“What in the world…! What were you thinking?! Do you have any idea how terrified your father was?”
Yoo Han-seok was on both knees, clutching Yoo So-ha and Yoo Seong-ha in his arms, his face already drenched in tears.
He had been overseas on a business trip when he heard that the twins were trapped inside a Gate.
The moment he received the news, he canceled every remaining appointment and returned to Korea.
The thought that something might have happened to the twins had made the entire flight on his private jet feel like hell.
Even after hearing that the two had been rescued, he could not relax until he saw with his own eyes that they were safe.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
Faced with their father like this, Yoo So-ha and Yoo Seong-ha could only feel even guiltier.
“Tae-woo, cancel every appointment I have this month. I’m staying with the kids for the time being.”
“Chairman, that would be…….”
Chief Secretary Choi Tae-woo adjusted his glasses with a troubled expression.
“Dad.”
Yoo So-ha gently pushed Yoo Han-seok away.
“You’ve probably already received the report, but we awakened as Hunters.”
“…….”
Yoo Han-seok looked at the twins anxiously.
Their Awakening.
It had already been confirmed when they were examined for injuries after escaping the Gate.
“You promised us.”
Promised?
He had.
If they became Hunters before turning twenty, he would support them on that path.
But he had never imagined they would actually become Hunters.
Hunters were hardly common. They made up less than 0.001 percent of the population.
Research into artificial Awakening had continued for decades without producing any meaningful results.
And yet both twins had actually awakened.
“You two really…….”
Yoo Han-seok looked as though he had lost the entire world.
Hunters.
Even though Yuseong could not own a Guild because of the Hunter Act, it was still one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates, so he knew their world all too well.
A life riddled with danger.
A life where dying at any moment would not be strange.
“…But we’re not both going to become Hunters.”
“…Do you really mean that?”
“Yes.”
The twins had gone so far as to do something this insane because they wanted to become Hunters.
He had assumed they both wanted exactly the same thing, yet one of them intended to remain behind?
“Why?”
“…Mom isn’t the only person who matters to us.”
Their mother, who had already passed away.
“Dad matters to us too.”
“You two…! You two!”
Yoo Han-seok pulled both twins into his arms again and began sobbing uncontrollably.
“…So, there’s something I want to ask you.”
Yoo So-ha spoke cautiously.
“But not right now. I’ll tell you later. I love you, Dad.”
“Uuugh! So-ha! I’ll give you anything! Anything at all!”
“Hey, Yoo Seong-ha. You should say it too.”
“Ugh, I can’t do that.”
“Yoo Seong-ha!”
“Ah, seriously… I-I love… No, I can’t!”
“Your father loves both of you anywayyy……!”
It took another two hours before the twins were finally freed from the sobbing Yoo Han-seok.
After the exhausted twins left, Yoo Han-seok wiped his tears, sat down, and called Choi Tae-woo over.
“Tae-woo.”
“I’m sorry, Chairman.”
Choi Tae-woo immediately bowed his head.
“This happened because I failed to keep a close enough eye on them. Whatever punishment you decide—”
Tap.
Yoo Han-seok placed a hand on Choi Tae-woo’s shoulder.
“Punishment? Why would you be punished?”
The foolishly doting father from moments ago vanished as though he had never existed.
Yoo Han-seok spoke with a perfectly composed expression.
“I should reward you.”
Choi Tae-woo raised his head.
“Thank you. I heard you were even willing to give your life for my children.”
“……!”
“Thank you. Truly.”
“It was nothing, Chairman.”
“Chairman, my ass. I keep telling you to call me hyung after work. You and I go back more than thirty years.”
“Chairman…….”
‘I’m a year older than you.’
Choi Tae-woo smiled awkwardly.
Pop.
Yoo Han-seok opened a bottle of whiskey and sat down.
“So, I heard it was the Association’s Special Division that saved the kids?”
“Yes. One Special Division Hunter entered and rescued both of them.”
“One person? He entered an Anomalous Gate alone?”
Yoo Han-seok had not been informed of that detail yet, and his eyes widened.
Then he nodded.
“Then again, you said it was an A-rank or higher Gate. A veteran S-rank Hunter could probably handle a rescue alone. There are two S-ranks in the Special Division. Which one was it? Park Min-ho?”
“No. It was a Special Division Hunter I had never seen before…….”
Yoo Han-seok’s eyes widened again.
“Someone even you had never seen?”
“I heard he was a rookie, but that was probably a cover.”
“A cover?”
“He did not look like a rookie at all. Because…….”
Even as he recalled it, Choi Tae-woo sounded as though he could hardly believe his own words.
“He did not merely rescue them. He successfully ‘cleared’ the Gate. Alone. An A-rank or higher Gate.”
“…What?”
A Special Division rookie had cleared an A-rank or higher Gate alone.
It was difficult to believe, but Choi Tae-woo was not a man who exaggerated or lied.
“…We owe him a debt. A very large one. What was that Hunter’s name?”
“Kim Si-hyeon.”
“Kim Si-hyeon.”
Yoo Han-seok’s eyes gleamed.
“Yuseong repays its debts. Thoroughly.”
That was the moment Yoo Han-seok, Chairman of Yuseong and the number-one figure in South Korea’s business world, firmly committed the three syllables of the name ‘Kim Si-hyeon’ to memory.
Meanwhile, at the Special Division office.
“So…….”
Choi Ji-woong asked, unable to hide his bewilderment.
“You can just do it now? You can erase your Kil—no, your presence?”
“That’s right.”
“Was that… even possible?”
There was a simple reason Choi Ji-woong was so shocked.
The Killing Intent I had been radiating was gone.
“How did you really do it? Right now, I can barely feel your Kil—no, your presence at all.”
“You can just call it Killing Intent.”
Choi Ji-woong flinched at my words, then gave an awkward smile as if asking whether I had known all along.
‘It started after I absorbed that purple energy.’
The purple energy left behind by the dead Dark Elf Boss.
At first, I wondered whether it might be some kind of poison.
But the moment it entered my body, I knew.
‘It isn’t poison.’
If anything, it was medicine.
My body had instantly become lighter, and my stamina had filled back up.
Even though I had just cleared a Gate, I actually felt more energetic now than before I entered.
There was one strange thing.
For a brief moment after absorbing that energy, my vision had turned red.
Of course, the red light soon settled inside me and my sight returned to normal.
Still, not knowing the cause made me uneasy.
The biggest change had come immediately afterward.
I had become able to completely erase my own Killing Intent.
That was why Choi Ji-woong was staring at me in such shock now.
“…Haa, what a relief.”
Choi Ji-woong spoke.
“You have no idea how shocked we were when we saw that all the Killing Intent suppression rings we gave you had shattered.”
Those were rings, not Brass Knuckles?
“…About that.”
I was about to apologize when—
“They were Items we bought with the Special Division’s entire annual budget. I was wondering what we were going to do.”
“……!”
What?
“But now that you can suppress your Killing Intent yourself, this is such a relief. I don’t think we’ll have to drink Death’s Illusion anymore.”
I had no idea what Death’s Illusion was.
But I doubted the Special Division’s annual budget could possibly be a small amount of money.
‘Come to think of it, I think someone mentioned an annual budget when they gave those to me too.’
“Are Items always that expensive?”
“Pardon? Ah, it depends on the Item. Some cost a few million won, while others cannot be bought even with money.”
The cheapest ones cost several million won?
Had living through a Zombie apocalypse destroyed my sense of money?
Or were Hunters in this world the ones with a strange sense of money?
“Is this about equipment? You don’t need to worry, Hunter Kim Si-hyeon. Our Special Division will provide everything—”
Had they not already spent an entire year’s budget on me?
And I had destroyed all of it.
“…….”
I thought for a moment, then stood up.
“I’m going home first.”
“H-Hunter Kim Si-hyeon?”
It seemed—
I needed to make money.
Kim Jin-cheol, Association President of the Korea Hunter Association.
His mouth slowly fell open.
Wider.
And wider.
Eventually—
Drip.
Saliva even ran from his gaping mouth.
“Min-ho.”
“Yes, Association President.”
Slurp.
Kim Jin-cheol wiped away the drool and looked at Special Division Director Park Min-ho.
“You spent an entire year’s budget on Items? I understand. No, I should be apologizing. You people work yourselves to death in the Special Division, and I could only give you that much funding.”
The Special Division ultimately belonged to the Korea Hunter Association.
Compared to Guilds, which were practically private corporations, the Association’s pay was indeed poor.
“No, sir.”
But the Association President was wrong.
At least when it came to its operational budget, the Special Division received one of the largest allocations in the entire Korea Hunter Association.
Ten percent of the Association’s total budget.
And that amount was allocated to fewer than thirty people.
Hundreds of billions of won.
Spending all of it on Items for a single person was absurd beyond belief.
But if that person was the Slaughterer, Kim Si-hyeon, then it was understandable.
“Besides, this was a major achievement. You saved the Yuseong twins.”
“No, sir. Hunter Kim Si-hyeon did everything alone.”
“Kim Si-hyeon…….”
Returnee Code No. 007, Slaughterer.
Hunters were already outside the ordinary.
Returnees were even more so.
They were like ticking time bombs that no one knew when or where they might explode.
But depending on how they were used, bombs could also possess tremendous power.
And the result of using this particular ticking time bomb for the first time was—
“Is this report real?”
A jackpot.
“…The Anomalous Gate opened a path only for Kim Si-hyeon, as though it were afraid of him?”
According to the preliminary investigation, the Sacrificial Gate’s entry conditions had made an exception only for Kim Si-hyeon.
Almost as though the components that made up the Gate itself were afraid of him.
And today, the full investigation results had finally arrived.
[It appears that an enormous amount of Special Energy destroyed the structure of the Anomalous Gate itself.]
An enormous amount of Special Energy.
In other words, the massive Killing Intent radiating from Kim Si-hyeon had seeped into the Gate and destroyed its structure.
The report stated that this was also why the entry conditions had rapidly loosened after Kim Si-hyeon entered the Gate.
“Huh. Power strong enough to destroy a Gate merely by existing…….”
No wonder countries around the world went insane trying to secure Returnees.
“Good. Everything is good. No, this is the best possible result.”
Of course, Kim Si-hyeon appeared to be exceptional even among Returnees.
“But…….”
Kim Jin-cheol’s gaze changed.
“Even so, you bastard! How does asking for another entire year’s budget make any sense? Just for buying Items!”
“Gah! Hyung! Why are you hitting me?!”
“Didn’t you say the mighty Slaughterer can control his Killing Intent now?!”
“But what if something happens again?! If the guys in the Special Division drink any more Death’s Illusion, it won’t be an illusion anymore—they’ll actually die!”
Kim Jin-cheol grabbed his face in frustration.
“Haa. I know. I know we should be giving him even more than that.”
An SS-rank Returnee.
In the United Kingdom, they had not only granted land to a Returnee who wanted to rule as a king, but also given him a noble title and support worth trillions of won.
The United States, a country that supposedly spent two quadrillion won a year on defense, had gone even further.
The details were not publicly known, but apparently it had promised unimaginable interests and privileges in order to keep its Returnee.
Still, the most extreme case was probably Saudi Arabia.
No more, no less.
‘One hundred trillion won.’
Apparently, that was how much they had simply handed to a Returnee.
Compared to that, what was South Korea doing?
‘Damn it.’
A Returnee had practically fallen into their laps, yet they could not even properly provide for him.
For now, they were desperately hiding Kim Si-hyeon’s existence, but that would not last much longer.
“…Min-ho, I’ll find a way somehow. Just hold on a little longer. We did save the Yuseong twins, after all. Yuseong will probably give us something.”
Yoo Han-seok cherished his blood relatives more than anything.
They had saved the twins, so he would not simply pretend nothing had happened.
He would surely give them something.
‘Should I ask him first?’
Forget the dignity of a Hunter.
Forget the dignity of the Association President.
He could simply beg.
At least enough to make up part of the Special Division’s budget.
That was when—
BZZZT.
A call came through on the Association President’s direct line.
“It’s here!”
The screen displayed the personal number of Yuseong’s Chairman.
Kim Jin-cheol answered with S-rank reaction speed.
“Hello. Haha, Chairman Yoo. It has been too long, far too long. By the way, you must have suffered terribly this time… Pardon? Wait, what did you… say?”
Kim Jin-cheol stared at Park Min-ho with wide eyes.
“Is that really… really true, sir?”
Enough to make him forget even his pride and position.
—You saved my children. That much is only natural.
Yoo Han-seok said he would make an enormous donation.
—Hunter Kim Si-hyeon is doing well, I assume?
And he would make it in Kim Si-hyeon’s name.