Infinite Evolution Hunter [NOVEL] - chapter 31
According to the information I received, that guy was working at a private investigation office in Seoul not far from here.
It’s ironic that I found one PI office through another PI office.
I drove and reached the PI office in thirty minutes. Hearing the word “PI office,” I expected a shabby place, but it was surprisingly on the second floor of a clean building in a busy area.
I went up to the office and opened the door.
“Welcome….”
The face of the person greeting me froze like ice when he saw me. It was the guy from the CCTV.
“Ah… hello.”
He greeted me with a stiff face.
“You know who I am, right?”
“Well…”
“You told me to educate my son better, and you didn’t think I’d come find you?”
“Si-hwan, what’s going on?”
The man sitting at the biggest desk stood up as he spoke. He was around two meters tall and quite burly.
“Boss, Hunter Lee Ji-seok is here. The one from a little while ago…”
The burly man, 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!”
He dropped to his knees like lightning.
“I swear I never intended to actually hurt her! I only meant to give a little scare, but the glass broke weirdly… I’m sorry.”
“I could tell. I watched the video.”
“Then you understand…”
“Just because it wasn’t on purpose and you’re apologizing doesn’t erase what you did.”
I slapped the same cheek my mother had been cut on, with my palm. If his attitude had been worse, I might have killed him, but seeing him sincerely apologize the moment he saw me, I hit him only hard enough not to kill.
Si-hwan’s body lifted and slammed into the wall.
The remaining four rushed me at once. Judging by their speed, they were weak but all Awakeners.
One of them produced a club from somewhere in that brief moment and charged. I stared at the club coming down at my head. When it struck my head and shattered, I glanced at his shocked eyes, then kicked him away.
I kicked the next two who rushed in and sent them crashing into the wall as well.
“Hunter Lee Ji-seok, do you think you’ll walk away from this?”
The last remaining boss started forward, then stopped and spoke.
“What if I don’t?”
“If we report this, you know you’ll not only lose your hunter license but also go to prison, right? You’ve vented enough—let’s call it even.”
“Then why mess with someone’s mother? There’s a line. A line.”
“…We’re sorry. We later learned she was your mother. If we’d known from the start, we never would have touched her. But isn’t this enough?”
“Because I’m a C-rank hunter? What if I were F-rank or not a hunter at all—how is anyone supposed to live with that kind of filth around?”
“That’s not something you need to worry about.”
I’ve been hearing that line a lot lately.
“Who hired you?”
“We can’t say.”
I walked up to the boss who still hadn’t decided which way to lean and pulled his hands together, interlacing his fingers.
“W-what are you—?”
I curled his hands and slowly applied pressure. His fingers turned white in an instant, then purple.
“Gaaaah!!!”
“If you don’t talk fast, you’ll be crippled.”
“The drawer! The drawer has the job order!”
Blood vessels popped in his eyes and snot and drool ran as he answered.
“Take it out.”
I let go of his hands.
“Ugh… yes…”
He pulled out the order; I snatched it and read.
“Job: Wreck the target’s hunter activities and daily life. Client… unknown?”
It listed my info as an F-rank hunter Awakened two months ago. Were they planning to disrupt my hunter work so I’d be strapped for cash and bring the contract back? Or maybe scare me into signing by force.
“When you’re hired to do shady work, who gives full personal details? And since they paid extra for secrecy, 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 hard stare.
“Now.”
He took potions from the safe and applied or fed them to his men’s wounds. Judging by how generously he used the expensive potions, he did care about his crew.
“Anyone here who’s committed major crimes—murder, rape, aggravated assault—step forward. Attempt counts too.”
I had all five kneel in a row and asked, but of course no one came forward. Judging by their heart rates, they weren’t lying.
“Boss.”
“Yes!”
“You and your men really don’t have anything like that?”
“We don’t.”
He wasn’t lying.
“Surprisingly, you haven’t done any big crimes?”
“Yes. We’re small fry. We do things like finding people and collecting debts.”
“I see. Breaking the law a bit along the way?”
“Just a little.”
The boss, comically for his size, held thumb and index finger close together in front of his eyes.
“Other than the thing with my mother, what else did you do on my job?”
“Well… we spread some bad rumors on the hunter app to make it hard for you to find parties and filed two or three complaints with the Awakener Management Bureau.”
“Wow… the job came in two days ago and you already did a lot.”
Since I hunted solo, parties didn’t affect me, but the Bureau complaints might have caused trouble later if left alone.
“Heh…”
“Take down the posts and withdraw the complaints.”
“The posts I can remove, 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 later.”
I righted an overturned sofa with one hand and sat down.
“You’re all Awakeners, huh? You look like you used to be a hunter.”
“Yes. I quit early on—I wasn’t good enough.”
“What about the other four?”
“…They awakened, washed out at the academy or couldn’t adapt to hunter life, and drifted here.”
I thought it over. What they did wasn’t right and they weren’t exactly helpful to society. But the ones who hired them were the real villains; like the boss said, these guys were small fry. I could take out my anger on them, but there was little value in that. A better use came to mind.
“Work for me from now on.”
I needed people I could push around anyway. Since they’d wronged me, I could squeeze them a bit—and maybe reform them along the way.
“Sir?”
“Keep doing what you do, and also do jobs I give you. I’ll pay you. I won’t nitpick if you bend the law a little, but don’t do anything that would make innocent people cry.”
“What kind of jobs…?”
“It’ll vary. For now, dig up everything you can on the one who hired you for my case. Probably someone from Shinwoo.”
I pointed at the job order with my finger.
“Shinwoo?? You mean the conglomerate?”
“Yeah. Shinwoo. The name was Tak Dong-yeon, but it might be an alias.”
“That’s way out of our league…”
“But it was in my league to pick a fight?”
“Sorry.”
“I’ll handle the muscle. You just do the digging—that’s your specialty, isn’t it? And don’t you have a grudge? Bad intel’s what put you in this mess.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll send an advance. Give me your number.”
“No need. You don’t have to pay us.”
“Sure, and then you’ll work your hearts out for free. Hand it over.”
“Here.”
He respectfully handed over his card with both hands. The card said President Yoo Hyeong-bin.
“President Yoo Hyeong-bin, I look forward to working with you.”
I sent the advance along with a copy of the contract Tak had left.
“Huh? This much?!”
Even if I was going to use them, if I made them work for free they’d bolt in a day. Why would they listen to me? The moment I turned my back, they’d run. It’s easier to control people with both stick and carrot. If the carrot is just money, all the better.
“If you do only my jobs well, you’ll earn more than before. Tear up everything you can on Im Seong-jun and Tak Dong-yeon—where they live, where they frequent, their dirty secrets, everything.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t wait until you’ve compiled a full dossier. Report daily as soon as you have anything.”
“Yes!”
“If you run…”
“We won’t run!”
All five answered at once before I could finish.
“If you work well and live straight, I’ll treat you accordingly. Now work on your own so I don’t have to come back.”
“Yes!”
Leaving the newly disciplined PI crew behind, I headed home.
—
The next morning, when I tried to reserve a gate, the app’s reserve button was grayed out and wouldn’t click.
“What… a bug?”
Restarting and reinstalling didn’t help, so I asked President Yang to book a gate for me.
“Ji-seok, we can’t book under your name. I checked with the Bureau because it was strange, and they said your hunter license is suspended.”
Suddenly I remembered the PI boss saying they’d filed complaints.
“I’ll go to the Bureau myself and check.”
President Yang rolled up his sleeves to join me.
“I’m coming too.”
—
“What? How does that make sense?”
Sang-heon’s father asked the clerk, sounding appalled.
“When we receive reports, we’re required to investigate. Once the investigation is over, your license can be reinstated.”
“What kind of reports did you get that there are so many?”
The PI boss said two or three, but the clerk showed a much longer list. Multiple sources had submitted things, and some were duplicates.
So they hadn’t hired just one outfit. Or Tak had filed them himself.
“This is the first time I’ve seen anything like it.”
The papers the clerk handed over listed every crime a hunter might commit—murder in a gate, item theft, tax evasion, using abilities outside gates, and so on.
“How can you suspend someone over baseless allegations like these?”
“Because they’re baseless, we’re not arresting you. And we wouldn’t normally suspend for a couple reports, but there are just too many.”
The clerk said there wasn’t much he could do.
“I’ll call Section Chief Baek.”
I picked up my phone. We’d built a good relationship over two subjugation ops; maybe he could help.
“What? A suspension?”
After I put it on speaker and explained, Section Chief Baek repeated incredulously.
“Does that make any sense, Chief?”
President Yang protested on my behalf.
“That is strange. One moment. I’ll look into it and call you back.”
We hung up and sat in the café on the Bureau’s first floor with coffee.
“President, have you hired a lot more employees?”
“Thanks to you. But even increasing headcount isn’t enough. Business is good these days because of you. Haha.”
“Really? Should we ramp up even more?”
“Ah… no… isn’t it already a lot? We’re behind on post-processing and the warehouse is still full of materials.”
They didn’t have capacity to expand yet. I was joking, anyway. I was already running plenty; no need to add more.
While I listened to his desperate excuses, Section Chief Baek came downstairs.