Chapter 235 - This Is the Worst

TL: Ramy

T/N: Hello guys since I'm the tler who will be in charge for the next chapters onward please bear with the new terms I used. Sorry for the inconvenience!

A male bee emerged from a collapsed pile of concrete. Just as it spun its tail to aim its stinger at Thomas—

"Kiik?!"

The male bee had a rebar impaled through its chest.

“Unlike worker bees, you have to watch out for the male bee’s head. Their bodies are tough, so they sometimes play dead and launch a surprise attack.”

Johanna, an Italian hunter who spoke English with an exotic accent, appeared on the rooftop. Jang Deuk-gu and Thomas barely glanced at her, their attention still fixed on the fallen male bee. Johanna found their attitude rude.

‘Shouldn’t they at least say thank you? I went through all that trouble running up here.’

She shook her head in displeasure, then suddenly noticed something sticking out from the back of the male bee’s head.

‘Is that a sword? No—a spear?!’

As she approached the male bee, she realized the object sticking out of its head was a spear. She could see the end of a rebar blocked by the spear and couldn’t go any further. It was the rebar she had thrown.

‘The rebar didn’t hit the spearhead — the handle stopped it.’

It was proof that the spear had struck the male bee first. In short, Johanna’s rebar attack had been for nothing.

“Tch! Still, I put in the effort. How can they be this heartless?”

As Johanna grumbled to herself, shifting her frustration from their rudeness to their indifference, Jang Deuk-gu finally spoke up.

“So there’s actually a hunter who didn’t run.”

“Run? That’s for the weak. Do I look like that kind of person? Tsk.”

“Fair enough. An A-ranker isn’t the type to go around getting beaten up.”

Johanna was taken aback. This Asian man had guessed her rank the moment he saw her. She became even more wary as she watched him retrieve the spear from the male bee with an expressionless face.

‘Now that I think about it... I can’t get a read on this guy’s rank at all. He seemed full of openings… but he’s stronger than me. Then that mage…? Huh? What’s going on? Wait, did I get it wrong? He looks way lower-ranked than me… Or is there another mage with them?’

Seeing the confusion all over Johanna’s face, Thomas responded.

“Don’t look at me like that. I really did cast this spell — there’s a reason for it, but I'd rather not talk about it. More importantly, with the city under attack, we’ll be working together for a while. So, for smoother communication, why don’t we introduce ourselves first? I’m Thomas Lee. This person here is Jang Deuk-gu. If the name’s hard to pronounce, just call him Mr. Jang. Judging by your accent, you’re not from North America, right?”

“I’m from Europe. My name’s Johanna.”

“Just Johanna?”

“Ceretti. Johanna Cerre—”

Johanna replied on reflex, but stopped herself mid-sentence.

‘Ugh! I let my guard down. Guess I’ve been off duty too long. I can't believe I gave out my name so easily in a situation like this. I’m way too relaxed. Get it together, Johanna!’

There was a good reason Johanna was overreacting to just saying a few letters of her name.

A city turned lawless zone by monster attacks was one of the easiest places for crime to break out. And hunters were often the ones who got involved in it. Sometimes, some hunters used their violent and sadistic urges on people instead of monsters. Sometimes, hunters got caught up in strange situations and ended up as criminals or fell into debt without even realizing it.

Since the hunter world often preferred immediate justice over legal proceedings, especially in chaotic times, many disputes were settled on the spot. To avoid having her life ruined on a simple vacation, she needed to stay alert, especially when facing someone stronger than herself. Noticing Johanna’s wariness, Deuk-gu Jang wiped the blood off his spear and spoke.

“I used to be an investigator. Then I became a bounty hunter. People caught doing bad things in front of me usually ended up begging to be thrown in jail instead.”

“I’ve seen a lot of hunters turn into villains themselves while trying to catch one.”

“That’s just how they were by nature.”

"And who's supposed to vouch for your true nature?"

“My rank.”

“What?”

"Haven’t you heard? Rank rules everything. My rank is higher, so that makes me right.”

"Huh? So that’s your true nature?"

"Don’t trust a hunter’s nature. We’re all the same in the end. There’s a fine line between a hunter and a villain. It’s good to be cautious, but if you overdo it, you’ll freeze up and won’t be able to do anything. You should act flexibly as the situation demands. You didn’t come all the way up to this rooftop just out of curiosity, did you?"

She really had come out of curiosity, which is why Johanna couldn’t say anything.

‘No, that’s not right. Curiosity was just part of it. The rest was… hmm… right! To assess the situation. I came up here because I needed to know exactly what was going on before deciding what to do next.’

While Johanna was busy making up reasons to convince herself, Thomas examined the bee and spoke up.

"This one's just a regular male bee."

“A male bee is a male bee. What do you mean, ‘just’ a regular one? Don’t tell me there are special male bees or something?”

“There are.”

“Huh?”

“How much do you know about carnivorous hornets?”

"I can tell this one's a carnivorous hornet. It showed up once in Korea, so I can recognize it."

Thomas thought that Jang Deok-gu’s knowledge about the carnivorous hornet was quite common. Carnivorous hornets were rare monsters to begin with, only appearing in limited areas. Since it was usually dealt with quickly in recent times, it never became a significant problem. However, looking back at the past, the damage caused by the carnivorous hornet was truly horrifying. Due to the devastating consequences, people avoided mentioning it, and aside from scholars with a particular interest in monster ecology or a few experts who kept track of hunting information regardless of how often the creature appeared, no one paid attention to the carnivorous hornet.

“I’m from here, so I’m familiar with LA’s monster defense system. The fact that the local guilds haven’t responded yet shows that this attack is on a scale too big for them to handle. It seems safe to assume that the entire city is under attack.”

“Well, I don’t know if the captain will be okay. My phone’s not working, and my messaging skill is out of range.”

“If he went to the Hunter Crime Bureau, he should be fine. The building’s defenses are as strong as any major guild’s.”

“Well, he’s not someone who will die easily. So, what’s your point?”

“If the entire city is under attack, that means the size of the hive is no joke…. No bee monster would do something stupid like expanding its territory. They’ll swarm once the time is right.”

Swarming is the phenomenon where the existing queen bee leaves the hive with some worker bees to form a new hive before a new queen bee is born. Jang Deok-gu, though unfamiliar with carnivorous hornets in depth, understood Thomas’s explanation because he was familiar with the basic traits of bee monsters.

"Are you saying that this incident happened during a Swarm?"

"No. Swarming is when the existing queen leaves with only a portion of the hive's population. But carnivorous hornets are different.”

Johanna interrupted. As she spoke as if she knew a lot about carnivorous hornets, Thomas and Jang Deuk-gu looked at her with an intrigued gaze.

“Why is that?”

“You seem to know a lot about carnivorous hornets. I thought they hadn’t appeared in Europe.”

“I’m Italian. Just across the Mediterranean is Africa. How many times have there been emergencies because they might cross over from there? Don't you know that?"

“Then, could you explain how the carnivorous hornet is different, Hunter Johanna?”

At Thomas's prompting, Johanna hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“The carnivorous hornets do swarm, but it's not the existing queen leading it. It's the new queens born in the royal cells. The existing queen stays behind.”

"What's that got to do with the male bees?"

"The queen bees that swarm are the second or third generation queens. I mentioned earlier that carnivorous hornets are different from other bee monsters, right? These creatures evolve genetically much faster with each generation. In other words, they get stronger."

"That's correct. However, this male bee closely resembles the original form of the carnivorous hornet."

Thomas returned to the point, and Jang Deuk-gu muttered, summarizing their explanation.

"That means these are first-generation bees, right? If they’re not swarming, what could cause first-generation bees to leave the hive without swarming?"

"The most likely reason is that they’re being attacked. They leave the hive to eliminate any threats to it as a countermeasure. But in this case, the scale is too large. It seems that the originally full hive has expelled its forces for some reason.”

"Expelled its forces?"

"Yes. The hive has thrown out the forces that have become useless. In other words, the first-generation queens and the worker bees have been driven out by the next generation."

Jang Deuk-gu wore a somewhat confused expression as if he was on the verge of understanding but still unsure. He understood the situation, but he didn't know what the consequences would be. Instead, Johanna furrowed her brow and responded.

"Seriously, now that I think about it, I picked the wrong vacation spot."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm saying it's the worst. The fact that the new queen didn’t swarm and kicked out the previous generation, which was much larger in number, means that the new generation is that strong. They're confident they can swallow this entire city."

"That’s not the only problem."

"Is there something worse than a stronger, new queen bee?"

Noh Song-rin, who was gripping the steering wheel of the car heading toward the Gunpowder Guild, asked with a look of exasperation. Kang Moo-hyuk, sitting in the passenger seat, opened the window slightly.

"Be careful. You might get stung by a bee."

At Noh Song-rin's warning, Kang Moo-hyuk stopped opening the window any further and instead aimed his gun through the gap, pulling the trigger.

Bang!

“Kkueek!”

The hornet that had been following the car was hit by a bullet from the silver revolver, screeching as it rolled. It hit the traffic light pole ahead and fell far behind.

“Indeed, the best monster weapon is American-made. It may not kill, but it's effective enough to hit a carnivorous hornet like that.”

"That gun costs millions of won per shot. It's so expensive that even Americans hesitate to shoot with it. Where did you get it?"

"It was in the bunker. I asked for it on the way to the parking lot, and they gave it to me."

"Wow, Americans are really generous. They just gave you that thing?"

"It wasn't exactly given to me, I have to return it."

"Return it?"

"Yeah. But if I say I lost it in the chaos, they probably won't make a fuss about it, right? After all, it's an emergency right now."

Noh Song-rin glanced at Kang Moo-hyuk with a look that said, “Of course.”

"The extra basic hunter set I brought is in the trunk. Since it’s American-made, it’s really flashy. Feel free to use it, Hunter Noh Song-rin."

"Ah, right, it’s an emergency. It’s totally possible to lose a set while hunting down monsters.”

"Anyway, the real problem is what happens after the queen bee starts producing the next generation. Whether it’ll be a stronger one or hundreds of slightly weaker queens, we don’t know for sure. But generally speaking, carnivorous hornets tend to focus more on evolution. The first carnivorous hornets that appeared in Africa evolved up to the 5th generation queen without swarming. It led to the downfall of a whole country. We’re not sure if this queen is second or third generation, but keeping her from evolving any further is going to be the main objective.”