Vengeance is the work of the individual, and punishment is the work of God.
Society stands between the two.
Retribution is above society, and vengeance is below society.
- Victor Marie Hugo
***
Do you know what kind of breed Hunters are?
If someone were talking about people who risked their lives for justice to fight monsters, Gyeom-shin would have smacked that person right across the head.
In all his life, Gyeom-shin had rarely seen anyone so noble among Hunters.
Most of them were a pack who fabricated nonexistent crimes against innocent people just to take more for themselves, burying one another through the power of the group.
That was what Hunters were.
From a young age, he had grown up as an orphan with nowhere to belong.
He stole food simply to survive.
Then, beaten black and blue and on the verge of starving to death, a boy named Jang-pil had appeared before him.
"...Hey, do you want to eat this?"
A single piece of bread handed to him back then.
He shed tears and ate it just to live.
Ever since, he had lived tenaciously, refusing to lose to this goddamn world.
As time passed and his frame grew larger, he was able to take on work despite being at the young age of a mere thirteen.
Dangerous work, dirty work, ugly work.
He was not picky at all.
As long as it was clean work that did not involve committing a crime, he struggled desperately just to survive.
It was an endless hell of odd jobs.
Not only did he work as an errand boy who had to run around all day until his feet swelled up, but at one point, he even drifted from one construction site to another.
Then, around the time he turned fifteen, he even entered a dungeon-type mine swarming with monsters to earn more money.
He was blinded by greed for money.
Madness spun in his eyes.
However, a dungeon was far too dangerous a place for an Unawakened who was not even a Hunter to come and go.
"Haa... Haaa..."
He gasped for breath.
Looking around, the entire area had become a sea of blood, and blood streamed down from Gyeom-shin's head as he lay on the ground.
Where had it all gone wrong?
"Grrrr...! Grrr!"
The problem was those ferocious Goblins.
Monsters of the mine that moved with agility, used tools, and even smeared deadly poison onto their weapons.
Having hidden deep within the mine, the bastards had drawn their blades and swarmed out when their territory was invaded.
As he blinked his eyelids with eyes that felt ready to black out at any second, he saw the heads of the miners flying up into the air.
"......!"
The owner of that head rising into the air was the foreman who had led Gyeom-shin to this place.
Despite his young age, the boy had followed him here through an illegal route.
Having even had an exorbitant finder's fee ripped off by the foreman, only to find himself about to die at the mere age of fifteen, Gyeom-shin realized something.
"Uuuugh...! Kuaaaagh!"
In this world, you either get used, or you use others—it was one of the two.
And if he did not want that, he needed to possess strong power that no one could dare challenge.
Clenching his teeth with sheer grit, he rose to his feet.
"Uaaagh! Kuhaaaagh...!"
Clutching his intestines that felt ready to burst, he picked up a sword lying scattered on the ground and charged at the bastards with all his might.
A mere fifteen years old.
That was the age when Gyeom-shin, an Unawakened, came to harbor the potential of a Hunter.
***
Even after miraculously escaping from the mine dungeon, his life remained an endless living hell.
On top of the medical bills for the major surgery he had undergone on the brink of death, he was hounded by all kinds of debt.
His only salvation came as time passed and, around the time Gyeom-shin turned twenty, he Awakened as a Hunter for the first time.
"Huh...?"
An incomprehensible, unknown power surged up from deep within his body, making him feel like a superhuman.
Monstrous strength beyond his control.
A body harder than steel, upon which ordinary impacts could no longer even leave a scratch.
And the special potential that each Hunter uniquely possessed.
Those were the hallmarks of a Hunter.
CRACK—!
"......"
Just moments ago, dozens of bricks falling from the top of a building at the construction site had struck him directly on the head, yet his body was completely unharmed.
Not only that, when he picked up a brick and squeezed it with his bare hand, it shattered right into pieces like a crumbling snack.
He was still a long way from blossoming his special potential, but Gyeom-shin felt as though he owned the entire world.
"I..."
A Hunter was a profession capable of raking in huge sums of money all at once, no less than a celebrity.
Because it was a profession only the chosen could Awaken to, he thought he had finally been saved from this sickening life.
"I've become a Hunter!"
However, that joy did not last long.
"Hmm... So you brought trash like this and call it a resume...?"
What Gyeom-shin had Awakened to was a mere F-Grade.
Even among Hunters, he was an F-Grade Hunter, a dime a dozen.
Despite that, knowing nothing at all about how the industry worked, he had blindly submitted his resume to a famous guild.
It was a fierce resume steeped in venom, dotted with a past where he had not hesitated to risk his life just to avoid dying and survive.
However, the response that came back was frigid.
In the Hunter industry, where superhuman strength was the baseline, a mere laborer good at doing dirty work was completely useless.
"Are you looking down on our guild right now? Who let a bastard like this pass?"
SWISH—!
"......"
What mattered was a Hunter's own special ability.
In the industry, that irreplaceable potential was valued highest of all.
However, Gyeom-shin had nothing of the sort.
Compared to other Hunters, he had nothing.
No, in fact, he was inferior.
GRIND.
The resume that had been flung right into his face.
Walking out of the famous guild's building in misery, Gyeom-shin clenched his teeth and vowed.
'...Someday, I'll stand in a place far higher than you bastards.'
That someday, he would pay them back for the humiliation he had suffered today.
***
About ten years had passed since he began living with nothing but venom toward the world.
Gyeom-shin's dream had already come true.
Guild Ranking 1st, Hunter Ranking 1st.
The strongest Hunter, known by the epithet 'Emperor.'
"Haa... Haaa..."
Now thirty years old, Gyeom-shin was breathing heavily in front of a monster the size of a house that had collapsed right before his eyes.
"Cleared..."
He had risked his life and fought to be the first to clear this top-grade dungeon.
Shouldering not only his own fate, but the fate of his guild members as well.
"Master Lee Gyeom-shin has become the first to clear the Demon Realm dungeon...!"
<Waaaaah-!>
In the end, after a battle fought with every ounce of strength, he had slain the boss monster, the Ghost Elephant.
Standing before the corpse of the monster reminiscent of a mammoth, everyone cheered.
However, the damage was severe.
Gyeom-shin, who had always regarded his guild members as his own family, tended to them first.
"Is everyone all right?!"
"Yes, Master!"
There was still vigor in the voices of the guild executives, but the situation was anything but bright.
It was in the aftermath of a massive sacrifice.
"...Baek Min-jun, what are the casualties?"
"Out of the 367 guild members who came with us, 117 are dead and 186 are severely injured."
That meant there were over 300 casualties among the elite guild members.
"So the only ones intact... are these sixty or so?"
That was how fierce the battle had been.
So much so that it was no exaggeration to call it a battle that decided the hierarchy of dominance between humanity and monsters.
"It is what those guys wanted, too."
"......"
"They will rest in peace with honor as Hunters."
Beside him, Wang Jun-gi, an executive and a hulking Hunter, hoisted a massive spear onto his shoulder with a shrug and spoke with a bitter smile.
"...Phew."
On the other hand, they had also gained much from clearing it.
"Just this single sword..."
Even so, the only thing that actually held meaning for Gyeom-shin was this single Demonic Sword.
"Was it a battle all for the Demonic Sword, Ades?"
SWIPE.
Quietly wiping away the blood flowing down his head, Gyeom-shin gently gripped the hilt of the sword that gleamed like obsidian.
A mysterious energy beyond description thickly wrapped around his entire body.
"That is not all."
Just then, Vice Guild Master Baek Min-jun, who had been watching him, spoke in a low voice.
"Because clearing this dungeon... means that from now on, we have surpassed Korea to become the strongest in the world."
"...Well, that's not bad."
He had a point.
Because this dungeon, commonly called the 'Demon Realm,' had been measured as having the highest clearing difficulty in the world.
"Hurry and treat the injured first!"
"Yes, sir!"
They had won the battle.
Now, they had to save even one more person.
"Master, can we divvy up the rest of the things left here?"
"...Of course."
While Gyeom-shin was hurriedly treating the injured, Executive Hunter Choi Ji-ho eyed the treasures covetously and asked.
"And that is not all."
SHAAAH—!
To Gyeom-shin, they were guild members who had willingly risked their lives to fight alongside him.
Therefore, he had no other greed.
Just this single, unidentified Demonic Sword held in his hand was enough.
"Once we return to the guild, to all of you who risked your lives and fought, I will give a great reward..."
SHAAAAH—!
However, at that moment, a completely unexpected catastrophe occurred.
Trudge, trudge.
"That's... going to be difficult, isn't it?"
SMIRK.
An unidentified group wearing black masks over their faces appeared.
They began swiftly severing the lifelines of the exhausted allies.
SLASH—!
<Kuhaaagh...!>
Lines of blood were drawn straight across the throats of the guild members who had been lying on the ground breathing heavily.
They brutally slit the throats of the wounded with sharp blades of steel.
<Kugh!>
Horrific death throes echoed from all around.
"Run away! Master! Kugh!"
THUD.
"......"
The sight of his beloved guild members dying in vain in an instant at the hands of the group that had suddenly stormed the dungeon, unable to even display their true skills.
A wretched spectacle unfolded as they were slaughtered all at once while defenseless, unable to even put up a proper fight.
"...These bastards deserve to be slaughtered."
Stopping his treatment of the injured, Gyeom-shin clenched his fists tightly and rose to his feet.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Even though he too was already exhausted to his very limit, he was the strongest Hunter.
"Who are you bastards?"
Over his ten years as a Hunter, Gyeom-shin had suffered countless ambushes like this.
However, none had been a lethal raid timed with such pinpoint precision as this.
"Have you lost your minds?"
Fury surged to the very top of his head.
He intended to annihilate the enemies right this instant.
"After we went through all that trouble to set this up, where do you think you're going, trying to return so easily?"
"Lee Gyeom-shin, we need you to die honorably right here."
"Don't resent us too much. You know full well that's just how this industry is."
Being a Hunter was the most recognized profession in the world, while simultaneously belonging to the most dangerous industry.
The reason was simple.
SWISH—!
"Spill it right now before I kill you!"
Not monsters, but humans.
Because being ambushed by fellow Hunters in the exact same industry was a routine occurrence.
SHAAAH—!
"Which bastard is it?"
Gyeom-shin immediately assumed a combat stance.
He aimed the Demonic Sword in his hand at the bastards.
Then, he even infused mana into the blade.
SHAAAAH—!
"Who ordered you to pull a stunt like this?"
The enemies clearly knew that Gyeom-shin's guild would come here today.
There was definitely a mastermind behind this.
"Is it Phantom? Or is it Diark?"
Naturally, the assassins did not obediently confess.
"There's no need for you to know that much."
"We'd appreciate it if you just died quietly, though?"
"You sure talk a lot for a man who's about to go to the afterlife."
Therefore, he intended to sever their limbs one by one first and ask again.
And if they still refused to talk, their necks would be next.
STEP.
"Fine. Come at me."
Even so, his goal was to capture them alive if possible.
However, because Gyeom-shin was already exhausted to the bone, he could not properly control his own strength.
Tap-tap-tap—!
Tap-tap—!
"Keuk...?!"
SLASH—!
He had meant to lightly sever only their limbs, but the blade went deeper and sliced right through their torsos.
SWISH—!
SLASH—!
SPLAT—!
"Kugh...!"
With sword strikes swung like a flash of lightning, the enemies' bodies were cleaved in half, and their heads flew up into the air as well.
"Kuhaaagh...! Cough."
By the time he stabbed the last bastard nearby through the heart and killed him, over a dozen men had fallen in the blink of an eye.
"I-I couldn't even see his movements...!"
"That crazy monster bastard...!"
"He still has that kind of strength left...?!"
The assassins were horrified.
Because it felt as if they were facing a monster rather than a human being.
"Where did all that lively momentum of yours go?"
For Gyeom-shin, on the other hand, this was only the beginning.
"Come on, all of you, come at me."
Even though it was his first time using the sword, the blade cut remarkably well.
His bloodlust, sent on a rampage by the Demonic Sword, could not be easily stopped.