Chapter 196
Translator: uly
Chapter: 196
Chapter Title: Part 2 Episode 59
Defense specialist auxiliary hunter Han Su-hwan was currently receiving gate situation updates from outside the defensive wall while calling in additional support.
“Han Su-hwan Hunter! Fox Hee’s team at the beachside has sent a support request from their emission gate!”
“Thirteen top-rankers were deployed, and six died. Of the six fatalities, three were critically injured and died en route. Only three hunters have returned so far, all critically wounded. Should we send the support team inside?”
Having received the update, Han Su-hwan looked at the additional hunters gathered outside the defensive wall.
They were A- to B-rank hunters from Abyss whose rankings had slipped a bit. They were the ones who had been grouped as B-Class back during the Abyss Project days.
Pyo Sang-hoon was there too—the B1-rank super rookie with terrifying electric powers.
Han Su-hwan glanced at the monsters clinging to the defensive wall like barnacles.
They were relentlessly bombarding it in an attempt to break through.
“Wait a moment. Hold position until those things are cleared.”
Not long after, the hunters from Woo Ji-yoon’s team, who had been clustered up front, unleashed a barrage of attacks toward the monsters gathered at the defensive wall.
Soon, Woo Ji-yoon herself rushed over from the front lines, gripped her twin swords tightly, and raised them high.
Whoosh!
The flames enveloping her swords blazed intensely, emitting red and blue light.
Woo Ji-yoon crossed her two swords, lowered her stance, and charged forward before kicking off the ground and leaping into the air.
She adjusted her angle toward the spot where the monsters were most densely packed, then thrust out her crossed arms.
Fwoooosh!
The fire rising from the tips of her blades traced a massive arc, cleanly incinerating only the monsters.
The charred wounds on the monsters didn’t regenerate.
The blackened areas spread throughout their bodies, claiming their lives in a single strike.
Once most of the monsters attached to the defensive wall were dead, Han Su-hwan swiftly deactivated it.
“Send them in now!!!”
The support team waiting outside rushed inside at his command. The moment they pushed forward, Han Su-hwan regenerated the defensive wall.
[Groooowl!]
A few monsters had slipped out in that brief gap. Fortunately, there weren’t many, and the cleanup hunters quickly took care of them.
Han Su-hwan watched the support team deploy and let out a deep sigh. The situation was dire.
One emission gate had closed, thankfully, but key hunters had suffered heavy casualties.
Even the Abyss crew, who usually devoured gates for breakfast, was barely holding on uneasily.
Especially after the injury and fatality counts from Byun Woo-jin and Fox Hee’s teams came in—some were even whispering that the two of them might be dead. But Han Su-hwan, having seen them fight, believed they wouldn’t go down that easily.
‘They’ll be fine.’
At this point, all he could do was trust and hope.
Han Su-hwan grimaced in despair as he monitored the internal situation.
Shortly after the support team entered, the roar of a flashy motorcycle engine approached.
It was Lee Sa-byeol, who had rushed urgently to the Hysis Gate sector.
She wiped away the sweat dripping steadily from her school uniform shirt and ran toward the group of hunters standing outside the defensive wall.
Spotting Han Su-hwan struggling to maintain the regenerated barrier, she headed straight for him.
He was watching the situation inside with a deeply troubled expression.
“Uncle Su-hwan!!”
Lee Sa-byeol, who had run up so fast her face was flushed red, shouted.
Startled by her clear, ringing voice, Han Su-hwan flinched, shoulders hunching, before turning to look at her.
“Huh! No, Sa-byeol!! What are you doing here!!”
“The injured and dead! From the rearmost emission gate—the injured and dead from there!!!”
At her desperate, wailing question, Han Su-hwan averted his gaze awkwardly.
“……The counts aren’t fully tallied yet.”
He answered vaguely, as if brushing it off, then continued gently.
“It’s dangerous here, so why don’t you wait in that seafood restaurant back there? Order whatever you want on my tab.”
“Fuck, you know!!! You know, don’t you!!!! You’re the one receiving situation reports and calling support—you can’t not know the injury and fatality numbers!!!’
Lee Sa-byeol cried out in anguish.
Hunters from Byun Woo-jin’s team, injured big and small from the emission gate, were being carried out beyond the defensive wall for proper treatment.
But Byun Woo-jin wasn’t among them.
The emission gate had been cleared long ago, yet he still hadn’t appeared with the treatment team.
Han Su-hwan looked at Lee Sa-byeol.
Her wide eyes were bloodshot. Her fingertips were caked in blood—probably from nervously biting them on the way.
Unable to bring himself to tell her the truth while looking at that face, Han Su-hwan made an expression like he might cry himself and bowed his head.
Instead of answering, he reached into his pocket to fish for candy or chocolate. He found a melted Ganada chocolate stuck to its wrapper.
Han Su-hwan pulled out the small chocolate and offered it to her.
“Want this for now?”
“What about Woo-jin?”
“……”
Failing at his clumsy deflection, Han Su-hwan forced the words out to tell her the truth.
“He’s missing.”
“……What?”
“I haven’t received word that he’s dead! S-so he must be alive. So, Sa-byeol……”
Lee Sa-byeol’s focus blurred as she arrived too late.
She stared endlessly at the spot where the gate Byun Woo-jin had entered had been. Gate debris floated thickly around it.
“What about Fox Hee’s side? What about the gates the others entered?”
“……”
When Han Su-hwan didn’t answer, Lee Sa-byeol pulled out her phone and opened the Korean Gate app.
For some reason, her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, making it hard to press the buttons.
She finally navigated to the screen displaying info on the Hysis Gate and scrolled through the contents.
The gate’s overall mana emission levels had risen. That meant someone inside had died. Or was in peril.
“Find Woo-jin, check the gates for Fox Hee and the others……”
Muttering in a cracked voice, Lee Sa-byeol walked to the support team’s supplies and grabbed a scuba kit.
She also picked up hunter bands and various supply weapons before heading toward the defensive wall.
“Sa-byeol, no!! What are you doing!”
“Uncle Su-hwan, drop this barrier for me. Yeah? Luckily, there are no monsters stuck to it right now.”
Lee Sa-byeol pleaded with him in a somewhat calmer, subdued voice.
Han Su-hwan shook his head.
“No. It’s too dangerous.”
Lee Sa-byeol’s face crumpled.
She needed to confirm even one minute sooner that the kids were alive to soothe this heart being brutally torn apart, but he kept blocking even that.
Maybe, just maybe, with some luck, she could save them on the brink of death.
She’d miraculously rescued kids on the verge of death more than once or twice before.
“I can judge for myself. I’m GAL Rank 1, you know. I won’t do anything stupid, so please……”
“……No.”
“Ah, fuck!!!!”
Feeling pushed to the edge of a cliff, Lee Sa-byeol spat out a harsh curse before grabbing Han Su-hwan, sobbing, and begging.
“Please……. Please……. They’re my family……. They can’t die too……. They’re everything to me……. If I lose them too, how am I supposed to live……”
The face of the kid who had always been plucky and full of mischief even in tough times twisted into something pathetic and heartbreaking.
“I’ve never asked for much in my whole life. Please……. Just let me protect them……. Someone like me can hope for at least that much, right?”
Her pleading, tear-streaked face looked so precarious that Han Su-hwan wanted to cry with her.
But letting an unawakened like Lee Sa-byeol inside like this was extremely dangerous.
Most hunters—especially Abyss ones—would turn their attention to her, potentially disrupting formations, and no matter how adept she was at gate handling, the Hysis Gate was an average A-rank underwater gate.
Sending her inside the defensive wall was no different from tossing her naked into a minefield.
“Please!!! Aaaah!!! Let me in, fuck!!!! Because I’m unawakened? I still got GAL Rank 1!!!!”
“……Sa-byeol.”
Han Su-hwan tried to soothe her, but she ignored him and kept trying to break through the defensive wall.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
She pounded it with all her strength, but bare fists and an unpowered blade left no mark.
“Quick, treatment, treatment!!!!”
“No more syringes???”
Suddenly, the water’s edge grew chaotic. Far off, someone limp was being supported and carried in.
It was one person with a long, deep diagonal fatal wound.
‘Moon Se-rim……?’
Moon Se-rim’s complexion was ghostly pale. Spotting him being moved to the treatment team inside the wall, Lee Sa-byeol ran alongside it.
“His breathing’s getting shallow!!”
“The wound’s opening too fast—the syringe isn’t working! Hurry and suture!!”
Everyone around Moon Se-rim uttered anxious words.
Blood-soaked. Completely drenched in blood.
The face and body she’d laughed and joked with were so covered in blood she was unrecognizable.
Lee Sa-byeol stared blankly at Moon Se-rim receiving treatment beyond the wall, then helplessly sank to the ground with a hollow laugh.
Once fear and anxiety surpassed a certain point, her mind went blank instead. The only emotion now was self-loathing at her own powerlessness.
* * *
The support teams split into four groups.
One for Fox Hee’s location, one for top-ranker Yoo Hee-ah’s emission gate, one for the base gate, and finally, the injured rescue team.
Pyo Sang-hoon joined the injured rescue team.
Though it was an underwater gate with good synergy for his electric powers, his history of monster phobia and the risk of killing injured if he used them without confirmed positions led to his assignment here.
Having boated all the way back to search for top Abyss ranker Byun Woo-jin, Pyo Sang-hoon surveyed the former emission gate site.
He couldn’t breathe underwater like Byun Woo-jin, but he could stay submerged quite a while.
‘If Byun Woo-jin hyung closed the gate and lost consciousness, he’d have sunk to the bottom.’
He was the only one who could swim to the ocean’s depths, so Pyo Sang-hoon volunteered to scout the lowest level.
Swimming far deeper than the other gates, Pyo Sang-hoon looked around for Byun Woo-jin.
But no matter how hard he searched, not even a hair from Byun Woo-jin was visible.
Finding one person in such a vast ocean felt impossibly daunting.
Having reached the seafloor without a trace, Pyo Sang-hoon scowled and swam upward at a diagonal.
‘What? Two more gates?’
He didn’t find Byun Woo-jin, but spotted two blue rifts clustered closely together.
No monsters emerging suggested base gates.
‘I’ll check inside first, note the monster traits, then report.’
Pyo Sang-hoon chose the upper rift and entered.
“???”
The moment he did, gravity yanked him downward sharply. He fell endlessly until his body jammed into a small hole.
Stunned by the unfamiliar gate entrance, he quickly drew his sword and smashed the surrounding walls to widen the gap.
Pyo Sang-hoon tumbled down from the ceiling amid rock debris. Using a roll to land, he swiftly assumed combat stance.
‘Where is this?’
No attacking monsters in sight yet.
Looking around, he glanced up at the ceiling—and saw screens like water surfaces displaying all the gates’ situations clearly.
Below that, a familiar man covered in monster blood and his own was peering into the water mirror.
Beside him lay a humanoid monster radiating unusual energy, unconscious on the floor.
“Seol……Do-yoon hyung……?”
Studying the man somehow standing despite fatal wounds while maintaining consciousness, it was Seol Do-yoon.
Dumbfounded, Pyo Sang-hoon stood awkwardly for a moment before offering the recovery kit he’d brought.
Seol Do-yoon accepted it with a pallid smile.
“Nice to see you, Sang-hoon. Help me out a bit.”