Siege Warfare (2)
I cut down the last surviving tentacle and sent my blade spinning away.
Red blood soaked into the sand.
Mun Dal-su came over to me.
“Hunter Choi. Who were you talking to?”
He must’ve heard me muttering to myself while I had the tentacle in my hand.
“The main body.”
“What? That’s possible?”
“It can communicate with its tentacles underwater. It was probably watching us from the shadows.”
“Heh. That’s wild.”
The Busan team inspected each slain tentacle one by one, checking to make sure none of them were merely playing dead. If any trace of life remained, they meant to finish the job properly.
Fortunately, the tentacles were sprawled limply across the white sand, not moving an inch.
Mun Dal-su called out to his team.
“Youngjoon. You hurt? I saw blood dripping off your elbow earlier.”
“It’s just a scratch. A bit of soybean paste and it’ll be fine.”
“What a load of crap. Get treated already. You’ll get infected.”
“Yes, sir! Team Leader Mun!”
Mun Dal-su looked over the injured man with affectionate concern.
“What about you, Na-ik?”
The youngest on the team, Jang Na-ik, was sweating bullets. Since the desert-type gate, this was the first large-scale battle he’d fought in, and now that the tension was finally draining out of him, he was sucking in breath in ragged gulps.
“I-I’m fine! Aside from twisting my ankle a little!”
“Good. Once you get healed up, you’ll be right as rain.”
Mun Dal-su turned to me.
“Hunter Choi. Thank you.”
The emotion in his eyes had nothing to do with victory itself.
“You kept the kids in one piece.”
Facing monsters meant gambling with your life. Thanks to my meticulous planning and the countermeasures I’d prepared in advance, the Busan team had made it through without a single casualty.
At last, we’d won the first day in a landslide.
The Dio Guild Busan team was riding high on victory, their voices growing louder by the second.
“The Dirty Kraken isn’t all that!”
“Those tentacle freaks couldn’t even move!”
“Watching them thrash around after getting caught in the stopper was so damn satisfying.”
Mun Dal-su smiled with obvious satisfaction.
“Those punks. Ever since Hunter Choi got here, they’ve found their confidence again.”
The Dio Guild’s Busan branch didn’t have any high-ranking Hunters. Their only A-class Hunter, Harpy, had already met his end.
A guild with weak combat power had no choice but to be looked down on by everyone else. It seemed the Busan team had been carrying around more humiliation than I’d realized.
Mun Dal-su stood straight before me.
“Hunter Choi. I’m truly grateful you came to Busan.”
Under the blazing sun, I met his gaze.
“I hate to pour cold water on the mood, but we can’t let our guard down. Not yet.”
If the tentacles were the appetizer, then the main course was without question the Dirty Kraken.
The place I was standing was Gwangalli Beach. On the first day, because we knew exactly where the Dirty Kraken would attack, we’d managed to defend successfully.
The Dirty Kraken was never an opponent anyone could take lightly.
Cutting down the tentacles myself had been nothing more than a strategy to provoke the bastard and make it lose its head.
If the plan works, all the better.
At a glance, the Dirty Kraken looked stupid and dim-witted. But it wasn’t an idiot.
In my past life, tentacle stoppers had been used as well. They’d been introduced only after the Dirty Kraken had already run rampant, the very definition of closing the barn door after the horse had bolted, but still—it had been a decent measure at first.
On the second day. Then the third day.
As the same defensive method was repeated over and over, the Dirty Kraken gradually accumulated information about the tentacle stoppers. It learned how to minimize sacrifices and send more of its own bodies ashore alive.
In fact, once a week had passed, the tentacle stoppers had become useless.
Like deep learning extracting data and recognizing patterns, the Dirty Kraken kept evolving as the days went by.
After a month, it began attacking every stretch of coastline in Busan indiscriminately. The defensive net was simply too vast to build quickly, and we couldn’t stop it all.
That was why I wanted to settle this in the short term.
If we dragged this out, we could be overturned at any moment.
We might not be able to win every battle with a perfect score, but we could still minimize the damage.
I looked at Mun Dal-su.
“The real war starts tomorrow. Save your thanks for when the Dirty Kraken’s been turned into grilled octopus.”
“Aye. Got it, Hunter Choi.”
Mun Dal-su’s eyes sharpened as his fighting spirit surged back to life.
I clapped my hands once.
“All right, then.”
Across the white sand, and out over the waves rolling lazily across the sea, countless tentacle corpses were floating on the water.
“Let’s make some money.”
For those who survived a battle with monsters, this was the time that followed—the time to gather the spoils.
“Take a look here.”
I picked up one of the tentacles.
“This thing doesn’t have a mana stone.”
Unlike other monsters, tentacles didn’t carry mana stones. They were mere extensions of the main body, living things that moved only by obeying orders.
“No mana stone? Tch.”
“That’s a shame.”
Disappointed murmurs rose from all around.
Mana stones were a precious resource used in all sorts of businesses. Monsters being profitable had a lot to do with those stones.
One of the team members prodded a tentacle with a machete.
“Hey, hey, hey! Is this eel-looking bastard actually worth anything?”
Was there any way to make money off monsters besides mana stones?
“Of course.”
Take the Pin Scorpion from the desert gate as an example. Its chitin shell had detoxifying properties, which made it useful as an ingredient in potions. It was also effective for skin care, so beauty companies would often pay a high price for Pin Scorpion corpses.
Someone nudged a tentacle with the toe of a boot.
“Hmph. I bet this tastes like absolute garbage, too.”
Sometimes monster corpses even became ingredients in cooking. Gryphon eggs were fried or steamed, unicorn horns were simmered down into stock, and cyclops eyeballs were turned into stew.
Dragon blood, in particular, had a sweet taste and was even used in cakes. Wasn’t even a single slice with a tiny amount of dragon blood worth a hundred million won? The price was absurd.
Dragon meat itself was almost impossible to get, but one SS-class Hunter who had tasted dragon steak had described it this way: it was the kind of heavenly flavor that belonged among the world’s four greatest delicacies, alongside caviar, truffle, and foie gras.
But tentacles were different.
“Right. I recommend you don’t eat it. Even if you used it for grass carp stew, it’d probably taste like zombie brains.”
“Ugh!”
At my words, everyone wrinkled their faces and shook their heads.
Tentacles didn’t have thick shells like the Pin Scorpion. Their slick, mucus-covered skin was thinner than expected, and sharp weapons could damage it with ease.
No mana stone, no hard shell, no flavor—so what, exactly, were we supposed to do with these things?
The answer was simple.
“Instead, what we’re taking is this.”
I sliced off the end of the tentacle with White Revenge. The rattlesnake-like tip separated cleanly from the body.
Jang Na-ik followed my lead and cut off another tentacle tail. He was already moving quickly on his own, without needing to be told twice.
Jang Na-ik shook the tentacle tail in his hand.
“What does this do?”
“It’s rich in calcium, magnesium, iron, and amino acids.”
“...Ah, I see.”
The reaction was still lukewarm. At that level, buying a supplement from the store would probably be better.
“And,” I said, stabbing a finger into the tentacle tail, “it also contains sildenafil.”
This time, everyone tilted their heads.
“It dilates blood vessels, improves blood flow, and most importantly, if you take it consistently...”
I lifted one corner of my mouth.
“...it increases testosterone levels.”
By then, a few quick-witted ones had already caught on. Mun Dal-su covered his mouth.
“No way.”
In my previous life, I’d spent so much time holed up at home reading books that I’d naturally become absurdly well read. Classical novels, essays, poetry, the humanities—before I knew it, I’d developed a full-blown addiction to the written word, and even devoured medical texts for fun.
At the time, I’d thought it was useless knowledge.
Even dog shit has its medicinal uses after all.
“To use the technical term, it helps with ED, or erectile dysfunction.”
I set aside the preamble and got to the point.
“In simpler terms, it’s effective against impotence. A natural tonic with no side effects, if you will.”
The Busan branch was made up entirely of men, aside from Heo Da-yeong. And besides Jang Na-ik, everyone else was in their thirties or forties and well on their way toward middle age.
The men’s faces lit up.
“Wow. There was a secret like that? You should’ve told us sooner!”
In Korea, there’s an old joke: if an animal is said to be good for male virility, it will inevitably go extinct. Of course, it was a joke, but the point was clear—anything tied to virility held value.
If word spread that tentacle tails were good for men...
“At the very least, one tail would go for a million won. If a shortage hit, the price could climb into the tens of millions per piece. If we just cut the tails off and sold them...”
I raised a tail high in the air.
“We’d make a killing.”
Silence hung in the air for a few seconds.
Then, as if on cue, everyone sprang into motion, all at once and full of purpose.
“So this wasn’t a tentacle, it was a gold bar!”
“Hey, move. I’m going into the sea and coming right back out. Damn it, I didn’t bring swim trunks—I’ll just go in wearing my underwear.”
“My wife is going to love this... no, wait. Absolutely not. I can’t bring this home.”
The Dio Guild Busan team had fought the monster with a sense of duty. But because they were stationed in a provincial branch, they’d been forced to live under miserable conditions.
After coming down to Busan and sharing hardship with their comrades, they’d made a decision: they were going to make these people rich.
I’d spent my entire life wanting to escape poverty. But once I’d actually managed to save up a billion won, it had turned out to be nothing special.
Only then had I understood.
There was no meaning in living well all by yourself.
I’d obtained a fortune, but then sunk into despair over my guilt toward my family and isolated myself completely. I had lived pointlessly in an empty apartment, waiting alone for the day I’d die.
Sometimes, while reading a book, a single tear would slip down my face without me even noticing.
The truth was, I knew it. I’d just been forcing it down, forcing myself to endure it, never showing it on the surface.
I’d been lonely. A lot lonelier than I’d let on.
I didn’t want to be the only one living well in this life.
If it were possible, I wanted everyone around me to be happy too.
“What are you all standing around for? Hurry up and gather it. Let’s all get rich together.”
The moment I finished speaking, the team members set to work eagerly, cutting the tentacle tails off one after another.
“There’s so much we can’t carry it all back.”
“What’s the problem? We’ll just call a truck.”
“Does this really work for that... you know, that department? Should I take a bite and find out?”
“Damn it, you need to grill it!”
“Think so? We can have it as a bar snack with soju later.”
The team members were humming happily to themselves when my phone vibrated.
“Hello?”
“Hunter Choi? How’s the scene? You aren’t hurt, are you?”
“Everyone’s safe.”
“Phew. That’s a relief.”
“How’s your side?”
“Well...”
Heo Da-yeong trailed off.
For the ever-bright, ever-clumsy rabbit to sound like that, something must have been going wrong.
“The maritime police gave us the okay, but the Navy...”
I could guess the rest.
They refused the request. That’s what she means.
Heo Da-yeong continued,
“They’re being so stubborn that they’re hard to persuade.”
That had been the decisive reason we’d failed to kill the Dirty Kraken in my previous life: conflict between organizations.
Fishermen who had gone too long without being able to put out to sea eventually rioted. Busan City blamed the monster and shrugged off responsibility as if there was nothing they could do. As the conflict dragged on, the blame eventually turned toward the Hunters as well. Citizens condemned the Hunters for incompetence, and the Hunters, from their own point of view, grew furious in return.
The Dirty Kraken had enjoyed it all, tormenting Busan for a long time as though it were savoring the chaos.
In the end, before we could even drive out the enemy on the outside, the fire had spread because humans were fighting each other.
Exactly as the Dirty Kraken had intended.
Humanity had been made to dance in the grasp of a vicious sea monster.
The Navy had been no different. They’d done their best in their own way, but they were also one of the institutions that had suffered the most damage at the hands of the Dirty Kraken.
We can’t repeat the same mistake.
It was a fight over who would take and who would be taken from. This siege wasn’t limited to the Dirty Kraken alone.
First, if we wanted to become one...
We had to fight among humans first.
“Wait there.”
I adjusted my grip on the phone.
“I’m coming now.”