the first hunter
Chapter 3. The First Hunter, Part II
Translator: Khan
Editor: RED
2.
When the Black Orc’s fist hit Bang Hyun-wook’s chest, he did not feel pain, because his heart stopped.
It was the Energy from his belly that moved his stopped heart. It thought of its owner more than any other power, and without hesitation, it ran toward his stopped heart. And it knocked on the heart. The Energy revived his stopped heart.
“Kuh-huck!” He was then able to feel the mysterious pain and fear. But the Energy did not stop there. It knocked on his heart again and again to make his heart beat harder! Under the repeated beat of such Energy, his heart began to pump blood like crazy.
Ow! It was like someone forced a hand into his heart and squeezed out blood, or like someone had brought a hot stone into where his heart should be.
The hot blood quickly circulated around his body. Her head was going to burst, the nails on his hands and feet were going to fly off like bullets, and his eyes were already red.
“Ow…”
The bloody battle between Kim Tae-hoon and the Black Orc that welcomed Bang Hyun-wook back. It was a sight that would make him numb all over.
The battle was quieter than any other bloody battle, and gentle. It was a battle of the lasting against the lasting; it should be expressed like that. Kim and the Black Orc were unable to move.
The sounds they were making were also trivial. The sound of hot breath came out of the Black Orc’s mouth instead of the scream, and only the sound of teeth cracking came out of Kim’s tight lips. Both sounds were buried in all kinds of noises from those who ran away frantically.
If someone who did not know the situation had seen it, he would have thought of it as a show. If a game addict had seen it, he would have thought the same thing: the screen stopped during gameplay, or it was lagging.
But Bang, who experienced all of this situation more closely than anyone else, knew that this was not a show or a game screen lagging.
“I can’t hold on long,” Kim thought himself.
Bang knew to some extent the ability of Kim’s Telekinesis.
His Telekinesis was powerful, but there were also weaknesses. The biggest weakness was that it could not affect the inside of a monster. Although he could exert Telekinesis outside, he could not exert Telekinesis inside of a monster. If he had been able to do it, he would have burst the heart or brain of the Black Orc without difficulty.
Moreover, Telekinesis was very difficult to handle. As soon as the image in his mind blurred, the Telekinesis was released. He would then be defenseless. It was hard to maintain his telekinetic power with only marginal concentration.
How long could Kim hold on to such a terrible Black Orc? Maybe three minutes?
‘What do I do?’ And for Bang, the three minutes were all the time he could think how to live or die. Within three minutes, he had to get an answer.
‘Do I have to run away? Do I have to fight for my life, or do I have to run away to save my life?’
His survival instinct urged him to choose the latter. It said that the living person should live.
‘Mom, Dad…’ His survival instincts painted his parents’ faces in his mind to convince him to run away: the faces of the parents who had suffered all kinds of hardships with the intention of making their child a baseball player.
‘Damn it, but…’ Of course, if it had been for Kim, he would not have been worried about it now. Bang did not make any choice or decision right away. No, he could not.
“Hold on!” At that time, a beautiful woman, Ahn Sun-mi, with freckles around her nose, appeared. “We have to run away!”
Having regained her freedom from the fear of the Black Orc a while ago, she once again demonstrated the courage she had shown when Park Jae-woon had been hit by four thieves. As everyone tried to escape from the Black Orc as soon as possible, she came to save Bang, and she started running after catching his left hand with her right hand engraved with the mark of an Awakener. He was not able to resist and started running with her hand.
“No, wait!” He rejected her hand in front of the fire shutter that the Black Orc had broken. It was a boundary line. If he moved onto the escalator beyond the fire shutter, he would be able to escape to the first level and then to the ground floor.
And if he ran away, he would not come back. The moment he stepped on the first floor, he would not step on the second floor again. At the same time, he would not see Kim’s face again.
Bang looked back at the silent battle of the Black Orc and Kim.
Ahn Sun-mi, seeing his face, shouted, “We can’t kill it! We have to run away!”
“Fuck!” Bang also shouted, not for her, but for himself.
“Fuck all this…”
‘I want to live. I want to live and see my parents’ faces, and I want to protect my parents in a world where I do not know how to go back.’
Even if it was not, there were a lot of things he wanted to do alive. He played baseball, dreaming of becoming a professional baseball player throughout his school days, and now he would be going to college as a specialist. He wanted to go to a wonderful college campus, become a professional baseball player, and drive an expensive sports car.
However, it was true that Kim had saved his life before. His father told him, “At least, don’t live cowardly.”
‘What do I do?’
At this moment, he remembered the scene that Kim had come up and saved himself: a paint spray to make the monster blind, the ability to kill it with fishing line, and the ability to use engine oil to poison it.
‘Ah!’ Suddenly, Bang’s mind flashed.
“Cooking oil, Cooking oil!”
“What?”
“Cooking oil!”
There was no longer any thought of escape in his eyes!
3.
“We have to run away!”
When Ahn Sun-mi grabbed Bang’s wrist and ran to the escalator to the first floor, Kim bit his teeth harder. He felt like the pillars that he could lean on in this desperate situation had disappeared like a mirage. But he didn’t blame them.
‘Run away, if you want to run away, and get it right.’
Humans live to live. Bang’s decision was a choice to live on, and at least Kim did not have the right to blame him, because he has also made many terrible choices to live.
‘If I only make an opportunity, if I can only make an opportunity for them to escape…’ Above all, he knew better than anyone else that resentment at this moment was not helpful to himself.
‘The opportunity to live is not going to come if I blame someone.’
But the situation was getting worse every moment.
‘I have to find a way before I lose my power.’ He clearly felt his power weakening. Especially, his physical health, mental strength, and concentration were consumed more than anything else.
‘Or maybe my body will burst.’ Telekinesis required much more physical health and concentration than he had thought. If the water stream was too strong, the waterspout would be destroyed. Like that, if he used the powerful Telekinesis, his body would be destroyed since it was still only a human-level trained body.
The fatigue that he felt now was terrible. Because he had been trained as a soldier, he could endure. He was a man who could struggle at the crossroads of life and death.
‘I would drink a cup of coffee before I die… I can’t ask the monster for that kind of consideration.’
In his mind, the image of the death was drawn. And the moment he was weak…
“Keeeeee!” A low but clear cry began to leak from the Black Orc’s mouth.
Thump! Its feet also began to move. It was as slow as walking on the moon, but it took a step at last. ‘Shit.’
It started to overcome his Telekinesis, and its orange eyes were shining. It spoke with its eyes, ‘Man, I’m going to chew your head off alive.’
He felt it in his own eyes.
‘These… these monsters are smart.’
The first Goblins and Orcs he had encountered were just fierce. They were overwhelmed by hunger because they were faithful to their instincts. That was why the small Goblins showed their teeth without hesitation to people larger than them.
But the Black Orc was different now. It was not ignorant, and it knew how to hunt. It did not just destroy and struggle instinctively. Of course, it wasn’t the only one.
‘Now this world would be full of these monsters… It is just the beginning. There will be some monsters like it, some monsters that are much more powerful than the Black Orc, with terrible abilities.’ He was sure of this.
‘We need a proper hunter to kill these monsters; not one, but a group of hunters… In the era of monsters that start from now on, mankind does not need only weapons to survive. We need hunters with knowledge, ability, and experience to fight monsters. Of course, the worries about this part are the ones that must be done after surviving.’
He forced his thinking to turn. He looked at the present, not the future.
‘If I pull it towards me instead of pulling it back, I might get a chance…’ He came up with a way to live.
At that moment, an unsuitable sound broke out in the stillness of the blood. Clank!
‘That’s…?’ The source of the sound was a huge can that hit the Black Orc’s head.
‘Cooking oil?’ It was a big yellow can, an 18-liter can of cooking oil!
“Big brother!” After the jaunty sound of such a can of cooking oil knocking on the Black Orc’s head, Bang’s voice was heard.
“Did you see the movie, Home Alone?”
Kim did not need any more explanation. He immediately changed the picture in front of his eyes. He turned the chain around the Black Orc’s neck, which had been pulling it back, 180 degrees, in his own direction. At the same time, he tied his own body with a chain of Telekinesis and pulled it to the right.
Thump, thump, thump! In a sudden change, the body of the Black Orc rushed toward him at the explosive speed.
His body, flying to the right as if hit by a car, was able to avoid the rush in a breathtaking move.
“Kaaaah!” The Black Orc, which had finally opened its mouth, screamed during its unceasing sprint, and it stopped only after it had broken five shelves.
“Krrr!” The Black Orc, who took an instant posture, immediately followed Kim with its eyes, and it was running toward Bang and Ahn. There was no hesitation.
“Kh-aang!” It began to rush again, screaming.
In the meantime, Kim shouted at Ahn and Bang, “Go up!”
“Watch out for the cooking oil!” Just as Kim was warned by Bang, he slipped on the floor, which had become a sea of cooking oil. At the same time, he reached out his hands for the ceiling.
Just like a spider-man, the hero from Marvel Comics, who fired a web with his wrist, Kim used his Telekinesis to create an invisible line between the ceiling and his arm.
He stopped slipping using the line, and said to Bang and Ahn who looked at him in surprise, “Go!”
“That’s awesome!” Bang said admiringly.
“Go!” Kim shouted again to Bang.
“What? What about you, big brother?”
At the repeated question, Kim looked at the Black Orc, who had just run back near them. He looked at it again and reached out his hands, painting a picture. It was a picture connecting a big line to its two legs. He waited for the moment it put its huge foot down on the cooking oil!
Thud!
As it stepped on the cooking oil, he began to slip backwards, grabbed its leg and pulled it the other way. There were many bangs as it broke down the display stands, and it past him out of sight.
“Keee? Keee? Keee?” In this unexplained situation that it had not experienced in its life, it cried out in confusion instead of shrieking.
Kim started to run on the escalator, leaving behind the embarrassed cries coming from the Black Orc. Bang and Ahn followed him. They quickly headed to the first floor. When they started for the ground floor, Bang asked, “Big brother, are you going to run away?”
It was more of a plea than a question. ‘Please let’s run away like this.’
“Kaaaah!” The cry of the Black Orc shook the escalator to the first floor.
Bang shook his deer-like eyes more eagerly at the sound.
However, Kim’s eyes were not on Bang, but on Ahn Sun-mi. “Do you have a driver’s license?”
“What?” It was a sudden question. “Yes, I do.”
She managed to answer, and Kim said, “We are going to steal a car outside.”