Chapter 17
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 017
Chapter Title: Ice Awakener Baek Dam-bi - [2]
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All messaging apps—from text messages to the hunter-exclusive app—were blaring one single sentence. "Citizens evacuate and hunters assemble."
"Yes, we're ready. Heading out!"
Seong Mun-yeong immediately called the association staff to report that our team was prepared.
By the time we raced to the designated spot, a dedicated helicopter was already waiting.
Even though we'd already completed helicopter boarding drills in preparation for this very day, a few team members still let out gasps of awe. Even Jang Byeong-gon, the veteran, wasn't immune.
"Never thought I'd ride in a helicopter during my hunter career..."
The chopper loaded with us lifted off toward our destination.
Up until now, no one seemed overly anxious. Amid the roar of the propellers, we even had the leisure to chat.
"Nervous?"
Seong Mun-yeong shouted over the noise, and Jeong Jin-yeong shouted back.
"Yeah, a bit...!"
"I'm kinda excited, though? It's our first mission! What should I buy first once we get paid? Just thinking about it has my heart racing like crazy!"
Lee Jong-ho was laughing, teasing that her pounding heart was from nerves.
Then, amid the propeller whine, a strange sound mixed in.
It sounded like a siren. Peering out the window below, I saw vehicles equipped with flashing lights hurtling in one direction, their lights strobing wildly.
In the world of a few years ago, I'd have thought they were tow trucks. But not anymore.
"Hunters."
Just like those tow truck lookalikes, their behavior was tow truck-esque too. Flashing lights blazing, sirens wailing, they forced surrounding vehicles to yield. Some cars veered onto the sidewalks in a desperate bid to speed away.
Rumor had it that hunters had inherited the infamous reputation of old tow trucks—and it was true. Jang Byeong-gon clicked his tongue.
"They say every time something happens in the provinces, hunters cause total chaos. Guess it's real. What a mess..."
Was this guy dissing Incheon compared to Seoul right now?
"What makes Seoul so great that they deploy in an orderly fashion?"
I shot back irritably, and Jang Byeong-gon hurriedly explained.
"It's not that Seoul's superior or anything—it's just the way it is. Seoul has the population and the budget to hire hunters, so they assign them to specific districts for deployments. But in provincial areas like Incheon, the population's smaller and there's less money for hunters, so it doesn't work that way. Hunters have to cover entire regions as their territory. That's why it's always chaos like this. The situation's so dire there's no choice. It's only natural everyone wants to ditch the provinces for Seoul..."
He added that in places like Incheon, each Awakener had to cover a much wider area than in Seoul, which was why provincial contracts were especially shunned by Physical Enhancement hunters.
Irritated, I turned my gaze away. I kept glaring down at those hunters below.
Watching that chaotic mess solidified one thought in my mind.
Non-Awakeners—whether they carried guns or had years of hunter experience—were ultimately unreliable.
They were probably all rushing to the scene as fast as they could, but looking like a ragtag mob like that...
Of course, it felt too harsh to think that with my teammates right beside me, so I shook it off.
And anyway, I soon lost even the leisure to entertain such thoughts.
"Uh, what the...?"
The chatting teammates fell silent, groaning.
I stopped thinking altogether and squeezed my eyes shut.
It was like an abstract video playing in my head. Emotions that weren't mine, metaphors of all sorts of concepts, rampaged through my mind.
Even Jang Byeong-gon grimaced and muttered.
"We've entered the gate's domain. Damn, this is the most intense one yet... Don't worry too much; you'll adapt after a bit."
They'd taught us that the stronger the gate's ripple effect, the larger the gate—and the more monsters that poured out.
This level felt pretty massive already, which was ominous.
Glancing at Baek Dam-bi, she alone seemed unfazed among the group. Trying to act nonchalant like her actually helped; soon, my head cleared up decently.
That was when it happened.
"Hey, over there!"
Seong Mun-yeong yelled, pointing out the window. Looking out, I widened my eyes.
A small apartment complex with 12-story buildings clustered together.
People had climbed onto every rooftop.
And below them, tiny monsters targeting them were visible.
With a Physical Enhancer's superior vision, I made them out: hyena-like monsters.
Those beasts were scaling the walls toward the 12th-floor rooftops. Even from afar, their climbing speed was freakishly fast.
At this rate, they'd reach the roofs in dozens of seconds. I didn't even want to imagine the fate of those who'd fled up there.
"Rally point—I'll radio it later."
At my words, Seong Mun-yeong's eyebrows twitched.
"Pardon?"
No time for long explanations.
I flung open the chopper door. Glancing at the apartment where a monster was about to reach the roof.
Ah, one had just crested the rooftop, charging at the retreating residents...
"Hyung?"
And I jumped from the helicopter. Left hand gripping my hunter rifle, right clutching the combat hammer specially made by the city, I surrendered to gravity.
"Hyung—!"
No need for a parachute. As my body accelerated, I swung the hammer down.
In that instant of teleportation, my hammer struck true. Carrying my falling speed and weight. Boom!
"Agh! Agh! Uh, wha...?"
The screaming man spotted me and his eyes bulged. More like, he was shocked by the monster's corpse pulverized beyond recognition under my hammer.
To ease the tension, I spoke up.
"Incheon forever."
"Pardon?"
"Incheon forever!"
"Pardon? Uh, yeah, Incheon forever..."
That victory chant would do. I stood, setting the hammer on the ground.
Then I picked up the 55kg hunter rifle.
A pack of hyena-like monsters was climbing the wall of the opposite building. Aiming the rifle at them—no need to even sight—I fired.
Soon, with a burst of flame, the 30mm autocannon rounds began shredding them. One shot, one beast exploded. The sound of their bodies bursting matched the gunfire's rhythm almost perfectly.
The dying monsters couldn't even scream in agony. Just endless echoes of shots and bursting flesh.
Gates can open anywhere. In abandoned buildings, deep in apartment underground parking lots, even underwater or in reservoirs.
Pinpointing exactly where a gate opens is incredibly hard, but noticing one's nearby is a breeze.
Gates accumulate the thoughts of all intelligent life that's ever lived on this land. Emotions, concepts, symbols—all sorts of metaphysical accumulations.
The moment a gate opens, that buildup floods out.
Nearby intelligences get swept in waves of emotions, concepts, and symbols. Even sleepers jolt awake as the influx forms bizarre nightmares.
It takes time for a gate to expand enough for monsters to emerge. So when you sense it, you get some escape time.
But not enough.
Apartment rooftops, commercial building roofs—people who couldn't flee the neighborhood screamed everywhere.
Everywhere my eyes touched was pandemonium.
Another bloodcurdling scream tore from a rooftop. Monsters were scaling the walls to reach those people.
All hunters knew those monsters well.
Deathclaws. The most common monster.
But common didn't mean weak. Excluding colossal supernatural behemoths, Deathclaws had killed the most people—and the most Awakeners—earning their infamous rep.
Deathclaws' paws bore elongated hook claws wrapped in heat-haze energy.
Force field blades.
Monomolecular cutters formed from force fields that sliced through anything.
No exceptions. Titanium, concrete—anything grazed by those blades got severed. They even transcended basic monomolecular cutters; I'd heard how a mediocre Deathclaw's blade effortlessly sliced through a force field that could block missiles from an exceptional ability user. It made you wonder if they were cutting space itself.
Naturally, a Physical Enhancer's muscles were less than tofu before those claws.
Let them get close, and whether civilian or me, death was inevitable.
Keeping that in mind, I kept firing the hunter rifle.
Bang! I shattered a Deathclaw about to crash through a window. Set to burst fire on the control stick, I mowed down several in seconds—but still, too many Deathclaws scaled the apartments.
I kept shooting, roaring at them until my throat tore.
"Look at me, you bastards—!"
I wasn't some game tank with a taunt pulling all nearby aggro.
But the infrasound woven in made them hesitate briefly.
And a few Deathclaws sprinting on the ground turned toward me. They charged.
The fact I was on a 12-story rooftop meant nothing to them. With one leap, they stuck to the wall two stories up and began climbing.
Like a mountaineer with ice axes on a glacier, they stabbed their anything-slicing hook claws into the wall, twisting to secure their bodies. Then they'd jam claws higher and climb in a flash.
No, "climb" wasn't right. They were bounding up the wall.
Me pouring bullets from the rooftop railing wasn't some leisurely defender dumping oil on ladder-climbing foes from a castle wall.
As I'd said, those bastards scaled at running speed—human sprinting speed. They reached me faster than I could shred them with gunfire.
Plus, my mental web warned of danger. Blind-spot approachers snagged in the net.
Deathclaws summited the roof, leaping at me from all sides.
And I teleported. Not far, since people I needed to protect were behind—just the adjacent rooftop.
View shifted; I pulled the trigger again. Shredding the pack that had gathered where I'd been.
"Over here! Here!"
People yelled behind me. Seemed they were calling to a rescue chopper.
Soon, rescue helicopters scooped up survivors one after another.
Ah, not just rescue—an attack chopper too. Behold that steel raptor roaring with majestic propellers.
Threatening even to Deathclaws, it seemed. I saw a pack scattering under its machine gun barrage.
One chopper like that could cover the whole area, I thought.
"Huh?"
Someone groaned. And I saw what shocked them.
A ground-running Deathclaw. Looked no different from the rest at a glance. It kicked off the earth and leaped.
No—better to say it rocketed into the air.
Its jump reached the airborne chopper, four stories high. It jammed a hook into the fuselage, and somehow wormed inside.
The attack chopper bucked wildly.
And I teleported into the attack chopper.
View snapped inward.
"Agh! Agh!"
The gunner spilling guts from a gutted belly, the pilot panicking over his comrade and his own doom—both filled my sight.
And one big, fat Deathclaw.
The moment it spotted me, I grabbed the surviving pilot and dying gunner, then teleported.
On the apartment rooftop, before the crowd awaiting rescue, I shouted.
"When the chopper comes, load these guys first!"
As I set them down, a massive explosion roared. Glancing over, the chopper had crashed.
What of the Deathclaw inside?
It survived. Unscathed. The crash impact, explosion, flames—none singed a single hair.
The Deathclaw burst from the burning wreckage, scanning around. Then, spotting prey, it bolted—fast enough to look like teleporting.
Rescue choppers arrived in succession. While they evacuated rooftop survivors, I provided cover nearby.
"Thank you so much!"
Gratitude faded into the sky as the radio crackled.
"Hyung! We've rallied! The spot is—"