The Ocean's Fury (3)
I stood up slowly, snapping the handcuffs and shackles as if they were nothing.
Unicorn's Protection
“Grab your gear!”
Seong Jaeyun clutched his mangled leg and shouted. The B-rank hunters from the Haetae Guild scrambled to gather their weapons. Being B-rank, their combat readiness was impressively fast.
“It won’t change anything.”
I scanned the Haetae Guild hunters with a smile. The power surging through every inch of my body was intoxicating. Right now, I was strong enough to shrug off a B-rank hunter’s attacks with my bare skin.
“Boss, what the hell is going on?”
“...I don’t know. For now, we kill this bastard.”
Seong Jaeyun’s leg had recovered, but there was no fixing the shattered morale that had plummeted along with it.
They had all witnessed it—how I’d been the one to get kicked, yet the one who delivered the blow had his own leg destroyed. Every single Haetae Guild hunter had seen it with their own eyes.
They didn’t know why, but I had undergone an awakening. I had met some unknown trigger and gained an overwhelming surge of power.
Is the tide turning?
The B-rank hunters from the Haetae Guild began to grow tense. Facing off against what had been a D-rank hunter, they hardened their expressions and lowered their centers of gravity.
“We’re doing this properly. That guy’s immune to the Lute-Shaped Bronze Dagger. If it’s a skill that boosts his stats, we need to figure out exactly how much it’s amplified before—”
Seong Jaeyun never finished his sentence.
Because I had already crossed the distance in a single step, appearing right in front of him.
Fast!
Seong Jaeyun twisted his body desperately. He barely managed to lean his torso sideways and dodge the fist flying toward his face.
…At least A-rank.
The vague aura I’d given off earlier had already felt close to S-rank. Seong Jaeyun realized this was no longer the time to play around.
If we’re not careful, we’re the ones who are going to die.
He should have realized it the moment the Lute-Shaped Bronze Dagger stopped working. They had been too complacent, enjoying the situation. Now they had become the prey being hunted.
“Fuck! You fucking insect, you worthless piece of shit!”
One of the Haetae Guild hunters detonated his mana. A B-rank explosion detonated right behind me.
BOOM—!
“Ah, that’s warm.”
It didn’t work on me at all. My body had grown so tough that I wondered just how high my Constitution stat had climbed.
“The moisture dries up pretty fast, huh?”
I shoved my face right into the heat of the explosion. I acted as if my sense of pain had vanished entirely, grinning cheekily.
“So this is what a B-rank from the Haetae Guild is like? How cute.”
Cute. So cute.
I openly provoked the Haetae Guild hunters.
Seong Jaeyun stopped the ones who were about to lash out.
“…This is a raid. Think of it as a boss monster raid.”
They had to move rationally. In this world, the one who survived was the winner. There would be plenty of time to mock me after victory was secured.
But I was already mocking them. Since I was certain of my victory, there was no reason to hold back.
“Boss monster? I’m the boss monster? Hahahaahaha!”
A monster was a beast. A beast that couldn’t think. Boss monsters were simply slightly stronger versions of regular ones.
To put me on the same level as those things was laughable.
“Fine. I’ll end this quickly. We were in the middle of clearing the Tower, after all.”
Even toying with them felt like a chore now. I decided to finish my revenge by killing every single Haetae Guild member as brutally as possible.
BOOM—!
Mana bombs exploded. Flashy skills poured out one after another. This was the full power of B-rank hunters.
“I was going easy on you earlier, you know that, right?”
I demonstrated super-high-speed movement. There was no way B-ranks could keep up.
“Y-you—!”
Thud. Thud! Crunch—!
“Ugh, ack!”
I slammed my fists into Seong Jaeyun’s eye, jaw, and solar plexus. Every single blow shattered his body further.
“Boss…!”
“R-run! Fuck!”
A few of the Haetae Guild members tried to escape. They were the quicker thinkers among the group.
But I was faster than they expected. The ones trying to leap from the 77th floor were caught effortlessly.
“Aaaargh…!”
“You can’t run. Even if you’re going to die, you die here.”
I had nearly died once. I was the type who never forgot a grudge. The Haetae Guild members would die here. By my hand. Without exception.
In the room I had left behind after rampaging for a while, dust hung thick in the air.
The Cheongryong Guild members, who had been practically abandoned, huddled together and moved toward a corner.
“Cough, cough!”
“Seung-a!”
The Cheongryong Guild members curled into balls. Having lost every last one of their stats, there was no way for them to escape this room. This was the best they could do.
Yi Cheongryong hid his daughter behind his back and used his own body to shield her from the shockwaves.
“Park Seonwoo! Do you want to watch the Cheongryong Guild members die?!”
“Ugh…!”
One of the Haetae Guild hunters dragged out a Cheongryong Guild member and held a blade to their throat, showing it to me.
The Cheongryong Guild hunters were now so weak that a single flick of a B-rank’s finger could kill them. They had been taken hostage.
I paused after driving my fist into the face of the Haetae Guild hunter who had abandoned his team to flee.
“My girlfriend.”
I checked on the limp Yun Jeonghui. She was nowhere to be seen. They must have decided she was too ugly and heavy to be useful as a hostage.
“Let Seung-a go!”
Instead, they had taken Yi Seung-a hostage. Yi Cheongryong, his arms severed, screamed from inside the room.
“How dare you…!”
It was a misunderstanding.
Yi Seung-a was not my girlfriend.
I had very specific tastes. I felt no attraction to women who looked kind and innocent.
Choi Daeun, who was fierce and prickly. Han Sora, who was cold and sharp. I wouldn’t admit it, but it was clear I had a masochistic preference.
If I shifted my perspective slightly, I could even include Yun Jeonghui in that range. There were related tags for it, after all.
“…M-my girlfriend…!”
Today wasn’t our one-month anniversary—it was our one-day anniversary. I thought of the girlfriend lying in the room and shed bloody tears.
Crunch—!
I crushed the head of the hunter I was holding. His skull shattered and brain matter leaked out.
I dipped my fingertips in the blood and drew a line from my eyes down to my chin.
Bloody tears.
“KIIIIIIIISSSSSSSAAAAAMAAAAA!!!”
I unleashed my rage. Unicorn's Protection responded to my fury.
The desire to save Yun Jeonghui! The will to protect a virgin! The unicorn gently pushed me forward from behind.
I vanished.
The sound…
It didn’t reach them.
The sound only arrived long after I had already moved.
The heads of every hunter except Seong Jaeyun exploded. It happened almost simultaneously.
BOOM—!
The 77th floor of the building shook. Every time I moved, the shockwaves made it feel like the entire building would collapse.
“Oh great hunters of the Haetae Guild, have you ever seen a boss monster like this before?”
My voice came from behind them. They couldn’t even react. Seong Jaeyun couldn’t breathe.
Overwhelming terror. It was more frightening than standing before an S-rank hunter.
A-am I going to die?
I didn’t want to die. Even though the situation made death inevitable, Seong Jaeyun desperately wanted to live.
Maybe if he begged for forgiveness, I would spare him. Maybe if he got on his knees, I would show mercy.
There was no trace of a man’s pride left in him. To survive this, he could throw his pride away as many times as necessary.
Seong Jaeyun somehow steadied his violently trembling neck and looked behind him. There I stood, shedding bloody tears.
He remembered it clearly—the sight of me crushing a man’s head and smearing the blood across my face.
He’s insane.
I had gone mad. He should have realized it from the way I usually spoke. From the moment I fearlessly provoked Yi Haewan, it was clear I wasn’t in my right mind…
I whispered softly.
“Do you want to live?”
Seong Jaeyun nodded frantically. I wrapped my hand around his throat.
“Shall we play a little Duty Game?”
“W-what kind of Duty Game…?”
I pointed at the corpses of the Haetae Guild hunters—nothing left but their torsos.
“…There are still twelve days left until we clear the 20th floor, right?”
The conditions of the bet were simple. Once per day, he would feed the zombies. The food would be human bodies.
Would he throw his comrades’ corpses to them, or would he offer his own body?
“If you say you’ll sacrifice yourself, I’ll send those corpses back to their families.”
“……”
He could throw away his morality if it meant surviving. That was the kind of man Seong Jaeyun was.
“O-once per day…?”
“Yep.”
He double-checked if his calculations were correct.
“Twelve people over twelve days…?”
“That’s right.”
“Then… you’ll let me live…?”
“Of course.”
I patted his back encouragingly.
“The Duty Game starts now.”
“…Ah, shit… *cough, cough.*”
“Oops.”
I scratched the back of my head. Seong Jaeyun collapsed.
“My bad.”
Seong Jaeyun couldn’t withstand my encouraging pat. A B-rank body was far too fragile. A massive hole had been punched through his weakened frame.
Seong Jaeyun gasped for air, wheezing violently. I hadn’t planned on killing him just yet.
“Could you keep this guy breathing for me?”
I decided to overlook my mistake. With great generosity, of course.
Unicorn's Protection—a skill that only activated when I wanted to protect a virgin. Its power had already been proven. Back when I was an F-rank hunter, it had let me shatter a Dark Knight. The effect was undeniable.
Moreover, it had only been level 1 back then. Now it was level 2. The stat amplification would be absolutely insane.
Power is overflowing.
There had been two women in the Cheongryong Guild. One was the rather pretty Yi Seung-a, daughter of the guild master Yi Cheongryong. The other was a fat, ugly woman who might as well have been a man.
I had remembered the names of the other Cheongryong Guild members after we exchanged introductions, but I had completely forgotten this woman’s name. So I didn’t even know what she was called.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected her to be a virgin. No matter how unattractive her face was, a woman was still a woman. A hole was a hole. As long as she didn’t have a dick between her legs, there would always be demand. That was simply how women worked.
Even if it was a piece of bread dropped on the ground or milk that had already gone bad, some men would still pick it up and eat it. Even knowing they’d get a stomachache the next day, their hands would still reach out. That was the tragedy of being born with a dick.
…No one touched her.
There had been a virgin in the Cheongryong Guild. A woman who still possessed her hymen—a pure maiden. Thanks to her, I had been able to trigger Unicorn's Protection and awaken.
If I had to put the sequence in order… I confirmed Unicorn's Protection had activated, then immediately unleashed The Ocean's Fury. I cleaned up the panicked Haetae Guild members one by one. That was about it.
“Are you all okay?”
I approached the Cheongryong Guild members. Using the Lute-Shaped Bronze Dagger I had taken from Seong Jaeyun, I released their sealed stats.
“Dad! Dad!”
The moment their stats returned, the Cheongryong Guild members regained their strength. They immediately began restoring Yi Cheongryong’s severed arm.
Grrrrr—
A new arm sprouted from Yi Cheongryong’s body. They hadn’t used a normal healing skill like a typical heal—they had employed a far higher-tier recovery skill to regenerate his body.
“This is the limit. Completely restoring it is impossible…”
The Cheongryong Guild supporter said as she looked at Yi Cheongryong. He flexed the newly regrown arm.
“Even this is better than nothing.”
It seemed Yi Cheongryong had chosen to view his current state positively. Watching him, I decided to lighten the mood with a joke.
“You’ve become Shanks, mister.”
“……”
The atmosphere suddenly grew cold. Time to change the subject.
“I can hear zombies on the floor below. Shall we head down?”
Before clearing the 50th floor, we would finish everything from the 48th floor first. We could talk more after that.