#22 The Stirring of Evil (4)
#22 The Stirring of Evil (4)
"Huff. Searched all over and never caught a glimpse of you, yet here you are..."
At the coat-clad man's words, I couldn't help tensing up. Hunters were monsters, every last one of them. And this man, carrying Hong Yuri on his back...
[Gu Jin-ha (Human)]
[Height 182.1 cm] [Weight 74.8 kg]
[STR 519] [AGI 577] [VIT 535] [MP 585]
'Is he insane.'
Those stats were utterly deranged. Gu Jin-ha of Daybreak's Dawn, Team Leader 3, the Three Swordsman. I knew well enough from the novel that every featured character was a freak of nature, but seeing all his stats above 500 still hit differently.
'...I expected as much, but.'
One thing was certain: no matter how I fought, victory was impossible.
"Alpha (Jirisan Warg)."
Alpha, the Jirisan Warg. That was apparently what they'd named me.
Even Gu Jin-ha's flat, uninflected voice sent dread crawling over me. The pressure was crushing—I felt like I might crumple on the spot. I couldn't afford to stay silent.
"Grrrr—!"
[Intimidation (F) Lv.8 proficiency maxed. Intimidation (F) Lv.8 → Intimidation (F) Lv.9]
My voice might've trembled a bit. Hopefully he didn't notice how badly I was rattled. Still, the level-up meant the skill had landed, so... thank goodness my title and Intimidation had done something.
The next instant, Gu Jin-ha's gaze shifted.
'Landed, my ass!'
All I'd done was put him on guard. His eyes turned chill and sharp as he assessed me. The moment he spotted the slightest opening, he would wring the life out of me.
'He's injured. Leg, right?'
His footprints pressed deeper than normal, which suggested a leg wound. His shoes hid it, but I'd caught the scent of blood.
'And his weapon...'
A bladeless hilt wasn't going to cut it. Maybe he sensed my attention on it, because Gu Jin-ha slipped the sword handle into an inner pocket of his coat. That was an honest relief. If he'd had a proper blade, I'd have needed a completely different strategy.
'This flasher-looking bastard.'
A sidelong glance showed a bandage—no, just torn cloth—wrapped around Hong Yuri's side. Probably ripped from something to serve as a makeshift dressing.
'Fuuu.'
After setting Hong Yuri down, Gu Jin-ha shifted into a stance with his bare hands. Low Hand Guard: the rear hand held near his chin, the lead hand lowered to defend the lower line.
'So he's decided to fight.'
Gu Jin-ha's logic was plain enough: eliminate the nuisance before it became a problem.
'He's not wrong.'
I smiled bitterly. Even with all the advantages I'd scraped together, fighting him was hopeless. While I hesitated—
'He's not even going to give me that much time!'
A razor gale coiled around Gu Jin-ha's wrist with enough force to sever it, yet it left only faint scratches on his skin. That same attack had sheared clean through the Great Tusk Boar's tusks... what kind of absurd world logic was this?
"Hup!"
Forget reading and dodging—I had to retreat the moment he moved.
'Damn it.'
Intuition and Perception weren't working.
Unlike monsters, Gu Jin-ha's movements shifted every instant. His trajectory changed constantly; even when Intuition read his intent, he adapted in response. A hundred, a thousand micro-decisions per heartbeat, his path recomputing moment to moment. Dizzying martial artistry. The Three Swordsman's skill unfolded from his hands and feet alike.
More than anything else, tracking Gu Jin-ha's movements was simply hard—even when I was staring right at him.
'Is this what they call technique?'
Endless Chain.
An unbroken stream of strikes, the sheer unfairness of seeing it coming and still getting hit. Motion laced with an incomprehensible grace. Even with All Damage Reduction and Hardening, even with Elasticity bleeding off the impact, my bones still fractured. All those penalties weighing him down, and the match between us still refused to tilt.
'He's in a different league entirely.'
Daybreak's Dawn, Team Leader 3. A-Class Hunter. A ranker bearing the title Three Swordsman.
I didn't need to run through the list of his gaudy epithets to know it.
—This man was a genuine monster.
***
'He bled off the impact.'
The timing had been perfect.
The fist that struck Alpha, the Jirisan Warg. It hadn't come at a moment the beast could've dodged. The blow landed as expected, but the feedback was muted. Alpha bared its teeth in what could only be called insolent defiance. If I'd had a sword—there'd been several openings to end its life. That galled me more than anything.
'And I can't put distance between us.'
He was pinned. He couldn't stray far from Hong Yuri's side. Alpha had figured that out and was exploiting it with cunning precision.
'On top of that, I can't use mana.'
The pounding headache screamed of mental exhaustion. If he wanted any chance of escaping the other monster, he had to conserve every drop of mana. The brief exchange had made one thing clear: Alpha, the Jirisan Warg, had already far surpassed the level of a Skull Wolf.
'He won't commit.'
Even when I deliberately left openings, he refused to bite. For all the bloodlust and ferocity he radiated, he wouldn't move rashly. That restraint—observing the situation, weighing his options—was proof of higher cognition.
'He understands the battlefield perfectly.'
He knew that dragging this out tilted things in his favor.
Not just clever—cunning to the point of malice. Gu Jin-ha found himself remembering the wolf from Ernest Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known. Lobo, the Wolf King—nearly two hundred years ago, the most infamous wolf ever to make his name. A vicious creature who saw through every trap and made fools of the men who hunted him. That wolf from the old tale now overlapped with the beast standing before him.
'A monster with intelligence surpassing a human's.'
It might become something truly beyond recourse, like the Purple Black Tiger. Considering Alpha's growth potential, the beast might already be more dangerous than the flesh monster barreling after them. The situation was dire, yet he'd been cornered with no other options.
"Hrnngh."
Hong Yuri groaned from where she lay. To Gu Jin-ha's eyes, Alpha seemed to be mocking him. Did the creature figure it could outrun the approaching horror on its own, and planned to sever its pursuer here?
'Son of a bitch.'
Cunning? This went past cunning into outright viciousness.
***
The effect of D-rank Regeneration was remarkable. My fractured bones crackled and popped as they realigned. Thirty seconds. If Gu Jin-ha hadn't held back, those would've been thirty seconds too many.
"Grrrr!"
I had to draw Gu Jin-ha out. But how?
'The Quickening Evil's closing in, too.'
It was genuinely close now. Worse, the wounds I'd burned into ash were starting to mend. Surely that fact wasn't only dark news for me.
'Does this man not feel anything?'
That placid gaze. The poker face. He radiated absolute composure. The Quickening Evil bearing down on us wasn't good for him either, yet he showed not a flicker of concern. Did he actually have some kind of plan?
'Then.'
I'd smash that plan to pieces.
Unfortunately, I couldn't beat Gu Jin-ha. Carrying Hong Yuri and running was likewise impossible. Even in conditions like these, the gap between us was that wide.
Which meant—
"Groooooooah!"
—it was time for my insurance policy to take the stage.
"...The Swamp Dragon!"
For the first time, a crack appeared in Gu Jin-ha's masklike expression. The sight was genuinely reassuring. It meant that at least this development was something he hadn't anticipated.
[Swamp Dragon]
[Length 8.6 m] [Height 2.7 m] [Weight 4.4 t]
[STR 426] [AGI 415] [VIT 476] [MP 318]
[Skill List]
[Dragon Scale (C)] [Evil Devouring (D)]
An unmistakable dungeon boss monster.
***
'The Swamp Dragon!'
He'd underestimated Alpha's intelligence. The creature knew how to lay traps for humans, how to wait for its moment. It wasn't just a potential future threat—the beast before him right now was an immense threat. How long had it been since he'd been pushed this far onto the back foot? A chill settled in Gu Jin-ha's chest.
A monster that called in adds. And was this truly the end of it?
He couldn't make himself believe that Alpha's trap stopped here. The creature had defied his expectations too many times already.
'This is trouble.'
The Swamp Dragon's estimated class: B to B+.
'If I'd been better prepared...'
He'd been careless. Nothing inside a dungeon could ever be predicted. If his sword hadn't broken. If he'd brought scrolls. If he'd just been a little more cautious... countless regrets writhed through Gu Jin-ha's mind, but none of them changed the situation.
'There's no choice.'
Facing the roaring Swamp Dragon, Gu Jin-ha clenched his fists.
"Groooooooah!"
For Hong Yuri's sake, he had to bring it down as fast as possible.
Because now, there truly was no time left.
***
The Swamp Dragon.
A sub-dragon species that made its lair in deep forests or swamps. Wingless and lacking true intelligence, but as its draconic name implied, it was far stronger than something like an Aranea.
'Absolute freak of a man.'
Against a monster like that, with no mana to draw on, he refused to yield a single step. No—he couldn't yield.
"Kwaaaagh!"
The Swamp Dragon lunged, its enormous jaws gaping wide. Gu Jin-ha stopped it cold.
'How the hell—?'
Tendons stood out along Gu Jin-ha's arms. Straining with every fiber—
"Hrnnngh...!"
He was lifting the Swamp Dragon and shoving it back!
"Kuaaaaagh!"
Four-point-four tons of mass, thrashing with 426 Strength, and yet—!
'Never mind that—this is my opening!'
No time to stand and watch. I folded Charge into a Gust and closed the distance. But Gu Jin-ha was already blocking my path—I'd moved the instant I saw him tangled with the Swamp Dragon.
'The AGI gap is just too...'
Enormous. When I initiated an action, he'd already slipped into a second and third movement. The fist that had been guarding low rose and reformed his stance.
'...Can't dodge it!'
The Quickening Evil was still approaching. No more time to stall. So.
'I have to break through!'
I surged every last drop of mana. The violent channeling made my body groan—148. A drop in the bucket compared to his, but that was fine.
"Kwaaaaagh!"
Because the Swamp Dragon was charging from the other side. The moment Gu Jin-ha's expression twisted, he vanished.
'Knew it.'
He'd finally resorted to mana. In a flash, the sword hilt was buried in the Swamp Dragon, which shrieked and thrashed in agony. On the condition of mana use, even a dungeon boss couldn't match Gu Jin-ha—in the brief span it took me to sprint toward Hong Yuri, he'd essentially defeated the Swamp Dragon twice.
If he'd had a blade in that hand, the dragon would've died twice over.
'...!'
Gu Jin-ha using mana was on an entirely different plane. The speed made everything he'd done before look like a game. But I'd prepared for this.
'I expected it.'
I'd believed he'd manage something. Gu Jin-ha's incoming fist surged at me with ferocious momentum, intent on caving in my skull. A perfectly straight, technique-less strike—and precisely because of that, it was his fastest. A punch from him would undoubtedly obliterate my head in a single blow.
Certainty filled Gu Jin-ha's eyes. Seeing that, I could feel relieved.
'Because the trick worked.'
His arm's trajectory warped. Gu Jin-ha's eyes widened. Why? The bafflement was written all over his face.
'I wasn't sure it would work.'
I'd been on the receiving end of a trick like this; that didn't guarantee he'd fall for it. It had been a gamble. And it had paid off. The mana I'd used to knock his fist off-course returned to me—a technique I'd learned from the Monk. How to use Stealth to cloak my mana.
Even after striking his arm with mana, I'd only managed to deflect his trajectory by a hair. The blade of his hand scraped across my skull.
Crrrrunch—!
A glancing blow, and my skull was half-shattered.
But the one smiling was me.
"Alpha, Jirisan Warg!"
I ignored his shout and hoisted the fallen Hong Yuri onto my back. Gu Jin-ha pursued, terrifyingly close—and yet he couldn't close the gap.
"Ngh!"
Because during that exchange, the Gust had completely torn through his ankle. Gu Jin-ha collapsed on the spot.
"Alpha—Jirisan Warg—!"
His anguished roar echoed through the forest.
—And with that, every preparation was complete.
The preparations for luring the Quickening Evil.