

I just said that without any rationale. I didn’t think she’d be looking for them.

Choi Soo-hyun tapped on the table with her finger.

“Her name is Song Eun-young. Age twenty-seven, parents are both A-rank hunters.”

“She’s from a hunter family?”

Choi Soo-hyun made a subtle face as I asked my question.

She told me she didn’t know where to start and hesitantly started talking about her story.

“You know about the great disaster that happened seven years ago, right?”

“You’re talking about the S-rank dungeon break in Seoul right?”

“Yeah. That.”

I had a vague memory of reading about it on the internet.

It was the most destructive dungeon break in the history of South Korea.

Of all things, there were also multiple SS-rank dungeon raids going on here and there.

The damages were even worse due to it happening at a time when the hunter forces were lower than normal. 

“The hunters who fought at the forefront at the time were Song Eun-young’s parents. They died.”

“Oh my.”

“Song Eun-young awakened a year after her parents passed away. She had the willingness to become a hunter. However, the results are, well…”

Choi Soo-hyun’s voice trailed off.

She aimed to follow in her parents’ footsteps and become a hunter, but the only thing the awakened Song Eun-young got in return was the stigma of being “unaffiliated”.

There secretly seems to be rumors that say she’s a unique woman.

“But why do you think there are unaffiliated hunters?”

Although awakened, those who didn’t have god on their side were not able to properly use their abilities.

It was impossible to know why these types of people existed, and why the gods avoided them.

“Why are you asking me that? How am I supposed to know?”

I shut my mouth in response to Choi Soo-hyun’s retort.

“There aren’t many people who think like you and approach them.”

Normally I think of an unaffiliated as just unaffiliated and move on.

Even if I had a question, I’d have no way to know, or even a reason to know.

Because it’s none of my business.

I have no reason to dig deeper and question them about matters that don’t bring any benefit.

I had gotten unnecessarily embarrassed, so I changed the topic.

“Anyways you were keeping an eye on Song Eun-young right?”

“That’s right, although I don’t know if she has any dissatisfaction with society or not. But how did you find out about Song Eun-young?”

Choi Soo-hyun was thinking of telling me about Song Eun-young after bringing me to this place.

It was only natural for her to be surprised since I abruptly asked her to find the woman and acted like I knew Song Eun-young.

I explained to her the events that happened at the recent dungeon expedition.

It was a simple story about how after we left the dungeon, fieldification had begun due to a dungeon break, and how Son Eun-young had helped a civilian who was about to be killed by an orc.

“Her knee kick to the face was amazing. I got a feeling. ‘Something like this would work’ kind of feeling?”

“Are you insane?”

“What do you mean insane? I’m perfectly normal.”

I became elated at the thought that I could possibly bring in Song Eun-young.

Choi Soo-hyun said she would join, but in reality, it was on indefinite hold.

I don’t know if she’s just having a taste or what, but it didn’t seem reasonable to keep nagging her about when she’s going to join.

I was currently in a state where I didn’t care enough. I felt that she would join on her own eventually.

In my head, I was already thinking about how to bring in Song Eun-young.

“Would it be okay?”

“With what?”

“Song Eun-young is unaffiliated. Is your god okay with an unaffiliated like that?”

I pondered for a moment about Choi Soo-hyun’s question.

Why are the unaffiliated, unaffiliated?

Because there isn’t a god willing to take them in.

There’s probably a good reason why other gods avoid unaffiliated awakened.

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Because to be fair, the best method is to fawn over people who just awakened like how other people do.

Who wouldn’t know that that method was comfortable?

It’s not that I don’t do it because I don’t know about it.

It’s because I don’t know how, and can’t.

‘But I really wonder why?’

I couldn’t understand why the other gods didn’t choose Song Eun-young.

It was just for a short moment, but the Song Eun-young that I saw definitely had talent.

And not only that, but since her parents were hunters, she was probably familiar with fighting monsters.

[Translator – DualDark]

I soon came to the conclusion that it was all right.

“Of course.”

Pretending to be a benevolent person, I spread my arms forth and gave out lines that fit the act.

“My god is impartial.”

“Bullshit.”

Choi Soo-hyun gave me a pitiful look.

I, who had become slightly embarrassed, pulled my hands back and sat down comfortably.

“Anyways I heard you almost died in a dungeon? Tell me about that.”

“It’s as they say.”

“What? You almost died while fighting against a C-rank queen ant? Did you think I’d believe that? If it were any other person, sure, but you? 

Choi Soo-hyun stared at me with a look of suspicion.

Getting a compliment felt good, but I couldn’t understand why the conversation was going in this direction.

Choi Soo-hyun was currently affiliated with the Hunter’s Association.

The Hunter’s Association, which was part of the government, did various jobs.

Among those jobs, the most iconic was their surveillance over guilds.

However, Choi Soo-hyun was not part of the dungeon or guild management departments.

In fact, she was part of the hunter education department, so it could be said that information flowed to it relatively slowly compared to the other departments.

I pondered on whether it was okay to talk about it or not.

Choi Soo-hyun, who had noticed I was thinking about it, spoke up.

“It’s good to spit it out while I’m asking nicely. I finally understand why Park Si-woo called you to his office.”

Choi Soo-hyun was already certain that I knew something.

I raised my hands as I finished thinking.

“I just need to tell you then.”

I decided there was no benefit in hiding it when we were close enough to share meals, so I started talking about what had happened at the dungeon while also making sure not to divulge too much.

An alley shrouded in darkness.

A girl wearing a hoodie looked around for a bit before making her way into an abandoned building.

What used to be a building full of offices was now reduced to ruins, where cold air would linger.

Room 412.

Although there was a door lock, it had long since stopped working.

At the entrance of the office, a sign for an already failed company barely held on.

Ahn Joo-hye opened the door with her body and went inside.

A man wearing a dark raincoat shone through the moonlight.

“So you failed.”

“Failed? I did as you ordered! What the hell was that?!”

Ahn Joo-hye was an eternal D-rank.

Normally hunters who started out at D-rank took around 3-4 years to get out.

This was an average estimate.

There were even cases of hunters with talent getting out of D-rank within a year.

She started her hunter activities during high school.

Unlike the 3-4 years they thought it would take for her to rank up, she was stuck as a D-rank for 6 years now.

The god that accompanied her was not a named god.

Although they believed it’d be fine after a few years, nothing changed.

Even when they tried to cover for her rank with equipment, there was a clear limit as the most she could handle were C-Rank Dungeons.

While wandering in that situation, Ahn Joo-hye got a secret proposal.

She was contacted by an anonymous party through her personal guild mail.

They said that they would write her a recommendation letter to the Raon Guild if she did as they ordered.

What kind of guild was the Raon guild?

Although they were also situated in Gangnam, unlike the Aria Guild who had no real main god, the Raon guild was mainly composed of devotees to the god ‘Lux’.

The man did not speak.

Ahn Joo-hye, who was on edge, raised her voice.

“Damn it, you told me that I just had to put the glass pieces in the monsters.”

They told her that all she needed to do was to make a cut in the queen ant and put the glass piece in through that injury. But that was all she was told. She wasn’t aware of what would happen after.

If Kang Han-kyul weren’t there, she might’ve really come out as a corpse.

She had heard that the Aria Guild had an increase in dungeon accidents as of late, and thought it might have been connected to what had happened in the dungeon.

“How did you get out alive?”

“Why should I tell you that? It’s whatever, so give me my rewa— Cough!”

The doll wearing the raincoat turned around and approached Ahn Joo-hye.

The raincoat was covered in a black mist so thick she couldn’t see who was wearing it.

The mist coming out of the sleeve of the raincoat wrapped itself around Ahn Joo-hye’s neck.

“What is this…”

Ahn Joo-hye struggled as she was being choked.

A sound that couldn’t possibly have come from a human was let out.

“ …Them, curse them. The reason you are weak is because your god is weak. Curse your god…”

The ceiling rattled.

As soon as it stopped talking, the steel sheet from the ceiling fell down.

It cut off the arm of the raincoat that had been choking Ahn Joo-hye.

The black mist quickly retreated.

The man dusted himself off and stood up.

“ …Who are you? What are you doing?”

The black mist that was floating in midair was wary of the man.

In the hands of the man wearing black was a sword that was completely wrapped in bandages.

Ahn Joo-hye, who had barely recovered her senses, recognized the man.

“You are… Kim Yoo-han?”

“I think you’re seeing things.”

“I don’t think I am though……”

As Ahn Joo-hye squinted her eyes in suspicion, Kim Yoo-han coughed and quickly put up the mask that was around his neck.

At the same time the black mist flew towards Kim Yoo-han.

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