The First Hunter Chapter 6: Establishment of a Clan (1)

1.

“I’m a hunter.”

The moment Kim Taehoon answered.

“KWAAAAA!”

The mud troll’s roar shook the whole battlefield.

Bhang Hyunwook and the soldiers who followed Kim Taehoon looked at the crushed mud troll’s body that was under the dump truck.

It was surely a dead body.

The truck had turned the mud troll’s body into a deflated balloon and flattened it under the six human-sized wheels.

Would there be any other words to call it other than a dead body?

But that dead body, rather the thing that was supposedly a dead body, was wiggling and making small noises out the mouth of its crushed head.

It was a nightmare.

“ARGGGGGG! ARGGGG!”

“We, we will be dead. We will get our heads eaten by that thing!”

All the guys remaining had repeatedly seen the same nightmare.

For second lieutenant Kim Suji it was also the same.

‘What should we do now?’

It was a nightmare from the beginning.

It was the festive holiday season and the base was not located near the front-line(towards North Korea) but in a metropolitan area. 

There was no cheering spirit with the soldiers nor a manual to follow for fighting the monsters.

The damage was severe from the start.

The brown goblins moved in packs and had started by hunting the unarmed soldiers. The worst was the mud troll which had appeared while the command staff was having a drink right before the new years.

Most of the people in the chain of command were killed by the mud troll. If second lieutenant Kim Suji was more flexible in having fun and went to the party she would already be inside the mud troll’s stomach.

Anyway, she had to pay a price for having survived. She led the remaining soldiers in a battle for survival. To stay alive, she had to repeat the nightmare again and again.

Especially, Fighting against the mud troll had given her a despair worse than a nightmare.

‘The weapons don’t work against it.’

They tried a variety of weapons against the troll. But the mud troll never made even a tiny sound in front of those powerful firearms. 

Satiation was the only thing that stopped the troll.

She couldn’t come up with another way to fight the mud troll. Her mind was wiped out.

“Rank and name.”

Kim Taehoon spoke to her as if he was yelling.

“Huh?”

“Name.”

“Kim, Kim Suji.”

“Rank.”

“Second lieutenant… Second lieutenant Kim Suji, Unit 1121, currently leading the survivors of that unit.”

Her eyes changed.

She could feel it.

‘He’s a soldier.’

The man in front of her, the guy named Kim Taehoon, must be a soldier who had actually been through tough battles multiple times. Further, she had another gut feeling.

‘He must be a soldier.’

Like she had seen him somewhere previously.

Anyway, to a straight-edged soldier like her, Kim Taehoon’s voice was a lifeline.

“I need the information about that mud monster right now.”

“Approximately 4m in height, strong enough to tear apart a human body, and has a rapid recovery ability against bullet wounds.”

“The weapons you used?”

“Claymores were useless, 81mm Mortar was somewhat effective, but not much.”

“KWAAAA!”

While Kim Taehoon and Kim Suji were having a conversation the mud troll started to recover past its head to its upper body. The sound it made became louder and clearer.

The soldiers started to shiver. They were in such a panic they couldn’t even scream.

“Wow, f*cking no joke.”

On the contrary, Bhang Hyunwook spat out his thoughts right in front of the mud troll.

At that moment, Kim Taehoon called out to Bhang Hyunwook.

“Bhang Hyunwook.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Clean up around here.”

“Yes!”

After answering, Bhang Hyunwook firmly grabbed his bat without hesitation. The bat he was holding started to be surrounded by his energy power.

‘Okay.’

Bhang Hyunwook was now aware, to survive he needed the power to finish monsters with a single swing. To survive he was attempting to use his power more effectively and more powerfully. Through that process, he learned how to handle his ‘energy’ power.

‘Now I know how to use this guy inside my gut.’

Energy not only intensified his physical power but could also be wrapped around weapons that he was holding. The power it showed was enormous.

BAM!

Bhang Hyunwook’s swing smashed through a brown goblin’s head like it was a rotten pumpkin. Of course, Bhang Hyunwook still yelled in between the flying flesh, blood, and brains.

“Here’s Bhang Hyunwook the 5th batter of Bucheon High School! Come at me, motherf*ckers!”

His eyes changed as well.

While Bhang Hyunwook was consciously learning how to handle his ‘energy’, his instincts learned how to take control of a battle. That you had to be a monster to defeat a monster!

“Second lieutenant Kim Suji, hold your fire and be alert.”

Kim Taehoon gave an order to Kim Suji while turning away from Bhang Hyunwook.

‘Hold fire? On alert?’

That order was confusing. In this desperate moment, while the mud troll was quickly recovering, and there were still about twenty brown goblins left, why hold fire and be alert?

“Everyone hold your fire! Form a line and stay alert!”

But Kim Suji, as a soldier, kept her doubts to herself and commanded the rest of the unit.

But there were not many soldiers who followed the order. The soldiers, still under the influence of the mud troll’s fear, only understood the ‘hold your fire’ part.

“Put, put down the gun.”

“Gun, down.”

They instinctively followed the most important part. The soldiers lowered their guns.

‘There aren’t any crazy ones among the survivors.’

That was why Kim Taehoon was trying to get the soldiers to stand down. Nothing was more dangerous than a soldier who had lost their mind.

At the same time, he was confident. He was positive that he could take care of the brown goblins himself.

His gaze left the soldiers and returned to the battleground.

‘Mud troll, still recovering. It will take about 40 seconds to fully recover with that recovery speed.’

He estimated the mud troll’s status.

‘Twenty-one of the brown-skinned goblins have survived. But more than half of them are severely injured. They are bigger and more aggressive than the green goblins from the superstore but that’s all. It’s less dangerous than before.’

Then he verified the brown goblins’ number, condition, and location.

“Haa!”

He also watched Bhang Hyunwook, who was violently attacking the brown goblins.

‘Ahn Sunmi is… Coming.’

He also verified the SUV coming towards him.

Once everything was confirmed, Kim Taehoon pulled the revolver from his waist and looked at a brown goblin that was rushing towards him. 

At the same time, the brown goblin’s body suddenly stiffened. Kim Taehoon had used his telekinetic chains to wrap around the goblin’s neck.

“Keeek!”

The moment the suffocating brown goblin reached for its neck Kim Taehoon pointed his revolver at it.

Bang!

A short gunshot rang out and a bullet hole appeared in the middle of the brown goblin’s forehead. An accurate shot! It should be accurate. Kim Taehoon could accurately put a bullet into a rushing animal’s head.

The reason why he was so confident was that hitting a target that was held still due to his telekinetic power was almost boring.

Bang, bang!

Kim Taehoon shooting was extremely effective to the point that you’d actually feel sorry for the brown goblins.

One shot one kill.

Kim Taehoon only used one bullet per goblin when shooting the aggressive goblins, but they remained unfazed even after that hail of bullets. When he emptied the revolver, after six shots, six dead brown goblins were on the floor bleeding from head wounds.

Click!

Kim Taehoon flipped open the revolver and reloaded.

Meanwhile, Bhang Hyunwook smashed two brown goblin’s heads with a single swing of his bat as if he were competing against Kim Taehoon.

Bam, Bam!

“Oh yes, Two-run homer!”

He was like an eradicator that removes weeds.

Swish!

Kim Taehoon finished reloading the gun and started to fire again. This time he was a bit faster.

Bang, bang, bang!

Kim Taehoon pulled the trigger without any pause. Like a quick shot competition, he rapidly fired five times.

Bang, bang!

Of course, he didn’t waste any of the five bullets this time. The bullets precisely cut through the middle of the foreheads of the goblins.

While Kim Taehoon was hunting eleven goblins….

BAM!

“This was the seventh!”

Bhang Hyunwook announced his seventh goblin kill. Only three were left.

“Keee!”

“Keehhh!”

“I will take care two of them!”

Two of the remaining goblins jumped at Bhang Hyunwook, the third attacked Kim Taehoon.

Kim Taehoon stopped pointing his gun at the goblin. Even though he still had one bullet left in his gun, he holstered the gun back to his waist.

Instead, he made a fist with his empty right hand and focused energy into that fist.

Kim Taehoon’s fist turned black.

[Dark Skin]!

He struck his dark skin covered fist, that could not be hurt, into the bridge of the nose of the rushing brown goblin’s and through the middle of its forehead.

BOOM!

A single fist was enough to make the brown goblin’s nose collapse, eyeballs pop out and collapse the face. It was the result of the thirty-three points of ‘strength’ and the [Dark Skin] from the Black Orc.

“Sir, it’s done!”

After thirty seconds of battle, the brown goblins were eliminated.

Kim Suji and other soldiers were shocked by that scene.

‘What, what is that?’

‘What happened? Are we dreaming now?’

Not because of fear, but out of surprise.

‘That, that easy?’

It seemed like a dream that they so easily dispatched the monsters which had been a nightmare to them. But it wasn’t a nightmare anymore, just a dream.

The pale faces of the soldiers started to regain color.

But what’s most worrisome was still there.

“Kwaaa, kwaaa!”

The mud troll. It had finished recovering its upper body and had started to recover its lower body. it scanned the surroundings with its orange eyes and started to drool.

“Krrrrr!”

It was ready to show its picky disgusting personal taste of only eating human heads.

“Ahn Sunmi.”

Meanwhile, Kim Taehoon told Ahn Sunmi who was driving the SUV.

“Open the trunk.”

“It’s open!”

The SUV’s rear hatch popped open and Kim Taehoon removed a plastic bottle from it.

When he opened the blue lid of the bottle a smell of gas came out of it.

Kim Taehoon threw the bottle towards the distant mud troll.

To a normal person’s point of view, it was a crazy thing to do. The full plastic bottle was heavy enough that most people would have trouble just lifting it. But throwing it?

It wouldn’t reach the mud troll. The scene of the bottle flying through the air was something unimaginable.

“Uh? Ahh!”

But the bottle Kim Taehoon had thrown flew through the air scattering gas everywhere.

“It stopped?”

What was even more surprising was the plastic bottle stopped right above the mud troll’s head.

Gushing!

The plastic bottle started to pour gasoline out like a fountain.

“Kwa?”

The mud troll made a confused sound as if it didn’t know what was going on. 

At that moment, Kim Taehoon pulled his revolver out again and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The last bullet in the revolver pierced the bottle.

Fazoom!

The furiously burning fire starting by covering the mud troll’s head and then down the entire body until the fire looked like clothes.

KWAAAA!

For the first time, the mud troll cry was of pain not to make people afraid. At the same time, its body started to stiffen like a ceramic plate under heat.

All the soldiers, including second lieutenant Kim Suji, speechlessly looked at the scene.

But Kim Taehoon…

Click!

He took a picture of the scene with his smartphone and checked the picture.

[The Flesh of the Mud Troll]

The flesh of the mud troll has incredible healing ability on wounds. If applied to a wound it will immediately heal the wound. If consumed, recovery ability will be greatly enhanced for a limited time.

It was the first time that humans acknowledged the value of the mud troll.

The end.

Chapter end