“Naito-san? I heard that Jap Hunter signed a contract through the Association, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct. He’s a B-rank, so he’s quite capable.”
“Of course, he’s not getting paid on the same level as an A-rank like you, hyung. You know those mediocre Awakened? About that much...”
Sung Moon-young’s voice trailed off as she suddenly started watching my expression. I must not look very happy right now.
And indeed, hearing that made me feel disappointed.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. But he’s still a B-rank, so he’s doing better than most. Don’t worry too much, hyung-nim.”
I let out a long sigh.
I had been working my tail off, risking my life in the field, yet the pay gap was still this wide. It was enough to make anyone feel bitter.
“Anyway, let’s focus on the task at hand. We have a job to do.”
I nodded, trying to push those thoughts aside.
“Right. Let’s go.”
We moved toward the designated area, our footsteps echoing in the quiet, desolate street. The air felt heavy, charged with the lingering presence of the Monsters we had been hunting.
“Wait,” I whispered, holding up a hand.
Sung Moon-young stopped instantly, her eyes scanning the surroundings.
“What is it?”
“I sense something. A faint vibration... it’s coming from underground.”
My heart began to race. This was the same sensation I’d felt before the last attack.
“Is it another Rock Spirit?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s big. Much bigger than the last one.”
I gripped my hammer tightly, my knuckles turning white.
“Everyone, get ready! Something’s coming!”
As I shouted the warning, the ground beneath us began to tremble violently.
RUMBLE!
The pavement cracked, and a massive, jagged hand burst through the surface, followed by a hulking, stone-covered monstrosity.
“CRASH!”
It roared, a sound like grinding boulders, and lunged toward us.
“Spread out!” I yelled, already moving to intercept it.
This wasn’t just a regular Monster. It was something else entirely.
“Spatial Movement!”
I vanished, reappearing directly above the creature, and brought my hammer down with all my might.
THUD!
The impact sent shockwaves through the area, but the creature barely flinched. It swiped at me with its massive arm, forcing me to teleport away again.
“It’s tougher than the others!” I shouted, landing a few meters away.
Sung Moon-young and the others were already firing, their bullets pinging harmlessly off the creature’s thick, rocky hide.
“We need to find its weak point!” she yelled back.
I focused, my eyes narrowing as I scanned the creature’s movements. There had to be a pattern. A soul pattern.
“There!”
I spotted a faint, glowing fissure in its chest.
“Everyone, aim for the chest! That’s where its core is!”
The team shifted their fire, concentrating their shots on the glowing crack.
The creature shrieked, a high-pitched, grating sound, and began to thrash wildly.
“It’s working! Keep it up!”
I didn’t hesitate. I charged forward, my hammer glowing with energy.
“Let’s finish this!”
"Naito-san? I heard that Jap Hunter hasn't even Awakened, but he's so famous that they signed him on a contract with treatment equivalent to an Awakened. Maybe that's why, but they say the land prices are slowly recovering, and the residents of Ganseok-dong are all satisfied."
"A Japanese guy who's non-Awakened is getting paid on the level of an Awakened?"
"Yes? Yes. I mean, it's obviously not on the level of an A-rank like you, hyung. You know those mediocre Awakened? Just about that much..."
Sung Moon-young’s voice trailed off as she suddenly started watching my expression. I must not look very happy right now.
And indeed, hearing that made me feel unpleasant.
Why? Because a Japanese person is making a lot of money? No, I don't care about my nationality or anyone else's. Then why on earth?
Only after deep contemplation could I realize why that remark had bothered me so much.
I didn't like that some guy, despite being a non-Awakened, was receiving treatment similar to an Awakened.
Well, I know that this is abnormal. How could I feel this much superiority and look down on others just because I’m an Awakened?
Until about half a year ago, I used to feel a sense of victimization about the fact that I was an Awakened. It’s embarrassing even to myself that I’ve suddenly developed this sense of elitism.
There is, however, a suspected reason for this sudden change.
I experienced a hallucination again today, and in that hallucination, I...
"Mr. Kim Geuk? Mr. Kim Geuk! Please come in!"
I looked to see who was shouting; it was an Association official.
I rose from my seat. The Academy students who had come to cheer for me stood up along with me, rooting for me.
"Good luck!"
"Hyung, don't forget what I advised you about getting the evaluation after you've rested enough if you don't get A-rank!"
I gave the middle finger to the cheeky Sung Moon-young and stepped into the evaluation hall.
Today is the day I receive my evaluation as an Awakened.
I didn't see any other Awakened in the hall trying to get evaluated besides me. That’s to be expected; there are few Awakened among Koreans, and even fewer who possess the ability to work as Hunters. And there are even fewer who have the ability to be Hunters and actually intend to do so.
Among the many people gathered here, I was the only Awakened; everyone else was there to evaluate me.
The people in uniforms must be Association staff, but there were many who didn't look like staff.
Those men in suits must be from local governments. They must have come to see an Awakened they might sign a contract with. The people who looked different in race at a glance were foreign scouts, and I saw a few who seemed to be from China or Japan.
Roughly two hundred people had gathered here just to see me. That fact was already making my heart swell.
"Then, we will begin. Get ready and..."
After that, I went through various evaluations.
100-meter dash, 5.8 seconds. Slightly faster than a cheetah. I was satisfied because it was 0.8 seconds faster than what I had measured at the Academy a while ago.
Long-distance running; I confirmed that I don't get tired as long as I run below a certain speed thanks to Super-regeneration, and moved on. During this, to prove my Super-regeneration, someone brought a scalpel and lightly sliced my forearm; when the bleeding stopped in just two seconds, not only the onlookers but I myself was surprised.
Lifting weights for Physical Enhancers...
Besides that, I went through various other tests, and it seemed I exceeded the standards by a significant margin in all of them. Just by looking at the reactions of the people I felt every time I took a test, I could tell in advance that the evaluation results wouldn't be bad.
"This is a perfect A-rank, to the level that it could be put in a textbook..."
Afterward, I demonstrated Spatial Movement. If they had asked for long-distance Spatial Movement, it might have been a bit difficult, but what the people gathered here wanted to see was the line-of-sight Spatial Movement that had been shown in the video. They asked:
"Can you really do it exactly like in the video?"
I had already become proficient at that. I picked up a stick and showed them as requested, and exclamations flowed from the mouths of the onlookers.
And finally, the shooting evaluation. I picked up the 22kg Hunter Rifle they had brought and fired as instructed.
No, actually, I didn't follow their instructions completely.
"Mr. Kim Geuk? Aimed Fire instead of—"
It’s an obvious fact, but there’s no need to listen to what non-Awakened dregs have to say. And if that non-Awakened person isn't from Incheon, you can ignore them entirely.
I fired at the 100-meter and 150-meter targets that were requested for Aimed Fire without aiming at them in succession. The Association official who was about to point something out just opened his eyes wide when he saw that all those shots hit the dead center.
It wasn't difficult to fill all the items of the shooting evaluation with perfect scores by hitting the 200-meter target and even moving targets without aiming in succession.
Thus, a gold-plated A++ mark was attached to my Hunter license. They said it meant I had satisfied all criteria above the required level, even among A-ranks. I felt like I was being treated like premium beef, but it didn't feel bad.
"Now, Mr. Kim Geuk, you can officially operate as an A-rank Hunter. You know that this A-rank isn't something anyone can get just because they're an Awakened, right?"
Surprisingly, the criteria for appointing an A-rank Hunter at the Association were the same as the criteria for giving badges on HuntWeb, so unlike the past where anyone who was an Awakened was considered an A-rank Hunter, they said that now one must satisfy clear criteria to be considered A-rank.
To be precise, one must be able to provide firepower beyond personal weapons or a significant level of support as an Awakened.
And since I can already carry and fire heavy weapons alone as a Physical Enhancer, I satisfied the 'firepower beyond personal weapons' requirement, and since I can also proficiently use Spatial Movement, which is clearly useful to anyone, I was also satisfying the 'significant level of support' requirement.
According to the Association official who followed, I was now in the top tier, where you count from the top among Awakened Hunters. Perhaps because I was such a capable guy, the Association's President even came out himself and asked for a handshake.
"As a being who carries such rights and responsibilities, Mr. Kim Geuk, you must now act with a spirit of patriotism and love for your people. Do you understand?"
As I tried to let the nonsense that sounded like something a Nazi party member would say slide, a loud national anthem rang out, making me feel unpleasant.
As I struggled to suppress the urge to leave this place with Spatial Movement, the appointment ceremony ended.
*******
That evening, I checked 78 text messages and twenty more emails than that. They were from places calling themselves agents or whatever, but it was too much to check one by one, so I didn't even touch them.
There's no need to mention how many missed calls had piled up. Filtering out the calls from acquaintances among them was a truly difficult task.
「Mr. Kim Geuk, are you coming to the Academy tomorrow? Are you really coming? Okay, then I'll order chicken in advance, so you must come.」
「I saw the news. Mr. Kim Geuk, congratulations! You know, as soon as I entered the plenary session hall, the Chairman looked at me and encouraged me to try and seduce you, Mr. Kim Geuk!」
Just as Ms. Park Mi-hyeong said, I appeared on the 9:00 news yesterday and today. Content about the new shooting record for Awakened, interviews from foreign brokers calling me a top-tier A-rank, and all that stuff that stimulates Hyper-patriotic Media.
At this point, even a fool could tell. My life, which had been unnecessarily eventful, had succeeded as of today.
Ⓐ BabyBerserker : Baby Mushroom got her A-rank certification today, yang!
Some mean monster is trying to bully my friends, yang! Baby Mushroom was scared, but I gathered my courage and Awakened into a Magical Girl Hellbenter, and then—yup! Yup!—I defeated it, yang! So the Association ajussis came and said Baby Mushroom is cute and righteous, and they made me an A-rank Hunter, what do you think, yang?
Below is the certification that Baby Mushroom got an A++ rating, yang! I covered up the photo of Baby Mushroom that everyone would want to see because I was afraid the Oppayas would all fall for me~
Anonymous : I looked at the Association's homepage and saw that there was only one person who got A-rank today, so I looked at the photo of this hyung-nim that was uploaded, and I'm so scared right now...
Ⓐ StoneHeadYouth : I'm screwed. I'm A-rank too, but looking at the video, I don't think I can stop this guy with my power if he keeps doing this. Where is Jun-chi hyung-nim?
After spreading this happy news to my comrades on HuntWeb, I sat on my bed and fell into thought for a while.
This morning, I had a hallucination again.
It was a fairly long hallucination. It was a continuation of the hallucination I saw last time, and I saw what happens when I use Spatial Movement to leave the scene.
Internet articles that portrayed me as a coward...
Because of that, in the hallucination, I suffered from paranoia that every passerby recognized me and despised me, and I had to go to a psychiatrist while taking out loans and using the funds provided by Ms. Park Mi-hyeong.
Even to me, the me in the hallucination was enough to become a mentally unstable madman.
Due to a series of events, the me in the hallucination hated non-Awakened, and hated not only the Korean government but even the citizens.
Certainly, he was a person who wouldn't be strange even if he detonated a nuclear bomb in Seoul in the future.
But isn't this a situation where I achieved the exact opposite result of the hallucination I saw earlier? Is there any reason for me to be like that now?
There isn't. What reason on earth would an A-rank Hunter who will earn astronomical amounts of money from now on and live boastfully have to commit such a terrible terrorist act?
If I take actions different from the hallucination like that, will I meet a different ending than the me in the dream? It seems so.
If so, can I now stop having that dream of his, which I guessed was my future?
*******
To tell you the result first, no.
I had a dream again tonight.
Unlike the dream I had last time, this dream didn't feature acquaintances in miserable states like Mr. Im Hyung-taek or Jung Jin-young. The expressionless Director didn't appear either.
However, the end of the dream was the same. This dream also ended with that damn nuclear explosion, that damn mushroom cloud.
I woke up gasping for breath again and wondered.
When on earth will this dream end?
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