Arrogance (1) — The Rift
He had thought it was just a sluggish boar, charging in however it pleased.
But the beast slammed into the ground with absurd precision.
Thud!
A shockwave rolled through the earth, as if the ground itself had sunk.
The goblins lost their footing.
The boar fixed the reeling goblins with the cold eyes of a butcher, then drove one forepaw forward.
It shot straight ahead like an arrow.
One of the goblins at the front took the charge head-on and was blasted into the air, shrieking.
“Kik, kieeek!”
The goblin’s body, flung away like a baseball, crashed into the tree behind it.
Crack.
The impact was followed by the dull, horrible sound of bones breaking.
It was nothing like the movement he had seen a moment ago.
Nothing like the information he had gathered until now.
The boar did not simply rush forward blindly. It struck the ground to stop its prey’s movement, then moved again.
The hunter goblins grasped the danger and hurried to hide behind the trees.
The boar immediately changed direction and swept sideways in a wide arc.
The moment it vanished from sight, a goblin hiding behind a trunk peeked out.
And in that instant, the boar burst from concealment as if it had been waiting for exactly that moment.
...No way. There was nothing like this in the data.
He had investigated enough before facing an enemy for the first time.
But the movement he had just seen through the interface was not in the records.
He understood it instinctively.
That boar could not be treated as the same kind of creature as the one he had faced before.
The goblins could not keep standing around in the forest forever.
Thud!
It did not miss even the faintest breath.
Collision.
Overwhelming mass.
It crushed bone and broke will.
Unlike before, the boar now seemed to be revealing its true strength at last.
As if the numbers he had calculated meant nothing, its charge trampled over every escape route he had prepared.
Each time the forest shook, goblin screams burst into the air.
The huge body of the black-skinned boar intercepted the fleeing goblins with frightening precision.
That thing... it's learning?
Its movements were becoming shorter and tighter, with no wasted motion.
Its eyes glowed red with killing intent.
And at the corners of its mouth, a faint curve had formed, almost like a smile.
It was hunting the goblins.
It shook their sight, choked off their breath, and measured the paths of their escape with those eyes.
New sights. Unknown data.
“Fall back!”
Dohyun gave the order to the goblins through the interface.
But it was already too late.
Or maybe that was exactly the wrong move.
Now that it had shown itself, the boar moved as though it intended to reveal its true strength at full speed.
The force of the impact was far greater than the data he had just obtained.
Crash-boom!
As it swept past, the scene turned into a spray of blood.
The goblins fell everywhere, bent and broken.
Keie... kieeek....
One goblin with a broken leg trembled in a cold sweat and groaned.
Whether it was lucky or unlucky, the boar clamped its jaws around a goblin that remained.
It did not tear into it or swallow it.
Instead, it shook the goblin deliberately, making the pain worse.
The goblin wailed.
Kieeeek!
The boar let the cry echo through the forest on purpose.
Its gaze swept the surroundings.
This bastard...!
He understood the purpose behind that look.
It was searching for the other hidden goblins.
It had left the victim alive on purpose.
The boar listened to the goblin’s screams for a moment, almost as if savoring them.
Then, as though it had no interest in such cries at all, it turned its head away.
The boar’s reddish eyes turned toward the far side of the forest.
Toward the path the goblins had crossed.
More precisely, toward the direction of the Dungeon.
At that moment, Dohyun, watching the scene through the interface, felt a chill run down his spine.
That thing...
It knew.
It knew where the goblins had come from, and where they had to go back to.
Then Heok-o asked, “Dragon, what are you looking at?”
...What is the true identity of that black pig?
“Hm? A beast that’s just about to become a Yokai. Ah, and let me warn you, fool dragon, that thing’s going to target your home.”
What...?
“Dragon, you don’t know your own worth.”
Heok-o’s words carried a strange, knowing weight.
And then Dohyun noticed a change in the gaze of the surviving goblin.
The beast was moving.
Because the boar had not killed it, Dohyun realized the truth immediately.
It’s coming.
With a goblin clamped in its jaws, the boar cut straight through the forest.
At the edge of his vision, the Dungeon entrance came into view.
His heart dropped.
That boar knew the condition for entering the Dungeon.
Rumble...
The boar kept running without pause.
There was only the thought of running in its eyes.
There was no killing intent.
The moment a living creature approached the entrance in that state, the barrier would be nullified.
Watching the beast come closer with those loud, pounding footsteps, Dohyun swallowed hard and hesitated for a moment.
It was a command he had to give.
As the commander and the Dungeon’s master, he made the decision.
...Take your own life.
It was the order he judged to be best.
Because it was sent through thought rather than speech, it felt even heavier.
...The moment he gave the command, his hand trembled.
Yes. This was his will.
Now that he had become a dragon.
He could not afford to shake anymore.
It was the right order.
If the goblin lived, the entrance’s barrier would be nullified.
Then could he stop that boar?
Impossible.
He gave the order from a rational judgment.
But it was an order he did not want to give.
The goblin inside the interface...
Like a living thing, not a machine.
With a face full of pain, sorrow, and a faint sense of duty...
It ignored its broken leg and forced its upper body up.
Thud.
The goblin did not stop.
Until the very end.
Following the command...
It thrust its own neck into the boar’s spear-like tusks.
Blood splashed.
The small body drew in a few ragged breaths, then went still.
...And in that instant—
Crash!
It had been tactically correct.
That made it all the more cruel.
In the end, the barrier held.
Thanks to that, the boar that reached the Dungeon entrance was stopped cold.
Stones fell, and the entrance trembled.
It had rammed in so hard that the soil around it crumbled down.
If it had continued charging, the goblins racing from deep inside the Dungeon would never have been able to stop it in time.
He confirmed that the decision had been rationally correct, but that did not make his heart any lighter.
...I didn’t know the word “right answer” could be this filthy.
With the sacrifice of one, the Dungeon would survive another day.
Huuuugh-!
It exhaled a long, anger-laced breath.
Then it chewed the dead goblin to pieces inside its mouth.
Crunch.
It had failed once.
But there was no sign of retreat in its eyes.
After grinding the corpse like gum and swallowing it, the beast glared at the barrier with visible regret, then slowly backed away.
Dohyun felt it in his bones.
That boar—
It will come again.
In an instant, dozens had been trampled and wiped out.
That was why it had to die.
As his face twisted with killing intent, Heok-o asked with a laugh, “Dragon, what happened?”
One of my subordinates got hit.
“You mean the goblins? Ahh, so the black pig came after all?”
Yeah...
Heok-o spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Good choice. If you hadn’t done that, those goblins would’ve just become fertilizer for the forest.”
It sounded like praise, like reassurance.
As if it had seen everything.
Dohyun understood that this bastard had known and said nothing.
If you had told me earlier...
“Don’t look at me like that. I already warned you, didn’t I? Preparation is your responsibility.”
He was right.
From the beginning, he had said the forest here was no soft place.
Dohyun thought back over the information again.
It had hidden itself from the start.
It had looked like it couldn’t catch goblins.
And then.
They had been lured.
Utterly toyed with.
With cruel precision.
The goblins who had been sacrificed to his own inexperience pained him.
Even if they were expendable, he wanted to treat them as living beings, at the very least.
That was the line he had set for himself.
He could not let this pass in vain.
Looking at Heok-o, who seemed to know everything before his eyes, he asked, Heok-o, can that boar be killed?
“Kaaak—”
“If you don’t spill blood yourself, next time you’ll be eaten by something even bigger.”
Heok-o said it with pointed meaning.
...I know that too.
“You do? What a shame. Guess I’ll just be a spectator, then.”
It was a creature he had chosen to cooperate with, but it was hard to think of it as a true ally.
Dohyun sank into thought.
There might be sacrifices.
More might die.
But he had to take revenge.
That was his role as the Dungeon’s master.
He began preparing.
Heok-o looked at the goblins gathering near the entrance and asked, “Did you call the goblins back in?”
Yeah. It’s more dangerous to leave them outside.
He had ordered all the harvesting units back, leaving only the hunting squad out.
If it was not now, he did not know what kind of sacrifice he would be forced to make.
“Dragon, you’re soft. Those goblins are just made again over there, anyway.”
...I know.
He understood, but did not want to accept it.
Even if he knew they were expendable, he had his own line. He would not throw them away carelessly.
Until the boar is dead, harvesting stops.
“You?”
Heok-o’s tone was mocking.
It’s fine. The boar isn’t frightening.
Dohyun swept over the Dungeon’s newly mapped forest terrain, built from all the scouting they had done so far.
Considering the different regions in the forest, there was only one route the boar could take.
The surrounding territories and the cliffs.
There was only one path.
If they fought it head-on, they would lose.
But that was also an advantage.
The beast had no choice but to come through that route.
So there was a way to hunt the black pig.
As he recalled the new information gained from the battle, Dohyun replayed the boar’s movements several times in his mind.
He calculated both the failed outcomes and the successful ones.
Then he chose the option with the fewest sacrifices.
...There was no perfect choice.
Someone would pay for it.
He looked out over the ranks of goblins filling the forest.
More than a hundred of them.
Because goblins aren’t weak in every way.
He looked into their eyes.
Faint anger.
They had heard everything too.
Their eyes were different now.
They waited for his command with excited breaths.
Ugly-faced goblins, but full of resolve.
Even with bodies like children’s, in that moment they looked like Dungeon soldiers, like adults.
Goblin legion, today—
Dohyun climbed up onto the cavern himself and looked down at them, sending his will outward.
—we will hunt that bastard and win!
The goblins answered the Dungeon lord’s declaration by lifting the corners of their mouths.
Kieek!
Keeaek!
They were small, unimpressive goblins.
But in this moment, they were reliable.
I will break the black pig’s neck, no matter what.