SSS-Class Sui**de Hunter - Chapter 3

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 3. But I Die (2)
“What?”
“I was lying. Bluffing. You don’t know what that is?”
Yeom Je laughed softly.
“I don’t have some skill that detects lies or anything like that. It was just bluffing to test the Saint. Man, both the Saint and you—you’re really naive. Do you believe everything I say?”
“Then… then…”
My lips trembled. I was in shock.
“You killed the Saint without any certainty at all?”
Ranking ninth, the Saint. A Hunter with character that stood upright—unlike the psychopath before me—who donated most of her earnings to orphanages. You killed someone called the Saint simply because you suspected her?
‘If that’s the case….’
This bastard wasn’t an extraordinary Hunter—he was an extraordinary lunatic.
“Hey, don’t talk to me like that. Of course I had certainty. The Saint really was trying to kill me. If I didn’t kill her first, I’d be poisoned to death by the Saint tomorrow.”
Yeom Je spat onto the street.
“Damn it. Now that I think about it again, my mood’s gone to hell.”
“How did you… know that?”
“I know everything.”
He answered as if it were obvious.
“I just know. There’s a way I know everything.”
……
“You don’t need to know what that method is.”
For a moment, words failed me.
It wasn’t just that Yeom Je was absurdly confident. There was a certain conviction in his eyes. A conviction that he had killed the Saint for a real reason. At least, that’s how it seemed to me.
“Well, the fact that you’re bringing up lie detection suggests you’re really innocent.”
“Ah…”
“Besides, this is actually the first time I’ve seen your face. I remember the faces of all those rats lurking around here—eighteen in total. Those bastards even matched their head count, so… anyway. Yeah, that’s right. There wasn’t anyone as meek as you among them.”
Yeom Je touched my head. He stroked it gently. He was smiling.
Did he finally believe I was innocent?
“Th-thank you so—!”
“But you know who I am. You saw that the Saint died by my hand.”
Stroke.
“So you’ll have to die for me.”
Stroke—and Yeom Je’s hand slowed.
“My name is Yu Su Ha. Farewell.”
That was the moment. My head burned. No—my brain burned. For just an instant, it felt like the crown of my head had touched a hot frying pan. But immediately, my gray matter ignited. It sizzled.
My skull boiled like an oil drum.
……. Ugh……!
No words came out. No scream came out. When the pain is truly unbearable, the human body cannot even cry out.
‘To die like this… to this madman. I’m going to die this way.’
Kim Gong Ja.
The name the orphanage director had given me—urging me to become great like Confucius himself—had lived a life nothing like Confucius, and now met a dog’s death just as ignoble.
It was sad.
‘Ah.’
In gaming terms, it was a bad run.
Said plainly, it was a ruined life.
A broken life, dying broken.
[You have died.]
I hated it.
[The condition for your skill is achieved through death.]
Why did I have to die like this?
No—why did I have to live like this?
I felt robbed. Enraged. Everything simply felt unjust. I could have lived a little better. Living a little better would have been fine. I had the right to it. Except I made mistakes. Today I made three mistakes. I died because of a mistake. I lived making mistakes. I was born by mistake.
Was I a mistake from birth itself?
[Randomly copying the skill of Hunter Yu Su Ha.]
[Forming a Skill Card.]
I heard nothing. Saw nothing.
Only vague glimmers of light flickered before me. Like fireflies dancing in front of my eyes. Some were copper-colored. Some were silver. And others were… golden.
They moved fast.
The golden firefly darted swiftly. Too quick to catch, it seemed. The copper-colored fireflies were countless. Easy prey, surely. There were a few silver ones too. I could catch those as well, I thought. But the firefly shimmering with the sun’s own gold—there was only one.
[Please select a Skill Card.]
I reached out toward that golden flame, the only one of its kind in this world.
[Selection complete.]
Got it.
[Copying skill.]
And then I died.
* * *
Activating skill.
Name: I Want to Be Like You.
Rank: S+.
Rule one.
Activates automatically when you die to an enemy.
Rule two.
Copy one skill from the enemy that killed you and make it your own.
Rule three.
You cannot copy the same opponent twice.
Rule four.
Which skill you copy is determined at random.
However, you die.
* * *
Do you know what Hell looks like?
Allow me to tell you instead.
First of all, there were no hellfire flames. No ordinary fire either. There was one gas stove, but it lacked the firepower to conjure anything resembling infernal flames. Oddly enough, Hell also contained a small refrigerator. A narrow bed too. A secondhand television.
“Huh?”
In short, it looked exactly like my Studio Apartment.
No—it was my Studio Apartment.
No matter how thoroughly I looked around, this wasn’t Hell. My modestly-priced 3.5-pyeong studio—hardly the stuff of temptation—was unmistakably real.
“Uh, uh… uh?”
I ran a hand over my head. It was intact. Just to be sure, I held my Smartphone up to check my reflection. My face looked like an Apollo statue abandoned halfway through its carving—in other words, moderately handsome and moderately plain in equal measure.
There wasn’t a single burn scar anywhere.
“…What? How is this possible?”
How had this actually happened?
‘Could Yeom Je have healed me and brought me here?’
That was absurd.
And yet… I couldn’t think of any other way to explain this situation. Maybe Yeom Je was kinder than I’d thought. Crazy, certainly, but not a complete psychopath—perhaps he’d faked killing me only to quietly let me live.
-This is breaking news.
Then maybe he’d left the Television on before stepping out.
-The Black Dragon Guild has launched an assault on the fortieth floor.
-This time, they promised to demonstrate the full might of a top-tier Guild, didn’t they?
-Unfortunately, they’ve returned empty-handed once again.
But that wasn’t it.
Yeom Je wasn’t in my 3.5-pyeong studio. He hadn’t simply turned on the Television and stepped out briefly.
Instead.
-Hunter Ranking number one!
-Yeom Je has solo-defeated another Boss!
Instead, Yeom Je was scowling from inside the Television screen.
2
-Hello there, Yeom Je!
-Ah, yes. Hello….
-You’ve set another new record today. You’re the only person to have achieved so many records. Would you mind sharing your thoughts?
-First of all, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop using that ridiculous nickname.
-I beg your pardon?
In the corner of the broadcast screen, English text appeared in capital letters.
LIVE.
I stared blankly at the old Television.
-First of all, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop using that ridiculous nickname.
-I beg your pardon?
-Yeom Je. Why would you call someone by such a vulgar alias when they have a perfectly good name?
Yu Su Ha.
The world’s number-one-ranked Hunter. The hero of this age. The man I had envied was there, on that screen. Yes, perhaps it would be inaccurate to merely say he ‘was there.’
He had killed me, and I had died by his hand.
“This can’t be real.”
Even as I said it was impossible, my hand had already moved to check my smartphone. I looked at the date. It was yesterday’s date.
My hand trembled.
I opened an internet community.
-Hey, Yeom Je’s acting up again!
Here too.
-In front of the whole world watching, could he at least watch his mouth?
There as well.
-That bastard’s girlfriend showed up! He’s dating The Saint!
Every site, every community, every SNS.
They were all the same. The posts I’d seen yesterday were appearing in real-time, identical, yet other people reacted as if they were seeing them for the first time.
“Hah…….”
Yet there was one thing that had changed.
-I want to be like Yeom Je.
My comment was gone.
Of course it was. Normally at this time yesterday, I would have been frantically typing replies, but now I was simply lost in thought.
I had truly returned to yesterday.
“…Skill Card. Open.”
Whoosh!
A golden card bloomed like flames before my eyes.
[I Want to Be Like You (S+)]
A skill I’d checked so many times since yesterday that I’d memorized it completely. An S-rank ability but one I could absolutely never use. The most useless technique imaginable—one that cost my life to activate.
But that wasn’t all.
“My God.”
Two.
There were two flames burning before me.
[I Want to Be Like You (S+)]
[Retrograde Pocket Watch (EX)]
Two golden cards hovered in the air.
‘How?’
My heart pounded.
Retrograde Pocket Watch. A skill I’d never seen before. It wasn’t there when I checked yesterday, and it wasn’t there even before I died to Yeom Je. All I had was that useless skill I couldn’t even use, and a skill with that name—especially not a golden-ranked one—should never have existed in my possession.
‘How did this happen?’
I didn’t know.
How that skill became mine. When it became mine. I couldn’t say. I couldn’t understand it yet.
But.
‘It’s mine.’
I could know this much—that this card belonged to me.
‘Mine.’
And perhaps a card that might change my entire life.
I reached out and grasped the card.
I flipped it over.
+
[Retrograde Pocket Watch]
Rank: EX
Effect: Activates automatically upon death. Regresses 24 hours from the moment of death. Memory and stat points are preserved through regression.
※However, stronger penalties are applied as your Hunter Rank increases.
※This skill was copied from Hunter Yu Su Ha.
+
Regression.
When you die, you return 24 hours back.
“Ah…….”
My head trembled as if struck by lightning. My heart hammered wildly.
I understood.
“This is Yeom Je’s secret…….”
How he became the world’s number-one ranked Hunter.
How he solo-defeated the impregnable Boss on the tenth floor of the Tower.
And finally, why Yeom Je was so certain that “The Saint will kill me.”
At last, I understood.
-The Saint really was trying to kill me.
-If I don’t kill her first, tomorrow The Saint will poison me to death.
Yeom Je had spoken.
I know it all.
I just know everything. There’s a way to know it all.
But you don’t need to know what that method is.
He had actually died at the hands of the Saint.
As he’d said himself, he’d been poisoned to death. Because he was dead, he regressed twenty-four hours. And grinding his teeth, he repaid the Saint.
For revenge.
‘And he killed me too.’
My fists clenched tight.
‘Me, who’d done nothing wrong! Just because I annoyed him!’
He cut off my feet. He burned my hair. He killed me. He toyed with me like an insect.
On the cheap television, the interview was still unfolding.
One last thing for our viewers—please share a final message with us!
Huh.
At the reporter’s question, Yeom Je scratched the back of his head furiously.
Yesterday, I saw a hero in that gesture. Now I was looking at a psychopath. It didn’t matter that he was ranked first in the world. It didn’t matter that he was a Hunter celebrated as a hero by countless people. He was my enemy.
Yeom Je stared directly into the camera.
Some people are just born to succeed.
I too stared directly at him.
But don’t defy me once you make it.
I gripped the golden card tight in my hand. The same card he possessed. The Skill I’d copied from Yeom Je. He was ranked first, and I wasn’t even on the Rankings, just a foot soldier, but in this moment, we two stood on exactly the same starting line.
You’re going to die.
Now it was my turn to take revenge.
SSS-Rank Hunter Who Lives by Dying (Ongoing)
Author │ Shin No-ah
Publisher │ Kim Ju-hyeong
Published by │ J Plus Media Co., Ltd.
Marketing │ Han Jae-hyeok
Address │ 204 Daelyung Post Tower 1, 288 Digital-ro, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
ⓒ Shin No-ah 2019
※This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. in accordance with a contract with the copyright holder, and the contents may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher and author.
Violation of this may result in criminal and civil legal liability.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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