Chapter 192

Time flowed in broken cuts.

It felt like I was watching footage of the past, and then at some point my consciousness would vanish and I’d be fully synchronized with the situation. I didn’t really feel like I couldn’t act by my own will. Even if it was a “previous” run, it wasn’t like my personality had been swapped out.

The dull, boring moments sped by.

What was occasionally interesting was that Kwon Taehan acted like he was trying to convince me.

When I suggested what I thought was the best method, Taehan would stay quiet for a while, then say he’d go look for a better way and slip out. Then he’d come back and insist we should go with some other route that was obviously more inefficient.

The logic was the same. He wanted to minimize the number of victims.

Of course, Taehan’s method really was a way to almost eliminate victims. Because he was volunteering to grind his own body down instead.

I just left him alone. If that’s what he wanted to do, why stop him? It’d be a problem if he died, but by that point I was pretty sure he wouldn’t, so I wasn’t exactly worried.

If anything, the worrying was coming from his side. Stuff like, “Go to the ward after you come out of a dungeon.”

I listened to the requests that were worth listening to and ignored the ones that were too disgusting.

And as he’d said, I didn’t throw away the beast I picked up from the cave. At first I’d planned to dump it on the Association, but things had gotten so sour between us that it felt like a waste to hand it over at all.

After he nagged that I couldn’t keep it in the freezer, I got a room, set the temperature low, and raised it there.

So... did I get attached?

Time passed by quite a bit, and the scene changed again.

The location was obvious. Inside a dungeon. The context, too, was easy to pick up.

‘Those Association bastards.’

It was the timing when the Association, which had cozied up right alongside the government, started really showing its ass. When illegal guilds were running rampant, the Association half-assedly protected them and pocketed money under the table.

It would’ve been nice if all they did was skim money, but the heads in the Association were all morally deranged in their own colorful ways, so there were plenty of victims too. There were hunters who lived as disposable tools for the Association and died that way, and hunters who got jerked around by the Association’s media play and ended up emigrating altogether.

And that wasn’t the only issue. There was a fuckton else wrong with them too. If there hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have been worth targeting in the first place. Sure, some of those problems did briefly get raised in the media, but since they’d already joined hands with the government, the news brushed it off after a couple lines and washed their hands of it.

Of course, that didn’t mean public opinion was entirely on the Association’s side. Most people already knew that anything with “Association” slapped on it tended to be rotten. The problem was just that people lost interest too fast.

Anyway, Taehan—full of energy as always—insisted the Association needed to be removed entirely. I had zero intention of stopping him, so I just quietly nodded.

And that day, the Association was kind enough to set the stage for us.

[News | Another slip-up from an S-rank hunter... “One wrong move and the damage could be catastrophic”]

[News | S-rank hunter Kwon Taehan, shield or blade?]

Once Taehan openly took shots at the Association, they kicked off a full-scale campaign to drag his reputation through the mud. They nitpicked the smallest things to summon him day and night, pleaded that they needed to discipline him, and twisted public opinion with articles and comments.

The clincher was when they used that as a pretext to toss him into an insanely dangerous S-rank dungeon. Even if you were S-rank, it was the kind of dungeon that was too risky to solo, so you absolutely needed backup personnel—but the Association said they’d provide support, then started making bullshit excuses and delaying the backup the second he went in.

The intent was so blatantly obvious it was almost funny.

Of course, Taehan wasn’t going to die in that dungeon. I’d never planned to let that happen.

So I told his “legal persuasion” plan to go fuck itself and chucked the Association’s top brass straight into the dungeon.

They might’ve held power, but stat-wise, every last one of them was trash. As long as I breached security, subduing them and teleporting them inside was easy. Sure, there was a bit of risk in not breaching that security “legally,” but that level of disciplinary action was worth eating.

After tossing the Association’s heads into the dungeon, I seeded a few rumors that a sudden dungeon break had occurred and they’d gone missing inside.

I’d already arranged backup with another guild instead of the Association. Hunters who drank the Association’s water weren’t the kind of people you could really trust, even if they were decent as individuals.

And then... I entered the dungeon too.

By the time I stepped in, the situation was more than half over.

“Seo Jehyun!”

As soon as I came in, Taehan shouted my name. I waved at him, and he stomped over and grabbed my shoulder.

“...What did you do?”

“Work.”

“Not like this...! We were going to do it another way. The plan was to persuade the Association hunters and—”

“Taehan. You trying to die here?”

“What?”

“You seem fucking desperate to.”

I brushed his hand off and pulled up the corner of my mouth.

“Because you’ve survived by pure luck up to now, it feels like you’ve got more than one life, huh? You come into a dungeon like this alone and worry about the Association guys’ lives...”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m not persuading anyone. You want to shave down your own life? I’m not stopping you. If you overdo it and get the dungeon boss half-dead, other hunters will come in to land the finishing blow. If you scrape by with your life again this time, healers will patch you up. Great deal. Ah, since you’re not the one who delivers the last hit, you’ll have to split the credit, of course. If the Association folks over there are lucky enough to walk out alive, the media will start spewing bullshit again.”

“......”

“It’s a good plan.”

Even with the compliment thrown in, his expression was far from good. I dipped my head slightly and met his eyes. For a second, I had the illusion something was flickering in them. Maybe a fire-attribute hunter thing.

“I just...”

I saw him start to flap his mouth to say something useless again, so I cut him off.

I slapped his cheek just enough to be offensive and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him a little closer.

“Taehan, cut the crap.”

“......”

“Burying those assholes in here and walking out is the cleanest option. Sure, things will be chaotic at first. All the heads will be dead. But in the long run, it’s a purge.”

“...A purge? What guarantee is there the next ones won’t be the same?”

“Then should we just let these guys sit there forever?”

“They should at least be sentenced—”

“You really think they will be? Think before you talk...”

Even after all this, his line of thinking hadn’t progressed. I sighed and scrubbed a hand over his head.

“If your conscience bothers you, shut up and clear the boss. No matter how hard you bust your ass trying to save them, your stats aren’t good enough to keep every one of those bastards alive. They’ll die on their own, so wipe away any guilty conscience in advance.”

“......”

“Nice and simple, right?”

He squirmed like he had a lot to say, but in the end he went off to deal with the boss.

I took my attention off the Association bastards who were still alive and focused on killing the dungeon’s other creatures.

That was when one of the Association higher-ups, who I’d assumed had the good sense to die quietly, lifted his head and looked my way.

“H-hey!”

Since he suddenly called my name, I thought he was going to shout for help or beg me to save him, but what came out of his mouth was even bigger bullshit.

“I know you’re the son of Seongmu Group! The adoptee! Right? I heard Seongmu Group cut ties with you completely, but that’s not true, is it?”

“......”

“I heard you’re CEO Choi’s bastard child. The media’s already itching to go. Your image is already rotten just from your little friendship with Hunter Kwon. If this comes out... you won’t even be able to set foot in this country again.”

My gaze dropped to his broken leg. With it mangled that badly, he shouldn’t even be able to talk, but I guess being on the brink of death gives your mouth extra life.

“Everyone already knows! There’s an embargo on it, that’s all. Even if we d-die here, they’ll tear you apart anyway. You look like the type who hates getting dragged into exhausting shit. Am I wrong?”

“......”

“I-I can protect you. Just... let me live. I’ll take into account the fact that you sent us here, to a certain extent. I’ll protect you from the press too.”

“......”

“It’s a win-win for you!”

I hadn’t answered because it didn’t seem worth responding to, but the guy must’ve thought I was conflicted or something, because he kept babbling on happily.

I stared at him for a while, then said just one thing.

“Go ahead.”

“...What?”

“You said you were going to lift the embargo. Go ahead.”

“......”

Watching him thrash on the floor with his eyes bulging made me laugh.

“But I wonder if you’ll manage it. You’ll be dead soon. Your left leg’s shattered all the way through... think you can run somewhere?”

“......”

“I’ll definitely attend your funeral.”

With one last polite reply, I turned my back on him.

It was about time I went to help Taehan. Even if he didn’t die here, it’d be a problem if he got seriously injured.

But just then, something came flying from his direction.

The thing whistled past me with a crash and hit another monster nearby.

When I dodged on instinct, what I saw was a monster with bloodshot eyes and a shattered bottle rolling on the floor.

I turned my head on reflex. The one who’d thrown the item was pointing at me and laughing his head off.

“It’s a potion that temporarily doubles your stats! I paid... a huge amount for it... but my leg’s broken, so I can’t use it. Might as well use it where it counts.”

“......”

“We can just hold a joint funeral! Not that there’ll be many people at yours. Who’d go to some bastard child’s funeral?”

I couldn’t even answer that. Because right after, it felt like my whole body was being smashed to pieces.

‘This fucking bastard.’

A furious monster barreled into me, snorting hard. Its superheated skin left a sensation like burns across my body, then my head slammed into something and my thoughts cut off for a moment.

When I came to, I was already knocked flat. Staring up at the sky and struggling to move, I felt something shifting slightly in my arms.

‘Ah.’

It was the beast I’d shoved into a portable storage cage on my way here, just in case it could at least earn its keep, squirming around.

‘Not exactly a good sign.’

It was already /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ big enough that if it wanted to, it could probably break out on its own, but the dungeon’s overall temperature was too high for it to really move around freely.

I blinked slowly and let it crawl its way out.

A short while after that, my consciousness flickered out.