Chapter 133: Rank-Ex Dimensional Entity
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 133: Rank-Ex Dimensional Entity
7
“……Ha-chan?”
“Are you okay? What happened? Did you get kicked out of the communion?”
I asked urgently, cupping her forehead with my hand. Ji-eun slowly came back to her senses.
She blinked her eyes open and looked around.
“I don’t know. I thought I had almost convinced the crying child. But then it suddenly said something was coming and threw me out.”
Ji-eun frowned in disappointment as she spoke.
The moment I heard her words and thought something is coming…
A sense of crisis flooded my senses.
Vwoooom!
At the same time, all the spirits in the area began to move about chaotically.
“Ugh, the spirits…”
Saran quickly tried to use her mental abilities to calm them, but it was completely useless.
While she stood there, bewildered, my eyes met Si-ho’s.
“Si-ho!”
At my call, everyone present was instantly teleported.
We reappeared in the sky high above the ice cave, where Si-ho immediately used her power to suspend us all in the air.
“What is…”
At the same time, Se-hee was staring down at the ice cave with a grave expression.
A massive number of spirits were pouring out of it.
Perhaps because of the spirits’ movements, the weather had turned bizarre.
CRACK!
Lightning flashed, and a mixture of rain and snow began to pour down from all directions.
Just as a bad feeling washed over me…
“It’s here.”
As Baeksan spoke, the ice cave collapsed.
CRUMBLE-CRASH!
A massive cloud of dust and ice shards billowed up from the collapsing cave.
Spirits continued to stream out from within the chaos, and among them was something that was clearly out of place.
It was a Spirit Cluster.
A spherical mass formed from thousands of spirits woven together, it was rolling rapidly across the ground, fleeing somewhere.
And just as the Spirit Cluster rolled away, something erupted from below.
“GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUo*
The entire sky began to vibrate.
“What is that? A dimensional entity? Why is it so big?”
Yu U-jeong’s eyes widened in shock.
There stood a dimensional entity of immense size.
It had three shark-like heads and six pairs of lizard-like limbs. With a single slam of its tail, the earth shattered.
In terms of size alone, it was like two apartment buildings laid on their sides.
As everyone stared, stunned by its overwhelming presence, the spirits began to unleash their attacks on the beast.
However, the dimensional entity was as tough as it was large; the spirits’ attacks had no effect whatsoever.
“A Rank-Ex Dimensional Entity.”
At that moment, Eva-noona spoke in a low, heavy tone as she stared at the creature.
A Rank-Ex Dimensional Entity.
The term referred to dimensional entities that could not be classified by the current hunter ranking system. The moment one was spotted, an immediate summons was sent out to the nation’s S-rank hunters and even those in neighboring countries.
Eva-noona had just classified that creature as a Rank-Ex.
“Rank-Ex?! Why is something like that here?!”
“……Because this is Iceland.”
I replied to a horrified Yu U-jeong, my own face grim.
Iceland was a land that had been all but lost to dimensional entities.
In a place with no management whatsoever, it wasn’t strange at all for a Rank-Ex to appear.
“That thing is dangerous. We need to deal with it here. Domi, call for a returnee with high firepower. I’ll try to tie it down in the meantime.”
Even Eva-noona, an S-rank returnee, didn’t rashly claim she could defeat it alone.
Rank-Ex dimensional entities were beings that had already reached the pinnacle of strength in their home dimensions.
With that, Eva-noona moved away from us.
Hundreds of talismans began to circle her body, forming six rings. Beams of light shot out from them, pouring down on the dimensional entity.
BOOM!
The beams of light struck the creature.
However, despite Se-hee’s attack, the entity paid it no mind and continued to stomp forward.
Its target was the Spirit Cluster, which was still rolling frantically across the ground.
It seemed the beast had surfaced just to devour it.
This is bad.
I felt that we needed to get out of here now, just as Eva-noona had said.
As someone who had studied to be a hunter, I knew better than anyone just how dangerous a Rank-Ex was.
If that thing were to leave Iceland and reach a country with a major city, it would be laid to waste in an instant.
“Ha-chan.”
Just then, I turned to Ji-eun, who had called my name.
Even from this distance, she must have been trying to commune again. She was staring at the Spirit Cluster with trembling eyes.
“The child is in there. What do I do? It’s crying, begging to be saved.”
Her communion had become so strong that Ji-eun herself was now shedding tears.
“Gah?!”
Suddenly, Saran let out a sharp cry.
When I looked at her, she was clutching her head as if in pain, her eyes wide with shock as she stared at Ji-eun.
“……Ji-eun, are you communing with that thing right now?”
“Saran, what do you mean? What is Ji-eun communing with?”
I asked urgently, holding Ji-eun protectively. Saran managed to fight through the headache and answer.
“I can’t say for sure. But it’s a pure, massive lump of spiritual power. Just getting close with my mental abilities is like this. I think Ji-eun’s power has been running wild ever since her first communion.”
Running wild?
“Is Ji-eun in danger?”
“She’s using more power than she can handle. But more importantly…”
Saran looked at the dimensional entity, which was still charging toward the Spirit Cluster.
“That’s the real danger. If it manages to swallow that mass of spiritual power, the consequences will surely be irreversible.”
It was already a monster classified as Rank-Ex.
If a beast like that got any stronger, it was obvious that something irreversible would happen.
If nothing else, we had to stop that thing from eating the Spirit Cluster.
My eyes turned to Baeksan.
They held a question: could I handle this?
“Kang Ha-chan, do you know why I never once warned you that this was dangerous?”
Looking at me, Baeksan showed a bold smile.
It was the same expression as always—the domineering, hegemonic, yet magnanimous smile that only the strongest regressor could show.
“Because I’m the one who killed that bastard.”
That was all I needed to hear.
After all, my body was one in which Baeksan himself had awakened my aura through his own enlightenment in his past life.
“……Saran, if Ji-eun is in danger from the communion, can you forcibly sever the connection?”
I turned to Saran and asked.
“I can.”
Seeing the serious look in my eyes, Saran nodded.
“Ji-eun.”
Thunderbolt began to form in my hand.
As Ji-eun looked up at me, I gave her the same gentle smile as always.
“Let’s save it.”
This was the first being that Ji-eun, as a hunter, wanted to save.
That was reason enough.
Because it’s a manager’s job to help their hunter do what they want to do.
“……Yes!”
Hearing Ji-eun’s answer, I immediately shouted toward Eva-noona.
“Se-hee-nuna, you said you needed a returnee with high firepower!”
As my shout rang out, Eva-noona’s eyes turned toward me.
A flicker of bewilderment crossed her face.
“You have one. Right here.”
I gave her a grin as a Brain Thunder bullet began to form in my hand.
“Kang Ha-chan, that thing, Ilbelli, befitting its Rank-Ex status, has a defensive barrier over its hide that weakens aura-like powers.”
Leave it to a Rank-Ex to have something like that.
It seemed that was why Eva-noona’s attacks were having so little effect.
“So, what you usually fire won’t be enough.”
Hearing Baeksan’s advice, I recalled the time I faced the shadow beast.
The moment I pierced its heart to save Hyeok-seo.
I had shaved off 1% of my very being, again and again, to create the bullet that would kill it.
And now, I had to create a 100% version of that bullet.
“What you need now isn’t the raw ore of your aura, but a single, true bullet carved from that ore. This will be a good experience for you, too.”
Crimson lightning began to swirl around my hand.
An absurd amount of aura, enough to distort the surrounding scenery, started to gather in my palm.
Red lightning rose above my body like a halo.
Even though it was my own aura, I felt a wave of intense dizziness.
But I gritted my teeth and poured all my strength into forging a single bullet.
Faced with that immense flow of aura, even Yu U-jeong and Si-ho had to hold their breath.
The problem was, they weren't the only ones who sensed it.
Down below, the Rank-Ex Dimensional Entity, Ilbelli, had also noticed the strange activity up here.
“Tsk, still too slow.”
Baeksan clicked his tongue.
Unlike using raw aura, precisely carving it still took time for me at my current level.
And this was carving 100% of my aura.
Of course it would be slow.
At that moment, a Brain Thunder bullet, so crimson it glowed white, formed in my hand.
Click!
I immediately loaded the bullet into Thunderbolt, and at the same time, aimed the barrel at Ilbelli.
The light in the area was sucked in, converging on him.
Snap!
KRA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-BOOM!
A storm of crimson lightning raged.
The Brain Thunder that shot down from the sky bleached the world white.
As everything slowly returned to normal, a clear blue sky greeted them.
The sky that had been filled with rain and lightning just moments before had been completely swept away by another, greater storm.
At the same time, where the Brain Thunder had directly hit, the ice and rock had been shattered, and white steam erupted.
The delayed shockwave kicked up a wind that whipped through everyone’s hair.
As they all stared blankly at the overwhelming sight, I slowly steadied my breath, still holding Thunderbolt.
I could feel sticky sweat all over my body.
Even so, my eyes were fixed solely on the scene below.
Thump!
At that moment, the ground rumbled again as if from another earthquake.
“GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-!*
Ilbelli’s furious roar echoed violently across the sky.
I bit my lip as I watched it.
Ilbelli emerged from the smoke with two of its heads missing, and half of its body had been erased from existence.
Sensing the massive wave of energy, it had tried to pull back to avoid the damage.
My mistake was taking too long to carve the aura.
But the attack had been so massive that Ilbelli hadn’t had enough time to move its colossal body completely out of the way.
Thanks to that, the beast was feeling a rage unlike any it had ever known, born from a pain it had never before experienced.
Even with half its body gone, its tenacious life force kept it anchored to this world.
Ilbelli’s eyes turned to the Spirit Cluster.
It could feel a massive lump of energy from the cluster, which had been sent rolling even further away by the shockwave of the blast.
If I don’t eat that now, I will die.
Realizing this, Ilbelli’s eyes went wild.
The beast began to run on its remaining legs, trying desperately to reach and devour the Spirit Cluster.
But hundreds of talismans rained down like lightning before it.
Beams of light erupted from the talismans, striking Ilbelli directly.
“Guuuuugh!”
Before, it had been an attack it could ignore, trusting in its tough hide. But now that it was wounded, even Eva-noona’s attack caused it intense pain.
It needed to get to the Spirit Cluster immediately, but there were too many obstacles.
“Guuuuuung!”
And so, Ilbelli decided to call for help.
The moment the beast roared at the ground, thousands of presences began to stir beneath it.
Simultaneously, those presences poured out onto the surface.
There were enough dimensional entities to cover the ground in a tide of black.
All of them were from Ilbelli’s world, and they followed its command, madly charging across the land toward the Spirit Cluster.
“Ugh.”
Eva-noona quickly tried to block them, but she was already focused on pinning down Ilbelli. She couldn’t stop that number of dimensional entities on her own.
As the horde closed in, spirits appeared from all over and began to attack them.
They, too, had to protect the Spirit Cluster.
“Si-ho, take us down!”
Watching the scene unfold, I gave the command, and Si-ho teleported us down below.
Appearing right next to the Spirit Cluster, I somehow managed to draw out my remaining aura and land on my feet.
“Yu U-jeong, Si-ho, we have to protect the Spirit Cluster. Can you do it?”
“I might not be able to handle a Rank-Ex, but the ones below it are my specialty.”
“Of course. I’m Hunter Si-ho.”
Hearing their dependable replies, I smiled and stretched out my own hand.
In that instant, crimson lightning began to gather in my palm.
It manifested a single sword, and what I soon held was none other than Bazra.
Crackle-zzzzzt!
The moment I gripped it, Bazra unleashed a furious crackle of lightning.
“Bazra, I don’t have time for your tantrums.”
My eyes, watching it, were colder than they had ever been.
This was an emergency.
I had used up almost all my aura on that last shot, so I couldn’t use Thunderbolt anymore.
All that was left was Bazra, which had its own internal lightning, and I desperately needed its help. But the damn thing was still trying to have a power struggle with me, and I was pissed.
“Obey.”
As I glared at Bazra and shouted, the sword seemed taken aback by my unprecedented reaction, its lightning sputtering weakly.
Then, as if dejected, it fell silent.
It was like a child being scolded by the father who had always indulged its whims.