Chapter 329. From Today, an Isekai Munchkin Hunter (3)
Separated from his party, Jeong Ha-seong pondered in a nearby parking tower.
Up until now, he had just thought that the blond hunter was a bit peculiar.
But now, giving no clues at all, and suddenly revealing such shocking personal information?
‘Ugh…’
To Jeong Ha-seong, it felt like a lightning bolt had struck him.
Whether his usual personality was calm or not, he had to feel several times more confused due to being caught off guard.
– Hyung! Now that I think about it, just before you collapsed, you definitely told me to bring this person… So, I made sure not to forget and ended up digging for their contact details…….
Of course, it was better than a certain skinhead Awakened having to endure a fainting test alone.
“Phew.”
Jeong Ha-seong got into his car parked in the parking tower.
After that, he stopped for a moment to calm down.
The national hero soon found himself thinking about the same topic as the master of the Korean Magic Tower guild.
‘Indeed, it seems like there’s no solution other than the elixir.’
So what could this dungeon liquid, often mentioned in the past, really be?
In fact.
[Elixir] was not formally registered in the world’s loot database.
But it was an item that was presumed to exist based on the atmosphere around it.
[(Today’s Gate) Industry Quiz: Does the ‘Panacea’ exist? No?]
Like a legendary creation born for people who are lazy about self-care.
Just by eating and drinking, it’s a miracle medicine that heals the body.
To elaborate, elixir referred to the potion of immortality from medieval times.
However, in modern times, the meaning had slightly transformed in the hunting industry.
Now, it referred to the substance that hunters said eliminated all sickness and harm from the body.
Moreover, this wasn’t the end.
There were even instances where the absurd effects of the elixir had actually been experienced.
‘Come to think of it, is that Awakened still healthy?’
To explain modern elixirs, one had to go back a few years.
About seven years ago.
When the Dungeon Shock had just begun.
At that time, a village in Sweden was surrounded by hordes of monsters.
A young man, on his way to escape, happened to awaken to magic and used his newfound abilities to fend off the monster wave.
Simultaneously, this new hunter reportedly obtained uniquely shaped loot from this massive hunt.
It was a container that seemed too wide and strange for a human’s mouth.
‘A bottle of such strange shape and unknown liquid…’
However, the young man who obtained the liquid said he had an inexplicable intuition at that time.
Thus, after giving the water to his family, miraculously, an elderly man near death sat up energetically.
“……”
Surprisingly, this was a testimony about the ‘panacea’ that could be understood through foreign news.
Hard to believe testimony.
But what was even more shocking were the outcomes that Hans, the Swede who claimed to have actually drunk the magical potion, displayed afterward.
‘Yeah. Sure enough, it comes right up when searched.’
Ha-seong glanced at his phone.
‘The Swedish Awakened elder. He must be nearing eighty by now since he was already in his seventies at the beginning of the Dungeon Shock.’
Hans Johansson, the protagonist of the panacea legend, is now a 78-year-old elder known for holding the record as the ‘world’s oldest hunter.’
During the early Dungeon Shock, he was afflicted with a disease that hadn’t even had a name yet—magic addiction—growing weaker day by day…
Just before his son took down the hordes of monsters, he was a person who couldn’t even move a finger, yet drank a potion and transformed into a hunter.
‘Typically, older individuals can’t withstand the shock of awakening and become vegetative.’
Talk about luck.
‘Is this the latest news?’
At this point, it was believable that an item existed that could heal a person with just one sip.
The case of that Swedish family was powerful enough.
After all, it had cured magic addiction, which still had no known treatment to this day…
Abroad, a filming crew once conducted a health check on that oldest Awakened.
The results revealed were nothing short of miraculous rejuvenation.
Hans Johansson appeared far healthier than a man in his seventies.
His physical age had regressed at least 20 years.
Moreover, it didn’t stop there; the first elderly Awakened was born.
Jeong Ha-seong decided to search for articles about the Swedes again due to nostalgia.
Then, in the image category on the screen, he easily found a photo of two men happily laughing, with their arms around each other.
“……”
Looking at the massive picture of the father-son duo made his feelings complicated.
– Thud.
Regardless, if what that family continuously claimed was true—that there was indeed a magical potion among those many dungeon creatures—then curing the symptoms suffered by Korea’s S-Class wouldn’t be impossible…
‘Forget the miracle cure. Right now, the monster that provided that loot hasn’t been reported either.’
Nothing is ever easy.
Jeong Ha-seong lowered his head.
Just as he thought, the elixir, which was a global concern, had still not been discovered anew.
‘At most, sometimes high-grade new healing liquids appear and cause confusion…’
Hans’s additional testimony as a presumed user of the panacea was that.
The potion was so captivating to look at that it stimulated all human curiosity, and once touched, there came an inexplicable conviction that ‘this potion will turn me into an ideal state of health the moment I drink it.’
So even if imitation products circulated in the market, never fall for them.
But as some sort of truth dawned on him, Jeong Ha-seong started having this thought.
‘Now, I’d rather see that elixir’s shadow, even if it turns out to be a scam.’
He was serious.
If a potion existed that could magically cure any sickness, honestly, it could fulfill his greatest wish.
‘……’
But daydreaming alone on the street was still meaningless.
[Auction House Search]
[Item Name: Elixir]
[Result: 0]
He genuinely wanted to help a hunter he recognized.
But anyway, without any confirmation of the existence of a miracle drug, there was nothing he could do.
Moreover.
‘Even if I happen to find that potion…’
Jeong Ha-seong turned his stern face away from the screen.
As the automatic screen-off time approached, his smartphone dimmed.
He firmly resolved to stop thinking uselessly with his eyes closed.
But without reward for his determination, his restless mind kept conjuring new worries.
‘Kim Gi-ryeo is a patient.’
It was dreadful.
‘And a critically ill one at that. I’ve been oblivious all this time.’
Why was he endlessly dwelling on something that had already happened?
This was a non-economic reflection commonly committed by people of certain personalities.
Yet the rank one hunter couldn’t help but keep thinking about it, even knowing how absurd it was.
‘How on earth……’
Especially since he lived with that Awakened, unlike other hunters.
‘Am I a boulder instead of a brain?’
Self-loathing washed over him.
‘I shouldn’t have assumed he was fine just because he was another S-Class…’
Jeong Ha-seong’s expression turned grave.
Admittedly, it was hard to guess that someone standing at the pinnacle of evolution in this world would turn out to be sick at first glance.
The man holding the steering wheel was relatively low in confidence. Therefore, it was easy for him to fall into self-deprecation.
‘How could I look at someone every day and not notice anything?’
Plus, it seemed that misinterpretations aside, if he thought about it at length, there were definitely pieces of the puzzle leading to this day.
Then what if he looked back on the past while knowing the truth that a certain hunter was a cancer patient?
Ha-seong couldn’t shake off his self-deprecating thoughts and reminisced about the past.
– Jeong Ha-seong Hunter… I truly appreciate your hard work alongside someone like me.
The first thing that came to his mind was a conversation from a meal gathering.
It was one of those sentences someone accidentally shouted out from the hospital room.
– But, what if I can’t keep that promise one day…
The menu was probably something like budae jjigae. Well, he brushed over that part.
Surely on that day, a certain S-Class hunter said seriously that he had thought about it and asked if it would be possible to cancel the regular team schedule they had agreed upon.
And when he pressed for the exact reason behind such a choice, Kim Gi-ryeo hastily changed his words.
‘Lately, I’ve been feeling fatigued, so I think it was just a slip of the tongue, so don’t worry about the promise…’
But the problem was that the blond hunter’s reversal about retiring happened merely three seconds after that.
So at that time, Jeong Ha-seong considered what the other was saying.
‘Is this just an excuse because he doesn’t want to partner with me anymore?’
In fact, that was the truth.
An alien, upon securing a certain Korean’s status, hastily pretended to be sick to cover up his deceptive actions.
However, in the middle of their conversation, an incident happened where the problematic S-Class fire mage went ahead and broke the restaurant’s furniture in half.
The frightened alien mage ultimately revoked all his excuses immediately.
And this became a rather unsettling action to Jeong Ha-seong.
“Keuk…!”
But now, revealing the family history illness all too late, the situation grew even more perplexing.
‘He only said he was a bit tired and was thinking of taking a break! He never said it was cancer!’
Did Kim Gi-ryeo, the S-Class hunter, start feeling too sick to work from that time on?
But what if someone was just overly concerned…
Maybe he thought of changing his words just in case it hampered his duties as a hunter…
‘Unbelievable.’
If that were true, all the feelings of discomfort he’d sensed up to then would be explained.
Ha-seong reinterpreted Kim Gi-ryeo’s past actions.
Certainly, it was far from reality, and the follow-up thoughts were similarly distorted.
‘This and that… and even back then, he was already suffering!’
This is the essence of psychology.
Even when one had been functioning normally, discovering the passage of time could suddenly alter the perception of events.
‘But can a person really die from such an illness? I’ve heard somewhere that it’s much harder to treat underlying conditions in Awakened, but there are many good drugs out now, right?’
Desperately trying to find a glimmer of hope, Jeong Ha-seong shook off his negative thoughts.
But it wasn’t working.
The self-loathing that he had been unable to sense the signs of someone in severe crisis right in front of him relentlessly weighed down his thoughts.
So Jeong Ha-seong kept mulling over these assumptions.
【3.5】
– Let’s see. Looks like that’s measured in kilograms……
Based on previously held suspicions.
Information capability.
Combat strength.
Judgment ability.
‘It would only be a waste of breath to mention that remarkable disguise ability he had when living as an F-Class hunter.’
Furthermore, perhaps including mental strength, he can be said to have proven this in the [13th Month’s Maze].
‘He’s definitely not ordinary.’
In his assessment, Korea’s fourth S-Class was indeed a highly capable individual, beyond what would be described as versatile.
And a normal person receiving regular education would typically find it hard to develop such a wide range of abilities.
‘Honestly, this sounds ridiculous, but what if saying he dreamed of working in a uniform outside was just a ruse? Perhaps he was scouted into that, ‘that’ department because he caught the nation’s eye…’
Jeong Ha-seong was still strongly hypothesizing about someone’s background being directly tied to state agency work…
The information he was recently given about the illness only cemented this suspicion.
‘Exactly! That must be it!’
The number one hunter in South Korea had already entered his awakening anniversary this year.
Yet a hunter he had never encountered even once while the disaster was rampant suddenly appeared, boasting top-tier skills.
After that blond hunter had the chance to formally surface, the little dungeon entrance records he had were all revealed.
Thus.
‘Logically speaking…’
To sum it up, there was no way Kim Gi-ryeo could have suffered from amnesia through normal channels.
Why?
Because there were no dungeons in Korea where an S-Class hunter could sustain a head injury.
In the past, Jeong Ha-seong had thoroughly annihilated high-level gates like he was true to his nickname of ‘machine’.
And the few remaining dangers were continuously handled by the second-ranked hunter.
‘It doesn’t add up…’
At least, within his knowledge, there were no unexplored high-level gates left in this Republic of Korea.
Of course, if he claimed to have gotten hurt in a special dungeon like [Baek-ui Maze], where detecting the time of appearance is challenging and exits disappear quickly, that would make sense.
But what were the odds that an S-Class would quietly be kidnapped into an S-Class dungeon while walking down the street?
And would those odds be higher than being struck by lightning?
“……”
Anyway, Jeong Ha-seong thought that if a battle involving big shots like S-Class were to occur, at the very least, news relating to it would circulate.
Yet until Kim Gi-ryeo had properly revealed himself, there hadn’t even been tiny rumors.
Even though he was so strong.
As if some gigantic organization had fundamentally prevented any leakage of information.
‘…….’
All of this were contradictions stemming from someone fundamentally deceiving the truth.
However, the listener firmly believed the scam artist.
In the end, the ordinary person ranked number one inevitably drew incorrect conclusions.
‘So, Kim Gi-ryeo is a National Intelligence Service agent. Isn’t that right…?’
And had already suffered misfortunes while protecting the country.
‘So the sacrifices of state institutions that I had taken for granted were this serious.’
At that moment.
Ha-seong, feeling upset, reflexively recalled a phrase.
‘Of course, all those choices must have been for the country. But still, having their members suffer until they are sick like that…’
He was someone unaware of the internal workforce structure over there.
But somehow, Jeong Ha-seong instinctively began to foster feelings of dissatisfaction toward the leadership assumed to be in the National Intelligence Service.
Moreover, remembering how the fourth S-Class hunter always appeared strong despite immense pain amplified his emotions even further.
In movies, there are often trained agents who refuse to divulge secrets even under torture.
But what if the source of Kim Gi-ryeo’s uncharacteristic patience actually stemmed from something like that, rather than an illness?
‘There’s really no basic human decency!’
Soon his assumptions reached this point.
Within a young man’s heart, anger towards a certain inhumane social institution began to sprout.
-?
And at this time.
Somewhere in Korea, an actual National Intelligence Service administrator, Mr. Yoon, unexpectedly felt a sense of injustice, but this was a topic that others could not understand.
