Chapter 1

Chapter 1
“What a mess.”
My condition was about as bad as it could get.
I did not know when it had happened, but my left arm was gone.
Blood was gushing from the gaping hole in my abdomen.
Most of my equipment had been destroyed as well, and the only thing even remotely usable was a sword with roughly a third of the blade snapped off.
A laugh escaped me on its own.
“Heh, heh. Heheheh!”
Lee Hyun hurled a stream of vicious curses at me.
“Cha Eunseong, you son of a bitch! What the hell did you dooooo?!”
Lee Hyun looked even worse than I did.
Not only had the entire lower half of his body been blown away, his intestines were spilling out of his ruptured abdomen.
“You look great.”
A smile spread across my lips.
“You bastard! Answer me! What the hell did you do?!”
Even in that state, he was still screaming his head off. He had to be furious.
“Can’t you tell?”
I answered with a snort.
“I just caused a little trouble so all of you would die. Heh. Heheheh. Urgh.”
The effects of all the potions I had downed earlier seemed to be wearing off, because I was starting to feel the pain.
“I said what did you do, you crazy bastard! Why did you do this?! Whyyyy?!”
“The fact that you still have to ask means you still don’t understand what’s going on.”
“I’m asking what the hell that’s supposed to mean! Cough!”
“I couldn’t kill you myself. How was a mere tool supposed to kill such exalted Rankers? Ngh! So I had no choice but to drag you down with me. Heheheh!”
36 hours earlier.
We had set out to conquer .
The boss, the Dragon Lord, was an 11-Star monster, a catastrophe capable of laying an entire nation to waste all by itself.
France had fallen that way, and Japan too had been reduced to ruin, with only Hokkaido left intact.
Our raid party, made up of South Korea’s top Rankers, had reached , where the Dragon Lord resided, after endless hardship, and the boss battle had begun.
When the fight was at its fiercest, I put into motion the plan I had dreamed of for so long.
The first thing I did was drive [Dagger of Instant Death] into the throat of Ra Sihyeon, the mage in charge of binding the Dragon Lord.
STAB!
“Ghk!”
Ra Sihyeon let out a short scream and collapsed, dead on the spot.
“You insignificant vermin dare!”
Freed from the restraints, the Dragon Lord went completely berserk.
“RAAAAAAAAGH!”
Tank Kim Kangmin was hit by the Dragon Lord’s breath and turned into a lump of blackened charcoal.
“Cha Eunseong, you fucking lunatic!”
Chae Gwangjin, our ranged damage dealer, drew his bow on me, but did he really think I would not have anticipated that?
Do you have any idea how thoroughly I prepared for this?
Who was it that made that arrow for you again?
BOOM!
The arrowhead exploded with tremendous force.
“Aaaaagh!”
A ranged damage dealer was fragile by nature, and the explosion blew Chae Gwangjin’s entire face off.
“Aaaagh! Aaaaaaaagh!”
CRUNCH!
Blinded in an instant, Chae Gwangjin had the honor of being swallowed from the waist up by the Dragon Lord, which had already closed the distance.
“Just wait!”
Baek Ayoung, the healer in charge of restoring the raid party, tried to pour life back into Chae Gwangjin, but that reaction too had been part of my calculations.
Whoooosh!
Baek Ayoung cast a healing spell, but Chae Gwangjin’s wounds did not mend in the slightest.
Yeah, go ahead and keep trying forever.
See if he recovers even a tiny bit.
Before entering , I had mixed a massive amount of extract into the enhancement potions everyone drank. How could healing possibly work after that?
Oh, and there was one more thing.
Bzzzzzz!
A swarm of bees flew in from somewhere and descended on Baek Ayoung.
Have you ever heard of [Eternal Hell Bees]?
They lived in [Primordial Jungle], a 4-Star dungeon, and when I thought about how much trouble I had gone through to raise those things...... no, never mind.
“Aaaaaaaaaah!”
Good. Die screaming.
“La-la-la.”
A tune slipped from my lips as I watched Baek Ayoung get stung and eaten alive by the Eternal Hell Bees.
Do you have any idea what she put me through?
“Cha Eunseong, you son of a bitch!”
“You bastard!”
The twin brothers Moon Daehan and Moon Daeseong, both sub-damage dealers, charged at me while hurling curses, but sorry, I was not your opponent.
“Die, you insignificant insects.”
The Dragon Lord went after Moon Daehan and Moon Daeseong.
“Fuck!”
Lee Hyun, the main damage dealer, ran here and there trying to salvage the situation somehow, but nothing was going to change.
How long could a raid party last after losing its mage, tank, ranged damage dealer, and healer?
It took less than five minutes for the raid party to be annihilated.
I was reduced to a mangled wreck in the process as well, but what of it?
If I could screw over these beasts that barely even qualified as human, if I could kill them, then I did not care about my life at all.
I was a non-combat Hunter, a Supporter, and with my own abilities alone, I could not even scratch them, let alone kill them.
What was the point of being SSS-Rank?
A Supporter was only ever a tool.
So this was the only way.
The only way to destroy the raid party from within.
Because of my decision, not only South Korea but the whole world would walk the path to destruction, but I could not have cared less.
Humanity?
To hell with it.
The world was already broken beyond repair, so what did it matter whether it ended now or later?
“So in the end, this was all about revenge? You did something this insane over your pathetic little grudge?”
“What part of it is pathetic?”
A surge of anger rose in my chest.
“The way you used me like a slave for the last ten years, was that pathetic too?”
At first, I thought it was teamwork.
I thought it was friendship.
But it was not.
As time went on, they did nothing but use me while never giving me the treatment I deserved.
Because I was a Supporter, they ignored me, looked down on me, and discriminated against me at every turn.
And yet the only reason those bastards had become top Rankers not just in South Korea but in the entire world was because of me.
Of course, I was not so petty that I would do all this for that reason alone.
The real reason I swore revenge was......
“And what about the fact that you left my mother to die? Was that pathetic too?”
“......”
Lee Hyun fell silent, as if the words had lodged in his throat.
Three years earlier.
The area where my mother lived had once been overrun by monsters.
I begged them.
Just once, please help her. Please save my mother.
But instead of saving my family, they chose to clear another dungeon that had been making major headlines at the time.
Under the pretense of sacrificing the lesser for the greater, they turned their backs on my desperate plea.
And so my mother died.
What sense did it make that the mother of a Hunter—worse, the mother of a son ranked among the very strongest Rankers—could be killed by monsters?
Those bastards came to my mother’s funeral and offered condolences they did not mean.
‘I’m sorry. That’s how it turned out.’
‘Make sure the funeral is done properly.’
‘That’s the weight of being a hero. You just have to endure it.’
The media, those trash reporters, showered me with flowery phrases like [A Nation-Saving Decision] and [A Noble Sacrifice], praising me to the skies.
There was no need to say that it had all been propaganda orchestrated by those bastards.
After that, everything changed.
They were afraid I would hold a grudge over what happened, so they quietly pressured me by using my younger sister as leverage.
They even watched me and threw obstacles in my way so I could not build ties with other Hunters.
Tool or not, I was still an SSS-Rank Supporter, so I had value.
So I swore it.
I would have my revenge on them, no matter what.
Today was the anniversary of my mother’s death, and considering that, I supposed I had laid out a feast rich enough to make the table legs buckle.
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t protect you to the end.’
I could not help worrying about my younger sister, who would be left alone because of this, but she would be fine.
I had made arrangements in my own way....
It would be hard for her, sure, but she had always been tough. She would survive even if one idiot big brother disappeared.
“Heh!”
Lee Hyun laughed.
“Cha Eunseong, you fucking moron. Do you think doing this will bring your dead mother back to life? Heh. Heheheh! Fine, let’s say you got your revenge. Do you really think the little sister you dote on so much can stay safe whe—”
Lee Hyun never finished his sentence.
CRUNCH!
The Dragon Lord’s jaws swallowed his head whole.
Crunch, crunch!
Wow. It was eating with real appetite.
Looks like the Dragon Lord had been very hungry.
Then the Dragon Lord slowly turned its head, and its gaze landed on me.
A shiver ran through me.
Under the Dragon Lord’s gaze, it felt as though my heart—no, my soul—was shriveling up.
But I could not lose my nerve.
I had something to rely on.
“You are...... a being I cannot kill.”
Maybe because it was an 11-Star boss monster, the Dragon Lord seemed to recognize me—or rather, what I possessed—at a glance.
“That’s right. I’m someone you can’t kill.”
As I said that, I took three stone spheres out of my inventory and held them up.
Whoooosh!
The spheres glowed orange and revealed their true form.
The Dragon King’s Wish-Fulfilling Pearls.
They were the crowning touch of this plan I had completed through endless hardship.
According to an ancient text discovered in the dungeon, if you gathered the three Pearls and came before the Dragon Lord, it would grant your wish.
Now it was time to see whether that was true or not.
“I have a wish.”
“By the covenant passed down since the beginning of creation, I shall grant your wish.”
“My wish is......”
STAB!
The Dragon Lord’s hand pierced straight through the center of my chest—through my heart.
“Hrrk!”
I could not even speak. Only a dry gasp escaped me.
A second ago......
You said......
You’d grant it......
“What you truly desire shall be fulfilled through death.”
What kind of bullshit is that, you damned lizard bastard......
‘Haah, so this is how I die. Without even getting to make my wish.’
My consciousness began to fade.
And when I opened my eyes again—“Son, son.”
“...?”
“Even if you’re going to sleep, eat first and then sleep.”
My mother was looking down at me.