Infinite Evolution Hunter [NOVEL] - chapter 27
According to the information I received, that bastard was working at a private investigator’s office in Seoul not far from here.
It’s pretty ironic, finding another PI through a PI.
I drove and arrived at the office in 30 minutes. I’d imagined some shabby place because it was a PI office, but surprisingly it was on the second floor of a clean building in a busy district.
I went up to the office and opened the door.
“Welcome….”
The face of the man greeting me froze like ice. It was the guy from the CCTV.
“Ah… hello.”
He greeted me with a stiff face.
“You know who I am, right?”
“Uh….”
“You told me to teach my son manners, and it never occurred to you I’d come find you?”
“Si-hwan, what’s going on?”
The man at the biggest desk stood up. He was about two meters tall and heavily built.
“Boss, Hunter Lee Ji-seok is here. The one from a while back….”
The big guy called “boss” flinched. There were five people in the office, and they all stood up at once.
“So your name is Si-hwan. What should I do with you?”
“I’m sorry!”
The guy dropped to his knees like lightning.
“I swear I never intended to hurt her! I only meant to scare her a little, but the glass shattered weirdly…. I’m sorry.”
He pressed his forehead to the floor and began to apologize.
“So it seemed. I watched the video.”
“Then you understand….”
“Just because it wasn’t intentional and you apologized doesn’t mean your sin disappears.”
I slapped the same cheek as the one my mother had injured. If his attitude had been bad I might have killed him, but since he bowed and apologized sincerely the moment he saw me—so he wasn’t complete trash—I hit him only hard enough not to kill him.
Si-hwan’s body lifted and slammed into the wall.
The other four rushed me at once. From their speed, they were all awakened, though weak.
One of them had somehow pulled out a club in that brief moment and swung it down at my head. I stared straight at the descending club. It smashed against my head and broke; I glanced at his startled eyes, then kicked him.
I kicked the next two who charged and sent them crashing into the wall as well.
“Hunter Lee, do you think you can walk away after this?”
The last remaining boss started to rush me, then stopped and spoke.
“And if I can’t?”
“If we report this, you know your hunter license is as good as gone and prison is guaranteed, right? You’ve had your vent—let’s call it even.”
“Then why’d you mess with someone’s mother? There’s a line, you know. A line.”
“…We’re sorry. We later realized she was Hunter Lee’s mother. If we’d known from the start, we never would’ve touched her. But isn’t this enough?”
“Because I’m a C-rank hunter? What, if it were an F-ranker or a non-hunter, they should just live with the filth?”
“That’s not something Hunter Lee needs to concern himself with.”
I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.
“Who hired you?”
“We can’t say.”
I stepped up to the boss, grabbed his hand, and interlaced our fingers.
“W-what are you—”
I slowly squeezed. His fingers turned white in an instant, then purple.
“Ghh… aaagh!!!”
“If you don’t talk fast, you’re going to be crippled.”
“The drawer! The drawer—there’s a request form!”
Red veins stood out in his eyes and snot and spit ran as he answered.
“Take it out.”
I let go.
“Urgh… yes….”
I snatched the request form he pulled out and read it.
“Request details: Wreck the target’s hunter activities and daily life. Client… unknown?”
My info said I was an F-rank hunter who awakened two months ago. Maybe they planned to disrupt my hunter work, squeeze me for money, and come back with the contract. Or maybe they meant to scare me into signing by force.
“No one gives out their full ID for a job that shady. And they paid more for secrecy, so we didn’t ask.”
“Boss.”
“Yes!”
“You’ve got potions, right? Treat your men and line up in front of me. Now.”
“Sorry?”
I fixed him with a steady stare.
“Now.”
The boss took potions out of the safe and sprinkled them on wounds or had his men drink them. From how freely he used expensive potions, he did seem to care for his men.
“Step forward if you’ve committed any serious felonies—murder, rape, aggravated assault. Attempts count.”
I had all five kneel in a row and asked, but of course no one stepped forward. Judging by their heartbeats, they weren’t lying.
“Boss.”
“Yes!”
“None for you or your men, really?”
“None.”
He wasn’t lying.
“So you haven’t committed any big crimes, huh?”
“Right. We’re small fry. We do things like finding people, collecting debts.”
“Right? Bending the law a little along the way?”
“Just a little.”
The big guy made a tiny gap between his thumb and forefinger in front of his eyes, a gesture that didn’t match his size.
“What else did you do related to my case besides going after my mother?”
“Well… we spread some bad rumors about you on the hunter app to make forming parties harder, and we filed two or three complaints with the Awakened Management Bureau.”
“Wow… you did a lot in two days.”
Since I go solo, the party thing didn’t affect me, but if they’d left the complaints alone the Bureau might’ve caused trouble later.
“Heh….”
“Take down the posts and withdraw the complaints.”
“The posts we can take down, but the complaints were filed anonymously so we can’t withdraw them. But there are only two or three, so it shouldn’t have a big impact!”
“We’ll deal with that when we get there.”
I flipped the overturned sofa back up with one hand and sat.
“You’re all awakened, huh? Boss, looks like you used to be a hunter?”
“Yes. I quit soon because I wasn’t strong enough.”
“And the other four?”
“…Awakened, washed out of the academy, or couldn’t adapt to hunter life and drifted here.”
I thought it over. These guys hadn’t done anything good for society, and they weren’t beneficial. But the ones pulling the strings were the real villains; like the boss said, these were small fry. I could beat them up to vent, but there wasn’t much nutritional value in that. Still, a better use came to mind.
“From now on, work for me.”
I needed people I could order around anyway. If they’d wronged me, I could push them a bit harder. Might as well rehabilitate them while I’m at it.
“What?”
“Keep doing what you’ve been doing, and do what I tell you too. Of course I’ll pay. I won’t nitpick if you bend the law a little like now—but don’t do anything that makes innocent people cry.”
“What kind of work….”
“It’ll vary. First, dig up everything you can on whoever commissioned my case. It’s probably someone from Shinwoo.”
I pointed at the request form with my finger.
“Shinwoo?? You mean Shinwoo, the conglomerate?”
“Yeah. Shinwoo, the big corporation. The name was Tak Dong-yeon, but it might be an alias.”
“That’s out of our league….”
“But it was in my league to pick a fight with me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll handle the muscle. You do the background digging. That’s your specialty, isn’t it? And don’t you have a grudge? Bad info is what landed you in this mess.”
“That’s true.”
“I’ll send you an advance. Gimme your number.”
“No need. You don’t have to pay us.”
“Sure, like you’ll work hard without pay. Hand it over.”
“Here.”
The boss respectfully handed me a business card with both hands. The name read President Yoo Hyung-bin.
“President Yoo Hyung-bin, I look forward to working with you.”
I sent the advance and handed over a copy of the contract Tak Dong-yeon had left.
“Huh? This much?!”
Even if I planned to use them, if I made them work for free they’d surely run within a day. What loyalty would they have to me? The moment I turned my back they’d bolt. You need both whip and carrot to handle people. If the carrot is just money, all the better.
“If you just do my jobs, you’ll make more than before. I suspect it’s this guy Im Sung-joon—so dig up homes, usual haunts, dirty laundry on both Im Sung-joon and Tak Dong-yeon. Everything.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t wait to report until you’ve gathered it all. If you find even a little, report daily.”
“Yes!”
“If you run….”
“We won’t!”
Before I could finish, all five answered at once.
“Do your jobs well and live decently, and I’ll treat you accordingly. Now work well enough that I don’t have to come back.”
“Yes!”
Leaving the now-disciplined PI crew behind, I returned home.
—
The next morning I tried to reserve a gate, but the reserve button in the app was greyed out and wouldn’t click.
“What the… a bug?”
Turning it off and on and reinstalling didn’t help, so I asked President Yang to reserve a gate for me.
“Ji-seok, I can’t reserve under your name. I checked with the Bureau because it was odd—your hunter license is suspended.”
Suddenly I remembered the PI boss saying he’d filed complaints.
“I’ll go to the Bureau myself and find out.”
President Yang jumped to help right away.
“I’m coming too.”
—
“Excuse me? How does that make any sense?”
Sang-heon’s father asked the civil servant in disbelief.
“When we get reports, we have to investigate. When it’s done, you can be reinstated.”
“What, how many reports came in?”
The boss had said two or three yesterday, but what the official showed us was a much longer list. They’d come from various places, with duplicates too.
Looks like they hired more than one outfit—or maybe Tak Dong-yeon filed them himself.
“I’ve never seen a case like this.”
The paperwork listed every crime a hunter could commit: murder in a gate, item theft, tax evasion, use of abilities outside gates, and so on.
“How can you suspend someone on baseless accusations like these?”
“Because they’re baseless, we’re not arresting you. And we wouldn’t suspend for just two or three, but there are far too many.”
The official said there was nothing he could do.
“I’ll try calling Section Chief Baek Young-shin.”
I pulled out my phone. After I put the situation on speaker and explained, Section Chief Baek asked again,
“Your license is suspended?”
“Does this make any sense, Chief?”
President Yang protested on my behalf.
“That’s strange. One moment. I’ll look into it and call back.”
We hung up and sat at the café on the first floor of the Bureau, drinking coffee.
“President, have your company numbers grown a lot?”
“Thanks to you. But no matter how much we add, it’s never enough. Business is good these days thanks to you, Ji-seok. Hahaha.”
“Yeah? Then should we add even more work?”
“Uh… no… don’t we already have plenty? We’re behind on post-processing and the warehouse is still full of materials.”
It seemed they didn’t have the capacity to take on more yet. Honestly I was joking; I’m already running enough, no need to increase it further.
As I listened to President Yang’s desperate excuses, Section Chief Baek came downstairs.