Taildog
“Follow them.”
Yeongyeong spoke up. She had kept pace with them this far, but everyone knew her body was far from whole.
Anyone who didn't know her would have taken one look at her now and recoiled in terror, convinced they were staring at a ghost.
“Follow what, exactly?”
“Somebody has to. Taildogs are no joke. We're short-handed.”
“We're not short-handed. Gong So-jang puts out a good estimate. If he says stay, you stay.”
“I'm practically dead weight…… Having you peel off to guard me is a loss. I'm already a burden as it is.”
With that, Yeongyeong let out a long, heavy breath, like the tail end of a cough.
“You're not a burden. We all took a hit together—what are you even saying? Nobody here thinks that way, so hurry up and get better. Yeongyeong.”
“…….”
“Just focus on recovering. That's the answer.”
“I can manage on my own. If you keep hovering over me like this…….”
“Honestly…… You don't know Gong So-jang at all, do you? The man's cold as a blade when he needs to be. But he's not the type to toss aside people who've bled through a job with him.”
Yeongyeong and Fresh.
The two of them spoke with an ease they never showed around the others.
Like people who had known each other for a very long time.
Closer, even, than anyone else realized.
“If things get bad, I'll break a ring or something, so go. Go, and prove you're not dead weight. And if it gets dangerous out there, pull out 'that' too.”
Yeongyeong raised her left hand as she spoke. A gold ring set with a tiny, almost invisible gem. So plain in appearance that no one would guess it was an item unless she said so.
And yet this was one of the hidden cards Yeongyeong had been keeping in reserve.
Fresh's eyebrows twitched at the sight of it.
“Unbelievable. There goes that stubborn streak again. You think Gong So-jang wouldn't notice?”
“……?”
“People at our level walk into a fight with at least one hidden card up their sleeve—it's practically standard practice. Now imagine spending that card hunting a goddamn Taildog. He'd be furious. Genuinely, spectacularly furious. Wasting resources on nonsense. You're in no state to judge a situation right now. Honestly. You can barely think straight as it is.”
The Taildog.
A monster named for its unnaturally long tail.
A kind of wild dog.
Roughly the size of an ordinary large breed.
Compared to other monsters, it had never undergone gigantification.
It used no special abilities, either.
It wasn't a creature of illusions or foul stench or venom, like some of the others.
Its intelligence wasn't noticeably higher than an ordinary dog's.
By appearance alone, then, it was nothing more than a dog with an unusually long tail.
And yet these long-tailed dogs had killed far more survivors than the goblins and orcs littering the earth—were killing them still, and would go on killing.
The reason was their utterly absurd athleticism.
Ordinary dogs were already impressive athletes, but a Taildog outclassed them many times over.
How impressive? Strong enough to plant its paws against a wall and hold itself upright on it, if only briefly.
Its bite force could crunch through stone, and its tail, well over a meter long, was powerful enough to strangle a grown human.
Above all, the tail was where a Taildog's strength concentrated—and it knew how to use that tail for all manner of attacks.
The one consolation for survivors was that the Taildog's durability was only exceptional in its tail.
Like any monster, it was tougher than an ordinary animal, but only marginally so—meaning that if you landed your strikes cleanly, it was more than killable.
Besides, Won-goo had plenty of experience hunting them.
In the early days of the apocalypse, he had slaughtered monsters in droves to stack coins faster than anyone else, and the Taildog had been one of his most frequent targets.
Given his rifle, they were easy to take down, and the rewards were generous.
No need to haul anything back but the tails, so they never weighed him down.
A single hunt could yield a whole bundle of them, and the tails fetched a respectable price.
Properly processed, a Taildog's tail could be worked into a weapon or into armor.
It also made excellent binding material for restraining monsters—its durability was that exceptional.
With a rifle alone, he could hunt at blistering speed, so it was fair to say the Taildog had played a large part in Won-goo's rapid early growth.
The one drawback was that quick, efficient Taildog hunting demanded a gun.
But the Trailer back then had no capability to manufacture its own ammunition.
So Won-goo had hunted Taildogs at the cost of burning through his own coins.
He eventually stopped because the market flooded with Taildog tails and the price naturally collapsed.
If your income dips below what you're spending in coins, you quit. Simple as that.
Solo-era Won-goo had been even more prickly and ruthlessly pragmatic than the man he was now.
An era of blind forward momentum, coin after coin, nothing else.
Now that he had people around him, his approach had changed considerably.
He knew that piling up coins without a plan would never carry him past the great obstacles waiting down the road.
So he drove at top speed while keeping strictly to the plan, letting nothing pull him off course.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The moment they crossed into the territory, the Taildogs erupted into a frenzied charge.
Ordinary wild dogs would have come in on a straight line. Taildogs did not.
They were masters of committing to a headlong rush, then breaking off mid-charge to redirect off the surrounding terrain.
One of the many reasons survivors found them so difficult to fight.
But Won-goo knew their patterns far too well.
And his marksmanship was simply a bonus.
Five Taildogs came charging out, and five shots put every one of them down.
Headshots, without a single inch of error.
Won-goo's own crew barely reacted to his shooting anymore, but the newcomers were another story.
They looked outright stunned.
“Gong So-jang, you……”
“Nothing special. I've just killed a lot of Taildogs, that's all. Let's move.”
There was no time to keep chatting. The Taildogs kept coming in wave after wave.
Once the first chargers fell, the rest began trying different approaches.
It didn't matter. The terrifying thing about a Taildog was its monstrous athleticism.
A regular dog was already fast; a Taildog was twice as fast. At full sprint it didn't look like running at all—it looked like sliding across the ground.
Closing the gap in a heartbeat to strike was their biggest headache, but Won-goo had just removed the vanguard and bought them time.
Time for his crew to set their formation properly.
And once Won-goo's people took their positions and settled into a defensive stance, they were anything but weak.
Ta-ang! Grrrrrk!
Gunfire rolled out again.
“You said thirty or so!”
Pacific screamed, drenched head to toe in blood.
“You been in this business a day and a half? 'Thirty or so' means a minimum of thirty, you idiot!”
“Still, this is way too many!”
Too many it was. They'd already put down more than fifty Taildogs, and the tide kept coming.
“Then why don't you fall back a bit.”
“No, but——”
“Fall back. Your body's already half-broken, don't overdo it. You need to save your strength for Ganjeol Point.”
“You'll be all right?”
“We'll be fine.”
“No, but…… they keep coming? Are you sure it's fine?”
“If I say it's fine, it's fine.”
“Got it. Then I'm hanging back for now.”
Pacific quickly drew out a syringe and injected himself—shutting off the physical load he had cranked up for combat.
“Hyeong-nim!”
Only one man here got called Hyeong-nim by Won-goo: Montage.
Montage's crew was locked in a ferocious struggle with the Taildogs.
There just wasn't the same sense of polished formation as Won-goo's group.
Won-goo's crew operated on strictly assigned positions—vanguard, support, rear. Montage's did not.
But their teamwork was solid and every man could hold his own, so they'd taken no serious losses so far.
The reason Montage's crew, composed less of varied specialists than of mostly enhancement-types, could hold the line so well came down to one thing: an iron command structure.
Before Montage's charisma, his men showed absolute loyalty—and their internal hierarchy was just as absolute.
Which meant there was no fear among them.
In a fight against monsters, panic multiplied your odds of dying enormously.
Fear, after all, was contagious.
“Yeah?”
Montage answered Won-goo's call while wiping the Taildog blood from his face.
Thud! Thud!
And he didn't forget to grind the skull of a fallen Taildog under his boot as he did.
“Still holding up?”
“Holdin' fine so far. But how much longer we gotta keep at it?”
“We can rest a moment and fight again after.”
“Then we can last a good while longer.”
“Then let's take one rotation off here before moving.”
“What're you plannin'?”
“Pulling everyone back, then—— Hyun-sung!”
“Yes, Hyeong-nim!”
Lee Hyun-sung, who had been body-blocking at the very front, answered instantly.
He tore free the Taildogs latched onto his arms and legs in one violent shrug and moved to close with Won-goo.
“No. Hold there, then fall back bit by bit.”
“Yes, Hyeong-nim!”
Won-goo then glanced at Mu Beob-sa and flashed him a hand signal.
Vrrrrmmm!
A protective barrier blossomed open around the crew.
It faced only one direction, so it was hardly perfect protection—but it was more than enough to matter.
One side sealed meant they only had to watch the other. And Taildogs weren't clever enough to route around a barrier without a moment's hesitation built in.
In that window, Won-goo switched his rifle to flamethrower mode.
He could have swapped it mid-fight, but that was inefficient.
When clearing monsters with fire, you always had to drive them into a kill zone first.
Herd them into the tight space, then sweep.
Fwoooom!
The instant the barrier dropped, the newly swarming Taildogs came hurtling in.
They charged straight over the corpses of their own kind, like animals gone rabid.
Fwooarrr! Fwaaaash!
A torrent of flame gushed out and turned the Taildogs to charcoal.
“You're burnin' the tails off 'em, you know that?”
“A Taildog's tail is all about the bone, hyung. A little singed fur's no problem.”
The bones of a Taildog's tail formed a fine mesh, like a delicate chain. Their elasticity and durability were so superb that, in a pinch, you could swing the whole thing as a weapon just as it was.
Fwoooom!
Won-goo raised the flames again, drowning the area in fire.
Dozens of Taildogs were swallowed by the blaze in an instant and died.
Won-goo thought of how he'd never had an opportunity like this back when he hunted alone.
He could have managed it even then—but the chance never came.
Taildogs had never traveled in packs this large.
Five to seven was a typical pack, and even the biggest rarely exceeded fifteen.
So this many Taildogs gathered in one place was deeply unusual.
They were, after all, monsters that sometimes hunted alone.
'Ha…… if I'd found a pack like this back then, I'd be soaring twice as high by now…….'
As the flames died down, a message appeared before Won-goo's eyes.
'……!'