Skills, which made many Hunters fall on their knees in despair, were acquired on a myriad of occasions.
“I hit training dummies ten thousand times and automatically got one.”
“I heard God’s voice one day!”
“You want to know how I used that magic spell just now? I don’t know. I’ve been able to do it since I entered the Tower.”
Some Hunters couldn’t escape poverty due to their lack of gifts, even though they were kind-hearted and tenacious. On the other hand, there were Hunters who made a decent living despite their ill temper. A prime example of the latter would be the Fire Emperor, the number one Hunter in the official ranking.
If people’s lives were games, the Fire Emperor’s would earn the Game of the Year award. He would be able to get anything he wanted in his game. Meanwhile, my life was... just a second-rate gacha.
Most people would think that the moment of greatest despair during gacha was if they never got Five Star items or characters, no matter how many times they tried. However, anyone who paid money to get more gacha pulls would know better... True despair was when they acquired the most useless Five-Star items or characters out there.
My Five-Star Skill was worse than most One-Star gacha pulls.
I Want To Be Like You
Effect: It will automatically activate after an enemy kills you. You will be able to copy and turn one of their Skills into yours. The Skill you copy will be chosen at random, but you can’t copy your enemies’ Skills more than once.
※ However, you will die!
Yes, my life was a second-rate gacha. Once Hunters acquired a Skill, they were supposed to visit the Hunter Management Bureau and report it, but I didn’t. My Skill wasn’t even fair, so I didn’t want to embarass myself too.
“Hello, Mr. Hunter. How did you acquire your Skill?”
“It was because I envy the world’s Rank 1 Hunter.”
“I yelled that I was going to go crazy because I envy him so much, and the Tower tossed me a Skill Card. Haha. You know, the Tower also told me that they never saw something as ugly as my jealousy.”
I couldn’t tell them that! Instead, I ended up drinking like there was no tomorrow and left the pub, wandering and staggering for who knew how long. I wound up in a deserted alley and couldn’t hold it any longer and vomited.
“Blarghhhhhh!” I wiped my mouth. “If I was going to be unlucky... I shouldn’t have been lucky at all. “
I wasn’t even good at finding the right place to vomit. Where was I? I had never been to this alley. How did I end up here? I remembered nothing. Would I have to sleep on the ground tonight?
Ah, I want to cry. I held back my tears.
“—go! Ah! Why would you suddenly do this...!”
Just then, I heard a faint scream from further inside the alley. My head cleared up right away. The scream was too vivid for me to have hallucinated because of the makgeolli I had. Although I wasn’t sure who it was, they were definitely screaming because their life was in danger.
What’s going on? I carefully picked my way down the alley and took shallow breaths to be as stealthy as possible.
One step after another, I made my way toward the source of the scream. The voice became clearer as I approached.
“M-Mr. Fire Emperor, why are you doing—”
“...It’s useless. No one is around....”
And that was my second stupid mistake for the day. I should have run as soon as I heard the scream. Of course... my first mistake was to drink until I pickled my brain, but that was because I had never gotten drunk in my entire life before today. Infuriated by the fact that I had a Class S shit, I had gulped down makgeolli as if it were water.
“I poisoned your glass.”
“Po-poison? I already told you, I don’t understand what you are talking about, Mr. Fire Emperor.”
“Wow, you’re a great actress. If anyone saw you right now, they would buy it instantly.”
A couple was standing deep in a dead-end alley without a single street light shining on them. Perhaps “standing” was an understatement, because the man was threatening the woman.
“I used Basilisk Acid. It’s the same poison you used in my glass before.” The man leaned closer to the woman. “ I gotta hand it to you. I would have been in real trouble if it wasn’t for my Skill. Hmm? What’s wrong? You look pale now, Miss Saintess.”
“Impervious Body...? N-no way. You don’t have that Skill.”
“I don’t.” The man’s laughter quietly echoed down the alley. “But I happen to have a slightly better Skill than Impervious Body.”
That was when I recognized the man. Even though the alley was pitch dark, there was no way I wouldn’t remember his ponytail after seeing him walking away in the TV interview last night.
It’s really the Fire Emperor!
He was the officially recognized number one Hunter in the ranking compiled by the Hunter Management Bureau, the star of this era, and the idol of everyone. That was why everyone was envious of him, especially me.
...And she’s the Saintess!
I covered my mouth so they wouldn’t hear me breathing.
The Saintess was a Rank 9 Hunter and was currently rumored to be dating the Fire Emperor. I had only seen her beauty from videos and photos online. Yet here she was, being threatened.
“But I’ve had enough of this game. You have to pay the price for messing with me.”
“H-hold on, Mr. Fire Emperor. You’re misunderstanding something— The only thing I want to do is clear the Tower together!”
“That’s what I thought, but I was wrong.”
“Please stop and think about it! If you and I work together, we can not only clear the fortieth floor, we can clear the fiftieth floor within a year! Yes! No human ever managed to clear the fiftieth floor, but we can!”
“I thought so too, but we probably won’t,” the Fire Emperor scoffed.
My jaw dropped to the ground. They... aren’t dating each other?
Two heroes in love—that was what people on the internet and the media said about them, but there was nothing romantic about this. In fact, a lover’s quarrel was the last word I would use right now.
The Fire Emperor’s voice dripped with murder. In my eyes, this conversation was between people who were about to kill and be killed.
“Let’s talk it out, please! I’m sure we can sort out this misunderstanding.”
“Talk? Ah, yes. I like talking. It’s what gentlemen do.” The Fire Emperor grabbed the Saintess by the neck.
The Saintess moaned in pain.
“But I make the rules.”
She gasped and writhed. His grip must have been suffocating. The more she struggled, the more suffocated I felt too.
It should never have happened, but it was happening right in front of me.
“I ask questions. The only thing you have to do is answer. You don’t need to answer out loud. If I guessed correctly, you nod. Otherwise, you can shake your head. It’s simple, right?” the Fire Emperor demanded.
The Saintess desperately gasped for air.
“I’ll spare you if you cooperate. You know what? I’ll even give you the antidote as a bonus, but if you choose to turn down my generous offer... Well, you don’t need me to explain, right? I heard you’re from Oxford University. Put your smart brain to work.”
The Saintess desperately hit the Fire Emperor’s arm to escape from his grip, but it didn’t affect him one bit. After all, the Saintess was a Healer, so even though she was a renowned Hunter, it was impossible to physically overpower the Fire Emperor.
“Actually, I only have one question for you.”
The Saintess struggled harder.
“Who ordered you to kill me? Was it the witch from the Black Dragon Guild?”
The Saintess’s resistance immediately stopped.
“Think carefully before you answer. I may not have Impervious Body, but I do have a lie-detecting Skill. I’ll cremate you right here if I catch you trying any fuckery with me.”
It seemed the Saintess hesitated a bit. The alley was dark, so I couldn’t get a good look at her face—still, I could tell she went quiet before she slowly nodded to the Fire Emperor.
“I knew it.” The Fire Emperor chuckled. “Goodbye, Isabel the Saintess.”
The fire he started reached the Saintess’s neck first. She desperately thrashed as she was slowly engulfed by the fire, but the Fire Emperor didn’t even budge. He watched the Saintess burn with an expressionless face.
“Hmm...” The Fire Emperor was nonchalant even in the blazing fire.
It eventually devoured the entire end of the alley, but he never let go of the Saintess. She clawed at his arm, but in the end, she gave up and reached for the night sky...
Her arms soon drooped, and she no longer moved.
The fuck...! I shut my eyes.
A hero died right in front of me. Perhaps that wasn’t an accurate description: Yes, the Saintess was murdered by another hero of the people, the Fire Emperor.
The Saintess was already a lump of charcoal now, but the fire didn’t die out because the Fire Emperor chose not to let it. He burned her flesh and bones until they turned into a pile of ashes, and yet he never even batted an eye.
He’s not in his right mind. I stumbled backward. I should run away right now.
And then I made the third and last mistake of the day.
It was very faint. It wasn’t even from a can. I stepped on a glass fragment. Maybe it was from someone’s soju bottle or it got carried here by a breeze... I didn’t know why it was there.
“...Hmm.” The Fire Emperor turned his head.
Although I didn’t have to know why the glass fragment was here, there were two facts that I couldn’t ignore: I had just made a foolish mistake, and the Fire Emperor was a predator who would never miss someone else’s mistake.
“I thought I dealt with all the rats nearby, but I must have missed one.”
The moment I met the Fire Emperor’s eyes, I squealed and ran away without looking back. His eyes belonged to a killer. He was a devil who had killed dozens of people at least, and today he was going to kill me.
“Ha.” The Fire Emperor sneered. “It’s cute that you think you can run away from me, you shit.”
I felt a burning sensation near my ankles and immediately went rolling across the ground. At first, I didn’t get why I fell down—then I saw both my feet still flat on the ground. I gasped. My feet were severed with my sneakers still on. The famous logo on the side of my sneakers looked unusually white today.
“P-please don’t kill me! Spare me, please!”
“Then you shouldn’t have run away in the first place. You scared me for a moment there.” The Fire Emperor bent over to pick up my foot and tossed it up and down like a baseball. “Hey, did you see it?”
“I-I didn’t see anything!”
The Fire Emperor approached me. “What did you not see?”
“I don’t know anything! P-please, I don’t know any—”
“What do you not know?”
“Please... Mr. Fire Emperor. Please...spare me. I won’t say anything. I won’t say anything to anyone...”
A shadow was cast over my head as the Fire Emperor crouched over me. “Wow, so you saw me and know I’m the Fire Emperor. You saw pretty much everything.”
“Bro, you’re making me upset. You know everything, so why would you keep bullshitting me?” The Fire Emperor turned my foot this way and that. “Tell me. Who sent you? Is it the Black Dragon again?”
“I... I really don’t know anything... I know nothing....”
“Yet you were quietly watching me and the Saintess from there like a rat. That sounds so trustworthy, doesn’t it? I would have bought it if I was an idiot.” The Fire Emperor grinned crookedly. “But I’m not, you dipshit.”
The Fire Emperor started another fire on the famous logo on my sneakers. Before long, the sneakers I had worn for a long time disappeared. I had been with my feet longer, but they were now gone too.
“Next will be your head, so answer me.”
My head went blank. This devil... was crazy. There was no talking to a psycho, and he was one. Everything inside his head was the absolute truth, so he was supposed to be always right. In truth, he was just a psychopath who would kill an innocent without hesitation.
The Fire Emperor was the Rank 1 Hunter, so how could he—no, how could a human do that? Had I been fanboying for a psycho? I used to think that he was a hero and I liked him for his candor and straightforwardness. That was what other people thought too—but he was just a lunatic.
“Lie-detecting Skill... You said you have a lie-detecting Skill,” I desperately blurted. “You told the Saintess to think carefully before she answers because you can tell if she’s lying. Use the Skill on me, and you’ll know I’m not lying. Mr. Fire Emperor, i-it really was a coincidence. Please believe me!”
The Fire Emperor’s expression subtly changed.