The Weight of a Hero (1)
Dawn broke the next day.
The tentacles began their infiltration again without fail, pushing once more for a way onto land.
Imrang Beach, Chilam Port, Dongbaek Breakwater, Cheongsapo—just as they had on the first day, they swept across the sea and came swarming in.
The Busan Hunter Alliance team fought siege battles at every point along the coast. Through their Bluetooth earbuds, they kept one another updated on the situation in real time.
"This is BlackCop. Tentacles eliminated."
"Confirmed."
"Blood Duelist, eliminated as well."
"Confirmed."
"Gwangnang is still engaged in combat. They’ll be wiped out soon."
"Okay."
This was the plan: each guild’s hunters would hold position and wait along the shoreline. The moment a drone stationed near the beach spotted tentacles, the nearest guild would move in. Most of them died the instant they tried to force their way onto land, skewered by the stoppers installed in the water. The few that survived were already half-dead by the time they entered battle.
"What about casualties?"
"Just a second. Hey! Anybody hurt? Ah, damn, I got nicked. Those bastards have some pretty sharp teeth."
"Hahaha! BlackCop’s not all that after all. Not a single one of us got hurt."
"What? You’re Gwangnang, right? Want to bet? Who can kill more of those worms?"
"Hey! You got the guts for it?"
They were so relaxed they could trade jokes over the group channel. Everything was going smoothly.
So far, so good.
Then came the third day, the fourth day, and so on.
On the seventh day, something changed.
"Tch! The, the defensive line’s been breached!!"
It was the first team to lose a siege battle.
Crashing noises poured through the earbud, followed by shrill, screeching cries.
"Kigek!"
"Kekek!!"
I could picture the tentacles thrashing around, their slick bodies slamming together as they rampaged.
"Hunter Choi! These things...!"
Panic and fear had crept into the voice.
"The stoppers aren’t working!"
The trap they had trusted had failed. That was the decisive reason they lost.
So it’s started.
There was a method prisoners on the front lines often used when they tried to break out: they’d throw a blanket over the barbed wire and leap over it. That reduced the risk of their skin being ripped apart by the fence.
The tentacles had used the same sort of tactic. The vanguard charged first, throwing themselves onto the stoppers. A large number died at the front, but there was a clear difference in the result. The tentacles had hurled themselves at the spikes as if they meant to die on them, and once their corpses were pinned there, they froze in place like broken dolls.
The follow-up wave had it easier. With the vanguard’s bodies cushioning the spikes, they could pass through without much trouble.
So that was it.
Suicide attack.
Unless it was something like the kamikaze tactics of World War II, it was a strategy no human would ever choose.
Only the Dirty Kraken could do something like this.
It was brutally sacrificing its own tentacles—its own limbs—to serve the greater plan.
It struck me all over again that the enemy I was fighting was a monster.
"Put the screen up."
A hunter wearing a body cam showed the scene.
Riding over the corpses that had been impaled on the stoppers, a considerable number of tentacles made it to land. Some of them were even devouring wounded tentacles still spilling their innards, while the healthy ones kept moving like nothing was wrong.
"W-What are they doing?"
"Why are they eating each other?"
Even monsters burned through an enormous amount of energy just crossing the sea. They couldn’t possibly reach land already half-dead and then fight hunters like that.
The tentacles secured an energy source through cannibalism.
...
First the method for countering the stopper through suicidal sacrifice, and now this ingenious idea of eating one another.
It was all information I had already figured out in my previous life.
Even so, seeing it happen with my own eyes sent a chill up the back of my neck.
This is not something to take lightly.
The tentacles weren’t choosing this on their own. Like robots receiving signals from a relay tower, they were faithfully following the commands of the main body of the Dirty Kraken.
Mun Dal-su, who had been watching beside me, said, "......Hunter Choi. Shouldn’t we go over there?"
At the moment, the Dio Guild was guarding Gwangalli. The side that had been breached was Haeundae. It wasn’t far from here, so if we moved in to support them, we could probably rebuild the defense line.
But—
"No. Dio holds position."
One of the ways the Dirty Kraken destroyed human defense systems was by shaking them up. If everyone started panicking and the other guilds rushed en masse toward Haeundae, that would be exactly what the Dirty Kraken wanted.
If that happened, it would definitely head for the gap left behind.
But I can’t just stand here and watch.
Someone had to go provide support.
I brushed the sand from my hands and stood up.
"I’ll go alone."
The aquarium in Jung-dong, Haeundae, Busan.
A facility that exhibited a variety of marine life.
"Hey, hey. Don’t run."
A physical education teacher at Subyeon Middle School shouted in a rough, booming voice.
Today was a field trip. Full of energy, the students had poured out of the school and were roaming the aquarium with bright, excited faces.
Lee Chun-bae’s grandson, Lee Geon-woo, was among them.
"This is insane! Look over there!"
A girl peering into the blue-lit tank let out a shriek.
Her name was Park Ha-i, a girl in the same class as Geon-woo.
High overhead, a giant ray flapped its wings and glided past with slow, graceful ease.
The long, narrow passage they were walking through was one of the Busan Aquarium’s famous attractions: the underwater tunnel.
Park Ha-i pointed at the ray.
"Lee Geon-woo. It totally looks like you. Right?"
"No, it doesn’t. It looks like you."
Like the middle schoolers they were, the two of them immediately fell into a childish little argument.
The underside of the ray did have a nose and mouth that looked a little human, after all.
Geon-woo himself wasn’t really interested in that, though.
What his eyes were fixed on was...
I’ve never seen Park Ha-i in regular clothes before. She’s pretty.
Long black hair, pale skin, and those pure, sparkling eyes that looked so clear they could pull you right in.
Lee Geon-woo had been secretly in love with Park Ha-i, his classmate since elementary school, for a long time. Out of pride, he couldn’t bring himself to show it, so he only acted rude on the surface.
"Should we do that? For the field-trip report."
"Fine."
They had to choose one fish they’d seen at the aquarium and write about it. The topic was free-form, and it was the assignment the children had been given for the field trip. They worked in pairs, and the point was to approach the same fish from two different perspectives.
"Hmm."
Ha-i followed the ray with her gaze.
"I want to take a closer look."
The other kids in his class kept sneaking glances at Park Ha-i just like Geon-woo did, but none of them dared to approach her easily.
The reason was...
"Hey, Lee Geon-woo."
Park Ha-i puffed out her lips and said in a prim little voice, "Are you even listening to me?"
"Huh? Uh... what?"
Despite her innocent face, Ha-i had a sharp, prickly personality. On top of that, she was going through what people called her chuunibyou phase—a stormy season of adolescent awkwardness.
"I said—"
"That... you wanted to see me?"
"Are you out of your mind?"
Park Ha-i thumped his stomach with her fists.
"Ouch! That hurts. It really hurts."
Of course, it didn’t hurt at all.
He was just too happy to care.
Geon-woo’s cheeks flushed red like peaches.
That was when it happened.
Wiiiing!!!
An alarm blared through the aquarium.
"Emergency! Emergency! A monster has appeared outside the facility. Citizens, please lower your posture and move quickly to the evacuation shelter."
It was an emergency alert announcing that a monster had appeared. Since the Gates had started opening, that had become a common social phenomenon. Movie theaters, department stores, amusement parks—alarms went off all the time.
"I repeat, this is a real emergency."
The physical education teacher calmly took charge of the children.
"All right, everyone. Don’t panic. Move calmly. Whatever you do, don’t go outside."
"Please move according to staff instructions. Pregnant women, the elderly, and childr—"
Static crackled over the speaker.
The guide’s voice sounded like a tape being stretched thin, and that only made it feel even more ominous.
Bang!
With a violent jolt, the speaker cut out.
What on earth was happening?
"Kyaaa!!!"
A woman’s scream burst out somewhere in the distance.
Geon-woo turned his attention to the glass wall sealing off the underwater tunnel.
The water’s... shaking?
Then the ground began to tremble as if an earthquake had struck.
He could hear something surging in from somewhere.
Suddenly, a documentary he had watched before flashed through his head: a herd of gnu and zebras moving together across the Serengeti. The sight of them charging forward in a white cloud of dust had been magnificent, almost awe-inspiring, and it had stayed in his mind for a long time.
But this was Haeundae.
There was no way wild animals would suddenly show up in a place like this.
...What is that?
With a crash, a long, writhing creature burst into the aquarium.
At first, Geon-woo thought it was a sea eel.
"Kigek!!!"
That was before it opened its gaping jaws and bit the physical education teacher’s head clean off.
With its head gone, the teacher collapsed at once.
"Ah..."
Park Ha-i covered her mouth and sank to the floor.
The unimaginable horror had turned her legs to jelly.
Geon-woo swallowed hard.
Then, on instinct, he glanced left and right.
The underwater tunnel had two exits.
On the right side, the tentacle monsters were already overflowing in.
To survive, there was only one thing to do.
"Run!!!"
Geon-woo grabbed Park Ha-i’s hand and sprinted the other way.
The underwater tunnel at the Busan Aquarium stretched a full 80 meters. If Geon-woo had been alone, he could have covered that distance in thirteen seconds. But Ha-i could barely keep up. She had probably twisted her ankle somewhere and was limping badly.
It’ll be okay. If we can just keep going like this...
The exit of the underwater tunnel was getting closer.
Thirty meters, twenty, ten...
Geon-woo stopped.
He had no choice.
"Kekek!!!"
"Kikikik!!!"
Another tentacle that looked exactly the same appeared at the exit.
Geon-woo turned his head.
The tentacle behind them was charging straight toward them.
"G-Geon-woo! What do we do...?"
Park Ha-i hunched in on herself like a frightened herbivore.
"Kiek!"
The tentacle at the front opened its jaws and lunged for Ha-i.
Geon-woo reacted instantly, throwing his body sideways and shielding her.
The tentacle’s teeth clamped onto his shoulder.
His clothes tore just barely, by a hair’s breadth.
"Ghk."
Geon-woo let out a groan.
Blood seeped through the shredded fabric.
He had barely escaped a deadly blow, but that was only because luck had been on his side.
The tentacle that had launched the attack slammed into the underwater tunnel glass and toppled over.
"Kigek!!!"
As if irritated by the dodge, it shrieked and twisted its body toward Geon-woo again.
Countless more tentacles followed behind it.
"W-Were we... going to die?"
Park Ha-i whimpered, consumed by despair.
With both ends of the underwater tunnel blocked, they had been caught in a dead end.
Geon-woo reached into his bag and pulled something out.
With a metallic snap, a collapsible three-section baton sprang into his hand. It was nothing more than a normal self-defense weapon he carried around for when monsters showed up.
"Don’t worry."
His hand was shaking violently around the baton.
He was terrified, honestly.
He wanted to hide somewhere. He wanted to run away right this second.
But he couldn’t back down.
For someone precious to him...
The tentacles charged at them with a racket of shrill, vicious screams.
There was no way a fifteen-year-old boy could beat a monster classified as Ruins-level with nothing but a steel rod.
And yet—
Lee Geon-woo looked straight into Park Ha-i’s eyes.
"I’ll protect you."
The tentacle lunged.
Its maw flew wide, glistening with sticky saliva.
Please. Please...!
Geon-woo squeezed his eyes shut and swung the metal baton in his hand.
In that instant, the tentacle that touched the baton burst apart with a wet pop.
Geon-woo stared, dazed.
Did he have some hidden power he’d never known about?
The tentacle turned into a lump of meat and dropped in chunks to the floor.
Behind it, someone stepped into view.
"Hey there."
It was a man with sharply slanted eyes and a fierce, cutting look about him.
Geon-woo slowly lifted his head.
He had seen this man before.
The one who had come to his grandfather’s house...
A Hunter!
Choi Yongki poked Geon-woo’s forehead with one finger.
"I came to save you."