SSS-Class Sui**de Hunter - Chapter 5

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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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Chapter 5. Hunting the Hero (2)
Day 4048.
[You are dead.]
Day 4047.
[You are dead.]
Day 4046.
[You are dead.]
It was the work of erasing a man’s history. Erasing a legend that seemed eternally carved into the Tower. Rome was not built in a day, and neither was Yeomje’s legend forged in mere days. Of course it was difficult.
But it was not impossible.
“Damn it……!”
I cursed. Cursing, I killed myself.
When I wanted to give up, I remembered. The pain I felt when Yeomje set my body ablaze. The injustice. The rage. His face as he casually returned after burning down the village and asked, “So, what are you going to give me?” as if nothing had happened.
The contempt in his eyes, as if I were nothing but a bug to be crushed.
‘I’ll kill him!’
Thud!
I clenched my teeth and drove my blade into my own throat.
‘I’ll kill you, Yusuhа!’
This was killing myself.
But more than that, it was killing Yeomje.
[You are dead.]
[Regressing 24 hours.]
Day 4040.
Day 4039.
Day 4038.
Day 4037…….
* * *
How many times had I killed myself?
Like an hourglass with sand that never emptied, my work seemed endless. Yeomje’s achievements loomed as immovable as a pyramid that would never crumble.
Cracks began to spider across that pyramid.
“Yeomje Conquers 39th Floor Solo!”
“38th Floor Conquered Through Solo Play! Another Legend of Yeomje!”
“37th Floor Cleared!”
“Hunter Yusuhа Ascends to World Ranking 1st. First Korean to Achieve This.”
“With the Sword Saint’s Disappearance, the Vacant Throne of Rank 1 Awaits a New Master. Who Will Take It? Foreign Experts Agree: ‘South Korea’s Yusuhа is the Strongest Contender.'”
“The Impenetrable 10th Floor Breached. Who Is This Mysterious Hero?”
“Sword Saint Missing for 22 Days. Is the Hunter Industry Facing Its Greatest Crisis?”
Newspaper clippings taped to the wall of my Officetel.
Those certificates proving Yeomje’s history were disappearing.
One by one.
“38th Floor Conquered Through Solo Play! Another Legend of Yeomje!”
“37th Floor Cleared!”
“Hunter Yusuhа Ascends to World Ranking 1st. First Korean to Achieve This.”
“With the Sword Saint’s Disappearance, the Vacant Throne of Rank 1 Awaits a New Master. Who Will Take It? Foreign Experts Agree: ‘South Korea’s Yusuhа is the Strongest Contender.'”
“The Impenetrable 10th Floor Breached. Who Is This Mysterious Hero?”
“Sword Saint Missing for 22 Days. Is the Hunter Industry Facing Its Greatest Crisis?”
One by one.
One. Then another. And another.
Like teeth falling from an old man’s mouth, the wall beneath the clippings slowly began to show.
“37th Floor Cleared!”
“Hunter Yusuhа Ascends to World Ranking 1st. First Korean to Achieve This.”
“With the Sword Saint’s Disappearance, the Vacant Throne of Rank 1 Awaits a New Master. Who Will Take It? Foreign Experts Agree: ‘South Korea’s Yusuhа is the Strongest Contender.'”
“The Impenetrable 10th Floor Breached. Who Is This Mysterious Hero?”
“Sword Saint Missing for 22 Days. Is the Hunter Industry Facing Its Greatest Crisis?”
They vanished.
‘I can see it!’
The end was coming into view.
There was still much left to do… but that was fine. I could endure it. Yeomje, who seemed immortal, eternal—that psychopath was neither eternal nor immortal after all. If I could just be certain of this one fact.
I could endure anything.
‘It’s not impossible!’
I swung my blade.
I swung the sword and killed the time of Yeomje, who had conquered the 37th floor.
“Hunter Yusuhа. Ascends to World Ranking 1st. First Korean to achieve this.”
“The throne of World Ranking 1st, left vacant by the Sword Saint’s disappearance. Who will claim it next? Foreign experts unanimously declare: ‘The strongest candidate is Korea’s Yusuhа.'”
“Impenetrable 10th Floor breached. Who is this mysterious hero?”
“Sword Saint missing for 22 days. Has the Hunter industry entered its darkest hour?”
I swung the sword again.
I swung it and killed the time of Yeomje, who had reached the pinnacle of the world.
“The throne of World Ranking 1st, left vacant by the Sword Saint’s disappearance. Who will claim it next? Foreign experts unanimously declare: ‘The strongest candidate is Korea’s Yusuhа.'”
“Impenetrable 10th Floor breached. Who is this mysterious hero?”
“Sword Saint missing for 22 days. Has the Hunter industry entered its darkest hour?”
Killed it.
“Impenetrable 10th Floor breached. Who is this mysterious hero?”
“Sword Saint missing for 22 days. Has the Hunter industry entered its darkest hour?”
Killed it.
“Sword Saint missing for 22 days. Has the Hunter industry entered its darkest hour?”
At last.
[You have died.]
My worn sword had somewhere become gleaming like new.
The wrinkles on my hands had diminished slightly. My Officetel had grown narrower with each move. As I regressed to my youth, my life had become more impoverished. Whenever I stole away to the bathroom for a moment’s rest, I could see in the mirror how much younger my face had become.
And.
“Ah…….”
There was nothing.
Nothing hung on my wall.
No newspaper clippings. No magazine interviews. Not a single scrap of paper clung to the Officetel wall.
Blankness.
I had erased the history of the name Yeomje.
“I did it.”
I muttered absently.
“I came back…….”
Eleven years ago. May 6th.
One month before Yusuhа awakened as Yeomje.
I had regressed.
4
‘There’s no need to hesitate.’
Shabby clothes.
‘No need to wait.’
A worn hoodie and sweatpants. Everything I owned in my early twenties. I wrapped myself in these meager belongings like a single layer of armor and stepped outside.
The thrill of returning to the past… was gone.
‘Yusuhа.’
Not until that bastard was dead.
‘I won’t let my guard down.’
4090 times.
That was how many times I had died to reach this day.
Forty more deaths than my initial calculation. Thousands of suicides, all the time spent resting — it all added up to this.
But that wasn’t all.
I had collected everything about Yusuhа. Every scrap of information.
This single day. May 6th. I had repeated it ten times over.
’11 A.M.’
Yusuhа almost always woke at 11 in the morning. May 6th. True to form, he rose at 11 A.M. He’d drained four beers the night before, so his face was already twisted in a scowl the moment his eyes opened.
‘2 P.M.’
Yusuhа left his rented Officetel and headed for the Hunting Ground. The kind of Officetel where F-rank bottom-tier Hunters frequented. The landlord, seeing that junior Hunters often died here, had kept the monthly rent cheap while demanding a hefty deposit. Good business sense.
‘3 P.M.’
Yusuhа hunted Slimes in the 2nd Floor Hunting Ground. But hunting only Slimes didn’t earn him enough for the day. At 3:11 P.M., Yusuhа said:
“Dammit. When am I ever going to live high and mighty like the Sword Saint……?”
He grumbled to himself. Four minutes later, at 3:15 P.M.:
“Man, Slime hunting is really boring.”
He muttered.
An ordinary F-rank Hunter.
A life spent waiting for sudden fortune to arrive.
That was twenty-one-year-old Yusuhа. Not the thirty-two-year-old Yeomje.
“If only I could win the lottery….”
It wasn’t long before twenty-one-year-old Yusuhа got his wish.
The moment he obtained the Regression skill, Yusuhа used his newfound ability to win the lottery.
The Merchant Guild—the organization known as the Merchant Guild—issued a lottery every week. It was the only guild able to draw lottery tickets from within the tower. And all Hunters who won this lottery were recorded in the official records.
Among those records was an entry for a young man who would later be called Yeomje.
A lucky man who had won first prize not once, but twice in a row.
‘Three weeks from now and four weeks from now.’
But.
The future that awaits this twenty-one-year-old Yusuhа standing before me will not be like that.
‘You die today. Here.’
May 6th. 5:31 p.m.
Yusuhа left the 2nd Floor Hunting Ground and moved on. Perhaps he’d realized that slaughtering nothing but Slimes for the rest of his life was hopeless. He headed toward a zone that beginner Hunters rarely ventured into—somewhere with a higher degree of difficulty.
A place more remote and treacherous.
A place where, for the next thirty-six minutes, no one would pass but him.
‘…He’s here.’
I had been waiting.
‘That’s him.’
The man shuffling along with a yawn—Yusuhа.
Eleven years I had climbed backward through time, and still I recognized him in an instant. It wasn’t any particular keenness on my part. Yusuhа simply looked much the same now as he would eleven years from now.
‘He must have found some elixir of immortality and eaten it later.’
How kind.
That this greedy pig’s appetite knows no bounds!
‘Come on.’
My heart hammered wildly.
I swallowed the tension and opened my mouth.
“P-please, Hunter! Save me…!”
“Huh?”
Yusuhа turned to look at me.
“I was attacked by wolves…. God. Please, save me. Do you have a Potion…?”
I was drenched in blood from head to toe. Covered in it. Of course, it wasn’t my blood—it was from Monsters I’d hunted and prepared beforehand. To anyone else’s eye, I was a novice Hunter on death’s doorstep.
“Ah, damn it. What’s this?”
To Yusuhа’s eye, no doubt the same.
“Did you already mess with the Monsters around here? Shit. That ruins my whole day of hunting.”
“P-please, a Potion….”
“A Potion? Hell no. I’m not even going to make my daily wage at this rate. Ugh.”
Yusuhа sighed and approached.
“How much will you give me?”
“What?”
“How much will you pay for the Potion? Look, I’m not running a charity here. I can’t just hand out these expensive Potions for free to some stranger I’ve never met. That’s not happening.”
Yusuhа pulled out a plastic bottle. He shook it right in front of my eyes. Slosh. Inside the vial bearing the Yeongeum Guild’s mark, a crimson liquid sloshed like blood.
Twenty Gold at the Yeongeum Guild. It was a Recovery Potion that sold for nineteen Gold per unit if you bought five at a time.
“T-twenty Gold… I can give you that. Please, hurry….”
“Wow, look at this old man. Your greed is something else.”
Yusuhа knelt down to meet my eyes at the same level.
“You got no sense of the situation? You’re about to die. About to. This Potion is what’ll save you. And you want to buy your own life for a measly twenty Gold? Your life is worth twenty Gold?”
“I… I….”
“If I just walk away right now? You’re dead. If you don’t want to die, you better know what your life is worth.”
“….”
Yes.
I knew it.
“F-forty Gold then….”
“Done. Hand over everything you’ve got.”
I knew exactly what kind of man this was.
“Yeah, sure. You probably want to give it, but look at you—you can’t even move your hands, can you? Don’t worry. I’ll collect for you. I’m considerate like that.”
Yusuhа reached out and rummaged through my clothes. Upper pockets. The inside of my hoodie. He patted down my pants pockets. He finally found my leather wallet and grinned wickedly.
“Let’s see. One Gold, two Gold, three Gold…. Hmm, about sixty Gold? Man, you’re poor. Carry more with you.”
“T-that’s… my entire fortune….”
“No worries. I’ll use it well.”
Yusuhа pocketed the wallet and patted my head.
Four thousand and fifty days ago. No.
Just as he had done four thousand and fifty days later, burning me alive.
“That’s how life goes, isn’t it?”
With a soft rustle, he withdrew something from his breast. The Recovery Potion he’d promised to give me stayed tucked away. What he drew instead was a blade.
A sword.
Not an instrument to save lives, but its opposite—a tool of death.
‘Ah.’
I looked up at Yusuhа. It wasn’t anger I felt, exactly—more a kind of absurdity. But perhaps he read my expression differently, because he gave a shrug.
“Come on, don’t look at me like that. I was weighing whether to give you the Potion, but if I let you live here, you might come back to take revenge on me later, right? I can’t have that. A person ought to live without loose ends, and since you’ve seen my face…”
Yusuhа was smiling.
“You’ll have to die.”
A Hunter I’d once glimpsed only from behind on television. A man I’d worshipped as a hero for a decade, envied so intensely because I wanted to succeed just as he had.
The hero’s true face was ugly.
Far uglier than I’d imagined.
‘Good.’
I watched quietly as Yusuhа gripped the blade.
‘I’ll live without loose ends.’
He raised the sword slowly, high.
And then.
I drove my right foot up, kicking him squarely in the groin.
“Ack?”
Staggering, Yusuhа’s form wavered for just an instant as he’d been about to bring the blade down. But that single moment was all I needed. I slipped past the path of his descending sword with barely a margin to spare, then—
“Huh?”
—drove my own blade into his throat.
“…!”
Unlike Yusuhа, I didn’t waste breath on pointless monologues when faced with prey that needed to be eliminated, that needed to die. The moment his throat was pierced, I twisted the blade and raked it across the underside of his jaw.
“Ugh, hack…!”
Blood sprayed outward. My hand was drenched in seconds. Yusuhа gasped in strangled whimpers before crumpling, managing at last a proper scream.
“Aaaaagh!”
But even that lasted only a moment. Blood and foam bubbled up immediately, choking off his throat.
“Mm, hack…! Ugh…!”
With each passing second, Yusuhа died.
He sensed it instinctively—his own dying. On the ground, mid-thrash, he arched his back and clamped both hands over the wound at his neck. But the blood wouldn’t stop. If anything, it flowed darker and thicker between his fingers.
“That’s right.”
I brought my heel down hard on Yusuhа’s throat.
“…!”
His pupils dilated. Why. How. Questions and rage flickered in his gaze—a light that would soon extinguish forever. I owed him no answers.
“Thank you for the experience.”
I gripped the blade.
The blade that had killed me four thousand and ninety times.
And I swung it.
To kill a monster.
SSS-Rank Hunter: Must Die to Live (Serialized)
Author │ Shin Noah
Publisher │ Kim Joo-hyung
Published by │ J Plus Media Co., Ltd.
Marketing │ Han Jae-hyuk
Address │ 204-ho, 288 Digital-ro, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong, Daelung Post Tower 1st)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
ⓒ Shin Noah 2019
※ This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. under contract with the copyright holder, and its contents may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the company and author.
Violation of this provision 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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