The Wabulgwi's Reward
The lightning kept hammering away at the makeshift house.
Everyone watched with anxious faces. Fresh's expression was grave.
"Director Gong. I don't think this thing can hold out much longer."
"Just hold on as long as you can."
Kuwaaang! Kwadeudeuk!
The lightning that had been striking again and again finally punched a hole clean through the roof.
Won-goo signaled to Mu Beob-sa as if he'd been waiting for exactly that.
The mage picked up speed on the incantation he'd been chanting at a measured pace and finished the prayer at once.
A pillar of ice erupted right in front of Mu Beob-sa.
It shot up so high that its height was impossible to gauge.
Everyone stared in astonishment at the spell the mage had conjured.
This time, even Won-goo was genuinely surprised.
The prayer had been a stopgap measure. That lightning couldn't fall forever, after all.
So the plan had been to ride it out with the barrier spell—and Mu Beob-sa had raised an ice pillar that fit the situation perfectly.
What made it interesting was that this pillar took a different form from the one generated back in the office.
It was an ice pillar all the same, but the shape was different.
The ice pillar in the office had looked like a stalagmite, tapering as it rose—but what had just been generated bore no resemblance to it.
Narrow at the base and spreading wider as it climbed.
And the pillar had formed in precisely the shape needed to plug the hole in the roof.
That was territory no one could reach without genuine talent as a mage.
The lightning kept pouring down after that, but it never touched the survivors.
"Hyeong-nim. Can we go with the ear attack?"
Won-goo, wearing his tinted glasses, asked. He intended to time his counterattack to the moment the Wabulgwi burst out.
"We can. Wanna set it up now?"
"When I give the signal, blast it."
"Got it. Joce, get ready."
"Yes sir, Boss!"
Joce stepped up to the front line. Then the sound of lightning strikes went quiet.
"Well, I'll be damned. I've now seen lightning strike out of a clear blue sky. Director Gong, I'm flat-out wrung dry. Ain't nothing left to milk."
"I know, so get back and stay there. Good work."
"Yeah. Having my life savings swiped really does suck the strength right out of you."
Fresh fell back, and from within the sanctuary, the Wabulgwi burst forth.
Hye-ji's sniper round, timed to that exact moment, slammed into the Wabulgwi's head.
Won-goo's shot was the same. But the Wabulgwi shrugged off the attacks entirely and charged straight for the house.
Then Joce blew his whistle. Montage blew his in sync, aimed at the survivors.
The Wabulgwi's swaggering expression twisted, and it clapped its hands over its ears.
But there was no hiding from the shock.
Before the golden Buddha statue had cracked, it might have withstood it—but now the cracks ran deep.
The impact was inevitable, and the Wabulgwi was left feeling the whole world spin in circles.
Of course, the survivors didn't let that opening slip away.
"Alright, everyone, put your backs into it!"
Clack!
Won-goo ejected his standard magazine and locked in one loaded with special rounds.
In his left hand, he gripped the Tail Dog's Rope.
The moment Won-goo sprang forward, the rest of the crew bolted after him.
"Wrap it up, fast!"
And they swiftly coiled the Tail Dog's tail-rope around the Wabulgwi's body.
Won-goo's crew had a fair bit of know-how with this kind of plan.
It was a tactic they'd used plenty against the Arctic Giant, after all.
Especially the experience of capturing the Ogre proved invaluable.
No matter how powerful the Wabulgwi's strength was, it wasn't on the Ogre's level.
What made the Wabulgwi dangerous was that it was more agile and far more skilled in combat than even a full-fledged Large Species like the Ogre.
For survivors, a Wabulgwi was a far more dangerous opponent than an Ogre—strong but slow.
In an instant, the Tail Dog's Rope was wound tight around the Wabulgwi's body, coil after coil.
At the rope's end, Lee Hyun-sung and the other strength-focused survivors threw their weight in.
Joce was no exception. The survivors spread out, gripping the rope where it fanned out in multiple directions, and pulled.
Every time the Wabulgwi came to its senses and resisted, the survivors staggered.
They had no choice.
When they'd captured the Ogre, far more manpower had been hanging on the ropes; right now they had less than a quarter of that number.
Kekeeeek!
The Wabulgwi shrieked and heaved with all its might, but it wasn't enough to shake loose the survivors who had already dug into position.
Everyone knew they couldn't let this chance slip, so they were clinging on with everything they had.
Like a line of men in a tug-of-war.
In the meantime, Won-goo closed in on the Wabulgwi and leveled his muzzle.
He fired from less than a meter away.
But the bullets that erupted were nothing like the ones from before.
A shotgun.
Right before his eyes, the spread tore loose and hammered the Wabulgwi's entire body.
There was a reason Won-goo had shifted Turnon's Warhammer into pistol form for exactly this.
Each and every pellet applied as a stack, weakening the target.
The drawback? Pushing the Warhammer up to this level of performance required a truly obscene number of coins.
In exchange, at moments that truly mattered—like now—he could buy rounds and use them.
It was always the cost that stung, though.
Each pellet was billed at a price you might as well call gold, so a single wasted shot was unacceptable.
He'd engineered a situation where every last pellet was guaranteed to land, and he dumped the spread in without a moment's hesitation.
The raw damage of the shotgun meant little to the Wabulgwi.
But the weakening meant everything.
By the time he'd emptied the entire magazine, the strength draining from the resisting Wabulgwi was palpable.
And then fragments of the Buddha statue began falling away on their own.
Won-goo looked at the Wabulgwi's exposed true form and let out a breath of relief.
The Wabulgwi had grades, just like other monsters.
Even within the same species, those granted a special class were classified in higher tiers.
There was also a more intuitive way to tell them apart.
Size.
With the Wabulgwi, though, that method didn't work.
A big one wasn't necessarily strong, and a small one wasn't necessarily weak.
The way to gauge a Wabulgwi's grade was the statue that served as its armor.
How many layers of Buddha statues nested inside one another—that was the measure of its strength.
Once the golden statue peeled away, the Wabulgwi's true form emerged: crimson-skinned, demonic.
"Rafael!"
At Won-goo's call, Rafael stepped in and brought her hammer down on the Wabulgwi's head.
Like a game of whack-a-mole.
With its shock-absorbing golden statue stripped away, and weakened further by the shotgun's baptism, the Wabulgwi couldn't endure Rafael's hammering.
Kwoong! Kung!
Two strikes and its skull and vertebrae were smashed to pieces; the body went slack.
The survivors who saw it let out sighs of relief. But some didn't stop there.
Fresh and Won-goo.
The moment the Wabulgwi was down, the two of them were already on the runners.
The fugitives scrambled to bolt from their positions, but it was too late.
Survivors hungry to catch them ringed them in on all sides—and Won-goo and Fresh moved faster still.
Won-goo snagged two of the runners, leveling his gun at one and pressing the Meaty Dagger to the other's throat.
That was enough to freeze the runners in place.
Fresh had a fistful of Gombang's collar.
Fresh might get written off as unremarkable—no single outstanding trait to his name—but he was nobody's fool.
He knew exactly when he needed to move.
For one fleeting instant, the runners' movements were pinned down, and after that, resistance was impossible.
They were already bound tight, wrapped in the Tail Dog's Rope.
Once they were tied up and dealt with, it was time to handle the reward from the Wabulgwi.
The heads of the three crews gathered.
Gong Won-goo, Fresh, and Montage.
"Me, I'm good this time around."
"You're sure?"
"Didn't do all that much, truth be told. Me or my boys, we've got our pride. This one's yours two fellas to settle and split."
Won-goo and Fresh both nodded.
In terms of pure merit, it was true that Won-goo's crew had carried the fight.
They'd absorbed nearly all the damage, and landed the killing blow on top of it.
But Fresh's contribution was nothing to sneeze at either.
Keeping the casualty count from climbing was work the Field rated very highly indeed.
Above all, no one could afford to overlook the fact that Fresh had pulled out his hidden card in this fight.
So Fresh and Gong Won-goo traded a careful glance.
They both knew it.
In moments like this, you watched your words, or grudges piled up.
In human relationships, the smallest slip of the tongue could fester into something ugly—and when rewards were on the line, all the more so.
Tension crackled between Fresh and Gong Won-goo.
They held each other's gaze for ten seconds or so, then moved—no one could say who went first.
Like gunmen drawing the pistols at their hips.
The survivors watching flinched hard.
Rock.
Paper.
But the move they'd made in all that tension was rock-paper-scissors.
"Ah, dammit…"
"Nice!"
Fresh's win.
"You know the deal, right? Pick your item, and we split the proceeds by value."
"Obviously."
"And the fee you're collecting on this job gets passed to Hyeong-nim's crew. No objections?"
"Call."
"Hyeong-nim. Is this acceptable?"
"It's a call. Now hurry up and pick, will ya? This bastard here's quite the fussy one, so the rewards ought to be decent."
"It won't be that bad."
"No?"
"No. This is the lowest-graded Wabulgwi there is."
"Wabulgwi? You mean the reclining-Buddha demon, that what you're saying?"
Won-goo nodded, clamping a cigarette between his lips. As always, Hyun-sung lit it for him and respectfully stepped back.
"From now on, if you ever run into something like this, approach careful. Especially if the Buddha statue's lying down—falling back first is usually the smart play."
"Then here's what I don't get. Why didn't that bastard move while Hoppang's crew was still around?"
"This Wabulgwi's defining trait is a ridiculously picky palate. It won't stir unless the target is something it actually wants to devour."
"So couldn't you just start wailing on it the second you see the statue?"
"It usually won't wake. And even when it does… you can't count on luck like today's. This one only had a single layer, but there are ones with three, with five—the shells stack layer on layer. Those bastards will show you what a real monster looks like."
"And this one was plenty monstrous already… and you're telling me it gets worse…"
"Which is why keep it in your head. Reclining Buddha. Hanging crucifix. That sort of thing. Different types, same breed of bastard."
"Reclining Buddha… hanging crucifix… logged."
Fresh chewed over Won-goo's words, filing them away in memory.
"Fresh, boy! Reward's gonna evaporate. Get to crackin' that thing open!"
Rewards didn't vanish with time, of course.
"Ttaeng-gu. Shouldn't you be the one doing this?"
"It's your reward. Why would I?"
"You know a hell of a lot more than I do, Director Gong."
"My advice comes at a premium."
"Oh, come on. I am genuinely dead broke after this one. This ain't some simple manhunt, you know."
"You think I walked in knowing this stuff? If I'd known we'd be meeting a Wabulgwi, I wouldn't have taken the job at all. You know how I am—I don't run anything I'm not sure about."
"Then go check the rewards for me. Tell me what I actually need."
"No can do. If you want no hard feelings later, you go look with your own eyes. Call it out to me. I'll at least tell you what's worth taking."
So Fresh moved to where the Wabulgwi's rewards lay. He checked the reward options and called them out.
"Slastone Candy."
Won-goo, mid-drag on his cigarette, bellowed the instant the words left Fresh's mouth.
"Son of a—! Why does that damn Slastone Candy show up every single time? Is there some kind of supply surplus or what?"
Oblivious or indifferent, Fresh calmly read out the next entry.
"Next is Rumpus's Dumbbell."
"Pass on that too. What is with these rewards?"
"Next one's the Wabulgwi's Capsule. Maybe this one's the best of the lot?"
Won-goo's eyes went round as saucers.
"Hey! That one! That one!"