Chapter 4
“It’s been about three days. Mia suddenly stopped coming to work. Thanks to that, I’m on duty for the third day in a row now.”
“Huh? Mia’s boyfriend? Oh, the Hunter? Mia bragged about him nonstop.”
“It’s gotten cold lately, so the monsters have decreased. Thanks to that, the mood here is grim. The Hunters have lost their work, after all.”
“The Hunters have been coming around less too. It makes sense, since there aren’t any monsters. Maybe they went off to look for other work?”
The nurses in the makeshift ward were mostly saying the same thing.
Because winter was coming and the nearby monsters had thinned out, the number of Hunters had naturally dropped as well.
There was no reason for hunters to stay in a hunting ground where the prey had dried up.
“What do we do now?”
Hunter Lee Kangho let out a deep sigh.
“There isn’t even the slightest clue about Mia. She really just vanished without a trace all of a sudden.”
I listened in silence, exhaling cigarette smoke.
It had that distinctive dusty taste mixed with the air outside Seoul.
“Hmm, looks like you’ve got something in mind?”
“Experience really shows.”
Renea leaned in slightly and whispered,
“Don’t talk about my age in front of a man who might become my future husband, or I’ll kill you.”
“You don’t actually believe that’ll happen, do you?”
“I-I can at least dream, can’t I?”
Sigh, fine.
At 1,900 years old, she was honestly closer to dead than alive.
Might as well do everything I want before I die.
“An idea? Did you find something, boss?”
“Ms. Yumia’s mother told me. There’s a record of her clocking in, but she never returned to Seoul after clocking out.”
That meant Yumia had gone missing outside Seoul.
That was why the police hadn’t really moved on it.
Because disappearances caused by monsters outside the city happen frequently every year.
“Monsters...!”
Hunter Lee Kangho widened his eyes and urgently grabbed the shotgun in his hand.
It wasn’t a meaningful action. Still, if he didn’t do even that, he probably wouldn’t be able to vent his frustration.
“Let’s clear out all the monsters around here right now! Then—!”
“That’s odd.”
Renea cut in, interrupting him.
“If that’s true, it doesn’t add up. Monsters have been sharply decreasing nearby lately, but a person went missing?”
She definitely had experience.
She’d pointed out exactly the part I was about to question.
“Huh? R-right, that’s true?! Why?”
This may be a bit rude to say, but—
Hunter Lee Kangho looked a little stupid.
Thank goodness the matchmaking agency didn’t evaluate intelligence, too.
If they had, I would’ve downgraded him to A-rank.
“I’m not familiar with this ecosystem. But you seem to know something.”
“Usually there are two major possibilities in cases like this. One, the person was just unbelievably unlucky. A monster managed to kidnap Yumia while slipping past the Hunters’ eyes.”
Of course, the odds of that were low.
The other one is—
“Some crazy monster that’s preparing for hibernation is gathering them all up.”
The two of them immediately grew serious.
The possibility that the monster was stockpiling food for winter hibernation, and that Yumia had become part of that stockpile, rose to the surface.
“Most of the monsters around here don’t hibernate. It’s a spot Hunters love all year round.”
“That’s right. I hunt in a more dangerous area, but most Hunters who have families or want something safe hunt here.”
The fact that there was even a container-made makeshift ward here meant Hunters came through here a lot.
“If I had to guess, it looks like some big bastard crawled in from somewhere.”
There was a monster that gathered nearby monsters as stockpiled food for its own hibernation.
No—could it be just monsters?
One of the nurses had said it.
Recently, Hunters had decreased too.
“Then there could be people being held too.”
I put the burned-out cigarette butt into the cigarette case.
With this theory, even the “mixed-up human scent” Renea mentioned earlier could be explained.
“What?! A-a person?! Then this is a real disaster!”
“...For a matchmaker, you know quite a lot about all sorts of things.”
Unlike the flustered Hunter Lee Kangho, Renea folded her arms and studied me with her gaze.
“Right now that’s not the important part. There may be more abducted people. Since it’s outside the city, it’s likely the police won’t bother getting involved.”
“T-then what do we do? Should I gather my fellow Hunters?”
“That’ll take time, and we’ll have to pay a lot too. More importantly—”
I called the office on my phone.
After the connection tone—
- H-hello? B-boss?
“Yeah, Kim Yang-a. Done dancing?”
- ...I-I didn’t dance at all.
“I followed your account.”
- Boss! Tell me your ID! I-I’m going to block you!
“Forget that. Go check my desk.”
- P-pervert. A p-peeping beautiful secretary voyeur. I-I’ll sue you.
Someone must’ve learned some strange words somewhere.
- I-I’m here, boss.
“In the second drawer, there should be a letter, right? The one with a number written on it?”
- A love letter? H-heart stationery?
“Right, call that number and tell them I’m in danger. My GPS is on, so they’ll find me on their own.”
- A-alright, boss.
“Did you have any visitors?”
- No.
Yeah, I need to make this job even more of a success.
If I just get the matchmaking success fee, I won’t have to worry about food expenses for at least a few months.
Goodbye, instant ramen.
Once I hung up, the two of them asked at the same time.
“Do you have any hunter acquaintances?”
“Who did you call?”
“A friend.”
After turning on the phone’s GPS, I patted the car.
“Let’s go a little deeper first. We need to check whether our guess is right. If it is, finding them won’t be hard.”
We all got into the SUV.
With a vigorous engine roar, it surged forward.
Finding it was, quite literally, not difficult.
If they’re preparing for winter, they’ll look for a warm place.
There were many abandoned buildings on Seoul’s outskirts, and I was wondering if one of them might be the one.
“The smell of humans is practically wafting over there.”
Renea stuck her head out the window and pointed at the construction site.
Near the unfinished high-rise construction site, spider-like monsters about the size of large dogs were scurrying about briskly.
“Ugh, gross.”
I wasn’t especially afraid of spiders, but when huge ones like that were wandering around, there was no way they wouldn’t be gross.
A cocoon of spider silk that all of them were carrying in their mouths.
A Hunter rifle was sticking out of the cocoon.
It was a person.
“Those bastards—!”
Hunter Lee Kangho was brimming with excitement.
After glancing at him, I casually suggested,
“How about we just push in? It looks like it’ll be a pain to break through all that.”
“Huh? This car still has installments left.”
Look at him snapping back to his senses right away.
“Ms. Yumia has been missing for three days. Every minute counts.”
The engine answered instead.
Bwaaaaang!
The SUV charged forward with a rough exhaust roar.
“Go, oppa!”
Renea poked her head out the window and called cheerfully.
For someone 1,900 years old, she sure says “oppa” with no trouble.
Bang! KWAANG! CRUNCH!
The SUV barreled through the spiders, from the ones that slammed into the windows and skidded away to the ones crushed beneath the wheels.
I’d heard Shilla’s SUVs were sturdy despite the ugly design, and sure enough, they were.
Screeeech!
The SUV came to a stop in the middle of the construction site.
The spider-type monsters shrank back and retreated.
“Boss, stay in the car.”
With a clack as he chambered a round, Hunter Lee Kangho took out his shotgun and stepped outside.
Lee Kangho is a pretty capable Hunter.
When it comes to assigning job grades, Hunters are judged especially strictly.
If they lack ability, they can die.
Even so, Hunter Lee Kangho received an overall “S” grade from our matchmaking agency.
That meant he was that competent, but—
He was a bad matchup.
At the construction site’s highest point.
A queen spider looking down at us.
Its lower body was that of a spider, while its upper body was humanoid.
Judging by the fact that it had even taken on human form, its intelligence was clearly high as well.
Behind it stretched a wide web, with a considerable number of cocoons hanging from it.
From the weapons and clothes sticking out, they were definitely people.
Bang! Bang!
The shotgun’s firing sounded.
Its overwhelming firepower burst the spiders apart.
Even after seeing that, the spider queen didn’t blink.
With so many mouths to feed while preparing for winter hibernation, it was naturally reducing the number of offspring.
The spider queen was actually enjoying the death of her own offspring.
Renea tapped my back while watching the situation.
“Aren’t you going to fight, boss?”
“I only have a folding knife at best. Legally, I can’t carry equipment capable of killing monsters.”
In Seoul, weapon possession is prohibited unless you’re a Hunter or a police officer.
There was no way a businessman like me could have weapons.
“Hmm? I have a bow.”
“You’re getting looked down on. The 3rd and 6th floors usually look down on bows and the like, don’t they?”
“......”
Especially in the 6th Floor’s Cyber City, they look down on melee weapons so much they practically call them monkeys.
“If I remember right, that thing is a named monster called the ‘Net Queen.’ It was wanted in another region, not here, but it must have come all the way to warm Seoul because of the cold weather.”
“You really do know all sorts of things. Anything else you know?”
“That even ten Lee Kanghos still wouldn’t be able to beat that thing?”
“And yet you’re awfully calm?”
Bang! Bang!
“I already called for backup. They should be here soon.”
“Your friend?”
“Yeah, so relax.”
There was a gum tin in the car, so I popped one into my mouth and chewed.
“If it’s wanted, that means there’s a bounty, right?”
“Hmm? Yeah, I think so. If I remember right, it was 200 million won.”
As soon as she heard the answer, Renea opened the sunroof and leaned her body out.
She drew her bow and immediately pulled back the string.
“That’ll make a perfect wedding fund.”
In an instant, a cluster of light enveloped Renea’s entire body and burst outward.
The sacred yet rapturous energy gently wrapped around the surroundings like a spring breeze, carrying a faint scent of autumn leaves.
All of it gathered in Renea’s grasp and soon took the shape of an arrow.
“...!”
For the first time, the Net Queen panicked.
She gathered up the cocoons caught in the web one by one and wrapped them around herself like a shield.
She’d only made tiny openings near her eyes to keep tabs on the situation.
A perfectly made meat shield.
“At this distance—”
Twang!
Renea released the bowstring toward them without the slightest hesitation.
“I can hit it with my eyes closed.”
The arrow, shot forth with scattering motes of light, pierced straight through the Net Queen’s head.