Chapter 366: Nature Shall Reject You.
Chapter 366: Nature Shall Reject You.
"Hup."
I let out a short breath as I spread my legs, vaulting over a deer charging at me head-first with its horns.
As I dodged the rush, a series of shockwaves erupted in the wake of its glowing blue antlers.
Predicting the shockwaves from the start, I jumped high into the air, only to be greeted by a barrage of boulders flying my way.
The projectiles were launched by a deer that stood perfectly still, its eyes glowing with a blue light as it stared me down.
Throughout the battle, these boulders would rise from the earth and float around the deer before being fired at me in intervals.
This was the Reality Manipulation ability the deer possessed as a monster.
In practice, it looked more like telekinesis than Reality Manipulation. However, since it also seemed capable of material generation, I suppose it just barely qualified as the latter.
It appeared to be pulling rocks from the earth, but there was no way there were that many stones just lying beneath the surface.
It was a low-grade form of Reality Manipulation—a mix of a telekinesis-like phenomenon occurring in a narrow radius around the user and low-level material generation that created stones, burning wood, or scalding water.
Despite being low-grade, when combined with the sheer numbers of a colony consciousness, it exerted quite a formidable combat capability.
Just like this perfectly synchronized volley of stones currently targeting me in mid-air.
However.
Too slow.
With that thought, I immediately summoned my hammer and let it vent fire.
Vroom!
With a strange mechanical hum as energy erupted, my body soared upward, and the stones whistled through the space I had occupied just a moment ago.
Well, that’s how it goes.
I might be weak in aerial combat, but that’s only when high-tier powerhouses on my level are flying in at supersonic speeds to beat me up.
Each individual unit was a low B-Rank.
Even with the entire colony combined, these Tree-Horned Deer were only at the bottom of A-Rank. I wasn't about to be taken down by the likes of them.
Of course, being at the bottom of A-Rank still meant one thing.
To an ordinary Hero, they were a living nightmare.
"Whoa! The deer just drifted to dodge the arrow!"
"Is this the time to be spectating?! Si-hyun! You have to block them!"
In other words, they were a nightmare for my disciples as well.
"Huh? A jump in mid-air? A double... jump?"
Following Han A-bin’s shout, Baek Si-hyun—who had been trying to set up a wall between A-bin and the herd with her hammer—let out a dazed comment.
Basically, Si-hyun had swung her hammer mindlessly at a deer charging with a jump, and the deer had jumped again in mid-air to dodge it.
Having bypassed The Wall that was Baek Si-hyun, the deer pounced on the sniper, Han A-bin.
"Si-hyun-naaaaaaa!"
Han A-bin began to scream as she rolled frantically across the ground to avoid the deer’s charge.
"Just! Get! Hit! Already!"
Whoosh. Whoosh.
The Hammer swung through empty air, and the results of her weapon generation—countless stakes driven into the dirt as if she were planning to start a farm—only served to level the ground.
Haha. What a mess.
Sitting atop my fire-spewing hammer and dodging stones in the air while watching the fight, I found it quite entertaining.
Speaking as a master, they were the perfect practice partners.
Though they were B-Rank monsters, as evidenced by the one that died after being hit by a car earlier, their physical bodies were only slightly superior to wild animals.
In other words, unlike most monsters, they weren't physical-based enemies but special-ability-based ones.
And those special abilities weren't the high-lethality type that would kill you instantly if you let your guard down.
Thoroughly coordinated attacks through a colony consciousness and continuous strikes based on Reality Manipulation.
Where else could you find such a perfect sparring partner for group combat?
"If we caught those and had the Management Bureau raise them, wouldn't they be perfect for group combat practice?"
"Not a bad idea."
I tossed the joke to Meteor, who had somehow slipped onto The Hammer beside me.
Taking it seriously, Meteor also seemed to have no intention of helping the disciples. She sat perched on The Hammer with a blank expression, watching my students.
In the distance, a ridiculous display of poor combat unfolded.
Baek Si-hyun swung her hammer wildly as if playing Whac-A-Mole. In contrast, Han A-bin fired her arrows one by one with careful precision, even accounting for the deer's movement paths.
Of course.
"Just get hit, you stupid deer!"
"How is that even possible?!"
Whether it was a careful shot or a wild swing, not a single hit landed.
The deer dodged The Hammer with the grace of wild animals and evaded the arrows with movements that made me wonder if they were even bound by the laws of physics.
They would suddenly make a right-angle turn in the middle of a charge.
It was as if the force had been applied that way from the very beginning.
Not telekinesis, but Reality Manipulation.
An impossible maneuver that occurred under the assumption that the force had been directed that way from the start.
The price for those failed attacks was...
"Aaaagh!"
"Kyaaaak!"
The deer demonstrated the consequences by firing clumps of dirt and using their wooden horns to lift the two girls and toss them into the air.
These were attacks that seemed to have absolutely no intent to kill.
What exactly were these deer thinking?
The moment that thought crossed my mind.
Whoosh.
I felt a projectile cutting through the air and tilted my head to dodge a stone aimed at my skull.
The sharp-edged rock grazed past my head.
Unlike the treatment my disciples were receiving, this was an attack filled with clear murderous intent.
Why was it only me?
According to the Management Bureau’s reports and the cases of Baek Si-hyun and Han A-bin, even if they were attacked, the deer only teased them with non-lethal strikes.
Yet, they were launching attacks filled with dark malice at me, even though I hadn't done anything.
"Did you do something to that species?"
"I didn't."
I had smashed a ridiculous number of cars into those deer during the loops, but in the later loops and the final loop, the number of times I had harmed them was much lower.
And since only the final loop remained as reality anyway...
I couldn't understand why these unharmed deer would be so hostile toward me.
"Judging by their behavior, they seem to be a case of naturally occurring monsters from wild animals that were friendly to humans. Perhaps this transcontinental migration was also a move targeting you, Lee Ha-ram..."
"I told you, I didn't do anything."
You should worry about what to do with that burning car back there, buddy.
That was definitely not my fault, so don't even think about giving me penalty points.
Whoosh. Whoosh.
How long had I been dodging the suspicious glares from Meteor and the malice-filled stones?
Eventually, thanks to the deer's prolonged teasing, my disciples seemed to have awakened their bloodlust, succeeding in slaughtering a few of the creatures.
Soon, I discovered an additional special ability of these deer.
"Hey, Meteor. I think these guys are your cousins."
"..."
Meteor gave no reply, her face turning pouty as if my joke wasn't funny.
And for good reason—these things had a very peculiar ability.
When a deer died, its corpse was slowly absorbed into the ground.
It wasn't an instantaneous phenomenon; it took a few minutes.
After being slowly absorbed, the deer vanished, leaving only its wooden horns above the ground.
A moment later, as if it had never died, a deer with a fully intact body would split the earth and lift those wooden horns back up.
A colony-type monster that maintained its numbers this way.
"No wonder the Management Bureau couldn't catch them."
If you didn't realize this was happening, their numbers would always stay the same.
From the Bureau’s perspective, they weren't monsters causing major incidents, so they probably didn't think to invest a massive budget and high-ranking Heroes here.
Instead, they likely tried to solve it by mobilizing local Heroes, defense forces, or national armies to thin out the numbers.
But lo and behold, no matter how many they killed, the numbers never dropped.
They get buried in the ground and their bodies are restored?
Wait, is it not a deer with wooden horns, but a tree with deer-like roots?
That kind of bizarre biological trait was something for researchers to figure out later.
As a field agent, thinking of a way to exterminate them...
I could check if breaking the wooden horns stops the regeneration.
Or, assuming the regeneration is triggered as a special ability of the colony consciousness, I could try to wipe out the entire colony in one go within the regeneration window.
"Both would be tough, right?"
"What would be?"
"Breaking the horns, or wiping them all out within the respawn time."
When I said that, Meteor replied.
"Let's find out."
After saying that, Meteor immediately...
Bang!
...pulled out her pistol and shot a wooden horn that was in the middle of regenerating.
Ting!
The result was a clear, metallic ring that echoed through the area.
"It's difficult."
"Right?"
You couldn't break the horns with ordinary strength, and most Heroes lacked the firepower to take down this entire colony within the regeneration window.
Alright. Let's adjust their rank.
Somewhere between low and mid A-Rank.
Of course, one swing of my hammer would bury them all in the dirt and end the situation, but...
I wondered how my disciples were doing.
Now that a deer had died, they should be fighting with a bit more killing intent...
With that thought, I looked over at the spot where they were fighting separately.
A truly absurd sight met my eyes.
"...Why are they being licked by the deer?"
"I suspect they are trying to replenish salt by licking the sweat."
No, I'm pretty sure that's not it.
Anyway.
It was a scene so bizarre that even Meteor was spouting nonsense theories.
Whether their kin died or not, the deer were still launching playful attacks at the two disciples, and now they were even licking the girls' cheeks as they passed by.
"...What is with them?"
They were monsters with an unusually low level of hostility toward humans.
Regardless of how many of them died, they didn't cause much damage to their surroundings.
Looking at how they destroyed cars and trains, they clearly had no qualms about wrecking objects.
But at the very least, they seemed to avoid killing humans.
"Then why are they doing this to me?"
Whoosh.
Another sharp stone had been flying at me for quite some time.
No matter how I looked at it, the treatment of my disciples and me was too different.
Since they just resurrected anyway, they didn't seem like the type of creatures to get angry over being killed. So what was it?
As I continued to dodge the stones, a thought occurred to me.
"Adversary! Bad!"
Suddenly, a strange voice reached my ears. I turned my head.
"...What is that now?"
I realized today was truly a day where only strange things happened.
"Mass murder! Adversary! Rage!"
The tentacle slandering me was...
...riding on the back of a deer with slightly more ornate horns, accompanied by Un-ho and several other deer, and was currently denouncing me.
"Kweee-gu-aaa-ooo-wek!"
The deer let out strange cries in sync with the tentacle's accusations.
It seemed they were actually capable of communicating with each other.
Maybe I could finally get a clue about this situation.
"Hey, I didn't kill you guys!"
I protested to prove my innocence.
"Repeat! Phenomenon! Death? Cycle? ...Don't know?"
The tentacle tried its best to convey the message, but as it went on, it seemed to hit words it didn't know. It twisted its body into the shape of a question mark and ended up just vibrating repeatedly.
...Hey, if you don't know, what am I supposed to do?
Someone, do something about this.
Since the tentacle—my only lead for conversation—had glitched out, dialogue was off the table.
Seeing as the deer had chased me all that distance, they clearly had some way of pinpointing a person's location.
If I went home in this state...
'Terrifying Deer Stampede Hits Seoul. What is the Cause?'
I might end up seeing a news headline like that.
To prevent that, I’d have to wipe them all out with my hammer.
They were high-grade monsters, but unless they were true enemies of humanity, my heart felt a tiny bit heavy at the thought of erasing creatures that felt so much like wild animals.
Just as I was pondering how to find a breakthrough in this mess...
"Mm. Could it be that during some loop, Master Ha-ram slaughtered these guys, and they remember it?"
Un-ho’s voice suddenly drifted over.
"Hey. Does that even make sen—"
...Huh?
Wait.
At Un-ho’s words, memories hidden in the abyss began to resurface.
Fragments of incidents I had self-sealed because the loops were so horrific.
...
Food. There were many times it was deer.
Times when I had gone mad and unleashed wide-range attacks everywhere.
If I thought about it deeply, many wild animals had been caught in the crossfire and died.
Just traffic accidents.
Excluding Meteor at the very end, most of them had been... those deer, I think.
And I just realized.
The reason memories are erased in the loops is because of The Hole Tentacle.
But if it's a low-level intelligence that the tentacle doesn't find worth eating...
"...Uh oh."
Was it my fault?
The moment that realization hit me.
Thwack.
A blunt, non-sharp stone slammed into my head.
It hurt.