The Reclining Buddha
“What the hell? What's going on?”
“That thing's called the Wabulgui. Normally it just lies there sleeping like that, but the moment its preferred prey shows up, it wakes up and starts raising hell.”
The fugitives came bursting out of the temple hall.
They shot the survivors a startled look, but before long they were strolling right up without a shred of hesitation.
“Shit! What the hell even is that thing!”
Thwack!
Purple came swaggering in mid-curse and took Ternon's Pistol right to the mouth, clapping both hands over it with a yelp.
“Shut up. If you want to live, you follow my orders. Otherwise, I'll kill you right here, right now.”
A single move, and everyone went quiet.
It wasn't because Won-goo had displayed some overwhelming show of force.
It was the number of crew members standing behind him — and the fact that they'd recognized at a glance that these were no ordinary survivors.
“Is Hoppang in there?”
“He got... eaten.”
“Speak properly!”
“He got eaten.”
“Then he'll be coming out soon.”
The two-meter golden Buddha statue was now standing up and moving on its own.
Its body was drenched in fresh blood.
The golden Buddha grinned at the party, revealing a row of gleaming white teeth.
Won-goo didn't hesitate. He fired.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
But the rounds didn't leave so much as a scratch on the Wabulgui's body.
And in a blink, the thing closed the distance and attacked.
“Hyun-sung!”
Before the words had even left his mouth, Lee Hyun-sung was already there, absorbing the Wabulgui's strike.
CLANG!
It looked like a casual kick, but the force behind it was anything but ordinary.
Lee Hyun-sung, who had blocked it with Huang Zhiheng's Chinese Cleaver, was launched clean off his feet.
Even airborne, the big man landed lightly on the ground, his massive frame touching down without a sound.
Before he could fully recover his footing, the Wabulgui was back on him, launching another kick.
Vwoooong!
Mu Beob-sa hurried over to back him up.
He caught the blow with the pot-lid shield raised in both hands.
Unlike Hyun-sung, he didn't go skidding backward.
He hadn't blocked it head-on — he'd angled the shield at a clever deflection, letting the force slide past. Redirecting the direction of the power, minimizing the impact.
Even so, Mu Beob-sa was rattled.
Even with the twist, enough shock had bled through to make his hands tremble violently.
Whiiiing!
“You son of a—!”
“You idiot!”
Purple, hanging back, smashed his iron mace into the back of the Wabulgui's skull.
BONNNG!
A deep, resounding boom — but the Wabulgui barely registered the hit.
It rounded on Purple instantly and drove a fist into him.
Thwack! Crack!
His neck snapped, the vertebrae grinding loose, and Purple crumpled to the ground like a discarded rag.
“What in tarnation! Director Gong, how in the hell are we supposed to take that thing down?”
“You have to strip off that gold plating first. That shell is both its armor and its weapon.”
“And how are we supposed to do that!”
Fresh yelled back.
“You beat the living shit out of it, what else? Just don't get in close — dodge its attacks, don't block them! We're in this for the long haul!”
Even as he barked orders, Won-goo kept stacking his shots with the pistol.
The rest of the crew hammered the Wabulgui with ranged attacks as well.
The Wabulgui tried closing in with its blistering speed to counterattack, but this place was crawling with nothing but hardened field veterans.
The instant the call went out that nobody should get close, they committed to maintaining distance with drill-like discipline.
WHAM!
The only survivor willing to close the gap was Lee Hyun-sung.
He knew his role in this fight perfectly.
Strictly speaking, he was closest to a hard tanker.
Once his sync rate with Huang Zhiheng's Chinese Cleaver climbed higher, he'd be able to break out of that role — but for now, hard tanking was his ceiling.
Which was why Hyun-sung pushed forward more aggressively than anyone else.
He understood exactly what it meant: unless Won-goo said otherwise, he had license to advance even further.
While everyone else held their distance, Hyun-sung alone kept darting forward — so naturally, he became the Wabulgui's favorite target.
He barely deflected its attacks each time, and every so often Mu Beob-sa stepped in to help.
Meanwhile, Rafael, who had been quietly holding position and reading the situation, finally moved.
She had been watching from about ten meters out. Then, in a single bound, she kicked off the ground and hurled herself into the air.
Like a beast that had sighted its prey and lunged for the kill.
Her timing was exquisite.
She waited for the exact moment the Wabulgui cocked its leg to kick at the crouched Lee Hyun-sung.
BOOOM!
Closing the distance in an instant, Rafael slammed a savage blow into the side of the Wabulgui's head.
It was hit much the same way Purple had been — but this time, the Wabulgui's reaction was different.
When Purple had struck, it hadn't twitched. Now it staggered, its balance visibly broken.
Seizing the opening, Fresh doubled over and dove forward.
He rolled in a hair's breadth under the Wabulgui's crotch.
Shhhhhlik!
Spider silk began climbing up from between its legs.
In moments, the silk had cocooned the Wabulgui's entire body in white.
“Beat it down!”
Fresh roared, and the Wabulgui — recovering from the shock — began to writhe.
But the silk was tougher than it looked.
Even under the strength of that monster, it held.
Survivors immediately rushed in and started wailing on the thing.
Montage's crew hurried to join the fray.
And among them, Joce shone brightest of all.
Wielding his recently replaced weapon, Joce hammered the Wabulgui's head with tremendous force.
Spitting thick curses the whole while.
Joce's weapon defied any single word of description.
If you had to pin it down, you'd say it resembled a monkey wrench — oversized.
Naturally, it was every bit as thick and high-performing as its tool-like appearance suggested.
A perfect fit for Joce, the strongest arm among Montage's people.
It wasn't Rafael-grade power, but Joce was a strength-type in his own right, and he was pulling his weight just fine.
“Die, you bastard! Die! Die, goddammit!”
KANG! KANG! KANG! KANG! Vwoooong!
Then, mid-flow, swinging his weapon in total battle trance, bewilderment crept across Joce's face.
The reason: the monkey wrench in his hands had snapped clean in half.
He couldn't hide his disbelief.
A veteran of Joce's caliber always evaluated a weapon comprehensively.
Durability, weight, center of gravity.
Only after a weapon passed judgment on every count did he make the switch.
Durability testing in particular was one of the things survivors took deadly seriously.
His monkey wrench had been put through the full gauntlet before selection.
Durable enough to smash through a building's exterior wall without taking a single scratch itself.
It lost nothing in comparison to any blunt weapon on the market — which was exactly why he'd picked it.
And that weapon had just snapped from hitting something. Of course he was stunned.
Only after the shock had registered did he finally hear the shouting from behind him.
Come to think of it, plenty of the survivors who'd been in earshot were already gone.
Tap! THUD!
In his moment of confusion, someone had grabbed him from behind.
None other than Won-goo.
“Joce! Are you deaf or what!”
“Huh? Boss?”
“You listen to orders, damn it! I told you that thing's dangerous!”
Won-goo had snatched him by the scruff and dragged him more than five meters clear of the Wabulgui.
The moment Joce showed a dazed, still-processing look, he blew up at him.
“That crazy monster doesn't die easy, so don't get greedy! Hey! Fall back, now! Get back!”
And even then, Won-goo was bellowing warnings at the survivors still clinging to the Wabulgui and laying into it, until his throat went raw.
POP!
The tightly wound cocoon of silk tore apart, and the Wabulgui emerged into view.
The only real change was a faint crack running through the golden statue's shell from earlier.
And the fact that it was no longer smiling.
On top of that, the shockwave released when the silk ripped apart had sent several survivors flying, knocked out cold.
“What the hell even is that thing?”
Fresh came back over to Won-goo's side, pulling a new weapon out of his subspace bag and assembling it as he spoke.
“What's what? It's the real deal, that's what. Think of it as Taderson-class.”
“Taderson? Then it's a Large Species!”
“It's nastier than that one, though. Break that gold shell and there's another layer underneath. Then it starts raising hell all over again.”
“Unbelievable...”
“Hey. That item you just used — you got another one? The spider silk thing?”
“Nope. That one, I spent a fortune on. Big money, this time.”
“Ha... it's single-use?”
“Rechargeable. An item I dumped half my net worth into.”
It might sound strange, investing half your assets into a single item — but in the survivors' world, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
“How long's the recharge?”
“Ages. If we wait around for it, we'll all be smelling like roasted pork.”
“Ha...”
Having confirmed that Ternon's Pistol was fully charged, Won-goo opened fire again.
Every single bullet buried itself in the Wabulgui's head.
Then he started bellowing all over again.
“Hey! Maintain distance! Distance! Did you sleep through the whole pandemic? All you do is draw aggro from a safe range! Ha... this is why unplanned encounters piss me off.”
“You got anything? Some hidden card or whatever?”
“Where the hell would I get that? We just endure the damn thing.”
But Fresh didn't believe a word of it. He knew exactly how specialized Gong Won-goo was in the art of survival.
Just as Fresh predicted, Won-goo was steadily working out his angle even against the Wabulgui, a heavyweight monster they'd stumbled into with zero preparation.
That was partly why he was acting a touch passive — he'd already run the numbers halfway through.
Won-goo knew the truth: the Wabulgui only truly began once that Buddha statue — its shell, its armor — came off.
So for now, he was hoarding his tricks, keeping every card close to his chest.
“Oh! It's bolting!”
Just as the cracked golden shell reached the verge of shattering, the Wabulgui fled back inside the temple hall.
The chain of command was in disarray, sure — but everyone here was a veteran.
And the Wabulgui's patterns were simple enough to handle.
“Isn't it better that it ran?”
Fresh said, eyeing the door.
“That thing won't open until we kill it. More importantly — anyone got a barrier?”
“Area-wide?”
“You got one or not?”
“Shit... what's coming?”
“No idea. But going off my experience, something's about to come bursting out of there.”
“God, this is annoying... fine. Get everyone gathered up for now.”
He relayed hand signals to his own crew and shouted for the rest to rally.
Among them stood a few figures looking painfully out of place — the fugitives.
Three survivors of the escapees remained.
Hoppang had been snatched and killed the moment it all began, and Purple had gotten big for his britches and died to a single blow.
The rest had been flung away by the Wabulgui's shockwave, and still couldn't get back on their feet.
Other survivors hit by the same shockwave had already recovered — so realistically, those two were as good as dead.
“Hey! You! You planning to come over or what?”
“...?”
Won-goo's eyes locked with Gombang's.
“Yeah. You! You little shit! Get in here, now! What are you, blinking at me from way over there?”
Gombang, who'd been wearing a startled expression, quickly hurried over to join the survivors.
The fugitives beside him followed suit.
“If you don't want to die, move when you're told. Got it?”
He gave Gombang a brief warning. Nearby, Fresh stood scowling, clutching a notebook no bigger than his palm.
And he was getting ready to tear it apart.
“When do I do it?”
“Wait for the signal. I'll tell you.”
With that, Won-goo approached Mu Beob-sa and told him to begin reciting the prayer.
Naturally, it wasn't just Mu Beob-sa reciting it alone.
Instructions for what the crew would do once the prayer started had already been handed down.
From the moment Mu Beob-sa began the recitation, their job was to protect him from any and all interference.
“Her moist lips met mine, and her tongue slipped in, stirring gently. Her breathing grew ragged. I could feel our bodies pressed together, perfectly entwined. When I laid my hand on her round chest, a faint tremble ran through her—”
It was a prayer that never failed to make ears burn, no matter how many times you heard it.
“Hold it. Pace yourself.”
And so Mu Beob-sa, who had been rushing through the recitation, throttled down his speed. Still, nothing stirred from within the hall.
“Shouldn't this thing be going in? Nothing's happening in there.”
Montage's observation.
“Going in is the trap.”
“Is that a fact, now?”
“INCOMING!”
Joce screamed it first — and then, KRAKOOM, they saw a colossal bolt of lightning come crashing down.
Before the signal was even given, Fresh tore the notebook open.
Shhhhlunk!
In an instant, a dome-shaped house formed around Fresh.
KRAKA-BOOOM!
The lightning struck the newly conjured structure and tore straight through it.
The survivors allowed themselves a moment of relief — but it was far from over.
Countless bolts of lightning were raining down like a storm.