Apocalypse Hunter

“I’m not sure if I should say this, but… A few went to work for Dominator after getting paid a lot of money. After announcing that they were leaving, the captain there as well… mmm, nevermind, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

He became quite, and Zin didn’t continued probing.

It seemed that even hunters had moved from the Nest to Dominator after getting recruited. The life on the road was a better fit for hunters, but it wasn’t bad that some chose to live another way. Each person was different.

That was the reason why monster hunters had disappeared from the Nest.

“From the very beginning, the Nest gets attacked left and right.”

In the past, there had been forces that had tried to monopolize business in the Nest, and now a corporation was trying to take jobs away from hunters.

Although many hunters gathered there, hunters were individual people, and it was very rare that they got together to do something.

In addition, they were not attacking the Nest directly, but operating their own business, so there were not enough grounds for attack. Even though it made their blood boil, there was no good reason to attack Dominator.

More than anything, the fact that they were backed by Odin Corporation could have made people shy away from fighting back.

“Hmm… Is that so?” Zin nodded slowly.

The hunter went away after he had finished speaking, and Ramphil commented, “I don’t think it’s the right situation for us to keep working.”

“That seems to be the case…”

There was a company that offered hunting services at a low price. If there was a big job, the client would most likely go to Dominator, not hunters but well-organized, instead of Zin.

The initial idea of obtaining big cases through word-of-mouth advertising was being crushed.

—–

“Why the long faces on both of you?”

Leona, who had just returned from evening shooting practice, cocked her head as she saw the two seated with a stiff expression on their faces.

“We have a problem.”

Ramphil gave a rough explanation of the situation to Leona. Once she heard everything, she grimaced.

“Those bastards are messing up our plan.”

Originally, they were only going solve almost all of the monster hunting requests for a little while. After that, they were going to move onto bigger, private jobs, but that wasn’t going to happen now, thanks to Dominator.

“Can we just destroy them?”

The cause really didn’t matter, and these days, no one mentioned things like that anyway. If someone was taking jobs away, that person needed to be destroyed.

But this wasn’t the kind of thing you could do just because you wanted to.

“That’s not possible.”

The opponent was a company specialized in hunting. That meant that its level of weaponry was the same as an army. And most importantly, someone had the company’s back.

“Taking Dominator on is like taking on the Odin Corporation, which means turning half of New Hong Kong into the enemy.”

All three had been there for over two weeks. They had a good sense of how much of the city was actually being controlled by the Odin Corporation.

The Odin Corporation’s main focus was ammunition and manufacturing of firearms. The guns made by Odin Corporation were up to their own standards, so one had to buy bullets from them only.

They made it impossible to use even regular bullets. That was a nervy move, but people bought from them because they were cheaper than other places.

In addition, they had expanded to food and railway businesses, as well as housing and security services for the rich. It was no exaggeration to say that the Odin Corporation had its hand in everything in the big city.

“They can use people from their security business, so I guess it must have been an easy transition for them.”

Therefore, attacking Dominator, which was backed by Odin Corporation, was a deathwish.

If they had taken all the jobs away, then all of the hunters would have protested, but in this case, it was just the monster hunting jobs that had been taken. So the bounty hunters and private detectives weren’t affected that much and were not paying much attention.

“Something smells fishy…”

Zin was lost in thought with his arms folded. There was definitely something that Odin Corporation was doing beyond the hunting business. But he knew it was ignorant to respond to them evenly.

“Does bounty hunting yield better profits?””

The detective work required many hours on a case. Bounty hunting required just as much time. No other was as honest as monster hunting. Perhaps things could’ve been different if they had more time, but for now, they had to raise money quickly.

Taking on Dominator was too much of a risk. They had to find another way to make money. That’s why Zin and Ramphil were so lost in thought.

“Hmm?”

And all of a sudden, Ramphil narrowed his brow as if he had realized something.

“When you mentioned bounty hunting… I thought of something.”

“What’s that?”

“Didn’t you say that there were many gangsters here, along with businesses?”

“I did.”

“Hmm… OK.”

Ramphil nodded slowly, but said nothing else, remaining deep in thought.

—————

The next day, he couldn’t just sit around, so Zin left the hotel. Several hunters were walking toward the train station as if they had a job to do.

“The place does seem empty…”

He hadn’t noticed anything different the day before, but now that he had heard the story, things seemed quite different. Certainly the number of hunters had decreased, and the hunters looked more somber than calm. Having had the conversatation with the hunter the day before, he picked up only two flyers.

Ramphil had gone somewhere at dawn, and since Leona was at the Academy, Zin walked alone toward the train station.

He still had a long way to go until he accumulated two hundred thousand chips, but the brakes had already been put on him. Therefore, Zin had to consider the company called Dominator.

Still, confronting them directly was out of the question, so he was thinking of ways to put a brake on their corporate activities.

“Can’t think of anything…”

There was no reason for people to hire hunters when there was a cheaper, more efficient, and faster way to solve their problems. In many ways, the current group of hunters was less competitive than Dominator.

The way of the world was that those who couldn’t compete, died out. And in this big city, hunters would eventually die out. Due to the inherent differences between groups and individuals, the hunter’s Nest might disappear altogether.

When he entered the station, Zin saw a man in black standing in front of him and stopped.

“Excuse me.”

“Do you have business with me?”

The suit that the man was wearing was a little worn out but washed clean, and around him stood two armed guards standing firm.

“I’m Course from Dominator’s Sales Department. If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“You look quite suspicious for someone who just wants to talk.” Zin smiled at the two armed guards with stiff facial expressions. “But I’d gladly listen to what you have to say.”

Zin had a sense of what the suspicious fellow would suggest.

——————-

“I guess it’s true that Dominator is a subsidiary of Odin Corporation.”

The place the sales agent, Course, had brought Zin to was an office inside Station 43, and the bodyguards accompanying him were also guards from Odin Corporation, who had been expelled from the railway station.

He smiled at Zin’s words.

“I won’t deny it.”

“So, what is it you want to talk about?”

“We’re building a hunting business system right now. The business will expand, and soon, it will be a massive organization that covers all of New Hong Kong.”

“That seems to be the case.”

Course grinned before getting to the point, seemingly satisfied that they could communicate fairly well.

“We need talented people and we still have a lot to improve on. I’d heard that someone who could help us with that had just appeared.”

Dominator was not just expanding their businesses. In actuality, they were also highly responsive to any news in the industry. As a result, they not only knew of Zin’s reputation, but also what he looked like.

“I heard you have excellent technique.”

He smiled and took a chip box out of his arms, handing it to Zin.

“And we need it.”

“Humm…”

The chipbox contained two thousand chips.

“You’re going to hire me. Is that it?”

“To be exact, we want your knowledge. We know that experience and knowledge are worthy of respect. Also, we don’t hesitate to put a high price on it.”

The commercialized hunting business needed Zin’s know-how. If that were to flow into the organization and systemized, they would be able to resolve all requests from clients with near-mechanical accuracy and speed.

“I want you to know that Dominator always pays a fair price for what it wants.”

The man looked at the chip box and added, “This is not a down payment, it’s a gift. If you’ll just visit our headquarters, I’ll give it to you right away.”

When Course told Zin that he would give him two thousand chips for a visit, Zin couldn’t help but be startled. Dominator had some deep pockets.

The hunters in the Nest were cold toward Zin and Ramphil, who had taken all the jobs. However, it was Dominator who really recognized the value of Zin, the person taking their jobs.

“That’s ironic…”

As he grabbed the chipbox, Zin was smiling bitterly on the inside. Hunting required caution, but when you had to make a move, you had to go for it. In fact, no one had bigger balls than Zin.

“Visiting would be a good experience for me.”

He might have just made the choice to walk into the lion’s den. However, Zin had already been inside the mouth of a dragon.

—————

Meanwhile, Ramphil was nearing Harlem. There were people everywhere, scattered like dirty filth and trash. Ramphil looked straight ahead as he walked, but in reality, he was observing everything around him. The backpack on his back contained a pile of leaflets.

The place did not have many visitors, and the residents were drug addicts and lowlives working in brothels. It showcased just how the losers were living in the big city, and ordinary people did not come near it.

Ramphil had gone there deliberately, passed through alley after alley, and taken a piece of paper and read it. What Rampil was looking at was a map of the large city, which he bought for three chips at a store. However, the place he was in was not even properly recorded on the map.

“That was a waste of money…”

Grunting silently would not get his money back. Ramphil diligently walked through the alley. Since the map was no help, he was just walking around without a proper destination.

The people who looked like bums did not care who was walking around. The sound of people hacking could be heard from here and there. It seemed like they were barely managing to survive.

In fact, in big cities, drug addicts often became street tramps. That was why, in Harlem, the drug addicts were as dangerous as the cadaver hunters in the alley. At least, those who were in habitable places did not wish to smell the rotting corpses in Harlem.

But wherever there were people, there was someone who wanted to control them, and that rule applied to those alleys as well. Those places were subject to gang rule.

“Hey, I think you’ve taken a wrong turn.”

Two men, arm in arm at the entrance of an alley, pulled pistols out of their arms and looked at Ramphil. Of course, the gangsters patrolling the area would have noticed someone they had not seen before walking around.

Ramphil gave a short reply, looking at the two gangsters who were ready to shoot at any time, “No, I think I’m in the right place.”

And the next moment.

‘Bam!’

“Ahh!”

“Ahh!”

Ramphil already had his hands around their necks.

——————

After about an hour…

‘Bang! Ba-bang! Boom!’

“Ugh! Ugh! Ah!”

The family house was in shambles, booming with loud gunfire. However, that was also coming to an end. The family house that had been cleaned up was full of incapacitated gangsters randomly hanging from the railings and the stairs.

‘Boom!’

When he stormed through the main gate, he saw the boss there staring at the monster that had just burst in with a puzzled look.

Trembling, he fired the Odin Corporation pistol in his hand.

‘Bang!’

“Hmm.”

But Ramphil avoided the bullets just by moving his head slightly. The surprise only lasted for a moment, and he soon fired his gun continuously.

‘Babang! Bang! Bang!’

Ramphil had already moved from the area he was shooting, however, and snatched away his pistol.

‘Crack!’

Ramphil broke the pistol by twisting it and stared at the pale-looking boss.

“You, you, what are you?! Are you the hitmen from Gorgio?!”

“Hitman? I don’t know what that is, but are you the boss of the Giodan Family?”

All the gang members in the family had been attacked by only one person. It seemed like he had been shot as he had holes in his clothes, but the opponent didn’t even seem hurt by such things. Instead of explaining who he was, he poured out numerous wanted posters from his bag.

Then, he took out a poster that matched the description of the boss and handed it to him. The reward was three thousand chips.

“Almost everyone here had a bounty on their necks.”

“Huh, a bounty hunter? Crazy! Do you know what you’re doing?”

Gangs were often entangled in grudges, and they often had bounties on them. But bounty hunters usually didn’t touch gangsters, as there would be retaliation from gang members.

So, the rewards were usually just a pie in the sky. Unfortunately, however, not for Ramphil.

“I could take your neck and get the reward money, but I’m not a regular hunter.”

Ramphil had thought this through. After all, the goal was money, not the job itself. There was no need to be bound by the rules of the hunters. Ramphil filtered out the gang members of the Giodan family from the flyers, leaving the boss not understanding his current situation.

All the wanted men on the battlefield had something in common: all of them belonged to the gangs.

There were a total of twenty-five wanted posters on the board. Ramphil pulled out the poster and asked the boss, “How much will you pay for the life of those twenty-five, including you?”

If he didn’t pay more than the reward, he was going to take their heads and get the reward.

Ramphil was not a hunter, which meant that that he didn’t know and didn’t want to know about hunters’ rules as long as he could achieve his goal.

In desperate times, Ramphil had come up with the crazy and unprecedented idea of robbing gangsters. The head of the Giodan Family didn’t know whether to feel relief or despair over the fact that his family had been destroyed over a petty matter like that that wasn’t even a gang war.

“W-Whoa… You crazy bastard…”

Still, he couldn’t help but quickly calculate how much money the family had at its disposal.