Chapter 59
Chapter 59
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 59
Chapter Title: Three Heroes Left
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I have three heroes left.
Elfer, whose HP kept teetering on the edge, eventually vanished.
“Terra. Valen. Messiah.”
Amid all that, Messiah's tenacious survival was something I was truly grateful for.
I pulled Messiah into a tight embrace, savoring a moment of mental healing, then lifted my head and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
Smack.
“I'm glad you're here.”
[Messiah Characteristic Skill: Immortality lv99]
As I stroked her white hair, Messiah's golden eyes sparkled like stars.
She was the one who'd repeatedly refused my requests to become my bound hero, insisting she’d be useless on the battlefield.
See, Messiah?
I told you you'd be a huge help to me.
Ding!
[Messiah's trauma in the depths of darkness is enveloped by love.]
[You have successfully unlocked Messiah's hidden ultimate skill.]
“!”
A hidden skill unlocked out of nowhere?
As Messiah activated her hidden skill, her starry eyes twinkled brightly.
[Sacred Restoration lv1]
A burst of golden light erupted.
[In the sacred light, all allies' stats increase by 200%, and the bind owner's and bound heroes' defense rises by 300%.]
[The higher the level, the longer the duration and wider the range.]
[Current duration: 5 seconds]
What the hell is this insanely overpowered skill?
(Cooldown: 5 minutes)
Even if the duration is short, the effect is ridiculously strong, and the cooldown is only 5 minutes?
Wait a second.
If we'd had this during the siege, mixing it with Three Ends could've let us wreck both Spaceking and Goldbunker at once.
“Whoa! What is this?!”
“We just got way stronger all of a sudden?!”
“Gasp, stats doubled?!”
Reactions exploded from all around.
I shouted loudly.
“It's Messiah's AoE buff skill! It only lasts 5 seconds, so fight like hell when the light bursts!”
Abyss zipped back to my side after tearing through the front lines.
She glanced at the alert window and asked,
“Is this for real? Messiah had a skill like this?”
“Just unlocked a hidden skill.”
“What's the cooldown?”
“5 minutes.”
“…….”
Disbelief flickered in Abyss's eyes.
But she didn't want to waste even those 5 seconds, so she dashed forward again, activating her skill.
Abyss's assassin AoE skill slammed the front lines hard.
A sinister light flashed.
Boom boom boom—!!
“!”
As expected of Abyss.
She nailed an 8th-tier assassin skill in one go.
But after landing the AoE damage up front and sliding back, Abyss looked dissatisfied.
“Tch. Even with the double buff, the damage output is still this low.”
She shot me a glance.
She seemed a bit envious of me for some reason.
Abyss could cast skills fine, but it looked like her damage wasn't fully ramped up.
But the same went for me.
“My damage wasn't quite the same as before either.”
I’d modified Dynamite to streak through the sky, but even that couldn't wipe out the monsters at the gate's entrance.
Anyway.
“We'll get better with practice.”
Casting skills without the skill window's help was definitely trickier than I'd thought.
The hunters up front shouted.
“Front lines breached!”
“Advancing!”
Sky-blue light spread across the area.
Someone in the rear cast a Haste buff to boost everyone's speed.
Probably a hero.
The rear, seen as safer than the front, was packed with the lightly injured and slower-adapting hunters, so all the heroes with various buffs were clustered back there.
Messiah cast her buff skill too, aiding the people in the rear.
The hunters started running.
Checking it out myself, the rear lineup was surprisingly solid.
Everyone here was a first-string ranker from Bipa Tower Guild—no weak links in sight.
As soon as I returned to the vanguard, I asked Gilgamesh,
“Skills successful?”
“For the most part. One went haywire and nearly killed me.”
“…….”
You too, huh.
Still, since they'd breached the front quickly, I could guess what went down while I was out.
Top rankers who handled brain force well were definitely nailing skill recreations.
I asked again.
“Damage output okay?”
“Not bad, but mana’s short too, we're only midway through the gate, and factoring in the boss mob, it's dicey.”
“…….”
“No doubt an S-rank Gate is beyond our current levels.”
His cool analysis sobered me up.
The hunters' ragged footsteps echoed inside the gate.
I glanced back.
Bipa Tower rankers wouldn't go down easy, but could I protect these people?
Even though they'd been enemies before, I'd seen the first-stringers from the three guilds so much during sieges that I knew exactly who everyone was.
Of course, I knew who the guy who died earlier was too.
Thinking about it made my chest tighten with emotion, but now wasn't the time to dwell.
I muttered without thinking.
“I wanna cry…….”
“Ha, me too. Holding it in like crazy here.”
Gilgamesh jumped in like he'd been waiting, and I burst out laughing despite myself.
Thank goodness I'm not alone.
I glanced at Dart.
“…….”
He'd lost a guildmate—must be dying to break down.
Even in Bipa, where user expressions directly mirrored emotions, I'd never seen Dart make a face like that.
Gilgamesh called to me.
“Kaisha.”
“Yeah.”
“Got another clever plan?”
“…….”
Does this guy think I'm some magic pouch that spits out solutions whenever?
Sighing, I said,
“Now we just gotta push the standard route: take down the boss mob quick and find a way to log into Babel Tower.”
“Babel Tower? Oh, the quest.”
“I'm betting the boss room has the login method. Or maybe it unlocks after beating the boss.”
“What happens if we log into Babel Tower?”
“No clue, but 'log in' has to do something. Like spatial transfer into the Babel Tower system.”
The front was packed tight with swarming insect monsters.
Gilgamesh said,
“But for an S-rank, aren't these monsters kinda weak? We could smash 'em all at max level.”
“You almost died—got words for that?”
“Maybe the S-rank rating's because of the heroes, not these guys.”
Pretty convincing.
Of course, at our level, even these monsters were S-rank difficulty.
Enormous bees, emitting the creepy wing buzz unique to insects, aimed their stingers sharply at us.
Gilgamesh raised his sword and said,
“Forget the boss for now—doubt we'll even reach the boss room in one piece.”
“We'll make it happen.”
I muttered and activated Messiah's characteristic skill to boost defense.
[Messiah Characteristic Skill: Immortality lv99]
And then.
“Messiah!”
It was AoE, but the level was too low, so the range was still narrow.
“I'm buffing—gather in the center!”
The rear, having experienced Messiah's skill once, moved fast.
As everyone clustered, heroes and hunters unleashed a barrage of buffs.
Messiah, now in the center of the formation, cast her skill right away.
[Sacred Restoration lv1]
A burst of golden light erupted.
[In the sacred love, all allies' stats increase by 200%, and the bind owner's and bound heroes' defense rises by 300%.]
[The higher the level, the longer the duration.]
[Current duration: 5 seconds]
The vanguard hunters, seeing Messiah's newly unlocked ultimate buff for the first time, gawked at the alert.
Gilgamesh's eyes went wide.
“W-what is this?! Another hidden card you were hiding?!”
“Nah…….”
“It's Messiah's newly unlocked hidden skill!”
A Goldbunker guildmate who'd been in the rear earlier explained for me.
[“As expected of the Guild Master-nim.”]
[“Keep pumping those items—use 'em freely. I want our guild to make it out without a single loss.”]
[“Mino-nim, where do you even farm all these items?”]
[“Oh, that? One of my bound heroes has a passive that boosts item drop rates for the bind owner during battle.”]
[“Whoa, you're the best.”]
So that's how it was.
“Incoming!”
As someone yelled, Dart threw up an AoE shield.
Boom! Boom!
Monsters slammed into it.
Then, an enormous scale of blue lightning webbed through the gate like spider silk.
Crackle,
Boom boom boom—!!
Whoa.
Dart's perfectly cast AoE skill rocked the gate, drawing cheers from everywhere.
The attack landed well—monsters curled up and dropped.
Someone else shouted.
“Battle ready! Shield's dropping!”
After one AoE cast, Dart glanced at me and said,
“Insect types are weak to fire and lightning.”
I knew that, but hearing it in the moment hit different. Knowing facts and using them right were worlds apart.
Gilgamesh overheard and switched to fire skills.
He yelled,
“Flying monsters! Protect the mages—DPS focus!”
Dart followed up.
“Can’t fight forever. Thin the herd and push in.”
Everyone's so reliable.
Whoosh.
Green light blanketed the area.
I cast wide-area heal while firing mana high into the air.
Dynamite variant.
Gunpowder explosion.
Flame.
Boom—!!
Roar of flames—
The fierce blaze swept over the gate's ceiling.
Bee-like monsters engulfed in fire plummeted as corpses or buzzed around frantically, panicking the hunters.
Fires were spreading everywhere.
“Argh!”
“Eek!”
Sh-should've gone with lightning for the AoE.
I glanced at Dart, but he looked away.
“…….”
No, not blaming him—it was a look begging the mage specialist for a fix.
It was an AoE nuisance, but the persistent burn kept killing tons of monsters steadily.
Splash—!!
Binu-nim unleashed a waterfall over the burning ones, and Gilgamesh shouted,
“Run!”
The hunters charged.
Looking up, the AoE fire show had definitely thinned the monster density.
The surviving ones were too distracted by the flaming ones.
Gilgamesh said,
“Boss room's gotta show up soon. Even my endless stamina's finally running low.”
“Almost there.”
Dart said confidently, so Gilgamesh asked him,
“How do you know?”
“There's a dungeon like this in the northeast. Animal types, insect types. Next up is…….”
The ground ahead shook.
Rumble rumble.
“Plant types.”
“W-what the fuck!”
Slash!
Gilgamesh slashed hard at something incoming.
A vine stalk dropped.
The ground quaked violently, and massive unidentified stalks rose like snakes, writhing.
Spaceking guildmates nearby shouted.
“Boss room entrance!”
“The range is huge, and the whole space is the monster—way harder than normal dungeons!”
Spaceking, the monster encyclopedia.
Ugh?!
“?!”
Chaos erupted behind.
A root vine had burst from the ground, wrapped Maya's ankle, and yanked her away in an instant.
“Kyaa—!!”
A camouflaged man-eating flower gaped its maw.
I kicked off the ground the second I saw.
“Maya—!!”