The F-Rank Hunter Defies Fate Chapter 3.5

His once-bright eyes turned dull in an instant. Yoogeom spoke as if it were no big deal, but to Harang’s ears, it sounded lower than trash rolling around on the street. Wondering if he had misheard, he met Yoogeom’s eyes, and Yoogeom furrowed his brow. His blue eyes were full of sincerity.

“So?”

“I’ll die if I go in there. I’m not kidding, I’ll really die.”

“Just stay behind me. Then you won’t die.”

“What?”

“If you don’t want to, I’ll report you as an unregistered hunter first.”

As if tired of repeating the same thing, Yoogeom turned his back without a second thought. Harang urgently grabbed Yoogeom’s arm. As he did, a throbbing pain shot up from his twisted knee.

“Wait, just a moment!”

Stopping Yoogeom was more important than the pain. Living as Baek Yoogeom’s exclusive fortune-telling assistant was far better than being arrested as an unregistered hunter.

Of course, there were people who lived without revealing they were hunters. Those who hid out of fear like Harang were a very small minority; most were involved in illegal activities. Like anti-government groups or violent organizations. Harang absolutely did not want to be lumped in with them.

“I think I’ve already given you a lot of time?”

Yoogeom theatrically fumbled through his pocket. Harang, who had been racking his brain, glared up and gasped for breath. It was truly infuriating for someone who could be brushed off with a single finger to act like this.

Beep.

“I’ll do it!”

His glare was brief; Yoogeom finally touched his phone screen. There was nothing he could do now. He had no choice but to agree.

“You should have just done that from the start.”

Baek Yoogeom, pleased about something, patted Harang’s shoulder. Harang smiled with his lips only and acquiesced, saying, ‘Of course, whatever you say is right, Mr. Team Leader.’

Damn it. He vowed never to let alcohol touch his lips again.

“Should I make a run for it now….”

After the morning’s commotion, Harang was in a state of extreme anxiety. He had been unconsciously gnawing on his normally neat fingernails, so his hands were just getting damaged for no reason.

“What are you doing, that’s disgusting.”

Yoo Jaei, who had been trying to ignore the crunching sound, snapped in annoyance. The superstition-monger, who had brazenly taken over the team leader’s office, was repeating his strange behavior next to Jaei. A moment ago, he had gotten on his nerves by shaking his leg, and now he was disgustingly biting his nails.

“Hunter Yoo Jaei, what was it like when you first entered the Tower?”

Instead of apologizing, the superstition-monger asked an unexpected question. His clear eyes were strangely creepy.

“Why are you suddenly going on about the Tower? Why would you be curious about that?”

“Right? I suppose a civilian shouldn’t be curious since they can’t enter the Tower.”

Yoo Jaei had meant it in the sense of ‘don’t even look at a tree you can’t climb,’ but Harang muttered the incorrect information as if it were a fact. Knowing that the words had come from his own mouth, Yoo Jaei decided to show some rare magnanimity.

“You can enter floors that have been cleared. Not every hunter has an overflowing inventory, after all. And you can’t just leave all your items behind, either. It’s different for every hunter, but our guild has a separate retrieval team.”

Although his tone clearly showed his displeasure, it was undoubtedly valuable information that couldn’t be heard anywhere else. Harang, who had somehow ended up wearing the shell of a hunter, listened intently.

“Then there must be people who get hurt going in?”

“In the beginning, there were a few people like that.”

“P-people who died, too? It really is dangerous, then!”

Harang cheered inwardly. Baek Yoogeom might be the number one ranker, but he probably couldn’t protect Harang perfectly inside the complex Tower. I should try to persuade him again with this. Having finished his calculation, Harang nodded to himself in understanding.

“Not anymore. That was when hunters and status windows first appeared. Now you can find someone right away with the party function even if you’re far away.”

Yoo Jaei, who had been watching Harang as if he were strange, added an explanation.

“Still… what if they die in the meantime.”

“What do you think the chat window is for? An emergency signal from the retrieval team is always the number one priority. If a civilian gets hurt, only the hunter will get fined. Who would stand by and watch that happen with their eyes wide open?”

Yoo Jaei shook his head and spoke with a subtle boast. The more he did, the more Harang wanted to run away somewhere, anywhere.

“No way….”

“I really don’t know what you’re thinking. Do you think all Towers are like hell? I mean, maybe above the 50th floor, but even underage hunters go into the lower floors for training.”

As Harang acted like his world was collapsing, Yoo Jaei shifted his posture completely. His cold tone also changed, becoming as gentle as if he were dealing with a trainee, but it didn’t reach Harang. The only fortunate thing was that Baek Yoogeom had been nowhere to be seen since coming to work. But he felt a chill, as if he would be dragged away at any moment.

“What’s really wrong with you?”

“It’s nothing.”

“If you’re going to make such a fuss, you could at least sit still.”

“Yes….”

Harang dragged his legs, which wouldn’t move properly, and moved. He had been loitering outside ever since he got to work, so the team leader’s office was filled with a desolate chill. Forcibly tearing his gaze away from Baek Yoogeom’s desk, Harang sat coiled in his chair as usual.

[Would you like to use the skill ‘Where I Go Is My Path, And What Do I Care About Your Heart?’?]

How long had he been like that? A blue window appeared below the back of his hand. The status window, which should have been without a will of its own, was peeking out its corner as if asking him to look at it.

“A skill?”

Normally, he would have ignored it, but today, he was intrigued. Unlike the saying that a monk can’t shave his own head, Harang was quite good at reading his own fortune. Of course he was. It wasn’t that he saw it with divine power, but that he used a skill.

Considering Baek Yoogeom’s actions so far, his talk of entering the Tower was probably not an empty boast. He knew it was something that would happen someday, but he wanted to postpone it as much as possible. Harang cautiously looked around and swallowed hard.

“I’ll look, I’m looking.”

When he used the skill, cards were generated on the empty desk. Harang shuffled the cards more seriously than ever before. He spread them out neatly and, after much deliberation, chose one card.

Perhaps because he was concentrating twice as hard as usual, his mana vanished like melting snow. It was to the point where all but the one card that caught his eye couldn’t maintain their form.

Harang glared at the single remaining card. He didn’t stop there but even clasped his hands and prayed. He didn’t have a particular religion he followed, but this time he was desperate.

When he finally turned the card over, a picture with a visibly grim atmosphere appeared.

‘Tower’

“Oh, fuck!”

There was no need to look at the status window’s interpretation. A bleak iron tower was drawn in the center, and a creature—whether a demon or something else, he couldn’t tell—was falling from an oval-shaped window. Its expression was extremely! terrified.

[You have peeked at your own fate. The future seen through the card will be realized in 3 minutes.]

[Warning: Refrain from impulsive actions.]

Three minutes? A countdown began, as if mocking Harang’s turmoil.

[Time remaining until future is realized: 2 minutes 53 seconds]

While a dazed Harang looked around the team leader’s office, a few more seconds had already ticked away. If he stayed like this, he would obviously be dragged into the Tower. Harang got up from his seat without thinking too deeply.

As he kicked the door open and left, Yoo Jaei stared at him as if he were the strangest thing. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes were cursing him. He could more than imagine how strange he must have seemed all day. But he didn’t have the time to clear up the misunderstanding.

“Where are you going, Master?”

Hyemin, who was entering the office just in time, asked placidly. Harang ignored even her and looked for an escape route. All I have to do is just walk straight out of here.

“Did I get the timing wrong? Where are you going?”

Yoogeom dropped out of the sky. It was something possible because he used portals as casually as eating meals, likely because he was a high-ranked hunter. Ha ha. Harang, who laughed awkwardly, nodded his head and then denied it.

“N-no. I was just waiting to see when you’d get here.”

“Then shouldn’t you have shaken your head? You just nodded.”

Finding something amusing, Hyemin burst out laughing all by herself. During that time, Yoogeom didn’t even glance at his younger sister and stood blocking the escape route. Suddenly cornered, Harang looked around the office.

He looked at Yoo Jaei as if asking for help, but the young hunter had no interest in Harang. On the contrary, he seemed pleased to see Baek Yoogeom and chimed in, saying, ‘Where are you going? Can’t I go too?’

“You’re a hunter. Hunters can’t.”

Harang glanced at Yoogeom, wondering what kind of bullshit this was. He had definitely! told him they were going into the Tower. At that, Yoogeom lifted one corner of his mouth and added.

“Min Harang is a civilian.”

At that vile face, the memory of kneeling that morning came to mind. He had begged him to keep it between them, so on the surface, he was indeed a civilian. What would be better, entering the Tower with just the two of them, or having it revealed to everyone that he was an unregistered hunter?

“That’s right. I’m the on-ly ci-vi-li-an here.”

With a sorrowful face, Harang was dragged out by Yoogeom just like that. Hyemin, left behind, asked dejectedly if her joke wasn’t funny, but Yoo Jaei just slapped her thick forearm.

“Am I really going into the Tower?”

“Yes.”

When he asked with a pained look, Baek Yoogeom nodded his head all too easily.

“But why are we going up? Isn’t the Tower outside?”

The reason he hadn’t let go of the thread of hope despite that was because Baek Yoogeom’s feet were headed toward the guild’s interior. The Towers that had suddenly appeared all over the world were located in each country’s capital. In the case of South Korea, it had sprung up right below Namsan, and Yoogeom, who had given an interview a while ago, had also come out through the 1st-floor gate.

Harang, who didn’t know their world despite being a hunter, thought it would be the same when going in. But instead of heading outside, Yoogeom passed through a long, long hallway. When he finally got on the elevator, the button for the 60th floor lit up.

“Newly discovered floors are.”

There was no time to express his dissatisfaction with the unkind explanation. The incredibly fast elevator quickly took the two of them to the 60th floor. When the ominous doors opened, a scene reminiscent of the 1st-floor lobby came into view.

An employee was guarding the very first entrance, and after a simple identity check, you could go inside. For Baek Yoogeom, his face was his pass; no one stopped him even when he just walked right in.

Harang followed with quick steps, looking around. After passing through the entrance, a space divided into several paths appeared. He could check the interior through the windows in each room, and it seemed like they would be a perfect fit for just a few people.

“It’s been a while, Mr. Baek Team Leader. I didn’t receive a briefing about you making a climb. Are you perhaps planning to enter a cleared floor?”

While Harang was rubbing his eyes at the unfamiliar scene, an employee approached them with a cheerful greeting. Despite his tone being so polite it made one suspect he was an AI, Baek Yoogeom only gave a slight nod.

“Just a moment. Should I look for one on the 50th floor or higher?”

“What’s the lowest floor we can enter right now?”

His words were short this time, too. Harang, a Confucian boy, felt needlessly self-conscious, but the employee seemed unbothered. On the contrary, his hands were moving diligently, and the screen that was partially visible was changing ceaselessly. He was searching for the floor Yoogeom had requested.