NOVEL NEXT Episode 8
As I entered the stairway leading to the rooftop, I quietly listened. I thought I could faintly hear voices arguing from above. My senses—sight and hearing—seemed to have been honed to a razor’s edge.
Closing my eyes to focus on the sound, I confirmed there were no monsters lurking above.
By the way, it’s a common cliché for squinty-eyed characters to be strong. But to think I’d awaken only to be a weak Hunter good at drawing aggro—it was hard to guess what kind of character Tito was trying to make me into.
Maybe I couldn’t use my power properly because I had just awakened. Hoping to find a weak-looking monster to fight again, I trudged down the stairs.
[SYSTEM:
As the skill activated on its own again, my head spun as if I were getting dizzy. I’d only heard that abilities consume stamina like physical exertion, but I didn’t expect it to be this disorienting.
I looked around but couldn’t see the monster. A thin, grating roar resonated from below. I quickly turned and ran up towards the rooftop.
Even with the minus, C-rank is still C-rank. It’s a grade that even seasoned pro Hunters approach with caution. For D-rank or F-rank Hunters, it’s a grade they can only hope to tackle in groups.
I would undoubtedly be no match for a C-rank. My feet moved as fast as my self-awareness. I just had to run for now.
-Thump, thump.
The people standing above startled at the sound of my forceful footsteps on the stairs and turned around.
Kang Chagyeong, Director Park, the assistant director—everyone was safe.
Their eyes widened at the sight of me, covered in blood and filth. Feeling awkward at their ghostly expressions, I scratched the back of my head.
“The rooftop key… you left it behind.”
I said, holding out my index finger with a bunch of keys dangling from it.
“Student Sun-woo!”
“Are you okay? Are you hurt…?”
As the production team asked in surprised voices all at once, rectangles kept popping up. Kang Chagyeong looked at my face with an expression mixed with confusion and relief.
I quickly waved my hand at them.
“I’m fine, no major injuries. Luckily, I awakened…”
“Ah! I saw the system message! Thank goodness. I really thought you were dead.”
The assistant director’s eyes seemed to glisten with tears as he spoke.
As I strode toward the rooftop door, relief seeped into the faces of those looking at me.
It was probably relief coming from both the fact that I wasn’t dead and that I had awakened as a Hunter.
“Who are you!”
Just then, a frightened voice from an unfamiliar man came from beyond the rooftop door. I reached out and tried to turn the doorknob, but it was locked, as expected.
Without hesitation, I lifted one foot to kick the door. But it only made a loud noise, leaving the door intact.
Even when I tried to look cool, Tito wouldn’t help me out.
The others watched with bewildered expressions as I fumbled for the rooftop key, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
When I inserted the key into the hole and turned it forcefully, the lock opened easily.
As I pushed the heavy iron door open with my shoulder, the man on the other side tumbled onto the rooftop floor.
He appeared to be in his thirties, dressed in a suit. An ID card hung around his neck, printed with the name “Thomas” and a photo. This must be Thomas.
Thomas adjusted his glasses, which had gone askew from the fall. His eyes behind the lenses darted nervously, seemingly surprised by the unexpectedly strong force from a girl my age.
“Are you perhaps a Hunter? You’re Sun-woo Maeng, right?”
“Yes, I’m Sun-woo Maeng.”
I nodded in response. Relief flooded Thomas’s eyes. Then he suddenly shouted, pointing at the rooftop door.
“What are you doing? You should be running around killing monsters!”
“Believe me, I’d love nothing more. But I don’t seem to have that ability. I nearly died trying to kill just one F+-rank.”
I confessed the truth without a hint of a lie.
The monsters inside the gate started at 14, and I had just barely managed to kill one on my way up.
Since civilians can’t kill monsters, there must be 13 left. That’s by no means a small number. There’s no way I could handle them with my pathetic abilities.
At this, disappointment clearly flashed across Thomas’s face. He didn’t even try to hide the sound of his heavy sighs.
What kind of person is this? My expression must have shown my distaste as I looked at Thomas.
「Tito grins basely as he draws ‘Thomas’.」
I decided to believe that even this shameless person before me—whose impudence was enough to irritate me—must have a reason for existing.
Director Park, who had been hesitantly lingering behind me, carefully asked, “Student Sun-woo, are you alright? I wanted to help… I’m really sorry.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. If you hadn’t run away, you all would have died there.”
I saw Kang Chagyeong bite his lower lip at my words. He seemed to feel guilty about leaving me behind like that.
But there was no time to dwell on past events. Just in case, I closed the rooftop door and slowly walked to the edge of the roof. The grating sound, like nails being bitten, had been irritating me for a while.
[SYSTEM: A sealed gate has opened at Seunghwa Building, Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. 12 minutes 57 seconds until seal release.]
Still, a lot of time had passed. If we could hold out a bit longer on the rooftop, the seal might be lifted.
After calmly closing the system message, I raised my gaze to observe the red curtain sealing the gate.
The unpleasant appearance of the red curtain covering the gate remained unchanged. As I looked over the rooftop to check the ground, my body froze in place.
A centipede, with a body as wide as a city bus, was silently moving its feet, crawling up the building wall.
The centipede that spotted me clacked its large mandibles together.
[SYSTEM:
Even without the system message, I instinctively knew: this wasn’t something I could beat.
I immediately turned around and started running, shouting with all my might, “Run away!”
Hearing my desperate cry, the others began running toward the rooftop exit without asking any questions. Director Park hopped on one foot, gritting his teeth.
Kang Chagyeong, who was closest to the exit, nimbly slipped inside the building, followed by Thomas… Ah, I have a bad feeling about this.
「Tito hums as he draws the shadow of the monster crawling up to the rooftop.」
In the moment I hesitated, the rooftop door slammed shut before the assistant director could evacuate. The assistant director, who was right in front of it, frantically grabbed the handle, but it only spun uselessly.
“What are you doing? Open the door!”
The assistant director screamed, while Director Park pounded on the rooftop door with his fist. Mixed with the monster’s grating sounds, Thomas’s voice filtered through from the other side of the door.
“Just run down to the lower floor! We’ve bought time! Hey, you bastard! Don’t open the door! Go down!”
The sounds of Kang Chagyeong and Thomas scuffling could be heard clearly. Kang Chagyeong’s voice, raised with difficulty, pierced through the iron door.
“W-we could just open the door instead of wasting time like this…!”
Could I survive if I fell from the rooftop with my Hunter physical abilities? I thought as I stared at the massive body of the centipede.
-Click, click.
Every time the monster clashed its strong mandibles, that eerie sound echoed.
The monster twisted its body while standing upright. Its belly was filled with fangs without any gaps, and its back was covered with hundreds of eyeballs, like barnacles, blinking madly in numbers rivaling the fangs. It was so disgusting it almost made me retch.
What kind of childhood did Tito have to imagine and draw something like that?
Of course, the primary target of this C-rank monster, with its extreme visuals, was me. Director Park desperately clutched the doorknob, shaking it.
“Please open the door! We’re all going to be eaten at this rate!”
“Director. It’s targeting me, so please calm down and—”
Director Park, not understanding my words, was understandably not calmed at all. The assistant director, standing with a resigned face, closed his eyes and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
Could I rip it off if I turned it hard enough? I gritted my teeth and grabbed the doorknob. The monster’s eyes, having finished their warm-up, all moved at once to focus on me.
-Click, click.
The monster, as if showing off its powerful jaws, hunched its long body. It looked like a spring just before leaping. My instincts screamed sirens madly.
And just as the monster was about to spring into action, the rooftop door burst open. Kang Chagyeong had finally succeeded in opening it. I, who was about to pull with all my strength, was pushed behind the door and slammed hard against the wall.
The monster’s massive body, having gained momentum in mid-air, couldn’t respond to the sudden change in direction and continued straight ahead. In that brief moment, I saw the eyeballs embedded in the monster’s side rolling toward me.
“Eek!”
There wasn’t even time to react. Thomas, terrified at the sight of the approaching monster, pushed Kang Chagyeong’s back with all his might.
Completely losing her balance, Kang Chagyeong was shoved toward the monster, flying with its mouth wide open and unable to counter in any way. Then he was trapped between its saw-like mandibles.
The monster plunged headfirst toward the stairs below. The stairs, hit by its hard and heavy body, crumbled with a crash, and they both fell to the floor beneath.
The sound of the world collapsing continued for a long time. The vibration from the impact transmitted directly through the rooftop floor, and white dust billowed up inside the red gate.
After staring blankly until the sound of collapse subsided, I hurriedly poked my head out and looked down at what used to be the stairwell. A hole about three meters in diameter had been punched through from the rooftop to the first-floor lobby.
On the edge of the broken concrete, bloodstains were visible on the exposed rebar that hung like noodles.
The stairs I had just walked up were no longer stairs or anything recognizable. I could see monsters that had been roaming indiscriminately gathering around the hole.
It seemed the aggro had been properly drawn by the noise of the concrete crumbling like dominoes.
Thomas, who had been standing behind Kang Chagyeong, had been thrown by the impact and was now lying beyond the large hole.
Far below, on the ground cratered as if hit by a meteorite, I could see the centipede-like monster twisting its body.
No ordinary human could have survived that. Even though I knew Kang Chagyeong was the protagonist Tito had set, my body froze like ice.
Thomas, covered in white dust, raised his upper body with a painful groan. Even as he wiped the blood flowing from his nose, he glared at us.
“How could you… Are you even human?!”
Director Park shouted with a shocked expression. The assistant director, overwhelmed by the monster’s destructive power, couldn’t move.
And at that moment…
-Ding, ding.
A system message appeared before our eyes.
Thomas’s face, blinking in disbelief, was a sight to behold.
[SYSTEM: Hunter ‘Kang Chagyeong’ has awakened in the sealed gate of Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul.]
[SYSTEM: Hunter ‘Kang Chagyeong’s unique skill