Catching Them All in One Net (3)
I'd figured that killing one of them first would send the rest of them swarming in, but apparently that wasn't the case.
The noise had echoed pretty loudly, and yet no one had come. So much for loyalty among comrades.
“Heartless bastards, every one of them.”
Clicking my tongue, I stepped out of the reception room.
I'd noticed it coming in, too — for a building this size, the place felt strangely hollow. Every piece of furniture and every fixture was pristine, without a trace of use.
Most of all, there are no people.
According to the intel I'd gathered before breaking in here, the New World Guild was a bigger operation than I'd expected. A rising guild that lured hunters in with lavish treatment and benefits, backed by enormous capital… supposedly, anyway.
Hm. No matter how I look at it, this place is empty.
Even with my senses amplified, I couldn't detect a single trace of human presence — to the point that the entire building felt like one enormous smokescreen.
“Rir.”
The moment I called the name, my shadow rippled and Rir trotted out.
“Woof!”
“Search every inch of this building. Let me know if you find anything suspicious.”
“Woof woof!”
Rir's body grew even more translucent before it dashed off at blistering speed, phasing straight through the walls.
Soul Sprint
Sweeping the entire building took Rir less than five minutes.
“Whine…”
“Just as I thought. Nothing here.”
There were no Moon Fragment production facilities in this building, and no Advent Cult personnel either. This place existed purely to establish the 'New World' guild for the public eye — the cultists actually operated somewhere else.
Then again, no one would build a clandestine facility out in the open like this. Of course it was elsewhere.
“In that case…”
I casually turned my head toward Rir.
“Sniff sniff sniff! Woof woof!”
“There it is.”
Wiggling its nose, Rir waved its tail up and down like it was telling me to follow. Whenever Rir reacted like that, it was always one of two things.
One: it found a bone worth chewing.
And the other…
“A barrier. It found a barrier.”
I chased after Rir as it bounded confidently ahead. We arrived at a small room that looked like a break room.
Rir sniffed at the floor, then nodded its head decisively.
“Woof!”
“So this is the spot, huh.”
I laid my palm against it and let a faint thread of mana flow out. I felt a repelling force push back — meaning there was a barrier here.
Like they say, you can't fool a dog's nose.
Okay, technically it's a wolf's nose.
“They put some real effort into this barrier, huh?”
This was the kind of work that would take several skilled barrier masters sweating over it for days. It was so discreet and refined that without Rir, I wouldn't have even registered the fact that a barrier was here at all.
But so what? Nothing I could do about it now.
“If it's been found, then it's been found.”
I drew my spear out of subspace.
Bzzzzt!
An overwhelming power coursed through my entire body.
The Yakcha mounts the tiger.
«Baekho's Fang» is activated!
Nameless Spear Art
Tiger's Bane, Falling Blossoms
My spear split through the floor and the barrier along with it.
CRACKLE!
The shattered barrier broke apart into countless fragments and scattered into nothing. And then, the thing they'd hidden so thoroughly was finally laid bare.
“Figures. The main stage was somewhere else after all.”
A staircase descending endlessly into the dark. That was no doubt the true heart of the Advent Cult's operations.
Bugs love dark, damp places, I guess. Fitting.
A place protected by a barrier of this caliber was guaranteed to yield something worth shaking down.
“Let's go.”
“Woof!”
The moment I reached the bottom of the stairs, a landscape like an underground bunker spread out before me. Call it a secret underground laboratory built for dangerous experiments — the atmosphere was strikingly at odds with a group that hid behind religion.
“Hm? Who are you?”
“Never seen that face before.”
Just then, two men came walking toward me from up ahead. One look told me they were thuggish lowlifes reeking of bottom-rank grunt.
“New recruit?”
one of them asked.
“A new recruit… I suppose you could look at it that way.”
“The hell did you—”
“Hey, let me ask you something.”
Just to be safe. They might be innocent civilians the cult kidnapped for experiments, for all I knew.
“Everyone down here — they're all Advent Cult people?”
“…Why would you even ask that?”
“Answer the question.”
The two glanced at each other and snickered.
“Well, yeah. Only those blessed by the Advent Cult can set foot in this place.”
“Oh, is that so? Then what about you two?”
“I don't know what you're trying to say, but you've been acting weird for a while now.”
One of them growled and stepped forward.
“You saying some heretic from outside the Advent Cult actually dared to set foot here?”
“What a relief.”
Thanks for clearing that up for me. And in return —
FWOOSH!
I'll kill you both quickly.
Flame Soul Throwing Spear
I generated a spear in an instant and slammed it into one of them. Karma Flame detonated on impact, shredding his body to ribbons.
“KRAAAAAAGH!”
“Wh-what the hell are you doing?!”
“Oh? Didn't die?”
I'd thrown it intending to finish him in one blow, but his regeneration was stronger than I'd expected.
Grrrurrrk!
The skin burning under the flames bubbled and boiled, gradually knitting itself back together — into a gray hide that resembled a troll's rather than a human's.
“You… bastard…!”
Those two were monster-variant hunters, mutated by the Moon Fragment. Lacking the talent to become knights, they'd failed the transformation — which meant they'd also lost none of their intelligence.
Pawns with half-baked ambitions.
“You… you're not one of the Advent Cult!”
“You only figured that out now?”
With instincts that dull, how did they ever survive in an organization?
“Intruders… must… be killed…!”
He was mutating further into a troll with every second. The only difference was the grotesque tentacles and eyeballs sprouting across his back.
“Your regeneration looked pretty solid earlier.”
Let's see if you can hold up against this, too.
“Flame Soul Throwing Spear.”
Into the scorching flames of sin—
«Resonance: Bleeding Strike»
—I folded in the power of bleeding.
Blood Soul Volley
Four crimson arrows. I lined up my aim on all of them at once and loosed the barrage at the troll-mutant.
BOOOOOM!
Charred flesh sprayed everywhere in the blaze. Unlike his instant recovery moments ago, the skin tissue twitched a few times and then simply hung limp.
You have acquired 5 EXP!
“Just as I expected — heavy regeneration and Bleeding Strike really don't mix.”
“You filthy vermin!”
the remaining one screamed. Maybe he had no brains at all — watching his buddy get shredded didn't make him flee; it only fired him up.
THWACK!
Unpleasant-looking wings erupted from his back.
“Die!”
The wings flapped, and in the blink of an eye he shot into the air and came hurtling straight at me.
So that's what he was banking on.
Speed, was it? At that velocity, shooting him down with the Blood Soul Volley might genuinely be difficult. Landing a direct hit wouldn't be easy either.
“Well, the arrogance wasn't entirely baseless, I'll give him that.”
Nodding inwardly—
«Resonance: Tempest Slash»
I whipped up a storm of blades.
WHOOOOSH!
Wind howled up around me in an instant, forming a ring of protection. SHRAK! The blades of wind carved into the mutant's body and denied him any approach.
“KRAGH! H-how did this wind just—?!”
“Reading the wind conditions before you fly is Flight 101, buddy.”
I grinned and resettled my grip on my spear.
“Oh, right — birdbrain. Maybe that's too advanced for you.”
I concentrated the tempest into a single point, then delivered it to him as a gift.
KRRAKA-BOOOM!
Countless slashes shredded his body — wings included — into pieces.
You have acquired 5 EXP!
Two more down. Bzzzzt—
I looked up at the CCTV camera staring back at me.
“Just wait a little longer. I'll draw this out and be right there.”
“GODDAMN IT! Of all times, it had to be while the Cardinal was away…!”
The man in the underground master control room ground his teeth. What he had just witnessed through the CCTV feeds was nothing short of shocking.
How can a mere human overpower variant hunters?!
They weren't on the level of knights, but hunters mutated by the Moon Fragment grew many times stronger than ordinary ones. Those two just now had been C-rank and B-rank hunters respectively, before their transformation. Even an A-rank hunter wouldn't have easily bested both of them.
“And he broke through that barrier to get in?!”
That barrier had been personally deployed by none other than Cardinal Elpiros. Short of an S-rank hunter — a World Ranker, no less — no one would have even noticed it existed, let alone shattered it.
There's only one person capable of pulling off something like this!
The heaven-defying existence the Prophet himself had spoken of.
“So it's you, Lee Tae-hyun!”
Flames blazed in the man's eyes. That man was destined to become an enemy of the Advent Cult — it had to be dealt with, right here and now.
If I sever that head and present it to the Cardinal—
Her favor would no doubt be beyond anything he could imagine. When 'That One' descended in the days to come, he might even claim a seat of real power.
Lee Tae-hyun was currently tearing through the underground like a whirlwind, destroying and slaughtering everything in sight as he rampaged freely. At this rate, he would soon reach the Moon Fragment production facility — and the most critical core facility of all.
“We cannot allow that.”
Narrowing his eyes, the man turned around.
“You will go out there.”
There, a massive figure in full plate armor stood in silent wait for its command. Its soul grade was too low, and it had lost its sense of self — but in strength, it was a battle doll that towered far above the average of even the knights.
“Knight of Predation!”
At the calling of that name, crimson eyes flickered to life in the abyss beyond the helm.
How long had it been since I cut loose like this, without a care in the world? Anything that moved got a spear through it, and everything got crushed.
“Now THIS is healing.”
Clearing out the trash and working off all my pent-up stress in one go — how much more ideal could it get?
“KYAAAAAAK!”
Monster-variant hunters came charging at me. The way they threw their bodies at me just to stall one man went beyond loyalty — it was closer to madness.
Does the Moon Fragment have some kind of effect in it?
No matter how I thought about it, there was zero reason for those hunters to give their lives for the Advent Cult. The moment they mutated into monsters, something seemed to seize hold of their minds and souls.
Well, controlling other beings completely was the Iron Blood Monarch's whole purpose to begin with.
That was probably the Moon Fragment's true function. The elixir packaging was just a delivery mechanism for spreading it around.
“Insidious bastards.”
“GAKH!”
I pierced the last one through the throat. When I pulled my spear free, purple blood came gushing out.
“No Moon Fragment production facilities here either, huh.”
I was shaking the blood off my spear and heading for the next chamber when—
A voice thundered from the ceiling.
- You've made quite the spectacle of yourself.
- I never imagined you were capable of all this.
He was forcing himself to sound calm, but the fury laced through that voice couldn't be hidden.
“Are you the administrator here? Where's the guild leader?”
I'd assumed that woman was the final boss of this place.
- There is no need for Her Eminence to concern Herself with a thing like you!
The voice barked in rage.
- I commend you for making it this far, but it ends here!
- Your journey of slaughter ends in this place!
With those words, space itself split open, and something massive was summoned into the chamber.
Armored from head to toe.
A knight?
Except the structure of its body was nothing human. Far larger, twisted and distorted, with a colossal battle axe clutched in its hand.
A form that wore the shape of a knight — but was not a man.
- KHAHAHA! Looking rattled, Lee Tae-hyun?
the voice sneered.
- Did you assume only 'humans' could become knights? What arrogance!
“Which means…”
- So long as the qualification is met, anything can be forged into a knight. It need not be human at all.
If my guess was right, that thing was the 'High Orc King' — the boss of an A-rank gate. And having passed through knighthood, it was probably far stronger than it ever was in life.
KUUUUGUGUGU!
The killing intent pressing against my skin was considerable.
Which is exactly why—
“…Heh!”
a laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.
He really put a lot of effort into this trump card, didn't he?
So I'm wondering — is it okay if I break it here?
- Knight of Predation! Slay the invader who has attacked our church!
KUUUNG…!
The Knight of Predation opened its eyes and hefted its enormous axe.