Chapter 233 – Kang Seong-Ki, the Strongest Player in Korea (54)

“Yes, I am strong.”

I felt the woman’s wary eyes melt in a matter of seconds.

What image did you have of me?
I wondered if he had some anxiety because he knew that he was at odds with Baek Sung-hoon.
I don’t know where she’s been or what she’s been doing all this time, but at least Baek Seong-hoon was most likely her first S-class Hunter she met.
If so, he would have had a bad image of an S-class hunter.

However, from her current reaction, I could see that those concerns within her had melted away.

I also had a rare experience.

Because I could feel it right away.

That she was exposed to my abilities.
A few seconds of eye contact made it clear that we were connected.
There was no doubt that this was due to the ability to ‘like for no reason’.

“I came to hear it myself. What the hell happened?”
“…”

Seeing that Oksana lowered her head with a distressed expression, she looked at Yoonmi Choi this time.
She shook her head slightly.
It must mean that he knows nothing more than what he told me.

“I know it will be hard to think about it again. But I don’t have much time. The more you leave it alone, the more time you buy on the other side to come up with countermeasures. I’ve been here for a few days, so I know they’re all trustworthy people. I dare say this is the safest place in the world.”

Oksana grabbed her arm and trembled.
Just by looking at her like this, I couldn’t get a sense of how much ability she had.

No matter how unusual her spirit mage ability was, it would also be able to divide her ranks as it was also a type of her hunter ability.
It was difficult for her to gauge how much skill Oksana had in terms of her hunter license level.

She doesn’t seem to be holding back her powers, but her feelings are still blocked by her mysterious veil.

“Yeah…”

Eventually Oksana nodded her head.

We sat around the living room table.
Kang A-jin got into the tea and put a cup in front of each of them.

As her sweet scent drifted through the space, there was a certain sense of relief in her mind.

Me, Ajin Kang, Valentina and Louisa, Chichi and Titi, and Choi Yoonmi and Oksana.
The number of people gathered here was quite large.
Considering the number of women staying at hotels in Hongcheon, I wondered when I had met so many women.
Not only that, but also Choi Na-ri and Jo Ah-young.

Ah-Young Cho was in the United States to honor her own adoptive parents, who had been taken away from her immediate public attention and died the unfortunate death of her brother, Dong-Geun Cho.
She was curious to hear from her, but she chose not to contact her first or until she returned to Korea.
In a way, she is the one who suffered the most severely among her members of KF.
Even though she was adopted, her parents are dead.
Moreover, even her brother, whom she believed in and thought was the only blood relative left in the world, was not her real brother.
The worst thing was that the man who claimed to be my brother was the murderer who killed his adoptive parents.

Even now, the atmosphere in Korea was one that could not accept Cho Dong-geun’s absence.
There was no media or people saying he was dead.
In public perception, an S-class hunter is not a being that can die easily.
They were like gods with two feet on the ground.

Even this side was not in a position to do something about Jo Dong-geun’s death.
I just have to wait until his presence among people fades.

Seeing this, the KF members also came to realize that the number had easily exceeded 10.

It was the first time I saw her face today, but there was a good chance that Oksana would be like that in the future as well.
It’s still only a possibility, so don’t jump to conclusions.

Her existence itself was still a mystery.
As Park Hye-na pointed out, we didn’t have her duty to take care of her yet.
Maybe it would be better to cut off the relationship in a certain line.
She couldn’t jump to conclusions until she heard her story.

“Thank you.”

The first thing Oksana said out of the blue was thanks.

“If you hadn’t rescued me, I would have been in prison by now.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine what kind of punishment a person who killed an S-class hunter would receive.
Hunters, especially S-class hunters, were considered important national assets.
It was difficult to compare the value with national treasure-level relics.
Because the very existence of an S-class hunter plays a key role in protecting life and safety.

Worldwide, there were not a few examples of dungeon breaks.
There are countries that lack hunter manpower to manage all dungeons safely, but most of them happened because the management system itself was immature.

Hunter management system.

Hunters have completely different senses from normal people the moment they have mana in their bodies.
Hunters who were selfish and fast-paced could have neglected people’s lives for their own benefit.

Because that happened in Korea too.
Han Cheol-gwan, who was considered a representative figure who had a high-speed career path, was also a person with a black stomach.
He decided to become a civil servant because he thought that being a civil servant would make more profit than being a hunter.
And his thoughts were right on point.
It could be said that the privatization of the dungeon in cooperation with some S-class hunters was the culmination of that.

People knew what would happen when a dungeon break happened.
Even though most of them were classified as private videos and deleted, it was the Dungeon Break videos that you could easily find on the Internet if you wanted to.

I remember watching a video by mistake before, but it was so horrifying that I stopped playing it right away.

Hunters and monsters are worthy targets to fight, but it is absolutely not the case for ordinary people.
To monsters, ordinary people were nothing more than easy-to-kill toys.

When a dungeon break occurs, the road to hell literally unfolds.
He had to hunt those monsters through a much more difficult process than hunting them in a dungeon.
Even the harmful mana flowing from the burst dungeon had to be dealt with over a long period of time and at great cost.
After seeing such things, a certain perception of the Hunter is established by itself.
In other words, he thinks of the death of an S-class hunter in connection with his own death.

The trial against Oksana could not have been rational.
Besides, regardless of her nationality, her appearance was a perfect foreigner.

Because she knows the situation she is in, she must have desperately figured out a way to survive.
In the end, what came to mind was the name Kang Seong-gi that came out of Baek Sung-hoon’s mouth, so it was possible to predict that she too was living a barren life with no place to rely on.

“I know it’s cold words, but it’s too early to say thank you. We don’t know much about who you are yet. We don’t regret saving you, but at least we know who you are and what happened that day. I need to know.”
“Yeah…”

Oksana started talking about the day she went to see Seonghun Baek.

“I was sold to criminal hunters.”
“Yes? It was sold?”

I wondered what I had heard wrong.

“Yes… My father sold me for money.”
“Father…?”

It sounded like a mental breakdown in itself.
No matter how much he became a Hunter, he was experiencing things he could never have imagined when he was a normal Awakener, but this was a different story.
A father sells his daughter for money.

“Right.”

Valentina nodded her head as if it wasn’t too surprising.

Chichi also said.

“Korea is a safe country. Even in Thailand, it is common for hunters to be traded. Children who have awakened as hunters are traded at high prices. If you are lucky, you can join a guild or clan and work, but you will be sold to criminals and live a life in the gutter. A lot of times it happens.”
“Exactly. For some people, being a Hunter is the greatest fortune, but for others, it is also the beginning of the worst misfortune.”

Louisa also added.

“They were clumsy. If they wanted to find an opportunity to escape, they could have left immediately. But there was nowhere to go. They always said they would sell me to a foreign country. I’ve already been sold once, so I’ll try again I thought it didn’t matter if I was sold. I thought that would be better. I felt like I could get away from people who saw me as a monster and meet people with the same abilities as me.”
“When did you become aware of your abilities?”
“There was an accident…”

Oksana’s eyes blurred.
It was the look she had seen when he first met her, a look that no living person would ever see.