Thumbs Up, Level Up

Chapter 124

“Alright, I will wait for your answer! This will end today’s emergency stream! See you next time~”

With an appropriate closing remark, Ji-Cheok ended the stream.

“Alright… My part is done. Let’s see what the reaction is.”

?Master, the enemy has taken the bait. We just received a message from him.?

“Already? He is pretty quick-tempered. Okay, let’s check the messa—”

Ring, ring.

Ji-Cheok's phone rang loudly. He picked up his phone—it was Director Jung Ji-Han.

“He must be calling me after watching my stream, right? There is no way he knew that I was with Jung Bi-Ga.”

?It is one hundred percent, Master.?

“Maybe he is trying to tell me to not fight…”

He answered his phone.

“This is Um Ji-Cheok.”

He could hear Ji-Han’s calming voice.

—From the lack of news about you on social media, I assumed you were doing great, but it seems like you got into a big incident today.

“Hahaha, it seems that way. I can’t help it when I’m streaming all the time.”

In fact, all of this was because of the Likes. There wasn’t any streamer who risked their life on GodTube as much as Ji-Cheok did.

—Okay. It’s actually good news. It was about time to…

* * *

Jung Ji-Han was standing in the middle of a ruined city from where people had completely disappeared. Even in this empty city without any administrative offices or public protection, he continued his phone call with Ji-Cheok.

He was in the North Korean region.

This region had been unable to either prevent or block a Dungeon Break, so it had become a Demonic Realm inhabited by monsters. Due to the danger of this area, people were strictly prohibited from trespassing. As a result, it had also become a favorite hiding place for Chinese, Russian, and Korean criminal organizations, and it was not strange to call this place a hell of overwhelming malice.

The roads of past dictatorships were almost gone, and the buildings had long since become seedbeds for otherworldly plants. However, even though Ji-Han was walking in such a desolate city, he had no sense of danger at all. It had to be because there were already countless corpses lying around him. Most were monsters, but some were human corpses. They were likely members of the criminal gangs lurking in the area.

“...to put the Yum family in their place.”

The Danmok Yum Family was located in the city of Danmok, Gyeonggi Province. They were a prestigious family of Hunters who were not only powerful in their own hometown, but also had a fairly strong influence in Korea at the same time. They were a family with talented Hunters, recognized in the entire world for their fire-type abilities. However, they were the ones who betrayed Korea to save themselves when the world was about to end. Ji-Han thought that it would be nice to get rid of them in advance, but they hadn’t committed any crime yet. He had never expected that Ji-Cheok would be involved with them at this time.

‘It must have happened without him knowing it.’

The biggest killer of Ji-Cheok was actually Bi-Ga, but Ji-Cheok had taken care of that problem himself with his GodTube channel. And Ji-Han had never expected Ji-Cheok to be involved this early with the traitorous Yum family.

‘The probability of this happening is stupidly low.’

To think that Yum Ra-Du himself had been provoked by Ji-Cheok and was running toward Ji-Cheeok like a moth to a flame…

“Yes, you have my blessing to beat him to a pulp. If you need anything, please ask our Support Team leader. Yes, don’t overdo it, and I hope you take care of yourself.”

Beep.

After ending the call, Ji-Han looked around. There was no one alive in his vicinity; he was surrounded only by corpses that had yet to cool down completely. As he raised his left hand, all the corpses turned into particles and were sucked into the back of his hand, triggering an illusion of gears behind his back, and then disappeared. It looked very similar to when he had dealt with the two assassins who attacked Ji-Cheok.

“He confronted Yum Ra-Du twenty-four times in his past lifetimes, but never like this. This time, he is different from his previous lives.”

This was very unusual. Was this also the result of Ji-Cheok repeating his death countless times? Sometimes, he died because of absolutely trivial things, and sometimes he died squashed like a bug. Ji-Han wondered where he was going by piling up his corpses like this.

“There is no way he knows about this.”

Ji-Han knew for sure that Ji-Cheok was not a Regressor like himself. Thus, it was surprising that he was moving forward in his life while dismantling each and every one of the previous death flags.

In the city of ruins that had just been cleansed, Ji-Han murmured to himself,

“I also talk more to myself than I used to. Is it a sign of my psyche collapsing?”

He wiped his forehead. The mountain of corpses of monsters and humans around him disappeared as if nothing had happened in the empty city. Ji-Han himself didn’t know what he was doing as he filled the landscape with corpses and then cleaned it up.

“Maybe this Um Ji-Cheok might be…”

With that, he dispersed like smoke and disappeared. The empty city was again filled with silence.

* * *

“What? How dare he challenge me? This fxxking bastard!”

Ra-Du was on his way home after filming ‘Seen This Hunter?’. Of course, he wasn’t driving by himself. It was inevitable that he, who loved reading comments on his GodTube channel from the back seat of the luxury sedan driven by a chauffeur, watched Ji-Cheok live stream as well. When he saw the angry comments of his fans on his channel, he rushed onto GodTube and saw a new video posted on Ji-Cheok’s GodTube channel. He clicked the channel that was called LikesTube and UmjiTube by the fans.

?Hello everyone! Umji, Gumji! This is Um Ji-Cheok!?

Ji-Cheok in the stream looked bright and happy. He was so lively that Ra-Du thought he was watching a kid’s GodTube stream. The more lively Ji-Cheok continued with his stream, the angrier Ra-Du got. Ji-Cheok’s hair looked messy, but Ra-Du knew that his hair was styled to look messy. Ji-Cheok’s hoodie didn't have any logos on it, but Ra-Du knew that it was from a famous clothing brand, very popular among teenagers. Ra-Du realized that Ji-Cheok hadn’t just started to stream in a hurry—he had the whole thing planned. Looking at the money spent, he understood Ji-Cheok’s purpose: to beat him and make his stream even more popular. Since they were in the same industry, Ra-Duy realized it at once.

‘How dare you disrespect me, a direct descendant of the Danmok Yum Family and a super rookie among the fire-type Hunters? I am the one challenging you!’

Bam!

Ra-Du got angry and kicked the back of the driver’s seat.

“Ouch!”

The driver groaned, but he didn’t care.

‘You get paid by my family. You should be grateful to be kicked by me.’

Violent energy soared around Ra-Du.

“... Young Master… Please calm down…”

The driver was begging Ra-Du to restrain his aura, but he didn’t care. Even if something bad happened to the driver, the A.I. would still be able to drive the car. If an accident happened, it would only hurt the driver, not Ra-Du, who was a Hunter.

“This bastard… I want to kill him so badly…”

But he knew that he couldn’t just kill without any plans. There was the protection from the Jungha Group and the fact that Ji-Cheok could always start his stream whenever he wanted to get evidence.

That was why Hunter murders usually happened inside a dungeon. Inside, the GodTube transmission could be cut off with skills. If that happened, no evidence would be found, which would make it hard for the government to intervene. Attacking Hunters outside the dungeon required a lot of determination, a determination to go on as a criminal if evidence was found.

In fact, professional assassins ignored everything and still killed people, that being their job and all, but after the Gates had opened, Korea had become one of the best countries in terms of public order. It was very rare to kill people in the middle of the city in broad daylight. No matter how much a Hunter wanted to kill other Hunters, they would wait until they entered the dungeon. It was easier to do the deed when they cut off the GodTube transmission.

This was not all. Since Ra-Du was still young, he had never been entrusted with a job by his family. Because of this, added to the fact that he had been living in the dark due to having many accidents to his name, Ra-Du had no direct subordinates under him. Thus, he was in no position to hire any assassins. The only thing he could do was to bribe people to disrupt Ji-Cheok, like in [Fortress of Hope].

“This bastard… Let’s put an end to it today!”

He wrote a message to Ji-Cheok. After that, he used the incognito mode to google something.

How much the sentence be commuted if it was an Awkaned that did the murder? How much can the Hunter Protection Act help to get a reduced sentence? (I would have expensive lawyers, and the murder would be outside dungeons.)

Ra-Du pressed enter on his phone. Then, he waited for the page to load up.

* * *

“This guy is so stupid. Does he have udon noodles in his head instead of brains?”

?You are right, Master. It is amazing how he can be this stupid.?

Ji-Cheok and Cheok-Liang were looking at the message sent by Yum Ra-Du. It was written so poorly that it was borderline artistic. The message was written in a somewhat polite way, but Ji-Cheok assumed that was because Ra-Du was afraid he would post it on social media for people to see. The message had a smidge of arrogance and a whole lot of stupidity, so much so that it took a couple of readings for Ji-Cheok to fully understand what Ra-Du was trying to say.

“Wow… Is he even Korean? Didn’t he learn to read and write in elementary school?”

Even normal people could develop dyslexia by reading this message. Ji-Cheok was just glad that there were some parts that were readable.

“So, to sum it up, he wants to have a fight at the World Cup Stadium at 1:00 pm, right?”

?You have only three hours left, Master. The World Cup Stadium is located in Sangam-dong. And I know that there is also a special barrier in the stadium.?

“Ah, I heard about that. It is a barrier specifically for PvP fights. You won’t die even if your head is cut off in there.

?Yes, Master. It is said that the space was made by mimicking the structure of the dungeons to some extent… In fact, it is believed that the barrier space was not created by mankind alone, but rather with the knowledge or authority of one of the Gods. Just like how each dungeon has its own ‘condition’.?

All the conditions of dungeons were different in some way. There were dungeons where Hunters had to defend something, like the [Fortress of Hope], and there were dungeons where they had to solve puzzles and riddles. And like the [Temple of he_who_denies_death], assassination could be the condition. There were also a few man-made places similar to dungeons. One of them was a place called [The Arena] located in the World Cup Stadium.

This place was covered by a barrier, and the space inside it obeyed a specific condition, just like a dungeon. Namely, if a Hunter died inside, they would just bounce out of the dungeon alive. In other words, it was a place to fight to the death without worrying about dying. It had actually become one of the most popular sports in modern days.

Ji-Cheok had heard that it was rare to have close fights in this place. Even if the Hunters were on a similar level, their power could be vastly different depending on their items and their jobs. As a result, there were many cases where the fights were one-sided.

However, this time, there was going to be a special fight: one corner would be occupied by a level 1 Hunter with the strength of a level 80.

1. Sangam-dong is a district in the center of Seoul.