Auto Hunting

No. 165

-I want to talk.

Auto-Hunt stopped moving. Yoo-seong checked the button to confirm it was still on.

There was no physical obstacle that was stopping him from moving, which meant that Auto-Hunt had determined that the voice couldn’t harm him and had stopped simply to listen.

“You must be kidding,” Yoo-seong said out loud as he figured out how to communicate with the strange voice.

-I want to talk.

‘Don’t try to be funny.’

This time, Yoo-seong answered in his head without making a sound. The voice responded immediately.

-You have nothing to gain from fighting like this. You must know… this isn’t even your land.

“….?”

-I know you are not from the land outside this place. You may be in a cooperative relationship right now, but… it will not continue that way.

Yoo-seong bit his lip for a moment.

It seemed that the voice wasn’t only telepathic. It also seemed to know more than Yoo-seong had initially thought. Not only did it have an idea about humans and the creatures that occupied the human world, but it was also aware of human relationships.

More so, it seemed to have mastered several human languages, including Korean.

Just by the amount of garbage in this place, it was clear that it had gateways to other places, not just Nashville.

“The rules are simple,” Yoo-seong said, taking control of the conversation by raising his Bow.

As he did so, the voice in his head screamed.

-No!

It was a bluff. Yoo-seong didn’t have any arrows left.

The dark clouds overhead were now beginning to clear, and the crackling electricity around his body had already subsided.

However, whoever he was speaking to didn’t know it.

“I will ask you questions, and you will answer.”

-I’ll do what you want…

Yoo-seong raised the Bow once more.

He was already familiar with the principle of changing his CE to electricity. Before long, lightning flashed and struck the space in front of Yoo-seong.

The owner of the voice wanted to bargain with him because it feared for the lives of the remaining Grays in front of Yoo-seong.

It was easy to negotiate with an opponent who had already shown his weakness.

“First of all, don’t interrupt me. Don’t do whatever you’re planning until I am done with my questions.”

-…….

“Do you understand?!” Yoo-seong raised his voice.

As he did, electricity crackled around his Bow.

-Yes… yes!

First, Yoo-seong wanted to establish who he was speaking with.

“Are you their leader? Or just one of the guys?”

-Yes, the leader…

“Did you open this crack yourselves?”

-That’s also right.

Perhaps Yoo-seong could get the information he wanted through a simple question-and-answer procedure. He could ask the usual “Who are you?” or “What are you trying to gain by invading us?”

However, as Yoo-seong knew very well by now, the creature he was speaking with was an intelligent being possessed of emotions.

He’d never encountered such a monster before, but…

“I’m sick of it,” Yoo-seong spat.

A creature capable of emotion was also capable of lying.

Provocation and mockery were more effective in bringing out raw, honest responses than a simple question.

“Things that look weird coming over to our world… Terribly disgusting creatures.”

-Shut up! You’re bottom dwellers who don’t deserve to breathe the air of Paradise!

“Paradise? Is that what you call our world?”

-Your… Your world…? What a shameless…

“You seem to have a lot of anger about that simple fact,” Yoo-seong acknowledged.

He was feeling something unusual. It was good that he could easily bring out the intentions of these creatures, but…

There seemed to be more twists to the story than he knew, albeit strange ones.

-If it weren’t for that ridiculous fluke, you ignorant creatures would have been stuck here.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

-All you remember is an absurdly short history. It must be because your past was shameful.

“Well, you seem like someone who knows a lot. Why don’t you give me a history lesson?”

Yoo-seong’s eyes were now scanning the plaza below. While Yoo-seong had paused to talk with the voice, the remaining Grays had disappeared.

‘This guy’s purpose was probably to buy them time,’ he thought.

However, now, with the voice’s emotion reaching its peak, it had no choice but to continue with its story.

-In the past, you were just beasts.

The voice didn’t say exactly when. For Yoo-seong, it sounded like a pseudo-scholar who believed in the theory of ultra-ancient civilizations.

-Paradise… We were the masters of the world that you now call “yours.” You were simply domesticated breeds that were of convenience.

“That’s pretty annoying bullshit,” Yoo-seong fired back.

-…it was a mistake to discover this hellish world…

When cracks first appeared in their era, the Grays had thought it was a disaster. However, using their innate power and their advanced civilization, they had found a way to cope with the rifts.

-Then someone stupid thought, “what if we explore the world beyond?”

It had been natural for Grays to be curious about the world beyond the cracks. Flora and fauna of a different world, utilities that could not be found on the planet…

-But it was fundamentally unreasonable. This place was too dangerous; we could not risk our lives for curiosity’s sake.

Soon, the Grays came up with a solution.

-We decided to use the “tools” at our disposal.

Although humans were considered livestock, their physical and mental potential had been quite usable.

-Of course, we didn’t send humans as soon as they were born. At that level, it would be just wasted meat.

Instead of sending Grays, they had decided to experiment with humans and sent them to explore the alien world.

In addition to training them with basic fighting abilities, their lower abdomens had been deformed so the Grays could artificially inject energy into them.

Humans were weak primates, but through training and scientific development, they could be trained like dogs.

-Not long after, nurturing your kind became a kind of entertainment and a source of honor among us. The stronger humans you had, the higher the honor for their owner. It was also important to get better blood by mating those who had excellent results in hunting. But… we overdid it. Because of that, you got things you shouldn’t have.

“…..”

-Eventually, your “king” was born. That damned monster.

For many years, Grays had used humanity as their puppets for hunting. But soon, a genius had emerged.

He had rebelled against his masters and liberated humans.

The “king” had used the world beyond the cracks as a safe haven for fellow humans who shared his will. He’d passed on his knowledge and strengthened his colleagues, preparing for rebellion.

When the day finally came, their masters hadn’t stood a chance.

The king of humans did not kill their old masters. Instead, he had wanted them to experience the same suffering humanity had gone through.

-He chased us all into this world, and… he closed the sky on us! Since then, we haven’t been able to return to Paradise, not until the seams of the closed sky loosened once more.

Yoo-seong understood what the voice described as a “loosening of the closed sky.” It was the emergence of cracks that had happened twenty years ago.

“Well, that was an entertaining story,” Yoo-seong said.

-It’s a true story.

“Of course, you would say so.” Yoo-seong spat on the floor. “But where’s your evidence? If a civilization of some degree as you described it had already existed on Earth before mankind, why were there no traces left?”

-Did you get rid of it all?!

The voice sounded as if it had reached the limit of its patience.

-Your King must have ordered all our achievements in Paradise to be erased. Thanks to that, you’ve gone through an age of savagery that you didn’t even need to go through.

“An age just like this?” Yoo-seong raised his arms and gestured at the pile of garbage around him.

Then his eyes focused on the altar, with the unclosed crack above it. Obviously, that crack must have a very special meaning to the Grays, just looking at its scale. However, if you looked at it closely, it was a fairly crude structure, something that humans could easily build with a piece of simple, heavy equipment.

“If this is the great civilization you were talking about…” Yoo-seong scoffed.

-You took everything from us! We lost everything we had built!

Yoo-seong could understand where the Grays were coming from. The story the voice had just told him wasn’t possible. They must have made humans in that image so they could blame someone for their situation. If an entire race that had lived on Earth had been pushed into the alien world without any tools or equipment, they would all have died.

The strange atmospheric composition alone would have caused innumerable deaths.

Yoo-seong smiled in pity.

“Is that why? Even so, I think the things you built in the past weren’t that great either. Why else would you store our trash like it was precious objects?”

-………!

“I’ve listened to your story, and my questions have been solved.”

Yoo-seong was able to guess the situation to some extent. This must only be one of the Grays’ villages, perhaps their equivalent of a city. Perhaps there were more intelligent species like them.

“I said you were disgusting before, right?” Yoo-seong said. “Now, I don’t think so. You’re just pitiful creatures.”

-….

Auto-Hunt was still on.

His presence detection tattoo was also on continuous alert, and as he listened to the story,

Yoo-seong slowly expanded his radius of detection.

As a result, his range had now reached a little more than a kilometer.

A military force of a fairly enormous scale had been gradually moving in from the time the Grays’ leader began speaking to him.

-It doesn’t matter what you say.

The voice now sounded elated as its reinforcements approached.

Doo Doo Doo-

The ground began to shake.

-We will take you captive and, like your ancestors, turn you into livestock. Your power will be at the forefront when we reclaim Paradise!

“You can’t afford my services,” Yoo-seong spat.

He felt lightheaded from using the detection tattoo at such a long range. Still, he clenched his teeth and composed himself.

“Did you think I was just relaxing here while I was listening to you?”

Yoo-seong had made up his mind.

‘I’m going to wipe out all of these guys.’

At the next moment, Yoo-seong soared into the sky.

“Now, the real war begins.”