Rabbit Hunting
“Don't be scared. It'll be over quick.”
Han Sungwoo squeezed his eyes shut as he watched the fist hurtling toward his face.
Getting hit by that moronic chunk of muscle wouldn't end in a knockout—it wouldn't have surprised him one bit if his head simply flew clean off his shoulders.
Honestly, it galled him to die so pathetically, without so much as a fight, but neither running nor resisting seemed like a real option anymore.
Huh? It doesn't hurt?
Han Sungwoo opened his eyes roughly five seconds later.
When he cracked one eye open, what slid into view was a man in crimson robes blocking the burly giant's fist with a sword sheath.
“...What do you think you're doing?”
The giant asked the red-robed man, who slid his sheath back into place and turned a bland expression toward Han Sungwoo's face.
Truthfully, Han Sungwoo wanted to ask the same question. He couldn't even begin to guess why a man in crimson robes had come to his rescue.
“He's one of ours, you idiot. The Cult Leader clearly told you to check the photo first?”
“Huh? Whaaat? He did? Ah, that was close. Thanks.”
The situation was spiraling in a direction Han Sungwoo understood less and less.
For one thing, the red-robed man and the giant clearly knew each other, and for reasons beyond his comprehension, they were insisting he was an ally.
Wait. Could it be...?
At that moment, a thought struck Han Sungwoo's head like a bolt of lightning.
The only person he could currently call an ally was Park Jaehyun of the government. If Park Jaehyun had sent these men, then everything made sense.
“Could it be... that Park Jaehyun sent you?”
“I know no such name, but it's true that someone working with you sent us. So rest easy.”
So spoke the man in crimson, and Han Sungwoo couldn't help letting out a sigh of relief.
That wasn't to say his doubts had vanished. The crimson-robed man before him, and the man who'd swung a fist at his head—they were both strangers to him.
Even if Han Sungwoo was an Awakened active in Busan, he knew most of the famous Awakened in Seoul.
Oh, wait a second. Yeongdeungpo—that incident?
Now that he'd calmed down, he realized the giant before him wasn't entirely unfamiliar after all. That monster who'd all but single-handedly stopped the gate break in Seoul a while back—it looked exactly like him.
“Th-then how many of you came, exactly?”
Han Sungwoo asked the crimson-robed man in an urgent voice.
However far beyond his league these men were, nearly every notable guild in Busan had gathered near the gate. Of course Park Jaehyun's side had calculated their strike carefully, but burning energy fighting fellow Korean Awakened before ever clashing with the Japanese wasn't exactly an ideal scenario either.
“Seven, for now.”
“I'm sorry... d-did you say only seven?”
Han Sungwoo's jaw dropped at the man's answer.
Sure, neither the giant nor the crimson-robed man seemed like ordinary people, but this was treating the Busan Awakened far too lightly.
Over fifty personnel were on guard duty around them at that very moment, and if trouble arose, several times that number could come running.
“If anything, seven feels like too many to me. Anyway—let's head out.”
At the crimson-robed man's easygoing words, Han Sungwoo found himself rising to his feet almost involuntarily.
He was still uneasy about the whole situation, but something in him felt compelled to follow the man's lead.
And so, stepping outside the container, Han Sungwoo was confronted with a scene beyond anything he'd imagined.
Nearly every guard stationed around the area was lying unconscious on the ground, and the only sounds drifting from the distance were the familiar voices of his own people—cursing, or screaming in pain.
“Cult Leader. We've finished handling everything you commanded.”
“Good work, all of you.”
It was only a little later that Han Sungwoo laid eyes on their master—or rather, their Cult Leader.
“AAAAAAARGH!!”
China, at that very moment. A remote hall deep within the Forbidden City in Beijing.
Inside it echoed the horrific screams of Namgoong Hwi, the Sword Emperor.
“My, my. Even with your bones shattered to that degree, you're still full of vigor. You do live up to the name Sword Emperor. A fraudulent one, of course.”
“...Wh-what the hell do you even want? I've already told you everything I know.”
Namgoong Hwi spat the words through tears of blood, his voice thick with venom.
Truth be told, back in his Moorim days, Namgoong Hwi had never once been in a position to come face to face with a figure of Hyeolnoe's caliber.
As Outer Hall Master of the Namgoong Clan, his standing hadn't been low by any means—but comparing himself to the Military Strategist of the Blood Cult, the very embodiment of Moorim's infamy, had been out of the question.
And Namgoong Hwi's first impression of such a legendary figure amounted to exactly one thought: so this is what a complete lunatic looks like.
“So it seems.”
“Th-then why? Why do you keep torturing me!”
“Torturing” was putting it kindly—it was, in fact, torture. The kind that left the mind disturbingly intact while pushing pain to its absolute limit. Deeply, professionally executed torture.
Needless to say, Namgoong Hwi had spilled every piece of information he possessed before the torture had even properly begun.
His knowledge of the modern world and the hunter system, the names of China's power brokers, even the full membership roster of the Moorim Branch Association—all of it.
He owed no one any loyalty worth keeping, and as long as he himself came out unscathed, he was prepared to do anything.
But the answer that came back was more torture.
Even that much, Namgoong Hwi could understand. He had broken far too easily; from the torturer's perspective, it was reasonable to suspect he was hiding something.
So Namgoong Hwi had dredged up and vomited out everything his memory could produce. He didn't have the presence of mind to judge whether any of it was useful or not.
The funny thing was, Hyeolnoe himself had apparently realized long ago that Namgoong Hwi had nothing left to give.
“One never knows. Something more might yet pop out.”
Namgoong Hwi swallowed hard as he watched Hyeolnoe deliver those words with utter indifference.
So that was it. He was being tortured, over and over, purely on the off chance that something more might surface.
“You insane bastard! There's nothing! I don't know anything else! So just kill me already!”
“I can't very well do that. You're now a valuable asset of our Cult, after all.”
Looking at Hyeolnoe as he said this, Namgoong Hwi found himself wishing he could simply pass out.
He'd known for a long time that the Blood Cult was deranged, but apparently their Military Strategist himself was no saner than the rest of them.
“HYEOLNOOOOOE!”
The torture finally ceased when someone flung open the hall's doors and strode inside.
A man drenched head to toe in what looked like green monster blood came bellowing at Hyeolnoe, huffing mightily.
“Ah, you've arrived, Gwanghyeoljon?”
At those words, Namgoong Hwi involuntarily drew a sharp breath.
Gwanghyeoljon—the Mad Blood Venerable, Right Guardian of the Blood Cult, a figure akin to the supreme commander leading both the Ten Blood Squad and the Blood Demon Guard.
“What in the world do you mean? The Cult Leader has departed?!”
“...Why are you demanding answers from me? Besides, didn't someone threaten you into entering that gate?”
“No, all the same, he should have been restrained! How could the Cult Leader leave alone when his subordinate had just arrived?!”
“...Restrain the Cult Leader? What utter nonsense. Besides, Yuk Jurim went with him.”
“Huh? That sneaky snake? Why did it have to be him...”
“It was the Cult Leader's command. Nothing to be done, is there?”
Namgoong Hwi held his breath, eavesdropping on the exchange between the two old monsters.
Yuk Jurim, the Blood Shadow of the Night—his name had carried considerable weight even in Moorim.
Granted, he paled somewhat next to Hyeolnoe or the Right Guardian Gwanghyeoljon, but the man who had killed more masters from more sects than anyone else was none other than that very Yuk Jurim.
With names of that caliber appearing one after another, Namgoong Hwi couldn't help swallowing dryly again and again.
It was only now, hearing them, that it truly sank in: the Blood Cult—the sect that had once stained Moorim red with blood—had genuinely appeared in China.
“By the way—look at this, Hyeolnoe.”
That was the moment Gwanghyeoljon called out to him. He rolled up his sleeve and thrust his forearm before Hyeolnoe's eyes.
And at the same instant, something like black scales began sprouting across Gwanghyeoljon's arm.
A-A variant kill ability?!
Watching the scene in secret, Namgoong Hwi recognized it at once—the power granted for hunting down variant-class monsters.
And his guess was spot on.
“Heh heh. Wondrous, is it not? I slew a strangely shaped lizard whelp inside that gate, and gained this power. It's quite durable, you know? Remarkable, is it not?”
Namgoong Hwi swallowed hard again as he watched Gwanghyeoljon boast to Hyeolnoe.
These were men who were already terrifyingly strong. If they started acquiring special skills like that on top of everything else, he couldn't even begin to fathom how powerful they would become.
“Is it stronger than Body Protective Astral Qi?”
“...No, it's not.”
“Then frankly, is it not a useless trifle? Even mastering Thirty Thousand Iron Cannons would serve me better than this. Scales, growing grotesquely on a man's arm.”
“...”
Namgoong Hwi found his eyes darting around at the peculiar silence that followed.
Anyone could see it—the Mad Blood Venerable's face had flushed bright red, clearly stung by Hyeolnoe's remark.
Namgoong Hwi could hardly believe what he was witnessing. This was far too strange to be the conversation of the Blood Cult fanatics he'd known as blood-mad lunatics.
Besides, abilities obtained by hunting rare-species or unique-species monsters were not things one could acquire easily to begin with.
Unique-species abilities could only be gained by being the first to slay the boss of an A-rank or higher gate, and rare-species monsters were so scarce that merely encountering one was an ordeal.
But one thing was certain: neither Hyeolnoe, who dismissed such an ability as a worthless trifle, nor Gwanghyeoljon, who bristled at it like a wounded child, was operating with a fully intact mind.
“Hmph! I shall return with an ability even you will envy, Hyeolnoe. Mark my words!”
“Heh. Suit yourself. But if you intend to conquer gates, go where I tell you from now on.”
“Why is that?”
“If we are to expand our territory regardless, we must first carve open the road to the Cult Leader.”
Namgoong Hwi swallowed hard at the unexpected intelligence.
If the place where these men's Cult Leader resided was likely Korea, that meant the Blood Cult intended to march east.
“Huh? It's the ocean.”
Inside the S-rank gate, Seo Yeon murmured as she gazed out at the endless sea stretching before them.
The Busan guild members who had been controlling access at the gate's mouth had, as expected, proved no match for Yuk Jurim and the Blood Shadow Squad.
A few Blood Shadow members had been left posted outside with Park Jaehyun, while the rest had all proceeded into the gate.
It's more ordinary than I expected?
Han Chaeyun had told her that the Yoma World's gate was the most distinctive of them all, but the scene before her eyes looked fairly normal.
Or at least, that was what she'd assumed—right up until then.
Well, look at that.
The moment they entered, she felt a multitude of presences stirring in the forest, and soon the creatures came bounding out of the trees all at once, hunting them like prey.
“R-rabbits?”
Seo Yeon said it with a dumbfounded look, but nothing that came out of a gate could ever be so simple.
Granted, their appearance was rabbit-like, but they were monsters of an entirely different order.
For one thing, rabbits did not carry mortar-pestle-sized clubs, nor were they hulking masses of muscle.
“A rabbit hunt. This should be fun.”
I murmured those words, and the moment I moved, Samsik and Yuk Jurim fell in behind me.
BOOM!
The first to charge in was Samsik.
He swung his fist at a rabbit monster that was leaping toward him, hoisting a pestle as big as its own body.
The rabbit monster swung its pestle back at him in response, but the outcome was exactly as predicted. The wooden pestle shattered like a toothpick, and the rabbit monster crumpled to the ground with its head burst open.
“BWAHAHAHA! Cult Leader! A fine beast! A fine beast indeed! This Samsik shall find you that altar without fail!”
If Samsik fought loudly, Yuk Jurim was the complete opposite.
Each time his perfectly concealed shadow flickered into view, a hole punched itself cleanly through another rabbit monster's throat.
It wasn't a battle so much as one-sided slaughter.
Well, I can't afford to fall behind either.
Having watched their displays, I lifted a handful of blood droplets into the air around me.
Not that I was competing with my subordinates—but a Cult Leader had a certain dignity to maintain.
“Die.”
The moment those words left my mouth, the blood droplets hovering around me shot outward at blistering speed.
Launched faster than any eye could follow, they drilled holes through the bodies of the monsters swarming toward me, ripping through their ranks in a screaming spiral of crimson.