Should We Drag a Tank In?
Jeong I-Yeong had only scouted part of the way toward the core.
Even that fraction, though, had been enough to draw a conclusion shocking enough that Jeong-Hoon shook his head.
“An orc boss?”
“More precisely, several orc bosses.”
What Jeong I-Yeong had reported was a host of orcs led by multiple orc bosses.
Orcs themselves were classified as D-class monsters. Anything up to A-class could still be handled with personal firearms if the firepower was sufficient, so they were not usually a major problem.
An orc boss leading them, however, changed everything.
An A-class monster, the orc boss was not drastically different from ordinary orcs on its own. What set it apart was its ability to strengthen the orcs under its command. Those boosted orcs were rated C-class. Considering how much more firepower each successive rank demanded, a pack led by an orc boss was C-class or A-class only on paper; factor in the sheer numbers of a horde and it was fair to call them S-class.
And if there were several such bosses… the worst assumption followed naturally.
“Don’t tell me it’s an orc lord?”
“That would appear to be the case. Without an orc lord, that many orc bosses would never cooperate to lead a single force.”
Signs pointing to the appearance of an orc lord—an S-class monster that, for an orc, was absurdly strong. From S-class upward, personal firearms no longer worked. High-caliber weapons like tanks became necessary.
S-class alone was already a headache, and orc lords were one of the more frequently appearing varieties. Every single time, they left a record that was anything but ordinary.
The orc lord that appeared in China had finally been lured to the coast and erased by naval gunfire from a battleship. One might ask what age still fielded battleships, but the need to fight monsters that rose from the sea had brought them back into production. That barrage had wiped out the orc lord and its horde, yet the terror of the creature had been burned into the world’s memory.
The one that appeared in America had been brought down only after a desperate struggle involving three SS-class hunters belonging to the United States and a coalition of guilds. Three SS-class hunters against a single S-class monster sounded excessive—until one remembered that an orc lord’s true horror was not its personal combat power but its staggering numbers. A single orc lord was rated S-class; in practice it was judged a catastrophe on the level of SS-class or higher.
And now they had to face one of those with four people—three, if one excluded Jeong-Hoon, who could not yet be counted as real combat power.
“Do we seriously need to drag a tank in here?”
The most common and effective way of killing an orc lord inside a dungeon was to bring dozens of tanks and attack helicopters and build a killing field until nothing moved. Jeong-Hoon shook his head the moment the image formed. Even if they were hiding their strength, that was not the kind of force a single family was supposed to possess.
“Mobilizing tanks and helicopters is possible,” Butler Ju said. “The problem is concealing the information.”
“…You actually have tanks and helicopters?”
Jeong-Hoon stared at the butler with a look that said, You even hid that? Butler Ju’s answering expression—Is that really something to make a fuss over?—shut him up.
“Anyway, if tanks and choppers are off the table, then what? Do we call in people from the two major guilds outside?”
He thought of Ace Jack and X-ONE, the guilds that had agreed to cooperate, then immediately shook his head. Facing an orc lord whose specialty was human-wave tactics could easily produce casualties inside those guilds.
“Or we inform the Hunter Association and let them respond in force—ah. No, that won’t work either.”
He cut himself off mid-sentence and clicked his tongue. The Hunter Association bore responsibility for the dungeon reaching this state in the first place. It had been officially rated A-class. They were the ones who had allowed an S-class monster—practically SS-class or worse—to appear inside it.
“Gaju, there is no need to worry so much.”
Butler Ju, who had listened quietly to Jeong-Hoon’s fretting, stepped forward with a gentle smile.
“Methods for dealing with situations like this exist in abundance.”
Watching the butler’s eyes light up as if a golden opportunity had just arrived, Jeong-Hoon nodded. He had no idea what those methods might be, but the thought that he might finally see the true power of an SSS-class Awakened stirred a flicker of anticipation.
When the SSS-class Awakened Butler Ju claimed he had a countermeasure, Jeong-Hoon had not really believed him. He had expected the man to simply crush everything with overwhelming force.
That was not what happened.
“Head Maid, how are the other packs behaving?”
“They have not noticed us yet.”
The plan was to defeat the orcs in detail before the orc lord could gather every last one of them and advance in a single mass. It was traditional in theory and, in practice, considered impossible. Yet the three vassals were doing exactly that.
Many had tried to pick apart an orc lord’s forces piece by piece; none had ever succeeded. Kill even a single orc boss and, no matter how carefully the traces were erased, the orc lord eventually sensed it and summoned every orc in the vicinity.
The three vassals were making it work.
Butler Ju would rush in and cut down the orc boss before it realized anything was wrong. Jeong I-Yeong’s telekinesis then bound the panicked orcs that tried to flee. Yeo Tae-Hyeon, master of subspace, simply scooped the corpses into his storage and erased every trace.
“So you keep repeating that until you’ve neutralized the orc lord’s greatest strength—its numbers?”
“Precisely. Without its human-wave tactics, an orc lord is nothing more than a somewhat stronger orc.”
Hearing an SSS-class dismiss a creature that was still classified S-class even without its horde as “somewhat stronger” made the pride of that rank feel very real.
“If we pushed a little harder we could simply sweep them all at once, but we can hardly place Gaju in danger, so we are restraining ourselves.”
“You really are overflowing with confidence.”
“Against mere orcs, it hardly qualifies as confidence.”
Those “mere orcs,” once they formed a pack, would force an ordinary person like Jeong-Hoon to run for his life. He had only been able to hunt them one or two at a time thanks to the vassals’ help.
“Chief Butler, we have a problem.”
“Would it not be better to report to Gaju rather than to me, Head Maid?”
“…Forgive me, but this is not the time for protocol.”
Jeong I-Yeong’s face was set hard; she needed the strongest person present to make a rapid decision. As the one responsible for reconnaissance, her tone alone told Butler Ju how serious the situation was. He nodded.
“What is the problem? Has the orc lord started for the exit?”
“Yes. I just confirmed a large-scale movement of orcs.”
She had not actually seen the orc lord itself move, but there was only one conclusion to draw from a migration of that size.
“If the boss—the orc lord—escapes, the dungeon collapses, right? Complete chaos?”
“…That is the accepted understanding, at least.”
Butler Ju seemed about to say more, then decided the matter was too urgent for digressions and simply nodded. They had to stop the orc lord from leaving the dungeon.
“Looks like we’ll have to push a little harder after all.”
“I am ashamed.”
It felt as though his earlier words had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Butler Ju gave a bitter smile; Jeong-Hoon merely shook his head.
Three thousand. The number was truly enormous.
For a human-wave assault it might not sound like much, but seeing three thousand with one’s own eyes was something else entirely.
“Looks like there’s no end to them.”
If they had held high ground—a hill, anything—they might have seen the far edge of the horde. On flat terrain, however, Jeong-Hoon could only see the orcs immediately in front of him. He let out a long breath.
Three thousand on one side. Four people on the other—three, if the Non-Awakened Jeong-Hoon was excluded. By any normal measure the numbers were impossible. But those three were Awakened of S-class or higher.
“Shall we cut loose, then?”
“Steward Yeo, enthusiasm is fine, but remember that Gaju’s safety is the absolute first priority.”
“C’mon, Chief. I know that much.”
“And second—”
“Leave no trace of the family.”
Butler Ju had been about to issue the usual pre-battle warnings; when Yeo Tae-Hyeon and Jeong I-Yeong finished the sentence in unison, he simply nodded.
“Only two things to keep in mind. This is a rare chance—move as freely as you like.”
Butler Ju sprinted forward as he spoke. The other two charged after him toward the orcs.
“Wait—if all of you go, what about me—”
Watching them leave him without a single escort, Jeong-Hoon’s panic lasted only a second. What he saw next made his jaw drop.
Every one of them was S-class or higher; Butler Ju was SSS-class, the absolute peak of humanity. That was the charge they unleashed.
“WRAAAAGH!”
The orcs roared as one. The three attackers stumbled as though they had slammed into an invisible wall. A charge by S-class-and-above powerhouses that had already butchered countless orcs managed only to clear a handful of the front rank.
“As expected of orcs under an orc lord’s command.”
“You charged knowing that would happen?”
The three fell back to Jeong-Hoon’s position the moment their advance was checked and sighed in unison.
“I suspected the orc lord possessed a strengthening ability similar to an orc boss’s, but I had no way of knowing the exact degree. So we tested it.”
“And the result?”
“Ordinary orcs are now A-class. The orc bosses are almost certainly S-class.”
Orcs that had been nothing more than D-class raised all the way to A-class. Jeong-Hoon finally understood why an orc lord was considered a catastrophe.
“And we have to stop that catastrophe right here.”
“If we just go wild, this is how it ends up. Time for a clearance sale on the inventory.”
While Jeong-Hoon’s face remained grim, the others were already smiling as Yeo Tae-Hyeon began pulling firearms from his subspace.
There was no need to aim; it was pure automatic fire. When a round jammed, Jeong-Hoon stopped mid-trigger-pull and scowled.
“Steward Yeo! Gun!”
“That was the last one!”
In the early stages of the dungeon a single headshot had dropped an orc. Under the orc lord’s monstrous enhancement they were a different breed entirely. They had emptied every firearm Yeo Tae-Hyeon’s subspace had held, and still less than thirty percent of the horde was gone.
“WRAAAAGH!”
Orcs charged without the slightest regard for death. Jeong-Hoon’s hand flashed to the grenades at his belt—only to find empty loops. His face twisted.
“Damn it! Out of grenades too!”
No guns, no grenades, and nowhere to run. In desperation he drew the spare daggers he had packed and hurled them.
“KRAAAAH…”
A dagger buried itself dead-center in an orc’s eye and the creature toppled. Encouraged, Jeong-Hoon kept throwing, picking off the nearest runners. He only had five daggers, but the hope that they could still deal meaningful damage made him glance toward the others.
“Could you retrieve the dag—”
He stopped. He had gotten too absorbed. The others were S-class Awakened; they did not flounder just because they ran out of weapons. They were already cutting the orcs down with their own powers.
The only real problem was that the orcs’ human-wave tactics had shoved them almost to the very end of the line.
“WRAAAAGH!”
With the dungeon exit practically in sight, the orcs loosed a victorious roar. Instinct told them that leaving the dungeon equaled victory.
“What now? Fall back outside and form a containment line?”
“That is one option, but the moment the orc lord steps outside, the dungeon’s release accelerates.”
“So is there another way?”
Butler Ju was casually dropping critical information, and Jeong-Hoon deliberately ignored it. Family secrets could wait; dealing with the orcs came first.
“There is still one matter I have not explained to Gaju.”
“I’m sure there are more than one or two. You have something hidden, don’t you?”
All three of them nodded.
“Good. Save the detailed explanations for later. Use that hidden power and clean this mess up.”
Jeong-Hoon spoke with the mental image of steel power armor flying in and the three of them suiting up; he would have accepted even that without blinking. Then he noticed the orcs around them had frozen solid. Something had changed.
None of the three had drawn new weapons. Yet the orcs were trembling. These were not the same creatures that had charged moments earlier as if they had never heard of the fear of death.
“Permission granted, then. We will go all out.”
The instant Butler Ju stamped his right foot, the ground split and a small earthquake rolled outward. When he thrust his fist, a tangible gray force exploded outward and burst orcs like overripe fruit.
“Wait—that’s the thing you always see in martial-arts novels—”
“Exactly as you are thinking. Fist Aura.”
Butler Ju’s words shattered every piece of common sense Jeong-Hoon had accumulated over the last ten years. Superpowers and monsters existed; martial arts and magic did not. That consensus had just been thoroughly demolished.
“Don’t tell me the technique that turns A-class into S-class is…”
“Martial arts and magic.”
While only martial arts had been visible so far, a sudden wave of heat washed over from the Head Maid’s direction. Jeong-Hoon turned. A translucent circle rose above Jeong I-Yeong’s outstretched hand, filled with countless geometric patterns and unreadable characters—a magic circle by any definition.
“Hellfire.”
At her calm declaration, blue flames roared from the circle and reduced orcs to ash.
“My turn to stretch a little after so long!”
Last of all, Yeo Tae-Hyeon drew a massive greatsword from his subspace and charged. With every swing a tangible aura—Sword Aura—carved through the orcs.
“Hold on—Steward Yeo had a weapon this whole time and never used it?”
“That greatsword is inseparable from Steward Yeo’s martial arts.”
The words were barely out before cold air poured from Yeo Tae-Hyeon’s blade and froze the orcs solid. Flames followed an instant later, shattering the ice and the creatures inside it.
“Ah. So he’s a magic swordsman.”
“Steward Yeo is one of the Twelve Vassals charged with managing the family’s armory. That is why I recommended Shine Mall as your first trial.”
Jeong-Hoon finally understood that the “trial” had never been merely about consolidating a business; it was a true ordeal meant to make him Gaju in truth. He simply sat down where he stood.
“You taught those martial arts and magic to the Saturn Guildmaster, yet he still keeps demanding more. Why?”
“Because what he received was tailored exclusively to him. Anyone else who attempted to learn it would suffer cultivation deviation.”
Not a novelistic metaphor—actual qi deviation. Jeong-Hoon shook his head. He could almost understand why the Saturn Guildmaster had been so greedy.
“Could I learn any of that…? No. The minimum requirement is S-class talent, isn’t it?”
“Kueeeek!”
Behind the silently nodding Butler Ju, Yeo Tae-Hyeon could be seen lopping the heads off orc bosses. The same human who moments earlier had been driven back and nearly surrounded now cut through the orc legion like Zhao Yun rescuing Adou from the heart of the enemy.
“At this rate, hiding tanks feels more like a smokescreen than anything else.”
“You deduced that much from so little information? Correct. The tanks and the like are nothing more than camouflage to conceal the family’s true strength.”
What organization in the world would hide tanks just to hide its real power? Watching the scene unfold, Jeong-Hoon finally understood. When an S-class Head Maid could fry an orc lord with lightning magic, concealment made perfect sense.