The Hunt at Mt. Yuhyang
Shelter Slow was run in a rather interesting way.
The operating policy of every shelter was the same everywhere. Every shelter across the world collected the same entrance fee, and in return, a person received protection inside for a set period of time. That was the fundamental principle behind all of them.
Put another way, though, it also meant that shelters couldn't care less about anything beyond that. If a major incident or bloodbath broke out inside, the administrators might step in — but even then, only if there were proper witnesses or hard evidence.
On top of that, every Shelter Director had a different temperament, and their management styles varied accordingly. Some, like Kane, had ambitions of climbing the ladder and involved themselves actively in shelter affairs, while others let the place rot in near-total neglect.
Slow was one of the latter. Its Shelter Director had never once shown their face, not a single time to this day. Administrators rarely patrolled the place either, and as a result, beastman tourists were almost nonexistent.
"The atmosphere here is really different," Jo Mu-sa remarked.
"That's because only Ganjeolgot coalition members use this place. Feels kind of like a military installation, doesn't it?"
"It does."
"There's no need to take in big crowds like other shelters. The idea is to have exactly what you need, done right. In exchange, the security's excellent."
"Good security? I don't see any administrators, though?"
"Ganjeolgot handles the management instead. They're way harsher than the administrators."
"Ah... so that's why."
"And entry's restricted to Ganjeolgot personnel only. You saw at the entrance, right? There's an extra checkpoint here."
Because Pacific had cleared things with them in advance, Won-goo's crew passed straight through. Without that heads-up, there were cases where people paid the entrance fee only to get kicked out right at the gate where the shelter proper began.
"Good thing we got here fast," Pacific said, his face brightening as he wheeled out to meet them.
"Yeah. You made it."
"Your timing is insane. Any later and things would've gotten ugly. Let's go."
"Go where?"
"We have to leave right now."
"Right now?"
"Yeah. It's urgent."
"You couldn't keep them under control, huh?"
"It's pissing me off. Those bastards kept whining about why should they have to wait, and now they've all swarmed off to Mt. Yuhyang. I barely managed to stop them from going to catch it this instant before coming here."
"Just like we expected. Let's get moving," Won-goo said, turning to look back at the rest of the crew. They nodded in return. It meant they were ready to depart immediately.
Mt. Yuhyang stood taller and broader than Mt. Cheonchu. It was easily twice the size, which meant there was far more to be harvested from its depths. A mountain that big was bound to spawn all manner of monsters, and that in turn meant abundant resources to be mined.
That was why Mt. Yuhyang could be called one of the core financial arteries of the Ganjeolgot coalition.
Pacific scaled the mountain with remarkable ease despite the wheelchair. Even near-sheer cliff faces posed him no problem at all.
"Son of a—"
He spat a curse the moment they reached the rendezvous point. Not a single one of the survivors who were supposed to be there remained.
"Those insane bastards..."
"Did those idiots even understand what they were told about Tadersen?" Won-goo asked.
"I told them. Apparently they didn't listen properly. They must've lost their minds, itching to die like that."
"Is Tadersen really that much of a pushover? I heard yer explanation, but having never seen the thing, it's hard to picture," Montage said, drawing closer.
"You've never seen one either, hyung-nim?"
"Never a monster like that in our territory. Kiss! Oy, Kiss!"
"Yes, sir!"
"You ever run into a Tadersen?"
"No, sir, I haven't."
"So that's how it is. Anyway, it's every bit as nasty as described. Hyung-nim, any read on how long ago it started moving?"
"Bout two hours?"
"What? Two hours? You're sure about that?"
Pacific's eyes went wide as he stared at Montage.
"Whoa. Are you callin' me a liar, you little—?"
"I'm not calling you a liar, hyung-nim, I'm just worked up about this."
"So what if it's two hours?"
"Two hours means the thing started moving the moment it descended this mountain. These bastards looked at it and thought easy money. Kheheheh. Pacific, you've gotten real stupid, you know that?"
When Won-goo burst out laughing, Fresh laughed right along with him.
"Ah. So that's what you meant? And here I thought you were callin' me a liar, dang it."
"Sorry. I got a little heated."
Pacific bowed his head.
"Forget it. A man's entitled to get worked up now and then. Anyway — Gangwon-do, you said?"
"Hey, that's my home region."
"Whereabouts in Gangwon-do?"
"Yeongwol."
"Yeongwol? Well, I'll be. My mother's family's from around there. I went all the time as a kid."
"Really? Then we're practically from the same hometown. Well, I'll be."
"None of that now. You two can hold your long-lost family reunion later. Let's move."
"But ain't this whole thing well and truly busted now? Can we still go catch it like this?"
"We set this whole thing up expecting it might come to this. So it's fine."
"He's right. I'm coming along this time too, so it'll be fine," Pacific chimed in.
Won-goo and Fresh both stared at him in surprise.
"You sure about this? You retired."
"Once won't kill me."
"Don't push yourself."
"I'm telling you, once is fine. Besides, these bastards have irritated me beyond all reason."
"Fair warning, though — even if you join in, there's no reward split for you. We already settled all the terms."
"I'm the one who brokered this whole operation. I took my cut as the middleman, so I'm good."
"Works for us."
"A rare chance to see Pacific hit the field in person, eh?" Fresh said.
"Follow me. I know where Tadersen's nest is."
With that, Pacific rolled out in front.
"He'll... be alright, won't he?"
Montage watched Pacific's retreating back with eyes that were half worry. That the man was no ordinary patient had already been confirmed on the climb — no ordinary person could scale a mountain that treacherous so effortlessly.
But climbing a mountain and hunting a monster were two very different problems.
As Pacific moved in his wheelchair, he first pulled the needle from the IV line he always kept running. Then he reached into his Subspace Backpack and began drawing out his equipment.
Rolling the wheels forward, he smoothly extracted each piece from the bag and strapped it on, one after another. The speed and precision of it were astonishing. With every ten meters or so of progress, another piece of armor appeared — knees, forearms, shins, shoulders, chest, stomach.
Like a baseball catcher, he layered on protective gear of every description, and last of all, a helmet. His weapon was a claw-shaped dagger strapped to his forearm — a blade large enough to cover his entire elbow, yet, surprisingly, not particularly long where it extended past the guard. Just enough to shadow the tips of his fingers.
Once his gear was fully in place, Pacific drew out three syringes and injected them. One went into a vein in his neck; the other two he drove deep into his chest.
"Boss, you think he'll be okay?" Fresh sidled up and asked.
"Who knows."
"For all we know we're hauling out a corpse."
"That bastard's nowhere near as helpless as all that. He's not the kind to die easy."
"Still, he stacked three doses at once? Isn't that going all-in a bit hard?"
"When it comes to Reinforcement Pills, that guy's more of an expert than any of us. It's like asking Neoguri-hyung whether he knows what cigarettes taste like, so fold that worry up and put it away. Besides, that Kiss fella came along this time too. That's a healer who'll grab you by the scruff and drag you back down from the very threshold of Valhalla. So quit worrying."
While they talked, they soon crossed into Tadersen's territory.
You have entered Tadersen's domain!
PKRAAAANG! PKRAAAANG!
The sound that greeted their entry was like a naval cannon going off.
The armored monster. It was Tadersen's roar. Tadersen was a monster born in armor and dying in it.
Its primary weapon was its entire body. Like a practitioner of whole-body martial arts, it fought with every inch of itself, and it fought with mastery. The more combat experience it accumulated, the more refined Tadersen's movements became.
The one mercy was that the Tadersen haunting this mountain was not the same one that had appeared at the entrance of Buri Island. Tadersen was a monster that revived where it died. Which meant the one that had emerged on Mt. Yuhyang was an entirely new specimen.
Tadersen's truly vicious trait was its capacity for learning and adaptation. It remembered the moment of its death, and upon reviving, it retained the memory of that trauma and developed a degree of resistance to it. It wasn't to the point of outright immunity, but growing resistance was terrifying all the same.
It meant that with every resurrection, it became more of a monster.
"Boss, so what's Tadersen's weakness? How do we take it down?"
"What weakness?"
"...?"
"I told you. We go and we hunt it."
"You were serious about that?"
Fresh's face flickered with faint disbelief.
"Have you ever seen me joke around about an operation?"
"No... but I figured there'd at least be a plan."
"I don't know everything, you know. I just know a little more than most people."
"..."
"If I'd actually known about Tadersen back then, I'd have dropped everything on Buri Island and gone for it."
"It looks pretty brutal, though."
"I know how to kill it."
"How?"
"You beat it to death. Even when it looks like the damage isn't landing, it's all landing."
By the time he finished speaking, they had entered the field of battle.
A multinational mob of survivors had Tadersen surrounded, piling on attacks from every side. A fair number of them were already sprawled across the ground, and Tadersen, roaring, kept shrugging off everything thrown at it.
"Listen up. You can see for yourselves — Tadersen's good at unorthodox attacks too, so it's hard to come out completely untouched."
PAAANG!
A heavy, percussive impact split the air. Tadersen's fist hammered into the side of a survivor's head with a sound like a sledgehammer on an anvil.
Even an Enhanced Survivor couldn't withstand it. The side of his skull caved in, and he crumpled to the ground without so much as a twitch.
"You see that?"
"You want us to just... eat that head-on?"
Fresh and every survivor who'd followed Won-goo here stared at him wide-eyed. They all understood this was the moment to shut up and listen. Even Pacific, who'd been chattering away at the front of the column, had gone quiet.
"Take it flush and that's what happens. Unless you're in the enhancement line, a clean solid hit means game over."
"Then what do we do?"
"Dodge the vitals when you take your hits. Everything else, you can afford to absorb — bones can be mended later."
"You're planning for a long fight, then?"
"Exactly. There's no one-shotting this thing to begin with."
"When do we attack?"
Yeongyeong asked.
"When our turn comes, of course."
Won-goo let his gaze drift casually over the multinational survivors.
"...?"
"Once every last one of those bastards is dead, it's our turn."
"Fighting alongside them would—"
"These are the blokes who charged in first to grab the whole reward for themselves, no? Why should we be watching their backs?"
"We shouldn't. Message received, loud and clear."
There was no signed contract between them, and no bond of loyalty deep enough to demand one. Strangers? No — they were something worse than strangers.
The multinational survivors hadn't waited. They had charged in first, and in doing so had slighted the survivors joining from behind on every possible front.
"Let's observe in silence, then. There's nothing else worth watching. Watch Tadersen's movements. However erratically the thing fights, every fighter has patterns."