The End Is in Sight
Chapter 98: The End Is in Sight.
Chapter 98: The End Is in Sight.
Deep in an A-rank Gate swathed in purple mist, Woojin stood amid a mountain of treasure that the dokkaebi had piled up and moved his hands with brisk efficiency.
The Body Imbue skill he had gained after awakening as an Augmentor was powerful, but it was also a brutally capitalist kind of skill.
That was because every time he used it, one item turned to dust and vanished, and the efficiency of that was downright wicked.
“Let’s see. This one’s got terrible attack power, but it comes with an earth tremor skill.”
Woojin picked up an old war hammer.
Under normal circumstances, he would have tossed it to the dokkaebi for parts, but right now it had a different purpose.
When Woojin gripped the war hammer tightly and focused his mana, the item broke apart into golden particles and seeped into his right arm.
“Body Imbue.”
Using a Normal grade item to imbue a skill. Uses available: 1
Woojin drove his fist toward the ground.
With a thunderous crash, the earth heaved like a wave and shattered the center of the monsters charging in.
He immediately picked up the next item. This time it was a pair of boots glowing with blue light, a Rare grade item.
“This one’s twice, is it?”
Using a Rare grade item to imbue a skill. Uses available: 2
Woojin had figured out the rules of Body Imbue.
A Normal grade item offered only a single use, while a Rare one gave two, and a Unique item could trigger a skill up to three times.
Grades above that—Heroic or Legendary—would likely guarantee even more uses, but Woojin shook his head.
“No matter how rich I am, burning Heroic grade items as consumables is insane. Do you know how much those cost?”
In the end, the precarious efficiency of Body Imbue had a ceiling at Unique grade.
It was the kind of choice you made only because one three-use skill infusion could vaporize hundreds of millions of won.
Well, if I really need it, I’ll use it.
Woojin pulled out the stack of Unique grade items that had good skills but mediocre performance and were otherwise a nuisance.
Fire storms, ice shards, lightning arrows—every kind of magical skill settled onto Woojin’s limbs.
Woojin’s mouth curled into a grin.
“Good. Time to play wizard.”
He brandished magic all by himself and swept through the monsters as he advanced.
Catherine, watching from the side, wore a dumbfounded expression.
“He’s doing that again… just messing around.”
Woojin wasn’t a dedicated combat class, but by chewing through items he was unleashing a destructive power that made him feel like a superior version of every profession rolled into one.
In fact, Catherine couldn’t help licking her lips.
“If you think of each skill as costing several million won, it’s enough to make you cry.”
***
At a point not far from the Gate boss.
Clack—
Bang—!
Beside Woojin, Catherine’s pistol spat fire.
“There!!”
“Oh!? Is it done?”
“Yeah!”
At last, she had completed the objective for her second awakening quest: one hundred pistol snipes at a distance of one kilometer.
It had gone smoothly thanks to the eyes Woojin had enhanced for her.
Then a majestic surge of mana enveloped Catherine.
It was the sign of a second awakening.
Woojin congratulated her once again.
“Congrats, noona. Man, that was brutal. Finally finished.”
Catherine stared blankly at her status window.
Her class name had changed from Gunner of Magic Bullets into something new.
“Gunner of Spirit Bullets...?”
“Oh, that sounds cool. What about the skills?”
Catherine slowly reached into the air. At her fingertips, an invisible mana bullet formed.
“This is fun.”
“How much changed?”
Catherine nodded.
“A lot. I’d say it’s basically a different class now. Apparently I can strike directly at a target’s mind. I can load spirit-bullet shots with mental status effects.”
“...?”
What the hell kind of broken class was that? Woojin asked, appalled.
“Emotions? Like what?”
“Confusion, fear, helplessness, sadness—even joy. There are tons of them. I can inject emotions straight into a monster’s brain, make them lose their will to fight, or even get allies to turn on each other.”
Woojin rubbed his arms, a chill crawling up his skin.
“Ugh, what is that…? That’s way too broken.”
Catherine shrugged.
“If the target has extremely high mana resistance, it won’t work, but against ordinary people or monsters it’d be lethal. Even in battles against other Awakeners, it should be enough to create an opening for a split second.”
But that wasn’t the kind of battle Woojin was worried about.
“...That sounds a little, no, a lot dangerous. You meet high-ranking state officials all the time, right? Isn’t Benedict basically one step away from world conquest?”
At Woojin’s half-joking concern, Catherine snorted.
“I won’t use it recklessly. It’s a mana-based skill, so it doesn’t leave no trace at all, and there are plenty of ways to track it. The country isn’t some corner grocery store; do you really think it’d fall for one skill like this?”
Woojin clicked his tongue.
“So you’re saying a corner store could be swallowed whole.”
“Hmm, I guess so...?”
“From Benedict’s point of view, where is there a place that isn’t a corner store?”
“Heh. Don’t worry. I’ll use it carefully.”
“Well, if it’s you, you’ll probably handle it fine.”
As Catherine kept scrolling through her status window, she made a strange noise.
“Oh, huh... this is an interesting spirit bullet.”
“What is it?”
“A charm bullet. And an arousal bullet.”
Woojin stopped what he was doing and turned to look at Catherine. The corners of her mouth were curving in a decidedly suspicious way.
“...Ah. No way. Don’t. Seriously.”
“Why? I’ve been dying to use it on our Chulsoo. That man always acts so damn gentlemanly that once in a while he needs to be loosened up. This is perfect! Heh heh.”
Woojin could already feel Kim Chulsoo’s future, somewhere on the Myanmar front, dissolving into the distance.
He did not want to imagine what would happen if a man with a 28-centimeter upgrade got hit with a charm-and-arousal bullet on top of that.
“...I don’t want to know. Let’s just go kill the boss.”
“Sounds good! I’m in a great mood.”
***
While Woojin and Catherine were cleaning out the Gates of Cambodia and Laos, all of Asia was being swept up in a massive tide of change.
By then, more than two weeks had already passed since the expedition began.
Sangjin had advanced through Thailand with the overwhelming mass unique to a necromancer, then pushed on to Myanmar and all the way to the Bangladesh border.
Wherever he had passed, the only trace left behind was the trail of a million undead troops.
The monsters marched onward toward the next Gate, having become his subordinates without even the chance to scream.
There was, however, one piece of friction.
The army Sangjin had been preparing to lead into India after crossing Bangladesh had come to a halt. Woojin frowned as he read the report Catherine had handed over.
“The Indian government refused?”
“Yeah. They sent an official letter saying they were capable of handling it themselves and wouldn’t permit entry by an outside Awakener army. They thanked us for the offer, but said it would be a violation of sovereignty or something. And apparently they even said India wasn’t Asia in the first place?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t India be Asia? Are they out of their minds? People are dying because Gates are popping open, and pride isn’t going to put food on the table. There are more people than monsters over there; the damage is going to be huge.”
“Lady Eileen seemed pretty angry too. Since Southeast Asia had almost been normalized, I guess the Gates flooding through eastern India near Bangladesh felt like a waste. They think they can handle it themselves now.”
China was the same.
As the number of monsters crossing from Southeast Asia into China’s border decreased, China and India were the ones reaping the benefit.
It was fair to say they had gained the breathing room to deal with the Gates within their own territory.
“Well, if the Gates disappear, that’s a good thing.”
“It is.”
Woojin nodded.
There was no need to go where they weren’t wanted and shed blood over it.
Meanwhile, Woojin had also normalized Cambodia, Vietnam, and the mountain regions of Laos.
He commanded fewer numbers than Sangjin’s army, but the hundreds of thousands of elite dokkaebi enhanced by Woojin were no less devastating than the undead legions.
Wherever the dokkaebi with giant clubs went, the people of Cambodia burst into cheers.
The situation for Eileen, Yu Jihyun, and Jo Ayoung was similar.
They were all capable of national-disaster-level force on their own. In fact, they were deliberately slowing their pace so that they could match Woojin and Sangjin and build toward a dramatic finale for Asia’s pacification.
“Noona, I can really see the end now.”
Standing on the high mountains of Laos and looking down over a sea of clouds, Woojin spoke. Far in the distance, beyond the mist, the border of a vast continent—China—came into view.
“Haah. Yeah. The end is finally in sight. Feels like I’ve been rolling around in the jungle for about two weeks, and I’ve gotten pretty attached to you, Woojin.”
“So that daily thing where you begged Gabi every night to open a dokkaebi gate so you could go see Chulsoo, that’s over too?”
At Woojin’s pointed jab, Catherine’s face turned bright red in an instant.
Apparently, after awakening as the Gunner of Spirit Bullets, she had been sneaking off at night to meet Chulsoo and spending hot nights under the excuse of testing her performance, and she had assumed Woojin didn’t know.
“Kh, cough! Anyway, let’s go! We just have to push all the way to the Chinese border! If we make it there, the first objective of our expedition will be complete.”
Embarrassed, Catherine hurried ahead. Woojin watched her retreating back and snorted.
This really was the end.
The purple catastrophe that had blanketed Asia was finally lifting.
“Gabi, let’s go!! Hurry up and finish this so we can go home, okay?”
At Woojin’s words, Gabi’s cute eyes widened into round circles.
“Home? We had a home, Appa?”
Gabi was a life born from a doll given to her during the Asia campaign. She had never once been to Woojin’s apartment.
“Yeah, Gabi. We have a home too. We’re not jungle squatters...”
“Reeally? Gabi didn’t know! Gabi wants to go home!”
“Yeah, let’s wrap this up fast and head home!”
His familiar monthly-rent apartment.
It’s kind of ridiculous that I’m still renting.
He wondered if he should move. It was starting to feel like an apartment might be a little small for them.
Even with Asia’s pacification nearly complete, Woojin was already worried about moving house.
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