At present, there are two major groups that hold the power to influence and control Hunters in the Republic of Korea.
The first is the Korean government’s Hunter Management Agency. If you are born a citizen of the Republic of Korea and awaken as a Hunter, you are required without exception to register with the Hunter Management and complete a mandatory service period of thirty-nine months. In most cases, after completing those thirty-nine months of service, Hunters leave without looking back and switch to freelance work, though some choose to remain in government service. I’ve heard that one major advantage of being a state-affiliated Hunter is that the government provides all necessary equipment.
And then there is the second one, the International Hunter Cooperation Body, shortened to the Hunter Association, an organization created to facilitate close cooperation between nations and to allow Hunters to protect their own rights. This Hunter Association is an international union-type organization, with roughly 190 member countries, and branches established in each of them.
When a member country is in crisis, the Hunter Association dispatches Hunters from other member nations to provide assistance and promote mutual coexistence… at least, that’s how it’s presented. In reality, as is always the case when humans gather, scenes of people scrambling and fighting over power to protect their own interests are frequently observed.
The reason the Hunter Association’s influence grew so large was that once it became possible to craft items from byproducts obtained in dungeons, the value of those dungeon byproducts skyrocketed.
From “dungeons” came new metals and resources, plants and animals alike, that could not be obtained on Earth. Paradoxically, thanks to the invaders, Earth’s resources became more abundant. On an Earth where melting polar ice raised sea levels, power plants built to cut electricity costs exploded and scattered radiation across the seas, and pollution from machines designed to cheapen labor filled the air with fine dust, leaving natural resources all but depleted, dungeons were nothing less than newly opened otherworldly paradises.
And Hunters were, in effect, the miners who harvested resources from those paradises. As the value of Hunters capable of bringing back dungeon byproducts rose, the Hunter Association’s clout naturally grew stronger as well.
The place I’d been summoned to today was, of course, the government-affiliated Hunter Management, to be precise, the massive building used by the Central Hunter Management in Gwanghwamun. And among it all, the office I needed to visit was on the thirteenth floor.
When I went inside, there were quite a lot of people. Hunters who looked to be around my age crowded the place.
To be honest, when I heard “Central Management”, I’d imagined there might be a separate department just for S-rank Hunters. Now that I was actually here, I realized how absurd that idea had been.
“Um…”
“Ah, yes. First, go over there and fill out the paperwork.” The woman sitting behind the glass spoke almost as if she were shouting, without even looking at me. She wore glasses, had an impatient face, and spoke in a harsh, rigid tone; so harsh it bordered on aggressive. With so many people already packed into the office, she looked thoroughly fed up.
“…”
Well, it wasn’t unfamiliar. Whenever I went to the local community office with Jeong Dajeong to ask about living assistance or welfare support, the staff there had been just like that. It’s not that there aren’t kind civil servants, but those with low pay and no real protection from all sorts of unreasonable complaints tend to end up like this.
I walked toward the stack of forms placed in the center of the office and muttered with a wry expression, “I thought an S-rank Hunter would get better treatment than this.”
“If anything, it’s the opposite.” Yu Hanul gave a bitter smile. “Once you register as a Hunter, you’re obligated to serve the state for thirty-nine months. After that, it’s extremely rare for an S-rank Hunter to remain government-affiliated. No matter how well they treat you, you’re someone who’s going to leave anyway. You can think of it as the Korean government’s basic stance: squeeze as much out of you as possible while they’re forcibly keeping you.”
It was a scathing analysis, fitting for someone who’d just said that a sharp sense of reality was an important talent.
“And if you don’t complete the thirty-nine months of mandatory service…?”
“To start with, every country that’s part of the Hunter Association won’t accept you. This is a basic obligation imposed on Hunters worldwide. Ah, China would probably take you in, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, China actively recruits Hunters of B-rank and above. They offer high pay, too. If you’re S-rank, they’d come running barefoot to get you. The problem is that once you go over to China, news of you tends to stop. In fact, about four years ago, more than a dozen Hunters who went over for money lost contact entirely.”
“Yikes.”
No matter where you ran, there was no utopia. In the end, there was no choice but to belong to the state and be used without resistance for thirty-nine months. From the government’s perspective, then, there was no reason to create special counters or dedicated centers for people who would only work for them for a mere thirty-nine months. After all, even giving preferential treatment to S-ranks would require the budget and manpower to support it.
It was a very fitting response from a country that, despite having developed this far by grinding down human labor in the absence of resources, still treated human lives lightly.
“The reception staff at the Central Management are the same. They hire very few people, but this office handles Hunter registration as well as all kinds of complaints about allowances and benefits related to Hunters. It’s only natural that everyone ends up on edge. And the most important thing is…”
“The most important thing?”
“The pay is terrible.”
A sigh escaped me on its own. In a country so money-obsessed that it even coined the term ‘financial therapy,’ the pay being that bad was almost impressive.
“Since most people don’t want to work here, they push new hires into it.”
“So it really is just a community service center for Hunters.”
“That’s exactly what it is. Still, I came with you. If things get too bad, I’ll file a complaint for you.”
“Hearing that makes me feel like I don’t really want to file a complaint after all…”
At a glance, she was clearly just an ordinary civilian with no developed mana circuits. And in truth, it isn’t easy for an ordinary person to deal with Hunters. Hunters are fundamentally physically enhanced and accustomed to violence, so even outside of dungeons their attitudes are often rough. Treating complainants like that was probably closer to a kind of defense mechanism.
After that, I shut my mouth, filled out the paperwork, and brought it back. The tired-looking woman snatched the documents as if grabbing them, skimmed through them, then checked my face against my ID.
The sharpness in her gaze softened slightly. “Ah, Hunter Jeong Daon… I was told you’d be coming today.” Her tone became a bit kinder as well. “Here, here. You see the blank spaces? Fill those in again and submit it.”
The paperwork I had to complete was extremely simple. I wrote down my personal information and current address as requested, then received a document with my training schedule. So from today onward, I was to live for thirty-nine months as a dog leashed to the state.
At the top of the training schedule document, large letters were printed: Nationally Certified Hunter, 18th Class. The only thing I liked about it was how that number sounded.
As if the system weren’t enough, there was yet another group holding my leash. I suddenly felt depressed. How much would the demons I know laugh if they saw this? Though, I suppose the ones with masochistic tendencies might actually enjoy it.
As I went through the short procedures, I found myself the center of attention from everyone in the office.
“That her? Jeong Daon.”
“She’s kind of underwhelming in person, isn’t she?”
“Lee Pyeonghwa’s way better, seriously.”
“S-rank… damn, must be fucking nice….”
I’d expected to draw attention the moment I came here. Today was the day to receive the ability assessment and complete formal Hunter registration, so all the prospective Hunters in the Seoul area had gathered here. And I’d also expected that those looks wouldn’t be purely friendly.
All the students who took the college entrance exam received their supernatural ability assessments on the same day, and as a result, I was the only one nationwide this year to be rated as having S-rank potential.
An ordinary person might not notice, but among prospective Hunters, I’d naturally anticipated envious stares. All kinds of filthy looks were hurled at me as I submitted my documents. I didn’t react, but Yu Hanul, standing beside me, seemed uncomfortable and subtly stepped in to block me with his body.
Of course, it didn’t really help. If anything, the sneering comments only grew worse.
“Wow, S-rank really is something. Yu Hanul personally acting as an escort.”
“You think he’d do that just because she’s S-rank? He’s doing it because she’s a woman. Man, must be nice.”
“So jealous, so jealous~”
“I should’ve been born a girl too.”
I turned my head. “Who just said that?”
The moment I spoke, the atmosphere in the office went cold.
I wasn’t asking because I didn’t know. The person who’d spoken hadn’t expected me to challenge them directly and stared at me with eyes wide open.
“Wh-what?”
“What you just ran your mouth about. Was it you?”
“Uh…”
“Your name?”
“Wh-why do you need to know…?”
He was a plain-looking guy, probably my age. Short, too, almost at eye level with me. If I had to compare him to someone, he looked no different from the guy who’d gone to the same school as me for three years and bullied me out of an inferiority complex over grades.
Predictable.
I must have looked easy with a small build, someone who wouldn’t be able to retaliate right away, so he’d openly talked shit behind my back. The fact that he was part of a group, snickering together, probably emboldened him too.
Why do humans try to prove their superiority as a group by tormenting the weak? And why do they delude themselves into thinking that merely being part of a group puts their insignificant selves above others? Isn’t this proof that, no matter the world, humans are creatures that never change?
I’m so tired of it.
From behind me, Yu Hanul called out in a quiet voice, "Daon, if it’s not inside a dungeon, and not against monsters, using a Hunter’s abilities is something you can be punished for.”
At his words, I saw the guy in front of me visibly relax. He probably thought Yu Hanul was taking his side. “Th-that’s right. If you mess with me for no reason, you’ll get an aggravated penalty—”
“Yeah. My mandatory service starts today, and if I use violence and get detained, the service period gets extended, right? I know.”
Whoosh! A flame flared up fiercely over my fingers. The fire, created from mana, made the air in the office stifling in an instant.
“So what?”
When I met his trembling gaze, a strange thrill welled up inside me.
Ah. This feeling. The feeling of intimidating and forcing submission from someone weaker than me, something I’d had to suppress for nineteen years because of Jeong Dajeong.
“Guess I’ll just do about three extra months of mandatory service.”
But in truth, patience is not a virtue demons are meant to possess.
“H-hiiik!” The kid recoiled in shock when the flame was suddenly thrust close to him.
Just because I haven’t trained yet, they think we’re all the same, these lowly little creatures.
The quest "Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿" is in progress.
The system entrusts the judgment of “Jeong Daon”’s behavior suitability to members of society.
Deriving results…
A system message appeared, but I wasn’t particularly worried. Like before, as long as I didn’t actually kill him, there probably wouldn’t be a serious problem.
With videos of me using magic already spread nationwide, people would say beating someone senseless would be too much. So maybe the opinions would split about fifty-fifty?
It wouldn’t be bad to find out just how much my stats drop when opposition outweighs support.
Since my stats hadn’t risen much yet, running a test now wouldn’t hurt, and I was also curious how Yu Hanul would react to seeing me act like this.
There were many calculations behind my actions, though to be fair, anger was the foremost one. What, I get favoritism because I’m a woman? I should tear that mouth off, seriously.
“Say it again.”
Standing face to face, we were about the same height. Completely overwhelmed, he took another step back. “N-no, I-I mean…”
I glanced sideways. Yu Hanul looked troubled, but with his arms crossed, he was simply watching. So he wasn’t going to step into a fight between juniors?
Thinking about it, this was an issue among this year’s class. No matter how kind Yu Hanul was, he didn’t have some flower-field brain that thought everyone should just get along. Conflicts that arise as people live together exist in any group. In that sense, this wasn’t really something someone several classes senior like Yu Hanul needed to intervene in.
In the end, it was something I had to handle myself. I’d be spending a lot of time over the next thirty-nine months with the people who took the ability assessment this year. If so, then it was right to establish discipline properly right here. I had no intention whatsoever of enduring things now only to be looked down on for the rest of the time.
That meant the first step was important.
“Th-that, no. I—”
He already seemed sufficiently cowed, but I had no intention of letting him off with just this. If I was going to subdue him anyway, I might as well do it properly. I clenched my fist.
“If you don’t want your corn husked, loosen up—”
“Hmm, the atmosphere’s a bit tense. Hello?”
The moment I heard the voice approaching from behind, a chill ran down my spine. Naturally so, because I hadn’t sensed anyone coming that close at all.
Startled, I reflexively turned my head, and a finger resting on my shoulder poked my cheek.
What?
“I heard there was a new S-rank Hunter, so I came to take a look.”