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Chapter 111: Terror Sleeping Underground (Part 1)

The lack of direct motivation for groups in other categories was also a problem. Hunters were naturally interested in their own affairs. Even at the Academy, they were taught not to work based on altruism and compassion.

That was why they couldn’t ignore Dominator, but they also couldn’t do anything about them.

“Yes, there’s the problem, but… They told me that they want to destroy the Hive.”

“That’s…”

Hearing Zin’s response, a worried look deepened in Taehone’s face.

“I have a feeling you knew this already.”

“Oh… It’s actually not that unexpected.”

“Don’t you think destroying the Hive is not a good idea on any account?”

Hunters were the ones who lived on misfortune, and destroying the Hive was tantamount to cutting off the hand that fed the hunters.

Apart from the danger and the uniqueness of the Hive, the Hunter’s Nest also had to consider its need.

That’s why Zin, when he had first arrived there, had been surprised to learn that Taehone had lost an arm and an eye while trying to destroy the Hive.

He would not have gone alone but with a large group, instead, and they would have gone underground to the Hive. Zin didn’t think there would have been any reason for that, but asking about it would’ve been somewhat disrespectful in the hunting industry, so he had not asked about it.

But now, he needed answers.

Dominator had plans to destroy the Hive, and the Dean of the Nest had suffered injuries in the Hive.

There was a good chance that there was a connection between the two, or at least, the Dean knew something about the Hive. For example, the reason why the Hive had to be destroyed.

With hesitation, Taehone started to speak slowly.

“… I was injured ten years ago.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, after that… As you can see, this is how we’re doing.”

He was saying that it had been a decade since he’d begun training other hunters in the Nest. Some had remained in the big city, and others had left for the world.

“It was a job,” said Taehone.

“Odin Corporation had put up a job with an unprecedented amount as the reward,” he continued to talk calmly with a look of regret as he recalled that time.

Odin Corporation had offered the Red Dragon Nest a hundred thousand chips at the start and nine hundred thousand upon completion, for a total of one million chips. That was a huge sum of money, enough to build and operate a decent-sized business within the big city.

Since they controlled most of the big city, they had a massive amount of capital and could afford to offer such an amount for a job.

The job was simple.

“Find the Hive.”

Odin Corporation had put up a large amount of money for what they believed existed, though it had been unclear whether it did or not. They could have deployed their own security team, but they had had no experience with monsters, just people.

Odin Corporation had relied on the experts to find the Hive. Of course, the job could not have been done by a single hunter, so the Nest had gathered a group of the most elite hunters and divided up the work.

The huge sum of one million chips would be enough to share with others, so the hunters had gladly signed up without hesitation.

Taehone, who had been the most experienced among all of the active hunters, also jumped at the opportunity.

“I was curious on whether the rumored Hive was real, and about what was in it.”

The hunters had been attracted by the large amount of chips, but at the same time, they had been tempted by the secrets of the land they had been living in. It had been uncharted territory, which had long existed only as a legend, and it had remained unreached, while at the same time affecting them.

Chips had been important, but more than that, their curiosity and the fame associated with the work had also been important.

The title of Hunter Who’s Been to the Hive had been enticing enough for some.

A total of five hundred hunters had signed up for the job. It had been a big deal for everyone one of them because each of them would have received two thousand chips upon completion.

“Nearly all the hunters in the Red Dragon Nest searched the empty land, the underground, and the ruins.”

Clearly, there were ruins in the big city, and the hunters had dealt with miscellaneous monsters and destroyed their nests as they roamed the underground passages of the ruins. They had roamed through destroyed roads and underground spaces to find the source of the monsters and killed them. They had been trying to find a hidden passageway to the Hive.

But finding a way to the Hive had been a difficult task.

“After about a month, Odin Corporation suddenly canceled the request.”

“Did something go wrong?”

“Actually, Odin Corporation didn’t have much interest in the Hive itself,” the Dean said, smiling bitterly.

Zin’s expression hardened, as if he knew what was coming, and Taehone continued, “They knew that once they had made the request to find the Hive, the hunters would have combed through the ruins. And we were roaming all over the city in search of the Hive, cleaning, organizing, and clearing the way through the deep, dark underground.”

“Hmm…”

“And a large portion of seemingly abandoned land and a number of ruins were actually owned by Odin Corporation.”

It had been almost as if all hunters from the Red Dragon Nest had cleaned up Odin Corporation’s land. A hundred thousand chips was only two hundred chips each for of the five hundred hunters, and two hundred chips a month was not much.

In the end, Odin Corporation only had to paid the hundred-thousand-chip starting fee.

The actual cost of what the hunters had been doing would have been at least five hundred chips, so the company had a huge profit.

The hunters had searched basements and made records of places with no underground tunnels. Those records had been as good as reports about the sites’ safety to Odin Corporation.

“They started developing the land we’d cleaned up. Factories, houses, offices, stores… things of that sort.”

Odin Corporation was able to develop the area safely because the hunters had already cleared the place and proved that it was safe. They had successfully manipulated the hunters. They had used the hunters very cheaply.

Of course, the hunters would normally have been angry. Ironically, however, that hadn’t been important to the hunters anymore.

They could have gotten angry at being used and retaliated against Odin Corporation, but the majority of hunters had no longer been concerned with the job.

They had nearly reached the Hive. They had had one foot in the area that had remained unknown since the construction of the metropolis–an area that had existed but that no one had been able to find.

Just like Odin Corporation had not been interested in the Hive in the first place, now that the hunters had reached the Hive, they had lost interest in Odin Corporation.

Those who lived by hunting could end up getting drunk in their own madness.

For Zin, the reason for why he had been wandering around in the devilless world in search of evil could also be explained by his madness in some way.

The hunters of Red Dragon had been intoxicated by the idea that they could’ve built a unique territory.

The hunters had gone down and down, finding hidden and dark tunnels in homes and mapping them.

Then, as they went further underground, they dealt with miscellaneous minions and killed monsters. They had opened up blocked roads by digging up the rocks and had eventually reached the Hive.

Rather than reaching it, saying that they had fallen in would be more correct.

They had fallen into the Hive all of a sudden, when the weakened ground collapsed. The hunters, who had fallen into the water, had barely been able to crawl the water’s edge. The liquid hadn’t in fact been water, but old sewage made of the bodily fluids of the monsters that had already rotted.

What had unfolded before their eyes had been an immense world, one they had never seen or experienced before.

“It was a land of despair.”

The expression on Taehone’s face was grim, and there was even fear in his eyes at that moment.

What had been seething in the vast underground space had been a battle between enormous terror against multiple fears, something they had had no idea of how do deal with. A grotesque scene in which different species interbred, gave birth, and where the young ate their parents had played out in front of them.

As soon as they had reached the Hive, countless hunters had tried to escape the place they had worked so hard to reach.

Unfortunately, the monsters had been hostile to everything, and the hunters had been no exception. Not only had there been strange creatures that they had never encountered before, but there had also been inanimate objects that had produced only malice and fear without form around them.

Within the food chain of a place where only the things that they had never seen or experienced before existed, the hunters had been too insignificant of a thing to even warrant a look.

And that had been rather fortunate. The hunters had had to fight for life and death against things that had been like insects in a hive. Countless hunters had died while fighting the mysterious organisms of the Hive.

To get out of the area with the monsters, the hunters had held their breaths and tried to escape. Each monster in the Hive had had its own territory, and all the hunters had been able to do had been to use the pathways made by tentacle monsters, which the giant monsters didn’t use.

With the structure of the Hive completely unknown to them, they had been forced to survive by hunting and chewing on the mysterious monsters they had been hunting. In the meantime, many hunters had died, and when only fifty hunters had remained, they had had to face the real terror: The Ruler of the Hive.

When it appeared, all the monsters escaped with their breaths held.

“If there such a thing as a demon, I think that would be it.”

Faced with a dead-end, the hunters had had no choice but to fight. They had fought by using chip busters, grenades and bullets that they had been saving. But the monster had eaten up the hunters without a problem.

Talking about the moment when he had had to flee using other, dying hunters as shields, Taehone became somber. He had run and run like a madman to get away.

He didn’t know how he had managed to escape, but when he had finally come to his senses, he had been wandering through the burrows used by insects and had suddenly reached a cave he recognized.

He had not even realized that his arm and his eye were gone.

“And after I came up, I never went down there again and I never told anyone about it.”

In return for trying to explore an area that nobody had been able to reach, Taehone had not only lost an arm and an eye, but a countless number of his hunter friends along with them.

He couldn’t tell anyone that he had been down to the Hive and had come back. Such terror and such despair were not something that could be explained in words. Just for having told Zin, Taehone seemed to have aged ten years and had dark circles under his eyes.

He had suffered great pain and despair and was under a lot of mental pressure. Nevertheless, there was something that bothered him even more.

“I’ve lost so much, but I don’t know what they are, why they exist, or what to call such monsters.”

Even though he had lost much, he hadn’t been able to get much info, which is why Taehone felt guilty for surviving.

It was painful to live with something like that, but for the sake of the dead hunters, he chose to stay in the Nest and train the generations to come.

Zin nodded slowly with a firm look. He had not thought that the Hive would’ve been that dangerous. It was difficult to imagine the place just from listening to the story.

“Is it an entirely different ecosystem of monsters?”

Not every monster in the world was known. There were a lot of monsters living in the world that even Zin had never seen before, and some had even gone extinct.

Zin asked something else, “Then, why is Dominator trying to destroy the Hive?”

“I’m not the only one who survived the Hive.”

Countless hunters had died during the job, but two had survived.

“Do you remember Yoohwan?”

“Him? He was…”

“Yes, he was a newcomer from Penrrier Industries. You know, he had the sniper rifle…”

Zin was able to recall a rookie hunter who had had a considerable talent for handling the sniper rifle from an early age, and who had been able to handle quite a large number of enemies. The fact that he remembered him despite it being a long time ago meant that the hunter’s talent was superb.

“He also survived, like me.”

A lot of time had passed since then, so the rookie would be a highly experienced veteran by now.

“No way… Then, is he?”

“Yes.” Taehone nodded at Zin’s question. “Yoohwan is the leader of Dominator.”

Zin could finally understand why Dominator had offered him such an outstanding deal.