How To Survive as a Class a Hunter

47. A-Class Hunter Nguyen – [5]

I gave a thumbs up. Then, as the host excitedly chattered, I looked at Naito-san.

That unawakened scum, I hate to admit it, but he did quite a job this time too. He was the first to arrive at the scene, killed about three Deathclaws rampaging on the road, and lured the boar monster, significantly reducing casualties, I guess?

And yet, he’s grinning ear to ear even though he’s only getting a certificate for risking his life. Naito-san was proving his professionalism just by that attitude. Or maybe he’s smiling because he’s thinking about bragging on TV later?

Unlike the hunters who were enjoying this event in their own way, another hunter participating in this commendation ceremony seemed utterly bored.

“Nóng quá đi…”

It was Nguyen, to be precise.

Nguyen had been muttering to himself since the ceremony began, and then he sneaked up to me and asked in a not-so-quiet voice.

“Kim Geuk? Want to grab a drink after this boring event?”

I didn’t like his attitude towards this sacred Incheon event, but well, what could I do?

I just learned that he had been harassed by the local government. I could understand why being dragged here would be annoying for him.

I nodded gently to show my consent.

And it seemed Nguyen genuinely liked me. He immediately flashed a bright smile, showing his shining teeth.

After the commendation, a fundraising event combined with a merchandise sale began.

As expected of an event for hunters, Incheon City had made character merchandise for the hunters to sell.

Among the hunters gathered here, the most famous ones were me and Naito-san, and our acrylic stands were the merchandise. Honestly, the quality wasn’t great, and I thought it would be better to sell T-shirts with baby mushrooms on them instead.

But the crowd here had come to see me and Naito-san, so the prepared merchandise sold out in an instant.

Baek Dambi seemed very envious of this. She sneaked up to me and spoke.

“You’re really popular…”

I replied comfortingly.

“It’s because I’m cute.”

Hmm, it’s the first time I’ve seen my round girl look like she wants to hit someone.

Baek Dambi closed her eyes and opened them as if trying to suppress some impulse, then said,

“I’m jealous because you’re so cute, really…”

“If you’re jealous, how about adding ‘nyang’ at the end of every sentence? That would definitely make you a thousand times cuter, nyang!”

It was also the first time I’d seen Baek Dambi look like she wanted to kill someone. She spoke with trembling lips.

“I’d rather die…!”

I laughed pleasantly and said goodbye to my round girl.

I was about to go for a drink as promised with Nguyen.

A civil servant grabbed me.

“Excuse me, Hunter Kim Geuk? I heard during the award ceremony that you’re planning to have a drink with Nguyen later, is that correct?”

“Oh, sorry for talking to you during the award ceremony. But I couldn’t just ignore you.”

“It’s not that, I have a favor to ask. It might be a bit troublesome, but could you ask Nguyen if there’s any problem while you’re having a drink with him?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean by asking if there’s any problem?”

The civil servant explained to my question.

*

Forty minutes after the award ceremony ended, I was drinking with Nguyen as promised.

I poured him a drink and said,

“Thanks for helping me out this time. I really almost died.”

Nguyen downed the drink I poured him and said heartily,

“Why are you being so formal? We awakened ones should help each other!”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“How could I ignore it when Kim Geuk looked troubled? You know I really like you, right?”

“Yes. The team members said the same.”

Nguyen gave his characteristic smile.

“I’ve met a lot of awakened ones! I’ve seen many in Vietnam and several in Japan, but there’s no hero like Kim Geuk here.”

“I am quite good, aren’t I?”

When I answered modestly, Nguyen continued to praise me.

“Yeah, you’re really good! I’ve seen many awakened ones boasting about their strength, but I’ve never seen anyone as gutsy as Kim Geuk, who can take down monsters with a hammer! I’ve seen some who recklessly charge at monsters with some courage, but I’ve never seen anyone who can achieve results like Kim Geuk with both skill and brains…”

He praised me for a long time, so I did the same.

“Mr. Nguyen, you’re really amazing, aren’t you? You were so fast that I couldn’t even see you running! Your specs are so good that your signing bonus must have been enormous, right? Oh, you’ve already finished your drink? Here, have another one…”

As I poured him another drink, Nguyen emptied his glass heartily, making everyone watching feel good.

As we exchanged drinks, I remained sober while Nguyen’s face turned red with intoxication.

Nguyen asked in a slightly tipsy voice.

“Come to think of it, Kim Geuk, you’re a body enhancer, so do you even feel anything when you drink? Isn’t your liver too strong to get drunk?”

“That’s true, but you don’t drink just to get drunk; you drink for the atmosphere too.”

“Is that so? Then I’ll just get drunk by myself!”

Nguyen almost shouted, and despite his face already being red from drinking so much, he continued to drink more and more.

Watching his heroic demeanor, I thought.

Is this the same man who is called the budget thief of Incheon City, acting timidly during hunts? At first glance, he didn’t seem that way.

According to the complaints of the civil servants, the A-rank hunter Nguyen in front of me was notorious for slacking off in Incheon City.

I recalled the conversation I had with him at the time.

‘We have to meet the number of dispatches written in the contract, so we do go out when a gate opens! But once we get there, he doesn’t try to do the proper work that an A-rank should do!’

‘When you say the work an A-rank hunter should do, do you mean handling the force field?’

‘Yes, exactly that kind of work! But Nguyen just pretends to do those hard and dangerous tasks, fires a few shots with his hunter rifle, and then goes home saying he participated in the hunt! It’s driving me crazy. He still has more than two years left on his contract, and he’s acting like this…’

I could understand why they were so serious about it.

It’s already a headache if a highly paid sports player just wants to make money without putting in the effort, but it’s an even bigger problem if an A-rank hunter, contracted with the city’s limited budget, does the same. Unlike a sports player who might just ruin the game results, the performance of an A-rank hunter is directly related to the lives of the citizens in the area.

‘But when I saw Mr. Nguyen this time, he wasn’t like that. He even got on a bike and quickly arrived at the scene, luring the giant monster away, risking his life.’

‘That’s right. From what I heard on the radio, this time he seemed to take the initiative? It was such an unusual event that I asked his team members why he was so proactive this time, and they said it was because of his personal liking for you, Mr. Kim Geuk. So…’

Since Nguyen seemed to like me particularly, the civil servant asked me to find out what the problem was.

They wanted me to ask why Nguyen was slacking off and how to make him work hard like this time.

Honestly, I didn’t feel particularly motivated. It was obvious to me what the problem was.

‘Isn’t it because he’s been overworked with emergency calls and priority field deployments, losing the motivation to work hard?’

When I pointed out what Nguyen’s team members had told me, the civil servant tried to change the subject awkwardly.

‘There’s nothing we can do about the past… I just want to see if there are any other problems.’

So they were trying to ignore the obvious real problem and find some other issue.

What was I supposed to do then? Even if I had amazing eloquence, I couldn’t improve this situation.

Still, since I was asked, I didn’t intend to ignore it completely.

I looked at Nguyen.

He seemed to have always liked drinking, as he continued to drink more and more. He was starting to have trouble holding himself up, and at this level of intoxication, it seemed easy to get him to open up.

So I asked.

“You’re quite dissatisfied with your current treatment, aren’t you?”

The answer came back immediately. Nguyen slammed the table with his fist and shouted.

“Dissatisfied? Of course!”

“Why are you so dissatisfied?”

“Because these guys see me as just a disposable foreign worker!”

Well, it wasn’t a surprising answer, so I wasn’t particularly shocked.

And as I was about to console him, Nguyen continued to speak.

“They shouldn’t treat me like that… Do they even know what I used to do? Do they know what I did in Vietnam before I became a hunter?”

“I don’t know, but I’m curious. What did you do?”

I wasn’t really curious. It was just a typical drunkard’s line, ‘Do you know what I used to do?’

However, Nguyen’s answer completely defied my expectations.

“My comrades and I, we ruled a whole province!”

I blinked. This was something I had never heard before.

“Ruling a whole province?”

And Nguyen, in a heavily drunken tone, shouted.

“Literally! We took over the entire province and acted as its lords!”

“How…”

“One day, when a bunch of monsters poured out of the gate, all the police ran away. Without the police, someone had to protect the people, right? So a few awakened soldiers, including myself, gathered the survivors and ruled over the weak people living there. Rule, yes! Rule! Just hearing the word sounds grand, doesn’t it?”

I suddenly recalled an article I had read before. It was about the awakened ones who had taken over Ca Mau province during a security vacuum.

I also remembered that those awakened ones had committed all sorts of crimes, such as extorting property or demanding tribute from the residents while claiming to collect protection fees.

It seemed that Nguyen in front of me was one of them.

I could roughly guess what happened next, but I pretended not to know and asked.

“So why are you a hunter now?”

“When the government ordered us to disband and we ignored it, they brought in the army to reclaim the area… Our leader got scared after hearing a few cannon shots and surrendered!”

It must have been something that made him very angry. Nguyen continued to shout.

“Idiot! There were nine of us with exoskeletons, so why be afraid of mortars? We’re so tough and fast, we could have withstood a few shells and then killed all the soldiers. Why be scared?”

“Were there few people who opposed the surrender?”

“There were some who said we shouldn’t surrender! But while we were arguing, the government offered to send us abroad to work as hunters for a lot of money if we surrendered peacefully. The idiots fell for that trick again… Real idiots!”

“It seems they kept their promise, though. You’re working as a hunter now.”

“The very fact that we kept that promise proves we couldn’t surrender there! The government didn’t have the confidence to suppress us, so instead of capturing us all to execute or use as slave soldiers, they first chased us out of the country to eliminate the dangerous elements, didn’t they?”

I looked around. Fortunately, this was a VIP room, so it was just the two of us, and there were no eavesdroppers detected through the mental web.

That was a relief. If someone had heard the words coming out of his mouth, it would have been a disaster.

And the heavily intoxicated Nguyen continued to spill secrets that should never be spoken aloud if he were in his right mind.

After a while, he spoke through tears.

“If Kim Geuk had been there at that time… I wouldn’t be treated like this now!”

“Why is that?”

“If Kim Geuk had been there, who would have feared artillery fire? Even a fool would have calculated that they could escape the crisis for a moment with spatial movement!

So if Kim Geuk had been there, we wouldn’t have surrendered… In the first place, if a man like Kim Geuk had led the group, we wouldn’t have surrendered just because a bunch of unawakened scraps showed up!”

Seemingly quite drunk, Nguyen was now half-crying.

He kept saying that I should have been there at that time, and then he mentioned running into a Vietnamese who knew about his past crimes in Korea, threatening to report him to the local authorities if he didn’t pay up, which made him lose a significant amount of his contract money, sniffling as he spoke.

After crying for a while, he suddenly looked at me and said,

“Kim Geuk? If you ever commit a serious crime and can’t be a hunter anymore, contact me, okay? Or even if you think being a hunter is too dangerous and hard, just contact me no matter what!”

“Are you suggesting we quit being hunters and go back to Vietnam to conquer a castle again?”

At my question, Nguyen nodded. He nodded several times, still sniffling.

“Those days were really good. It was so much better than now…! The number of women I slept with back then…”

*