Damn Hunter Life Chapter 105
* * *
At that time, Ja Hyeong-woo, similarly lying alone, idly examined the appearance of the unfamiliar room.
‘America has so many hunters that they even have this kind of spatial manipulation ability.’
This was essentially the first overnight stay away from Hunter School since its establishment. Korea had never discovered such spatial processing abilities.
His chest muscles, lying still on the bed, rose and fell listlessly. His disheveled hair pressed down and spread out with Ja Hyeong-woo’s occasional restless movements.
Since exercise was both an obligation and his only hobby for Ja Hyeong-woo, he had nothing particular to do in this place without a training ground. Nevertheless, he didn’t go to sleep early. Besides exercise, he had a routine he did almost every night.
When Gyeon Gang-hyeon fell asleep, every night Ja Hyeong-woo secretly made contact with the mouse familiar.
“Whether it’s muscle pain or body aches, don’t let Gang-hyeon feel even the slightest discomfort. If possible, maintain healing every moment.”
He had repeated the same request a hundred times, now making it a hundred and one. The mouse familiar knew its distant master’s devotion. So it always answered that it would do so.
Even though Gyeon Gang-hyeon would glare and say cold things during the day, at night he became defenseless and had to surrender himself to Ja Hyeong-woo.
Ja Hyeong-woo pictured the small, white face sleeping peacefully and the round bundle of blankets.
Imagining the smooth limbs sprawled carelessly made him clench his fists and endure. Even so, thinking of the peace Gang-hyeon would feel in his unconsciousness made his chest feel full, and he opened his mouth.
Hatred, joy, heat, melancholy. Gang-hyeon possessed too much of what belonged to Ja Hyeong-woo. So Gang-hyeon was essentially him. Even if the reverse wasn’t true.
‘It’s fortunate that despite having so much to tire him today, his yang energy didn’t decrease much. It’s because he didn’t use intermediate skills and above.’
It was welcome news. No treatment needed today.
No matter how much Ja Hyeong-woo secretly craved the time spent treating Gang-hyeon, doing treatment even while they were abroad… was really not right.
There was no teleportation function here. He absolutely didn’t want to sneak into Gang-hyeon’s room by climbing walls. If the association staff on patrol or someone out for a walk saw him, it would be a major incident.
“Gang-hyeon… what position is he sleeping in?”
{I don’t say things like that.}
Whether the mouse familiar and its master had conscience or not, they would nervously put time limits on these conversations where they passed and received Gang-hyeon’s information, even though no one would know.
Because of this, the last question came out hastily, yet somewhat forcefully.
“Gang-hyeon was strangely unable to look at me today. Is he hiding some pain somewhere?”
Honestly, being kicked when he embraced him during battle was… pretty much routine. Even accounting for that, Gang-hyeon was more unusual than usual today.
He shouldn’t be in pain.
Or perhaps… maybe he hated me more.
{It’s not that. He’s not in pain either. That guy is just naturally strange. He has a lot of idle thoughts too.}
Ja Hyeong-woo felt that the mouse familiar was trying to evade giving a proper answer.
“Can’t you speak properly?”
If his condition was bad, he needed to know even more. He persistently questioned with the intention of not letting it go until it spoke honestly.
The familiar ultimately couldn’t disobey its master’s command, but hesitated greatly until the very end.
{When master was giving yang energy and did that thing with him.}
“…Yeah.”
While reluctantly revealing the truth, the mouse familiar seemed to feel guilty as it drew out its words.
{When Gyeon Gang-hyeon ejaculated in master’s hand.}
“I know when that was.”
{That guy dreamed about master.}
Ja Hyeong-woo bolted upright from where he was lying.
“Gang-hyeon noticed?”
Horror spread across his face between his disheveled hair. His mind went blank as a sheet of paper.
“So he avoided me—”
{No. That’s separate. Um… I’d call it a coincidence.}
In other words, Gyeon Gang-hyeon simply had a dream without knowing the truth of that night.
Even after vaguely understanding the context, Ja Hyeong-woo couldn’t accept it immediately and fumbled through his thoughts.
‘So, in Gang-hyeon’s dream, I was…’
Gang-hyeon dreamed about me?
After repeating the same words several times in a daze, the meaning gradually sank in. Even then, the shock didn’t fade. It wasn’t a lie, not imagination, but real?
So that’s why he couldn’t meet my eyes properly all day and stayed far away?
“What did we do in the dream?”
{That much I won’t…}
Gang-hyeon had done exactly what Ja Hyeong-woo himself would do. The more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.
It couldn’t be dismissed as just a physiological phenomenon. Dreams were still the realm of the unconscious, weren’t they?
Gyeon Gang-hyeon could have sexual thoughts about Ja Hyeong-woo.
Starting from his nape down his entire spine, stimulation like being heavily beaten raced through him. Hah. The breath he exhaled contained heavy, hot heat.
Even if he grabbed and tore at his twitching mouth corners with his hands, they probably wouldn’t come down.
Even after staying up all night with open eyes, Ja Hyeong-woo’s healing condition was better than ever. His mood could only be said to dominate his entire body.
However, on the other hand, he knew his position well.
{Gyeon Gang-hyeon thinks of that dream as an accident.}
Whatever the unconscious might be, to Gang-hyeon it was an unpleasant, disgusting dream. An unwanted experience.
‘…Still, I can’t help but feel good about it.’
He was escorting cargo down the bottom lane with Sa Ye-ho and Ma Cheon-ah.
The first victory condition for the attacking team was to eliminate First Call, whose purpose was to block the cargo, push them away, and escort the cargo to the end of the path.
The territorial control game, which was the latter half of the friendly match, was modeled after the structure of existing AOS and FPS games. However, since Ja Hyeong-woo had never played such games even once in his life, the rules were just unfamiliar and difficult.
“Why don’t you understand?”
So Gyeon Gang-hyeon had explained it to him once more.
He listened with an expressionless face on the surface, but inwardly felt good thinking of old times. Even though Gang-hyeon’s way of speaking was about six times more blunt than back then.
The rules of territorial control he learned this way were as follows:
The match time is 30 minutes total. The attacking team must first push cargo to place it at the stronghold, then fill the occupation gauge to capture the stronghold for final victory. The defending team prevents this for 30 minutes.
The attacking team’s respawn point is at the cargo escort starting point, while the defending team’s respawn point is near the occupation stronghold at the opposite end. From the attacking team’s respawn point to the stronghold, there are two branching paths—the upper path is called the top lane and the lower path is called the bottom lane.
The attacking team splits personnel in half and must push both upper and lower cargo to get both into the stronghold. Occupation only begins when both pieces of cargo enter.
“It’s important to divide top and bottom well at the very beginning. You can’t move to other lanes until your initially assigned cargo fully enters.”
In contrast, the defending team can not only move between both lanes at all times, but can also utilize the forest, which is the neutral zone between top and bottom lanes. Naturally, the defending team’s movement becomes faster than the attacking team’s, and ambush tactics are also considered.
Ja Hyeong-woo, having recalled the rules once, raised his staff upward.
Pop, blue light flowed out like a fountain. Blue water completely flooded the area surrounding him.
“「Ah, healing feels so good」!”
Sa Ye-ho, who had been flying around using the cargo as a foothold without touching the ground, shouted.
Going out of his way to shout so loudly, and even switching to English with full voice, meant the target he wanted to hear wasn’t on our side.
The corners of Bootsman’s eyes, always gentle and calm, crumpled.
As soon as he saw Ja Hyeong-woo’s area healing, he ordered his teammates to retreat. That was already the fourth time.
‘「Damn. I can’t maintain dignity as a healer. Is that the power of the world’s 2nd ranked healer?」’
Bootsman was himself a skilled healer. But until competing directly with another hunter like this, he didn’t know.
When two hostile healers simultaneously activate skills in one area—
The superior one’s healing devours the other’s.
‘「Besides, Ja Hyeong-woo’s condition seems particularly good today. Must be one of those days when everything goes well」.’
Whatever the trigger was, Ja Hyeong-woo’s power was stronger today than yesterday. To the extent that whenever Ja Hyeong-woo used large-scale healing, Bootsman’s skills completely lost effectiveness.
The successors pushing cargo in this top lane were these three: Ja Hyeong-woo, Sa Ye-ho, and Ma Cheon-ah.
All of First Call was here.
In other words, they were fighting with the disadvantage of three against five. Without even Woo Sae-geon.
Yet Ja Hyeong-woo’s great performance meant no significant damage so far. Even though Ma Cheon-ah seemed unable to lift her spirits due to yesterday’s defeat, the successors had managed to completely wipe out First Call once and succeeded in pushing the cargo a little.
‘「The bottom lane must be riding the cargo smoothly without any interference」.’
The time until Woo Sae-geon pushed all the cargo he was assigned and ran back here.
First Call had bet their chance of victory on that timing.
* * *
“Yaaawn.”
Ah, I yawned loudly enough for Woo Sae-geon to hear.
The large box-shaped cargo smoothly advanced down the wide-open path. Looking at the forest on the right, looking ahead… not a single person was visible.
Finally acknowledging that First Call had fled to avoid him, Woo Sae-geon also climbed onto the cargo. The two of them sat blankly on the cargo as they traveled down the path. Showing each other their backs to avoid eye contact.
“……”
“……”
Somehow it felt like a sunset scene would be fitting.
“……”
“……”
“……Want to play word chain?”
Of course, my words were completely ignored.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
