Don't Even Breathe
I had just cleared the tenth floor when Han Sowon, who had been waiting outside, spotted me and waved enthusiastically.
“Humin!”
“Sorry. Did you wait long?”
“Not at all. It wasn’t that bad. More importantly, did you finish what you set out to do?”
“Yes. Thanks to you.”
The summon limit was still only one creature, so I had packed every remaining slot with champion-grade goblins rather than ordinary ones. When I thought about how much smoother future hunts would become, this alone felt like an enormous windfall.
“You haven’t done the settlement yet, right?”
“The raid leader isn’t here, so I couldn’t exactly do it alone. Settlement is the raid leader’s job. So I’m counting on you~ Raid Leader.”
Together with Sowon, I submitted the raid confirmation report required after clearing the tower and settled the mana stones. Even without a single miscellaneous item, the mana stones alone weighed a staggering 1,700 kilograms.
At current market value, that came to roughly 170 million won—an absolute fortune.
“I’ve transferred it to your account, Sowon. Go ahead and check.”
I wired her ten percent—17 million won. When she confirmed the amount, her lips curled into a wide, delighted grin.
“Thank you. Honestly, at first I thought of it as just pocket money, but now I’m earning more than I ever did with my old raid team. Hehe~.”
“Isn’t it too heavy? Carrying 1,700 kilograms of mana stones by yourself can’t be easy.”
“The bag reduces the weight by a tenth, and I’ve stacked quite a few strength passives along with weight-reduction ones. Weight-wise, I could handle twice this much without breaking a sweat. The real issue is space.”
As expected of an A-class Level 34 porter. She really is on another level.
I felt genuinely fortunate that my companion was the porter Sowon rather than some combat specialist. Thanks to her, I hadn’t been forced to abandon any of that massive haul of mana stones.
Of course, I now possessed the Cradle of the Dead subspace storage… but that was strictly for undead summons and corpses. Mana stones and miscellaneous loot couldn’t be stored inside it.
“Since the hunt is over, how about a drink to celebrate our first one-turn boss-floor clear? My treat.”
“Of course we’re going. Grandpa always said never turn down free drinks…”
Vrrr. Vrrr.
“H-hello? Ahn Humin? This is Kim Jong-man… I work under President Go Yeong-gwang. Something big has happened to the boss.”
The instant I heard those words, my racing heart dropped like a stone and my blood turned to ice.
I pulled the phone slightly away from my ear and spoke to Sowon.
“I’m sorry, Sowon. Something urgent came up. I have to go ahead.”
“Ah… okay. But you look really pale. It’s not bad news, is it?”
“I’ll tell you later. Take care.”
After parting with her, I burst out of the administration building and flagged down a taxi. Even inside the speeding car, I kept the line open with Jong-man.
“What about the police? Did you file a report?”
“I did, but it looks like Oh Se-jun’s side got to them first. I told them it was a kidnapping and every second counted, yet they started verifying my identity as the reporter. They’re clearly stalling before they dispatch anyone. If they keep that up, we won’t even recover the boss’s body! Please, I’m begging you…!”
“Of course I’ll help. But why did you think to contact me?”
“Ah, well… the client this time said the target was like a son to him. He was incredibly proud that the kid had become a successful hunter. In all the years I’ve known the boss, I’ve only seen him that happy twice—once when his daughter entered a prestigious high school, and now. So I figured you must be an incredibly strong hunter…”
I see. Uncle…
Life had been so busy and harsh that I hadn’t given him a proper greeting in three years. Yet he still thought of me like his own child. Gratitude and guilt washed over me at the same time.
“But is there any way to locate him? They smashed his phone, didn’t they?”
“Actually, the boss and I hid location-tracking chips under our skin for emergencies. I’ll send you a tracking app right now. As long as he’s inside South Korea, you’ll be able to see his position in real time. I probably won’t be able to contact you again after this. Looks like they’re after me too.”
“Will you be all right, Jong-man?”
“I’m an old hand at running away. Anyway, please take care of the boss. He’s more than an employer to me—he’s a benefactor. I’m hanging up!”
The call ended. A moment later the app arrived. After installing it, I could immediately see both uncle’s and Jong-man’s locations.
“Driver, head in this direction.”
“Hmm, that’s pretty far…”
“I’ll pay quadruple the fare. As fast as you can.”
“Hold on tight, sir! I’ll get you there in no time.”
The engine roared.
“Looks like the car can only go this far…”
The driver compared the navigation map with the glowing marker of uncle’s location and pointed at a blocked mountain trail.
“Thank you. It’s dangerous from here, so please head back right away.”
“You be careful too, sir.”
After confirming the transfer, the driver clearly sensed the ominous atmosphere and drove off without looking back.
I stared into the wild mountain swallowed by deep darkness, then pulled a black hooded robe from my inventory and slipped it on.
It had been nothing more than a practical garment to block wind and dust—one that didn’t show dirt easily and had no special abilities whatsoever.
I never imagined I’d end up using it like this.
I pulled the hood low, covering half my face. Adding the black mask I’d gotten from the taxi driver concealed my entire face perfectly.
Once my preparations were complete, I raced up the mountain path.
To anyone else, the pitch-black trail without a single light would have been riddled with danger. To me, it was the opposite.
With the hood covering my eyes, one might wonder how I could see at all. Yet darkness was not an obstacle that blocked my vision—it was more like a telescope that expanded it.
That must be because I’m the apprentice priest of the Goddess of Night.
I offered silent thanks to the goddess I had never seen and carefully scanned my surroundings.
After climbing for some time, I found footprints leading in a direction completely different from the main trail. Following them, an old shelter came into view in the distance.
It looked long abandoned. Several masked figures stood guard around it.
A moment later—
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Three arrows flew from the trees and struck the three villains guarding the perimeter with perfect accuracy.
‘Urgh…’
‘My… voice…’
The men hit by the paralysis-coated arrows collapsed, writhing in agony. Their tongues and vocal cords had stiffened; they couldn’t utter a single word.
Crack!
Only then did I step out from the bushes, walk past them, and quietly smash the locked door of the shelter open.
In that instant—
Flash!
Were they seasoned fighters? The moment the door broke, they realized something was wrong, grabbed their weapons, and charged the entrance.
My figure, just stepping inside, reflected in their eyes. Their murderous blades caught the light.
At that exact moment—
Swoosh!
Shadows even faster than the enemies’ leaps shot past me from behind and streaked forward like lightning.
Slash! Slice! Splurt…!
A massacre unfolded in the blink of an eye.
Severed arms and legs littered the floor. Thick pools of crimson blood gave off a metallic stench.
The sight genuinely surprised me.
Was I frightened by the sight of human limbs being cut off? Quite the opposite.
I had expected to feel intense revulsion and fear the first time I saw something like this… yet I felt no different than when I butchered monsters. The fact that I felt nothing scared me more.
Perhaps it was because I had become an existence that resurrects and commands the dead.
“What the hell?! Goblins?”
“No way… How could we lose to mere goblins…”
Even the men with severed limbs seemed more shocked that goblins had taken their arms and legs than by the pain itself.
But the answer was simple if you thought about it.
The minion goblin assassins here were champion-grade monsters among goblins. On top of that, it was the middle of a pitch-black night. That meant all my stats were tripled by the effect of Night’s Aria.
Furthermore, Minion of the Underworld was already Level 24—a number that would require even a necromancer with similar summoning skills to be at least Level 60, regardless of rank.
Raising the same skill card had been that difficult.
And finally, Thanatos’s Baptism, which amplified the power and effect of death-, soul-, and dead-type skills by five times…
My own level was merely 20, yet the combat strength of my summons had long since surpassed that of high-level undead.
“Where is the person you kidnapped? Where is he right now?”
“Fuck off, you bastard. Why the hell would we—”
Slice!
“Aaaaagh!!”
At my nod, a nearby minion goblin assassin approached without hesitation and severed one of the man’s remaining arms.
“Now you each have one limb left. Want to spend the rest of your life lying down? Or being spoon-fed by others? Choose.”
“You think you’ll get away with this? We’re the Devils Clan! We’ll find you and your whole family and—”
“So you want both?”
Slice! Slice!
“Aaaaaaaaagh!!”
“You’re not going to answer either, huh?”
In the end, the man who had lost all his limbs and fainted from the pain was ignored. I turned to the one collapsed beside him.
Having watched his comrade’s fate, the man’s face had gone deathly pale. He answered immediately.
“Th-the basement! He’s in the basement!”
“How do I get there?”
“Move the mat over there! There’s a door leading underground!”
As he said, beneath the mat was a door to the basement. It had originally been an underground storage room for emergency supplies, but it was clearly being used for something else now.
Uncle…
Descending into the basement, I found Go Yeong-gwang.
He was still breathing, but the sight of scabs and dark bruises all over him made my chest feel heavy. It seemed as if this had all happened because of me. If I hadn’t asked him for that favor, he never would have suffered like this.
Perhaps that was why—
“Don’t move. Take one more step and this old man dies.”
A black-masked villain stood beside the unconscious, chair-bound uncle, pressing a dagger to his throat and threatening me.
Unbearable rage boiled up from the pit of my stomach like magma.
I calmly swallowed that fury and returned the exact same warning to him.
“Put the knife down. Unless you want to become a cripple.”
“What? Can’t you read the situation, you crazy—!”
At that moment—
Thud!
“Argh!”
An arrow flew from nowhere and pierced the man’s shoulder.
While he staggered backward with a pained scream, a minion goblin assassin instantly rescued uncle and brought him to my side.
“What? When did you—?”
The subordinate villains clearly hadn’t noticed when the assassin minion had taken uncle.
But the real show was only beginning.
“Kneel.”
Thud. Thud!
“Urk…!”
The moment I gave the order, arrows sank into the hollows behind both of the leader’s knees. His legs gave out against his will, forcing him to kneel.
I commanded him again.
“Bury your head in the ground.”
Thud!
“Grrruu…”
Once more, the arrow from the goblin assassin hidden in the darkness struck the back of his neck without fail. It had precisely avoided any fatal points, so the pain must have been excruciating.
Yet the man who could not die simply pressed his forehead to the floor, sweating buckets, groaning like a wounded animal.
“Boss!”
“You son of a bitch…!”
The four nearby subordinates tried to rush forward to save their leader, but they couldn’t move.
Gulp…
When…?
At some point, minion goblin assassins had climbed onto their shoulders, pressing daggers to their throats and licking their lips.
In a situation where a single tug on those daggers would sever their necks—
“It’s noisy, so don’t even breathe. I’ll start cutting off limbs from anyone whose breathing I hear, one by one.”
Only my cold, fierce threat echoed quietly through the basement.