After the incident with the bag of Mana Stones.
“Is your Awakening Ability super strength?”
The female Mage named Yu-bin followed close behind me, constantly trying to strike up a conversation.
“…….”
I silently nodded.
“You’re not much of a talker, are you?”
“…….”
“How long have you been a Hunter?”
The female Mage kept chattering away.
All I could do was nod in silence.
‘I can’t answer any of that…….’
Was my Awakening Ability super strength?
Of course not.
I hadn’t Awakened even in that last Anomalous Gate.
But I couldn’t exactly tell her outright that I wasn’t Awakened.
And I definitely couldn’t answer a question about when I had become a Hunter.
Just as I found myself being forced into silence, Choi Yoon-seo called out to the Mage.
“Yu-bin! Come over here for a second!”
“Ah, what is it now?”
“It’s about time we ate.”
“Okay. Your name was Si-hyeon, right? Come on.”
I was about to follow the Mage when someone stepped in my way.
“The Porter can stand guard for us, right? It’d be a problem if the Orcs suddenly came charging in.”
It was the Party Leader, Choi Yoon-seo.
“Why do we need someone on guard? We already set up alarm magic and everything.”
The female Mage, Yu-bin, spoke up again, but I was already heading toward the cave entrance.
“Fine.”
‘They really are a good person.’
It seemed Choi Yoon-seo had noticed that I was uncomfortable with the Mage’s questions and had deliberately sent me somewhere else.
Grateful for Choi Yoon-seo’s consideration, I went to the cave entrance and sat down.
I had already checked the terrain, and we had finished setting up some simple traps while skinning the Orcs.
The cave entrance was definitely secure.
“…….”
Orcs, and the Hunters who hunted them.
I had seen and experienced quite a lot today.
‘Magic, huh.’
This world truly was different from the one I had lived in.
I never imagined I would see someone conjure flames from their bare hands and make them explode.
This was why real-world experience mattered.
The difference between experiencing something firsthand and merely studying it was like the difference between heaven and earth.
And there was one other thing I had learned.
‘Those Orcs… were weak.’
Despite their appearance, Orcs were surprisingly weak.
They were sluggish.
On top of that, they were big.
They carried weapons, but it felt as though they had no idea how to use them properly.
They charged fearlessly, but that only made what they were aiming for painfully obvious.
My candid impression was—
‘They were basically just strong Zombies.’
The Dark Elves had been different.
They were certainly troublesome, with traits that demanded caution.
Much like Special Variant Zombies.
Compared to them, the Orcs were no more than enhanced Zombies.
And there was one more thing.
“…….”
Hunters.
They were undeniably Superhumans in this world.
They possessed absurd physical strength, and their stamina was monstrous as well.
But that was as far as it went.
I closed my eyes.
If Choi Yoon-seo had been thrown into my world, how long would they have lasted?
By the time I quietly opened my eyes again, I had my answer.
“Two months.”
Surviving two months would have been impressive.
That was when—
TWITCH.
A sensation like needles pricking my skin.
“Aaaaaah!”
The female Mage’s scream echoed from deeper inside the cave.
* * *
While Kim Si-hyeon was standing guard.
“That damn Porter pisses me off.”
Choi Yoon-seo voiced their displeasure.
“Why?”
“I don’t like the way he looks at me. He’s just some D-rank Hunter, but he acts like he’s hot shit.”
“What’s wrong with him? He seems dependable. More importantly, I can’t believe he carried a Subspace Backpack packed with that many Mana Stones like it was nothing.”
Yu-bin spoke in response to Choi Yoon-seo.
“Isn’t that amazing?”
“Amazing, my ass. He’s still just a Porter.”
“But with Contribution-Based Distribution, he won’t get anything. Contribution only counts toward monster ‘hunting,’ not mining. I think we should at least give him something.”
“Hey. Kim Yu-bin.”
Choi Yoon-seo’s expression darkened at Yu-bin’s words.
“Okay, okay. Enough. Either way, this is a jackpot, isn’t it? A Mana Stone Mine this big… I’d believe you if you told me this was an A-rank Gate.”
Sensing the mood turning sour, another party member hurriedly changed the subject.
“Yoon-seo, how the hell did you find a place like this?”
“Whew… I told you. I used to be with the Baeksu Guild.”
“Then did Baeksu hand over the Gate Clearing Rights to you?”
“Yeah. And not just anyone—”
BOOOOM!
A thunderous explosion rang out as one side of the mine collapsed.
“What the…?!”
The startled party members hurriedly jumped to their feet.
CRUNCH!
An Orc charged in, seized one of the party members by the head, and crushed it in its grip.
GRRK, GRRRAAAK.
Orcs.
And not just one or two of them.
A horde numbering in the dozens.
“W-What the hell?!”
“Prepare for battle!”
The party members frantically tried to ready themselves for combat.
But they had already removed all their equipment.
Worse—
“Our weapons…!”
When they had recoiled from the Orc’s sudden attack, they had left their weapons on the side now occupied by the Orcs.
“Damn it, damn it! Why the hell are Orcs suddenly coming from there?!”
The Orcs had emerged not from the entrance, but from the collapsed section deeper inside the cave.
“They’re coming!”
The Orcs began their assault.
The party members hurriedly drew their backup weapons and fought back.
“Fire… ball!”
Kim Yu-bin’s spell exploded, and just as Choi Yoon-seo drew a dagger and tried to rush forward—
BANG!
An Orc’s fist burst through the smoke and smashed into Choi Yoon-seo’s chest, crushing their ribs and sending them flying.
“Guh!”
“N-No way…!”
This was a C-rank Gate.
The monsters that appeared here were Orcs.
But not all Orcs were the same.
“Th-That’s….”
The Orcs found in a C-rank Gate were usually no more than Orc Slaves or Orc Workers.
But the one standing before them now was—
GRRRK.
An Orc Warrior.
A monster that should only appear in at least a B-rank Gate.
There was only one possible explanation for a situation like this.
“An Anomalous Gate!”
A phenomenon where a Gate suddenly underwent a drastic change.
GRRK!
The instant the Orc Warrior raised its hand, the Orcs charged as one.
“Save me!”
The party was only C-rank.
Choi Yoon-seo was at least close to B-rank, but that was all.
If they had their weapons, they might somehow have been able to hold out.
But right now, they did not even have proper weapons in their hands.
Against dozens of Orcs, there was only one obvious outcome awaiting the party.
“Aaaaaagh!”
The word annihilation flashed through the party members’ minds.
WHOOOSH!
A sword came flying from somewhere and buried itself in the head of an Orc attacking one of the party members.
Grr…k.
The snorting Orc toppled over and died on the spot.
TATAT, TATATAT.
Accompanied by the rapid pounding of footsteps against the ground, a black shadow shot past the party.
SHING.
A tiny flash of light flickered.
It came from a dagger reflecting the brilliant glow emitted by the Mana Stones.
STAB!
The dagger buried itself in another Orc’s skull.
But the incoming shadow did not stop there.
He immediately drove the dagger into its neck and severed the Orc’s head from its body.
He was—
“You… Porter!”
Kim Si-hyeon.
The man they had called a Porter.
* * *
Human lives were precious.
And yet it had not taken long for most of the world’s precious population of nearly eight billion people to turn into Zombies.
A few years at most.
Despite that, I had managed to survive alone for thirty years because there was something even more precious than other people.
There was only one thing that took precedence over everything else.
‘My survival.’
GRRRK!
Even though the world had changed, my absolute rule had not.
A world without Zombies.
A world where there were people I could talk to.
A world filled with cool water, warm food, and comfortable beds.
The Hunters of the Special Division.
I thought all of those things were precious, things worth protecting.
Even so, what mattered most was—
‘Me.’
It was always me.
I had to survive.
I had to survive until the very end and kill the thing called Plague.
And by doing so, take my revenge.
GRRK!
So the reason I was fighting these Orcs right now was simple.
SPLAAASH!
Because these things—
“H-How…?!”
—didn’t feel like a threat to my survival.
“H-Holy shit. He killed ten Orcs in an instant…!”
“I thought he was a Porter!”
“Wasn’t he supposed to be D-rank?!”
There were still more than ten Orcs in front of me.
Off to one side stood an Orc that looked far from ordinary.
And yet—
CLENCH.
My palms were not sweating.
The hands that had always been drenched in sweat whenever my survival was at stake were completely dry.
“What the hell are you…?!”
Choi Yoon-seo stared at me, their face twisted in shock.
‘I actually knew.’
I knew that Choi Yoon-seo wasn’t a good person.
I had also noticed that they had started becoming wary of me the moment the Mage showed interest in me.
If this had been my old world—
If I were still the man I had been until recently—
‘I would’ve killed them.’
The slightest hostility toward me would have been enough for me to separate their head from their body.
At the very least, I would have driven a blade straight through their brain and left it lodged there.
But I hadn’t.
Was it because the world had changed?
No.
“Stay back.”
It was because they weren’t a threat.
I was different from them.
I wasn’t talking about how I had no Mana or how I wasn’t a Hunter.
‘We’re on different levels.’
I hadn’t simply become younger.
Nor had my body merely grown tougher, or my strength merely increased.
‘Death.’
Death—the being that had sent me to this world—had given me a special power.
Of that, I was now certain.
And I was certain that this power was something no Hunter in this world possessed.
GRRK!
The Orcs charged.
Perhaps because of that unusual Orc, which appeared to be a Special Variant, several of the Orcs charged at me while others simultaneously rushed toward the party members.
Clever.
‘They’re trying to distract me.’
But the Orcs were mistaken.
The party members were not so precious to me that I would throw away my own life to protect them.
Of course—
STAB! SLASH!
I had enough strength to protect every one of them anyway.
The Orcs were weak enough that even the old me could have dealt with them.
‘Maybe I should try using it.’
The most important thing for survival was ‘knowledge.’
Nothing was more important than knowledge and information.
And among all information, the most important was knowledge about myself.
WHOOOSH.
I released the Death I had been concealing.