Chapter 99
Chapter 99
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 99
Chapter Title: The Giant Scorpion's Secret
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Pushed back, Kang Jin-hyuk steadied his stance before the giant scorpion could pull off any tricks.
“You used your shed shell as bait, huh? Not bad for a monster—you're using your head.”
The giant scorpion didn't charge recklessly. Instead, it burrowed back into the hole in the ground.
Not long after, it burst out again from behind Kang Jin-hyuk.
It shot up like a geyser, its pincer aimed straight for his body.
“What's this now?”
Kang Jin-hyuk dodged a split-second ahead of the giant scorpion's attack.
The pincer sliced through empty air and retracted. Without hesitation, the giant scorpion dove underground again.
“So you're going to keep doing this.”
Unlike their first encounter, it had abandoned a frontal assault in favor of playing to its strengths.
Kang Jin-hyuk suspected the giant scorpion had boosted its intelligence by devouring a large number of mana stones.
‘It's not just intelligence. Its speed and power are different too.’
His hand gripping the baseball bat still tingled from the recent impact.
Even the barrier seemed much thicker than before—sloppy attacks wouldn't get through at all.
Kang Jin-hyuk focused on the ground while waiting for the giant scorpion to reemerge.
It moved as quietly as possible, but it couldn't fully mask the vibrations.
He sensed faint tremors as it drew near.
“There you are!”
Kang Jin-hyuk channeled some of the MP stored in his baseball bat, unleashing a thick aura.
Concentrating the aura at the bat's tip, he slammed it down onto the ground.
The aura seeped into the earth, delivering a shockwave strong enough to crack the surface.
Unable to endure it, the giant scorpion burst out right beneath him.
“Huh?”
Kang Jin-hyuk lost his footing and launched into the air along with it.
Assuming he couldn't maneuver midair, the giant scorpion seized the opening.
Its stinger shot out like lightning, stabbing toward his vital point.
“Urk.”
Kang Jin-hyuk swung his baseball bat to counter.
The clash sent him flying backward, crashing into the ground.
He hit with a cloud of dust but had no time to register the pain.
The giant scorpion thrust its pincer toward the prone Kang Jin-hyuk.
As he rolled desperately backward, the pincer hammered the ground like a sewing machine needle, closing the distance.
Kang Jin-hyuk tumbled to his feet in a somersault.
Gripping the bat with both hands, he poured even more aura into it.
He unleashed a full swing timed perfectly with the incoming pincer.
Boom!
His aura collided with the giant scorpion's barrier, the explosion echoing like a bomb.
Kang Jin-hyuk's bat emerged victorious.
Defeated, the giant scorpion spewed fluids from its burst left pincer, which deflated like a balloon.
“You didn't realize I was going easy on you, did you?”
He had no intention of going all-out with Cheon Sang-ho watching.
The man had approached amicably, but as the right-hand man of the Association Chairman, he couldn't be shown everything.
“No eyes on us here. You'd better abandon any hope of me holding back.”
The giant scorpion shuddered as if it understood the taunt.
But it didn't fly into a blind rage.
With its heightened intelligence, it sought to avoid reckless combat.
Having lost faith in its barrier after one blow shattered it, the giant scorpion had only one option left.
“Burrowing again?”
It plunged underground once more, prompting a weary sigh from Kang Jin-hyuk.
It had to know ambushes were pointless now.
Wasting time like this grated on him.
“…What? Why isn't it coming out?”
Even after five minutes, he sensed no sign of the giant scorpion.
This seemed too suspicious for a ploy to lure him into lowering his guard.
“Did it actually bail for real?”
To confirm, Kang Jin-hyuk aimed his baseball bat at the hole.
Lightning arced from the tip, surging into the earth.
No reaction—he was certain the giant scorpion had fled.
“You damn bug…!”
How many times did it need to escape before he'd feel satisfied?
Veins bulging on his forehead, Kang Jin-hyuk snatched up his flashlight.
He bolted down the tunnel in pursuit.
This time, he wouldn't let it get away. Channeling aura into his legs, he dashed forward.
His feet dug deep grooves into the ground as he rocketed ahead like a bullet.
While sprinting, Kang Jin-hyuk pulled the radar from his inventory.
Useless against its intact barrier before, it now pinged faintly.
Thanks to his bat shattering the barrier in one hit, the radar could pick up its trail.
“Perfect.”
He followed the radar's guidance.
When the signal vanished from the screen, Kang Jin-hyuk was convinced that was its location.
“Disappearing from radar means it's regenerated its barrier.”
Unlike a hunter chugging potions for wounds, it must have devoured other monsters to recover.
Kang Jin-hyuk raced to the scene before the giant scorpion finished its meal.
Pushing to the brink, he arrived just in time.
“Got you.”
He spotted it tearing into prey with the small pincers around its mouth.
It had consumed a massive amount of monsters in that short time—grotesque corpses littered the area.
But Kang Jin-hyuk focused on the phenomenon behind it.
“Is that… a gate?”
The two-meter-tall purple vortex matched every gate he'd ever seen.
Gates spawning monsters was normal, but this was different.
Gates were unpredictable disasters no one could foresee.
Yet this giant scorpion had anticipated them—not once, but twice—and rushed straight here.
This was no trivial matter.
“Time to spill your secrets.”
Monsters couldn't talk, so he'd get answers from its body directly.
As if ready for round two, the giant scorpion faced him.
Crack.
With a sickening sound, its back split open left to right.
From the zipper-like gap emerged a new body.
Freshly molted, it displayed newly grown pincers.
Freshly molted arthropods typically had soft exoskeletons, but that common sense didn't apply here.
Its new form lunged at Kang Jin-hyuk.
“You're not escaping this time.”
He used half the MP in his bat.
He wanted to dump it all and pulverize it in one go, but he needed to know how it predicted gates.
The giant scorpion saw brilliant golden light erupt from the bat—far more intense than before.
It hesitated for a fatal moment.
Kang Jin-hyuk swung the bat horizontally with full force as it froze.
The new pincer exploded on contact, not even five minutes old.
He pressed forward, smashing the remaining legs one by one.
Only after losing all its right legs did the giant scorpion grasp the gravity.
“!!”
It belatedly thrust its stinger in retaliation.
In perfect condition, it might have landed; now, it was too late.
Top-heavy and unbalanced, the attack couldn't even graze his clothes.
Kang Jin-hyuk shattered its tail with the bat as well.
Expending the last of his MP, the aura faded. He stepped back to regroup.
Bereft of tail, right legs, and both pincers, the giant scorpion barely clung to life.
Kang Jin-hyuk left it without finishing the job.
“Let's see if you can still head for gates in that state.”
It had its left legs, but it couldn't move.
He had a hypothesis.
‘Maybe it's not chasing gates—maybe the gates are coming to it.’
An absurd idea no one else would entertain.
But Kang Jin-hyuk had witnessed countless impossibilities, shattering his preconceptions.
He watched, testing the theory.
Losing too much fluid, the giant scorpion's struggles grew feeble.
Left alone, it'd die in under ten minutes.
“Was I wrong?”
As he moved to end it, the unbelievable happened.
Light bloomed from within its body, birthing a small gate.
Kang Jin-hyuk gaped at the goblins pouring through.
“No way… this can't be happening.”
He steadied himself and charged the goblin horde.
Before the giant scorpion could react, he bashed them all with his bat.
Deprived of food before its eyes, it writhed in agony before going limp.
Kang Jin-hyuk approached the corpse and raised his bat high.
“Whew.”
Inhaling deeply, he burned MP to form aura.
Thinner than usual, it gleamed with edge, forming a blade around the bat.
He swung before it dissipated, cleaving the giant scorpion cleanly.
Inside the bisected body lay a green-glowing gem nestled with the mana stone.