The First Hunter

Chapter 39. An Eight-tailed Fox, Part III

Translator: Khan

Editor: RED

7.

Nature is always cold. Successful hunting does not guarantee a day when it is fully stuffed. Rather, if something succeeds in hunting, they have to fight to protect their game from others. So, one of the most dangerous things in the world is to touch a beast that is feeding itself on the prey after the hunt.

‘It is war now.’

Kim Tae-hoon knew the fact better than anyone else. It was a completely different story to have a successful hunt for the Eight-tailed Fox, and to get the game that he killed. The fact was that when he succeeded in his hunt, everything around him would jump to take his prey.

Therefore, he needed to show his power. The man who hunted the Eight-tailed Fox now was not just a lone eagle who took a chance, but a more brutal, cruel, and terrifying beast than the Fox. The roar informing everyone was the Ice Blaster!

The ice thorn armor wrapped around Kim Tae-hoon’s body was shattered with the explosion of Anger Soaring, and it scattered all over with a thunderous explosion.

The power was enormous. Just being exposed to the power was enough to wound even a blue-grade monster.

The first group that was exposed to the attack by Kim were the Samurai who had approached near the Eight-tailed Fox for hunting. There was no way to stoop the ice thorn fragments that were suddenly shooting at them, after they had already suffered a lot of injuries and damage due to the battle with it.

“Aaaaaaargh!”

“Get out of here!”

All they could do was to choose to run away with all their might at this urgent moment. Running away was the only possibility, but no one succeeded.

‘I will kill all of the Samurai.’ Kim had no intentions of letting them live. That reason was enough.

Swish! Their fellow’s Swords moved toward the fleeing Samurai without showing any mercy. The result after that was obvious.

Pook! The flying katanas penetrated through the armor they were wearing and they became dead bodies crumpled around the blades. The Swords that had been prepared to kill the Eight-tailed Fox became daggers to pierce their armor.

In the meantime, an attempt was made to save the Samurai from a long distance and to take the game from Kim.

“Charge!”

“Charge!”

Kim turned his head toward those who were approaching from a long distance. It was a long way. It was hard to measure the distance without the help of a telescope if there was a moving object at a long distance, but he was able to grasp the movements of those who came toward him clearly.

He saw a Samurai approaching with a lowered posture and a firm determination to kill him somehow in this situation.

Kim painted a picture in the scene that looked like that.

‘It’s possible now, with the help of Hahoetal.’

He painted a picture that a featherless arrow on his waist flew across the long distance and pierced the target’s brow at once.

Whizz!

The arrow moved to make the picture its master painted in front of it real.

Pook! The arrow, flying quickly, sleekly, and in a straight line, penetrated the Samurai’s brow at once.

Kim turned his head and saw the men around the Samurai. They were not only the Samurai, but Awakeners who were well armed.

Thunk! And now they became dead bodies with a hole in their heads. They couldn’t believe their eyes.

“Run, run away!”

“The curse! The curse has come down!”

Those, who experienced it in close proximity, however, denied reality regardless of their belief. It was natural to express the sudden death of a colleague as a curse.

On the other hand, Kim did not feel much inspiration at this fact. ‘Not bad, but not efficient.’ He realized that this was not a very wise way to solve this situation. In addition, he did not forget that what he should do now was not just murder, but make war to protect his prey. He swelled his chest largely.

“Fuhuhu!” He began to breathe out a huge fire through his mouth. The fire started to burn rapidly and quickly with the surrounding grass and plants as fuel.

That was the signal.

“It’s the master’s signal!” It was a signal to Kim’s men who were waiting in the distance.

“Start shooting!”

“Start shooting!”

Bang! Shortly after Kim set the fire, gunfire began to spread on the stage, which was already a mess.

“It’s an enemy attack!” Despair began to spread in the eyes of those who had been staring at Kim.

“Not an enemy!”

There were two main ways to keep his game: Showing the power of the owner of the game, and showing the owner of the game was a group rather than alone. At this point, it was only right to back down.

In fact, no one was approaching near the Eight-tailed Fox.

“The Kusanagi! Get the Kusanagi anyway!”

“Take your life and retrieve it!”

Instead, there were those who rushed toward the Kusanagi that Musashi had dropped as he had flown away

Of course, Kim did not intend to allow it. ‘I will never give them anything on the wish list.’

Kim started running like an angry beast toward the Kusanagi.

8.

‘What the hell happened?’

Matsumoto Khan, the head of the Imperial Hunting Unit, was negative from beginning to end about this Eight-tailed Fox hunting.

There were more than a hundred tanks sacrificed immediately, and dozens of Samurai, regardless of the victory or defeat of the battle, were forced to receive notices of the required sacrifices.

Moreover, Kyushu was not the only province which the Imperial Hunting Unit managed. Still, the Japanese archipelago was full of monsters, and the Imperial Hunting Unit had to deal with all of them.

In such a situation, concentrating power for hunting the Eight-tailed Fox meant that there would be a power vacuum elsewhere. There was no chance that the monsters would leave the power vacuum alone, and if they added the damage that would occur that way, the Eight-tailed Fox hunt demanded so much in return…

Therefore, the hunting of the Eight-tailed Fox had to be successful. Not just a success, but it needed success to become a legend of the history of the Japanese Empire in the future.

So, when Musashi cut off the head of the Eight-tailed Fox by using the Kusanagi, Matsumoto Kanyo thought that this hunting barely made ends meet right now, rather than feeling joy. He thought it was more natural and proper than that it was great. He thought about like that…

‘Who the hell is he?’

Everything fell apart. Of course, what should be done was now shattered. The hard-built tower was now being blown away as dust as it collapsed.

“Captain Matsumoto, orders!…”

The worst was that Matsumoto Kanyo, who had the highest command in this situation, was himself. It was a hunt. It was strange that someone other than him, the leader of the Imperial Hunting Unit, gave orders in a monster hunt.

In the situation that he was not able to confirm even the life and death of Musashi after the attack by the decapitated Eight-tailed Fox, it was impossible for someone other than Matsumoto Kanyo to make a decision.

“The order… the Eight-tailed Fox right now…” Matsumoto Kanyo, of course, tried to order them to secure the Eight-tailed Fox at the urging of a subordinate.

He could not even imagine such a thing as not securing the dead body of the Eight-tailed Fox, or even the crystal, as they had suffered so much damage!

Regardless of the damage, it had to be secured, as much as the crystal of the Eight-tailed Fox.

‘Now, wait.’ But at that moment Matsumoto Kanyo reconsidered the judgment he was about to spit, in his mind.

‘Is that really true? No matter what damage?’

‘How much damage do we have to take to regain the crystal of the Eight-tailed Fox at this moment? And can we really get what we want by taking that damage? The obvious thing is that we can’t do what we want at any cost, because if it were a real world, it wouldn’t have happened now.’

“Not one enemy. We’re being shot at from everywhere. We can’t locate them.”

“They’re obviously soldiers, and there’s been bomb attacks all over the place, as well as booby traps.”

“There are fires everywhere, and the fires are getting stronger. The enemy prepared the fire attack.”

“We have the sign of monsters from other regions who are coming here!”

In front of the new information, Matsumoto Kanyo rolled his head.

Then someone exclaimed, “The man who killed the Eight-tailed Fox is Kim Tae-hoon, the monster of Joseon, Kim Tae-hoon!”

The moment he heard it, Matsumoto Kanyo turned his head and looked at the man who spoke. He was an Iga ninja in a black ninja suit. Originally, he was acting with his identity hidden, and now he was raising his voice in front of everyone. Even the Iga ninja was embarrassed and frightened. It made Matsumoto Kanyo’s choice possible. He gave the order.

“Take all the relics we can secure and retreat to Kitakyushu City, and block all the ways from Kyushu to the mainland! Land route, and sea route, of course! And contact Hiroshima Port! All naval forces have to block Kyushu! Don’t let anything get out of Kyushu!”

9.

‘There is a man who knows how to make bold decisions on the Japanese side.’

Kim Tae-hoon knew war better than anyone else.

‘I know better than anyone that it is the commander who moves the flow of war. ‘A commander of that kind never decides on the impulse of all or nothing.’

He knew of course what a bold, decisive commander would do.

‘There is no all-in in this situation.’ Kim was confident because of this.

‘In this confusion, the Japanese commander will never fight with all-in. Naturally, the forces that fill the surroundings will begin to retreat like the ebb tide.’

And his predictions came true. The sounds heard by Kim began to disappear gradually. He knew that it was not just a retreat, but an operational retreat.

‘Now they’re going to block Kyushu.’

‘Kyushu is a large island. If the land route and sea route are blocked, they cannot leave. In other words, from now on, Japan’s power is concentrated on the outskirts of Kyushu.’

‘Now I can take a break.’ So Kim was able to take short rest for the first time and was able to inspect the game that he had succeeded in keeping for the first time: the dead body of the Eight-tailed Fox. Its head was cut off, laying on the ground, and the Kusanagi was in his hand.

10.

==[The Crystal of the Eight-tailed Fox]

– Telekinesis can reach the transcendental rank when ingested.

– The power of the Eight-tailed Fox, Telekinetic Beads, will be acquired when ingested.]==

A dark night.

Kim Tae-hoon was staying up at night, with a cup of coffee for company.

“Hoo.”

Kim’s whole body was filled with a sense of lassitude. He could not feel his Energy, his Strength, his Mana. It was the price that he had paid for using the amazing power of Hahoetal. It was a dangerous time.

Now, in a situation where Japan was the enemy, it was eerier than being a normal human being and entering a lion cage with his naked body. But Kim did not feel particularly afraid of it. It was a usual routine for him. At this moment, it was not a fear of such a thing, but a choice that was tormenting him.

‘The rewards were big.’

Today, Kim had really gotten so much. The biggest prizes were the crystal of the Eight-tailed Fox and the Kusanagi. He had gotten the indescribable treasure. He had secured had many other relics. The number of relics that he had taken from the dead Samurai was twenty-seven!

Of course, there were things he had not gotten. He had not acquired the Golden Altar of the Konjikido; it was too much larger than the others. It was possible to steal the Golden Altar, but it was virtually impossible to escape after stealing it. He felt sorry at the fact.

But now Kim’s anguish was not agony for his sorrow. The starting point of agony was the dark blue monster stone now grasped in his hands.

‘If I eat a dark blue monster stone, I will definitely be cursed.’

Kim died because of the dragon’s curse, not once, but twice. He eventually repeated the death he had thought would not be repeated.

‘If I eat the crystal of the Eight-tailed Fox, I’ll surely be cursed.’

From that point of view, it was also likely for him to be cursed if he ate this crystal.

In the case of the curse of the dragon, the curse was not just a stigma caused by the fact that the monster stone was eaten.

‘It’s a price for transcendental power, rather than a clear curse.’

The curse was a kind of side effect of transcendental power, gaining its power, and overusing it.

‘It would be strange to use such a crazy power without any cost.’

And it was a very reasonable side effect.

‘No matter how an Awakener is chosen, there is a limit; there is always a limit to everything, and among them, strong power always comes with danger. When mankind transcended the speed of sound with repeated technological developments, the air itself becomes a wall in the end. Like that, if someone gets the transcendental power beyond the superhuman level, the power itself will become a wall in the end.’

Of course, even Kim was afraid of it, he did not intend not to eat the crystal of the Eight-tailed Fox.

Kim was a man who wanted to set a new record, by doping if necessary. What he wanted was to run faster than anyone else to survive, not Olympic medals. Even now, the resolution did not change at all.

‘I’m not afraid to eat it.’

‘In an age already full of enemies, if I eat the crystal of the Eight-tailed Fox, I will die in the distant future, but if I do not eat it, I may die right away. No, if I had an intention not to eat it in the first place, I would not even have had to worry about it. I have to eat it, so I have to worry.’

‘I can’t die of a curse again, in the end.’

‘The moment I eat it, I will be sentenced to a deadline.’

‘The curse of the dragon was so, but it is not so good to die of a curse, for the limits of what can be obtained by that death are clear. Above all, the death that can be seen as Napoleon’s Golden Glass was very fragmentary.’

If Kim died again with the curse of the dragon or the curse of the Eight-tailed Fox, the time of death will not change much, and the reason for his death or the surrounding situation would not change much.

‘The fact that the surrounding situation does not change means that the possibility of acquiring new information from the surroundings is lowered. In other words, the golden opportunity, Napoleon’s Golden Glass, will be meaninglessly blown away.’

‘The next Napoleon’s Golden Glass must be drunk by someone who can see the age after I die.’

That’s why he needed someone who could drink Napoleon’s Golden Glass on behalf of Kim Tae-hoon, and who would look after Kim’s death.

That was the reason for the trouble.

It would be irresponsible to leave Kim’s fate to someone else, in the end. Could Kim Tae-hoon do that? And was there anyone who would be willing to bear that fate on behalf of him?

In the agony, there was one face which came up in the mind of Kim.

“Hoo.” Kim drank his coffee with a long sigh. After a while, he swallowed his coffee and put the crystal of the Eight-tailed Fox in his mouth.

Gulp! A small sound rang out in the dark night.