Leveling Up Alone

Han-Yeol returned home after purchasing his weapons, and the first thing he did once he reached home was to check all of his equipment. The equipment he had used when he was a Porter would be quite useful as well if he went out to hunt monsters alone.

He went online after he finished checking his equipment, and searched for any trucks he could rent. He could get a truck from the Porter department at the city hall for free, but what he was trying to do right now would be considered unregistered, illegal monster hunting. Getting any support from the government would definitely be out of the picture. That was why he was checking online to rent a truck.

[RV Truck—Daily Rent]

[500,000 won per day]

The RV trucks used to go monster hunting were trucks that were specially modified to suit Hunters’ needs, which was why the daily rental rate was so expensive.

‘It’s a bit expensive, but it’s an absolute necessity. There’s no way around it,’ Han-Yeol sighed inwardly. There was no way around it, as he absolutely needed a truck if he wanted to earn money, and the only way for him to get one was to pay to rent it.

Han-Yeol immediately called the rental company and requested them to bring the truck the next day by nine in the morning at the location he gave them. He was supposed to pay up front, but he was able to convince them to take the payment the next day when they handed over the truck to him, as he would be paying by cash.

‘Alright, the truck is ready as well,’ he thought. All of his preparations to go on a hunt were complete.

***

Slide…

Han-Yeol passed a white envelope toward the factory manager, who was giving him a dirty look.

“What’s this? Did you write a letter or something so I would treat you favorably?” Deok-Su said with a cocky grin.

There were a few young kids who came to him with handwritten letters in the hopes that he would treat them better, but Deok-Su ripped their sincere letters to pieces whenever someone brought one to teach them a lesson.

However…

“It’s my resignation letter,” Han-Yeol said with a straight face.

“What’s with your tone?” Deok-Su raised a brow at Han-Yeol’s informal tone[1]. He was so focused on the way Han-Yeol had said it that he did not even hear the words that had been said.

Bam!

Deok-Su slammed his fist on his table and stood up in a fit of rage as he screamed, “What?! You bastard! Have you finally gone crazy? Huh? Huh?! This fucking moron dares!”

Whoosh!

Deok-Su swung his hand and tried to slap Han-Yeol. He was aware that it might end up turning into a case of corporate violence, but he felt that a social outcast and loser like Han-Yeol deserved to have a taste of reality.

Tak!

Of course, Han-Yeol easily caught Deok-Su’s hand.

Grip…!

“Aaaaak! Euk… You! Let go of me this instant!” Deok-Su screamed while groaning in pain. Han-Yeol did not grip his hand that hard, but for Deok-Su, who was a normal person, it was already strong enough.

However, Deok-Su still did not come to his senses as he spoke in his usual derogatory tone toward Han-Yeol. “You fucking loser!” he screamed as he swung his other hand, but this time it was balled into a fist.

Peuk!

Deok-Su had put all of his weight and power behind the punch, so the sound reverberated quite loudly when the punch connected with Han-Yeol’s right cheek.

However, Han-Yeol nonchalantly rubbed his right cheek with his hand before opening and closing his mouth a few times. He then said in a coldly threatening voice, “You hit me first.”

Deok-Su tried to free the hand Han-Yeol was holding, but Han-Yeol had other plans.

“What…?!” Deok-Su exclaimed.

Whooosh… Bam!

“Kuheok!”

Han-Yeol threw Deok-Su into the wall, and the manager hit the wall hard and landed on his face. He could only groan in pain, as he was left stunned and barely conscious from the impact.

“Euuuuk…” Deok-Su rolled on the ground while groaning in pain.

“Factory manager-nim!”

It would be strange if nobody had come rushing in, as the sound that had emerged when Deok-Su hit the wall was quite strong. Deok-Su’s secretary and three other people who had been waiting to enter the office came rushing in. They were shocked by the factory manager’s condition, and they hurriedly approached him to check his condition.

One of the senior staffers glared at Han-Yeol after checking Deok-Su’s condition, saying, “Hey, you bastard. Have you gone insane?!”

However, Han-Yeol smiled nonchalantly, holding up both of his palms toward the senior staffer as he leisurely said, “I just protected myself when that bastard hit me.”

“W-What did you say?!” the senior staffer exclaimed, taken aback.

“Oh, and,” Han-Yeol said as he grabbed his resignation letter from the table and walked toward Deok-Su. He was smiling, but he gave off a chilling aura at the same time, and the senior staffer and the secretary slowly backed away as Han-Yeol got closer to the man.

“I think you didn’t hear me a while ago. This is my resignation letter,” Han-Yeol said.

Munch… Munch…

Han-Yeol stuffed his resignation letter into Deok-Su’s mouth, and Deok-Su gagged as his breathing became more labored.

Tak! Tak!

Han-Yeol tapped Deok-Su’s cheek twice and said, “Try to be better next time, alright? Kekeke!” Then, he stood up and leisurely left the office.

“T-T-T-That gangster bastard!”

“Has he gone mad?!”

“I told you, didn't I?! That bastard was famous around here for beating kids up when he was in school! I told you he was a good-for-nothing gangster wannabe scum!”

Just as the senior staffer had said, Han-Yeol had never been a model student in his school days. He had neither been talented nor interested in his studies, and he had gone to a trade school and gone around town beating other kids up for three whole years. He had never officially acted like a gangster, but he had been infamous as someone to avoid messing with.

Han-Yeol’s gaze was cold after he left the factory.

‘Well, I just repaid him for all the shit he gave me,’ he thought. He was someone who would definitely pay back anything done to him, whether it was good or bad. He did not feel relieved or anything, but he knew that anything more than what he had done could land him in legal trouble, which was why he decided to be content with that.

‘All that’s left is to start hunting… Oh right, rations!’ Han-Yeol thought.

He had already decided not to choose the comfortable route of going to hunt at nine in the morning and coming back at six in the evening the way other Hunters did.

‘I’ll focus on getting stronger and only that. I won’t come back until I’m satisfied with myself…’ Han-Yeol steeled his resolve as he went to the supermarket and bought the cheapest MREs available.

‘Preparation complete!’

***

The next day…

Han-Yeol woke up early in the morning, as he had gone to sleep early the previous night. He took a quick shower before putting on all of his Porter equipment. He did not forget to bring the weapons he had bought the previous day, and he went to the place he had specified to the rental company.

“Mr. Lee Han-Yeol?” the rental company staffer asked.

“Yes, I am Lee Han-Yeol,” Han-Yeol responded.

A staffer from the rental company was already at the place they had agreed on, and Han-Yeol handed his ID over.

“I have confirmed your identity. Here is your key,” the staffer replied, then passed the truck’s smart key to Han-Yeol.

“Here you go as well,” Han-Yeol said, passing a white envelope with ten 50,000 won bills inside to the man.

“Can I just pay you for whatever time I exceed if I do not return it in 24 hours?” Han-Yeol asked.

The man replied, “Yes, you may do that.” Then, he blew into the envelope and counted the bills in it. “Hooo! Alright, that checks out. Have a safe and successful hunt!” He took off his hat and bowed toward Han-Yeol.

“Then, I’ll be off,” Han-Yeol said as he drove the RV truck toward Gangwon-do.[2]

If the North Gyeinggo-do DMZ was a hunting ground crawling with mid-tier monsters, then Sokcho in Gangwon-do was a habitat for low-tier monsters.

Vrooom…!

The RV truck let out a loud roar of exhaust as it sped toward Gangwon-do. Sokcho contained many low-tier monsters, and one had to pass a checkpoint manned by the military if they wished to enter the hunting grounds there.

“Please show us your ID,” a soldier asked.

“Here it is,” Han-Yeol replied as he passed his Porter ID to the soldier.

“I see you are a Porter, but why are you alone?” the soldier asked.

“I am the advance party. I am supposed to go first and set up the base camp before the main party arrives,” Han-Yeol lied.

“I understand,” the soldier said. He did not seem to suspect anything, as he waved his light baton to signal the gate to open.

Creaaaak…

The sturdy gate slowly swung open.

Vroom…

Han-Yeol drove the truck through the gates, and soon arrived at the hunting grounds. He looked around the hunting grounds. The entire area was enclosed within a giant, invisible dome that resembled the forcefields frequently seen in sci-fi movies. Such domes had been put in place by the aliens to contain monsters, and also to quarantine locations where dimensional gates had appeared, separating them from civilian areas.

The domes were truly an example of hitting two birds with one stone, as they acted to prevent monsters from leaving their enclosures while providing Hunters with places to actively hunt monsters down.

Buzzz… Buzzz…

The sound of insects noisily buzzing around filled the air as soon as Han-Yeol parked and exited his vehicle. ‘They said on the internet that this was an Insect Field,’ he thought, recalling the information he had read online.

There were insect-type monsters that had crossed over to Earth through dimensional gates, but there were also a lot of cases in which Earth insects had been exposed to the dimensional gates’ energy and mutated into monsters. The dimensional gate in this place was known to be a habitat of insect-type monsters, and had thus been called an ‘Insect Field’.

‘Oh right, I have to distribute my bonus stat points,’ Han-Yeol thought. The hunt today was not a time for him to joke around, nor was it a time for him to save up his bonus stat points.

‘Status,’ Han-Yeol muttered in his head.

Name: Lee Han-Yeol

Level: 4

Points: 20

STR: 29

VIT: 36

AGI: 30

MAG: 10

LCK: 10

Skills: Dismember (E), Sword Master (F), Walking (F), Mana Control (F), Mana Mastery (F), Power Strike (E), Mana Shield (F), Sixth Sense (F), Restrain (F), Body Strengthening (F), Mana Eyes (F), Heal (F).

Two of his skills were E-Ranked now, and he still had 20 bonus stat points to distribute.

’10 points each to STR and MAG,’ Han-Yeol commanded.

Name: Lee Han-Yeol

Level: 4

Points: 0

STR: 39

VIT: 36

AGI: 30

MAG: 20

LCK: 10

Skills: Dismember (E), Sword Master (F), Walking (F), Mana Control (F), Mana Mastery (F), Power Strike (E), Mana Shield (F), Sixth Sense (F), Restrain (F), Body Strengthening (F), Mana Eyes (F), Heal (F).

Badump… Badump…

He felt his muscles tighten and his heartbeat increase the moment he invested his bonus stat points into STR and MAG.

“Hmpfh…! Haaa…!” Han-Yeol tried to exhale slowly and control his breathing. The shock subsided, and his breathing soon returned to normal.

‘Now, shall we start?’ he thought as he looked around his surroundings and checked for any traces of monsters in his vicinity.

Han-Yeol was certainly going to be ganged up on by monsters if he moved too noisily or plowed through the field with the truck, so he chose to quietly and stealthily move around and find some monsters first. He imbued his mana into his eyes and scoured his surroundings to look for monsters.

‘Aren’t these footprints…?’ he thought as he saw a footprint with numerous holes. It did not seem to have been made on purpose, nor did it seem to belong to a human, so the only answer was that it definitely belonged to a monster.

‘Is it this way…?’ he thought as he carefully followed the footprint’s direction and went into the bushes.

Rustle… Rustle…

‘Hmm…?’ Han-Yeol stopped when he heard a strange sound from somewhere.

Rustle… Whoosh!

He instinctively turned around as soon as he heard the sound of something coming from behind.

“Grrrr…!”

‘A Volax!’ Han-Yeol exclaimed inwardly.

The monster that had appeared behind him had the body of a large dog and green skin. Its face looked hideous, as it was made up entirely of a mouth divided into four parts. Volaxes were monsters that had crossed through dimensional gates, and were classified as low-tier monsters.

‘Using the slingshot at this distance isn’t an option,’ Han-Yeol thought as he took out a chain from his backpack.

The steel chain was not something he had purchased; rather, it was something provided for free by the Porter Department to Porters, for them to tie up large monsters during monster hunts. Han-Yeol had gone to a local hardware store and asked the owner to weld a hook onto the end of the chain.

“Grrr..!” The monster growled at Han-Yeol while drooling from its divided mouth.

Monsters usually treated humans as food. They saw Hunters as nothing but walking meals, freshly delivered to monster habitats by their own two feet.

Tadak! Tak! Rwar!

The hungry monster charged at Han-Yeol.

“Ha! Restraint!” Han-Yeol shouted.

Shwaaak!

Han-Yeol imbued his mana into the chain, and it flew straight toward the Volax. All he had done was throw the chain in the monster’s direction, but the chain moved through the air by itself, twisting and turning to bind the monster’s body.

Shwaak!

Then, Han-Yeol pulled on the chain, dragging the monster around helplessly. The Volax was stunned for a moment, unable to move or do anything just as the ‘Restraint’ skill’s description had said. However, it regained its ability to move almost immediately, as the stun’s duration was very brief.

“How dare you!” Han-Yeol roared as he stabbed the knuckle knife in his other hand deep into the monster.

Puuuk!

“Kekeng!” The Volax winced in pain and tried to escape from Han-Yeol.

‘So you don’t wanna die a quick death, eh?’ Han-Yeol thought as he mercilessly stabbed away at the monster.

Puuk! Puuuk! Puuuk!

He just had to stab multiple times if it refused to die the first time. Han-Yeol kept stabbing the monster again and again until it finally stopped moving.

Thud…!

The monster that had just been flailing around, trying to escape from Han-Yeol, dropped dead on the ground.

‘I did it!’ Han-Yeol rejoiced.

Ding!

[Your level has risen.]

‘Finally! I’m Level 5!’ Han-Yeol exclaimed inwardly in delight before looking down at his hands.

Clench…

Then, he balled his hands into fists and clenched them tightly as he thought, ‘It’s easy. I can do this!’

1. There’s a cultural barrier here. The Korean version says ‘다?’, which is the end of an informal sentence without any honorifics, but there’s no way to express that in English so we went with ‘tone’. Yes, Korean can be quite complicated if you add the honorifics and formalities. ☜

2. Gangwon-do, or Gangwon Province, is one of the provinces of Korea that borders North Korea. Gangwon is the name, and ‘-do’ stands for province. ☜