Field Boss Monster
The conference room in the annex of the Government Complex Seoul.
The air was still murderous.
Minister Lee Hyeon-seok and Director Oh Gwang-seok stared at Hatchery, their minds completely blank.
As if she were asking how the talks had gone so far. Or rather, as if she were asking whether they were free to wrap things up and leave already.
Well, even if they were on the same side, she had just turned a Hunter into a bloody pulp right in front of them. Of course they were walking on eggshells. It felt like standing before a teacher waiting to grade their homework.
The Korean side was still better off. Special Envoy Wang Lei and Secretary Chen? They had frozen solid in their seats.
Crunch.
The silence broke with the sound of Hatchery biting into a piece of candy. That alone was enough to make everyone in the room flinch.
"Oh! You lot, be happy-yong! Master says to bring you along-yong!"
Every eye followed where she was looking. Naturally, straight at the Chinese delegation.
"W-what? Wh-who are you—"
"You guys, of course-yong! He says to take you sightseeing-yong!"
Hatchery flicked her finger lightly. Violet smoke surged upward, weaving itself into ropes of demonic energy that snared Wang Lei and Secretary Chen around the waist. Fang Tian's neatly folded body came along as a set.
"W-what is the meaning of this! Let go! Release us at once!"
"You there, Korean officials! Help us! Please—save us!"
"You're heavy, so be quiet-yong! On three we leave! Three!"
Hatchery's body shot upward, shattering the conference room window on the way out.
BOOM—!
A sonic boom cracked open over the city skyline. Bound in the Black Chains of demonic energy, the Chinese officials couldn't even scream. The acceleration climbed higher and higher. The flesh of their cheeks peeled backward in grotesque distortion, their eyeballs bulging as if ready to pop free.
As the altitude rose, the beautiful mountains and rivers of Korea spread out below them in a single sweeping view.
"Wow, Korea is pretty-yong. Totally different from the Demon Realm, heheh! Oh, I can see Kaesong from here-yong!"
"······Uwaaaaaaah!"
The coordinates Hanul had marked with demonic energy appeared in Hatchery's vision as a violet point of light. Around it, the air near Kaesong was already burning red.
Arriving near the site, Hatchery dropped Wang Lei, Chen Wei, and Fang Tian, then landed herself.
KRAAAAAA—
A colossal pillar of crimson light surged upward as if splitting the sky in two. The dimensional barrier crumbled, a Gate tore open, and monsters poured through.
And fleeing with their backs to that spectacle was a group of Hunters from the Black Dragon Guild.
"Everybody stop right there-yong!"
Stop right there-yooong— Stop right there-yoooong— Stop right there-yooong—
Hatchery's voice, laced with demonic energy, rang out clear and resonant. The Chinese Hunters who had been fleeing for their lives stopped dead in their tracks.
"Special Envoy Wang? Secretary Chen?"
"···What are you doing here?!"
Before he could get an answer, Zhao Liang's gaze locked onto a lump of flesh rolling across the ground. Dragon-class Hunter Fang Tian. He almost failed to recognize him—but whatever sadistic joke this was, the face had been left intact, so he could tell.
"Hhk! Fang Tian?! What the hell happened here?!"
"Zhao Liang, never mind that—kill that bitch first! Strike while she's off guard!"
Wang Lei's urgent shout. Hatchery bounced lightly into their midst, clapping her hands together to draw every eye.
"Alright, alright, you can talk later-yong! Oh, I forgot to introduce myself-yong. I'm Hatchery-yong!"
Hatchery······.
Hatchery?!
"You—you're the one from that phone call—!"
"Oh, so you're the one who was on the line-yong."
"Don't underestimate her. That bitch is the one who did this to Fang Tian!"
Blood vessels stood out in Zhao Liang's eyes. These were high-ranking Hunters China had carefully cultivated. They had grown up together at the training academy. They had shared the same pot of rice since childhood—and she had reduced him to this.
"Everyone, take her down!"
The Chinese elite Hunters unleashed their demonic energy in unison. Skills and weapons of every kind poured toward Hatchery. She didn't so much as blink.
"Ehh, the bugs are thrashing around-yong."
Violet mist exploded outward in every direction. The arms and legs of the attacking Chinese Hunters locked rigid.
"And I'll fix mister up for a bit too-yong!"
Hatchery placed her hands on Fang Tian's neatly folded body. Squish-squish— Crack— Crunch-crunch-crunch! She molded bone and flesh like wet clay, the sounds utterly grotesque.
Moments later, Fang Tian's body was restored. On the outside, not a single wound remained. Inside, however, his demonic energy circuits were still pulverized—he was a cripple.
"All done-yong! Now just say what I tell you to-yong."
"Don't make me laugh! You devil bitch!"
Zhao Liang shouted. Even with his nervous system crushed, his arrogance refused to break.
"Release this at once! Zhao Liang, do something!"
"I—I'm trying—ugh, my energy won't move!"
Zhao Liang gritted his teeth and fought back, but it was useless. Humming a little tune, Hatchery pulled Fang Tian's phone from her pocket—the one she had pocketed earlier.
A flick of her finger lit the screen. She expertly switched on the video recording function and wedged the phone between two trees, as if someone had already set it up there in advance. High-performance demonic energy audio recording was activated as well, of course.
"Alright, cameras rolling-yong! Readyyyy, action!"
The record button pressed down. Instantly, the facial muscles of Wang Lei and Zhao Liang twisted into grotesque shapes. Separate from the terror in their eyes, their lips curled upward into a vile, sneering arc.
"The Gate opened exactly according to plan! Hahahaha!"
A hearty laugh burst from Wang Lei's mouth—forced vibration of his vocal cords.
"Of course it did, Special Envoy! Those small-nation dogs won't have the faintest idea."
Zhao Liang chimed in, and Secretary Chen soon joined as well.
"How dare they defy a great power? We should swallow the entire northern half of the peninsula while we have the chance."
"Exactly! Once the Field Boss pushes all the way down to Seoul, that Korean president will be on his knees begging!"
Wang Lei pointed at the Gate with a deliberately arrogant expression. Contemptuous remarks about Korea poured out without filter. Conversations they would have had anywhere, anytime—the pleasure of trampling a small nation while invoking the dignity of a great power.
But the camera couldn't capture what their faces looked like from the front. Their eyes were screaming for someone to save them.
KUUUUUUU—
Meanwhile the crimson pillars spread left and right, and the Gate yawned open. The pillars of red light swelled, tearing the atmosphere to shreds.
But that was only the prelude. A crushing pressure settled over the entire region, as if the space itself were being compressed. Just before the SSS-class Field Boss descended, a powerful wave of demonic energy whipped through the air in a frenzy.
Hanul stepped out of the conference hall. He kicked off the ground.
BOOM—
In a single bound he left downtown Seoul behind, turning his course north.
Soon Kaesong and the surrounding mountain ridges filled his vision. The coordinates he had marked. Silhouettes lined up on the cliff like puppets on strings. And beside them, Hatchery.
She's doing well.
—How dare they defy a great power. This time······.
—Exactly! Once the Field Boss pushes all the way down to Seoul······.
—Those stupid Korean dogs······.
The filthy confessions of the Chinese officials drifted to him on the wind. Passing the cliff where Hatchery had set her stage, Hanul touched down on the ground—on the opposite side of the Gate from the cliff. No, closer to the Gate than they were.
Hmm. The dimensional rift has opened far wider than expected.
He had a rough idea of the real reason the Gate had expanded so explosively. The aftershock of his own passage from the Demon Realm into this world.
He had put so much care into preventing exactly this kind of backlash—and still he had significantly worn down the dimensional barrier's integrity. But looking at it another way? It was precisely because of that effort that the damage had stopped at this level.
If I'd returned with no restrictions at all, the entire Earth would have been finished.
—Master! I did everything just like you said-yong!
Hatchery's message arrived in his mind. Looking toward the cliff, he could see her waving.
"Well done. Keep it up."
Hanul answered, then turned his head to survey the distant landscape. Several kilometers out, at a point that had secured a safe distance, press vehicles and equipment were visible.
In front of them, a defensive line of military units and Hunters. With the Gate facing Seoul, they had dug in for a last stand with everything they had.
"Shall we get started."
Monsters were already pouring from the Gate. At the vanguard came creatures with grotesquely elongated limbs that called to mind the rakshasas of Buddhist lore. Bone joints jutted from deathly pale skin. Faceless—no eyes, no nose, no ears—they split their lips all the way to the cheeks and bared needle-sharp fangs.
Slender Rakshasas. Champion-class monsters from a certain infamous dungeon of the past. A single specimen was rated at Rank 11—something that required a party of A-class and B-class Hunters to take down.
And those monsters were spilling out now like so much refuse. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, packing the horizon to the edge of sight. A veritable legion.
Kieeeeeeeee—!
Kkyaaaaak!
They charged Hanul. A tidal wave crashing down on a single man. Hanul's eyes remained perfectly still.
"Might as well make it flashy—for Eunha's sake, too."
He pressed his palms together, one above the other. Violet demonic energy condensed.
Dark Magic Spell.
Splitter.
In truth, it was a simple spell. Nothing more than concentrating demonic energy to generate a cutting slash. But the caster was Hanul. Demonic energy deployed ahead of the slash's trajectory, carving open fissures in space itself, and the Splitter formula was massively amplified by the sheer volume of power behind it.
Then Hanul twisted his stacked palms ever so slightly—and the slash erupted from between them.
Tst-tst-tst— SHRAAAAAAK!
Using the spatial fissures the energy deployment had opened as rails, the slash carved through the air like an ultra-concentrated laser shearing through space.
KRAAAAAAAAA—!
The instant the beam scoured the ground and stretched left and right from the center, the trajectory it drew split heaven from earth.
The legion of Slender Rakshasas? Their bisected bodies crumbled into black granules. And the slash didn't end with the cut. Dark Flame Spell took root in every severed cross-section, incinerating the Slender Rakshasas from the inside out.
Fsssssss—
They evaporated at the molecular level.
Slender Rakshasas were still pouring from the Gate. Hanul couldn't have cared less.
Splitter wasn't some ultimate technique. If anything, it was closer to a basic attack. He could fire it as much as he wanted.
KRAAANG—
KRAAA—
KRAAAAAAAAAAA—
And the slashes never stopped. Eventually the violet lasers fanned out like the ribs of an open fan, splitting space into multiple branches like light through a prism. The wave of monsters was wiped clean in an instant. All that remained was billowing smoke.
Shuuuuuuu—
The catastrophe vanished without a trace. The destructive power of a tactical nuke, dropped right there.
No—strictly speaking, this wasn't the real catastrophe. Anywhere else, even this much would have ranked as a disaster-class event. But right now, a Gate that spawned Field Boss Monsters had just torn open. The real thing was still coming.
At this rate the atmosphere I just heated up is going to go cold.
Hanul walked across the scorched earth. With every step, blackened soil scattered into the air.
KUUGOGOGOGOGOGO—
The Field Boss Monster's sheer mass was staggering. Beyond the crimson light pillars, only an enormous silhouette still loomed. In that case, he simply needed to drag it out.
Crackle-crackle—
A sphere of violet demonic energy rose above Hanul's palm.
Dark Magic Spell, Black Hole.
The energy sphere darkened, compressed, and then unleashed a powerful gravitational pull on the target Hanul designated.
BOOM!
Responding to that pull, the demonic energy erupting from the crimson light pillars slammed into the earth—into the very ground where tens of thousands of Slender Rakshasas had just been annihilated.
The sky turned blood-red.
Crack, craaack—!
Like a pane of glass shattering, enormous fissures split open across space itself—and the Gate tore apart in a single stroke.
"Oooooooohm—"
With a resonance like a Buddhist mantra, colossal golden hands surged out of the Gate. A thousand arms interlocked like the teeth of a gear and blotted out the night sky.