Chapter 38

The youngest skeleton came back dead.

If I had gone to pick up that package myself?

I would have been the one who got hit.

This was a threat aimed straight at me.

I gritted my teeth, summoned every skeleton I could, and shoved them forward.

Park Wonchang, his eyes rolled white with rage, started beating the skeletons to death. He didn't have a single piece of equipment on him, and still the raw physical power pouring off his body was staggering.

All he had in his hand was a rock.

And with that rock, he had already dropped several of them.

The moment my MP filled, I used it.

"Summon."

Hodu came out barking, and Changsik with him.

"Summon."

The youngest again?

The youngest kept coming out with a frequency that was almost pointed. Park Wonchang killed it every time it showed its face.

"Youngest. You just run. Draw aggro and nothing else."

Except it wasn't a dagger. It was a rock.

"You thieving son of a bitch!"

A wet crack — the helmet shattered, and the package thief crumbled into dust and vanished.

But the skeletons kept coming.

"Aaaagh! Fuck, fuck! Where the hell do these things keep crawling out of?!"

There was no end to them. He was losing his mind.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Again! That rabid dog!"

Especially that thing that had crawled out of hell. Because of that mutt, his ankles kept getting snagged.

"Woof! Woof!"

He smashed the charging mad dog's skull in with the rock.

And what did that get him?

It came back and charged again.

And again. And again!

The rest of the skeletons weren't quite on the mad dog's level, but they were a headache all the same. The second they spotted a gap, they piled in.

"Don't tell me this is a Gate Break?" ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

They were coming from the direction of the Gate. But the Upo Wetland wasn't an Undead Gate.

Then what the hell was this?

Park Wonchang kept killing the skeletons as they came, trying to put distance between himself and the Gate.

And yet — was he imagining it?

A hiss of air. A whisper of bone.

The skeletons were getting harder to hit. And mixed in among them, faintly, were ones that felt stronger than the rest. Was that his mind playing tricks?

More than anything, there was the skeleton standing planted on a rotting tree, spear in hand, staring him down.

That one bothered him.

Was that the leader?

It hadn't attacked even once. It just watched him.

Park Wonchang hurled the rock in his hand straight at it.

A hiss — then a dry crack.

The spear split the fist-sized rock cleanly in two. This one was in a different league from the others.

"So you're the head? If you're the boss, come fight me like a boss!"

As if that was going to work.

The hellhound and the small-fry skeletons were already charging. A motley pack of nobodies. The one with the spear didn't so much as twitch. It just watched.

"You won't come to me? Then I'm coming to you."

A whisper of displaced air.

Had it accepted the challenge?

The spear-wielding skeleton dropped from the tree to the ground, then spun the spear in a long, fluid arc.

There it was. It handled a spear like a ghost.

But there was no real weight behind it. To Park Wonchang, it looked like nothing more than a circus trick.

"Cute little stunt."

He was a B-class Hunter, for crying out loud. If you lined up every monster he had ever killed, the row would stretch from Busan to Seoul and back without breaking a sweat.

Park Wonchang took a rock in each hand. No teeth? Use your gums. No dagger? Use a rock.

"Here I come."

Park Wonchang kicked off the ground and vanished. He reappeared in front of Changsik and drove a fist into his temple.

A heavy crack.

"See ya. Huh?"

Spin.

Changsik's skull turned. A full three hundred and sixty degrees, round and around... and then it settled back into place.

"Huh?"

A grin. It was smiling.

This one was different from the others. Something primordial, something that had been sleeping in the deep of Park Wonchang's gut, opened its eyes.

A crawl of gooseflesh.

"Y-you monster bastard!"

Another crack — he hit it again, and again the skull spun.

That grin.

Park Wonchang was, in fact, a high-level B-class. But he had no gear, and years in a cell had dulled his combat sense.

This was doable.

Changsik drove the spear down from high to low. Park Wonchang rolled left and slipped it.

A boom — the earth split open, gouged deep.

Strong.

A chill ran through Park Wonchang down to the bone.

"So you weren't a pushover after all."

If he didn't take this seriously, he was going to die here.

Park Wonchang's movement sharpened. Movement speed inflated. He closed the gap in a blink.

Darkness flashed, and the rock hammered into Changsik. One hit. Two.

But on the third —

Changsik had learned the pattern. He slipped the third strike and countered, a horizontal cut.

A wet slice. Park Wonchang's side opened up.

"Ghk. You piece of—"

The spear work was too good. With only a little exaggeration, it was Zhao Yun out of the Three Kingdoms. The reach on that spear made it nearly impossible to close.

In the end, Park Wonchang decided to bring out his ultimate.

The last resort.

Using ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this when he should have been running made no sense. But being hunted like this while he fled — better to wipe these skeletons out to the last bone.

Park Wonchang crossed into frenzy. Every stat multiplied tenfold, and the mana in the air around him was dragged in like a tide.

A boom — he closed the distance like a bullet. The speed was so violent that Changsik was already in his grip, and then the neck bones pulverized and Changsik came apart into powder.

But it wasn't over.

This time the youngest skeleton, cracked helmet and all, charged in bare-handed. Eighteen transfer stacks. It locked onto Park Wonchang's lower body, drove, and succeeded in putting him on the ground.

"GRAAAAAH!!"

The rage toward the package thief, burned into his unconscious, fed the frenzy and made it worse.

A wet pop. With monstrous grip strength, he tore the youngest's head clean off.

And still the skeletons came, so relentlessly it was nauseating.

Skeletons that had been nothing were getting stronger by the second. And in equal measure, the damage on Park Wonchang was stacking up.

But under the ultimate, Chaos Frenzy, a portion of the damage he dealt came back as HP, so it barely registered. Even the gash Changsik had opened in his side closed over fast.

Watching it all through Oculus's Eye, I broke into a cold sweat.

"That monster of a man... Summon."

Hodu and Changsik came back out, and the moment Park Wonchang saw them he lunged. But the frenzy didn't have much time left.

Hodu tore into Park Wonchang's ankle — and Park Wonchang pulped Hodu and healed off it.

Changsik's spear punched through Park Wonchang's shoulder — and then Changsik's ribs were ripped out with a wet crunch, and he went down.

"Is this it...."

His mind was coming back, piece by piece.

And then, in the distance, the helmet appeared again.

That little shit!!

He charged to kill it — and it threw both arms up over its head and ran.

It came back in. Arms up.

"I'll kill you!"

It ran, arms raised. A full three-cheer salute.

The ultimate dropped, and Park Wonchang felt the surplus power ebb out of him like a tide going out. The youngest felt the change, threw both arms high, and charged.

So this was what it felt like to be chased by a suicide bomber.

"Stay back! Stay back! Fuck, stop it! You package-thieving son of a bitch!!"

Through the shattered helmet, that thing was grinning at him.

Bite down hard.

A heavy thud. Another. Another.

"Ghk... s-spare...."

"Clack-clack."

The singularity had arrived.

"Let's go. Us too."

"Hyung! How'd it go?"

"It's over. The youngest is beating the hell out of Park Wonchang."

"Whoa, no way. I thought Park Wonchang was high-level."

I could have stacked it higher, but I was satisfied with fifty this time. The stacks had been spread around — if they had all dumped onto a single skeleton, we would have been looking at seventy or more. Against a naked, unequipped Park Wonchang, this was more than enough.

A B-class at or above level 400, the line people used for "high-level." That man was getting his skull caved in by the youngest's fists.

"But what do we do? Hunterpol's going to swarm this place any minute, right?"

From the nearest cities — Daegu or Changwon — it was fifty-five minutes to here. They'd be speeding, so call it forty. That left us a window of about ten minutes.

"Better to clear out."

Get tangled up in this and we'd be looking at an interrogation. I'd have to confess what I could do, and that information would find its way to the Mir Guild, who were already looking for me.

"We stay out of sight until Tess-hyung gets here."

"That's probably smarter, right?"

"You said you had a heavy vehicle license."

"A license? Yes!"

"Load the Throne onto that five-tonner."

"Yes, sir!"

Hyeondo hauled the Throne into the cargo bed of the five-ton truck Park Wonchang had driven in on, and I climbed into the passenger seat.

The cab was a landfill. Empty cans, cigarette butts, snack bags, half-eaten convenience-store lunchboxes.... Ugh. Filthy.

"Shit...."

It turned my stomach, but it wasn't like we had a choice. Hyeondo turned the key.

"Where to?"

"Daegu's north, Changwon's south, Busan and Ulsan are southeast — so we go the opposite way. West. Hapcheon!"

I picked a destination off the cuff, and Hyeondo put the truck on the road. Putting a kilometer of asphalt behind us took no time at all.

The last thing I saw through Oculus's Eye was Park Wonchang, out cold. The youngest dumped him in the swamp near the Gate and slipped back inside. The aftertaste of violence still hadn't faded — the fifty-stack youngest threw its arms up in a salute and sprinted into the Upo Wetland Gate.

A little later, skill experience started rolling in. And fast.

Fifty-stack fever time.

That was how we ended up on the road to Hapcheon. I pulled the SD card out of the truck's dashcam and stuffed it in my pocket. We were on the national highway, about to take a left at the fork, when I heard sirens in the distance.

I checked through Oculus's Eye.

A left turn put us nose-to-nose with Hunterpol. That direction — Changwon's people, then?

"Hyeondo, right turn here."

"Yes!"

A long screech. The truck lurched. I felt the right-side wheels lift.

We followed the GPS, and then—

"Left here!"

This time a police car coming from the Daegu side.

"Yes!"

"CCTV up ahead."

We ducked our heads and slipped it. We wound and doubled back until we were near the Nakdong River.

"Park it down there."

We tucked the truck under an underpass, and I pushed Oculus's Eye to maximum height. All clear. The area around the Upo Wetland was flashing red and blue, packed bumper to bumper with police cars.

VROOOOM—

Wee-woo wee-woo, wreee-wreee—

Kim Taesu's police car tore down the road, picking off the cars that had left before him one by one. A hiss of displaced air. Another.

But he still wasn't first on scene. The Hunterpol units out of Daegu and Changwon, which were closer, had beaten him there.

"The hell? Why's everybody standing around? You're not chasing Park Wonchang?"

A step too late?

"Oh, Inspector Kim. Long way from Busan. Hate to break it to you, though — we already caught Park Wonchang. Situation's over."

"What? Already?"

That was when he saw it: Park Wonchang, insensible, being dragged by Hunterpol and stuffed into a police car.

"N-no, I can' do i' no more. Heeeek!"

His face was swollen to twice its size from the beating, and every last tooth had been knocked out of his head.

"Why's that bastard look like that?"

"No idea. We found him like that, out of his mind, flailing around in the swamp. Almost felt sorry for him."

At that, Kim Taesu redlined.

"Sorry? Sorry? Shit, you got nowhere else to dump your sympathy so you're wasting it on that bastard? You have any idea what Park Wonchang is? There's a rape victim who killed herself because of that son of a bitch! And that asshole is the kind of trash who commits murder like he's eating lunch."

"Alright, alright, simmer down, Inspector Kim. Figure of speech.... Though, looking at him, Park Wonchang might've actually snapped? Won't know until we run tests, but it could be schizophrenia or something."

"Schizophrenia my ass. That bastard's acting! He's angling for a reduced sentence!"

"We'll know once we look into it. But he keeps going on about skeletons this, eyeballs that, some crazed dog crawling out of hell — he looks completely gone."

"What? Skeletons?"

"Hey! Where the hell are you!"