Chapter 72
Chapter 72
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 72
Chapter Title: Han River Bridge (2)
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Hanbit's new item—that grotesque rifle—possessed truly astonishing power.
Its loading method was a bit tricky, using monsters as bullets, but the effect was undeniably certain.
Every time he took the lead and fired, horrific screams from the monsters pierced the fog, accompanied by the sound of flesh splattering.
Contrary to his claim that it could only handle trash mobs, we were able to advance smoothly along the bridge.
But this fog-shrouded bridge seemed to have no end in sight.
The thick fog made it impossible to gauge how much farther the end was, and to make matters worse, our phone GPS had been dead for a while.
"The support team is busy handling vehicle control this time, so we couldn't bring the earpiece radios. It's a bit worrying."
Park Sunja muttered anxiously.
Losing connection with the support team also meant we'd lost our link to the outside world.
At that moment, Hanbit—who had been firing his rifle from the front as always—suddenly halted in place.
He turned to us with an awkward smile.
"Um... it looks like it's finally time for you all to step up."
An opponent had appeared that his gun couldn't handle.
No sooner had he finished speaking than a massive silhouette emerged from the fog ahead.
At first glance, it looked like some bizarre shape—a giant ball with limbs attached.
And as the monster slowly approached, emitting eerie sounds, we finally beheld its true, horrifying form.
It was... a nightmarish mass of countless crushed and mashed humans, fused into one enormous meatball.
Arms and legs protruding here and there, faces contorted in agony.
The grotesque sight alone turned our stomachs and stirred primal fear, causing every team member to furrow their brows.
Shing.
I silently drew the Returning Sword from my inventory.
I had no desire to let my fists touch such a horrific thing.
Bora and Park Sunja shot puzzled looks at me drawing a sword from thin air, but they seemed to prioritize dealing with the monster in front of us.
Bora was the first to make a move.
"Hup!"
She hurled a talisman, and blue lightning crackled around it, streaking straight toward the monster.
Whoosh!
The thing—with its slender limbs dangling from a massive body—looked sluggish, yet it bizarrely twisted its torso and dropped low like a collapsing heap, deftly evading her attack.
Such agility from that bulk. It was no ordinary foe.
"Ah... a, aaaaaah!"
Having nimbly dodged Bora's strike, it slowly turned its enormous body toward us and began shrieking in agony.
The scream didn't come from its main body.
It erupted simultaneously from dozens of agonized faces embedded across its form.
As that chilling chorus began, shadows of countless monsters surged toward us from beyond the dense fog.
Words began to engrave themselves unbidden on the cold metal surface of the bridge railing.
Despairing cries and curse-like pleas echoed from all directions.
It felt exactly like a nightmare.
In that horrific situation, I felt pure terror for the first time in ages.
My mind went blank, my legs trembled uncontrollably.
I'd thought I'd overcome so much, but why now—
This was precisely the moment when my strength was truly needed by the team.
But my body wouldn't obey.
Without thinking, I crouched down and, with shaking hands, opened my inventory to pull out that candy I'd gotten recently.
The mood-boosting candy. It might help me forget this fear, even if just for a moment. The temptation whispered.
While I entertained such feeble thoughts, the other team members were already preparing for battle in their positions.
Bora gripped stacked talismans at the ready, Shun calmly stretched as he gauged the moment to charge.
Hanbit had his rifle trained on the enemy.
They were waiting for me.
Then, Park Sunja quietly approached me.
"...It's scary, isn't it?"
She gently stroked my back, as if she understood completely.
I glanced up at her.
Her hand was trembling faintly too.
Truth be told, she—among us—should be the one feeling the greatest fear.
She had the weakest combat ability on the team.
Yet here she was, trembling with fear herself, but still comforting me.
In that instant, the fear filling my heart melted away like snow in sunlight.
I silently stowed the candy back in my inventory, slowly rose to my feet, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Shun.
I'd changed my mindset.
'Why should I be scared here? I've got Cheat Mode.'
Before, I'd thought such ideas were no good in horror games.
But I have Cheat Mode—why is this a horror game?
It's an action game.
Me stepping up would ease the burden on my comrades.
A wicked monster trying to kill humans?
'Bad monsters get punished.'
The only good monster is the one at my house.
From the depths of my heart, I summoned a surging emotion utterly unlike fear.
It was anger.
Only a greater emotion could conquer one.
"Huu..."
I felt something inside me flip completely.
I hesitated no longer. Leaving my reliable teammates—who had prepared for battle before me—I strode forward first, straight into the fog toward the monsters.
And my team followed behind me, trusting in me.
It felt incredibly reassuring.
Tadak!
I charged toward the writhing horrors in the fog.
Truly, each one seemed born solely to instill terror.
Monsters made of woven corpses slithering across the ground like threads, ones with massive mouths in their bellies, even headless ones missing everything where a head should be.
Kwang!
The asphalt beneath me cracked like a spiderweb.
Debris flew up.
Whoosh—!
My body launched like a cannonball.
The surroundings blurred into streaks. The moment I tore through the fog like paper, dozens of foul stenches assaulted my nose.
Monsters packed the area, reaching out toward me—the lone intruder.
Swipe, whoosh!
I swung my sword mercilessly at them.
But it wasn't swordsmanship worthy of the name—just flailing fueled by rage.
In fact, more died from colliding with my swinging arms and legs, their bodies crushed, than from my blade.
Thud! Crunch!
I barreled into them, bouncing them away with my body, occasionally kicking them down into the blood-red Han River below. Even lightly deflecting their attacks with my arm snapped their limbs in reverse.
Like eggs smashing against solid steel.
Our physical toughness was on another level.
The more I fought, the more I realized.
Only now—truly now—did I understand.
I no longer needed to fear monsters of this level at all.
My power had long surpassed their realm.
Beside me, reliable support rained in.
Bora's lightning-infused talismans and Hanbit's red energy bullets cleared the distant monsters, while Shun delivered precise, heavy kicks to the small ones I'd overlooked.
Most monsters exploded in gruesome fashion, literally.
This was no longer a fight.
It was a one-sided slaughter.
The horrors that had filled the surroundings became limp husks of skin and bone.
Trampling those corpses, we pressed forward.
The thick fog gradually lifted, and soon the round one's form came into view ahead.
The one that had summoned countless monsters from the fog and carved curses into the railing.
"Time to end this."
As I closed in to finish it, the thing whirled around in apparent panic and fled hastily toward the far side of the bridge.
Its movements were surprisingly swift for its size, but it had no chance of shaking us now.
We all pursued it together, cornering it at what seemed a dead end, where it finally stopped.
And that's when we understood why it had halted—why it no longer fled.
Behind it loomed a far larger monster, previously hidden by the fog.
A gigantic humanoid covered in excessively bulging muscles.
Like a bodybuilder who'd chugged a truckload of steroids, or clad in armor made purely of muscle.
Just standing there, it exuded an overwhelming pressure that crushed the air around it.
"I'll take the first shot."
Hanbit reacted first.
He aimed his rifle at the new muscle-bound monster and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Kwang! A deafening roar echoed as the red energy bullet struck its chest dead-on.
But it didn't dodge or block.
The red energy simply collided with its iron-hard chest, leaving only a tiny scorch mark before fizzling out pathetically.
The power that had turned trash mobs into minced meat in an instant had no effect.
"..."
Finally, a tough one had appeared.
A satisfied smile tugged at my lips as I raised the Returning Sword I could barely wield.
"...Scary."
Shun said, looking at me.
Yeah, these monsters were definitely scary.