Leviathan
Incheon Port, Pier 3.
On the deck of the Changlong.
Hanul stood tall amid the pools of blood.
At his feet, Fang Tian lay bound and trembling violently.
"Go back where you came from."
"Guh... What?"
Hanul seized Fang Tian by the scruff of the neck. With a casual snap of his wrist, the massive man went sailing through the air.
Crash!
Fang Tian slammed precisely into the pier's safety zone. He wouldn't be dead.
All that remained now were the rats still aboard the ship. Hanul waited for the rest of the Chinese hunters to climb onto the deck. In the meantime, he extended his senses and swept the entire Changlong.
Black Magic Spell
Structure Scan
A thorough sweep confirmed it. Just as reported, this was no ordinary vessel. Intricate mana circuits were meticulously etched throughout the hull—a cutting-edge combat ship. At its core, however, it remained a massive freighter. That meant its internal cargo holds were enormous.
And those holds?
Currently full. As Hanul read what lay inside, his eyes narrowed.
He had already seen the Special Task Force reports, yet witnessing the reality here was something else entirely. The byproducts of the Corrupted Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara. The freighter was packed to the brim with nothing other than the remains of the very Corrupted Avalokitesvara he himself had hunted.
"Ha."
A dry laugh escaped him. These bastards had brazenly tried to steal from him without even knowing who their true owner was. He had been about to deliver punishment anyway—this timing was perfect.
"Theft always comes with a price."
Hanul casually raised a hand.
Screeeeech—!
The sound of metal twisting and tearing echoed across the harbor. The special alloy rebar that formed the ship's very skeleton was ripped free, drawn by Hanul's mana. Thousands of steel rods tore loose and aligned themselves behind him.
Just then, the Chinese hunters finally emerged onto the deck.
"What's with the damn intruder?"
"Looks like some Korean bastard figured out we cleaned out the byproducts."
"Didn't they say everything was already settled with the higher-ups in the Korean government?"
"I was planning to grab the byproduct collection bonus, head home, and knock back a few drinks."
"This works out fine. Let's show them what happens when you talk back."
"Dump them in the ocean and feed them to the sea monsters—perfect."
Their snickering laughter cut off mid-breath.
Screeeeech—!
The Changlong itself began to scream, twisting grotesquely.
"What the hell? What's wrong with the ship?!"
"Is it sinking? Grab onto something!"
Then they saw what had risen to meet them. Thousands of rebar rods, torn free, spinning behind Hanul like a steel dharma wheel. The overwhelming sight froze the Chinese hunters solid with terror. Hanul looked down on them with indifferent eyes.
"Welcome."
His low voice swept across the deck.
"Those byproducts you love so much? I'll let you keep them forever."
Hanul flicked his fingers. In an instant, a rain of steel poured down.
Thud! Crunch!
It took only a single moment. Before they could even think of resisting, the Chinese hunters' heads burst open like watermelons. Over their collapsed bodies, Hatchery's power settled.
Revive
Their pupils, having crossed the threshold of death, flipped grotesquely. Forced life flooded back into them just as they were about to scream—and the thousands of rebar rods hovering in the sky traced arcs like controlled swords.
Whoooosh—!
Steel pillars slammed down vertically. From crown to crotch, without a single inch of error, they skewered every Chinese hunter through.
"Aaaaaargh! Just kill me already!"
"Save me... Ghk, guhhh!"
The hunters, dangling from the rebar, were yanked skyward once more. Human sacrifices impaled on massive steel spikes decorated the night sky. Hanul pressed his hand downward.
Rooooaar!
With a sonic boom that tore the air, the forest of rebar hurtled toward the West Sea. Steel stakes plunged vertically. Black seawater exploded upward in towering columns.
The screams sank beneath the surface. The rebar drove deep into the muddy seabed.
At the bottom of the West Sea, they were buried alive right beside the byproducts they had tried to steal.
"Ending it here would be too kind."
Hanul stretched a hand toward the sea. Black waves swirled, and from the abyss, massive shadows rose. Native fish of the West Sea, exposed to Hanul's mana, mutated into grotesque forms.
Familiar Modification Formula
Demon Fish
Beasts with steel-hard scales and teeth sharper than razors. Tens of thousands of Demon Fish formed a swarm under Hanul's will. They were now the West Sea's new apex predators—and loyal guardians who would attack no one without his command.
"Go eat. There's plenty of feed."
The Demon Fish dove as one, pouring into the abyss where the steel stakes had been driven. On the seabed, the Chinese hunters' pupils flipped with pure terror. Thanks to Hanul's Revive, even with lungs full of water they could not die. Infinite agony looping on the border between life and death. Before them, the fangs of ravenous beasts flashed.
Crunch, crunch!
Demon Fish tore mercilessly into the hunters' thighs and flanks.
"Glrrrk! Mmph, mmmph!"
Screams dissolved into bubbles. When flesh was ripped away and bone exposed, Revive forcibly regenerated the muscle. That regenerated flesh became Demon Fish feed once more. Torn, regenerated, torn again—an eternal cycle. A silent hell of being eaten alive by fish unfolded in the dark depths.
The Chinese hunters prayed for their minds to break, yet Hanul's mana kept their consciousness razor-sharp.
"One left."
Hanul fixed his gaze on the upper decks of the Changlong, now little more than a skeleton. Without hesitation he stepped inside the hull.
At his movement, mana reactions flared throughout the ship—like booby traps.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
A chain of explosive traps designed to deny approach. Hanul did not dodge. He simply walked through the onrushing flames and shrapnel. Steel decks crumpled like paper. Automatic turrets in the corridors turned to scrap and rolled across the floor.
At last he arrived before a steel door sealed layer upon layer with mana formulas.
Hiss— Crunch!
Hanul jammed his fingers into the seam and ripped the door free. The twisted steel hatch fell away uselessly, revealing the bridge.
The heart of the ship's control. There, a man clung to the helm, shaking violently.
The Chinese captain of the Changlong. The dense mana rolling off him marked him as a hunter—and a fairly high-ranked one at that.
"I-I'm a Heaven-rank 1 hunter! A precious body specially optimized to pilot this massive ship!"
Even so, the man hid behind the helm and shrieked.
"If you touch me, my homeland won't sit still! This is a diplomatic declaration of war!"
Hanul scanned him. His brow furrowed. The grain of the man's soul was twisted in a grotesque way.
"You Chinese bastards really did something disgusting. Extracting Awakened genes and breeding them like livestock."
The man before him was no naturally Awakened human. Hunter genes had been harvested and artificially spliced together the way one improves plant seeds. He was closer to a cultivated breed optimized solely for ship piloting.
"B-breeding?! This is the evolution of mankind! The cutting-edge hunter our homeland poured its heart and soul into completing!"
"Just out of curiosity—how many artificially crossbred Heaven-rank hunters like you does China have?"
The man's eyes glittered with madness.
"You think I'd tell the likes of you?! Enough to wipe out a tiny country like this in a single breath!"
"You really did manufacture a lot of trash."
With Hanul's cold sneer, the man yanked a glowing red mana item from his coat—a last resort linked to the ship's self-destruct system.
"We die together! Killing you will be a service to the motherland—!"
He charged with a scream. But Hanul's hand was faster.
Crunch!
The wrist holding the device snapped instantly. Hanul seized the man by the chest and hurled him straight at the reinforced glass wall of the bridge.
Shatter!
Shards of reinforced glass scattered over the night sea. The man was flung outside.
And then a waiting rebar rod screamed through the air and skewered him clean through.
Crunch-crack!
"Aaaaaargh!"
His final cry. The man plunged deep into the black sea. Beneath the surface, Demon Fish with glowing red eyes swarmed him.
"Finally cleaned up."
Captain dealt with. Every Chinese hunter and crewman aboard the Changlong had been annihilated.
Yet in Hanul's eyes they were nothing more than the tail. The ones who had detonated the Gate. The ones who had swaggered in the embassy. Ultimately, heads who had given the orders still existed.
"The heads will pay the price as well."
Hanul placed his hand on the floor of the bridge. Abyssal mana spread like blood vessels and hijacked the ship's mana circuits.
Structure Alteration Formula
Model Leviathan
Rooooaar— Screeeech-grind—
A grotesque metallic roar shook the night sea. The Changlong's hull twisted and began to reconfigure. Crimson demonic muscle layered itself over cold steel plating. The bow morphed into a colossal beast's maw. Bone wings sprouted from the flanks of the hull.
KRAAAAAAAAH—!
The sea screamed as it split. Thousands of tons of seawater cascaded away as the Changlong, now shaped like a demon, rocketed into the sky. The vessel that had become a gigantic flying fortress punched through the clouds.
Hanul stood at the tip of the bow and looked down. Beneath his feet stretched the cold night waters of the West Sea. The ship tore through the air, accelerating westward. Atop the demonic vessel, Hanul's coat whipped violently in the wind.
The night sea was not quiet. Fragments of the Corrupted Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara still littered the West Sea.
Shadows swarmed like ants after those golden shards. A Chinese fishing fleet. These were no simple fishing boats. Crude mana circuits had been bolted onto every hull, turning them into armed plunder ships.
And at their center, two freighter-converted escort vessels—lesser than the Changlong, yet still formidable—held position. The fishing boats scraped up byproducts; the escorts collected and stored them. A thoroughly planned robbery.
That scene was captured by Hanul's eyes as he rode the Changlong-Leviathan. A memory flickered through his mind. News reports of how, even though these were Korean territorial waters, Chinese boats would swarm and drive off any Korean fishing vessel that tried to work. Now they had gone so far as to deploy converted warships for open, wholesale looting.
"Throwing a feast right in someone else's front yard."
And what they were stealing right now? His own spoils of war.
Rooooaar—
The Changlong-Leviathan tore through the clouds and descended. A colossal shadow fell across the water. Over the Chinese fishing fleet still engrossed in plunder, the true predator's pressure crashed down.
Split
Hanul drew a horizontal line through the air with his hand.
First, the two freighter-converted combat ships that had been collecting byproducts. Their steel-armored hulls were cleanly sliced in half lengthwise.
KRA-BOOOOM—!
With a thunderous roar the two bisected vessels began to sink.
"Uwaaagh! What the hell?! The ships just split in two!"
"Is it a deep-sea monster?!"
"No, there wasn't even an alarm!"
"Then what the hell—"
Chinese hunters screamed as they leapt into the sea. This time Hanul raised his palm upward.
Demon Spiral
The cold West Sea transformed into a colossal whirlpool. Black water columns shot toward the sky, coiling around the sinking ships and hunters. Powerful centrifugal force yanked the hunters out of the water and flung them into midair.
"Gyaaaah! What is this?!"
Hundreds of Chinese hunters flailed in the empty sky. Hanul's gaze shifted to the sinking wreckage of the escorts. He flicked his fingers, and the steel frames that had composed the hulls rose as thousands of spears.
"You lot deserve punishment too."
Whoooosh—!
A rain of steel engulfed the hunters floating in the air.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Not a single exception. Every hunter's body was skewered by the steel frames of the ships they had ridden.
"Grrraaagh!"
"Ghk... kuh!"
Blood poured like rain into the sea. Hanul pressed his hand downward. The hunters impaled on steel frames plummeted straight down into the black water.
Splash! Splash!
Beneath the surface, the Demon Fish that had already claimed the territory caught the scent of blood and multiplied madly. Tens of thousands of red eyes surged toward the fresh prey.
And directly above, on the surface—
"I-it's a Gate! A field boss monster appeared in the sea!"
"Run! Full speed, get out of here!"
The trawlers that had been busy plundering spun their helms in panic. The colossal demon-shaped warship that had punched through the clouds was catastrophe itself. Even then, those who could not abandon greed still clutched crates of collected byproducts and thrashed about.
"Where do you think you're running?"
Before they knew it, two more shadows had attached themselves behind Hanul.
Rumble—
Modified ships reconstructed from the wreckage of the sunk escorts via mana. They flanked the Changlong Hanul rode, cutting across the sky like escorts.
Hanul pressed his hand down. From the two modified ships, thousands of steel frames tore free—
and fell like a torrential downpour.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
The fleeing trawlers shattered like paper. The plunderers flung into the sea were no exception. Steel frames punched through their crowns and pinned them to the seabed.
Clean disposal. Scattered byproducts were drawn up by mana and stored in the ships' holds. Then the three magic warships turned their prows westward.
The Changlong's original systems forced themselves online. The China-bound route that had originally been meant to carry Fang Tian and the byproducts home. As the ships accelerated along the predetermined trajectory, a signal lit up on the monitors of the Chinese mainland control center.
Return signal confirmed: Changlong, entering scheduled route
The recovery cargo China had so eagerly awaited was on its way home. The only difference was that the contents were not Fang Tian, but a magic warship loaded with catastrophe.
"Almost there."
And beyond the horizon, the continental bridgehead came into view. Most likely Tianjin Port, next to Beijing. Then it was time to return to China what it was owed. A smile touched Hanul's lips.