The Signal of Despair
The difficulty is fucking ridiculous. Even as I grumbled, I diligently worked away. By the time Yeonhee had cleared the area, I managed to craft five more Skeleton Bombs to replace the ones I'd used up. My proficiency was still low, so making even one took quite a while.
'Fifty should be enough no matter what happens...'
I swept every goblin corpse I saw straight into my inventory, and we pressed forward.
"It's not as bad as I thought..."
Since this was Yeonhee's first disaster relief operation, she'd been incredibly tense at the start. But now her body was finally loosening up. Hmm... I bet most of the other hunters felt the same way. Was that complacency what made the situation spiral out of control?
'We'll find out soon enough.'
The path toward the center was relatively clear, but the sight of bubbles rising from the lizardmen bodies exposed to the poisonous mist was an unsettling sign. Yeonhee kept summoning and dismissing her weaker summons in rotation, but she didn't seem particularly strained.
Glug glug—
"Ugh— Pass me the antidote—"
Yeonhee made a face like she'd bitten into a lemon, but she kept steadily downing the antidote. As for the sonic attacks...
"Ilwol, these earplugs are amazing! The sonic waves just sound like a flute now. When did you even prepare these?"
'Heh...'
Back when we left Gu Chang-ro, I'd secretly snipped a handful of Wangwang's fur with scissors and shaped them into earplug form in advance. The fluffy texture made them easy to craft. Most people probably had no idea that earplugs made from Wangwang's fur performed far better than anything you could buy on the market.
'Isn't knowing these little tips one of a regressor's greatest privileges?'
It didn't take long before we reached the center, where a massive battle was already raging. Since we were now fully within range of my senses, I could accurately gauge the scale of both enemies and allies.
Swoosh!!
Kikigigi—!!
I could feel all kinds of weapons slicing, tearing, and exploding against the monsters. The thinner concentration of poison mist suggested they'd significantly reduced the number of spore snails as well.
The monster count had dropped below five hundred, while over seven hundred hunters remained—even with the injured steadily retreating. Considering a disaster alert had been triggered in the heart of Seoul, that might seem like a small number. But for a localized Stage One alert, it was actually an impressive turnout. After all, many hunters had already entered dungeons or left for expeditions in other regions.
'Is this the end?'
No more monsters were emerging from the gate situated underground.
'Hmm...'
Of course, I was deliberately dragging my feet as much as possible.
'My gut feeling is still bad...'
But the hunters aggressively pushing forward up ahead looked completely at ease, even from behind. The C-grades in particular were just giving orders without lifting a finger themselves.
'The woman who used the alias Helen? She's here too. And that one... No Hayun from the Bijeon Guild? It's been a while, haha...'
The woman I'd briefly teamed up with in the Goblin Dungeon. The talkative man named Hyun-seok and the woman named Jin-gyeong were with her as well. They bickered constantly but were still doing their part quite diligently. It was also pretty entertaining to see No Hayun in her bratty early days before she became a named hunter.
On the other hand, some people were making complete fools of themselves.
"Cough! Antidote!! Me first!!"
Han Eulmin was demanding antidotes from the support hunters like they were his personal property. His body was already covered in bubbles, but strangely, the lower half of his face hadn't been affected—he kept flapping his mouth nonstop.
But the man distributing masks and antidotes in proper order ignored him completely.
"Fuck!! What the hell are you doing?! Give it to me now!!"
"Who the hell are you to speak so rudely? Are you insane?"
"You son of a bitch, do you even know who I am?!"
"If a bug-covered bastard like you dropped dead, no one would even notice. Let's hear it then. How impressive are you exactly? What, are you the president's son or something?"
"Khh... F-fine, just give me the antidote!!"
"Fuck off, you idiot. Hey!! Just leave this bastard to die!!"
Han Eulmin, who had thrown a tantrum instead of waiting his turn, happened to run into a C-grade hunter and ended up pushed far back in line. The comment about letting him die probably wasn't serious, but I had to agree that a guy like him needed to suffer a bit.
'Ugh, what a pathetic piece of shit. He was already like this in his rookie days. Tsk tsk. So he still had both arms at this point?'
I remembered running a dungeon with him once back when I was unaffiliated in my previous life. Even then, he'd been stuck at D-grade, missing an arm, and his personality had been just as trash. A lunatic with the delusional goal of finding an elixir to regrow his arm.
And the one who handed an antidote to Han Eulmin—currently on his knees, head pressed to the ground, fists trembling—was none other than...
"Here's an antidote..."
Our Yeonhee.
"Ugh..."
Han Eulmin snatched it without so much as a thank you and gulped it down desperately. Then he asked the departing Yeonhee for her name.
"......"
Of course, Yeonhee pretended not to hear and continued distributing the remaining antidotes, carrying on her good deeds. Han Eulmin shouted after her several times, but she ignored him just the same.
"You lot... Once we're out, find out who that woman is. Got it?"
The three men collapsed nearby with him only rolled their eyes and glared silently at Han Eulmin.
"Y-you're not answering? You bastards! Want me to tell my father?"
"...Understood..."
'Something must've happened between them.'
The murderous looks in their eyes were quite vicious. It seemed Han Eulmin had done something to his own companions. Probably stole the mask hanging on his chin from them, or abandoned them to save himself in a crisis. In the end, they were all lying there together.
"Use these as earplugs..."
When Yeonhee returned after distributing all the extra antidotes, her face looked incredibly satisfied.
"Hehe..."
'I don't get it...'
Finding joy in helping others... It was an emotion I'd never experienced in my entire life. I'd only ever lived to satisfy my own desires, and I'd done pretty well for myself. Then one woman saved my life, and everything changed.
Reborn as I was... I found joy in helping her. Even as a skeleton.
She approached me with an expectant look on her face. I stroked her head while never letting my guard down. And it wasn't long before my senses, spread out in a twenty-meter radius, detected something alien that hadn't been there moments before.
'There's... something...'
A bipedal entity that had leaped up from underground was moving at terrifying speed. The blurry sensation it gave off through my senses could only mean one thing.
'Stealth type...!'
Crack—
Something massive opened up on the face of the monster hidden within the poisonous mist, and it swallowed the heads of several isolated people whole.
Crunch—!!
Hunters were collapsing one by one after losing their heads, but the poison mist that hadn't fully cleared yet prevented the others from detecting it.
'Fast. And strong.'
It could instantly devour the head of a hunter whose defenses were bolstered by equipment and whose physical abilities far surpassed those of an ordinary human after leveling up? It was an insane monster. The kind that would require at least two or three C-grade hunters at the upper end of their rank to hold it off from the front line before anyone else could even try to fight it.
It wasn't something we could handle right now. I had no memory of such a monster from my previous life either. We were still some distance away, but at that thing's speed, an encounter would be over in an instant.
I gripped Yeonhee's hand tightly.
'We need to run!!'
I'd never squeezed this hard before, so she must have understood my intention clearly. Feeling my grip, she flinched at the sudden pain and looked at me. Her expression quickly darkened.
"Run?!"
"Clackclackclackclackclack!!!!"
I shook my head frantically, clacking my teeth together. Only then did she look around and realize something had gone terribly wrong.
A few hunters with sharp senses were already slowly backing away from the center. But when I tried to scoop her up in my arms, Yeonhee shook her head fiercely and said,
"Ilwol, we have to fight!! If we don't kill it here and let it escape outside—"
I didn't need to hear the rest.
'Fighting is something you do with an opponent you can at least trade blows with, Yeonhee... This is a massacre!'
Before I could even finish the thought, Yeonhee pulled a black whistle from her inventory and blew on it with all her might.
Piiiiiiiiiiii———
The most dreaded signal among those agreed upon by hunters echoed across the battlefield. Signal Number Four. Its meaning was crystal clear.
-Run if you don't want to die-
Thankfully, Yeonhee didn't recklessly charge at the monster.
"Run right now—!!"
—!!!
The hunters didn't ask why or what they were running from. Blowing the Number Four whistle as a prank was punishable by life in prison. It was a signal reserved exclusively for absolute, life-threatening crises. If you heard it, you got the hell out first and asked questions later.
Hunters scattered in every direction at once. The unidentified monster stopped hunting only the isolated prey and began devouring the fleeing hunters at will.
Kiiiiiiiiiiii—
They say bad luck always comes in pairs. Another new monster had finished its cooldown and resumed its sonic attacks.
-Khhrrrrr!!-
-Ugh! Run, you idiot!! Run!!-
-Aaaagh!! My arm!!-
-Serves that idiot right.
Chaos erupted across the battlefield, but since the hunters were spreading out in all directions, it seemed we'd avoided a massive death toll. However, hundreds of lower-grade hunters whose movements had been slowed by the sonic waves still remained trapped in the poisonous mist, along with five C-grade hunters who couldn't bring themselves to abandon them.
Those five hunters each brought out their strongest cards. Powerful mana rippled from the weapons in their hands.
'Sword and shield, spear, hammer, rapier, and... cards? The card user might be useful. But damn, what a uselessly balanced group.'
Out of the five remaining hunters, four were close-combat warrior types. The last one, the card user, was a ranged physical attacker. Without a clear target, he wouldn't be able to exert much power either.
'So these five were the C-grades who died. Goddammit!'
Even if they'd stayed behind with good intentions to help others, from my perspective they were pathetic fools.
'Can't even protect your own lives, what the hell!'
Yeonhee fell into that same category, yet strangely, I didn't feel even the slightest resentment toward her.
'Guess I'm the crazy one here... heh.'
[Calm] has been activated.
I calmed my excitement and calculated coldly. The path to survival.
'...Alright. That method might actually give us a chance.'