Chapter 55
Chapter 55
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 55
Chapter Title: Army of Death (1)
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A dark night.
Dim lighting enveloped the hospital room.
Even though there was only one bed in the room, several people were bustling about.
Guards were even stationed outside the room.
All to care for a single patient.
The patient was Jeong Woo-jin, the second son of the Phoenix Guild Master.
That was why everyone was tending to him with utmost care, even at this late hour.
If anything went wrong, their heads would be the first to roll.
"Heehee... Hng..."
But Jeong Woo-jin's condition on the bed was far from good.
No, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it the worst.
He would grin to himself while sitting still, drool at times, and even seize up in fits.
When the fits were really bad, it took everyone around him piling on just to restrain him.
Jeong Woo-jin.
He used to wield personnel authority within the guild.
It was a lower position than his older brother, the vice guild master, but being the guild master's son was no title to ignore.
And what kind of guild was the Phoenix Guild?
It was one of the top guilds in South Korea.
They had enough power to crush mid-tier guilds with a mere breath.
That was how Jeong Woo-jin lived like royalty within the Phoenix Guild.
If this wasn't happiness, then what was?
But that happiness didn't last long.
Jeong Woo-jin grew a bit greedier here.
He wanted to elevate his status in the guild even higher. At the same time, he wanted to drag down his half-sister, Jeong Ye-rin.
So he hatched a plan.
A dungeon raid.
Assigning dungeons wasn't hard.
Since he held personnel authority, he could pick any dungeon he wanted.
He assigned his sister an A-rank dungeon with a Goblin Lord.
And for himself, he chose a B-rank incubus dungeon.
Incubus.
Monsters that drained women's essence.
With proper preparation, it was practically a free ride.
Jeong Woo-jin set off to conquer the incubus dungeon, brimming with confidence.
The result?
Failure.
He barely clung to life and made it back, but his current state was indescribable.
He might as well have died.
Daily life was already impossible.
The life he dreamed of in the guild was over.
He was now a non-entity in the guild.
No, worse—a shameful secret to be hidden.
What happened in that dungeon was kept under strict secrecy and control.
"Ah."
Tears welled in Jeong Woo-jin's eyes as his mind cleared for a moment.
Regret on repeat.
The dungeon he thought was a sure win had one variable.
The appearance of a succubus.
A high-rank monster at that.
And then his and his men's memories cut off.
After that...
"Urk...!"
Only horrific memories he desperately didn't want to recall remained.
That place was hell.
A hell he never wanted to think about.
Yes, memories he absolutely had to forget.
To the point where he wished his mind would just break completely.
Even now, Jeong Woo-jin was frantically trying to erase them.
Just a little longer.
His mind would snap again soon.
As Jeong Woo-jin muttered to himself, a voice came from outside.
"You've arrived."
Someone had come to visit.
Who could it be?
Jeong Woo-jin had already been cut off.
No family had visited when he was admitted.
The only visitors were hunters from the guild's intel department.
Yet someone had come for him now.
Maybe someone else from the guild?
The door opened, and a man stepped in.
An unexpected face.
"...Brother."
It was Jeong Tae-young, vice master of the Phoenix Guild and Jeong Woo-jin's older brother.
"Everyone out. Don't come back until I say so."
Jeong Tae-young first cleared the room of all personnel.
Only after confirming they were gone did he look at Jeong Woo-jin.
"I heard your condition was bad, but you look fine to me, Woo-jin."
His first visit to his injured brother.
But Jeong Tae-young's voice was ice cold.
"......"
Jeong Woo-jin couldn't say a word.
His brother's reaction was far too frigid.
'Well, yeah. Since I failed.'
It must have hurt the Phoenix Guild's image too.
And that would rebound on his brother, the vice guild master.
That's what Jeong Woo-jin thought.
But what came from Jeong Tae-young's mouth was entirely different.
"Did you want to be vice guild master that badly?"
"...?"
What did that mean?
Why would he want to be vice guild master?
Jeong Woo-jin couldn't comprehend his brother's words.
He wanted to voice his confusion, but Jeong Tae-young gave him no time.
"If all that acting up till now was just a front, I'd give you a clap. Impressive."
Jeong Tae-young actually clapped mockingly.
"None of what you said checked out."
Jeong Woo-jin still looked puzzled at his brother's words.
What was going on?
Did something else happen while he was out of it?
"That clueless look on your face now just makes me more impressed."
Jeong Tae-young approached slowly.
"I sent a raid team into that dungeon based on your word alone. But there's been no word from them since. With that level of force, they should've cleared it by now."
Jeong Tae-young was now right in front of Jeong Woo-jin.
"The guild's already concluding something went wrong. Word is the raid team's basically wiped out."
Jeong Tae-young slowly raised his hand.
"So I started thinking. Where did it go wrong? Or did it go wrong at all?"
Jeong Tae-young's hand stroked the flowers by the bed.
"What if, just what if, it wasn't a mistake? What if it was set up to fail from the start?"
Petals tore off one by one in his hand.
"There was no succubus in that dungeon from the beginning. Hell, it might not even have been an incubus dungeon. We got played by a scheme."
All the petals fell.
"Who benefits most if this blows up?"
With the petals gone, his aimless hand pointed at Jeong Woo-jin.
"Jeong Woo-jin. Did you want to be vice guild master so bad? Enough to take out your own brother?"
Jeong Tae-young's voice trembled with rage.
Jeong Ye-rin was gone for good anyway.
A-rank Goblin Lord dungeon.
Even if she'd survived this long, she wouldn't last much longer.
So Jeong Ye-rin was erased from consideration.
But not Jeong Woo-jin.
Blood brother or not, he was always a potential rival.
"I tolerated you not because you're my brother. You knew your place and kept your head down."
But not anymore.
Now that he knew Jeong Woo-jin was eyeing his spot, he couldn't let it slide.
Jeong Tae-young grabbed Jeong Woo-jin's mouth.
"Mmph...!"
Jeong Woo-jin struggled to break free, but the strength gap was too vast.
Jeong Tae-young tightened his grip.
As if ready to kill his brother right there.
"You're useless anyway. Might as well die."
Strength drained from Jeong Woo-jin's body.
Then.
"Vice Guild Master!"
Someone burst into the room.
It was Jeong Tae-young's secretary.
"What? I said no one comes in."
"I'm sorry! But this is urgent..."
Jeong Tae-young released his grip.
What could be so urgent now?
"What is it?"
He turned from his gasping brother.
"A monster wave! It's broken out!"
"...What?"
Silence fell over the room.
A monster wave out of nowhere?
"The raid team led by Seo Young-ho entered a dungeon, and the monster wave erupted from there!"
"What's the scale!"
Jeong Tae-young looked at his brother with a stern expression.
There really wasn't a single thing going smoothly.
"So far, the confirmed monsters are ghouls, incubi, and..."
The secretary hesitated for a moment.
He took a deep breath and continued.
"Death Knights have also been confirmed."
Haha.
A-rank monsters...
Jeong Tae-young laughed in disbelief.
Like a madman.
"Woo-jin."
He called his brother's name again.
"Even with this, you're saying there was a succubus in there?"
His voice dripped with fury.
The doubts Jeong Tae-young harbored now made sense.
The dungeon had Death Knights, not succubi.
They'd focused only on succubi, so no word from the raid team checked out.
They'd been wiped by the Death Knights already.
The ghouls pouring out now were probably the raid team members transformed.
"And also..."
But the report wasn't over.
"Miss Jeong Ye-rin has emerged from her dungeon."
"What?"
How is any of this happening right now?
Suddenly, why?
Ah, did she barely escape with her life?
Not impossible.
But the next words shattered Jeong Tae-young's hopes.
"...She cleared it. Even brought back the Goblin Lord's corpse."
Jeong Tae-young staggered and sat on the edge of the bed.
"Ha..."
It was the worst.
In this situation, Jeong Ye-rin's return was a massive variable.
He thought eliminating Jeong Woo-jin would end it, but a bigger problem popped up.
Where did it all go wrong?
He glanced at Jeong Woo-jin.
"Woo-jin."
Unlike before, his voice wasn't cold.
"We're brothers, right?"
It was soft, even.
"Mom's worried sick too. This is only because it's the Phoenix Guild—if it gets bigger, it'll be tough."
True.
When Jeong Woo-jin's incident broke, Jeong Tae-young acted fast.
He'd used artifacts to suppress the energy and keep dungeon info from leaking.
Burying it quietly was possible only because of the Phoenix Guild's prestige.
But now the mood had shifted.
A monster wave from a dungeon the Phoenix Guild owned.
They had to contain it now.
Couldn't let the wave grow.
And with Death Knights turning kills into ghouls...
If it kept expanding...
After the monster wave ends, the government will thoroughly investigate Phoenix Guild.
In severe cases, a hearing will be held.
"Tch."
The monster wave has turned everything upside down.
Moreover, the place where the monster wave erupted was not sparsely populated.
But what if more damage occurs here??
What if he reaches a point where he can no longer intervene?
His father, the guild master, may not be affected, but as the vice-guild master, he certainly won't remain unscathed.
In the worst-case scenario, he might have to step down from his position as vice-guild master.
No, that might just be the start.
Jeong Tae-young swallowed his rage inwardly and looked at Jeong Woo-jin.
Still, he's his younger brother.
Unlike Jeong Ye-rin, Jeong Woo-jin was his full-blooded sibling from the same womb.
"Woo-jin, you clean this up."
A plea from one brother to another.
"Whether you kill Jeong Ye-rin or stop the monster wave, take full responsibility and step back. Then I'll at least let you live under the Phoenix Guild."
A threat at the same time.
If he couldn't? Well.
I have to die.
The Hunter Association was quiet today as well.
Not because of low staff, but no major emergencies.
Unlike before, the system was now fairly systematic.
Most issues were handled by lower agencies and hunters.
"It's quiet again today."
Han Jeong-cheol, on duty, lounged in his chair.
An A-rank hunter and head of the association's emergency response team.
Emergency response team in name only—in this peaceful era, they had nothing to do.
Even if a dungeon popped up somewhere, local guilds or government hunters handled it fast.
Within the already established systematic system, they just needed to hold their positions.
Well, unless a monster wave breaks out somewhere.
"Team leader! It's a big problem! A monster wave has occurred!"
Just like this.
So, a monster wave has occurred. A mons...
"What?!"
Han Jeong-cheol jumped with a surprised expression.
He stared at the speaker.
"Mi-rae, a monster wave? You messing with me?"
A monster wave out of the blue.
Normally, he would have brushed it off as a joke.
But the person in front of him was someone who had no sense of humor and didn't joke around.
Lee Mi-rae.
B-rank hunter with the emergency response team.
He knew her well, since he mentored her.
She was definitely not the type to lie.
"Mi-rae, what're you saying? A monster wave all of a sudden?"
This was no prank.
Everything from her mouth was deadly serious.
"...And even a Death Knight on top of Ghouls? This is bad. Where is it?"
The most important thing was the location.
If it happened in a remote place with no people, that would be somewhat fortunate.
At least they could buy some time.
But the world was not always a beautiful place where things went as desired.
"Anyang."
The last hope was trampled.
Anyang had a solid population.
And it was near Seoul.
"Damn it! Mobilizing now!"
Death Knight is an A-rank monster.
It wasn't just scary because of its high rank; the true power of Death Knight lay in its skills.
The opponents it kills are reborn as ghouls.
In other words, it could endlessly create ghouls.
They had to quickly subdue it before everyone turned into ghouls.
"Please..."
He hoped nothing serious would happen.
At least, he hoped the damage wouldn't be too great as Han Jeong-cheol called for an emergency response team.