Hunter Academy’s Battle God

A beautiful, straight arc of light.

EunAh charged towards JunHyuk, leaving a trail of blue light behind her.

Flash!

“Argh!”

She narrowly dodged a punch that her opponent threw in her direction; her hair was blown backwards by the wind pressure.

Bzz!

EunAh covered her fist in lightning and hit JunHyun square on his side.

Bam! Bzzt!

The amount of lightning used was enough to retire a regular person instantly. But Kim JunHyuk was himself a hunter who used mana, even if he was in a berserk state at the moment.

“Khhg!”

JunHyuk’s body trembled from the shock it received. He retaliated with a swing of his arm.

Vmm! Flash!

Before his attack could connect, however, EunAh had already dissipated into light—she was using lightning to stimulate her physical abilities to draw out the fullest extent of her capabilities.

‘…I strained myself too hard earlier.’

Her mana was decreasing by the moment. To a hunter, their mana was their life. She needed a decisive blow to end the fight.

Flash!

EunAh appeared behind JunHyuk and stretched out her arms towards him. Her hands met his heavily injured back.

‘…Oppa.’

She squeezed her eyes shut.

She wanted to avoid the reality of the situation: that she was attacking her own brother directly.

But…

—For her sake.

—For her brother’s sake.

—For the city’s sake.

There was no other option. Kim EunAh had to suppress Kim JunHyuk.

“Take a rest for a moment.”

With that short remark, Kim EunAh began to discharge lightning. Blue light surrounded the two siblings.

Flash! Zzzzt!!

JunHyuk swayed on his feet after being assaulted by the electricity, then began to collapse in a dead faint. EunAh supported her brother’s body and laid him down on the ground.

Once she was sure the situation had settled, she bit her lip.

There was no reason for JunHyuk to suddenly go berserk as long as the circulation stone continued to purify his mana. Therefore, his state had to have been caused by someone tampering with the stone in his hospital room.

“Who’s the bastard who did this…”

She gritted her teeth in anger. The stone’s astronomical costs made it a tempting target for many villains, but the fact that they decided to attack a member of the Shinsung group meant that they were no ordinary, run-of-the-mill criminals.

EunAh stood up from the ground and scanned her surroundings with a tired gaze. She could see the unconscious Yu AeRi in the distance.

And just when she was about to truly determine that things were over and that she could relax, a voice began to whisper from behind her.

“That’s me~”

—A voice crackling with static.

Eyes widening, EunAh tried to turn her neck to face the attacker. But by then, she was too late.

“Idiot~ react faster next time.”

Cheat planted a needle into EunAh’s pale neck. An odd feeling began to spread throughout her body.

“You, wh-what is th…”

EunAh managed to quickly create distance between her and Cheat but began to sway as she lost the strength in her legs.

“Ugh!”

Cheat began laughing uproariously as if the whole scene amused her.

“Kuhahaha! Man, am I lucky! Look at this, Claw! I told you someone would take the bait, didn’t I? You gotta be patient if you wanna land a big catch!”

The electronic display on her helmet began to openly mock EunAh.

[LMAO~♬]

Cheat had opted not to return to the hideout after retrieving the circulation stone. Instead, she had hidden her presence on the floor above and waited for EunAh to appear, then used Blink to ambush her.

Her luck was truly exceptional.

Cheat had already known that Kim EunAh was in Metro City, but to think that both the fake, comatose successor and the real successor of the Shinsung group would be at the hospital! She licked her lips while staring at the girl from afar.

“Kuku. Hey, little miss rich girl. Aren’t you tired? Unni will take you safely back to her hideout, so why don’t you take a small breather?”

TL/N: Unni is a title primarily used by women to refer to their older sisters. Otherwise, fairly similar connotation to noona (saved for those who are relatively close to each other, not used to refer to old women).

“Shut up…! What the hell are you planning to do?”

“Man, you look pretty glamorous on the outside, but your mouth is just as filthy as the kids who live in our ghetto.”

Cheat glanced over at EunAh languidly. The mission that the Rebellion had initially given her was espionage and enacting information warfare. She wasn’t strong enough in combat to fight someone like EunAh.

But the needle that EunAh had been pierced with was called the Mind Number. The drug slathered on it had the effect of lowering one’s ability to concentrate on manipulating their mana.

“Keuk!”

EunAh wheezed while clutching her shoulder. She had pulled the needle out earlier, but the joint was still throbbing.

“Mhm?”

Intrigued, Cheat began to slowly approach her. EunAh aimed her hands towards the villain and began shouting in desperation.

“Don’t come near me!”

Bzz! Flash!

The lightning scattered as her concentration broke.

“Give up, missy. If you keep resisting, I’ll have to get a little rough here, too. For example, hm…”

Cheat gently placed one of her black walker boots on top of JunHyuk’s head.

“If you piss me off too much, I can just… get rid of this piece of trash. How about that?”

“Shit, I’ll kill you! Take your foot-cough! Keuk…”

EunAh began to scream, enraged, but Cheat wasn’t even fazed.

“Aw, c’mon. Don’t strain yourself like that—you’ll collapse. Actually… if I pump enough mana into my foot, I think his head’ll actually explode. Wanna bet on it?”

She instead doubled down on the taunts, lightly kicking JunHyuk’s head in the meanwhile.

“And now that I think about it… I only really need one hostage, don’t I?”

The smile had vanished from Cheat’s face.

She spoke even faster now that the humor was gone from her tone.

“If I get rid of this guy, you’ll be the only successor left, right? It’s easier to threaten someone who’s perfectly fine like you instead of an unconscious, bedridden guy like him, too. Right, I should just kill him. It’s too much of a pain trying to deal with two of them.”

—Madness.

From her casual tone of voice, EunAh could practically see the expressionless face of the villain on the other side of the helmet. Cheat had infiltrated Metro City to steal the circulation stone. She could tell that the woman’s words were no bluff.

Thump.

EunAh gently bit her lip, then lowered herself onto her knees.

“…Keuk.”

Normally, it was something she would never do against a villain. But to EunAh, JunHyuk was her sole, precious brother.

“…I got it, so let my brother go. You only need me to be a hostage, right?”

Pride wasn’t important to EunAh as long as she could save her brother. 

Seeing her surrender, Cheat finally took her foot off of the man’s head.

“…Fufu, you’re actually pretty agreeable, aren’t you? Don’t worry, I’m not that bad of a person, either.”

Stomp stomp.

Cheat began to strut towards EunAh like a model on a runway.

‘Oppa…’

EunAh fell into her thoughts as she gazed at her fallen brother. Would things have turned out differently if she had listened to SHin YuSung and had stayed in her patrol area? The villains weren’t even aiming for JunHyuk. Her own decisions had exacerbated the situation.

‘…I ruined everything.’

EunAh was completely spent on mana and had been struck by the Mind Number needle. If she became a hostage of the Rebellion, there was no way to know when she would be free from their clutches. There was no question that the Shinsung group would be threatened endlessly with the life of its successor.

‘I ruined…’

EunAh closed her eyes.

Thinking about it rationally, there was no hope she could cling to for rescue from that situation. Yu AeRi, who had been dispatched there, was unconscious. By the time other hunters arrived in the area, everything would already be over.

* * *

* * *

“See, you should’ve been cooperative from the beginning. All you did was waste my precious time.”

In contrast to her chilling words, Cheat let out an exuberant laugh. She took out some rope from her Pocket and began to tie EunAh’s hands together.

“Keep your promise… don’t touch my brother,” said EunAh, a pained expression on her face.

Cheat found that incredibly funny. She let out a large guffaw, unable to hold it in, and kept laughing for a good while before finally beginning to speak.

“What, you mean what I said earlier? Ha, hahahaha! Are you seeing this shit, Claw? She’s bringing up the promise I made!”

Claw did not reply; it was obvious that they had cut off the transmission on their end. Cheat continued to blabber on, undaunted.

“You crack me up. Really! I think there are tears in my eyes right now. Wait, I can’t even wipe them away because this helmet’s in the way.”

Cheat roughly grabbed EunAh’s chin with her fingers.

“Oh, boy… so innocent. Maybe it’s because you’re a student? You actually believed me? Well, I guess I’m kind of envious of you in that way. Pfft!”

EunAh turned pale at the villain’s words. Cheat stood up and looked down at her.

“Hey, little miss rich girl. The funny thing about an item is: the rarer it is, the better the price you can get for it.”

“Wh-what’s that supposed to mean?!”

EunAh belatedly began to struggle, but it was useless. With her hands tied together, she eventually lost her balance and fell to her side.

It was a humiliation that she had never experienced up until that point in time.

On the ground, she couldn’t even keep her body steady, but EunAh continued to desperately ramble on.

“Why? What’s your goal? You promised! You promised you’d let my brother live…”

Cheat lifted an index finger to her helmet and made a shushing motion.

“No, no. It’s different now that you’re the one who’s being captured~ Didn’t you hear what I just said? That the rarer the item, the better price you can get for it? It’s the same with a hostage.”

Saying so, she began to approach Kim JunHyuk.

“If I can’t take both of you, well. That means it’s definitely better for there to only be one of you instead of two.”

Cheat’s intent was clear. She would kill Kim JunHyuk so that there would only be one successor to the Shinsung group left alive. There was not an ounce of guilt in her, despite the fact that she was about to end a person’s life solely for her own gain.

“This’ll be a little violent for the students in the audience. Wouldn’t it be better for you if you closed your eyes?” she said, showing her own form of consideration.

She lifted her mana-imbued foot high into the air. If that foot struck down on JunHyuk’s head, it was all over.

“S-stop! I’ll give you as much money as you want! I won’t struggle! So please…”

EunAh begged. Her breath came out in short gasps, and her pleading voice was no louder than a whisper.

“…Please. Don’t do it.”

But Cheat merely enjoyed the show that the girl was putting on for her.

“Sorry, I don’t negotiate with hostages. They call me a villain for a reason, you know~”

Her black walker boot flew down. At the moment when she was about to stomp JunHyuk’s skull into smithereens, EunAh finally looked away, eyes closed.

‘Please, someone, anyone.”

Bam! Boom!

The dull sound of a foot colliding with something echoed throughout the area.

A cool breeze tickled EunAh’s side as if a rush of wind had passed her by. Only then did EunAh harshly let out the breath she was holding and open her eyes.

“Haak! S… sob! Waah…”

But what was in front of her eyes was so much different than what she had expected. JunHyuk was perfectly fine, and Cheat had been thrown into a wall.

“Keuk, cough! Has the backup already arrived? There’s… no way. M-my data showed me…”

Her carefree expression had been completely wiped from her face. She was propping herself up on the ground.

Kim EunAh turned her head to look at the person who had created the scene.

—To Shin yuSung.

“…YuSung-ah.”

EunAh had ignored YuSung’s advice and had left her designated area. On top of that, she had worsened the situation and had become the villain’s hostage. Even to her, the one that had created the entire mess was her own self.

But despite all of that, YuSung had come to save her. EunAh looked at the boy with her tear-ridden face.

Her hair was a mess.

Tears were dripping down her face.

Pride left to the wayside, EunAh began to beg to YuSung fervently. It was an expression that one would usually never see on her.

“I’m begging you… please… save my brother…”

Instead of a reply, YuSung looked down at EunAh.

‘…So the reason why she rushed to the hospital was for the sake of her family.’

EunAh had called the unconscious man her brother. The gown he was wearing made it clear that he was a patient at the hospital.

The reason as to why she didn’t want to talk about it earlier was clear. YuSung nodded in lieu of a reply to EunAh’s downtrodden figure.

To him, the mentality of a villain—who used a hunter’s power to commit crimes—was completely different from his own.

YuSung glared at Cheat with cold eyes, as-then unseen from him before that point in time.

‘I’ll finish this in an instant.’

His emotions were raging on the inside, but his mind was more calm and serene than it had ever been before. YuSung knew very well through his strenuous training that excessive emotions could lead to him making wrong decisions.

Of course, his anger did not exist solely due to EunAh’s heartfelt request.

‘…I don’t need any reason other than the fact that I need to capture a villain.’

The boy took his stance. At once, blue-tinged mana began to erupt beautifully from his form.

Tup!

YuSUng rushed towards the fallen Cheat at an incredible speed, but the villain’s Skill was Blink. Even if Cheat wasn’t well suited for combat, she was confident in her ability to run away.

“And just who are you trying to catch?”

Right when she was about to turn into light and disappear—

YuSung heightened his concentration to his utmost capabilities.

‘A teleportation user?’

His perception of time slowed down to a near stop. Even if Cheat herself had disappeared into pixels, traces of her mana still lingered.

‘…Right in front of the exit.’

There was a limit to teleportation abilities. He only had one chance to capitalize on it. That chance was the moment when Cheat let down her guard after using her Skill.

Tup!

YuSung began to run towards the exit before he even turned his head in that direction. Even to a hunter, it was near impossible for one to find the location where Blink would drop off its user. But Shin YuSung’s concentration surpassed human limits.

“Over here!”

Battle God Style Third Form – Heaven Shattering Fist Strike

After determining the location, YuSung aimed his fist towards the exit of the building. As a result, Cheat was hit square in the helmet by his punch as soon as she had finished teleporting.

Boom!

The helmet shattered into pieces from the shock, and Cheat slumped down on the spot—a rather anticlimactic end for a villain who was part of the Rebellion.

“Y-you did it!”

EunAh yelled, staring at Cheat, face ruined with tears. It was a natural reaction, considering the fact that a student had managed to defeat and capture a villain who had created such a huge buzz around the world. On the other hand, YuSung was looking down at Cheat’s prone form with a puzzled, suspicious expression on his face.

‘…She’s so weak.’

To YuSung, who had been molded into a weapon for combat by the Fist King, a spy like Cheat was much too weak.