36. One of a Kind
The capital's southern district was thrown into a state of emergency the moment a gate tore open, flattening an entire building beneath it.
Its very size was unsettling, and the wavelength readings confirmed it immediately—an S-Rank gate.
The problem was that the gate's progression was moving far faster than anyone had predicted.
Before the authorities had even settled on an assault team, the gate had lunged to the brink of Stage 3, forcing an emergency mobilization. Every available hunter was called in at once.
Five hunters thus gathered.
"Is this everyone, then?"
Song Tae-han said, glancing around. A Grade 10 high-tier hunter, he was the CEO of Yuhan Entertainment, the fourth-largest hunter management agency in the country.
The muscular giant standing beside him was Go Jin-young, Yuhan's co-founder.
Within the industry, they counted as genuine heavyweights. Of course, in the eyes of Aegis—the pioneer of the entire business—every other agency, no matter which one, was more or less interchangeable.
"Look at that—everyone here's from the same outfit except for us, who happened to be nearby. That's Aegis for you. A true conglomerate really is built differently."
Kim Jun-seok and Lee Ha-ye, Aegis's well-known hunters, stood there without offering any particular reply.
When it came to the domestic pool of civilian high-tier hunter talent, no agency could hope to rival Aegis. Counting its overseas branches, it was rated the foremost of the world's top three managements—calling it the industry's finest was no exaggeration.
"You know... it's been a while since I've seen that particular face at an S-rank gate."
Song Tae-han turned his gaze and said it with a sneer.
He was looking at Ju Ji-hye, standing between the two Aegis hunters. But she didn't dignify him with so much as a glance, sweeping past him without a word. Kim Jun-seok and Lee Ha-ye simply fell in behind her.
"So being part of a prestigious company means you don't even bother acknowledging people, huh."
Cleanly snubbed, Song Tae-han shrugged.
Yuhan Entertainment's reputation in the industry was admittedly poor, but only Aegis could get away with snubbing them this openly.
"Some rather juicy rumors have been going around lately, so I figured if I poked at you a little, you'd snap right away... And yet today, suddenly, you're all calm and collected."
"Rumors? What rumors?"
"Oh, it's an interesting story. Just not one for here."
Song Tae-han's mouth curled into a sly grin.
While the men behind her traded barbs, Ju Ji-hye stood before the gate, which was pouring out its enormous pressure.
Its presence filled the entire cordoned-off site.
It really hits home now—this is what an S-rank gate is.
Ju Ji-hye took a slow, deep breath. She was a little tense, but she'd be fine. She steadied her mind by recalling Oh Hyeon-seong's parting words—that she'd grown strong enough, so there was nothing to worry about.
She'd faced the last lurker-type boss monster on her own, after all. There was no reason to get worked up with a proper team assembled this time.
"Ju Ji-hye, want to take team lead?"
Kim Jun-seok asked her. The three Aegis hunters here were comrades who had conquered countless sites together, and all of them knew perfectly well that the strongest of the three was Ju Ji-hye.
Unlike the ranks below Grade 9, each step among high-tier hunters covered an enormous range of power. Even hunters lumped together as Grade 10 could differ wildly from one individual to the next.
Ju Ji-hye had been exceptional even within Grade 10, so before her injury, taking the lead would have been a given. The only question mark was the blank period that had come after.
"If it feels like too much, I can—"
"No. I'll take it."
Ju Ji-hye nodded. Returning to an S-rank site after so long might have left her feeling uncertain, but her two comrades showed no trace of doubt and accepted her decision without hesitation.
Right. It's time I could stand on my own again.
Ju Ji-hye's eyes turned grave. In the lurker's nest, she had leaned on Oh Hyeon-seong entirely. Even as she grumbled, she trusted him without reservation, which was why she'd been willing to do things that bordered on suicidal.
But Oh Hyeon-seong wasn't here. There was no one to lean on, and the decisions had to be her own.
Leading a team meant shouldering the lives of everyone in it—naturally, the position demanded seriousness.
"You've all heard the pre-mission briefing, so I won't go back over it. We're short on time, so we're going in immediately, no delays. Everyone ready?"
The team members—including Song Tae-han and Go Jin-young, who had sauntered up late—nodded. Equipment checks were already complete.
The gate had fully entered Stage 3, and entry into the activated gate was now possible. There was no room for posturing; it had to be handled fast.
Neutralizing a gate before it erupted had always been a hunter's foremost objective.
"This gate is a total unknown, so everyone stay sharp. Entering now."
Tzzzzzzt!
She stepped into the great fissure in space. Her surroundings flipped, and even the air itself changed completely. Having crossed into an otherworldly realm utterly unlike Earth's environment, they could feel the thick, oppressive miasma—the takgi—pressing down on them.
It was a density so heavy that a low-grade hunter or an ordinary person couldn't have lasted even a moment.
"A cave, huh."
Spread out before them was a gloomy cavern. Fluorescent moss bloomed here and there, but it failed to properly light the surroundings, only deepening the dismal atmosphere.
"One look and you can tell the interior layout will be a maze. This'll eat up a ton of time."
Song Tae-han clicked his tongue. It was true—few hunters enjoyed sites like this.
"Our objective is destroying the gate's core. Unless this is some special type, remember that the priority is disabling the core as fast as possible and getting out of here."
Avoid unnecessary engagements; focus on neutralizing the gate. Once a gate closed, the monsters inside could never cross over to Earth anyway—there was no need to fight them.
Above all, it was best to avoid an encounter with the boss monster.
But barely any distance into their advance, they came face to face with a surging tide of movement.
Krieeek!
The things came swarming without restraint—over the floor, up the walls, across the ceiling. At the sight of the massive centipedes, the hunters grimaced.
"Those are armored centipedes, aren't they?"
Bigapchung—centipede monsters sheathed in hard crimson carapaces. At the sight of the repulsive creatures dripping with secretions, Ju Ji-hye frowned in annoyance.
Of all things, it had to be the type I hate most.
As a child, she'd had no aversion to insects—she used to snatch cicadas right out of the air with her bare hands. But at some point she'd begun recoiling at even the smallest bug.
Her horror of real-world insects was itself the product of a neurosis born from running into gate-dwelling monster vermin of that size. Seeing those grotesque bodies—features she'd never noticed when they were tiny—swarm until they filled her entire field of vision was enough to sap anyone's spirit.
Still, she kept her composure as she drew her sword.
"Armored centipedes feed on mana. Direct mana projection won't work on them."
"Then it's a mercy that three of us are combat-types."
The giant, Go Jin-young, stepped forward and swung his massive hammer. The head of a lunging armored centipede burst in a single blow—such was his monstrous strength.
The armored centipede's hardened carapace was infamous for being difficult to crack, but against monsters like these, Go Jin-young was at his most confident.
Behind the vanguard of his rampage, the team slaughtered the swarming centipedes wholesale. Close to a hundred corpses lay crushed and scattered across the ground.
"Well, well. Maybe we should hand team lead over to our Director Go for this one, eh?"
"Move it instead of yapping."
At Song Tae-han's needling, Ju Ji-hye simply strode forward.
Things were going better than her initial worry. Armored centipedes, thankfully, were a species without a boss monster—the single greatest variable had been removed.
But that didn't mean this would be an easy gate to clear. There was a reason it had been rated S-rank.
Each individual armored centipede was a tricky opponent, and they carried a lethal venom that could kill from even the smallest wound. Thankfully, Lee Ha-ye's presence—someone capable of neutralizing that poison—was a stroke of luck.
Even so, their numbers inside the gate were enormous. This would be a battle of endurance.
"This way."
They pressed deeper, dodging monsters where they could. There were unavoidable skirmishes along the way, and even a minor wound or two had them pausing to detoxify before moving on.
About an hour had passed.
Krzzk!
"The comms are starting to go."
"Still holding on, though."
They'd come deep enough that their link with the outside was on the verge of failing. Most gates and monsters emitted wavelengths that interfered with communication, and some gates blocked human transmissions outright.
Just like the lurker-type monster that had appeared in Changyeong-ri, which had severed all communications in the vicinity. Here, it wasn't a full blackout yet—the signal was still holding.
"Gates like this are a relief, honestl—"
Kzzzt!
In that instant, every communication device they carried went dead. Startled by the abrupt change, Kim Jun-seok pounded on his dead equipment.
"What the—what's wrong with this thing?"
"You're fumbling like a fool. Hand it here."
Go Jin-young strode over and made to snatch the device away.
While they fussed over it, Ju Ji-hye, a step apart from the others, scanned their surroundings.
...What is this? Something feels wrong.
A sense of grim foreboding washed over her. The others hadn't noticed a thing, but something was off. It felt as though something enormous was closing in.
Shhhk—!
Thud.
In that instant, Go Jin-young's severed head shot up into the air. In the spray of scattered blood, before any of the stunned hunters could even react—
A pitch-black darkness crashed in upon them, and every one of their visions went dark.
Vrrrrm!
Over a cordoned-off road, a helicopter that had been slicing across the city skyline banked sharply and touched down. The moment Han Su-yeon, Deputy Director of the Disaster Management Bureau, stepped out, a hunter waiting for her bowed his head.
"What happened? All of a sudden?"
"Contact was lost with the hunters mobilized under the emergency call for the S-rank gate. On top of that, an anomalous phenomenon has been detected at the gate itself."
Han Su-yeon took the documents and approached the gate. There she could see it—a reddish, dome-shaped barrier had formed around the gate, which had grown even larger than when it first appeared.
A special pattern, unlike an ordinary gate.
"The emergence was reported as armored centipedes, wasn't it? Why has this formed?"
"It seems... there is something else inside the gate. Right before contact was lost, one fatality was registered on the biometric readouts."
Something else inside.
At those words, Han Su-yeon's expression grew grave. The gate's unnaturally rapid progression, and now a cascade of variables—one anomaly after another, none of it normal.
Above all, there was this barrier. It was blocking all approach from the outside completely—like an anglerfish that had swallowed its prey.
Crackle!
When Han Su-yeon extended her hand toward the gate, a powerful repulsive force burst out from the surrounding barrier.
"It's a special barrier that repels mana. We needed to send support in immediately, but because of this, entry has been impossible."
"..."
Han Su-yeon looked down at her stinging palm. A barrier with the property of bouncing mana away—and with the vast reserves of mana she carried in her body, the repulsion had struck back all the harder.
"...What a headache of a gate."
A barrier that repelled mana—an unprecedented gate pattern. Judging by the barrier's caliber, forcing a way through was out of the question.
There was one avenue: someone without any mana, subject to no repulsion at all, might be able to pass through freely.
But no hunter existed without mana. Even combat-type hunters stored and used mana, whether through awakened constitutions or supplementary means.
A hunter holding only a trace of mana could push through while enduring the repulsion—but sending a hunter of that caliber into an S-rank gate was nothing short of suicide.
In practical terms, rescue and support were impossible.
"Could the barrier perhaps be broken through?"
"Possible, but it would take a long time. Its mana-repelling nature makes it very hard to work on."
Even if Han Su-yeon went to work on it personally, it could take a minimum of several days. With the team already feared annihilated, waiting that long meant the hunters inside had zero chance of survival.
Besides, a gate moving at this speed would hit Stage 4 long before the barrier came down.
"Then... we have no choice but to stand by until the eruption?"
At the man's words, Han Su-yeon fell silent for a moment.
Thinking rationally, as the responsible official, the correct call was to abandon the people inside right now and prepare for the eruption.
But the name Ju Ji-hye on the assault team's roster held her feet in place. Han Su-yeon had spent days helping train the girl, living alongside her—she couldn't simply brush it aside.
And as an ability-type hunter, there was nothing Han Su-yeon herself could do. Neutralizing this barrier would require someone who met a different set of conditions entirely.
A master strong enough to conquer an S-rank gate on their own—yet a high-tier hunter completely free from mana's repulsion.
In the entire history of hunters, only one person had ever reached the solution to that seemingly impossible equation.
But that person is...
Han Su-yeon shook her head.