Damn Hunter Life Chapter 4
Ja Hyeong-woo grabbed my dirt-covered arm and lifted me up with a jerk. I dangled half in the air before being plopped down.
Immediately, something blue touched my forehead.
A staff with a butterfly-shaped tassel. It was Ja Hyeong-woo’s healer staff.
The Mouse Familiar cowered like a mouse in front of a cat as soon as it encountered Ja Hyeong-woo.
{Master…!}
Ja Hyeong-woo seemed not to hear it at all. When Ja Hyeong-woo with his menacing face opened the cork of the gourd at his waist, the familiar was instantly sucked inside.
The familiar that had threatened my life was disposed of so simply by Ja Hyeong-woo’s hands that it was laughable.
Everything around was broken and destroyed. Ja Hyeong-woo, seeing the chaotic surroundings, slowly turned to look this way.
The first thing he said was unexpected.
“Did you awaken?”
I flinched inwardly. But since there was nothing to be guilty about, I puffed out my chest confidently.
“Are you kidding?”
How deceptive a question to ask Gyeon Gang-hyeon, who couldn’t awaken. However, Ja Hyeong-woo didn’t back down either.
“I just teleported to you instantly. As if you definitely have a successor awakening window.”
Huh? That’s strange. Why did that work?
How do I make excuses for this?
If it were ordinary awakening, it would be one thing, but this is an unprecedented half-awakening. If this becomes known to the world, the association will definitely try to interfere with me.
“Must be an error.”
Just as I was about to regret spitting out that lame excuse, Ja Hyeong-woo, who had been staring at me, shook his head.
“…That can’t be right. There’s no earth energy at all. You don’t appear on the successor list either.”
I, who had been standing dumbfounded, soon got indignant.
“Who are you trying to provoke right now?”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Then why did you come?”
At my question, Ja Hyeong-woo looked down at the gourd at his waist.
“Because of this.”
Even though the dormitory was far away, it seemed only Ja Hyeong-woo had sensed the energy of the familiar that belonged to him.
A familiar that helps successors in various ways. Ja Hyeong-woo’s had finally appeared, but looking at the gourd, Ja Hyeong-woo’s eyes were extremely cold.
“A familiar that attacks people without hesitation is inexcusable. Rather than causing an accident, it would be better to eliminate it now…”
“Hey, wait!”
I shouted loudly in panic. Ja Hyeong-woo stopped talking and looked at me with a puzzled face.
If that familiar dies, you’re screwed! I can’t directly explain how much help it will be in your future crisis, so I tried to think of how to phrase it like it has intelligence unlike other familiars and could reform later…
That was my last memory.
I fainted right after, and I was bedridden with aftereffects from overexertion.
While delirious with high fever, I opened my eyes to see someone enter my hazy vision.
Dark blue hair tied back in one bundle. Someone wearing a brown-red headband on their forehead, with a gold-embroidered brown vest over a white jeogori.
“Silla Dynasty ghost…”
I realized shortly after that it was Ja Hyeong-woo.
Ja Hyeong-woo, with slightly surprised eyes, tilted his head to the left.
“I can tell you have a severe fever bad enough to not distinguish heaven from earth.”
Feeling embarrassed, I snapped back like this.
“Get out! You’re making my fever rise by hovering around.”
I tried to get up but my body swayed. My head spun round and round, and I hit the back of my head on the bed again.
The tip of Ja Hyeong-woo’s staff touched the top of my head like last night.
“Are you sure it’s okay to use that precious heal skill on me? You’re trying to make me get cursed out in the community, aren’t you?”
“This is my duty. Something I must do even if it means shortening my lifespan to increase skill uses.”
“What? You shortened your lifespan?”
“No.”
His words without any inflection were truly sharp like a blade. His quiet eyes didn’t even blink.
Right, this was frustrating when reading the original work too. Because of that inflexible, damn sense of responsibility.
So he’s saying that since I suffered damage because of his familiar, he’ll take responsibility for my condition with the mindset of picking up the one piece of trash that fell in a clean house.
“Come to think of it, what about the familiar? What happened?”
As I remembered what I’d forgotten, my spine went cold. How out of it had I been?
Seeing Ja Hyeong-woo’s calm face made my anxiety amplify even more.
Did he kill it? Is that already the look of someone who killed it?
“I’m going to eliminate it.”
My heart sank.
I aged ten years. I thought I’d already crossed a river of no return!
“You mean you haven’t killed it yet?”
Though I might have seemed suspicious asking so persistently, Ja Hyeong-woo honestly nodded.
“Right, not yet.”
Good, I went from a crisis of ruin to a situation where I might be ruined. It felt like barely grasping at straws.
But what do I say now? Isn’t it strange for me, who almost died to the familiar, to defend the familiar?
Should I say ‘But it’s completely obedient to you. It’ll supplement your lacking heal abilities, so try raising it’?
No, wait. Let me think more properly. Say Ja Hyeong-woo listens to me and withdraws his decision.
‘Then do I have to follow Ja Hyeong-woo around like a daycare teacher, watching whether Ja Hyeong-woo gets along well with the familiar?’
Gyeon Gang-hyeon, who should have died, survived, and the moment the familiar tried to kill that Gyeon Gang-hyeon, their relationship was ruined. There would probably be worse discord than in the original work. Would it improve over time? The situation was so different that I couldn’t be certain.
So I decided to make a somewhat groundbreaking move. Pointing at the gourd, I said this.
“Give me that.”
* * *
After catching the collapsing Gyeon Gang-hyeon and laying him down at home.
Ja Hyeong-woo stared blankly at the pale face blooming with fever.
‘He’s too thin.’
Days devoted only to training without even time to wipe away flowing sweat. The rare leisure of sitting and looking after Gyeon Gang-hyeon felt unfamiliar. Ja Hyeong-woo looked down at the small face with black hair stuck to it and suddenly thought.
‘Have I looked at his face this closely in the past few months?’
When his eyes were open, only harsh words came out, but seeing his sleeping face made feelings like disappointment disappear.
‘If awakening was something I could help with, I would have done anything. If you were the type to change your mind with warm words, I would have said anything, however much.’
Sometimes he regrets it. That he wasn’t an important person or friend to Gyeon Gang-hyeon.
So when that incident happened to Gyeon Gang-hyeon a few months ago, he wasn’t someone who could give him comfort.
‘Well. Taciturn and boring, always following along with whatever you did – that was impossible for me.’
He didn’t leave his side, giving heals whenever the fever spiked.
Perhaps because his body was originally weak, the fever would go down but flare up again whenever Ja Hyeong-woo tried to get up.
He ended up sitting back down several times, and eventually stayed the whole time.
Though Gyeon Gang-hyeon would jump if he knew, he directly cared for him, lifting his drooping body to change his sweat-soaked clothes. This was clearly his responsibility.
‘A familiar born to follow me dared to try to kill Gyeon Gang-hyeon without my permission.’
He couldn’t forgive either the familiar with its cruel nature or himself for not knowing anything until it attacked Gyeon Gang-hyeon.
He desperately wanted to immediately break the gourd and eliminate the familiar, but he was holding back for a moment thinking there might be something more.
But then.
“Give me that.”
After almost dying, he suddenly asks for the gourd containing the familiar. Though he doesn’t know Gyeon Gang-hyeon’s true intentions…
“I want to kill that ghost bastard with my own hands. Ah, so infuriating.”
The words he spat out afterward while huffing convinced him.
‘That’s just like Gyeon Gang-hyeon to get worked up.’
Convinced, Ja Hyeong-woo handed over the gourd to Gyeon Gang-hyeon. He also gave him precautions.
“If you throw and break the gourd, it will be eliminated.”
“Yeah.”
“Never open the entrance. It might attack again.”
There was no way scoundrel Gyeon Gang-hyeon would carefully listen to Ja Hyeong-woo’s words. Ja Hyeong-woo, sighing inwardly, wrote the precautions on a note and placed it by the head of the nodding Gyeon Gang-hyeon before leaving.
At the same time.
“…Hunter Ja Hyeong-woo is skipping training to do what? Going in and out of Gyeon Gang-hyeon’s house?”
The Hunter Association president, who received a report from Ja Hyeong-woo’s manager, hung up and drummed his fingers on the table.
‘Hunter Ja Hyeong-woo leaving the training ground was directly exposed to the media. Since he usually has a sincere image, there won’t be attitude controversy, but even now there will be a flood of inquiries asking what Ja Hyeong-woo is doing…’
The association, suddenly established a few months ago, was still small and unstable. Having received too much public attention without time to stabilize, the association was overly conscious of the media.
‘…I should summon Gyeon Gang-hyeon to the school headquarters. I need to divert attention by revealing Gyeon Gang-hyeon’s face. If I can protect Hunter Ja Hyeong-woo, it doesn’t matter if I throw away that trash.’
They said Ja Hyeong-woo’s departure was because of Gyeon Gang-hyeon in the first place. Then shouldn’t that scoundrel himself also take responsibility? He got off easy anyway.
Having made his decision, the association president immediately picked up the communicator and moved.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
