Hunter Academy’s Battle God

Chapter 45

A cool, air-conditioned café…

EunAh sucked in a gulp of her iced americano as she enjoyed the pleasant breeze hitting her face.

“Ahh~ this is the stuff.”

EunAh’s expression was one of happiness as she drank her beverage. YuSung watched her in fascination.

“Really? It’s too bitter for me.”

“Hah, brat. If you become an adult like me, you’ll enjoy bitter flavors like this.”

EunAh kept sipping her americano triumphantly. On the other hand, YuSung was drinking a tooth-rotting caramel macchiato with whipped cream on top.

‘It’s so sweet.’

YuSung really enjoyed the drink that EunAh had ordered for him.

“I like this.”

EunAh snorted. She leaned her chin against her arm and then glanced towards the boy.

“By the way, how is this the first time you’ve ever been at a café at your age?”

“Hm, well, I had been living on Martial Spirits’ Mountain since I was five years old, after all.”

“F-five years old? You were living there until just recently?”

The straw fell out of EunAh’s mouth as it hung open from her shock. If he was seventeen currently, and he had been on the mountain since he was five, then he had spent 12 years of his life there. It was unfathomable to her.

“What… no way.”

Even if he was the Fist King’s disciple…

Surely he must have left the mountain every in a while, she thought. EunAh was taken quite off guard by his declaration.

“If you were on the mountain this enti~re time, then what about your family? Did you not see them at all?”

It was a question born from her skepticism. YuSung gave her a calm answer.

“I’ve never left Martial Spirits’ Mountain all that time. My only family is Master.”

A moment of silence.

That was the first time that EunAh had heard that YuSung was an orphan. Up to that point, she had only known that the Fist King had raised him.

“Oh? Th-that so, huh? Now that you mention it, the mountains aren’t too bad, really. For starters, um… the air is clean?”

EunAh tried to respond casually, but it was rather obvious that she was nervous.

Sippp.

The only sound was from EunAh’s straw as it sucked in nothing but air. An awkward atmosphere began to permeate the café.

“I’m fine,” replied YuSung. 

EunAh finally opened her lips at his nonchalant reply. She began to engage him carefully.

“…Hey, look.”

Her fingers danced along the tabletop, betraying her nervous energy. EunAh looked outside the window and continued to talk in the most neutral tone she could muster.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend it’s all fine.”

Kim JunHyuk had fallen into a coma two years ago.

Her voice lowered as she recalled the memory that had sprung up out of nowhere.

“That is to say… I’m sorry… For bringing the topic up in the first place.”

EunAh timidly apologized to her extracurricular partner, fiddling with her hair. YuSung was the first person in the Academy who had ever gotten an apology from her that was so sincere.

‘She’s surprisingly delicate.’

YuSung found that new side of EunAh fascinating. Even so, he couldn’t let her go and blame herself over it.

“No, it really is fine. Hm…they’re still alive, for starters,” he replied, laughing.

EunAh creased her forehead.

“Huh? You said you didn’t have any earlier!”

YuSung slowly shook his head.

“They’re all perfectly fine. It’s just that we aren’t family anymore.”

“So you mean…”

It seemed like she had just realized what sort of situation YuSung was in.

“My household disowned me.”

EunAh didn’t say anything to his composed reply. He had told her that he had entered the Martial Spirits’ Mountain when he was five years old. The logistics were incomprehensible to her.

“That’s… really weird. Just what sort of crazy mistake did you make that would make them abandon a five-year old?”

At that moment, they were the only two customers in the café. EunAh’s questions were proposed to YuSung carefully, but it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t particularly feel a need to hide his past.

‘It’s probably better to talk about a lot of things with EunAh if I want to be friends with her.’

While the act of venting your innermost thoughts didn’t have any direct or physical benefits, it was meaningful in its own right.

“My household didn’t want a successor with an F-rank Trait.”

“…So they threw you away, huh.”

EunAh sighed, then looked directly into YuSung’s eyes. If a family wanted to be considered one of the top hunter families in a country like South Korea, which was known for being a hunter stronghold, the strength of its successor was key.

‘Even so…’

The idea that they had abandoned a child for that reason left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“You said household, right? Does that mean… you’re from a famous clan?”

A famous clan of hunters that used the last name ‘Shin’. In Korea, there was only one household that came to mind for EunAh.

“No way… the Shin-Oh family?”

YuSung nodded his head. EunAh bit her straw and began to think.

‘I just threw that out there… to think he was actually from there.’

The Shin-Oh family was acknowledged by Kim JuHyuk, her grandfather and the president of the Shinsung group. If a large guild began a raid in the Tower or a dungeon, there was always a member of the Shin-Oh family in the mix.

‘The Fist King’s disciple and born from the Shin-Oh clan… that’s pretty sick, honestly.’

EunAh suddenly opened her mouth, remembering something.

“Hey, but the Shin-Oh family…there’s a second-year student from there!”

Shin HaYoon.

—First in the student rankings among the second years.

—Next term’s student council president.

And the sole student in Gaon who had hunted a rank 5 boss monster.

EunAh’s train of thought had reached Shin HaYoon—a person even she couldn’t ignore.

“Yep. It’s not like I remember her face all that much anymore, though.”

YuSung nodded once more as if it was no big deal. EunAh, on the other hand, looked furious.

“So they threw you away and raised Shin HaYoon instead, huh? …Because her Trait is S-rank?”

Crumple–

The paper cup crumpled up in her hands as she put force into her grip without thinking. EunAh leaned her chin lazily on her arm and stared at YuSUng.

“You really are a saint. How did you just endure all of that? If it was me, I would’ve…”

“I’m fine. It was thanks to them that I could meet Master, after all.”

Those were his true feelings.

Compared to the Shin-Oh family, where meritocracy triumphed over all, his master, the Fist King, felt more like family to him than they ever had.

Sippp.

‘Time to go.’

YuSung placed his finished cup on the table to break the awkward atmosphere. EunAh called out ot him.

“Hey.”

Shuffle.

A black credit card was lodged between her fingers. She extended her hand towards YuSung.

“I’m… going to buy another drink.”

Her expression seemed displeased, somehow.

“What’s the issue? You told me you’ve never been to a café before since you were stuck in the mountains.”

“But still…”

YuSung laughed shakily at her insistence. EunAh, embarrassed, kept waving the card in his direction with a pissed-off expression on her face.

“Come on! The café sells a bunch of things, like cake. Go ahead and order whatever you want.”

YuSung took the card at her continued pressuring.

‘…Is this how she shows she cares?’

The way EunAh showed her emotions seemed immature to him, but it wasn’t like he disliked that aspect of it. He smiled.

“Okay, sounds good.”

The sole granddaughter of a chaebol family, Kim EunAh, and an orphan, Shin YuSung. The relationship between the two people, with seemingly no overlap with each other, grew closer at that moment.

* * *

* * *

The seventh floor of Metro City Hospital…

It was closed off to regular people, a forbidden area to them. But the reality was different.

“Just what kind of villain is going to visit a hospital, anyways? We’ve been guarding this place for two years already…”

The city guard.

The man in his late twenties was an elite bodyguard who worked for the city guard. His job, however, was solely to be a part of the shift that guarded the hospital room on the 7th floor.

“Stop whining. The pay is good and there’s no danger. You think jobs like this fall out of trees?”

The guard next to him scolded him. The man who started the conversation in the first place let out a large sigh in response.

“Hah, to be honest, I do really like that the job isn’t dangerous at all. But… it’s really boring.”

“Fair…”

“And what sort of insane villain would target a large city like Metro City, anyways? Even this hospital is firmly guarded.”

The guard checked the time with his Pocket. Three hours were left of his shift. There was not another living creature in sight, not even an ant.

“Didn’t you see the faces of the nurses coming up here? They leave the 7th floor with all the energy drained out of their bodies.” 

“Haha, I bet. The entrance process into the floor takes five minutes in and of itself, after all.”

While the two men were gossiping with each other, a helmet appeared from behind them and inserted itself between their heads.

“Ahahah~ right, right! It’s really awful here, like you said! All of my energy gets drained whenever I come here!”

An energetic voice, riddled with static, came from the helmet. The guards belatedly reached for their hips with their hands, but their weapons were missing.

“Shit, when did she take them!” they yelled, not intimidating in the slightest.

The villain wearing the helmet was, in fact, was showing off the items in both of her hands.

“Oh my, are you oppas looking for this, perhaps~? Ahaha!”

TL/N: Oppa is a title used by women to refer casually to men who are older than them. It's also the title used by women to refer to their older brothers. You also see women use oppa for their boyfriends a lot in Korean dramas.

The items in her hands were the security guards’ guns.

“You little!”

Green emotes spawned on the villain’s helmet as if to mock them.

“What, you’re gonna fight me without any weapons? You oppas are so brave~”

[^o^ LOL]

The villain laughed, one hand covering the area where her mouth was supposed to be, then she aimed the guns at the two guards.

“Ah, now that I think about it, I’m feeling a little hurt by this~. All I did was play a little prank, but you try and bring these scary weapons out in response? Isn’t that a bit much?”

The two stopped moving as she pointed their guns back at them. Even if they were members of the city guard, they weren’t hunters, only normal people. There was no way they could shrug off a bullet wound.

“How did you bypass the security system…”

The security guard in his twenties couldn’t believe what was happening. How did the villain in front of his eyes approach them without setting off any alarms?

The woman with the helmet laughed crookedly at the man’s question.

“Curious? Ugh~ the best way I could handle this is to just say my methods are a secret, then escape in a cool fashion or whatever… But that doesn’t really fit my style, hehe. I guess you could say that the jerk next to you was an informant.”

She began prattling on while typing something into a hologram screen that had appeared in the air.

“I know I don’t look like it, but I’m the smart type, so stuff like this is my specialty. Isn’t it fascinating?”

There was no exaggeration in her words. With a few quick movements of her hand, all of the security systems on the 7th floor were deactivated.

Vween! Click! Click! Click!

All of the doors that had been closed shut slid open, and the lights in the hallway shut off. Only then did the security guards figure out the identity of the woman in the helmet.

“It-it’s Cheat…”

“No way… the Rebellion’s hacker!”

An infamous villain group known as the Rebellion.

Cheat was a hacker who had a bounty put on her by China for leaking confidential secrets.

“No way, am I that popular already? That’s a problem, ahaha! This is only the beginning of my exploits!”

“Get her!”

Cheat was laughing her ass off. One of the guards ran towards her, trying to throw his body on top of her.

Flash! Sss!

But her body turned into light, then disappeared. She reappeared next to the other guard, giggling all the while.

Flash!

“Aha. I’m here~”

‘Blink’.

It was a form of teleportation Skill. The guards took out weapons form their Pockets and began to wave them around, but it was already too late. By that point, Cheat’s body was completely flickering.

Flash!

“Slowww.”

Flash!

“Oh, that was a little dangerous.”

That situation wasn’t a fight to her but a source of amusement. As the men approached her, she used Blink once again to attack them from behind.

Thwap!

“Keuk!”

“Argh!”

The guards fell down onto the ground without another peep from their mouths as she struck their neck from behind, hands formed into a blade shape. All that remained was the defenseless Kim JunHyun, who was laid down in the hospital room.

Step step.

The door was wide open. Cheat languidly stepped into the room. Even cutting-edge technology was child’s play to her hacking skills. It would have probably been better off if the defense system consisted of nothing but a steel door—no electronics, no anything.

Cheat looked around the place and began to mumble to herself.

“Damn, the world really is unfair. Back when I was in Guangzhou~ oh wait, Claw, you’re listening, right?”

She was just as chatty as she had been before, but her talking speed seemed to have gone down, perhaps due to her being lost in thought.

“No response, huh. You’re listening in on me, right? I’m talking right now.”

She kept asking for the other person. Soon after, a voice rang out from the Pocket in her suit.

–Have you obtained the cycle stone yet?

Cheat looked down at Kim JunHyun and giggled in lieu of a reply.

“Later. Just listen to me for a sec.”

She reached out towards the machine next to the comatose man. A small jewel labeled as the cycle stone was embedded into the massive device.

“When I was little, I had to worry about where I would sleep, what I would eat that day, that sort of thing, you know? But I can use the money they spend for one night’s stay in this hospital room to eat dim sum at Tianhe for a whole year.”

Cheat took the cycle stone out of the machine and began to fiddle with it.

“It’s unfair, right? You think so too, don’t you?”

Just as she was gearing up to ramble on and on again, the man on the other side of the line shot her down.

–I’ll ask you again… Did you get the cycle stone?

Cheat grinned, though the action was hidden by her helmet. She squeezed the stone in her hand. Every villain who joined the Rebellion had their own motivations and goals.

Her own reason had never changed since she had first joined them.

–Again. Did you take…

“Aargh, stop nagging me! I got it!”

Cheat shook her head in frustration. She then walked up to Kim JunHyun until she was right next to him.

Bzzt.

[ Sorry~♥ ]

[ TT^TT LOL ]

She flashed a series of messages towards him through her helmet, looking down at him all the while. It was her form of apology for what was about to happen.