The First Hunter

Chapter 17. This is My Territory, Part III

Translator: Khan

Editor: RED

7.

‘Fuck, damn it…’

“Goddamn it.”

A man was walking in the hallway of a dark five-story building quietly, as there was no light on. He was a filthy man. He didn’t know when he had last washed, and skin frozen and torn in cold weather made the man’s look even worse.

“It’s really fucked.”

His name was Kim Hyun-seok. He was twenty-six years old this year, and up until a few months ago, he was a man with a handsome face and a slim figure. In addition, he was full of heart-warming expectations for a new world as he got ready for a trip to Europe in 2017.

It was December 31, 2016, when his everything changed. A new world had begun.

‘Why the hell did this happen?’

However, it was not the new world Kim Hyun-seok was waiting for. Suddenly, a monster appeared and the world became hell. The monsters that appeared made food of humans and enjoyed eating them alive more than anything else.

The survivors were also the same. Looting, rape, arson… There are even some lunatics eating human flesh.

He thought that there would be nothing more like hell than this. But that idea was shattered with the appearance of a furry crocodile.

‘The world is over.’

The giant furry crocodiles, not one, not dozens, but hundreds of eerie crocodiles began to move around like a tsunami, sweeping through everything.

Even in the middle of them was a larger crocodile than the two buses combined. A ridiculous monster with yellow eyes spewing huge flames with its mouth was there!

‘Damn it…’

Kim Hyun-seok, who had seen the monster, shuddered. He also recalled that he had pissed his pants when he had seen the monster.

‘It’s over now. The world is over.’

In his trembling, an unspeakable wave of despair swept over himself, and in his despair, Kim Hyun-seok was overtaken with the desire to escape this hell.

‘If I lived like this…’

He thought he would like to face a peaceful death that no one would know about, somewhere in this building.

So Kim Hyun-seok started anguishing over the terrible choice.

‘Huh?’

It was a sense of smell that had been made extremely sensitive by hunger for days that stopped his agony, and the soft scent tickled his sensitive nose.

‘Coffee?’

The smell was coffee. It was a smell he knew well, and something that could not be found anywhere after the monster appeared.

‘Why coffee?’

Unknowingly, Kim Hyun-seok headed for the place the odor was coming from. His footsteps stopped at an office which used to be a calligraphy institute before the monster appeared.

A man was enjoying a coffee under the translucent window in the office, framed in the sunshine that penetrated the window.

It was a very peaceful appearance, totally disparate. For Kim Hyun-seok, peace was no longer part of the world.

When Kim Hyun-seok saw this scene, he froze. His brain stopped working in this ridiculous situation.

The screaming of his stomach woke him up.

For a few days, the only thing he had eaten was a lump of snow, and the coffee flavor roused his appetite.

“Huck!”

Kim Hyun-seok was most surprised by the loud noise, while the man looked at Kim Hyun-seok in a coolly.

“Hey, hey…” At this moment, the only words that came to mind in Kim Hyun Suk were, “Do you have anything to eat?”

There was no such thing as a sense of shame.

It had been such a long time ago since he had a proper meal. What he could call food among the things he has recently eaten was a triangle Kimbab which had been trampled by someone at a convenience store, where everything else had already been stolen five days ago.

“Please… please.”

The man looked at him at such a desperate request. The cold eyes of the man met Kim Hyun-seok’s eyes. At that moment, Kim Hyun-seok could see that the man in front of him was a monster that was not lacking compared to the most terrible monster he had ever faced.

‘Is he a monster? A monster that looks like a person?’

“Are you a survivor?”

“Yes?”

“Where do you live?”

“Oh, well…” At the sudden question, Kim Hyun-seok came up with the answer he had to. “Gwangmyeong City! I live in Gwangmyeong City, my name is Kim Hyun-seok, and I am twenty-five… no, twenty-six.”

The man took a chocolate bar out of the inner pocket of his jacket. Kim Hyun-seok’s eyes widened.

“This is the information fee. I will give you one more if you tell me what happened in Gwangmyeong City, and everything you’ve seen and heard.”

8.

“It is about three meters long, and its exterior appearance is like a crocodile, but it has fur like a wolf instead of armor-like leather, and it lives in groups like wolves.”

A Wolf-crocodile…

Kim Tae-hoon, who finished explaining about the newly appeared monster, looked up at the crowd.

Kim Soo-ji, Yang Jung-hwan, Lee Soo-young, and Jang Sung-hoon, four people looked at their smartphones and had a stiff expression on their faces.

“And this is the one in the center.”

Four people looked at the photo file that had been transferred to their smartphones. In the picture was a Wolf-crocodile that was too big to be compared to a normal Wolf-crocodile.

Other pictures even showed him breathing out the fire. It was the leader of the Wolf-crocodiles.

“There is a Mutant Wolf-crocodile between the leader and the subordinates that is an intermediate boss. It is not externally distinguishable, but it has orange eyes. You should look at the color of their eyes when you’re dealing with them. Red and orange grades are different levels.”

The existence of a Mutant Wolf-crocodile was overshadowed in front of the existence of a flame-spewing crocodile

“These three kinds of monsters, a total of over four hundred, are moving toward Bucheon.”

At the end of the story, Kim Tae-hoon looked at the crowd. No one had spoken to Kim Tae-hoon, or taken their eyes off their smartphones.

‘A very different type from the Black Snake we dealt with last time…’

‘The number of the group is over four hundred, we almost died just dealing with a crazy Black Snake…’

‘If it comes into Bucheon, there will be some kind of damage.’

‘If four hundred monsters eat half a human being a day, twenty thousand people will be prey in ten days. Bucheon was lucky. Bucheon was very lucky. The city of Gwangmyeong has only a small population left.’

They knew that yellow-grade monsters were moving towards Bucheon City, so Kim Tae-hoon moved in person to scout. But they didn’t know that the yellow-grade monster was not a single individual like a Black Snake, but a leader who led a huge crowd.

The situation was quite different from the one for the Black Snake. That was why they couldn’t speak. They couldn’t talk about it because they were looking for a new solution to deal with the new situation.

“Do you have any questions or comments?” Kim Tae-hoon urged them. The effect was certain. To these people, his words meant more than anyone else.

The first one to spit out was Kim Soo-ji. “In order to deal with a large number of monsters, there is the only firepower, in the end.”

“What is the current state of our firepower?”

“We are still getting ammunition from the Ammunition Company. We have ample ammunition, but the problem is we don’t have enough guns.”

Kim Tae-hoon turned his attention to Lee Soo-young. It was her job to get guns and other weapons from the 17th Division.

“We’re working on a route.”

But now she had few weapons in the subordinate units of the 17th Division.

“You know that it’s a good distance, and it cannot be done in a short period of time, as we have to go over a mountain.”

There were many reasons. The biggest one was the distance. It was quite a distance, and they had to cross a mountain in between.

She would like to bring an armored car to carry the weapons, but the condition of the road did not allow it. She was trying to secure a route to supply and receive weapons, cleaning up the vehicles on the road and removing the surrounding monsters. It was a task that would take time.

“Of course, I know this is an excuse, and if you give me an order, I’ll take risks and get things done quickly.”

But the situation had changed, and she was willing to do it if she had to do it.

The pack of Wolf-crocodiles approaching now was not monsters that could be killed without suffering damage.

“A week. For a week, I will stop the Wolf-crocodiles from approaching, so you’ll have to get as many weapons and ammunition as you can.”

“Boss!” Jang Sung-hoon asked the cross question directly. “How will you make a week? By the speed of their movements, they will be in Bucheon City as early as two days, and on the third day, they will be in Bucheon City Hall.”

It was not easy for anyone to see a group of four hundred Wolf-crocodiles moving at a rapid pace, eating monsters or humans like bulldozers.

If there was a way, it would be fantastic for everyone.

“I will check them out alone.”

“Yes?”

“What?”

“What the hell is that…”

Everyone made a foolish expression at Kim Tae-hoon’s answer.

“Boss alone?” Jang Sung-hoon asked the question, with the narrowed eyes. “Is it possible?”

Kim Tae-hoon nodded lightly instead of answering.

The crowd looked dumb again.

“Major, no matter who you are, you can’t stop a group of four hundred monsters including the yellow-grade one…”

“The lieutenant is right. It is impossible for the boss to do that…”

Kim Soo-ji and Jang Sung-hoon changed their complexion and spoke to stop Kim Tae-hoon somehow.

If this decision came from Kim Tae-hoon’s brave spirit and self-sufficiency, the result would be terrible. However, Kim Tae-hoon ‘s decision was never something that rose from a brave spirit and self-sufficiency.

“The goal of guerrilla warfare, with a few troops in operation, is to kill a large number of people.”

It was a decision made by cool judgment. There was no choice but to judge it calmly

“That’s my specialty.” That was what Kim Tae-hoon had done. “There’s no reason for me to get involved in the street battles.”

Moreover, a city was a world that man made for man, no matter what they say. It meant it was not a world that they made for monsters.

“Do you have any further opinions?”

Everyone was silent in the face of Kim Tae-hoon’s confidence.

9.

A crocodile slid its huge head into the building’s door. The sight of it putting its head in was bizarre. It was about three meters long and had the same shape as a crocodile, but all over it was not armor-like leather, but fur-covered leather reminiscent of a wolf.

Its legs were much longer than a crocodile, making it possible to run faster and more stealthily than a crocodile.. The Wolf-crocodile’s steps into the building were so quiet that its huge body was meaningless.

Slurp!

Rather, the sound of a tongue as long as an anteater, coming out of the snout, was louder. It licked the red blood on the floor, and its red eyes began to glow because the blood was still warm. The heat in the cold winter meant that the owner of the blood had just spilled blood.

Slurp!

As soon as it thought about it, the Wolf-crocodile began to move along the blood trail without any hesitation, just as Hansel and Gretel in fairy tales followed breadcrumbs.

The thing waiting for the Wolf-crocodile was not bleeding prey, but a man holding a silver thermos with blood dripping out of it.

Shiyik! Shiyik!

The Wolf-crocodile flicked its tongue at the man. It was excited to see prey alive after a long time.

That was its last action.

Shiyik!

With a gruesome sound, the Wolf-crocodile’s head rolled on the floor, still sticking out its tongue.

Tsreung!

The Sword that cut the head off the Wolf-crocodile in a single stroke went back into the sheath on the back of Kim Tae-hoon. At the same time, he filled the thermos with the blood pouring from the body of the Wolf-crocodile.

The hot blood filled the thermos. Kim Tae-hoon, closed its lid, cut through the Wolf-crocodile’s stomach, ripped the monster stone from its heart and put it in his mouth.

The last act of the hunt was to renew the number of Wolf-crocodiles he had killed today.

‘This is the eleventh.’

Eleven, the moment he remembered the number, a memory from two years ago came to mind.

Two years ago, Kim Tae-hoon was in Syria. When ISIS appeared in the land of Syria, which was ravaged by civil war, countries around the world dispatched special forces to counter it. Kim Tae-hoon and his men were the same. They were sent to Syria after being disguised as mercenaries under orders.

Their instructions were as follows: kill as many IS agents as possible in the city.

Their purpose was to keep the IS agents from escaping the city in fear after the death of their colleagues, and it was to earn the time needed to perform operations elsewhere.

Kim Tae-hoon completed the order surprisingly well. In other words, he killed so many people that they would call Kim Tae-hoon a monster, despite not even knowing his name.

‘Not much different from then.’

What Kim Tae-hoon did now was not much different from what he had done in Syria two years ago, either. He was removing the Wolf-crocodiles outside the pack to hunt for food.

The method worked well enough.

A group of simple monsters would have ignored it. However, the group of Wolf-crocodiles was not just a pack but had a hierarchy.

In addition, the reason why the group of Wolf-crocodiles moved was that they were forced to move by the green-grade monster. They had no choice but to be sensitive to changes around them, and be careful.

In fact, the number of Wolf-crocodiles searching increased, and the speed they were traveling slowed down. It was evident that they were alert. But they were literally alert, not in fear.

Therefore, it was necessary for him to instill that fear in order to slow their feet, just like he had done against ISIS two years ago in Syria.

In the end, Kim Tae-hoon would tell the group of Wolf-crocodiles and its leader, even though they could not speak, “This is my territory.”