The Butcher's Ledger
Above the hotel.
The standoff continued beneath a wide-open sky.
On one side, the dream demon. The Queen of the Succubi, who until now had hidden her true strength — a terror beyond measure.
On the other, the hunter. A slayer of monsters who had engineered this entire situation for one purpose: to kill the Queen of the Dream Demons.
And so it was the hunter, not the demon, who broke the heavy silence that had settled over the battlefield.
In other words — Park Woochan.
With the demon's signature mana now completely neutralized, what move would she make next? Unlike the Queen, Park Woochan had no need to agonize over the question.
VWOOOONG!!
The sound of splitting air. The chain that, until a moment ago, had been coiled around the greatsword's grip came flying at the dream demon.
An underhand throw, carrying not even a whisper of centrifugal force.
And yet the roar it produced was far too sinister to dismiss as a mere feint.
The Queen beat her wings in a panic as the weight at the end of the chain came hurtling toward her. It grazed her flank by a hair's breadth — then, in the next instant, whipped around in a sharp arc.
At the end of the chain. With a light flick of his wrist, Park Woochan sent the chain snapping like a whip.
A serpent of steel, sinking its teeth into the Queen's wrist.
Before the terrified demon could even open her mouth to cry out, a dull shockwave raced down the length of the chain.
Holy water!
As mentioned before, even Park Woochan couldn't keep a supply of holy water on hand at all times. Crafting the genuine article required the consecration of a high-ranking priest.
And even then, holy water was, at its core, just water. Left alone, it simply evaporated.
That was why, unlike his other tools, Park Woochan actually preferred to buy holy water in bulk, cheap and fast. The batch he was using now was no exception.
It wasn't something you could call high-quality even as a joke.
But — for the briefest moment, the Queen's body froze where it touched the holy water.
And for Park Woochan, that was more than enough.
In that instant when even her wings couldn't flutter, he seized the auxiliary grip of his greatsword and swung it with every ounce of strength in his body.
The chain connected to the pommel rattled with a metallic clatter.
At the same time — another shriek of cleaved air, and the Queen's body was launched far into the sky.
Hnnngh!!
KYAAAAAK?!
He had thrown her, chain and all, even higher. Straining her paralyzed wings, the Queen barely managed to right herself — and iron beads soaked in holy water came flying at her.
Unlike the baseball-sized iron spheres Park Woochan usually favored, these were small hidden projectiles, no bigger than marbles. The perfect size for soaking in holy water.
Tsk!
Of course, the chain had its limits. Having regained her freedom the moment the beads flew out of range, the Queen rubbed her wrist and began evasive maneuvers.
The battlefield was the open sky. There was no way a handful of pebble-sized iron beads could pin down a winged monster!
Naturally, Park Woochan knew that too. In the next instant, the beads that had missed their mark began to glow.
And then —
Ugh……?!
The beads that had sailed past the Queen curved mid-flight of their own accord and slammed into her back.
It was Park Woochan's mana, coating the surface of each bead. By manipulating his mana in real time, he was steering the beads' trajectories as they flew.
Easier said than done — a feat of calculating friction against the surface of already-thrown projectiles and controlling them freely in midair. Even with only a handful of beads to manage, it was a technique no one but Park Woochan could pull off.
She had been conceding moves to him from the very start. Now, forced to contend with freely maneuvering iron beads, she was running out of places to hide even in the open sky.
And if that was the case —
Her options had dwindled to almost nothing. In the next moment, the demon's signature mana wrapped around her entire body.
The holy water itself was cheap junk. It wasn't as though she couldn't defend against it with mana. And truthfully, the damage she'd taken so far was negligible.
Dream demons were, after all, beings of the dream. Without holy water, physical interference against them was difficult — and against one of her caliber, cheap holy water could barely land a meaningful blow.
The thickly unfurled mana effortlessly blocked the incoming beads.
And so — the Queen, pausing to catch her breath, suddenly felt an impact detonate above her head and doubled over, gasping.
Of course. Park Woochan again.
A defense of pure mana. The optimal move available to her at that moment — and precisely because it was optimal, it was easy to predict.
She could either destroy the beads outright, or ignore the damage and charge through. For a dream demon, whose nature was ill-suited to brute brawling, neither was an easy choice to make.
Which meant, eight times out of ten, she would fall back on a mana defense. That gap was what he'd aimed for.
The essence of a dream demon's mana was mist, or shadow. When it unfurled, securing a clear line of sight in an instant was nearly impossible. Cornered on the defensive, swinging her mana around wildly, she would inevitably blind herself.
Of course, as a species born to mist and shadow, the blindness would last only a fraction of a second.
That's enough.
More than enough for Park Woochan.
Shukuchi.
He appeared behind the Queen, whose entire body was cocooned in mana like a fleshy cocoon.
There were two main reasons the man had hurled the Queen of the Dream Demons into the sky in the first place.
The first was to restrict her flight. By exploiting his advantage — the initiative — he needed to force her to divert her wings' mobility into simply controlling her own body.
And the second was to protect the civilians. The Queen's habit of flinging herself out of the hotel had, frankly, been a considerable nuisance for Park Woochan as well. Unlike the hotel's many floors, the space outside the windows dropped straight down — a perfect route to snatch a hostage.
Of course, Park Woochan would take every precaution to prevent that, but there was always the one-in-a-million chance.
And so: first, bind her mobility. Then, drag her into a battlefield of his choosing. That was what the situation demanded.
So he stole the movement of her wings. Seized control of the airspace with his hidden projectiles. Forced her into a mana defense, blinding her own vision.
Having driven her this far, the rest was easy.
One-Billion Slash!!
A mightily swung blow came crashing down on the cocoon of mana.
KUUUUNG!!
The Queen's body was hammered squarely into the hotel rooftop. The mana barrier kept him from taking her head cleanly, but this much was plenty.
Perhaps because the attacks had been raining down from below until that very moment — the Queen's reaction was late. Beyond the mana scattering into nothing, he could see her face, bewildered, still struggling to grasp what had just happened.
Toward that demon, the hunter kicked off the air and plummeted.
Two-Billion Kick!!
And in the next instant, the Queen thought: Wait, that's not a kick at all.
The pommel-weight hanging from the grip of Park Woochan's greatsword slammed into the Queen's cheek. He could feel the moan that had been slipping between her lips turn dull and flatten out.
Kuuung. The rooftop caved in.
The hunter who had inflicted billions in damage with just two strikes, and his victim, the Queen, plummeted together toward the hotel's top floor.
At the same time —
Three-Billion Punch!!
Of course, the attack that came next wasn't a punch either. The blade he'd been holding in reserve, just in case, finally flashed into view, aiming this time for her neck.
He spun the grip — which had been angled downward to strike her cheek — smoothly within his grasp. An upward slash using the rotation. The crescent-arc blade came screaming in to split the dream demon's chin.
That she dodged it at all was purely the product of dumb luck. To a dream demon, the face was the most precious asset of all. Her instinctive judgment — tilt the chin back, protect the face at all costs — was the only thing that kept her lifeline intact.
There was no earth-shaking roar this time. A restrained technique. The hunter reined in the brute force packed into the blade with complete control.
And then —
A blade held vertically, point down, fell toward the heart of the Queen sprawled on the floor.
SEOGEOK!!
Blood sprayed.
Her judgment, once again, hadn't been bad. A succubus was, at her core, a demon born of human lust — her body's structure differed little from a human's. Pierce the heart, and she dies.
So she gave up something else. It was, one might say, a genuinely demonic piece of judgment.
Both arms, crossed over her chest, flew into the sky instead.
The tip of the greatsword. The crescent-curved blade had moved with exquisite precision, severing both arms clean off.
Even the time bought by that sacrifice was only a fraction of a second. Soon enough, she'd have no choice but to give up her heart.
But — to the Queen right now, even that fraction was precious time.
Her wings, folded tight, slammed into the hotel floor once more. The force of the descending greatsword dispersed through her severed arms and into the ground below.
Thanks to which —
Hm.
For the first time, the hunter let out a grunt. The dream demon's maneuver had collapsed the hotel floor yet again. A fall following a fall. Park Woochan's greatsword, too, had been robbed of the Queen's heart.
The regret lasted only a moment. Suspended in weightlessness, the hunter's eyes swept over the next floor down — the Queen had hidden herself behind the collapsing floor, using it as a shield.
Of course, if he used his ability, flushing her out would be trivial. But —
Don't feel like it.
In a fight between a high-rank hunter and a monster, every single move was a hand around the other's throat. The tide wouldn't turn over one ability activation — but by the same token, there was no need to waste moves playing fair.
And so, in the next moment, Park Woochan unhesitatingly pulled a bottle from his belt and hurled it into the air.
The Queen of the Dream Demons was watching him too.
Szzz. The cross-section of her severed arms let out a hideous hiss. The holy water doing its work.
Fortunately, she could judge for herself that the improvisation had gone well — but —
What do I do, what do I do?!'
Nothing about the situation had changed. How was she supposed to break through that sacred downpour? The Queen's mind raced, still without a real answer.
And — as it happened, Park Woochan had no intention of giving her time to think calmly.
The Queen's battle-focused thoughts turned pink in the next instant.
Because of the glass bottles that had appeared at the edge of her vision. Beyond their fluttering caps — those bottles, scattering pure white liquid —
WAAAAAH!!
Abandoning every strategy she'd been weighing, the Queen bolted. She had the energy of something that would have crawled on all fours, if only she still had arms.
Easy pickings.
Watching her flee, Park Woochan re-gripped his sword.
The reason Park Woochan derided succubi as airheads was simple: as you could see, most of them genuinely were. Medieval monks believed it too. According to legend, succubi were so stupid they couldn't tell milk from semen — so if you left a glass of milk by your bedside, they'd take it instead of draining you, and everyone called that a win.
Watching this scene, it seemed the old stories weren't wrong. Who would have thought the Queen of the Dream Demons herself would lose her mind over a few bottles of convenience-store milk?
Her instincts were decent, but she hadn't overcome them — that was the fairest way to put it. Then again, even half-bloods inevitably succumb to their instincts to some degree. A purebred monster would be worse.
Guess I'll need to train Ji-hee after this.
Being a dream demon or a half-blood didn't mean automatic superiority across the board. This scene made that plain as day. No matter how you sliced it, showing an opening over a few bottles of milk —
Well, sure, with her arms gone, her instinct to replenish strength had grown sharper — but either way, it wasn't Park Woochan's problem.
Hold it right there!!
Only now, belatedly, did the Queen spot Park Woochan and shout. Naturally, he didn't stop. Naturally, she hadn't expected him to.
In the next moment —
KWARURURUK!!
With a rush of wind, the hotel's outer wall tore away.
Directly below. A monster revealed itself, swallowing an entire floor as it emerged. This was why she had booked out the whole hotel. Beyond a spatial-manipulation mana crystal installed on a middle floor, a monster of staggering size loomed into view.
Whoa.
Didn't see that coming.
Beyond Park Woochan's musings, the beast stirred. The hotel's upper floors were completely gone — and despite how much deeper they'd carved into the building since the fight began, blue sky was now visible through the torn-away outer walls.
So she'd been commanding another monster. Well, by the time a dream demon reached Queen status, she could appear riding beasts or crimson dragons, so it tracked.
He finished his assessment. Perhaps because of its enormous bulk, a quick once-over wasn't enough to identify the species. The mana it radiated was A-rank or higher. It looked vaguely insectoid.
Mongolian sandworm?
That was all he could come up with on the spot. There was, admittedly, a legend on the Mongolian side about the monstrous sandworm that nearly wiped out the entire cast of Journey to the West.
Irrelevant either way.
And so —
CRASH!!
Park Woochan, rummaging through his storage, hurled something out. The object shattered against a window with a burst of glass and crumbled into blue light — and the gaping maw of the endlessly writhing monster worm stopped dead.
The Eye of God — Nazar Boncuğu.
A talisman passed down in Turkey, Greece, and beyond. In the modern day it's treated as a simple symbol of luck, but its true purpose is countering the evil eye. It exists to ward off the "wicked gaze" that spreads misfortune to others through the act of looking. As in the tales of Zoroaster, founder of the fire-worshipping faith, it deflects malice by mimicking a divine eye.
And the fact that this talisman had taken effect meant, in other words, that the evil eye's influence was at work in this area. She'd evidently been dominating the worm through the evil eye, forcing it to serve her. The worm's spawn had snapped wide awake, too.
That's more like it.
If she'd brought the dream demon's legendary partner, he'd have had to work a good deal harder on this end as well. Which was why Park Woochan could offer his thanks with a pure heart.
Keep your mouth shut — it's fucking hideous.
Gratitude and repayment, of course, were separate matters.
He kicked off into the open sky once more. Beyond the closing heavens — in a flash he was clear of the worm's maw, and drank in a deep breath. The air smelled impossibly sweet compared to the worm spawn's stench.
Carrying that feeling with him, Park Woochan poured mana into his blade.
At the same time, he added a rotation so violent it should have been impossible in open sky.
Five-Billion Kill Slash!!
The mana-laced blade he scattered came crashing down on the worm's clamped shut maw.
And — true to its name, it severed the worm's body and the hotel's social value in a single, total stroke.