CH 10

Something must be wrong. It’s not April Fool’s Day today.

I calmly procrastinated under the blanket and turned on the calendar app. April 22nd.

April Fool’s Day has long passed. Then, the article I saw earlier should be real.

My heart thumped like I had an arrhythmia. I thought I could run the generator with my heart.

Will it be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records if the generator runs using heartbeats? No, I’ll get an Ig Nobel Prize or something.

[An S-class Awakened (estimated) appears in the Hapjeong Station wave. Hunter of the Daybreak Guild, “At least S-class to reduce the Garuda Army to ashes”]

[Fire Dragon Natural Dream, the guild leader of Constitution Guild, “I owe a great favor to the new S-class Hunter.” …… Declaring to recruit the new S-class Hunter first.]

[Hapjeong Station B+ level wave, 188 dead and 297 injured. Gate expert Lee XX, “Problem with invalid gate measuring instrument.”]

[Daybreak Guild’s leader, Daybreak Sniper, “Daybreak Guild will take the S-class Hunter again this time.”]

[Does Korea finally become a country with ten people above S-class? The whole country is ‘excited’ by the appearance of a new S-class Hunter.]

[Paradise Guild’s leader, Polar Night, “The new S-class Hunter will open a new horizon in this world.” …… Direct recruitment.]

[Hunter expert Kim XX, “This level of firepower is not S-class, but S+-class.” A notice about the appearance of a new S+-class Hunter?]

What are these strange articles? Constitution? Daybreak? Even Paradise?

It’s only 12 PM now. I don’t know when everyone did the interview. Wait. It’s 12 PM?

I, who was lying in bed, wriggling my toes, then jumped up on the spot.

I burst open the door and went to the kitchen to see a note my mom had pasted on the refrigerator.

[Mom goes out first, so make sure to eat and study. Don’t even think about going outside.]

It smells like seaweed soup. Did she leave seaweed soup?

I unplugged the rice cooker cord set to keep warm and scooped the rice roughly.

I roughly put the soup in a soup bowl. It would be nice if I could bring out kimchi, but I was too lazy to do it. I’ll just eat it like this.

As I was eating only rice with seaweed soup, my mind seemed to return.

How can you not bring radish kimchi while eating seaweed soup? I can’t believe I passed kimchi because I’m lazy. How is this possible?

The result of my hazy mind was incomprehensibly miraculous.

I jumped up from my seat, opened the refrigerator door, and took out a container of diced radish kimchi.

I scoop it with a spoon because the dishwashing gets longer if I use new chopsticks.

I’ll get scolded if Mom finds out, but it’s okay because she’s not here now.

The sound of chewing radish kimchi has been added to the house where the sound of bathroom construction above rings.

When the hell is that toilet construction going to be done?

They said they would finish it a week ago, but they’ve been going on all week. How shameless. How can they not apologize once?

The child who used to run around every night moved away, and this time a construction villain appeared.

The annoying inter-floor noise, when the hell will it end?

I slurped seaweed soup and picked up my phone again.

I didn’t have the courage to click on the article because I feared the reaction in the comment section, so I kept reading the article’s title.

[Fire Dragon Natural Dream, the guild leader of Constitution Guild, “I owe a great favor to the new S-class Hunter.” …… Declaring to recruit the new S-class Hunter first.]

Constitution Guild is where the older sister of the auntie yesterday is the guild leader.

She said she would talk to her sister, and she really did.

For some reason, I felt like I could feel the force of Natural Dream auntie from the title of the article.

[Daybreak Guild’s leader, Daybreak Sniper, “Daybreak Guild will take the S-class Hunter again this time.”]

Daybreak is always the same.

When a high-ranking Hunter of B-class or higher appears as a newcomer, he approaches faster than anyone else and slams his stamp.

We are a special guild with only B-class or higher Hunters.

In addition, we are planning to recruit Finger Technique soon.

So you’d better come to our guild.

We prepare only the best for growth, support, special benefits, and salary.

In the past, when guilds were not large, they would pick up high-ranking Hunters from other guilds, but these days, they only pick up high-ranking rookies, as if the policy has changed.

The fact that the initial ranking is above B means that it is okay to expect growth to A or S, so it seemed like an investment plan with a view to the future.

That crazy punk is surprisingly resourceful.

[Paradise Guild’s leader, Polar Night, “The new S-class Hunter will open a new horizon in this world.” …… Direct recruitment.]

And Paradise is, um…

I hated the intense cultish energy that I could feel from the title of the article.

Paradise was a super-large guild competing with Daybreak for first place, but in fact, its foundation is a pseudo-religion.

Why, you ask? Isn’t there an article I saw on the day the gate opened?

‘Mr. Lee, the leader of a pseudo-religious group, prophesies that a new space-time will open on a certain day of a certain month, and a passage to another dimension will open. The Earth will perish with the creatures that came out of it.’

That pseudo-religion was Paradise.

At that time, it was a new pseudo-religion called the Paradise Religion that believed in the young leader Lee Yedan. It has now become an axis of Korea’s Hunter industry beyond the level of pseudo-religion.

The reason why the guild is named Paradise comes from the name of the religion, Paradise Religion.

Polar Night is the nickname of Paradise Guild’s leader, Lee Yedan, the founder of Paradise Religion.

What was the utopia of Paradise? Something like endless night? I think I saw an interview that said it was called polar night.

These people are pure lunatics at first glance, right? I thought so, too. But after a few years, my thoughts have changed.

They are a bunch of crazier nutjobs than I thought.

Paradise Guild was extremely closed as it was a guild from a pseudo-religion.

There are people who enter Paradise, but no one comes out of it.

All those who entered Paradise after receiving a proposal from Lee Yedan remained in Paradise as Lee Yedan’s faithful dogs.

According to rumors circulating in secret, they shot everyone trying to get out.

The Daybreak Guild, led by Sniper Ban Seojun, said they were a small elite guild with only A-rank or higher-ranked Hunters, but in fact, the true minority elite might be Paradise.

Because only the people selected by Lee Yedan could enter Paradise Guild, and the number was extremely small.

Lee Yedan of Paradise selected guild members based on an unknown standard.

Among them, there were B and C, not S or A, and occasionally D, E, and even F.

However, almost all of those who entered Paradise Guild became high-ranking Hunters.

In particular, Paradise’s ‘I Really Like’, who became an S-class Hunter from an F-class, was a kind of myth talked about worldwide.

When you enter Paradise, you get special abilities even if you are not a high-ranking Hunter.

A Hunter with a material steel attribute entered Paradise and gained the ability to make special equipment, while a Hunter with an emission-based light attribute entered Paradise and developed healing abilities.

So Paradise Guild was a hot topic in many ways.

A guild based on a pseudo-religion, a guild leader who knows the future, and guild members selected by the leader as if scratching a lottery.

The guild members of the Paradise Guild, who did not disclose anything about the inside of the Paradise Guild, praised him whenever the guild leader was mentioned.

It was a holy place for fanatics of all kinds. They say he truly knows the future, that they were saved by him, and that everyone must believe in Paradise as soon as possible to save their lives from the catastrophe that will happen later.

Oh, great.

I heard he looks fine. So why does he live like that?

The path of the new S-class (presumed) Hunter, who was spotted by the two fronts of Korean Hunter-gatherer, the crazy punk and the radical punk, was fixed.

Either enter Daybreak, Paradise, or the other three guilds to block the pressure of those two guilds.

A panorama of hellish life unfolded before my eyes.

I thought about how to escape hell while chewing radish kimchi militantly.

I had the confidence to do 1:100 with monsters, but I didn’t have the confidence to do 1:100 with them.

After drinking all the soup, a steel spoon was placed in an empty bowl.

I put the bowl and cutlery in the sink and the box of radish kimchi in the refrigerator.

Just in time, a ding sound rang from the cell phone.

▶ Talk with Mom. Come to the cafe.

Mom… Why did you use spaces?

Mom… Why did you put a period?

Why…?

I gulped at the ominousness that swept behind me. It felt like something was really, fXcking wrong.

[T/N: So I’m just guessing this, but. 

The ‘sae-chin-nom 새친놈 (crazy punk)’ here refers to Daybreak’s leader. The word itself doesn’t literally mean crazy punk. It is a wordplay of the word ‘sae 새 (deep, dark, intense)’ in ‘sae-baek 새벽 (daybreak)’ and ‘mi-chin-nom 미친놈 (crazy guy/screwball)’. 

Whereas Paradise’s leader is referred as ‘guk-chin-nom 극친놈 (radical punk)’, which comes from the word ‘guk극 (extreme, radical, pole) in ‘guk-ya 극야 (polar night)’ and ‘mi-chin-nom 미친놈 (crazy guy/screwball)’.

Both are the combination of the first character of their nickname and the word ‘crazy guy’]