The Huntress, Your Knight Next Door

“Wow, I never dreamed that a female newcomer would come to a place like this.”

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The man in the front giggled and opened his mouth.

All five of them were dressed dirtily.
Some were wearing half-torn leather pants and others were shirtless, not to say they were all wielding blood-stained weapons.

“Brother, I think we got a poor catch this time.
The weapon she has is obviously rented.
She must be a real rookie.”

“Yeah, but just be glad that we have some catch this time.
If you sell a new hunter, we can play around for a month.”

“….”

What is this old-fashioned conversation? Am I not in Korea but in medieval Europe right now? I slowly looked at the faces of those around me.

“I guess she didn’t understand the situation.”

The man who was called ‘brother’ continued to laugh and talk.

“Lady, why did you come here? You should’ve looked for a party or gone through a crowded gate instead.
Just by looking at it, you should have suspected that this gate was a dead end.”

“Was the owner here?”

“Huh? Of course, there’s no owner.
But this is our territory.”

At Jin-hee’s question, the man scratched his short dandruff-full hair.

“This is the Nogada Village that we’ve taken over.
We don’t loot hunters these days because they don’t have a lot of money, but I didn’t know that such a treasure would willingly roll down onto our arms like this.”

Looting.
Seems like these people are living in this place like thieves.

I’ve only seen it in my past life, and I didn’t know that there are also people who do such obvious things in modern times. 

Jin-hee, who has a puzzled expression on her face, immediately patted her chin and muttered.

“Ah, no, this is rather good….”

“What are you muttering? Lady, let’s work like professionals.
Yes? Let’s just stay still If you don’t want to get hurt….”

“That’s right, if you don’t want to get hurt, you have to stay still.”

“…So the lady can speak.”

The man approached Jin-hee with an insidious smile when he heard her answer.
It turned out she was quite the beauty.
She had a rough worn-out boxed t-shirt, jeans, a hat, and a mask.
But the eyes and skin that appeared between them seemed to be pretty.

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He can make a fortune with her.
The man approached with such a vulgar thought.

“All right.”

“Huh?”

Suddenly, he had his knees to the ground.

Jin-hee had approached from behind, kicked his shin, made him kneel down, pulled the sword from her waist, and put it to his neck.

“Everyone, shut up and give me everything that can make money.
Then I will spare his life.”

…Isn’t this line reversed? But the man couldn’t spit his words because of the short sword’s blade, which began to spill his blood by squeezing the skin around his neck.

Jin-hee smiled so brightly that it could be seen through her mask, and she began negotiations by pretending to be a threat to the remaining four thieves.

“Come on, wait! What are you doing now!” (Thief)

“What am I doing? It’s the same thing you were trying to do.”

“What kind of strange thing are you talking about?” Jin-hee said with a smirk.
Every time she spoke, the sword moved, scratching more and more the skin in the neck of the man who was held captive.
As the man started to make shrills and slurping sounds, the other brother he had been talking to came out.

“Hey, stop it! Let go of our brother.
We were wrong, okay? We’ll just let you go!”

“Just let me go? Haven’t you figured out the situation yet?”

Jin-hee gave an artificial laugh and grabbed the man’s hair. “Why don’t you wash your hair, it’s too oily.” Muttering a bit of complaint, she continued.

“You thought of selling me out, didn’t you?” 

“T-That….”

“You were trying to sell people, right? Well, it’s obvious.
A beautiful woman suddenly appeared alone, apparently a beginner, and this is a lawless area.
When you say you’re handing me over to the top, you’re giving me to a gang or the mafia.”

“….”

It was not possible to refute, because the trash-like conversation they had moments earlier was the proof of that.
They couldn’t say anything in front of her, who proudly called herself a beauty.

Even if they had something to say, their boss’ head would fly if they opened their mouths.

Slave trading and human trafficking are some of those words that Jin-hee extremely hates.
She thought she would never hear those words again, and it’s quite vexing that she encountered them again in modern times.

Ah, I’m really disappointed.

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“Hic!”

“Oh, sorry.
You will die soon at this rate.”

As the sword shook, the wound on the man’s neck got worse.
The man drew the mana to strengthen the area around his neck, but somehow, the sword was ignoring all his efforts and digging into him.

This sword is a ready-made cheap sword that could not do that much damage alone.
However, seeing all this happening just meant that the mana contained in this woman’s sword was several orders of magnitude higher than his own.

The man’s face gradually turned blue.
Not because of fear and despair, but because of real blood being lost, his head was getting cold.

“Why would I let you go when I was threatened like that? I told you, put down your weapons and give me everything that can make money.” 

“Well then… If we give it all, will you spare our brother?”

“Of course.”

The thieves have a strong sense of camaraderie.
If these guys had the mind level of a real bandit, they would have either attacked her either way or ran away without caring if this guy in front of her was already killed.
Jin-hee smiled slightly when she saw the man trying to negotiate calmly.

Jin-hee laughed quietly.
Of course, she knew it was all acting.

“You think I’m lying?” (Jin-Hee)

“Oh, no! Then we’ll put the weapon down.
Wait a minute.”

As the man said, his colleagues laid down their weapons calmly.
They were putting their weapons down on the floor with a slow gesture, but their eyes were on Jin-hee until the end.

She just noticed that it wasn’t a look of abandonment or acceptance.

“Why don’t kids like you keep their promises?”

Jin-hee held a sword in her hand and took a dagger out of the man’s waist with the other hand.
It was pretty good stuff, and just as she predicted, there was poison in the tip.

As soon as Jin-hee picked it up, she did not hesitate to throw it to her left.

“Cough…!”

The dagger was precisely buried in the neck of a man who was pulling a bow’s string across another tree.
It was a long-distance of nearly 50 meters away, but her throw was accurate.

“Gasp!” 

It was an obvious ruse.
At the same time as their boss was held hostage, they tried a sneak attack with another colleague hidden behind the tree.
They were going to shoot her with a bow while pretending to negotiate, and so to speak, the act of kneeling down was to gain momentum.

“What’s the big deal? I gave you all a chance, but you just kicked it with your own legs.”

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“Hey, stop! Wait! We….”

The man tried to say something again, but Jin-hee’s sword had already been thrust into the air neatly.
Seeing the bloody body of his boss, the man started to scream, but Jin-hee said again.

“Come on, give me something worth of money.
But your lives, I will take as a bonus.”

Jin-hee’s dry, black eyes painted a smooth arc.

She didn’t go easy on the situation.
Even if she was the modern Jin-hee, the “Bazette” in her was a knight.
Knights were those that cut the wrists of people who steal, cut the tongue of those that commit fraud, and execute people who kill others.

There, the “slave traders” were immediately sentenced to death.

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Her father noticed that Bazette was talented in martial arts when she was still at a young age and yet to make her social debut.

However, he did not want to put her on the front line at this time when the Empire was in turmoil and soon kept Bazette away from the arts.
However, a genius’ talent was bound to emerge in the end.

‘You’re very mature, my lady.’

Bazette had a playmate.
For generations, a fairy was often chosen as a nobleman’s playmate for the emotional development of the child.
This is because the energy emitted by the fairies was effective in calming children’s emotions.

The fairy girl had always played with Bazette, who has been somewhat mature since childhood.
But one day, she was kidnapped by slave traders.

It was because Bazette went in and out of the mercenary guild to learn martial arts.
Realizing her own talent for martial arts, she had a habit of sneaking away from the mansion in search of a swordsmanship teacher in the mercenary guild.
It was the fairy friend who always protected her by following her by her side.

However, the fairy who hid Bazette to protect her was caught by a passing slave trader instead.
Armed with special artifacts, he kidnapped the fairy and fled.
Bazette, belatedly realizing that, pursued the slave trader along with mercenaries that were close to her.

However, by the time they arrived, the fairy already had a slave seal branded on her back.

As the mercenaries were slaughtering all the slave traders, Bazette held her only friend, the Fairy, close to her chest, and with a crying whilst smiling expression on her face, decapitated the Slave Guild master.

At that time, Bazette was still seven years old.

It was the first time that she killed with a sword.

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“Well now, tell me.
Where is the organization that buys people?”

“….”

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Jin-hee left only two people alive.
After beheading all the thieves, she tied the remaining two to a tree.
Tying them tight with the ropes they had and taking away all their hidden weapons, she spoke once more.

“If you let me know, I’ll cut you some slack.” 

Slack? Do you call this slack?! The man clenched his teeth and looked at Jin-hee, but soon saw her calm face and bowed his head.

Both their wrists had their nerves and mana circuits cut off.
They could recover if they went to the hospital, but it was impossible for them, as uncertified hunters, to receive legal surgery.

“…It is in District 2.”

“It is?”

“It is in District 2, ma’am.”

(Note: He spoke with informal language at first, and after Jin-hee asked back, he changed to formal language.)

From what he divulged, the gates of Sillim are ruled by four huge organizations.

The ‘Underground Syndicate’, which was made up of both certified and uncertified hunters, was generally responsible for commercial arbitration and street management.

An armed force united by the original gangsters of the area was the ‘Crows’.

The ‘Miners’, was a farming organization of uncertified hunters united to make a living.

And finally, the ‘Container’, is an informal association of external companies.

“Why don’t they just band together already? It’s hard to memorize.”

The neutral one is the Underground Syndicate, and the thugs doing illegal work were the Crows and the Miners who united to make a living.
On the other hand, the Container was trying to make some gains from all the mess.

According to them, it was always the Crows and the Miners that were in the center of illegal things.

The Miners who did anything for money sold all kinds of things to the Crows, and among them, there were monsters, artifacts, and even people.

Those tied to the tree belonged to the Miners.
It was their job to settle down in a dungeon where monster regeneration was frequent like this one and to sell the accessories that came out from hunting to the Crows.

Then, like the case with Jin-hee, he said that if a novice hunter or an outside hunter came in, they would kidnap and sell them.

‘If you buy a person, it’s no brainer that there is a place where you can sell them.’

It was difficult for Jin-hee to predict that far, but the outline was roughly drawn in her head.
The gangsters called the Crows were obviously selling people to one of the other two organizations.

It was not known what kind of treatment those people and hunters would receive, but such a black market does not work without consumers.

There must be more complex interests intertwined than what she was just told.
Of course, she wasn’t meticulous enough to care about every single little thing.