“During the test that day, the sky split apart? You call this a report?”
“That is correct.”
Park Min-ho stood straight and answered Kim Jin-cheol without hesitation. Kim Jin-cheol slapped the report down on the desk.
“Hey, you bastard! Didn’t I tell you not to write reports like this? I told you to write a report, so why the fuck did you turn in some damn novel? And why did you print it out when you could’ve just emailed it?”
The report in front of Kim Jin-cheol was packed with writing so dense that it looked no different from a page filled edge to edge with tiny letters.
“Because it is classified….”
The report concerned none other than the Slaughterer.
Since his very existence was considered top secret, it was indeed classified.
“Min-ho, do you have any idea how good our security software is…? Why are you doing this kind of crap, huh?”
“It is vulnerable to hacking.”
“Hey! This is vulnerable to theft!”
“Wouldn’t it be fine as long as you keep it with you, Association President?”
Kim Jin-cheol closed his mouth at the strangely persuasive argument.
“At this rate, you’ll tell me to mix red pepper powder into soju whenever I catch a cold.”
“Do you not do that, Association President? It works immediately.”
Kim Jin-cheol stared blankly at Park Min-ho before letting out a deep sigh.
He could only reflect on the fact that he had somehow forgotten that everyone in the Special Division had a screw loose somewhere.
“Haa, forget it. So….”
Kim Jin-cheol asked Park Min-ho with a serious expression.
“What the hell happened that day?”
That day.
Operation: First Day at Work, the day the Slaughterer first reported for work at the Special Division.
And on that day.
“Every mana circuit within a five-kilometer radius of the Association headquarters burned out. The Presidential Office was thrown into an uproar over the anomaly, and apparently even the World Association detected something unusual.”
The Seoul area had been plunged into darkness.
An emergency alert had been issued in a hurry, and civilians had even been evacuated.
The cause of that entire commotion was the ‘Slaughterer.’
“To put it briefly, the Slaughterer’s test results indicate that he is unable to use mana.”
“…You’re telling me that makes sense?”
Kim Jin-cheol had already received the report.
But he still could not understand it.
“He’s an estimated SS-rank Hunter. That wasn’t just some measurement device error. You saw it yourselves inside the Ultra-Anomalous Gate.”
The sight of Kim Si-hyeon slaughtering the Monsters.
That was precisely why he had earned the epithet Slaughterer.
“It is true. However, it is also true that he cannot use mana.”
The important part here was—
“‘Cannot use it,’ huh.”
It was not that he had no mana. He simply could not use it.
“The moment an Undead Monster appeared in the Training Ground because of a sudden system error, the Slaughterer swung his Halberd.”
“And?”
“Darkness fell.”
“Hey!”
“I mean that literally.”
Park Min-ho answered without yielding even an inch.
“That single swing severed every mana circuit in the entire Seoul area. And….”
Park Min-ho flipped through the report he had submitted.
On the next page, instead of another mass of black writing, there was a photograph.
“The sky split apart.”
The Association building itself was intact.
The only things destroyed were the Zombie’s head and the surrounding mana circuits.
But the sky captured in the photograph showed the unusually numerous clouds from that day split cleanly apart along a straight line.
It was a feat even S-rank Hunters could not accomplish.
“The Slaughterer’s Hunter rank is unquestionably SS-rank. And that is the minimum estimate.”
“…….”
“At the same time, he does not know how to use his own power.”
“So?”
“I believe bringing him into the Special Division was the correct decision. However….”
Park Min-ho spoke as though he were staking everything on a gamble.
“I think it would be best to keep him tied to the Special Division and severely restrict his activities outside it.”
One thousand push-ups.
Once I finished the thousand, I did another five hundred handstand push-ups.
Next came squats. In a world where iron weights were difficult to obtain, I used to tape together containers filled with stagnant water and strap them to my back.
Last came the weapon check.
I only moved once I was prepared enough to face a hundred Zombies without a problem.
“…….”
It was a routine I no longer needed to follow, but habits were difficult to discard, so I still repeated it every day.
If anything had changed—
‘I’m not sweating.’
Back in a world where running outside was impossible, I had to build my endurance through strength training alone.
I increased the weight little by little every day, so by the time I finished the routine, I would always be drenched in sweat.
But that was no longer the case.
‘Because my body is young again?’
That was all I had thought at first.
But I had continued increasing the weight every day.
“…This is definitely abnormal.”
Now, even after doing more than a hundred squats with 200 kilograms, I did not break a sweat.
During that previous ‘test.’
CLENCH.
The sensation of gripping a Halberd again after so long.
And the slash I unleashed at a Zombie I never thought I would see again.
The sensation I felt at that moment was unlike anything I had experienced even once in the past thirty years.
“Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Hunter Kim Si-hyeon, this is Choi Ji-woong! May I come in?”
“……? Come in.”
At my answer, the door opened and Choi Ji-woong carefully stepped inside.
He had deliberately made his footsteps loud from a distance as he approached.
“…Is that some kind of trend?”
“Pardon?”
“Making the doorbell sound with your mouth.”
“Ah, no. There is no doorbell in the Safe House, is there? So I tried making the sound myself.”
The loose grin on his face made it obvious that he was intoxicated.
There was no smell of alcohol, so he seemed to be under the influence of that medicine he swallowed every day.
No matter how sick someone was, taking medicine like that was bound to cause side effects.
It looked as though he had increased the dosage again.
“I would not want you to mistake me for a Monster and smash my head in, Hunter Kim Si-hyeon! Hahaha!”
Choi Ji-woong looked especially bad today.
“Th-the…….”
Then he suddenly began trembling.
“Whenever I think about the way you swung that Halberd… Hahaha! I am a cockroach! No, I am a mosquito!”
If he was still like this the next time we met, I should tell him to stop taking that medicine.
He should find some other way to stay healthy.
The fact that his eyes were going crossed made the side effects look serious.
“It is almost time for you to report to work, so I came to escort you!”
Could he even drive in that condition?
“Ah.”
As I put on my clothes, I turned to Choi Ji-woong and asked,
“There’s something I want to ask you.”
“Y-you want to ask me? Ah… at last… the time has come.”
Choi Ji-woong suddenly reached inside his clothes and pulled out a sheet of paper.
“Please deliver this will to the Association! Then where should I be buried? I will dig the grave myself!”
“……?”
I still could not get a feel for the humor of this world.
Perhaps the problem was me, after going so long without interacting with other people.
Maybe someday I would be able to understand Choi Ji-woong’s jokes, but not yet.
“Save the jokes for later.”
“…Jokes… Phew, haaah. Thank goodness…….”
“It’s about the test that day. How were the results?”
The Association was treating me well because they believed I was a powerful Hunter capable of using mana.
If they found out that I could not use mana….
“Pardon? They were excellent! I am telling you, the clouds split apart that day!”
I had no idea what he meant by the clouds splitting apart.
Still, it seemed I had somehow gotten through the test without a problem.
‘I should ask about mana now.’
Internet access worked perfectly well in this world, but it had been so long since I had used it that I was no longer familiar with how to search for things.
I carefully asked him about mana.
“…Are there cases where a Hunter cannot use mana?”
“No, that is impossible. A person only becomes a Hunter after awakening mana.”
“…….”
I see.
“How… do you awaken mana?”
It was fine even if I did not have mana right now.
Choi Ji-woong had said my test results were excellent.
I just had to become a Hunter before they noticed.
“I do not know!”
“……?”
“There is no real pattern to becoming a Hunter. People even say that Hunters are chosen.”
Chosen.
Something came to mind.
—I am the owner of the word death.
In the darkness I had encountered after everything burned down to ash, the being called Death had spoken to me.
—The death you reap belongs to you.
Come to think of it, ever since Death threw me into this world, I had neither seen nor heard from it.
But asking these people whether they knew about ‘Death’ would obviously make me look strange.
Even I, whose sense of normal life had been destroyed after living in a den of Zombies, knew that much.
‘Plague.’
I needed to do something if I wanted revenge on that bastard who had taken my world from me.
But I had no idea where to begin.
“There are various superstitions, though.”
“Superstitions?”
I listened closely to Choi Ji-woong.
“There are rumors that are treated like superstitions about how to become a Hunter. Things like offering a sheep’s head as a sacrifice and performing a ritual.”
A sheep’s head. I should remember that.
Sheep would probably be easy to obtain in this world.
“Or going to a specific area on the nineteenth night of every month.”
“A specific area?”
“A place where a Gate appeared before, or where a disaster occurred.”
I see.
I should remember that too.
“Or that you can become a Hunter in a hidden space beneath the Association.”
“……!”
That sounded quite promising.
It might even be the easiest method.
“Of course, they are all nonsense rumors.”
“…Nonsense rumors.”
“The Association has verified all of them. Hunters are strategic national assets, after all. If a country could mass-produce them, it would obtain an absurd level of national power.”
Still, there was always a chance.
A sheep’s head, the nineteenth night, and beneath the Association.
“Besides those nonsense rumors, there are also two hypotheses with at least some credibility. They are not certain, but there have been quite a few cases.”
“What are they?”
“Entering a Gate.”
By then, we had arrived at the Association building.
“Feeling the fear of death.”
The car came to a stop.
“Well, if an ordinary person enters a Gate and faces a Monster, they will feel the fear of death. So this is actually the most likely condition for awakening, but who would do it? If they fail to awaken, they will die. Even if they do awaken, they have never fought a Monster before, so they will probably die immediately anyway.”
That made sense.
Going in to awaken and dying would make the entire attempt pointless.
“…The fear of death. A Gate.”
“Rather than the fear of death itself, perhaps it is the manifestation of an extreme survival instinct?”
Come to think of it.
‘When I faced a Zombie again after so long, my emotions churned.’
I remembered something boiling up inside me at the thought that those detestable creatures were threatening even my new world.
Then, for the sake of my new world, my new life, my new job, and my new people, I had to gain mana and become a Hunter.
“W-welcome! Hunter Kim Si-hyeon!”
“…….”
The moment I opened the door to the Korea Hunter Association’s Special Division, greetings came from all around.
These people welcomed me so warmly.
I spoke to them.
“I want to enter a Gate.”