The First Hunter Chapter 1: 2016 December 31st, At the Superstore (3)

4. 

The food section on level B2. 

“AHHHH!”

Different types of food had been stacked like mountains on this aisle before, but not since it had become a battleground filled with screams, crying, and blood. 

“Surround that goblin! Surround it!”

“The spear! Spear!”

The four muscular young men ran towards the three goblins and a green-skinned dwarf. 

No one could find similarities between the four of them. Their age, appearance and outfit were all different. The only thing they had in common was that they each held shitty spears made out of kitchen knives, curtain poles and duck tape. 

However, they made the most out of those spears. They utilized a spear’s main advantage—its long range—and used it to stab the goblins’ stomach and eyes. 

Keeeeee!

The goblins screamed, one of them slipped and fell down onto the floor. 

The moment the goblin fell down, a baseball bat appeared out of nowhere and smashed down on the goblin’s head like an ax. 

BANG!

The baseball bat literally smashed the goblin’s head until it looked like playdough. Blood spewed out of its eyes, nose, and mouth—like a fountain—as it collapsed to the floor. 

“Haaa!”

The person with the baseball bat, Bhang Hyunwook, dashed towards the goblin nearest him with a short shout. The moment the distance got smaller, bang! Bhang Hyunwook’s bat split the air in half. 

BANG!

And split the goblin’s face, too. 

Between the bridge of its nose and the middle of the forehead, the bat cracked exactly that point. The red eyes of the goblin were not okay. They popped as if they were eggs.

But the goblin did not scream out in pain. 

Instantaneous kill. 

All the goblin did was shudder like a freshly killed corpse. 

‘I’m full of strength.’

Bhang Hyunwook was sure at this point.

‘I could hit a home run in the major leagues, like this!’

This power that started from his stomach to the end of his limb was not his misunderstanding. 

That assurance became his courage. 

“Bring it in! Bring it in!”

Bhang Hyunwook yelled. It was like he was wishing for all the monsters on this floor to attack him. 

But no monster approached him.

BAM!

Because the last monster on level B2, the one labeled an orc—grey-brown skinned and about 190 cm in height—had just died. 

The cause of death was a vehicle accident. 

A forklift had pierced the orc’s chest and stuck it right to a wall. 

Kim Taehoon, the person responsible, immediately hopped out of the forklift and took his smartphone out of his pocket. 

Then, 

Crack!

With a cracking sound, the lights that lit the whole floor suddenly went out. 

“Uh? What is this?”

“I can’t see anything!”

The light from the smartphone lit up Kim Taehoon’s face amidst the ensuing chaos. 

He didn’t have a good face. 

‘The phone signal is gone.’

No telephone communications. 

Another factor that turned on the red alert light inside Kim Taehoon’s head. 

5. 

It’s always so silent after a battle. 

No cheering, nothing. 

The relief felt at survival drained energy, even the power to chitchat or complain was gone. 

Also, the fatigue that couldn’t be felt during the extreme situation came back doubled after it was over.

Pain accompanied fatigue.

The 102 people who survived the battle with the monsters on level B2 weren’t any different. 

Everyone sat down on the floor, leaned against an aisle, or just passed out on the floor snoring. 

As the emergency generator started to work, lights came back on but only the dim lights, It only made them more sleepy. 

If there weren’t any lights it could be scary, but the subtle light gave them a sort of comfort. 

In addition,  there was one more thing that gave them a sense of safety. 

The fire shutter. 

The fire shutter completely covered the exits of the B2 floor and gave them a lot of comfort. 

But one person wasn’t relieved. 

‘The monsters appeared out of nowhere.’

Kim Taehoon couldn’t relax.

Instead, Kim Taehoon was more… more nervous than the moments when he faced the orc monster, the goblin or the dwarf monsters. 

Because the battle was over. 

As soon as he started to fight, Kim Taehoon did not think about anything other than the battle. He could do that later after the battle ended. 

That meant he finally started to think about the things that he had pushed aside during the battle. 

And now Kim Taehoon figured it out. 

‘The monster appeared out of nowhere.’

The monsters appearance, it’s unbelievable. 

But there were more important factors than the common sense.  

‘Level B2, or ground floor, if that’s the route they took I would have sensed it already.’

The monsters literally appeared out of nowhere. 

There were two ways to get into this store.

One way was to go through the ground floor and the other was to go through the subway station that was connected to the B2 floor. 

If the monsters came in from the outside the people on floor B1 should have recognized the chaos that was made from the ground floor or from B2 even before they faced the monsters. 

But nobody recognized anything. 

Not even Kim Taehoon. 

‘I had a year of rest, but I am still on duty.’

If Kim Taehoon had become dull enough not to feel the monsters coming from B2 or ground floor to B1, he would have been forced to retire already. 

‘I didn’t feel anything… That’s for sure. These monsters did not use the regular routes. They came out of nowhere.’

The monster appeared without any restriction to space.. 

If the wall did nothing, then a bunker would not do anything either. 

In Kim Taehoon’s mind, he quickly imagined the worst things that could happen.

‘It could be worse than the worst.’

And that imagination sent a chill down his back. 

“Sir.”

It was Bhang Hyunwook who stopped Kim Taehoon from imagining. 

Bhang Hyunwook looked different from the first time Kim Taehoon saw him, he was without his baseball jacket and baseball cap. 

First, he had very short hair. Almost shaved. 

His looks were rather naive. The big eyes reminded him of those of a deer. 

His physique was pretty large with his jacket off. It wasn’t just fat but well defined muscles. 

“I brought the coffee you asked for.”

Bhang Hyunwook handed over the canned coffee to Kim Taehoon. Kim Taehoon started to take the coffee but realized he had not taken off the gloves that were soaked in blood. 

Kim Taehoon put the coffee on the floor. He was going to drink the coffee after getting rid of the gloves first. 

Bhang Hyunwook sat beside him and asked. 

“Um, Do you know what happened?”

Kim Taehoon answered while he took the left glove off. 

“If I knew this was going to happen I wouldn’t be here today.”

“Haha, right.”

After an awkward laugh, Bhang Hyunwook made a deep sigh as he spoke.

“A lot of people died. A lot…”

There were 102 survivors. 

Considering the number of people who visited the superstore on the New Year’s Eve, it’s not a small amount but a tragic number. 

Of course, not everyone died. Most of them ran away. Through the subway station that’s connected on B2, or through the doors located on the ground floor. 

But even considering that, there were lots of people who died. The number of dead on B2 was almost equal to the number of survivors. That meant more than 100 people died. 

It’s a big number. It’s not easy to see that big number in some incidents. 

“Because they didn’t fight.”

Kim Taehoon did not question that horrible scene. 

Regardless of the number of monsters that appeared, there were only a few people who had battled against the monsters before Kim Taehoon showed up. So the result was pretty natural. 

That’s what it was. 

If 100 adult men decided to fight against a lion with butcher knives and baseball bats, they could eventually catch the lion even if they lost some of the men. But if they only tried to run away, they could never catch the lion. 

On top of that, the goblins and the orcs were not simple predators. 

‘They even formed a group.’

They formed packs, and cooperated with each other. 

They were like wolves, hyenas, and humans.

Hunting in packs was also very effective. Humankind’s history proved it. 

It was thanks to Kim Taehoon that 102 of them survived. If it weren’t because of him, it would have been impossible to get rid of the three orcs on B2, not just the goblins. 

“Is it?”

Bhang Hyunwook did not understand Kim Taehoon right away. But he seemed like he was getting the hang of it, bit by bit. 

Because it was clear that they survived because they fought back. 

It was also clear that they would have been hit harder if they had not had Kim Taehoon with them. 

“What’s going to happen from now on? No, I mean, do we have to stay here for a while? This is the food aisle so we could stay here as long as we wanted… I think? That’s why you came down here right? If we were stuck on  B1 because of the fire wall it would have been… horrible.”

Instead of answering Bhang Hyunwook, Kim Taehoon took off his right hand glove. 

Kim Taehoon saw it at that moment. 

The black mark on the back of his right hand, the mark looked like a blazing sun.

‘This is?’

Kim Taehoon had found the mark of the awakened. 

The end. 

Chapter end