Chapter 3: Grade-9 Civil-Service Hunter (1)
“Ugh… completely crushed to death.”
“The body’s half-melted too, and the face is smashed beyond recognition. Identifying him is going to be tough.”
Hunters conversed while looking at the corpse flattened beneath a massive boulder.
“Probably one of the civil-service hunters handling scene control. Tell their side to handle the ID check themselves—just make sure the body doesn’t reanimate from the creep. We’re going after the boss.”
A cold-faced man clad in expensive defensive gear spoke.
The hunters who had been talking among themselves immediately bowed their heads in unison.
“Yes, Vice Guild Master.”
Jung Yeon-jun, Vice Guild Master of Crystal Guild.
His hunter grade was an astounding 2, placing him among the top ten strongest hunters in South Korea.
He was usually far too busy to appear at ordinary incidents, but this time was different.
“Where is the Sand Wraith currently located?”
“The wind speed and direction of the sandstorm are changing erratically moment by moment, interfering with the monster tracker. Pinpointing its position isn’t easy.”
“So you’re saying you can’t find it?”
“N-no, sir! We’ll compile the estimated positions from multiple beacons and set a route immediately!”
“…”
The Sand Wraith, a danger-level 3 monster, was notoriously difficult even among grade-3 threats.
Not only did it blanket the area in a sandstorm that blocked vision and other senses, but its habit of burrowing underground made it hard to locate.
Unless one had an ability with perfect compatibility, it was a terribly cost-ineffective monster for hunters of the same grade.
That was why Jung Yeon-jun, who was on an entirely different level, had stepped in personally.
He wouldn’t have bothered if it were inside a dungeon, but right now it was a gate runaway—civilians were in danger.
The creep had to be stopped from spreading further, and the monster needed to be eliminated as quickly as possible.
As Jung Yeon-jun watched the guild members frantically working on tracking,
His gaze suddenly shifted.
The unidentified corpse crushed to death.
At first glance it looked like the work of a Rock Golem, but he didn’t think so.
The body appeared evenly pulverized all over, yet the legs had clearly been sliced by a blade.
Just as he began piecing together what might have happened here—
“We’ve located the estimated position of the Sand Wraith. Departing now—”
Beep-beep.
Before the guild member could finish, the red dot blinking on the monster-tracking device strapped to his wrist vanished.
“What the—equipment malfunction?”
“My signal’s gone too.”
The trackers used by Crystal, Korea’s top guild, weren’t the kind to fail easily.
Jung Yeon-jun stared at his own device with a grave expression.
Then—
Sssssssss…
The creep covering the ground began rapidly dissipating, and the sandstorm subsided in an instant.
“No way…”
“Someone already killed the Sand Wraith? Who the hell?”
The Crystal Guild members looked at each other, then cautiously glanced at Jung Yeon-jun.
If there was anyone here capable of taking down the Sand Wraith, it was him.
And sure enough—
“…”
Jung Yeon-jun’s face openly displayed his displeasure at having the boss monster stolen from him.
Without a word, he began striding purposefully toward somewhere.
The guild members quietly followed, and soon they stood before a man.
A man of average build wearing a black suit—clearly a civil-service hunter.
Aside from being reasonably handsome, there was nothing particularly remarkable about him.
The guild members’ gazes naturally shifted past the civil servant to what lay behind him.
The earth was cracked and upheaved everywhere.
It resembled a massive crater formed by a meteor impact.
In the center lay the enormous corpse of a monster.
A creature that resembled both a giant armadillo and a mole—the Sand Wraith.
Its limbs and head had been gruesomely torn off, a sight grotesque enough to unsettle even veteran hunters.
After briefly locking eyes with the civil-service hunter, Jung Yeon-jun broke the silence first.
“Where did the person who killed the Sand Wraith go?”
“Go? He’s right here.”
The guild members flinched at the civil-service hunter’s provocative informal speech.
No one had expected a mere civil servant to speak so casually to the Vice Guild Master of Crystal Guild.
“What grade are you to talk down to our Vice Guild Master like that?”
One guild member glanced at the name tag on the right chest pocket of Jin-young’s jacket.
White background with black letters: “Grade 9 Chae Jin-young.”
“What the—only grade 9?”
“What, first time seeing a grade 9? You started the informal talk first.”
Grade 9—the absolute lowest hunter grade.
And if it was a civil-service hunter, they were the especially pathetic ones among grade 9s.
The only difference from ordinary people was that they had awakened a unique ability; otherwise, they had nothing worthwhile to show.
A Crystal Guild member glared at the civil-service hunter with contempt and spoke in a low voice.
“If you’re grade 9, you should at least have grade-1 situational awareness. Do you even know who’s standing in front of you right now?”
“We haven’t even introduced ourselves—how would I know?”
“This little—!”
“Enough.”
Unable to listen any longer, Jung Yeon-jun raised a hand to stop the guild member himself.
“Sorry, Vice Guild Master.”
The agitated guild member immediately shut his mouth and stepped back.
“I’m aware that the government has been quietly supporting Guardian Guild lately to keep our Crystal Guild in check. There’s only one person in Guardian who would cause this kind of mess.”
“What are you suddenly talking about?”
“Right now you have them protecting you, so you feel fearless—but you’ll regret it soon enough.”
The civil-service hunter wore an expression of genuine confusion.
But Jung Yeon-jun was certain.
The Guild Master of Guardian Guild had killed the Sand Wraith, taken the core materials, and vanished.
Only one person could upheave the entire ground to find a Sand Wraith hiding underground and dismember a grade-3 monster barehanded with such strength.
The torn-off limbs and head looked messy at a glance, but Jung Yeon-jun—sharp-eyed as he was—noticed the precise, expert touch behind it.
This grade-9 civil servant standing here was clearly a decoy to distract attention.
As he organized his thoughts, one lingering doubt remained for Jung Yeon-jun.
Even with Guardian Guild backing him, this civil servant’s attitude was excessively arrogant.
‘If I half-kill him and interrogate him, something would probably come out…’
But with the sandstorm and creep gone, people were starting to gather around.
He could even see reporters with large cameras filming from a distance.
“…No good comes from touching a civil servant with so many eyes watching. Let’s go.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
Jin-young watched the backs of the Crystal Guild members as they left after spouting nonsense out of nowhere.
‘Crystal Vice Guild Master… Jung Yeon-jun, right?’
The man who had examined him with an unwavering, icy expression.
Grade-2 hunter Jung Yeon-jun was a famous figure even Jin-young knew. But he had no intention of acting familiar.
It had been thirty years, so the face was hazy anyway.
More than anything, he didn’t feel like playing along with their nonsense.
‘His gaze was pretty impure, though. Still, they saved my life in the previous timeline.’
It was this very Crystal Guild team that had found Jin-young when he was on the verge of death in the sandstorm.
That’s why he had stayed quiet even while they talked nonsense.
Jung Yeon-jun’s stare had seemed a bit suspicious, but as long as they didn’t make the first move, Jin-young had no plans to act either.
While he was briefly organizing his thoughts, a voice calling him came from afar.
“Mr. Jin-young! You’re safe?”
He turned his head to see a woman in a black suit quickly approaching.
A woman with straight black hair down to her shoulders and a pure, fair face that stood out.
Searching his memory, Jin-young immediately remembered who she was.
“Long time no see, Sol.”
Grade-8 civil-service hunter Jin-sol, from the same support team.
She had been appointed two years after Jin-young, yet became grade 8 in less than a year—a highly promising hunter.
A talent almost too good to be wasted on civil service.
“Long time? It’s only been thirty minutes. Anyway, are you okay? Isn’t that blood on your mouth?”
“I drank a healing potion, so I can move just fine.”
“That’s a relief. We found you and Ji-ho too… but the team leader is still missing.”
Jin-sol muttered with a hint of worry in her voice.
She looked exhausted—clearly worn out from struggling in the sandstorm.
“Oh, right. It looked like Crystal Guild stopped by earlier. Did they take down the Sand Wraith before leaving?”
“No. They just came to look at the one I killed and then left.”
“Huh?”
Jin-sol stared blankly at Jin-young for a moment before bursting into a soft laugh.
“I didn’t know you had a sense of humor, Mr. Jin-young.”
“…”
Just like the Crystal Guild members, Jin-sol didn’t believe Jin-young had hunted the Sand Wraith.
It was understandable.
The mana density emanating from him was pitiful—borderline horrific.
His mana reserves barely exceeded that of an average civilian.
His physical abilities were equally abysmal.
While a hunter’s grade was partly determined by their awakened unique ability, the main factors were mana capacity and physical prowess.
Even without a particularly special ability, diligent training of mana and physique could turn someone into a high-grade hunter.
But some hunters were born with severe limitations in those areas.
Jin-young was one of them.
No matter how hard he tried, his growth in mana capacity and physical strength was excruciatingly slow.
Despite having a decent unique ability—Subspace Storage—he was treated like a shuttle for good reason.
It seemed no one could sense the psionic energy he had awakened on the continent of Renard.
“We still need to clean up the site and look for the team leader, so let’s get moving.”
“Sounds good.”
Seeing the ever-enthusiastic Jin-sol muster her energy first, Jin-young nodded.
Watching her reminded him of thirty years ago.
Having good colleagues like her had made it bearable even with trash like Kim Young-jae around.
“Crystal really took all the core parts, as expected. At least they left the hide—that’s something. Normally they’d take the entire carcass.”
Jin-sol remarked while examining the Sand Wraith’s remains.
Jin-young couldn’t exactly admit that he had taken the core materials himself.
Parts like the brain, heart, eyes, and hide of a boss-level monster like the Sand Wraith were rare items that money alone couldn’t easily buy.
The brain and heart were the most expensive, but even the hide and claws were far from cheap.
They could be used to craft high-performance armor and weapons.
“With this much hide, we could probably replace everyone in our department’s equipment, right?”
“Probably.”
Jin-sol said excitedly, and Jin-young nodded in agreement.
It was a monster he had hunted alone, so there was no real obligation to share—but he had discarded everything except the core parts because he simply didn’t need them.
He wasn’t short on money.
If this could even slightly improve the gear of the civil-service hunters, it was actually a good thing.
Soon, the major guilds would rise above the nation itself.
Laws would mean nothing to them.
They had created a world ruled by strength, where the powerless could not even raise their voices.
Jin-young had lost his younger sibling because of a major guild, and the incident was buried forever.
During an SP Guild operation to reclaim a contaminated zone, one guild member went missing and never returned.
That missing guild member was Jin-young’s sibling.
Because SP Guild—one of Korea’s top three guilds—had covered it up, a mere grade-9 hunter like Jin-young could never uncover the truth.
‘Not this time.’
The fortunate part was that he had regressed to before it all happened.
There would be plenty of time to clean out the trash.
But first, there was one thing he needed to do.
When Jin-young suddenly started walking away, Jin-sol called after him.
“Mr. Jin-young! Where are you going in the middle of cleanup?”
“The hospital.”
It was time to strengthen this frail body using the Sand Wraith’s parts.