VSP 45

“Ah, found it.”

Hangyeol, who had been doing his job, opened his eyes.

“Not sure if they evacuated or not. In a nearby high school classroom, some kids are hiding and playing.”

“Ah.”

Kim Jinyoung immediately contacted through the radio.

From then on, Hangyeol’s activity began.

“XX Building, third floor corner restroom, one young man hiding. Monster on the same floor. Must hurry.”

“OO Building underground parking lot, second floor, family of four. Monster in the next block parking lot, they are trapped.”

“Flying-type monster on the broadcasting station rooftop. Place a hunter who can snipe from range.”

Hangyeol briefed the situations with precision, short, and concise words, and Kim Jinyoung frantically relayed the details.

That process repeated several times.

“Busan sure is wide.”

The search, which would normally end quickly, was repeated again and again. Since the boss was left to Sejun, Hangyeol kept his focus on scanning for monsters that were not boss level and for living beings first, so many things came up.

Each time Hangyeol detected something, Kim Jinyoung busily radioed the news to hunters in each area. While he did that, Sejun, who had been silently staying in communion with his spirits, suddenly frowned.

Yerin, who had nothing to do at the moment and was simply watching the two of them, noticed it first.

“What is wrong?”

Sejun did not give a proper reply. He just frowned and then suddenly jumped to his feet.

“XX Elementary School playground.”

“What?”

Before Yerin, confused, could react, Sejun used a skill for the first time in a while.

[Skill ‘Battle Tactics’ is activated.]

At the same time, Sejun’s body disappeared with a pop sound.

“…..!”

“Huh?”

Yerin, who had been watching, opened her eyes wide, and Kim Jinyoung, who had just caught a breath after frantic radio work, let out a startled sound.

A small mischievous spirit appeared in the place where Sejun had vanished with a faint trace of smoke, flapping its tiny wings as it floated.

“What?”

Kim Jinyoung’s voice was flustered at the sudden disappearance of the hunter who had been beside him, but Yerin knew what was happening.

“Choi Hangyeol!”

She immediately called for Hangyeol.

Just as he finished his last scan, Hangyeol saw Sejun gone and a spirit left in his place, and his expression turned cold.

“Battle Tactics?”

“Looks like it.”

Battle Tactics was one of Sejun’s skills, a skill that swapped his position with that of his summons or spirits. Naturally, there had not been much reason to use it, since even if Sejun switched places with a spirit, there was not much he could do.

But this time, Sejun had switched urgently without even giving a proper explanation, that meant…

“It must have been that urgent.”

Sejun’s role was to find the boss.

That reaction could only mean he had found the boss, but the situation must have been extremely urgent. Urgent enough for Sejun to decide he had to move first.

“Ah, fuck.”

Hangyeol cursed and immediately got into the car. Yerin did not hesitate either. Kim Jinyoung, caught in the rush, jumped into the back. The process happened so fast it was like it had been set up in advance.

“Where is XX Elementary School?”

Hangyeol started the engine, drove straight onto the road without even asking the direction, and asked. His face looked so fierce it seemed like he was heading to kill someone instead of heading to a school.

Kim Jinyoung shrank and shouted nervously.

“N-not far!”

His instincts warned that if he answered wrongly here, he would be seriously screwed.

•••

“Z-rank Hunter” was a streamer on the streaming platform Pajijik, with around ten thousand subscribers.

Although it was a platform filled mostly with gamers, he had built up subscribers with talk shows, but recently he had been feeling stuck in a slump.

In life? No, in his life that was basically his stream.

He had managed to push growth quickly up to ten thousand subscribers, but the problem was after that. Becoming one of the so-called “corporate streamers” was still a long way off, but his channel’s growth was already slowing down.

That was the nature of being a streamer. Either you consistently did something very well and kept rising, or you had something that went big in one shot and blew up the channel.

But Z-rank Hunter’s channel had neither, and naturally the rate of subscriber increase had gone downhill.

He had cleared away a long unemployed life and only later jumped into streaming, so it had not been that long since he became a streamer. But to Z-rank Hunter, who now saw streaming as his calling and his channel as his entire life, every day lately was a crisis.

He was not only feeling it himself. Even viewers were saying, “Not that good these days,” labeling him as a streamer in crisis.

For someone like him, this disaster was an opportunity.

He was a native of Busan. He had been taking a nap in the middle of the day, and when he opened his eyes, he saw all kinds of disaster alerts and heard the loudspeakers outside telling people to hurry to the shelters. He stared blankly out the window and then suddenly thought.

This… could be an opportunity?

He was the one who always complained, “why does someone’s meaningless video blow up one day because the algorithm picks it, but that never happens to me.”

Now, at the point where he had just barely evolved from being unemployed to being a streamer, he considered this an opportunity.

He washed his face roughly like a cat, then hurriedly threw on a hoodie. He did not pack spare clothes or a backup battery for his phone to use at the shelter. He only packed his camera and camera batteries.

Z-rank Hunter set up his self-cam and waited for the right time.

Finally, when he thought all the people near his rented room had evacuated, and when the Association employees who seemed to be guiding people had thinned out, he quietly started his stream and stepped outside.

“Hello, everyone! This is Z-rank Hunter!”

His viewers all knew that he lived in Busan. His streaming schedule was usually irregular, but since he almost never streamed at this time of day, his precious subscribers began connecting one by one in surprise.

[??? What is this? Is this an evacuation stream?]

[No matter how I look at it, this is not evacuation, this is a picnic]

[Isn’t Z-rank Hunter in Busan??? Why aren’t you evacuating?]

[Hey, a dungeon overflowed in your neighborhood]

[Impossible not to know, the loudspeakers are broadcasting everywhere]

[Don’t tell me you stayed behind to stream?]

[No, right?]

[Looks like yes? lolol]

[The Association employees are risking their lives to guide evacuation, but this crazy bastard…]

[No matter how I look at it, that is not a shelter]

[Why are you not evacuating?]

[Z-rank, are you insane lol]

[Go to the shelter;;]

[I don’t want to watch a death stream]

[I am reporting you right now]

[Wow, are you really insane? Do you want to die]

When he turned on the stream, the viewers assumed it would be a shelter broadcast. But instead, when he boldly roamed outside streaming, they panicked.

He swallowed his saliva.

For him, who had a slow follower growth, a streamer said was stuck in slump, who thought others succeeded because the streaming god helped them ride the algorithm but he had no such luck, this was an opportunity given by the heavens.

Well, if he got caught, he would just pay a fine. After all, this was just a B-rank dungeon overflow.

Since all the hunters who appeared on TV were A-rank or higher, he had raised his standards, and a B-rank dungeon seemed ridiculous to him.

He forgot the fact that even B-rank hunters, who were classified as high-level and hard to see, found B-rank dungeons burdensome.

On top of that, he himself was not even an awakened F-rank, just an ordinary civilian.

He also forgot that monsters from a B-rank dungeon were still monsters, ones that even guns and knives did not work on.

It was the harm of the media, but he had no self-awareness. He swallowed nervously and moved quickly, worried someone might spot him. If he got caught like this, he would be screwed. Whatever happened, he had to film a monster.

[They say the ones coming out this time are insect-type?]

[Anyway, you are going to die, right? lololol make it entertaining]

[No but seriously this doesn’t look right;]

Meanwhile, the viewer count was quickly rising, and more and more people came in to enjoy the thrill.

Donations exploded too.

<‘Superbox’ sent 1,000 won! Hey Z-rank, where are you going?>

“Ah, Superbox hyung~ I am moving because it’s too quiet here.”

<‘Donutaiya’ sent 1,000 won! Do you have two lives?>

“Donutaiya, of course I only have one! If it gets dangerous I will run! I know exactly where all the shelters are! Don’t worry too much!”

<‘YuringiIsTasty’ sent 1,000 won! Crazy, seriously…>

“Ah, I am not crazy, YuringiIsTasty!”

The provocative stream content kept drawing more viewers, and Z-rank Hunter got more excited and kept streaming. Some said they were reporting him, but by the time a report went through and the stream was suspended, he would already have filmed enough.