The Weight of a Hero (2)
I headed for Haeundae, where the defensive line had been breached.
Heo Da-yeong was behind the wheel, and I sat in the passenger seat.
It was the kind of situation where every second mattered, so we should have been racing there as fast as humanly possible.
Instead, Heo Da-yeong looked on the verge of tears.
“...Hunter Choi. What do we do?”
One furious blast of a horn stabbed into my eardrum.
The car ahead of us seemed to crawl forward like a turtle, then came to a complete stop, showing no sign that it intended to move again.
We were stuck on Suyeong Bridge No. 2.
If we wanted the shortest route to our destination, this bridge was unavoidable.
Damn it.
The two-lane span was jammed solid, with no space to slip through in front or behind.
Heo Da-yeong stamped her feet and bit at her nails.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry...”
Then my phone rang.
The caller was someone I knew well.
“P-please... save me!”
“Hunter Choi! Please! Please!!”
“Gun-woo... our Gun-woo is—!”
“He went on a school outing today, and I think those bastards are swarming the place where Gun-woo is. Please, save my Gun-woo. I’m begging you!”
“Calm down first. Tell me what happened, one step at a time.”
“Gun-woo... our Gun-woo...”
“Where is Gun-woo?”
“T-the place with all the fish.”
“The aquarium?”
“Y-yes! That place!”
I ended the call.
Heo Da-yeong looked at me.
“Did something happen?”
“I’ll go from here alone.”
“Huh?”
I opened the car door and got out.
Heo Da-yeong shouted after me, “Hunter Choi! We’re in the middle of the bridge. You can’t even hail a taxi out here! What are you planning to do?”
In the middle of that brutal traffic jam, what was the fastest way to reach Haeundae?
A motorcycle? A plane?
I pictured Busan’s road map in my head.
After roughly calculating the distance, I muttered, “Twenty million won, huh.”
2. Speeder Series
1) Infinite Acceleration
Price: ₩10,000,000 per use within a 1-km radius.
The answer was to move myself.
It was time for a hero who ran at the speed of light to make his entrance.
I bent one knee and crouched low like a kangaroo, loading my body for the explosive rebound I needed from the ground.
A crouching start.
“Hunter Choi, you’re going to run? At least take a scooter or—”
Before Heo Da-yeong could even finish, I shot forward.
My hair flew back, and in the blink of an eye I was already past Suyeong Bridge No. 2.
I drove my legs hard and tore through the city.
Every scene whipped past me like a film played too fast, while at the same time everything felt strangely slowed down.
No matter how many times I see this, it still amazes me.
Hero abilities gave me a strange, almost intoxicating thrill simply by letting me experience them with my own body.
Until now, I’d used the Speeder’s power mostly for short-distance movement or in battle.
This was the first time I’d ever run a distance this long.
I skidded across the asphalt with a raucous scrape and began to slow myself down.
My soles are burning.
In the blink of an eye, I arrived at Haeundae.
“Help me!!”
As expected, Haeundae was a total hellscape.
Cars lay half-destroyed and overturned, and smoke rose from all over the place.
The tentacles had crossed the white sand and spilled into the city, running wild.
The disgusting, eel-like creatures with their long bodies were lashing out at anyone on the streets.
“Kieeek!!!”
I was about to draw my sword, then stopped.
At a glance, there had to be well over a hundred tentacles.
If I cut them down one by one, I’d never make it in time.
I needed a way to eliminate the monsters in a short span of time.
As efficiently as possible.
Fast and precise.
How?
Experience was a terrifying thing.
I must have been gathering hardship and misery all this time like records carved into my body.
Before I could even finish thinking, I was already moving, making the best possible judgment at speed.
I put my hand on the ground.
I closed my eyes and focused.
Allusia activated.
The entire area within range became my target.
I was using the technique of the supreme black magician, Mr. Eden, but in a very different way than before.
A massive magic circle unfurled from the hand pressed to the ground.
Everything inside that circle was now within range.
In other words, every tentacle here was included.
Go!
I clenched my teeth and poured out my mana.
“Kiek?”
“Kkeek?”
The tentacles convulsed and writhed like eels tossed onto a scorching grill.
Then they opened their maws wide and began biting at one another.
Normally, they should have been attacking only the injured ones.
Instead, they started chewing through the flesh of their unhurt companions, crunching down to the bone.
“Kkeek!!”
“Kieeek!!!”
Tentacle blood sprayed everywhere, and thick guts burst out in slick ropes.
It was a full-scale slaughter of their own kind.
Good.
Allusia was especially effective against large numbers of monsters with no intelligence of their own.
The instruction I had fed the tentacles through mental manipulation was simple.
“Eat each other.”
Caught in the powerful illusion, the tentacles ignored the Dirty Kraken’s orders and obeyed mine without hesitation.
“Kkege...”
All those tentacles, over a hundred of them, soon sagged and collapsed in heaps.
In the end, I had wiped out every tentacle nearby without lifting a finger.
Of course, it came at a price.
Balance:₩673,040,889
The people who had been suffering under the tentacles looked dazed and speechless.
“Did he just save us?”
“T-thank you.”
Without even waiting to hear any more thanks, I turned and left.
The aquarium was my next destination.
The moment I stepped inside, I clicked my tongue.
Shit.
There were far more tentacles inside the building than I’d expected.
They had been active on land, but some buried instinct for water still remained in them.
It made sense, in a twisted sort of way, that they would be drawn to the aquarium.
Maybe this is actually a blessing.
If I could eliminate them all at once, that would be ideal.
Unlike outside, the aquarium was a narrow, twisting maze.
I couldn’t spread a magic circle out wide and flat here.
And since Heoksikdo was so long, there was always the risk of smashing it into the walls by mistake.
I slowly curled both fists.
It was a motion I had repeated thousands upon thousands of times every dawn.
The act of concentrating all my mana into one point in my body and striking it out in a single blow.
A crude imitation of Judgment of the Superhuman.
I brought my right fist down on a tentacle’s head.
With a wet crack, the tentacle burst apart.
Sticky gray matter ran down my hand.
It felt much like the time I had brought down Big Lava.
This works.
Right hand, left hand.
I surged forward, throwing one-two combinations without hesitation.
Every punch shattered a tentacle as though a massive hammer had struck it.
To use Super Kid’s ability, I’d have to pay one million won.
Yet I could imitate Judgment of the Superhuman without spending a single penny.
All that blood, sweat, and endless training had finally begun to shine.
At this rate, someday I might even...
...surpass Judgment of the Superhuman with my own strength, without relying on the Awakener's Balance.
No. I would make it happen.
“Eek!!!”
“Which way is the evacuation room?”
“This way! Students, come this way!”
As the number of visible tentacles dropped sharply, the adults who still retained some semblance of composure began guiding the children to safety.
I checked each child’s face one by one.
Gun-woo?
Sure enough—
“G-Gun-woo!”
A young girl’s voice rang out.
It came from the side where the undersea tunnel was located.
“Hup!”
I drove out a kick, and five tentacles were torn apart at once.
More tentacles were crowding into the narrow entrance of the tunnel.
The sight was obscene, like worms fighting to cram themselves into a hole far too small to hold them.
I threw out jabs as fast as I could.
“Hup! Hah!”
Each tentacle broke apart, and slick fluid and flesh splattered over the back of my hand.
I hacked my way forward through them like someone carving a path through earth and stone.
My breathing grew heavy, and my pulse began to hammer.
“Khgh!”
I was drenched in sweat from head to toe.
My throat stung as though a thorn had lodged itself there.
Of course it isn’t easy.
To fight only with my own strength, without buying hero abilities, was a relentless and painful process.
And yet.
A crooked smile tugged at my face.
Standing against monsters.
Saving people.
Protecting the ones who mattered.
Wasn’t that the hero I had always wanted to be?
“Hah. Huu...”
Once the tentacles packed at the entrance had all been smashed to pieces, the undersea tunnel opened up ahead of me.
Far in the distance, I spotted a familiar silhouette.
It was Lee Geon-woo, Lee Chun-bae’s grandson.
Geon-woo had pulled out a three-section staff to face the tentacles.
He was protecting a little girl behind his back.
That kid. Not bad.
Just as Geon-woo swung the staff, I drove my fist forward in the same rhythm.
The tentacle exploded and rained down in chunks like torn meat.
“There. I’m here to save you.”
Geon-woo and I came out of the aquarium together.
“You’re not hurt, are you?”
Geon-woo nodded.
“Thanks to you, Hunter Choi. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
For a middle schooler, he was awfully grown-up about it, bowing to me twice in a row.
“I... thank you too.”
The little girl standing beside Geon-woo spoke up.
Looking more closely, I saw that she was gripping Geon-woo’s hand tightly.
“Your girlfriend?”
“W-what? No!”
Geon-woo jerked in alarm and let go of the girl’s hand.
“When did you even grab my hand?”
“Tch! What? Me? Did I grab you? You were the one who held on first!”
Like a pair of squabbling lovers, the two of them started bickering.
I lightly tapped Geon-woo on the back.
“Good job. A man’s got to know how to protect his woman.”
Geon-woo’s face turned bright red.
“...Yes, sir.”
A truck fitted with a water tank came to a stop in front of the aquarium.
It was the kind of truck fishermen often rode in, a so-called water truck.
Someone stumbled out of it in a panic.
“Gun-woo!”
“Grandpa!”
Lee Chun-bae rushed over and pulled Geon-woo into a tight embrace.
“Oh, my boy.”
Lee Chun-bae burst into tears.
“If I lose you too... I won’t be able to go on. I just won’t.”
Having already lost his wife, Lee Chun-bae clutched the one precious treasure left to him as though he would never let go again.
“Come on, I’m not dying. Who’s dying?”
Lee Chun-bae bowed his head to me.
“Thank you. Hunter Choi, thank you truly, truly much.”
He thanked me twice for the exact same thing.
Come to think of it, Geon-woo had just done the same.
Like grandfather, like grandson.
Raised under his grandfather’s roof, Geon-woo had grown from a nice boy into a fine young man before I knew it.
“You should hurry and go. I’ll stay here and clean up the scene.”
Lee Chun-bae climbed into the truck.
“Get in, Gun-woo.”
Geon-woo hesitated.
“Park Hae-in, you get in too. I’ll take you home.”
Without quite meeting her eyes, he awkwardly held out a hand.
The girl gave a little snort, then took Geon-woo’s hand as if she’d lost the argument.
“So you were just going to leave me behind and go off alone? You cheap little punk!”
“What, you want me to hit you again?”
Lee Chun-bae laughed at the children and started the engine.
He rolled down the window and called out to me.
“Hunter Choi, did you already take care of that big octopus out at sea?”
“Not yet.”
“...I see.”
A shadow crossed Lee Chun-bae’s face.
The Dirty Kraken had sent only its tentacles ashore and hidden its true body deep beneath the sea.
The war was not over.
Ambulances had already arrived and were hauling away the injured.
Fire trucks were dousing the burning buildings with hoses.
Just today, countless facilities had been destroyed and casualties had been taken.
If things kept going like this, it would only become a miserable war of attrition.
Damage is piling up across Busan.
Fortunately, there was some good news too.
The Coast Guard was circling the waters and doing its best to lure the Dirty Kraken out.
And tomorrow, at last, the Navy’s massive fleet would set sail.
Lee Chun-bae was my client.
I had a duty to carry out my client’s request.
“It won’t be long.”
I pointed with my index finger toward Haeundae’s shoreline.
“I’m going there myself and ending this.”
And that was how the full-scale war against the Dirty Kraken began.