Park Jungsoo had declared the western five blocks off-limits, but Donghoon had permission to hunt at night. And Park Jungsoo didn't check exactly where Donghoon hunted. As long as he came back, that was enough.
Donghoon went out at night.
He hunted at the boundary of the fourth block, not in the western fifth block. It was right in front of the Hunter's territory—a zone packed with Crawlers and Howlers. The closer he got to the rift, the denser they became. It was an efficient hunting ground.
Over three days, he killed twelve Crawlers and eight Howlers.
Donghoon's body continued to change.
On the morning of Day 13, Donghoon tested his body on the rooftop of the base.
A standing vertical jump. He cleared two meters. Three times an ordinary person's height.
Grip strength. He could bend a steel pipe with one hand.
Hearing. He could hear sounds from across the river beyond the barricade. More than five hundred meters in a straight line.
Sight. Even during the day, he could see things ordinary people couldn't. The outline of a Crawler hiding in the shadow of a building. Footprints on the road more than three blocks away.
Donghoon gauged his level by the standards of the novel. He had surpassed the intermediate level and was entering the advanced level. In the novel, an advanced enhancer was capable of engaging a Hunter alone.
It was possible.
Donghoon was certain of it.
That afternoon, Donghoon went to see Park Jungsoo.
"I'm going to take down a Hunter."
Park Jungsoo looked at Donghoon. For a long while.
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Are you insane?"
"I'm not insane. I'm ready."
Park Jungsoo rose from his chair and came over to Donghoon. They were about the same height. Their eyes met.
"Han Donghoon. You haven't even been in this world for two weeks. I've survived here for three years. In three years, I've never managed to kill a Hunter. I've tried. Three people went, and only one came back. That one was me."
Donghoon looked into Park Jungsoo's eyes. There was anger in them—not anger at Donghoon, but at himself. At the fact that he hadn't been able to kill a Hunter in three years.
"Boss."
"What."
"You couldn't kill one because you weren't weak. You didn't have the information."
"Information?"
"Its weakness. The spinal connection on its back. The seam in its outer shell. You just have to stab there."
"How do you know that?"
"I observed it."
"Observed it? After seeing it once?"
Donghoon didn't answer. He hadn't learned it through observation. He had read it in the novel. But he couldn't say that.
Park Jungsoo stared at Donghoon for a long time. Then he sighed.
"...Go."
"What?"
"I said go. But there's a condition."
"What is it?"
"Take Lee Jaehyuk with you. I'm not sending you alone."
Donghoon thought for a moment. He would be more efficient alone. But he understood Park Jungsoo's position. If he sent an enhancer alone and Donghoon died, the responsibility would fall on him as the boss.
"Understood."
Donghoon left the room and went looking for Lee Jaehyuk.
Lee Jaehyuk was standing guard at the barricade.
"Jaehyuk."
"What."
"We're going to the western fifth block tomorrow. To take down a Hunter."
Lee Jaehyuk looked at Donghoon. Three seconds of silence passed.
"Did you get permission from the boss?"
"Yes. He said I had to bring you along."
Lee Jaehyuk sighed.
"All right."
"You agreed pretty easily."
"We have to take it down sooner or later. If the Hunter expands its territory, it could reach Zone 2. We'd better deal with it before that happens."
Lee Jaehyuk looked at Donghoon.
"But do you have a plan?"
"I do."
Donghoon explained it to Lee Jaehyuk, dressing up what he had read about the Hunter's behavior patterns in the novel as his own observations and deductions.
"Hunters use traps. They weaken the ground, then collapse it when prey passes over. So we can't go inside a building. We have to fight in the open."
"If we're out in the open, there's nowhere to run."
"We don't need to run. We can fight it head-on."
"Head-on? A third-grade monster?"
"Hunters are intelligent, but physically they're similar to Howlers. Their outer shells are thinner than Howlers' too. They fight with speed and intelligence. If we neutralize their traps, we can take one on."
Lee Jaehyuk stared at Donghoon for a long while.
"How the hell do you know all this?"
"Observation."
"You keep saying observation, but does it make any sense to figure out this much after seeing it once?"
Donghoon met Lee Jaehyuk's eyes.
"Jaehyuk, do you trust me?"
Lee Jaehyuk was silent for a moment.
"...I do. I don't know why, but you haven't been wrong yet."
"Then do what I do tomorrow."
Lee Jaehyuk nodded.
The next morning, before dawn.
Donghoon and Lee Jaehyuk left the barricade. Donghoon had an ax, and Lee Jaehyuk had a steel pipe. They were both enhancers, but their weapons were pathetic. That was the limit of what they could find in this world.
They walked west. They passed the third and fourth blocks, then entered the boundary of the fifth.
Donghoon stopped.
"Be careful from here on. Watch the ground. There's a difference between concrete cracking naturally and being weakened deliberately. Deliberately weakened areas have scrape marks around the cracks."
Lee Jaehyuk inspected the ground and nodded.
The two of them advanced slowly.
Donghoon's hearing caught a sound. Ahead. Inside a building. Something was moving. It wasn't a Crawler. Its footsteps were lighter than a Crawler's. And there was a pattern of intermittent pauses. Moving, stopping, checking the surroundings, then moving again.
It was the Hunter's patrol pattern.
Donghoon gestured to Lee Jaehyuk—a signal to stop.
"It's ahead. Inside the building."
Lee Jaehyuk strained to listen, then shook his head. He couldn't hear it.
"I'll draw it out. Wait here, and when I signal, get behind it."
"What signal?"
"I'll yell."
Lee Jaehyuk looked uneasy, but nodded.
Donghoon gripped his ax and walked forward. Into the open. The middle of the road, away from the building. A place without traps.
Donghoon stood in the middle of the road and waited.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Six yellow eyes appeared in a third-floor window.
It was the one he'd seen before. It would remember Donghoon—the direction he'd avoided the concrete, his speed, his posture. Everything.
The Hunter looked down at Donghoon. Donghoon looked up at it.
"Come out."
Donghoon spoke in a low voice.
The Hunter didn't move. It was observing him, analyzing why its prey had appeared on its own.
Donghoon raised his ax and brought it down on the roof of an abandoned car beside him. The sound of tearing metal rang out.
Sound. Hunters didn't respond to sound. Unlike Crawlers, they couldn't be lured by it. But Donghoon hadn't made the noise to lure it out. It was a demonstration. A way to show that he had this much strength.
The Hunter's six eyes looked at the torn car roof. Then at Donghoon's ax. Then at Donghoon.
It was calculating whether this prey was dangerous. Whether it was worth hunting.
The Hunter jumped from the window.
It was three stories up. Its landing was soft, making almost no sound.
For the first time, Donghoon saw the Hunter head-on.
It looked exactly as the novel described. About 180 centimeters tall. A more agile build than a Howler's. Its outer shell clung tightly to its body, revealing the contours of its muscles. Six yellow eyes were fixed on Donghoon. And its hands—five fingers, similar to human hands, but with claws at the fingertips. It held something in its right hand: a chunk of concrete. It intended to use it as a weapon.
A monster that used tools.
Donghoon gripped the ax with both hands.
The Hunter moved first.
It was fast. Faster than a Howler. It threw the chunk of concrete in its right hand at Donghoon. Donghoon dodged to the side. The concrete slammed into the car behind him, denting the door.
The Hunter charged at the same time it threw the concrete. The claws on its left hand aimed for Donghoon's throat.
Donghoon lowered his body and swung the ax horizontally. The Hunter dodged by stepping back. Donghoon's ax cut through empty air.
The Hunter stopped and looked at Donghoon. Its six eyes blinked.
It was reassessing him. It had realized that this prey was faster than expected.
Donghoon didn't wait. He charged first.
He brought the ax down from above. The Hunter dodged to the side. Donghoon changed the ax's trajectory and continued the swing horizontally. It grazed the Hunter's side. The outer shell split open. It was shallow, but blood came out. Black blood.
The Hunter screamed. It wasn't like the metallic shriek of a Crawler. It was a short, sharp sound laced with rage.
The Hunter counterattacked. It swung the claws on both hands in succession. It was fast. Donghoon retreated and dodged. Once, twice, three times. The fourth grazed his arm. His hoodie tore, and his skin was cut. It wasn't deep, but it stung.
Donghoon widened the distance between them.
The Hunter didn't pursue. Instead, it observed Donghoon, analyzing his movement patterns—the tendency to dodge right, the angle of his ax swings, the position of his feet.
It was just as he'd read in the novel. Hunters learned even during combat. The same trick wouldn't work twice.
Then he just had to use a different trick.
Donghoon switched the ax to his left hand.
The Hunter's eyes shifted. His left hand. A right-handed fighter had switched to his left. The pattern had changed. It needed to recalculate.
That gap in its recalculation.
Donghoon threw the ax.
The ax flew toward the Hunter from his left hand. The Hunter dodged. Of course it did. A thrown weapon was slow. But hitting it wasn't Donghoon's goal.
The Hunter moved to the right to avoid the ax. Donghoon had predicted that direction. He had started running the instant he threw the ax, heading toward the direction the Hunter dodged.
Behind the Hunter.
Donghoon clenched his fist. He had no ax. He was bare-handed. But Donghoon's fists were strong enough to shatter concrete.
Donghoon drove his fist into the spinal connection on the Hunter's back.
The seam in the outer shell. The thinnest point. Donghoon's fist pierced through the shell.
The Hunter convulsed. Its entire body trembled. A scream burst out. This time, it was long and high-pitched.
Donghoon drove his fist deeper. He grabbed the spine, then twisted it.
Bone snapped.
The Hunter collapsed face-first onto the ground. Its legs scraped at the air, then stopped.
Donghoon pulled his blood-covered fist free and stepped back.
"Jaehyuk!"
Donghoon shouted.
Lee Jaehyuk came running, steel pipe in hand. But he didn't need to use it. The Hunter was already dead.
Lee Jaehyuk looked at the corpse, then at Donghoon. Then at Donghoon's blood-covered fist.
"...With your bare hands?"
"I threw the ax."
"You threw it? Why?"
"To get behind it."
Lee Jaehyuk opened his mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again.
"You crazy bastard."
Donghoon laughed.
And then the sensation came rushing in.
It was stronger than when he killed the Howler. A hot torrent surged through his entire body. It felt as if his bones were melting and hardening again. As if his muscles were tearing apart and regenerating. Donghoon dropped to one knee, gritted his teeth, and held back his scream.
Lee Jaehyuk rushed over to him.
"Are you okay?!"
"I'm fine... Just give me a second."
Thirty seconds later, the sensation subsided.
Donghoon slowly stood.
He had changed. Without a doubt. It was a transformation that couldn't compare to what happened with the Crawler or Howler. The price of reaching third grade.
Donghoon looked at his hand. His fist was covered in blood, but there wasn't a wound on it. The skin that had torn as he punched through the Hunter's shell had already healed.
Regeneration.
One of the traits of an advanced enhancer in the novel. Wounds healed rapidly. Unless they were fatal, they recovered even during combat.
Donghoon clenched and unclenched his fist.
Power surged through him. It was on an entirely different level from before. With this fist, he felt like he could punch through a Howler's shell with his bare hands.
Lee Jaehyuk looked at Donghoon with an expression close to awe.
"Han Donghoon."
"Yes."
"What the hell are you?"
Donghoon didn't answer. Instead, he picked up the ax lying on the ground.
Then he looked at the Hunter's corpse.
The outer shell. In the novel, the protagonist used it to make weapons.
"Can we take this with us?"
Lee Jaehyuk looked at the corpse.
"...Can you carry it?"
Donghoon lifted the corpse with one hand. The roughly eighty-kilogram body felt light.
Lee Jaehyuk fell silent.
The two of them returned to the base, Donghoon carrying the Hunter's corpse over his shoulder.
The guards at the barricade saw Donghoon, then what he was carrying. Their eyes widened.
"Th-that..."
"It's a Hunter. Open the gate."
The barricade opened, and Donghoon carried the corpse inside.
He set it down in the plaza in front of the base. People gathered around. It seemed like half of the eighty-seven residents had come out. Every eye fixed on the Hunter's corpse held the same emotions: fear and awe.
Park Jungsoo came out. He looked at the corpse, then at Donghoon.
He said nothing. For a long while.
Then he spoke.
"...Strip off the shell. We need to make weapons."
Donghoon nodded.
That night, Donghoon took out a sheet of paper in his room.
"Day 13. Killed one Hunter. Crushed its spine bare-handed. Confirmed solo kill of a third-grade monster." "Enhancement level: Advanced. Regeneration confirmed. Expanded sensory range. Greatly increased strength and speed."
Then he added one more line.
"The protagonist of the novel first killed a Hunter in the third month after the ruin. Donghoon did it on Day 13."
Donghoon set down his pen and looked up at the ceiling.
He was faster than the protagonist of the novel. Faster than the regressor who possessed fifty rounds' worth of knowledge. The reader who had read that knowledge was growing stronger faster than the regressor.
It was strange. But he knew why.
Jin Seoh a had to start from the beginning every round. She had the knowledge, but her body reset. And she was alone. She had to do everything by herself.
Donghoon was different. He had fifty rounds' worth of complete knowledge. He could take the optimal path without any trial and error. And Donghoon wasn't alone. He had Zone 2. He had a base, food, and a place to sleep. He could focus solely on hunting.
Donghoon was walking in a single stride along the path Jin Seoh a had completed over fifty rounds.
Donghoon closed his eyes.
But this was Round 3. The round Jin Seoh a had given up on. The round in which she had said, "This time, it won't work."
Could Donghoon accomplish what even Jin Seoh a in Round 50 had said was impossible?
Donghoon opened his eyes.
He had to. It wasn't a question of whether he could or couldn't. He had to do it.
Donghoon set down the ax and lay on the mattress.
Tomorrow, he would make a weapon from the Hunter's outer shell—the same kind of weapon the protagonist had made in the novel. Then he would take down the remaining one.
Donghoon closed his eyes.
Sleep came quickly. For a night on which he'd killed a Hunter, it was remarkably peaceful.