Chapter 27
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 27
Chapter Title: Rescue (4)
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Having put some distance between himself and the rescue team, Dong-gil unleashed Heavy Strike on the cliff face and bellowed into the empty air.
Kwaaaang-!
“Songpa Station 1-Team!! Team Leader Sung Dong-gil’s here to save you! Just hang on a little longer!!”
The shout echoed and reechoed through the canyon, drawing the gaze of every hornet in the area—except for the swarm packed at the entrance—straight toward him.
Boooong- boooong-
Sure enough, the hornets immediately gave chase after the bait team fleeing into the distance.
After about a minute had passed like that, not a single hornet patrolling the nest vicinity could be seen nearby.
“We should be good to go now…. Min-jun, you think we can pull this off?”
“We have to. I’ll head up first. So-hee, follow that path up.”
Min-jun, with a greatsword as tall as a man strapped to his back. So-hee, with a scutum—a rectangular wooden shield as tall as a man—strapped to hers.
They began scaling the sheer cliff.
After ten-odd minutes of climbing the barren rock face, where not a single blade of grass grew.
“Huff… huff…. Min-jun, are we really almost there?”
So-hee, panting hard as she scrambled up after him from below, called out to him.
“We’re really almost there now.”
“Damn it, that’s the third time you’ve said that! If this is another lie—”
“Shh. What’s that noise…. So-hee, I think I need to go ahead.”
Cutting off So-hee’s lament, Min-jun cocked his head, listening. Then he started scaling the rock face with the speed of a wall-clinging ant.
The closer he got to the hole, the thicker the faint sounds leaking from within became.
“Shit! Hornets… too… many!”
“…Behind… eggs… coming!”
“Team Leader… here… hold on!”
Min-jun moved his hands and feet even faster.
The hole he reached was a bit too small for an adult to squeeze through comfortably, so Min-jun immediately drew his dagger from the leather sling and set to widening it.
“Team Leader Sung’s here!!”
“Sung Dong-gil, you bastard! I’ll serve you as my big bro for life!!”
Amid the roaring cheers from inside, Min-jun finished enlarging the hole in short order and shoved his way through.
He landed with a squelch atop a wave of white larvae numbering well over a hundred.
“What the…? You’re not the team leader?”
“Who cares! The important thing is he’s here to rescue…. Shit, Gun-woo, watch out over there!”
There, five men—battered and broken all over—were locked in desperate combat with a horde of dog-sized larvae.
* * *
Crash! Clang!
Two earth hornets, having bitten off one leg each from Go Dong-beom as he attempted to escape, tossed him forward before their teammates like so much trash.
“Bro!”
“Senior!”
Lee Cheol-ho, the team’s most injured, rushed to support him. Enraged, the bald man standing behind—Kang Man-sik—strode toward the hornets.
“Man-sik. Don’t.”
“Bro! Let’s just kill these bastards and get out!”
As Kang Man-sik protested with his sledgehammer in hand, Go Dong-beom scowled and beckoned him over. Then…
Slap! He smacked Kang Man-sik’s bald head good and hard, then laid into him.
“You’re supposed to be the team’s second-in-command, but instead of calming the juniors, you just fly off the handle. After we kill those two, then what…?! You gonna kill every hornet in here?!”
“But still—”
“Let’s trust Woo-jin.”
“Oh! Did the maknae make it out?”
“Hell if I know! I got caught again!”
Go Dong-beom smacked Kang Man-sik’s head again and continued.
“We got him out at the end…. We’ve gotta trust him.”
Even as they talked, the hornets paid them no mind, going about their business.
One spat wax from its mouth to seal up the breathing hole the team had used for their escape attempt. Another simply checked on the hundreds of eggs piled in one corner.
Once finished, they sealed the door with wax and left the chamber.
“Bro. How’s the leg?”
Lee Cheol-ho, supporting Go Dong-beom, eyed his massively swollen leg and asked.
“Those bastards broke it. Been trying to move it since earlier, but no dice. How’s your arm?”
“I’ve still got my left. But… oh man, look at our bro’s leg all swollen up. Gun-woo, get over here. Help me support him.”
“Yes, senior.”
Just as Lee Cheol-ho called his junior Kim Gun-woo to help carry Go Dong-beom.
Crack.
A small breaking sound echoed from somewhere.
Go Dong-beom, ears perked, asked his juniors.
“…Didn’t you hear something just now?”
“Hear what? I didn’t hear anything.”
“Oh, you dense bastards!”
“Ah, bro! Quit hitting my head. I told you it makes me dumber?!”
“You’ve got no brains left to lose, you brute. All brawn and no…. Tsk.”
Having chewed out Kang Man-sik once more, Go Dong-beom let his two juniors help him lie down in a corner—when another crack rang out.
“Huh? I just heard something weird too.”
“…Me too.”
“No, what the hell are you guys—”
Crack! Crackle-!
This time, the sound no one could ignore reverberated through the classroom-sized cavern.
All four heads whipped toward the source.
There, hundreds of eggs the size of knees stood lined up.
“Shit. We’re fucked….”
“…Bro, what now?”
“Cheol-ho, carry me.”
“Why me again?! Gun-woo’s right here!”
“You bastard! Healthy me and Gun-woo gotta fight! Can you even move your right arm?!”
“Damn it—”
Even as Kang Man-sik and Lee Cheol-ho bickered, more eggs began cracking.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Snow-white larvae started bursting from the elongated white eggs, one by one.
Their numbers swelled from one or two to dozens in moments, then to hundreds.
The freshly hatched hornet larvae lifted their heads high, as if scenting the air, wriggling like sea anemones.
“Gun-woo! Stick right by me! Cheol-ho, you carry bro and stay behind us.”
Without orders, the four backed slowly toward the corner.
Kang Man-sik, gripping his sledgehammer tight, took charge in place of the lame Go Dong-beom and positioned them.
With the corner at their backs, they finished battle prep in the tense calm before the storm.
- Songpa… 1-Team!! Team… Sung Dong… here to save…! …Hang on…!!
Dong-gil’s voice filtered through the small breathing hole in the cavern wall.
“What?! That’s Sung Dong-gil, right?”
“The maknae must’ve brought him!”
“Our golden boy maknae!”
“Guys, until Dong-gil gets here to save us, we hold the line. That’s all we need to remember.”
““Yes, sir!!””
At Go Dong-beom’s words, the team roared in unison—and dog-sized larvae began wriggling toward them from all sides.
* * *
Were they teaching the law of the jungle from the larval stage? Even after slaying dozens of larvae already, the adult hornets showed zero concern for the nursery chamber where the desperate fight raged on.
“Gun-woo, cover there! Block it!”
Kwaaaddduk-!
Senior Man-sik swung his sledgehammer sideways, and the soft-skinned larvae burst like overripe fruit.
Seeing it, Kim Gun-woo slashed at the larva clinging to his leg with his machete, then dashed to the spot senior had indicated and unleashed Slash skill.
Shwaaaak-
Yellow hemolymph from the horizontally bisected larvae splashed across his face and body.
‘Damn…. My body’s not responding.’
The more he killed them. The more he got drenched in their yellow hemolymph. The heavier his limbs grew.
Their fluids must contain paralyzing venom.
“Huff…. Shit. So damn many!”
“It’s that Star Ground crap dropping our stats!”
“Stats don’t mean shit against numbers like this! Just hold!”
“Sung Dong-gil said he’s coming—when the hell’s he getting here?!”
Senior Dong-beom’s furious cursing erupted from behind.
Normally unthinkable to curse the team leader, but right now, this forced rage was fuel to keep moving.
‘Shit—!!’
Stomping larvae underfoot, machete-fending off the charging ones, Kim Gun-woo bellowed at the senior beside him to hold out.
“My body’s going numb, senior!”
“Fight without getting…. Huff…. That gunk on you as much as possible!!”
“Easy for you to say!!”
Shwaaaak-
Even amid the chaos, hemolymph from a cleaved larva soaked his arms and legs.
No matter how many he killed, larvae swarmed from every direction.
Like a white wave crashing in, heedless of their siblings’ corpses, they surged over the bodies with bared fangs.
Realizing annihilation loomed soon, yesterday’s screams from the next chamber over flashed in his mind.
‘Shit….’
Had they died like this too?
His head filled only with curses.
‘Please…. Team Leader, hurry up. I’m sorry for cursing you in my head last time. Save us, and I’ll serve you body and soul as your benefactor for life.’
Kim Gun-woo repented inwardly, praying desperately for rescue.
* * *
Plop-
‘Prayer buffs actually work this well…?!’
Not even minutes after he prayed, the sound of wax shattering outside rang out like a miracle.
Thud- thud-
Bit by bit, the nursery’s breathing hole was widening.
“Team Leader Sung’s here!!”
“Sung Dong-gil, you bastard! I’ll serve you as my big bro for life!!”
Senior Dong-beom chimed in too, having seen it.
In an instant, the enlarged hole spat out a figure that landed atop the white larva swarm.
Full plate armor wrapping his body like medieval cosplay.
A massive hunk of metal slung on his back.
He looked just like a knight from the Middle Ages come to save them.
‘He’s here, sure. But who the hell…?’
The voice right before the larvae fight had definitely been Team Leader Sung’s.
Yet the rescuer was no team leader they knew, but some unfamiliar young man.
Gun-woo himself, and the other team members, all looked baffled.
“What the…? You’re not the team leader?”
“Who cares! The important thing is he’s here to rescue…. Shit, Gun-woo, watch out over there!”
I stabbed my machete where senior Dong-beom warned, then turned to eye the newcomer.
‘Right, what matters is we’ve got one more fighter against these things.’
The larvae, intrigued by the sudden prey, had lost interest in us.
They paused, then charged en masse at the intruder in our midst.
His gear suggested Team Leader Sung hadn’t brought just any civilian, but even with high stats and good equipment, no one could solo this horde.
“W-Watch out!”
But….
Scrape- scrraape-
‘Crazy…?!’
Even as their fangs scraped his steel armor, echoing through the chamber, the young man ignored them completely, eyeing us instead as he spoke.
“You guys Team Leader Dong-gil’s team?”
“If ‘Uncle Dong-gil’ means our Sung Dong-gil, then yeah…. Who’re you?”
Go Dong-beom, carried on the back, spoke for them—and the man nodded without reply, drawing the massive sword from his back.
‘So it wasn’t just for show?’
As that thought crossed my mind.
Whooo-
A faint breeze tickled my nose, snapping me from my daze.
The young man’s stance had changed when I looked again.
“…Huh?”
One of the team noticed too—just as I opened my mouth to warn about the hemolymph and not attracting the adults outside.
Shwaaaaaak-!!
The hundreds of writhing larvae from moments ago dissolved into a puddle of hemolymph, painting the chamber sickly yellow.
Fwooooosh-!
Riding the belated gale.
We, freed from crisis so effortlessly, could only gape at the man in stunned silence.