Chapter 14: Episode 14 – Hunter, Part I
Chapter 5. Hunter, Part I
Translator: Khan
Editor: RED
1.
It was about five kilometers from the large mart to the Ojung-dong military base. Therefore, Kim Tae-hoon aimed to reach the military base of Ojung-dong by least four AM after leaving the large mart for the first time. In addition, he was planning to mobilize all means and methods to achieve the goal.
He knew better than anyone else the importance of carrying out the goal and planning thoroughly in a war situation. But now he was in the police station even though the time was well past three AM. He even had the time to drink coffee, using a coffee dripper in the boiled water from a portable pot.
“Big brother, is it okay to take time to relax?”
At that sight of Kim, Bang Hyun-wook was suspicious.
Kim, who enjoyed his coffee, as usual, said to Bang in a low voice, “It’s too dangerous for us to move with our minds and bodies clouded with fear, and the first thing we need to do is ease our bodies and minds. Hmm… This coffee has a good taste. I’ve never drunk this product before.”
Of course, Kim was never able to take a break. However, right now, the three of them were not in normal physical condition. A huge monster that could not be explained by anything had scattered fear in Bucheon City, and the fear was now rooted in every corner of the minds and bodies of his party.
Moving in a situation where it was not extracted properly was like moving in poison.
“Right now, the situation is different from when the dragon appeared. The condition has changed.”
More importantly, this fact did not apply only to Kim and his party. The unidentified dragon had scattered the fear of his presence in Bucheon like a shower. All the things that had settled in Bucheon were exposed to the fear.
After the monsters’ attack, which had started around four PM on December 31, the situation came to a lull temporarily and now was out of control.
Like a ship, their boat, which had been drifting quietly, was swept over by huge waves.
Ahn Sun-mi added her opinion to Kim Tae-hoon’s. “The shriek… Most people must have passed out or died because of the fear. Because of the temperature right now… falling into a state of unconsciousness when they can’t expect the right help around is virtually the same as freezing to death.”
Of the three, the dragon fear hit her the hardest, and at the same time, her words as a doctor were certainly convincing.
Kim Tae-hoon supplemented her opinion by pouring coffee into her empty cup.
“I wished all of them would be fine, but it’s a bigger problem that all of them will not be.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s more likely that there will be something going crazy then fainting.”
Dragon fear was strong. But not everything had fainted to the dragon fear.
Just now, Bang Hyun-wook and Kim Tae-hoon were stunned but did not faint. There must be Awakeners among the survivors, and a high-rank Energy user among them would surely survive.
“It would be people or monsters.”
“The monsters aren’t gone yet.”
All the monsters have not disappeared from Bucheon.
As evidence, there were few bodies of the monsters, which made Bucheon City a ghost city.
So where did the monsters go? Did they leave Bucheon, and go to Seoul or Incheon?
It was much more plausible that monsters who had already attacked humans and filled their stomach had hidden in the forests of buildings, taking shelter to avoid the cold winter weather late at night.
Was it not a shelter that humans loved to use, in places like a subway station?
“And if I were a monster, I would rather come out and fill my stomach than stay still at this moment.”
In such a situation, a monster who felt a sense of crisis due to the emergence of an absolute upper predator would try to hide in a more secret place, deep, after filling its stomach before it went crazy or felt hungry again.
In other words, for the time being, monsters would come out and work.
“The ones who are moving now are strong enough to carry out their purpose, not fainting in the face of the fear.”
At least the monsters that were active at this moment were stronger than Goblins or Orcs.
He had to keep the Black Orc in mind, at the very least.
Kim Tae-hoon was waiting for them to quickly fill their stomachs and then hide deep again.
In front of such an explanation, Bang Hyun-wook and Ahn Sun-mi no longer asked additional questions.
Kim Tae-hoon’s boiled coffee thawed their cold bodies in the cold weather, and their frightened brains were thawed by chocolate.
In the silence, Kim Tae-hoon looked at his right hand carefully. His right hand gradually began to turn black by the ability Black Skin acquired after killing the Black Orc!
Currently, Kim Tae-hoon’s force rank could only turn his skin black up to his wrist. The Black Skin gave him the feeling of wearing an iron glove. It was actually pretty tough. It was not cut by a crude knife, and even hitting the wall as hard as possible, it only stung a little.
‘If I kill a monster, I get paid!’ This was clear evidence.
‘Evidence that I can get something if I kill a monster!
‘I wonder what it would be like to kill that monster…’
The evidence reminded Kim Tae-hoon of how he could kill the monster in his mind, while weighed down by the fear of the dragon.
Kim Tae-hoon sipped coffee with a slight smile in his imagination.
2.
There was a stretch of darkened road, along a row of one-story storehouses, full of stopped cars that had lost their owners, and frozen corpses.
Two Goblins were eating there. Clinging to a frozen corpse, they were tearing and swallowing the flesh of the body, using their dog-like teeth.
It was a pretty nasty thing to see.
Goblins had the power and sharp teeth to bite the flesh out of a person, but that was based on the flesh of a living human being.
Bodies of frozen people were different, and there was no shortage of cold. It didn’t even taste good, and their cries complained about it. It was hard to swallow the flesh that had been ripped off, because there was nothing good about chewing, swallowing, or filling their stomach. It was a meal to live.
The Goblins, who had been struggling to survive, suddenly grabbed their necks. “Keck, keck!” The Goblins who gasped began to struggle to live.
“Hoooo!” At that moment, a young man appeared, took a short breath and hit the head of the Goblin with a baseball bat.
Pak! A single eyeball shot out of the Goblin’s head halfway after the attack. The man used his momentum and hit the other one’s head vertically.
Keck! Its open mouth was slammed closed. It bit off its own tongue, and its teeth were shattered. The Goblin dropped to the ground and spewed out blood like a fountain from its mouth.
Bang Hyun-wook made a circle with his hand.
Ahn Sun-mi appeared. She had a sharpened knife, turned the body of the fallen Goblin over to face the sky, and put a sharp knife into the pit of the Goblin’s stomach. After that, she put her hand into the deep incision she had made. When she drew her arm out, gory to the elbow, a red jewel was caught at the end of her finger.
She did the same thing with the other Goblin, cutting into the softest part of the Goblin’s body in its gut, and plunged her arm in up to the heart, taking a jewel out.
It was then that Kim Tae-hoon appeared. His right hand was holding a plastic lamp bottle, and he sprinkled kerosene on the Goblin body.
“I’m still wondering why you’re spraying kerosene?”
“The only one who’ll eat this body is a monster. I hope they eat them and get sick,” Kim Tae-hoon explained briefly.
In the meantime, Ahn Sun-mi wiped the blood off her hand with a towel and held out her palm to Kim Tae-hoon.
“Here.”
Kim Tae-hoon handed one of them to Bang Hyun-wook after he picked them up.
“Eat it.”
The two swallowed the monster stones, still warm with the blood of Goblins, without a word. They swallowed against the strong taste of blood that made them want to vomit.
Soon Bang Hyun-wook stroked the area near the pit of the stomach and said, “I’m nearly full now.”
When Kim Tae-hoon started moving, the scenery that was unfolded in front of his party was the same as he had predicted.
The monsters were eating the frozen bodies as if they were possessed by something.
Kim Tae-hoon did not pass up such monsters. He hunted. And he put Bang Hyun-wook and Ahn Sun-mi on the front line.
“Bang Hyun-wook, watch out for the bat when you swing it. Never let go of the tension at the moment of attack.”
“Yes.”
“And Ahn Sun-mi.”
“Order me.”
“Stab these two dead eyes with that knife.”
At the words of Kim Tae-hoon, Ahn Sun-mi stabbed the red eye of the Goblin with the end-point of the knife without hesitation.
With the eerie sound of the eye being destroyed, red liquid flowed out of Goblin’s eyes. It was like the tears of unjustly dead souls.
Bang Hyun-wook watched the scene and took a short breath. It was a sight that he could not easily get used to. That was why Kim Tae-hoon ordered it.
‘I am glad they got used to it so quickly. Ahn Sun-mi is a doctor, so she is adapting quickly.’
Unlike Kim Tae-hoon, Bang Hyun-wook and Ahn Sun-mi were ordinary people until less than a day ago.
‘The public basically has a rejection of killing, and many people are unable to arrange chicken that has already been slaughtered, and they cannot even defeather a chicken.’
They could not boldly stab a monster who was seeking their life. The momentary hesitation that happened then eventually cost them their lives.
Kim Tae-hoon wanted to give Bang Hyun-wook and Ahn Sun-mi the experience of slaughter. It was an experience that human beings would normally never need to build up, but now they could not help it. From now on, they would have to kill something to live.
“And that’s your destination, isn’t it?”
In addition, there were not only monsters to worry about.
“We’ll take a nap for a while and move on.”
“What? We’ll arrive at the military base if we move just a little bit more.”
“No guard welcomes anyone who appears at night. If I had command of that army right now, and if any men approached at night, I would order them to fire if there was no answer two seconds after the warning.”
There was no guarantee that the soldiers of the military base, their destination, would welcome survivors. If the military base was operating normally now, it would set up on guard. The guards would be extremely nervous, because the price of a mistake was no longer running around the training ground with a military bag, nor canceled out by a day’s vacation or long vacation.
“Take a break.”
Above all, Kim Tae-hoon and his party were quite tired, and they needed a break. It took some energy to run away or fight.
“When the sun starts to rise, we approach the military base.”
Kim Tae-hoon found a place to take a nap for a while, but there was no suitable building to sleep. In the end, Kim Tae-hoon made an SUV vehicle into a lodging shelter. After opening the locked door with Telekinesis, the three entered the vehicle.
The car was cold, but it was warmer than any other place nearby, as they had been hunting a long distance through the bitterly cold wind. It was the first break that they had taken, but the rest was not long.
Blam! By the time dawn was barely up, the gunfire that rang out instead of a rooster’s cry woke them with the sun.