Leveling Up Alone

Chapter 486: China, here I come! (5)

[What the hell are you doing? If you were going to help us, you should have come alone, notified us in advance, or followed the procedures. Bringing an entire army of monsters here without any notice or permission is an insult to China, Hunter Lee Han-Yeol!]

As expected, the Chinese officials started complaining as soon as they saw Han-Yeol. The idea of a foreign Hunter leading a large army across the border and into the capital without permission was unheard of in all of history.

For China, a country that was basically nothing without its pride, this was a maddening and frightening situation. Especially now that China was divided into three because of two monster armies, another monster force was a huge burden for them.

Han-Yeol frowned as he leaned on one foot and scratched his ear with his left hand.

“What are they saying…”

Han-Yeol had the interpretation skill, but Chinese was not a language that was a part of this skill. In other words, no matter how much they talked to Han-Yeol, it was like talking to a brick wall.

[Ugh!]

But more than that, the Chinese officers who didn’t like Han-Yeol’s posture and attitude thought he was mocking them. This caused them to grind their teeth and complain even louder.

[Excuse me, Hunter Lee Han-Yeol!]

[Now, now, that’s enough. He’s come a long way to help us, so we shouldn’t give him an earful when we can’t even offer him a proper welcome.]

‘Who is that?’

Even Han-Yeol had never seen this Hunter before, even though he was familiar with most of the high-ranking Hunters.

He was a man, but his silver hair was tied up in a ponytail, a style that could easily make him look weird. But because of his pale skin, blue eyes, and sharp jawline, he looked incredibly handsome (?), which made him not look weird at all. Even though he was smiling, his charisma didn’t make him look weak at all, indicating that he was not someone to be underestimated.

‘Was there a high-ranking Hunter that I didn’t know about?’

It wasn’t hard to gauge the strength of a truly weak Hunter, but if they were a Hunter good at hiding their powers, it wasn’t easy to gauge exactly how strong they were, even for Han-Yeol. Of course, Han-Yeol could tell right away if they were weaker than himself.

“Who are you?”

[Ah, I apologize.]

He opened his mouth for a moment at Han-Yeol’s question, but then realized something and bowed politely toward Han-Yeol, crossing his right arm over his chest like a medieval knight.

[Mr. Lee, my name is Ferdinand von Hompesch, a knight commander of the Order of St. John. It is an honor to meet you in person, one of the most powerful men on the planet.]

“Ah, yes…”

Han-Yeol felt his entire body tingle at the polite attitude of the man who introduced himself as Ferdinand.

‘Ugh, I’ve been enjoying myself too much lately, and his politeness is making me more uncomfortable. I don’t like it.’

However, it would be strange if Han-Yeol ignored him completely when he was acting so polite. Instead, if he acted like the Chinese and straight up complained right in his face, Han-Yeol could also easily ignore them.

‘Wait a minute, a knight of the Order of St. John? I think I’ve heard of them before.’

As Han-Yeol frowned, trying to think of where he had heard of them before, Ferdinand flashed a smile on his incredibly handsome face.

“By the look on your face, I’m guessing you’ve heard of them before but don’t quite remember.”

“Ah… yes… wait! B-But you know h-how to speak Korean?”

South Korea had never been a particularly global country, and only a few foreigners spoke Korean well, even among those who loved K-pop. But Ferdinand spoke Korean fluently and with perfect pronunciation, as if he had been learning it for years.

“It's no big deal. The knights of St. John have a mindset of learning the languages of the nations where our branch offices are located, and Korean is such a fascinating language that I've been studying it in my spare time. Before I knew it, I reached this level of proficiency.”

“Wow…”

Tia had been silent all this time, but she suddenly interrupted from the back and made fun of Han-Yeol.

“Haha, he’s very different from someone who doesn’t know a single foreign language without the interpretation skill even with all that reading, right?”

Han-Yeol’s inability to learn languages was a significant source of insecurity for him.

“B-Be quiet!”

“Why are you taking your anger out on me? It’s you who can’t learn languages, Master.”

“Ugh!”

“Haha.”

Tia still found it adorable how Han-Yeol reacted to her teasing.

“This must be Mr. Lee’s monster pet, Tia.”

“Oh my, how polite. It’s been a long time since a human has been so polite to me.”

“Everything deserves respect just for being alive, don’t you think?”

“Haha, do they?”

Tia didn’t really want to agree with that part, nor was she going to. To her, living things were just creatures to be killed and targets to be hunted, except for Han-Yeol and those Han-Yeol instructed not to kill. Her personality simply didn’t let her say such things out loud, and she wasn’t nice enough to agree with such sayings.

“I see.”

However, Ferdinand was able to get a rough idea of her feelings from that answer. He didn’t expect much from her anyway since she was just a monster.

“Wait a minute, I still haven’t heard the answer. Knights of St. John, is that like a Hunter’s guild from a certain country or something?”

Han-Yeol circled back to the point once he realized that they were going to go on a tangent at this rate and waste time.

‘Is this how Stewart feels when he gets frustrated with me and Tia?’

It seemed like it might be since there was no end to it once Han-Yeol and Tia started ranting.

Ferdinand shook his head at Han-Yeol’s question.

“No. We, the knights of St. John, are technically both an NGO and a nation, and not a nation at the same time.”

“Huh, what do you mean? It’s both a nation but not a nation? And you said it's an order. So can an order be a nation?”

“Ah, you must not know. It’s a little complicated…”

“I’ll explain that to you.”

“Oh, Stewart, you will?”

“Yes.”

Stewart, the history nerd, interrupted to put his knowledge to use. If this had been any other topic, he wouldn’t have spoken up.

“The Order of St. John is…”

To summarize, the Order of St. John was a group of knights who provided relief during the Crusades, one of the most famous wars in history. After the war ended, the knights, who had nowhere else to go, traveled from place to place, robbing Islam through piracy and founding their own kingdom of knights.

Later, Napoleon destroyed the kingdom of knights, but only the land was taken, leaving the people and money intact. They couldn’t give up the classic and wonderful remnant of this nation of knights, so they organized once again under the Catholic name of an NGO.

Recognizing them as an official nation was difficult because they didn’t have a homeland, but surprisingly, they had diplomatic relations with many countries, including South Korea. The leader of the Order of St. John was none other than this handsome man, Ferdinand.

“Ah…”

All Han-Yeol knew was that the Order of St. John was involved in the Crusades. So when Ferdinand introduced himself, he had misunderstood.

“We’re not officially affiliated with the UN, so we don’t do that many official international activities. We usually just do some religious ones, especially the Catholic ones, so it’s normal that Mr. Lee wouldn't know.”

“I see.”

Information about the Vatican was heavily protected. Information about religion was so difficult to access that even in the US, only a few people at the highest levels had access to it.

[Ugh! What are you guys yapping about? Are you here on a picnic?]

Unable to take it anymore, the Chinese officials finally burst out again.

“Oh no, the Chinese officials seem really upset. But Mr. Lee, you’re not willing to apologize at all, right?”

“NOPE.”

He’d rather do a handstand and sing a song than apologize to the Chinese.

[Oh no, you all seem to get along so well. Why don’t you let me join too?]

Han-Yeol could hear a slightly awkward English accent.

‘Finally…’

[They’re here.]

Han-Yeol and Karvis’ attitude sharpened.

One of the hyena sorcerers, with their hands behind their backs, finally stepped forward and interrupted them.

“Hmm, so you’re the hyena sorcerers from the Bastro Dimension?”

[Kahaha, it seems you’ve heard a lot about us from those children who ran away, seeing that you’ve added sorcerer to our name. How are those children doing? We visited them shortly recently. Oh, and we plan to give them a proper visit soon too, haha.]

Kwak!

Han-Yeol involuntarily clenched his fists.

[Han-Yeol-nim, you have to control yourself.]

Karvis held Han-Yeol back.

‘I know.’

If he really lost control, negative emotions would materialize and fill the air around him. With so many ordinary humans around, exposure to such intence emotions could easily result in instant death.

“Haha, I accepted your greeting, which is why I came to visit you like this too. I’ve come to greet you properly, so please take a good look.”

[Oh?]

The hyena looked down at Han-Yeol with an amused expression. They exchanged sharp gazes.

“Hm?”

However, Ferdinand didn’t know anything about the relationship between the two, so he couldn’t help but make a puzzled expression.

‘Did something happen between Mr. Lee and the hyenas that I don’t know about?’

Ferdinand was a bit oblivious to outside information.

His current dispatch as the head of the HUN China team was not only because he was the most skilled on the Chinese team, but also because he was the weakest Master-Rank Hunter.

The HUN was a federation of counties, so there were a lot of different interests involved. Therefore, there were various nerve-wracking battles over who would lead the rescue team to China. In order to avoid tipping the balance of power to any one country, the HUN appointed Ferdinand as the leader. Ferdinand lacked organizational power since he wasn’t a part of a real country, but he was very strong and had a great public reputation.

In other words, Ferdinand was a very good person, but he wasn’t a great enough figure to deal with something too big, so it was impossible for him to know what was going on between Han-Yeol and the Hyenas.

However, the HUN officers were confused.

‘What? As far as we know, there’s no point of contact between Hunter Lee Han-Yeol and the hyena race.’

‘What if there was a point of contact that we don’t know about?’

‘D-Damn it!’

Drip!

Cold sweat trickled down the backs of the HUN officers.

Tokki's Thoughts

The part on the Order of St. John: This is the author's own perspective and can be different from actual history. This is a semi-fictional world!