Translator: Wan ED/PR: Personal Ghost
44. After bad weather (6)
Bang Yunseop, who became a highschooler, tried to change a few times.
But a person cannot change easily.
Only a minority of hard workers and geniuses obtain the result the instant they make up their minds to change and put it into action.
And Bang Yunseop was just an ordinary human.
‘I thought something would be really different now…’
The enthusiasm he was overflowing with the instant he made a decision was crumpled through the tedious and difficult training.
He believed he would change when he entered Eungwang School, but he didn’t.
He believed he would change when he became Tak Geosan’s disciple, but he didn’t.
Bang Yunseop, who experienced the crisis during the training camp, and all kinds of dramatic incidents after becoming the disciple of the prominent martial artist, who was considered the best in close combat, remained the idiot he was before.
As the idiot was an ordinary person, if that ordinary person was to be reborn as a top-notch Player, he would need a lot of external trigger incidents, effort and perseverance.
When he accomplished the tasks given by Tak Geosan and endured the exhausting training, he was even more certain of that.
But there was a huge gap between knowing the fact and actually enduring it.
‘How the hell that fucker endures it without a drop of sweat? How are you doing all of that!?’
Watching Maeng Hyodon, who grew while silently enduring the training at Bang Yunseop’s side, he realized.
What the real hard worker and genius meant.
Even if you were born with talent, the process of blooming and successfully ending the process through the painful and boring patience wouldn’t be easy.
And when compared with Maeng Hyodon, who grit his teeth and advanced forward, Bang Yunseop couldn’t match it as an ordinary person.
‘… Even so, I soon will be able to rest! Because a typhoon will soon come to Gangwon Province[1]!’
And on the brink of the typhoon hitting Hongcheon.
Tak Geosan was planning a training to face the typhoon while looking at the weather forecast.
Bang Yunseop, who endured believing that he would be able to rest soon because of the incoming typhoon, suddenly cried out, asking for a beating.
“Are you going to train even after the typhoon? Are you crazy?!”
“Are you calling your master crazy, you ill-tempered bastard?!”
“Keuk!”
With a loud ‘Peuk!’ sound a finger flick fell on Bang Yunseop’s forehead.
He glimpsed Tak Geosan swinging his fist lightly, but it wasn’t at the speed that Bang Yunseop could avoid and dealt enough damage for his head to hurt.
“Let’s go, disciples-ah!”
When it started to rain little by little, Tak Geosan led his disciples with an energetic voice.
And not much time had passed after they climbed the mountain, when they faced the typhoon’s fierce power.
When they caught their breaths to climb the Hongcheon’s mountain peak.
Pweee!
An alarm sound rang out simultaneously from their devices, which were set on the silent or not disturb mode.
In their current mode the only warnings they would receive were sent by the Association’s Satellite.
Tak Geosan quickly activated the device and opened a hologram.
“… Emergency call from Association, eh?”
The content of it was that as the typhoon’s size was larger than expected, the damage was bigger than predicted, they asked for cooperation in the rescue missions from the Players in the corresponding area.
‘Request for cooperation in the rescue missions… right, there are also such things.’
Natural disasters and otherworld outbreaks.
When these two occurred at the same time, most Players usually devoted themselves to the latter.
The Players had no duty to respond to the natural disasters.
But on the humanitarian level, there was a necessity to help other people, moreover, they needed to be prepared to deal with the situation where an otherworld occurs when the damage caused by the natural disaster wasn’t solved yet.
The Association’s side actively encouraged Players’ participation in the rescue activities.
Unlike the otherworld conquest, they couldn’t gain a reward, but the majority of Players readily responded if they received a cooperation request.
There were even Player groups which specialized in responding to the natural disasters like a type of volunteers.
‘No way, you won’t be continuing the training in this situation, right?’
Bang Yunseop glanced at Tak Geosan’s face with a sign of nervousness.
Luckily, it seemed that Tak Geosan planned to cooperate in the rescue mission.
As they accepted the cooperation request and moved in front of the Hongcheon’s county office, through the fierce rainstorm they saw people wearing raincoats frantically enter inside.
As at the parking lot before the county office, the firetrucks and police cars were coming and going, they could feel that the situation was becoming precarious.
But the number of Players who accepted the call was less than 50.
That headcount was a result of it being difficult for nearby areas to provide support because the typhoon was currently hitting the entire Korean Peninsula, but Bang Yunseop felt as if his vision was spinning.
‘Why is there no Players in this village? Hongcheon County population is over 70,000, so even if only 1% of Players were free to move right now, it should be at least 700 people…!’
Even if considering the aging of the area and said that elderly Players, who find it inconvenient to move, didn’t respond to the call, it was strange.
Even when considering there weren’t just that many Players residing in the Hongcheon County, the number of Players in this place was extremely small.
While Bang Yunseop was filled with doubt, a civil servant handed Tak Geosan a map wrapped in plastic and started an explanation.
A complex requests were given to Bang Yunseop’s group which were formed from Tak Geosan, who was a veteran among veterans and two Eungwang School’s students.
“This village has a tendency to be flooded. But right now because of the broken bridge, this area is isolated. Right now we can’t use our hands on that, because we don’t have enough firefighters to sent out. For now, we told the People to take shelter in the town’s major house on the slope, but there are people suffering from chronic diseases, and we’re worried about a landslide, so…”
Because the underpass was lost in the downpour, the request they received was to rescue the isolated residents.
“I heard about your body from Geun-hyeong. Take care of your body.”
“… Yes!”
Before departing, he saw Tak Geosan beseech Maeng Hyodon.
Seeing that scene, Bang Yunseop was shocked.
‘That fucker… is he sick? You’re saying he is fighting so well with a sick body?’
At the time, to lose the title of Bread Shuttle, he just moved according to what Tak Geosan said without thinking.
But when he thought about it thoroughly, the appearance of Maeng Hyodon he saw on the octagonal stage during the betting contest was strange.
He somehow tried to avoid getting hurt so much it was strange.
‘Darn it, is it the time to worry about others right now?!’
He couldn’t continue his thinking.
They wandered around Hongcheon while responding to cooperation requests.
In the meantime, the rain and wind gradually grew stronger, his body grew heavy, and the wet clothes were snatching his body temperature.
Even when Bang Yunseop’s physical strength gradually headed towards the bottom, the typhoon showed no signs of passing.
Maeng Hyodon was energetic like before and Tak Geosan was showing off a marvelous skill of wrapping his body in the superpower wave to not be damped by even one drop of rain from the beginning.
Looking at them, Bang Yunseop’s frustration and sense of defeat only grew stronger.
‘I’m being pushed around by over 70 years old geezer and by a dwarf fucker, who is much shorter than me and seems to have some kind of disease…?!’
He tried to grit his teeth and endure, but in the end Bang Yunseop reached his limits.
Tak Geosan spoke to Ban Yunseop, who was trying to endure while gasping for breath.
“Bread Shuttle-ah, you go back first and rest.”
“Aah, really! Stop calling me Bread Shuttle!”
With such a shout Bang Yunseop exhausted the last of his strength.
He couldn’t emit any more superpower wave and his body was rapidly getting cold.
In the end Bang Yunseop took rest in a school gym close to the Hongcheon County Office, which was changed into a temporary shelter.
As he crushed in the gym corner and then woke up after instantly falling asleep, everything was already over.
The typhoon had passed, and Tak Geosan and Maeng Hyodon, the master-disciple duo, saved a lot of people.
Seeing the master-disciple duo, who became heroes, wrapped in blankets and sleeping so very comfortably nearby Bang Yunseop, he was drowned in complicated feelings that were difficult for him to put into words.
‘… what the hell am I doing?’
Bang Yunseop left the two sleeping people and wobbled out of the gym.
Thanks to the typhoon which passed, the weather was nice.
It was a mess thanks to the fallen signs, turned upside down tents, messed up banners, broken street trees, etc, but the sky was clear, and the people were cheerfully moving around.
Bang Yunseop, who walked without stopping, arrived at the place where he was left behind, Oeum Mountain[2]
Oeum Mountain was the place where they headed after receiving a request to search for 60 years old elderly couple, with whom the contact was cut off after they climbed the mountain to gather mushrooms.
‘Seeing the two sleeping peacefully, they should have been safely rescued, right?’
He thought like this, but he felt like he was suffocating.
When he was driven into a corner, the thing he recalled was a cigarette.
‘… Anyhow, Jo Uisin that dog fucker isn’t here, and ascetic and his disciple bastard are sleeping, so I won’t be caught.’
Bang Yunseop took out a cigarette that he mobilized all his abilities of an idiot to hide and put in into his mouth.
The moment he took it out, he was better, but there was a problem.
‘I don’t have fire!’
When Bang Yunseop was grinding his teeth with his own idiot sound and was about to return to the gym again.
Jo Uisin and Ju Su-hyeok appeared in front of Bang Yunseop.
* * *
The moment I saw Bang Yunseop holding a cigarette in his mouth, I fell into worry.
‘Should I send him to buy potato bread or corn bread?’
While I was worrying, Bang Yunseop made desperate excuses.
“Ah, I didn’t light it up!”
“Yunseop-ah…”
Ju Su-hyeok snatched the cigarette from Bang Yunseop’s hand like lightning.
Bang Yunseop reflexively stretched his hand out towards the cigarette held by Ju Su-hyeok and then withdrew it with a bashful face.
Ju Su-hyeok threw the cigarette into the air.
Pat!
Light flashed in the air in the instant.
After Ju Su-hyeok materialized the item card for a short moment and summoned the twin swords and turned the cigarette into powder starting from the mouthpiece.
The powdered cigarette scattered in the wind and disappeared.
“Heuk…”
“Actually, the youth quit-smoking program is held also during the summer, do you want to go there?”
“No, why would I go there!? I didn’t smoke!”
Bang Yunseop, who lost his soul before Ju Su-hyeok’s amazing technique, raised his voice.
But Bang Yunseop’s words couldn’t continue.
Peeuk!
“Keuk!”
With the sound of a log splinting in two, Bang Yunseop was shoved into a tree trunk.
In the place where Bang Yunseop was standing a moment ago, stood Tak Geosan with a fuming face.
Looking at his fists, he was in the finger flick pose.
“Smoking again?! Again!? And this bastard is trying to smoke in no other place than in the mountains?!”
“Ouch, I said I didn’t smoke!”
When the master-disciple duo were arguing.
I heard a soft ‘clip clop’ noise from behind me.
It sounded like horse hoofs hitting the ground.
“Wait, someone is coming.”
After I said that, as if the enraged Tak Geosan also sensed it, he looked behind me.
Someone with black hair and dark skin came towards us leading three white horses.
It was the first time I met the standing at the front black-haired woman, who overflowed with dynamic energy[3], but I remembered seeing the three white horses somewhere before.
‘Perhaps those horses are…’
The day I visited Hongcheon to meet with Hong Gyeongbok together with Min Geurin and Song Daeseok.
When passing through the Oeum Mountain’s Sammachi, the air taxi suddenly stopped on its own.
Under the air taxi that stopped, three white horses quietly looked up in our direction and then disappeared.
‘Are those the white horses from that time?’
Tak Geosan instantly moved in front of me and facing the person leading the white horses, he spoke to her:
“A Jin, eh? Can I ask what business You have here?”
I had a vague guess, but it seemed that she was a Jin.
“Fussy. I went through quite a trouble to come and express my thanks.”
Hearing the voice, I guessed the other party’s identity.
It was a voice I heard before during the 12 Zodiac Alliance Meeting.
“Hi, I’m the head of the Ma tribe[4]. I don’t have a name to use among humans. Just call me Heukma (Black Horse).”
The other party was the head of the Ma tribe, the part of the 12 Zodiac Alliance and who used a nickname ‘Sensitive Black Horse’.
*~*~*
[1] Gangwon Province — where Hongcheon mountains are located.
[2] Oeum Mountain — Five Voices/Sounds Mountain. If you remember, it’s the mountain whose legend Jo Uisin mentioned when visiting Hongcheon before about five generals in chapter 139.
[3] dynamic energy — a power to move forward
[4] Ma tribe — ‘horse’ tribe. Ma is also a homophone for demons.
Translator’s note: Yeees! She is here! My black queen!
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