Chapter 366

Hunters above a certain Rank tended to have a few things in common. For example, they became obsessed with Dungeons, chased dopamine, threw themselves into dangerous situations, and acted as though they had become... something beyond human.

There was no way to document what each and every one of their lives had been like before, but one thing was certain: the moment someone awakened as an S-rank, they could no longer live ‘the same life as before.’ They had already become something that had departed from humanity.

Thus, while they might agonize over what kind of ‘life’ they would lead after becoming S-rank, they tended to accept their new identity as an S-rank awakened person remarkably quickly. They already possessed abilities surpassing those of humans. Naturally, their way of thinking could not help but become different.

And this very point was the sole flaw possessed by the person known as ‘Sung Uijae.’

Sung Uijae still had lingering attachment to his former life.

A considerable amount of it, at that.

This was connected to the ‘humanity’ Sung Uijae often spoke about, but at the same time, it was also a manifestation of his boundless arrogance.

The Upheaval had dealt an enormous shock to all of humanity. Naturally. Even before that, the world could hardly have been called ‘peaceful,’ but having the world suddenly tear open overnight and monsters pour out through those wounds was an entirely different matter.

Yet even amid that Upheaval, S-rank Hunters alone had been able to find a new way forward.

Because they alone remained equally safe.

Sung Uijae was one of the earliest awakened.

He awakened during a Dungeon Break he encountered while traveling through Korea. The Hunter responsible for the scene at the time was Park Seoncheong of the Hunter Association.

The lover Kang Sojeong had been dating at the time, whom Seo Jehyun had tracked down.

Back then, the Hunter Association had only recently been established, and rather than Gates, its primary concern was controlling awakened individuals. It was a system devised so the state could dump off the enormous national risk of having to keep around people who could tear apart someone’s mind or set an entire street on fire, all for the sake of supernatural disasters that might occur at any moment.

Naturally, the countless traces of discrimination built up under the name of the Association were passed directly onto Hunters.

Unfortunately, Park Seoncheong was a victim with nothing particularly unusual about them.

At the time, the Hunter Association knew a Dungeon had appeared, yet left it unattended under the excuse of dealing with other matters. It fell behind on the priority list, and those higher up naturally postponed clearing the Dungeon.

The Gate, overloaded with mana, eventually failed to withstand the accumulated disturbance and suffered a Break.

The unfortunate part was that there was a school and a large residential complex near the Break.

Naturally, the damage was catastrophic.

It was a major disaster with more than a hundred casualties.

And ‘Sung Uijae’ was among those victims.

The overwhelming mana wave unleashed by the Dungeon Break awakened Sung Uijae as an S-rank in an instant.

He understood instinctively.

What the waves and energy surging through his body meant.

It was, in a sense, the end of the life Sung Uijae had enjoyed until then.

There was a reason Sung Uijae had not immediately gone searching for Park Seoncheong’s lover after the Break.

More precisely, it was an emotional reason.

Fear for his life, questions about his identity, anguish over how he should live from that point onward....

Even the minor troubles any ordinary person might encounter once in their life had largely been absent from Sung Uijae’s.

His national identity had never mattered much to him either.

Naturally.

He was a healthy 193-centimeter-tall man who had never had reason to fear for his life, had plenty of money, plenty of affection for his family, and even had his future more or less secured.

The greatest concern Sung Uijae had ever faced in his life was whether he should postpone graduation and travel around the world.

For someone who had lived that way to awaken as S-rank overnight was... closer to a downgrade than an upgrade to his life.

Of course, in the era of the Great Upheaval, Sung Uijae naturally found himself holding ‘power,’ meaning he still remained on the side of those who possessed it....

But separate from that, Sung Uijae was forced to confront something he had never once had to think about in his life.

His former life had been taken from him.

An S-rank awakened person naturally found a place in the world while possessing the privilege of being awakened, but for Sung Uijae, that simultaneously meant being deprived of both the career he had originally wanted and the family he had naturally assumed he would someday have.

Instead of a peaceful future, he stepped into Gates and repeatedly slaughtered things in order to find emotional stability.

The moment he recognized that fact, Sung Uijae’s common sense became twisted.

He knew it was inhuman.

But so what?

The more numb he became, the more ‘obligatory’ concerns accumulated.

Even when he saw someone die, he felt no sense of danger.

He might pity an animal struck by a car, but he never imagined that animal could have been him.

Once that degree of inhumanity lodged itself in his mind, disgust naturally followed.

After defining himself as inhuman, Sung Uijae became obsessed with finding proof that could allow him to define himself as human.

The Hunter Association Hunter who had helped him after his awakening.

And that Hunter’s terminally ill lover, who ‘might already have been dead.’

He had to find them.

He had to repay them.

Because a human being should repay a debt of gratitude.

It was a kind of code Sung Uijae had become obsessed with, a goal he had wanted to accomplish for a very long time....

And at the same time, something he could never be allowed to accomplish.

If he completed it, would Sung Uijae finally become human?

Of course not.

But unfortunately....

As time passed, even this obsession gradually began to fade.

To the point that the keyword ‘repayment,’ which Seo Jehyun had stated so confidently, began to feel as though it truly were the truth....

The Gate Seo Jehyun had told Sung Uijae to come to felt peculiar.

From the instant he stepped inside, his mind felt strangely clear.

It was like the sensation of a faint headache disappearing.

Even though nothing had actually been hurting him.

The moment Sung Uijae stepped into this strange mental territory, he was overcome by an inexplicable sense of discomfort.

A Dungeon should not be able to make him feel this way.

At its core, a Dungeon was a place for slaughter.

Sung Uijae immediately sensed the wrongness of it, handed Seo Jehyun the Nullification Ring, and watched his reaction.

Afterward, leaving Seo Jehyun behind and entering beneath the lake with the two Hunter Association Hunters, he found faint lights glowing throughout the darkness.

‘Ugh, what the hell is this!’

Once the acrid cloud of dirt and dust cleared away, what had been buried underneath naturally came into view.

At the Hunter Association Hunter’s voice, Sung Uijae silently took out an artifact and slowly illuminated the space.

‘Statues....’

But they were far too detailed.

Sung Uijae immediately warned the Hunter Association Hunter who was cautiously stepping forward.

‘Careful. I don’t like this.’

‘Do you sense something?’

‘No. Just a feeling.’

At that moment, a small voice struck Sung Uijae’s ear.

-Deceiver.

He did not think it was the Hunter Association Hunter’s voice.

He had suspected from the beginning that this was a mental-type Dungeon.

Sung Uijae lightly brushed at his ear and began properly surveying what lay ahead.

But the voice that had only hovered around his ear gradually began reverberating inside his head.

-You said you’d get revenge for me, and even that was just for your own satisfaction?

It was a voice he knew.

Kang Sojeong’s resentful voice.

-You saw that I died, and you still did nothing....

-You knew you killed me, didn’t you?

-You killed someone.

-Just so you could be happy by yourself....

-Deceiver!

Immediately afterward, numerous voices plunged into Sung Uijae’s mind all at once.

Flash-!!

‘Stop! Wh-What is this?! Who are you!’

For a moment, Sung Uijae thought he had been the one who shouted and raised his head.

Then he saw the A-rank Hunter Association Hunter looking around nearby, their hands trembling violently.

‘Same effect.’

Golden lines shot from the Hunter’s hand, wrapped around a statue, and yanked it forward.

The statue tumbled across the floor with a crash before striking the ground and shattering with a dry crack.

‘Hey, stop!’

‘N-No! I didn’t deceive anyone! There were reasons, there were circumstances...! You didn’t even listen to what I had to say!’

‘It’s a mental-type Dungeon. You need to focus....’

But before Sung Uijae could finish speaking, an enormous fragment burst from the wall where it had collided hard with the Binding lines.

‘H-Hunter...!’

There were two Hunter Association Hunters here.

Just before the other one could be injured, Sung Uijae rapidly poured a Skill into the flying fragment.

The fragment instantly became lighter and crumbled against the Hunter Association Hunter’s body with nothing more than a soft impact.

But it did not end there.

Sung Uijae quickly made his decision.

‘Kgh.’

‘Agh, it wasn’t me...!’

After slamming the A-rank Hunter into the floor hard enough to knock them unconscious, Sung Uijae looked around.

The voices noisily echoing through his head were growing steadily louder.

-You killed someone....

-Something that isn’t even human killed a person.

-The things you killed were monsters, but after killing a person, are you still human?

Sung Uijae gripped the terrified C-rank Hunter firmly by the shoulders in an attempt to calm them.

But the C-rank Hunter spoke first.

‘H-Hunter.... Why did Jigyeong do that?’

‘...What?’

‘Why did they suddenly....’

Sung Uijae stared quietly at the C-rank Hunter, who blinked as though they had no idea what was happening, then cautiously asked,

‘Hey. You don’t hear anything?’

The answer came immediately.

‘What kind of sound do you mean...?’

The principle was simple.

To enter paradise, one had to cleanse themselves of every original sin.

Otherwise....

At that moment, a tremendous roar erupted from the wall and the entire space began to shake.

Massive fragments came crashing down onto the floor.

In the middle of the chaos as Sung Uijae blocked the debris and protected the Hunter Association Hunter, he sensed a faint presence.

There was only one thing capable of giving off that kind of presence inside a Dungeon sealed on every side.

“Hunter Seo!”

Seo Jehyun naturally avoided the falling debris at Sung Uijae’s call and approached.

As though none of this bothered him in the slightest.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Simply asking the question made it feel as though they were confronting each other.

Sung Uijae knew that Seo Jehyun [N O V E L I G H T] had killed someone inside an S-rank Dungeon.

No.

He had... suspected that Seo Jehyun had ‘intended’ to.

He also knew the public tore Jehyun apart for being a psychopath.

And that, to some extent, it was true.

There was no way he could be fine.

He had to be affected.

At Sung Uijae’s question, Seo Jehyun pretended to narrow his eyes as the corners of his mouth rose.

As though he had already understood the context of the situation.

“Why does your concern sound so much like you’re checking something?”

“.......”

“Are you hearing strange voices in your ears?”

Tap, tap.

Seo Jehyun tapped his own ear and naturally continued.

“I’m not hearing anything.”

“...How did you know I was hearing voices?”

At that, Seo Jehyun nudged the Hunter lying on the floor with his foot.

The A-rank Hunter, who had gone beyond merely covering their ears and was now scratching at them furiously, was curled tightly into themselves and trembling.

“Do I look like an idiot....”

“You’re not hearing them?”

“No.”

“.......”

“Why? Ah, are they hurling insults at you or something....”

Seo Jehyun trailed off and stared quietly at the A-rank Hunter before adding,

“Well, maybe they’re not insults. Maybe they’re just telling you the truth.”

“You....”

Sung Uijae cut himself off for a moment, then said,

“You killed someone.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. More than once.”

“Do you have proof?”

“No. I’m just certain.”

At those words, Seo Jehyun’s eyes curved ever so slightly.

The instant Sung Uijae saw it, he unconsciously stepped closer to Seo Jehyun and seized his jaw tightly.

“You’re... a monster.”

“Why? Doesn’t it feel like you’ve come to heaven?”

Even with his jaw held, Seo Jehyun spoke calmly, rolled his gaze behind Sung Uijae once, then looked directly at him.

“That’s probably because... you’re the one who’s supposed to go to hell, Hunter Sung.”

The moment he finished speaking, Sung Uijae’s body was pushed backward.

‘What?’

It had not been physical force.

It felt as though someone were commanding him that he ‘had to step back’....

‘A mental-type Skill.’

Sung Uijae reflexively retreated about two steps, steadied his breathing, and stared directly at Seo Jehyun.

“...You had a mental-type Skill?”

“Ah, well.... I do have one, but this one isn’t mine.”

Seo Jehyun strode toward him, briefly closed his eyes, then opened them again with a grin.

“But your Skill really is... nice, Hunter Sung.”

Booom!

The instant Seo Jehyun finished speaking, Sung Uijae’s body was crushed down against the floor.

He knew instinctively.

“That’s my Skill, but you....”

“Sorry, but while we’re inside the Dungeon, I need you to remain cooperative, Hunter Sung.”

“.......”

“If necessary, I can erase your memory afterward.”

Seo Jehyun seized Sung Uijae’s jaw and squeezed hard enough to hurt.

A deep, aching pain spread across his face.

“We’re in a good relationship where we cooperate with each other for Kang Sojeong’s revenge... without any ill will toward each other.”

“.......”

“You don’t harbor any ill will toward me, do you?”

“No.”

Seo Jehyun studied Sung Uijae’s eyes closely before saying shortly,

“Lie.”

“.......”

“You do now.”