Chapter Text
There were only three of them left. Everyone else had either died or betrayed them to save their own skin. There were over a dozen murderous statues approaching from all sides that would begin moving as soon as you looked away. That was bad enough, but with the most recent betrayal they didn’t have enough hunters left to cover all angles anymore.
He needed to figure out a solution to this, both Joohee and Chi-Yul were counting on him to figure it out like he had the last two trials. He tried to think it through as quickly as he could, doing an inventory of what they had.
Song Chi-Yul had fire magic and a D rank magic sword. He was also missing an arm, but he’d cauterized his own wound so at least he wouldn’t bleed out. Joohee had B rank healing magic, but she’d used the last of her mana healing his leg as much as she could. It left him with a stump for a right leg below the knee, but she’d saved his life. The bigger issue was that she’d basically gone catatonic and someone who was dissociating couldn’t look at statues.
He thought about it for a few more seconds before coming to the only conclusion. He briefly looked over at Chi-Yul between their frantic glances at the different statues. He gulped, trying to stay as confident sounding as possible.
“You need to take her and go.”
The stoic swordsman shook his head sharply. “Absolutely not. I’m the leader and I got us into this, I’ll stay behind.”
“Please, Chi-Yul. We need to be realistic, there’s no way I survive this. Someone has to stay behind to keep the doors open and since I can’t walk I’d need someone to carry me. So unless Joohee suddenly snaps out of it or you plan on leaving her to die then it has to be me.”
After a long pause, the man came to accept that there wasn’t another option and responded solemnly. “Okay. I’m sorry, Jin-Woo. For everything.” He then pulled out his sword and handed it to Jin-Woo. “You’ll need this more than I will. Thank you, we owe you our lives and I’m sorry I won’t be able to repay that debt.”
As Chi-Yul picked up their healer and draped her over his shoulder, Jin-Woo realized there was one more thing he needed to say.
“If you really mean that, then there’s something you can do for me. My sister, Sung Jinnah. Please take care of her. I’m the only family she had left…” There was more he wanted to say, but the statues were getting closer and he couldn’t risk Chi-Yul missing the window to escape.
“Of course. I’ll do everything I can, she won’t face this alone.”
He gave a weak smile as he watched them leave the accursed double dungeon. That was all he could really ask for. Chi-Yul was a good man, between that and the Hunter Association’s life insurance, she would be okay. Or at least, as okay as she could be.
Sung threw his body to the side, narrowly avoiding a ball and chain that crushed the stone beneath it. He crawled up onto the top of the altar to get a better vantage point and see as many of them as possible. The one closest to him was a massive knight barely five feet away. It stood with a broad sword held in both hands, raised above his head and ready to cut him down.
He saw movement in the corner of his eye, quickly turning to stop the approach of a mace wielder that was still coated in the blood of his fellow hunters. When he turned back the knight was now standing directly over him, the razor sharp looking sword barely a foot away. If he turned his head one more time, he’d be cut in half, but if he didn’t turn then the statues behind him would crush him in the next few seconds.
He held his eyes on the sword for as long as he could but the sound of something very large swishing through the air made him look towards the mace hurtling towards his body, saving him from being crushed. He knew the cost he’d pay for that though. He held up Chi-Yul’s sword, deflecting the attack slightly, making it avoid his heart, letting out a scream of agony as the dull stone blade tore through his arm instead.
Jin-Woo’s vision began to darken, probably from a mix of extreme pain and blood loss. He’d done all he could and fought until he didn’t have any fight left in him. He let his eyes close and accepted that this was the end, he’d given everything he had, it just hadn’t been enough. And as that thought crossed his mind, the final flame went out as he fell into unconsciousness.
Sung Jin-Woo opened his eyes to a bright white light, and his first thought was that he’d entered the afterlife. After a few disorienting seconds he recognized the room as one in Seoul’s hunter specific hospital, a place he’d grown quite familiar with over the years. With that important realization he came to a very relevant question.
“How am I still alive?”
His voice was a raspy whisper in the silent room. After barely a minute of laying there and contemplating his survival, a nurse doing her rounds came in. She looked at him with a kind smile and said something into a walkie-talkie, probably letting people know he was conscious.
“It’s good to see you awake. There was a change in your vitals so I was sent to check up on you. You’ve been out for a few days now but have been recovering well, from what we can see.” She grabbed a paper cup and began filling it with water. “I don’t know much about your case beyond that, but I’ll have your doctor come by soon and your family will be notified, I’m sure they’re looking forward to seeing you.”
He instinctively reached out and accepted the water before looking down in shock and confusion at his right arm.
“How…?”
The kind nurse tilted her head slightly “Hm? How what?”
“I… My arm was cut off, but it’s back.” He moved his arm around a bit in testing sort of way, finding no issues with range of movement or any pain.
His attention was pulled by a new person entering the room. It was an older man who seemed to be a doctor and was looking over some papers on a clipboard.
“Thank you Ms Yi, I’ll take it from here.” The friendly nurse nodded to him and quickly left the room, deferring to the newcomer. He was surprised at how fast a doctor had arrived, usually it took hours if not most the day. Beyond that, he’d never seen the man before, which was odd since he’d met pretty much everyone in the hospital with how often he got hurt.
The man looked up from his clipboard and addressed him. “It’s good to meet you, Mr Sung, I’m Dr Choi and have been monitoring you while you were unconscious the last three and a half days, and will continue working with you for your recovery. To answer your question, an A rank healer had been part of the rescue team sent into the dungeon and regrew your arm when you were found.”
He supposed that made sense, any team strong enough to defeat those statues had to be at least rank A or S and would have healers with them. He didn’t have the money to cover something like A rank healing and hoped he wouldn’t get charged since it sounded like it was just some random hunter being kind. He paused as a thought crossed his mind.
“If I was healed by someone that strong, why does my leg still hurt? Shouldn’t it have been healed with everything else?”
The doctor hummed in thought. “Where specifically does it hurt?”
“I guess the area below the knee, it aches pretty badly.” Jin-Woo sat up a bit more so he could reach down and point for emphasis. He’d been a bit out of it with the whirlwind of activity after just waking up and the pieces hadn’t quite clicked together until he only saw the outline of one leg under the hospital sheets. “Oh.”
“Unfortunately we were only able to regrow your arm. Because your leg had already been healed, there was little to be done.”
He’d been a hunter long enough to know the risks of being healed poorly or not soon enough. Once a wound had healed, either naturally or magically, it couldn’t be re-healed. It was the reason you frequently saw S-rank hunters with scars even though they had healers on hand. The rapid healing of higher ranks meant there was a real risk of things healing badly before a healer got there.
The doctor had paused to give him time to think for a moment before continuing. “However, it was still for the best that the wound had been closed when it was, you likely wouldn’t have survived without that impromptu procedure.”
He nodded numbly, unsure on how to respond to finding out that he’d lost a limb when he hadn’t been expecting to survive at all, let alone with both his arms. While the news settled in he saw Dr Choi speak into his own walkie-talkie.
“We have a visitor here for you, if you feel up to it. Your sister, Sung Jinnah, has been visiting you every day and I’m sure she’ll be glad to see her brother awake again. As long as you’re fine with it, I have no problem having her in the room while I check your vitals and make sure everything is within the desired ranges.”
He quickly agreed, happy to see his little sister again after that nightmare of a dungeon.
Within a couple minutes the door was thrown open with a very stressed looking Jinnah power walking through it (just slow enough that she wouldn’t get yelled at again for running in the hospital). She came right up to him and stared him in the eye with no small amount of suspicion.
“What’s my favorite animal?”
“Huh? What are you going on about now? If this is for some online quiz then you really need to time things better, I just woke up from a minor coma.”
“Answer the question.”
He groaned internally but did his best to take her seriously since she looked genuinely concerned. “It seems to change every few weeks, but right now it’s rabbits. Because they’re tiny, cute, hop around, and you think it’s hilarious that they eat their own poop since you have the humor of an eight year old boy. Is that enough?”
She breathed out hard, and the suspicion seemed to flow out of her until it was replaced by the fear it had been holding back. She threw herself into the arms, the doctor grumbling and repositioning himself as he took Jin-Woo’s blood pressure.
“It’s actually you. The doctor and hunter people kept saying it was the real you, but I needed to make sure.”
“My sweet darling baby sister, what the hell are you talking about?” In a strange way, his little sister freaking out and being irrational made it easier to push down his own fears and panic about everything going on.
“That’s not your face. Well, it’s kind of similar, but it’s definitely not what you look like.”
His hands quickly moved to his face, trying to feel whatever was so different, before being cut off by the doctor.
“A representative from the KHA will come by tomorrow to explain in further detail, but we believe that you had a reawakening. Reawakening is known to change the physical appearance to a degree, the same way awakening does. The body tends to go through a collection of minor changes at higher ranks as a way to protect itself from harm. We don’t know the full mechanics of it, but it’s not as uncommon as you’d believe. It’s why you’re unlikely to find an out of shape high rank hunter, even if they don’t do any training or fighting.”
Well, that was certainly something to unpack later. “Can I have a mirror or something?”
Dr Choi nodded and grabbed one nearby, clearly anticipating that the request would come up.
Jinnah cut in briefly. “Um, try not to freak out, okay? I needed a little bit to deal with it too.”
“Wow, that’s reassuring, your bedside manner is amazing as always. What, do I have demon horns or somethi- oh.” Staring back at him in the handheld mirror was their father. He’d always had a bit of his dad’s looks, but this was nearly identical to how their dad had looked when they’d lost him almost seven years ago. Somehow, he wasn’t sure if looking like his dead father was better or worse than growing horns.