Predator (7)
The night of the third day since the exam began. We continued pressing forward without rest. Moonlight flickered through gaps in the clouds only to vanish again. Though we tried to maintain a forced march, our pace was far from swift. The basin’s terrain had been utterly ruined by the meteor impact.
Sheer cliffs blocked the way before valleys, while endless grasslands unfolded beyond the horizon. We detoured around crystal-clear lakes that reflected all the way to their depths and vast stretches of dark green wetlands. The atmosphere circulated wildly along these landforms, so sudden drizzle often fell even under a blazing sun. Even accounting for the Cheongong Basin’s immense size, its internal environment was far more varied than expected.
“Uwek. Look at that.”
We were passing a cluster of woody mushrooms as tall as a person when Muyeong, who had been scanning the surroundings, suddenly twisted his face in disgust. A swarm of large, furry, plump larvae were enthusiastically devouring the mushroom caps. The crisp crunch of chewing echoed into the distance.
“Now I understand why the professor called this place closer to an alien world. They look like something straight out of hell. What the hell are those things…?”
“…They’re larvae of the Lipeus moth. You don’t even know that?”
“Lipeus… what?”
“Haah… The professor said to memorize all the scientific names if possible since monsters belong to a narrow biological group… You wear glasses, but your brain doesn’t seem very good…”
Yena grumbled in a pouty, high-pitched voice. At her sharp retort, Muyeong let out a bewildered laugh.
“I clearly apologized, didn’t I? It’s not like I have any ill feelings.”
“…If you’re going to say that, then take that cloth off your face first…!”
As she said, Muyeong had a thick white cloth wrapped tightly around his lower face. Though I wasn’t one to talk with my own mask, the sight alone seemed enough to make anyone feel suffocated.
“I can’t help it when I keep feeling nauseous. Can’t you understand that already? You’re far more narrow-minded than I expected.”
“Who are you calling narrow-minded…!”
“Both of you, stop it now…”
I barely managed to end their bickering, but Muyeong and Yena simply turned their heads in opposite directions and refused to acknowledge each other. It was the umpteenth repeat of the same scene since yesterday. Being caught in the middle was incredibly awkward. Still, I couldn’t drive either of them away. I had no intention of doing so anyway, and we had already ventured deep into the northern sector. Increasingly powerful monsters kept appearing to block our path. Both provided excellent support, but neither was particularly strong in direct combat—Yena especially, and Muyeong wasn’t much better. If even one person fell behind, elimination and the lowest score were all but guaranteed. In the end, we had no choice but to stay together until the exam concluded.
“Wait.”
We advanced in an inverted triangle formation, with Muyeong at the rear point while Yena and I scouted the left and right fronts. Suddenly Muyeong halted us.
“What is it?”
“There’s a crack in the ground at eleven o’clock. It doesn’t look natural. I sense movement inside it too.”
I examined the ground at his words. When I lightly brushed aside the leaf litter, a mass of faintly glowing, translucent, sticky threads clung to my fingers.
“…Looks like a Signata nest. Yena, can you draw it out?”
“I’ll try.”
Yena fiddled with the particle arranger on her wrist. Soon tiny droplets gathered in the air before her, forming a large water orb. She hurled it straight toward the crack ahead.
-Screech!
After a brief pause, a massive creature unable to hold its breath any longer burst from its hiding place. Its huge fangs and twelve legs were overwhelmingly intimidating. The body alone, excluding the legs, was nearly Yena’s size. The spider-like monster spun around and fled toward the shrubland. What it wanted now was not hunting but escape from danger. That made dealing with it simple.
I swiftly closed in from behind the fleeing monster and drove my blade into its chest, slicing straight down to its abdomen and cutting it in half. Green blood splattered messily in every direction.
“Ugh…”
Yena grimaced at the sight of the still-twitching corpse.
“It really does get more diverse once you leave Lupus territory. I couldn’t have come this far alone.”
Muyeong, who had collected the monster’s fangs as proof, muttered.
“Without both of you, I wouldn’t have made it this quickly either.”
“Such humble words…”
I wasn’t simply being polite. The difficulty itself wasn’t that high, but without such perfectly distributed scouting and support, our pace would have slowed considerably. After all, I needed to conserve my magic as much as possible. I was beginning to understand why the Cradle placed such high value on joint efforts. Even if my skills had been far lower, the difference in speed probably wouldn’t have been significant.
“Ugh… go away…”
“You… again…! Hic… Hyun…”
Another commotion erupted behind us. Yena’s face flushed red as she made a tearful expression. If only those two could get along, everything would have been perfect…
“Hey. That’s enough. The midpoint is just a little farther. Let’s rest there tonight. At this pace, we should reach the center soon.”
“Already…? Are we actually going to take first place…?”
Yena murmured, her voice brimming with delight.
We cleaned up the scene and resumed walking under the moonlight. An eerie stillness hung over the area today. Aside from the single Signata we had encountered earlier, not even a squirrel could be seen nearby.
“Something feels off…”
Muyeong muttered suspiciously.
“The spirits are agitated. Just what is causing… ugh…!!”
Muyeong suddenly clutched his head and collapsed on the spot. The way he writhed in agony, crawling on all fours, was clearly far worse than before.
“Huk…!”
“Muyeong! What’s wrong all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know…! The connection with the spirits was forcibly severed for a moment and then restored…! Ugh… what is this…”
Muyeong groaned, pressing a hand to his head.
We remained in place for some time, waiting for him to recover. Unlike the dawn-like silence from moments ago, indistinct noises now drifted toward us from afar. Whatever it was, something had clearly gone wrong.
Muyeong, still staggering as he regained his balance, suddenly raised a hand in warning.
“Wait… Leader, two entities are rushing toward us from three o’clock. They’re moving very fast…”
The area was overgrown with reeds that reached above our heads, making it impossible to secure a clear line of sight. I sent Muyeong and Yena behind me and prepared to face whatever might emerge.
Soon rustling sounds approached from the distance, heading straight for us. A moment later, what burst from the reeds was not a monster but the silhouette of a person walking on two legs.
“Hiiiiiiik!!”
I hadn’t even raised my blade, yet the figure screamed at the sight of me as if the world were ending. The voice was loud enough to put most monsters to shame.
Yena, watching the scene, suddenly called out a name.
“Sera…?”
“Yena…???”
It seemed she was one of Yena’s acquaintances. The girl only relaxed after seeing Yena, her strength giving out as she collapsed on the spot.
Upon closer inspection, her condition was dire. Sera was carrying someone on her back, and both of their protective suits were torn and shredded, leaving almost no intact sections. The person she carried was unconscious. Her arm bore what looked like claw marks, and the bandage wrapped around the wound was not only soaked bright red but dripping blood steadily downward.
“Sera… what happened??”
At Yena’s urgent question, the girl sobbed in a voice thick with terror.
“This is no time for explanations… It’s a disaster…!”
“What do you mean, disaster…”
“The partition wall in the southern sector has been destroyed!! High-ranking monsters are pouring through from that side…! People could actually die at this rate…!”
“What…?”
The temporary camp set up on the grasslands near the Cheongong Basin was bustling with dozens of second-year Cradle students. They were assisting the professors with various miscellaneous tasks. Numerous upperclassmen had synchronized their vision with crows and were surveying every corner of the northern sector. Their primary duty was to monitor illegal conduct during the exam.
Collisions and duels were everyday occurrences at the Cradle, and the instructors rarely bothered with minor disturbances. But there were always those who crossed the line. Especially in a situation like this, chaos provided the perfect cover for foul play. Preventing such incidents was exactly what they were watching for. They also aimed to identify standout individuals for future faction recruitment. After all, raw gems revealed their true worth not in orderly tests but in unpredictable real combat.
“How strange…”
A female student lay sprawled on the field with her eyes closed, muttering to herself. Her cheerful features were accentuated by a prominent tear mole beneath her right eye. What Kwon Yuri was observing was a peculiar trio that seemed completely mismatched. Ha Yena, the countryside natural awakening mage whose lively personality made her surprisingly popular. Shin Muyeong, the spirit mage who somehow received oddly negative evaluations from the female students. And the new student whose reputation needed no introduction.
Most bizarre of all was the fact that they were currently the group closest to the center. It appeared Lee Hyun handled most of the physical work, yet the other two were supporting him nearly flawlessly.
“Yes. This is what practical training is all about. Unexpected things always pop up from somewhere…”
Kwon Yuri murmured. Her gaze lingered especially on Lee Hyun. The news that he had shown strong antipathy toward her friend Baek Seoyeon had already spread throughout the entire Cradle.
“Strange… He didn’t seem like the type to act that way…”
Kwon Yuri had already met Lee Hyun once before. At Baek Seoyeon’s request, she had helped invite the new students to the social gathering. Though his appearance was unusual, his manners were polite and his speech gentle, leaving a rather favorable impression. Aside from spending time with Ha Yena, he lived quietly without engaging in other social activities, so it didn’t seem like he was trying to create some political rivalry.
She pondered reasonable explanations for a moment, but only a ridiculous joke crossed her mind.
“Maybe he ran into an ex-girlfriend by chance… pfft.”
She burst into laughter at her own absurd thought. Although she was close to Baek Seoyeon, her friend had always kept her fiancé’s identity strictly secret. Still, it was easy to tell how Baek Seoyeon felt about him. Whenever she spoke of her fiancé, her face would fill with a radiant smile. She had even said he was the only one she had ever loved in her life. There was no way such a woman would have an ex-boyfriend.
At the same time, she was incredibly curious. Even from another woman’s perspective, Baek Seoyeon was a perfect being—talent, appearance, background, personality. Nothing was lacking. What kind of man could receive such absolute love from her? Who knew… maybe she surprisingly preferred a simple, handsome country boy…
“Pfft… Ah, I should stop. Next time I’ll definitely get her drunk and ask.”
Kwon Yuri shook her head, scattering the wild thoughts. She was just about to return to work when—
“Back to it then… ugh…!”
A sudden, excruciating impact struck her head. It felt as if someone were scraping her nerve bundles with a knife. The pain traveled downward, burning her eyeballs.
“Kuu… ugh… what is this…”
The agony tore through every corner of her body before finally subsiding. Kwon Yuri barely managed to realize that her vision link with the crow had been forcibly severed. Staggering to her feet, she looked around.
“Kuu…!”
“What’s going on?!”
“It hurts… my eyes…!”
The area around her had already descended into chaos. Everyone who had been scouting the exam site through crows was rolling on the ground in pain. It looked as if some incomprehensible mass hysteria had swept through the camp.
“What the hell is this…? Ugh…”
Kwon Yuri muttered. The others seemed to be experiencing the same rebound from severed connections. But forced disconnections were extremely rare. Such a widespread occurrence was only possible if there had been an explosive surge of powerful particle interference nearby. And the only time large-scale interference like this happened was when a monster of at least danger class 1 appeared.
-Boom!
The sound of something exploding in the air snapped her out of her thoughts. A single firework spell had soared high, painting the night sky red. With the appearance of the first dropout, the camp personnel immediately began preparing a rescue team.
“Yuri, come here!! Hurry!!”
Kwon Yuri was about to begin her own duties when she heard someone urgently calling her name from the basin entrance. The voice was filled with panic and tension.
At the basin entrance, a group of bloodied new students had just staggered out. They had lost all their backpacks, and their protective suits were in tatters. Several appeared to have sustained severe injuries, their bodies completely drenched in blood.
“You’re…”
Among them, she spotted a familiar face. Guk Jae-ryong. A junior from the same one of the 27 Magic Families, though she had never been particularly close to him due to his cocky, irritating demeanor. She did remember him boldly leading a group of nine people. It was somewhat amusing that the route they had chosen was the easiest central path…
“Junior. What on earth happened?”
At Kwon Yuri’s question, Guk Jae-ryong answered while trembling violently.
“Senior… this is no time to talk… We must stop the exam immediately…”
“What?”
“As quickly as possible…!”
“Junior. Take a deep breath and speak slowly…”
She tried to calm him, but Guk Jae-ryong continued shaking, spitting out words that barely made sense. His face was filled with pure terror.
-Boom!
The sky suddenly brightened as if the sun had risen, and a roar similar to large-caliber gunfire followed, echoing loudly in every direction.
“…Just what is happening…”
Dozens of red signal flares continuously detonating across the night sky above the basin.