Chapter 196
Chapter 196
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 196
Chapter Title: The Stolen Golden Maned Horse
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“Ugh! I can’t just take this lying down.”
Tritonias wasn’t some fool—he hadn’t earned his S-rank hunter status solely through the power of his ‘blessing.’
Chased by Bunny Bunny, he had deliberately taken a kick to get flung off the ship. The moment he touched the grotesque sea of blood, flesh, and bone—not the real ocean—he felt his strength returning and decided to play his trump card.
“My constellation! Father, Lord of the Great Ocean! Your enemy is right here, defiling this sea! Lend me your power now!”
Pwoooo!
Tritonias pulled something like a horn pipe from his inventory and blew into it immediately. Waves and whirlwinds began raging around the Golden Maned Horse.
From within them emerged legendary sea creatures that didn’t belong in Earth’s oceans, leaping out to charge at the demons of the Slaughter King atop the Golden Maned Horse.
“Scylla! Giant Octopus! Kelpie! Swordfish! Merman Swordsmen! Annihilate those who defile the sea!”
“Hmm… yeah, now that’s more like a constellation battle. Hahahahaha!”
“The Laistrygon Legion will be back soon, and the Sky Island in Korea! Hunters from Japan’s special forces unit will come as reinforcements! Your leisure ends there! Ugh!”
Splash!
The pastor, who had been opening portals on the ship’s deck to command the demons, smirked as if he’d seen Tritonias’s counterattack coming.
But Tritonias wasn’t backing down either. He blocked Bunny Bunny’s attacks alongside the other sea creatures, maneuvering toward waters more favorable to him for a superior fightback.
“Arrogant fool! Did you really think you could beat me in five minutes?”
[Poof… the sea, huh. Didn’t see that coming.]
Thwung!
Splash! Splash!
Tritonias and Bunny Bunny exchanged blows while sprinting across the ocean surface.
Though he’d been getting one-sidedly pushed before, now in the ‘sea,’ Tritonias brimmed with confidence that he absolutely wouldn’t lose. He handled the situation with skill.
He didn’t just run atop the waves—he absorbed impacts from attacks, diving into the depths or submerging for ambushes, fully exploiting his home turf advantage.
[Poof. Guess I won’t get to taste that S-rank fish after all.]
“Too bad for you. So, how many minutes left? Looks like your time’s almost up.”
[Hmm, not much. But don’t worry. Poof. You guys are still the idiots here… You still don’t get why he only hired me for five minutes, do you?]
Bunny Bunny stood on the ship with arms crossed, gazing down at Tritonias with a meaningful smile.
Despite the condescending tone explaining why the pastor had only hired him for five minutes, Tritonias still hadn’t caught on.
“Five minutes? Who cares about that crap.”
[I see. Poof~ Already four minutes gone. Guess you can’t be a smart friend after all. You know the ‘sea,’ but not the ship’s condition.]
“The ship?”
At Bunny Bunny’s words, Tritonias glanced at the Golden Maned Horse—and something seemed off.
The ship looked like it was slowly sinking into the sea of flesh and blood.
Shocked, he dove underwater to check the bottom again, but there was nothing there. It was as if space itself had been sliced away.
So what the hell was happening to his Golden Maned Horse?
“What the hell are you doing right now?”
[Poof~ Beats me? One thing’s for sure—that ‘Pastor Lee’ on the ship is way smarter than you. Anyway, 40 seconds left. No more fighting, so time for me to clock out. Suffer in helplessness, son of the sea.]
“You bastard!”
Splash! Splash!
As things spiraled far beyond expectations, Tritonias raced across the sea in panic toward the ship.
He swung his spear, briefly cleaving through the realm of blood and flesh to peer beyond.
Below wasn’t seawater—it was another ‘star’ he’d never seen before.
A barren wasteland, rivers of blood and flesh flowing under a blazing red sun, a world teeming with demons and beasts devouring countless piled-up corpses and meat.
He knew its identity without deeper thought.
It was the Slaughter King constellation’s core dungeon. Only then did Tritonias realize Pastor Lee’s scheme.
All the probing actions had seemed like a surprise assault to take out the ship first, but it was all bluffing to hide the plan to hijack the entire vessel.
“You crazy son of a…! Pastor Leeeeee!”
“Heh heh, Mr. Bunny Bunny, you could at least respect the contract’s time limit, you know?”
[Poof! It’s all over anyway, and you’ve given that guy despair. Isn’t that enough?]
Tritonias scrambled aboard, glaring at Pastor Lee, but the man responded indifferently.
Everything had gone according to his scheme. They’d overthought and predicted it wrong, wasting all their time and chances.
At this rate, the Golden Maned Horse would plunge into the blood pool and enter the ‘constellation’s’ core dungeon. They’d been completely played.
‘Damn it… what now?’
[This is the Laistrygon Legion! Hastily returning, but delayed by enemy scavenger interference… Repeat.]
[Tritonias! Demons keep pouring into the ship! W-we know you’re fighting on deck, but we need backup fast!]
[This is Olympus Guild’s Korea branch team. Ah! We’ll arrive in about ten minutes.]
“Heh heh heh, time’s up anyway. This ship, the humans, all the goods… I’ll put them to very, very~ good use. Tell Poseidon that. And~ the exit’s to the left.”
Pastor Lee’s mocking words rang out. Only seconds remained. He and the dispatched Olympus Guild members had danced in the palm of his hand.
The ship’s surroundings began glowing blood-red, sinking faster like it was collapsing.
Probably some spell or magic that wouldn’t wait for the whole thing to submerge.
“Damn it!”
Amid frustration, confusion, self-reproach for not being more cautious, and the agony of abandoning comrades who served the same constellation Poseidon, Tritonias gritted his teeth. He gripped his trident, glaring at Pastor Lee and Bunny Bunny beside him.
Only seconds until the ship vanished entirely.
He could escape now and live, but he couldn’t abandon the countless comrades and hunters inside.
“Huuu… Victory to Poseidon! Lords of the Pantheon who have descended here once more! Watch over us! Staff of the Golden Maned Horse, hear me! I, Tritonias, will save you all!”
This was undoubtedly the worst choice.
But he could never choose to flee alone.
Without him, the comrades and hunters left aboard would die cursing him in the core dungeon with no reinforcements—or become that mad ‘Pastor Lee’s’ guinea pigs for human experiments.
Tritonias couldn’t bear that.
Even if it was a gamble with abysmal odds, he had to fight.
“Glory to Olympus!”
With his shout, blood-red energy enveloped the Golden Maned Horse, and they—all of them, blood and flesh included—vanished without a trace, leaving only the vast ocean.
The belatedly arriving assault ships and transport craft searched for the Golden Maned Horse but found nothing, reduced to screams of despair.
It was a resounding victory for Pastor Lee and the Slaughter King’s minions.
***
Fortress ship Golden Maned Horse. Even excluding hunters and combat personnel, it carried 15,000 aboard. Losing the entire vessel was no small matter.
The material loss was incalculable, but worse was the disappearance of elite personnel painstakingly nurtured by constellation Poseidon—and the massive blow to Olympus Guild’s reputation.
As news spread not just across Japan and Asia but worldwide, the Slaughter King’s name—which had been fading into obscurity—resurfaced, along with ‘Apostle Pastor Lee.’
His whereabouts after robbing Olympus Guild blind were unknown, though he was likely up to something inside the core dungeon.
The ship-less Laistrygon Legion landed in Japan, scouring for the vessel and exacting revenge by rooting out scavengers like rats.
But the Slaughter King-affiliated scavengers, tipped off by ‘Pastor Lee,’ had long gone into hiding. In the end, only the other scavengers suffered.
“Wow… what the hell happened?”
The news reached Yoo Seongwon, who’d been enjoying peaceful days in Korea.
It was so shocking that Elder Baek Ga-yeon immediately called an emergency meeting—proof of its gravity.
“Ah, you’re finally here. Sit down. Something enormous has happened.”
“…How big a mess is this? The news is blowing up…”
“Not on the level of Sky Island, but still—a treasure of Poseidon’s forces, the mobile sea fortress Golden Maned Horse, got snatched wholesale by that guy. You know it, right?”
“…No way I’d know. It never came near our waters. Checking Wikipedia now… holy crap! What is this? It’s bigger than an aircraft carrier? It’s basically an island floating on the sea? How do you steal something this huge?”
Yoo Seongwon gawked at the Golden Maned Horse info online, doubting the news all over again.
Humanity’s largest fortress ship, treasure of Poseidon’s apostles, carrying 15,000 souls—how could anyone steal it? The whole damn thing! It defied belief.
“The details are still under investigation. Too few witnesses or info on what happened. The assault ships that deployed, Laistrygon Legion members reviewing comms logs… only combat records, they say.”
The Golden Maned Horse had vanished into the core dungeon, leaving scant clues.
Tritonias had realized it almost too late to warn anyone outside, and inside, S-rank hunters were racing to protect the engine room and central control while blocking Slaughter King demons rampaging on deck.
“Anyway, what’s clear is ‘Pastor Lee’ pulled some trick to poof! the floating Golden Maned Horse somewhere.”
“Sounds insane, but it’s real… What a massive incident. Stolen, just like that?”
“It’s not just theft. Sparks will fly our way too. Those guys aren’t exactly on bad terms with us, are they?”
“Ah… right.”
Their momentum had cooled lately, and with barriers from the Heavenly Army Commander and other legions keeping them in check, but Slaughter King forces originally operated in North Korea and Manchuria.
That deep Korean tie meant Korea’s top hunter, Yoo Seongwon, would inevitably get dragged in somehow.
“Ah… headache. Thinking about getting nagged again just pisses me off more.”
“I already told that hunter lady Diomedea there’ll be a summons soon, so prepare your mind. No dodging this one.”
“Even if I act on my whims, I’m not that clueless. Sigh~ Gotta prep files on Pastor Lee and Slaughter King crew to hand over. And a top-tier medical wheelchair too, probably.”
“Still sticking to the recovery concept?”
“Just a bad feeling about it.”
Yoo Seongwon’s bad feeling wasn’t abstract—it was the worry they might dump this mess on him to fix.
That’s why he immediately contacted his staff and knights, preparing to answer Olympus Guild’s summons.