SSS-Class Sui**de Hunter - Chapter 51

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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 51. After the Ending (2)
“You need to think more carefully about where you stand now!”
The Black Dragon Lord spoke.
She continued striking my forearm with a rolled-up bundle of newspaper. Thwack! Thwack! The glee radiating from her was so palpable that she seemed unable to contain herself.
“Where I stand?”
“Right. You’re currently registered with all five of the Great Guilds. But in practical terms, you’re unaffiliated—no different from that. Since things have gone so well, you could even consider founding your own guild from scratch.”
The Black Dragon Lord chuckled with evident delight.
“For a Hunter ranked third in the standings, you ought to at least hold the title of Guild Master. Even if you’re simultaneously registered with all five Great Guilds, appearing as just another ordinary member doesn’t sit right.”
I couldn’t quite grasp it.
“Guild Master, then.”
The idea of me becoming head of some guild felt unreal—not merely unreal but completely inconceivable. Why would I need Hunters under my command in the first place? I already have the Skeleton Legion.
“That’s fair.”
Noticing my less-than-pleased expression, the Black Dragon Lord shrugged. Behind her shoulder, the Sword Saint gazed toward me in silence.
“You might turn out to be like that old man over there—solo play might suit your nature better. Plenty of people have a romantic attachment to going it alone, crushing everything themselves. I won’t pressure you if your mind isn’t set on it.”
“Hmm, are you gossiping about me right now?”
“Setting that aside for a moment……”
The Black Dragon Lord turned away, ignoring the Sword Saint.
“What are those over there?”
Beyond the Acacia Forest Path.
Soldiers of the Continent were constructing something on the small plain. It was a military encampment. Having abandoned their assault on the Paradise of Agui, they would rest for the day and then withdraw.
“Ah.”
I stroked my chin thoughtfully.
“Those soldiers were gathered from all across the Continent.”
“From all across the Continent?”
“If I may explain……”
I went on with my account. Of course, I left out everything about Agui. I spoke only of how I’d deceived the Continent’s armies.
The Black Dragon Lord and the Sword Saint listened together, and with each detail, their expressions grew more curious. The Black Dragon Lord’s remark seemed to capture their shared sentiment.
“Sa Wang… you certainly have a talent for deception.”
“Well, thanks to that, we cleared without shedding a drop of blood.”
“No, I’m not reproaching you. On the contrary, you did brilliantly.”
The Black Dragon Lord’s eyes narrowed.
It was the calculating gaze of a merchant hatching a cunning scheme.
“Now we can actually conduct trade with this Continent. We won’t have to grovel before those elders in the outside world anymore. Vile creatures! They’ve always beaten down our prices on food supplies. Let’s see if they dare try such tactics going forward.”
Resentment dripped from her voice.
“Fundamentally, trade between the Tower and the outside world is unjust,” the Sword Saint said.
He continued speaking.
“Capital, resources, technology—the outside world is richer in everything compared to the Tower. Of course, the Tower does possess Elixirs and materials that the outside world cannot obtain……”
“Food! It’s always food that’s the problem!”
The Black Dragon Lord stamped her foot against the ground.
When I first met her, I’d thought her a stoic sort, but perhaps it was because the three of us had pushed through from Floor 12 to Floor 19 together—her emotional expressions had become far more animated in front of us.
Which meant we’d grown that much closer.
“Black Dragon Lord, in any case, you’re saying we’ll begin trading with the people of this Continent?”
“Of course. The outside world needs to taste some bitterness for once.”
“Then.”
I smiled slightly.
And I pointed toward the military encampment sprawled across the plain.
“From now on, we’ll need to negotiate with those people. If we just bluntly say ‘Let’s trade’ without any foundation, they won’t listen to a word, will they? To the Continentals, we’re foreigners, and to us, they’re people from another world entirely.”
“That’s true.”
“I’ll lend you my name.”
I said this.
“In this other world, I am the predecessor of the First Emperor and an apostle of the Goddess. If you frame yourselves as apostles sent by the Goddess as well, it should at least serve as a foundation for beginning trade.”
……
The Black Dragon Lord’s eyes narrowed.
“A generous offer. A useful one. But you wouldn’t be lending me your name for nothing… so what do you want?”
“Floor 20.”
“What?”
I looked around me.
The Acacia Forest Path. The Small Plain. Esdel’s homeland.
This small world was the entirety of Floor 20.
“I want Floor 20.”
For a moment, the Black Dragon Lord fell silent.
“…Wait. Floor 20? You’re not saying you want the entire floor for yourself?”
“Yes, ideally the land of Floor 20 would be entirely mine.”
“That’s…….”
“In exchange, I won’t take anything for clearing Floors 11 through 19. Let the other Hunters divide the profits from trading with the Continent.”
The Black Dragon Lord’s lips pressed shut again.
It was an audacious proposal.
Ordinarily, when Hunters cleared a stage, the participants would first divide the spoils among themselves — ownership of items, and further, ownership of resources. However, roughly half of all rights were left for all Hunters to share.
No one had ever possessed an entire floor outright.
“This isn’t something I can decide unilaterally.”
The Black Dragon Lord’s expression grew troubled.
“I need to call the other Guild Masters and discuss it.”
“Well, I have nothing to do for the next twenty-four hours anyway. I’ll wait.”
“…You really do want this stage?”
The Black Dragon Lord glanced around.
“Frankly, the land doesn’t look particularly valuable. The Acacia Forest Path is beautiful, certainly, but there’s little ground suitable for farming. The stage itself is cramped.”
“I see.”
“From my experience, Sa Wang, when something like this comes up, it’s far more profitable to take your share of the rewards for clearing Floors 11 through 20. You could earn an enormous sum of money.”
I smiled.
“I prefer real estate to money. Land is best.”
“…….”
“Deal?”
The Black Dragon Lord sighed.
“I’ll gather the Guild Masters. Let’s discuss it on Floor 1.”
“Understood.”
“Yes, besides, you should show your face to people at some point anyway. But…….”
The Black Dragon Lord slowly turned her gaze.
“There’s something I’ve wanted to ask since earlier.”
“Yes?”
“…What is that?”
I followed the direction the Black Dragon Lord pointed.
“Damn it, stop… damn, stop! Stop it, please! Is that really so hard to ask for?! What have I done to you, what is this grudge—!”
There, the greatest Dancer of the Tower was displaying his prowess.
The Dancer’s sweat and tears streamed down miserably, soaking the Acacia Forest Path.
Beautiful.
“Black Dragon Lord.”
I smiled brightly.
“The Black Dragon Lord saw nothing.”
“Hm?”
“You saw nothing at all. You understand, yes?”
“…….”
The Black Dragon Lord’s expression grew peculiar.
It was the face of a biologist confronting the mystery of a lifetime.
“Right, the world is full of all sorts of people. I can accept that.”
However, the Black Dragon Lord murmured,
“You’re truly not in your right mind either…….”
That too was a minority opinion.
2
I dismissed Agui and Yeom Je, and had myself and the Hunters transported to Floor 1.
“Would that coffee shop from before work as a meeting place?”
“Yes, I’m fine with anywhere.”
Babylon, the city of Floor 1. I had returned after ages.
To others, it might have seemed I’d come back after merely five days, but not to me.
It truly felt like hundreds of days, years since I’d returned to the city.
“Hah.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing, I’m just now feeling like I’ve truly cleared the stage.”
The Black Dragon Lord laughed softly.
“Well, you might need to wait a little longer for that.”
“Hm?”
“I told you so. Everyone in the Tower is talking about nothing but you these days. You’d better prepare yourself mentally.”
There was no need to ask what kind of mental preparation she meant.
“What?”
“Wait, is that…?”
We’d barely stepped off the teleport stone on Floor 1 when the murmuring began.
Pedestrians crossing the street, vendors hawking wares at their stalls, Hunters gearing up to head out to the hunting grounds—they all began whispering one by one.
“That’s the Witch and the Sword Saint.”
“Then that person must be…”
“Sa Wang!”
Someone cried it aloud.
That was the turning point.
“Sa Wang has appeared!”
A customer examining secondhand weapons at a stall turned his head. A couple enjoying coffee at an outdoor café stood up. A merchant selling rare flowers, a Hunter chatting with a colleague—dozens, hundreds of eyes fixed on us all at once.
In an instant, a crowd surged toward us.
“Wow, amazing…”
“Is it true you cleared Floor 20 solo? The rumor—is it true?”
“Look here! Just a moment! Over here!”
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
We didn’t even have time to react. In one blink, people had surrounded our entire group. And that wasn’t the end of it. By the second blink, the circle had doubled in thickness.
“Um…”
“Don’t say anything.”
The Black Dragon Lord leaned close and whispered, her voice meant only for me.
“You’ve never dealt with the media before, have you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Mysterium Concept or Celebrity Concept?”
“Sorry?”
“A concept—which do you want? The Mysterium Concept or the Celebrity Concept?”
Even as she whispered, the crowd tripled in size. Our pace slowed to a crawl. Click! Click! Every step we took, camera shutters clattered like gunfire.
Good grief.
I couldn’t think straight!
“Once you commit to a concept, it’s hard to change. Decide now.”
“Well, I understand the Mysterium Concept, but what exactly is the Celebrity Concept?”
“It’s like being a movie star.”
The Black Dragon Lord explained.
“You’d need to create new social media accounts. Hire a secretary for image management and another for media relations. Of course, we’d also need to employ someone to manage your appearance and fashion. Don’t worry about the cost—the Black Dragon Society will cover everything.”
My already scattered mind scattered further.
Beside us, the Sword Saint was frowning deeply.
He muttered under his breath.
“No wonder he hates all that nonsense and travels alone.”
It sounded perfectly reasonable to me.
“Please, the Mysterium Concept…”
“Are you sure? People change with proper management. You’d become even more handsome, of course, and you’d learn to see other people through fresh eyes. The Heresy Inquisitor, for instance—he’s done magazine spreads and personal photo shoots.”
I knew that well enough.
Before my regression of four thousand days, wasn’t I the one clipping and collecting pictures from exactly those magazines and photo spreads? The Black Dragon Lord standing right in front of me had been a magazine cover regular.
“No. Mysterium. Please, I’m begging you—Mysterium Concept.”
But when the subject was me, things were different.
“Why? Don’t you like photo shoots?”
Had I taken a bullet to the head?
“I’d die of embarrassment!”
“Everyone’s embarrassed at first. Well, the Heresy Inquisitor was never embarrassed from the start, but he’s an exception. Sa Wang—truthfully, if we’re talking about embarrassing moments, what you did screaming from the top of the tower in the Akim Empire was far more…”
“Mysterium Concept, or I’m leaving the Five Great Guilds.”
I meant every word.
The Black Dragon Lord laughed softly.
“Fair enough. That sounds about right for you.”
“So what do I have to do for the Mysterium Concept?”
“Simple. Keep a blank expression.”
For the first time in my life, I was receiving advice to maintain a blank face.
“Absolutely no social media activity. No magazine appearances or broadcasts. Refuse any requests for interviews from personal streamers or news outlets. You can do about two interviews a year, but I’ll vet the journalists beforehand and send only approved ones to you.”
Right.
“That’s… all there is to it?”
“You still don’t understand how difficult this is.”
The Black Dragon Lord chuckled softly.
“Attention is a drug. The most addictive drug there is.”
The Sword Saint picked up her thread.
“And the most thoroughly ruinous one at that.”
“Exactly. Even if just ten people give you their attention, you feel happy. But once you reach a place like this, a few words from your lips and tens of millions—hundreds of millions—of people respond. There are so very few who can resist such a drug.”
The crowd pressed closer.
It felt as though the entire city’s population had gathered here.
“It’s all illusion,” the Sword Saint said flatly.
The Sword Saint said as much.
“True. But it’s a pleasant illusion.”
The Black Dragon Lord said so.
“Perhaps learning to enjoy such a drug is itself a mark of the famous—enduring it until the addiction wears thin, or until disillusionment sets in watching your peers inhale the same poison. What will you do, Sa Wang?”
…….
I looked around me.
A wall of humanity.
Not a gap remained—bodies packed so densely that camera flashes erupted without pause, forcing my eyes into slits. Through half-closed lids, the procession of light became mirage-like, and the human wall itself barely more than shadow.
“Though I doubt anyone gets trapped by others’ gazes quite like I do.”
I opened my mouth.
“What I want to gain is recognition. And perhaps I don’t fully understand it, but… I think there’s a difference between receiving attention and receiving recognition.”
I thought of Yeom Je.
The absolute being who monopolized every eye in the Tower before his four-thousand regressions.
“I don’t need the attention of millions. Attention from those around me is enough. Whether tens of thousands or millions—what I want from the world isn’t attention. It’s recognition.”
“I see.”
The Black Dragon Lord smiled.
“I think the two can’t truly be separate, but if that’s your answer, I respect it.”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad you’re that kind of person.”
It was something I’d heard before, long ago.
“How does one master an emotionless expression, then?”
“I’ll share the secret.”
The roar of the crowd erupted from all sides.
Our group’s pace had slowed to roughly ten centimeters per second.
“Call to mind a truly painful memory.”
“A painful memory?”
“Yes. In my case, when I was in the outside world, my father died in the civil war.”
The Black Dragon Lord spoke calmly.
“I was seven. We fled together with my mother, and soldiers were chasing us, I think. My father stayed behind and shouted, ‘Don’t look back—run!’ But…….”
The Black Dragon Lord pushed through the crowd, leading the way forward.
“I really did run without looking back. I heard gunshots, but I didn’t turn around. I just kept running.”
Click! Click!
The camera flashes never stopped.
“But it was when you were young.”
“It was when I was young.”
The Black Dragon Lord murmured.
“I don’t regret running. I was just a child. But why didn’t I even look back? It would have been easy. Just one glance.”
…….
“When I need an expressionless face, I recall that moment. When I relive the memory of my heart pounding with panic, the expressionless look comes so naturally. My own small magic, you might say.”
The Black Dragon Lord looked at me.
“You have at least one or two memories like that, don’t you?”
I did.
A dark alley.
I recalled the memory of Yeom Je gripping my head, my entire body burning.
“Yes, I do.”
I didn’t need a mirror to know.
That my face was now a perfect mask of nothing.
“Look over here for a moment, please!”
“Say something for us!”
“Black Dragon Lord, when can we expect an official announcement…….”
“What is your relationship with each other!”
“Sword Saint! What do you think of Sa Wang?”
Scanning the crowd again, my eyes had already grown accustomed to the camera flashes—the scene around me came into sharp focus. This was my first time surrounded by such a throng of people. My first time bathed in such a barrage of light.
But then.
“It’s quite effective, isn’t it?”
I wasn’t disoriented the way I had been before.
My heart simply settled into its familiar calm.
The Black Dragon Lord lifted the corner of her mouth slightly.
“You’re a quick learner. You’ll be used to it soon enough.”
In five days, the world had undeniably transformed.
But it hadn’t changed so much that I needed to become someone different.
S-Rank Hunter: Must Die to Live (Serialized)
Author │ Shin Noah
Publisher │ Kim Ju-hyeong
Published by │ J Plus Media Co., Ltd.
Marketing │ Han Jae-hyeok
Address │ 204, 288 Digital-ro, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong, Daelyung Post Tower 1st)
Email │ [email protected]
Website │ www.jayplemedia.com
ⓒ Shin Noah 2019
※ This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. in accordance with a contract with the copyright holder, and its contents may not be used in any form or by any means without the permission of the publisher and author.
Violation of this prohibition shall 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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