35. alma mater (1)
I remember the first time I went to school.
I remember sitting alone in a shady place with few people as it was natural to see some newly admitted students with their parents and siblings taking pictures, laughing and chatting about the future.
There was someone who came first.
He was a boy with the same loneliness as me.
Are they the same students?
“What is your name?”
spoke first.
I wasn’t an outgoing personality either, but the guy sitting next to me looked so timid and depressed.
He looked at me with fearful eyes, barely making eye contact with me, then averted his gaze and announced his name in a creeping voice.
“······Kang Han-min.”
I smiled at him, forgetting the miserable reality surrounding me for a moment, whether I was intrigued by his timidity or felt the small sense of superiority peculiar to childhood.
“It’s a strong-looking name. I am Park Kyu My last name is Park and my name is Gyuji.”
It was the first school connection he made.
Contrary to his name, Kang Min-min was weak and his physical strength and skills were below average.
At first, I tried to help him, but I ended up turning away from him, who didn’t know how to improve, perhaps because of the spartan trend that was prevalent in the school.
Perhaps the teachings of my charisma had a strong influence on my young self, which was about to become established.
“People can make mistakes. Because perfect humans don’t exist. However, we hunters must not make mistakes. Because our enemies are not human. To deal with non-human beings, we too will have to shed some insignificant bits of humanity.”
Jang Ki-young, like the first-generation Hunter, was a soldier and had a brilliant career with the title of hero.
Attracted by his reputation, many students wanted to become his students, but Jang Ki-young was a picky and nervous instructor.
He demanded perfection, a virtue that is difficult for humans to have.
Excessive training and excessive reprimand were the basics, and students who judged that they did not meet the standard were tried to be driven out of the school by any means and methods.
“Kang Han-min. Is it you again?”
“Kang Han-min. Aren’t you sorry for your colleague? Because of you, your teammates and teammates suffered a penalty of deduction.”
“Kang Han-min!”
Kang Min-min was a constant target of Jang Ki-young’s attacks.
In his view, Kang Min-min was a defective product that should never be labeled a hunter.
In the end, Jang Ki-young gave Kang Min an ultimatum in front of everyone.
“Kang Han-min. you are not needed in my class If you have a conscience, if you have a human heart, walk out on your own.”
Kang Min did not go out.
He was stronger than he looked.
Maybe he hated monsters as much as I did.
Jang Ki-young’s bullying and reprimands increased, but Kang Min-min steadfastly endured until the grade changed.
I can’t forget Jang Ki-young’s expression and what he said when Kang Min narrowly passed the final exam.
So, when Kang Min-min fired camouflage shots at the hologram-embodied necromancer type, entered the range of the force field, and split the necromancer type in half with a high-powered shotgun, Jang Ki-young untied his arms and shook his head while muttering.
“That bastard will do us harm in the end! I bet you!”
It doesn’t seem like Jang Ki-young had the ability to foresee.
If you see that you can’t predict your own fate right away.
“Principal Jang Ki-young.”
Time flies and is in China.
While I was spending my days accumulating data while watching the Chinese government notice, Woo Min-hee, who was fine at the time, held out a separate bullet from a high-powered shotgun to me and said abruptly.
“Did you hear that his career is a blatant lie?”
“what?”
“My old comrades who fought with that human exploded it. A human named Jang Ki-young. Instead of holding an ax and fighting in front of the monster, he sat down and cried and hung his head like an ostrich.”
The reason Jang Ki-young was able to be so hard on Kang Min-min is because he is a hero.
Because I deserve it, I was able to bully others so much, see them as insignificant, and throw them out with pride.
Even the axe, the main weapon I use in close combat, owes much to Jang Ki-young’s heroic story.
According to the now half-legendary story, when a rift broke out on the side of Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do, soldiers including Jang Ki-young stood up to protect the people from monsters.
In front of the monster’s ability to reflect bullets, the soldiers died helplessly, and to make matters worse, the dead soldiers came back to life and started attacking other soldiers.
In an instant, the defenders were annihilated, and the survivors fled as the two tanks were destroyed by the reflective force field.
In that hell road, Captain Jang Ki-young made a decision.
He threw away his gun, pretended to be dead, and waited for the monster to come closer.
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Glaring with open eyes at the fire ax placed within reach.
When the monster finally approached, Jang Ki-young stood up with an axe and “cut down” it with superhuman prowess.
This is the beginning of Jang Ki-young’s heroic legend.
The legend was widely spread throughout the world through the media, but no one doubted it.
Jang Ki-young is a soldier who has received a typical elite course, and has completed the difficult North American special training unit training course with high marks and has a brilliant anecdote of beating a black soldier 40cm taller than himself in a bar.
Above all, when the reinforcements arrived, the monsters that appeared in the rift had completely disappeared.
All that remains is Jang Ki-young and several zombies he knocked down with an axe.
Even when reinforcements arrived, Jang Ki-young cut down two zombies with an ax in quick succession with the same skills he used to knock down huge American soldiers.
It wouldn’t have been easy to doubt his exploits in that situation.
“The reason the monster didn’t attack him was probably because he lost his fighting spirit and didn’t do anything. As you know, monsters read human hostility and react to it, right? You said you didn’t feel that way? It is a little different from me.”
At that time, I accepted Minhee Woo’s usual object of slander to the extent of extending it from colleagues and Chinese to distant teachers.
Although not as much as Kang Min-min, it was because Woo Min-hee was also one of the students Jang Ki-young hated.
Jang Ki-young’s favorite disciples are me and Kim Da-ram.
He valued Da-ram Kim more highly than I did in front of people, but that was probably because she had reached the highest level that an ordinary person could reach.
The only person he truly considered as his persona was me, Park Kyu.
“okay. That’s what you do. That’s how you swing an axe.”
In the past, the weapon used to deal with monsters in the half field was a high-powered grenade.
In fact, it was more destructive than an axe, easier to use, and less dangerous.
However, the monsters also came up with a new ability to explode Hunter’s gunpowder weapon in a close combat situation, as if they had thought of their own countermeasures.
It is a new authority called “detonation”.
Countless hunters have been ensnared by this new ability and have been brutally murdered with their fingers torn, their chests punctured, or distorted into unrecognizable shapes.
In order to respond to this, mankind confronted with a new weapon using non-explosive gunpowder until just before the detonation called the so-called separation charge, but even that was not safe from the detonation.
This is because the guys who cast the detonation targeting the moment when the separated charges are combined and have explosive properties appeared.
To this end, hunter equipment with faster fusion, explosive power, responsiveness and convenience was developed one after another, but at least the cold weapon, a traditional human weapon, was free from such a game of notice.
Jang Ki-young was the most fierce believer in cold weapons.
He especially considered the ax that made him a hero the best of all weapons.
“The ax is the most superior weapon. Just like I did 15 years ago.”
I learned everything from him.
Although he was a cold-hearted, strict, and picky instructor, it cannot be denied that his vast knowledge and outstanding skills made me who I am today.
However, it was a rather strange decision to insist on using an ax in close combat.
There are many other good weapons, but why was it an axe?
In fact, unlike the many techniques he taught me, the ax handling techniques had gaps somewhere, and most of them were close to acrobatic techniques that were extremely difficult to use in actual combat, to the extent that I wondered if someone had created them out of imagination.
In actual combat, I realized that his ax was not very suitable for dealing with monsters.
Jang Ki-young assumed that monsters were extremely fast and agile in close combat, and were constantly attacking, but in reality, the monsters I dealt with were more like moving trees than animals, as he used the expression “logging” during his active career.
When news spread that I had used an ax to cut down my first monster, Jang Ki-young was the first to contact me.
“Yes, Park Gyu. How is it? what’s my skill? Was the close combat tactic using the ax effective?”
At that time, I was very tired, many of my comrades died on the battlefield, and I had an interview with a Chinese investigator, so I evaded it appropriately.
“It seems fine.”
At that time, Jang Ki-young seems to have been overjoyed.
The last time I saw him was after the age of old school hunters had passed and he took off his clothes as his past unsavory behavior became a controversy.
The hero of yesteryear lived in a tiny rental apartment.
If he had just stepped down from his position as principal, he would have kept his property, but he had filed numerous lawsuits and himself was caught up in numerous lawsuits.
He had a wife and children, but he seems to have been as harsh with his family as he was with his students.
If you look at the small house that can be seen at a glance, there is no trace of anyone other than him.
“Is it Park Gyu? okay. come in It’s a shabby place, but there’s room to treat you to a cup of tea.”
There was only one chair at the table, so he had to drag the chair in front of the computer.
While he was making his coffee, he looked at his computer screen.
He was writing a long article with the word processor turned on.
I couldn’t tell what he was writing because of the distance, but I could easily recognize one mark that floated on the bottom right corner of the screen.
[WINDOW activation]
[Go to settings and activate Windows]
“······okay.”
Jang Ki-young served coffee.
“Was my skill valid?”
I hesitated for a moment.
Should I tell the truth, or should I comfort the teacher with pleasant words?
Suddenly Kang Min-min’s face passed by.
Driven to a dead end by Jang Ki-young’s constant filming, Kang Min-min would often appear in front of me as I was going back to the dorm with an expression as if he was looking for help.
what did i do then
Yes, I threw in a moderate amount of soulless consolation.
“It’ll turn out okay. If you work a little harder, the officer will see you again.”
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Giving similar consolation to Jang Ki-young is probably not just a coincidence.
“yes. It seems so.”
Despite the soulless praise, Jang Ki-young was delighted.
When I saw the water shining in those harsh eyes.
And, it seems to be quite difficult.
“I think I’ve developed a way to become Awakened.”
“Is that so?”
“okay. zombie. Aren’t zombies human mutations? When a human’s vital activity stops, the mutation factor is adsorbed on the corpse and infuses it with the energy of the other world, right? that’s using it It puts a person in suspended animation, almost killing him. Make the mutation factor work thinking that this person is dead! at that time! It’s a resuscitation activity! With the authority of the other world, perhaps a human with an immortal body as well as Awaken’s telepathic ability could be born!”
When I see the tiger instructor I know talking about such crazy things casually.
I tried to stand up with deep disappointment, but the instructor’s story continued.
“······People see me and call me a con artist, but I saw it. the reality of the monster. Monsters have bosses. There must be an entity giving orders!”
“You mean the general type?”
“What is your general type?”
It seems he was unaware of the new entity.
Well, I found it about 2 months ago. The man who took off his clothes a year ago must be Ali.
Unintentionally, my discovery seemed to hurt Jang Ki-young.
“no! It can’t be! That’s not it! You must have seen it wrong. You said you were guessing? A guess is just a guess.”
“It could be.”
“sing! okay! There was a guy who sang a song or something. I couldn’t see if it was in the rift, but it sang something like a song! As if that were their language! You definitely heard it when I played dead. When it ordered, the monsters all entered the rift… no! One left! The guy I killed with my axe!”
I made up an empty promise and left.
As I was about to leave, Jang Ki-young hesitated and told me.
“Ha, do you keep in touch with Hanmin?”
Because I knew his intentions, I was able to answer coldly.
“no.”
Jang Ki-young lost one lawsuit after another.
The hero of the past, who once responded to interviews with three broadcasting companies and major media outlets, came out on a human broadcast called YouTube Lecca to criticize government policies and beg for Super Chat.
I turned off the video when I saw him claiming that I had raised him, mentioning the name of Kang Min Kang, the disciple he had cast out and now the savior of our time.
Jang Ki-young is now dead, and the school he devoted everything to is also about to be demolished.
I pondered for a while.
Whether to go to the site or not.
I thought it would be better not to go.
Because the world is dangerous enough right now.
One contact changed my mind.
Personal Identification Number: REDMASK
Minhee Woo contacted me.
“Did you know we’re demolishing the school this weekend? It would be nice if the seniors went.”
“I?”
“Are you far away?”
“…”
“I don’t like to talk. Well, there’s nothing good to say to someone like me. But I think you better go there.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I heard Kang Han-min was hoping for that too.”
“Are you Kang Han-min?”
“huh. I wonder if a senior would be the best person for the position.”
“…”
I thought for a moment.
Are the words he left to Woo Min-hee ridiculing or respecting me?
In the silence, the sound of Woo Min-hee smacking her lips was heard.
Is this the main point?
“Oh and one more. Do you know the news about Jang Ki-young?”
“Instructor Jang Ki-young? I heard you died I’ve heard that a funeral will also be held together.”
“I am alive.”
Minhee Woo laughed.
“I’m still alive and eagerly waiting for my senior to come.”