Into the Dungeon (10)
Lee Ji-jun bared his teeth as he held the curtain of blood in place.
“Kuh!”
If he let his strength slip even a little, it felt as if the Batter beyond the gate would burst into the world outside. But this was still manageable. He wasn’t pulling out a massive volume of blood to form a three-meter spear the way he had when he fought Instructor Nike. All he was doing now was spreading the blood as thinly as possible to seal the torn barrier of the gate. The Batter’s physical strength was weak; if he kept pressing like this, there was no way it could break through.
The real problem is...
Lee Ji-jun raised his head. Inside the sealed gate, a man was thrashing as if he’d fallen into deep water and was slowly drowning.
Choi Yongki.
The first feeling he’d had when he saw him was curiosity. During Dio Guild’s selection process, Choi Yongki had attacked an S-class hunter and still earned a place on the roster with his head held high.
Back when Lee Ji-jun had been in the Superior Guild, most hunters cowered before high-rank hunters. It wasn’t just because they feared the power of an S-class. Guilds, when you stripped them down, were structured just like big corporations. Climbing the ladder by earning merit and results was old-fashioned. There was no reason to take the hard road when you could get on the right invisible faction instead.
Hunters with ambition were desperate to ride the line directly attached to the guild representative, to become the underling of some executive, or to join the team of an S-class Awakened. The higher their rank, the bigger their salary; if they switched guilds, they could even receive a massive transfer fee.
The richer you were, the more comfortable your life became.
That hadn’t changed before the monsters appeared, and it hadn’t changed after.
And yet.
“Gghh—!”
Choi Yongki groaned as the Batter assaulted his mind.
Lee Ji-jun frowned.
What in the world are you doing this for?
Sealed gates closed on their own once enough time passed. Of course, the damage accumulated in the meantime would be impossible to measure. Still, even so—
He’s risking his life.
Fighting monsters was no child’s game. He could end up with a trauma that would never heal. He could lose a limb and become disabled. He could become a vegetable and lie in a bed for the rest of his life.
Black veins bulged beneath Choi Yongki’s skin.
The Batter was gnawing at both his mind and his body. Maybe.
...Maybe he’ll die like that.
Lee Ji-jun didn’t think of himself as a good person. In his teens, he had gotten into fistfights at the drop of a hat, and he had even stolen things from a corner shop now and then. But there had been a good side to him, too.
After his mother remarried, she gave birth to his stepfather’s daughter. Lee Ji-jun, with his prickly personality, had never been quick to warm up to his half-sister. But as he watched the infant take her first steps, then go to kindergarten, then enter elementary school, affection had slowly begun to settle in his chest. Before he knew it, he had come to accept her as family.
It had been his younger sister’s ninth birthday.
“I want to go to the amusement park with my big brother.”
Lee Ji-jun had snorted and patted her head.
As they ate churros together, rode the attractions, and went into the haunted house, he’d thought that maybe this was what happiness felt like.
Until a monster dropped from the ceiling and destroyed the Viking ride.
That accident had sent no fewer than 248 children to the stars in the sky.
Lee Ji-jun had clutched his sister’s corpse and screamed as he Awakened.
“KIEEEEK!!!”
The Batter’s shrill screech yanked him back to reality.
This was the limit.
Choi Yongki was panting, his pupils blackened all the way through.
No one had been held responsible for his sister’s death.
Monsters were treated less like a man-made catastrophe and more like a natural disaster.
Later, it was revealed that the monster that had appeared at the amusement park had escaped because the hunters inside the gate had neglected their duties. They’d been too busy stealing the magic stones in the dungeon to properly close the gate.
The media had made a huge racket for a while, but with accidents and disasters endlessly exploding everywhere else, the story had quickly gone quiet.
Even now, Lee Ji-jun still dreamed about that nightmare.
Somewhere along the way, hatred and distrust toward humanity had settled deep inside him.
There were no good people and bad people.
They were all just chasing their own interests.
And yet.
Why are you...?
Watching Choi Yongki stand against the evil spirits, Lee Ji-jun’s thoughts kept spiraling.
To save someone?
For honor?
...Or maybe because of some sense of justice?
Choi Yongki drew a magic circle and cast a spell on himself. He was probably trying to brainwash himself into forcibly awakening his mind.
“Kough!”
Choi Yongki coughed up dark red blood.
A Batter couldn’t endure much once its mental attack was broken even by a single opponent. And yet he was holding out alone against countless Batters.
Lee Ji-jun had known there was something hidden in him.
...But this is beyond anything I imagined.
It wasn’t even enough to call him amazing. Choi Yongki’s mental strength was so extraordinary it felt almost supernatural.
Before he realized it, Lee Ji-jun was looking up at him with something close to reverence.
He knew hunters were supposed to protect civilians from monsters. That was their duty.
But wasn’t that just the official line?
The Batters packed around Choi Yongki until his body looked entirely black.
“Ah.”
A sigh of admiration slipped from between Lee Ji-jun’s lips.
Even as he trembled all over, swallowed by that murderous aura, Choi Yongki’s eyes never once lost their light.
He looked like a heroic figure from myth.
Demi God.
The Greek root of the word hero—half god, half man.
For the first time in his life, Lee Ji-jun was seeing an unknown existence that had surpassed humanity itself.
Blood kept flowing from his torn hand.
He felt as though the world might end at any moment.
And yet a fire blazed up inside Lee Ji-jun’s chest.
If only I could fight alongside you.
He squeezed every last ounce of strength out of himself and gripped the blood shield with both hands.
The ground trembled.
Lee Ji-jun turned around.
Even though Jincheon and the Superior Guild had held back one more monster wave, the nineteenth push had finally broken through.
Monsters came surging this way.
Each of them had eight single eyes on its head and chest, and eight legs as well. A vicious set of jaws twisted from side to side in their mouths.
Their name was Gum Spider.
These monsters had long, threadlike webs attached to their bellies. Once those webs were cut, they died naturally, so their weakness was obvious enough. But their threatening jaws and lightning-fast movement made them a miserable opponent to deal with.
The Gum Spiders crashed into the last line of defense in an instant.
Bang Su-hwan raised his shield and blocked the swarm.
“Kuh! Are you still not here?!”
If even that stubborn bastard was saying that, then it wasn’t exaggeration. He was barely holding them back.
He’s hanging on by a thread.
If the Gum Spiders reached Lee Ji-jun now, with both of his hands occupied, he’d be defenseless.
“Choi Yongki!”
Lee Ji-jun shouted as he squeezed out the last drop of blood.
“Please!!!”
It was strange.
My eyes were closed, but I could see everything perfectly.
Several people had surrounded me.
Who are they?
Every one of them was wearing a purple mask.
When they took the masks off, their faces were revealed.
They were all Choi Yongki.
Me.
Their expressions were all different. Some were angry. Some grinned too broadly. Some were crying.
To be honest, I wasn’t the kind of person who had that many expressions.
After spending nearly thirty years doing nothing but working in a factory, my emotions had gone dry. Things that were funny didn’t make me laugh. Things that were sad didn’t make me feel sad.
Were they my hidden feelings?
One of them drove White Revenge into my abdomen.
“Ghk!”
I knew it wasn’t real, but the pain was so intense the hair on my body stood on end.
Stab. Stab. Stab.
They were stabbing me from every direction.
Why were they attacking me?
Probably because Mr. Eden’s spell had been cast on me.
Before long, black shapes began creeping toward me.
They, too, were trying to attack me, hurling their pitch-black breath forward.
Whoosh.
One of my doppelgängers attacked a Batter.
Normally, Batters didn’t take physical damage. But the ghost-type monster still shrieked and was split clean in half.
“Kieek!”
That was the beginning.
The war between the doppelgängers and the Batters began.
The versions of me swung White Revenge. The Batters answered by fluttering their robes.
The gleaming white blade danced through the darkness like a constellation.
Everything moved in slow motion.
A banquet of evil and the Purple Devil.
Ah. What a spectacle.
It was a horrible situation, and yet it was also so dazzling that I could almost lose myself in it.
I was the reason they were fighting.
Their purpose was me.
A fierce battle had broken out just to claim me.
The struggle that had been locked in a dead heat slowly began to tip.
If I judged by fighting power alone, the Purple Devils were stronger. In one-on-one combat, they had the advantage.
But the Batters kept coming without end, while the Purple Devils were being worn down at a terrifying rate.
This isn’t a monster wave.
It was as if they were being produced endlessly from somewhere...
I froze.
Replication?
Besides their mental domination, the Batters also had the ability to self-replicate.
If I wanted to deal with them, I’d need to summon more magic circles.
Would my body even hold up?
If this turned into a war of attrition, then even my Awakener’s Balance would be drained to the bone.
Then I focused everything.
The flow of the air, the stinging odor, the direction of the sticky aura that wrapped around my body...
Only then did I notice a subtle difference.
Unlike the Batters that moved with machine-like consistency, there was one that drifted lazily around the battlefield.
It was bigger than the others.
And the glimmer of light flickering inside its skull was stronger than any of the rest.
That one was...
The main body.
I pulled White Revenge from its sheath.
In the middle of the chaos, I headed straight for it.
The main body noticed me and quickly put distance between us.
I don’t have time to play tag.
I was under Nike’s curse, which meant I couldn’t use my hero abilities for twenty-four hours.
But I didn’t care.
I kicked off the ground and used Infinite Acceleration.
To my surprise, Speeder’s skill activated just fine.
It didn’t even deduct a single coin from my balance.
This was a realm of consciousness.
It wasn’t reality, so the curse had no hold here.
In the blink of an eye, I was right in front of the main body.
Die!
I drove the tip of my blade forward.
The knife punched through the robe and sank into the Batter’s heart.
The skull’s eye sockets widened even farther.
“KIEEEEK!!!”
Countless Batters screamed all at once.
One after another, their robes ballooned outward as if they were about to burst.
The main Batter swelled too, light spilling from its mouth as its body puffed up.
Then I realized my mistake.
Sealed gates closed once the monster inside was killed.
But if a mana explosion happened in this cramped space—
“Damn it!”
I wrapped myself in Super Kid’s God’s Aura and drove out a fist loaded with Judgment of the Superhuman.
BOOM!!!
At the instant of the massive explosion, I woke from the consciousness world and was blasted out through the gate.
Thanks to my hero skill, I made it outside safely.
I tumbled two and a half times through the air before performing a clean breakfall on the asphalt.
The protective gear I’d been wearing had turned into a ragged mess, but I staggered up and braced a hand on the ground to steady myself.
Slowly, I lifted my head.
Where am I...?
The first person I saw was Lee Ji-jun.
He was staring at me, blood streaming from his hand.
Then there was Bang Su-hwan, holding up his shield and blocking the spider swarm.
And finally—
Crack.
The spider in the very front shattered to pieces and scattered into the wind.
For the Gum Spiders, those long webs were their lifeline.
Once the gate that was their home closed, those webs vanished as well.
Now that the main gate had shut, the rest of the doors were closing in sequence too.
The swarm of spiders that had been pouring toward us like beads on a string turned to ash in an instant.
“...You bastard.”
“Boss. You did it.”
Lee Ji-jun and Bang Su-hwan both had wet eyes, like they were about to cry.
Cheering rang out from the other side of the bridge.
They had realized the main gate had collapsed.
For a moment, victory seemed within reach.
Then—
Thud.
The bridge shook, and an earthquake rippled through the ground.
“Grrrrraaagh!!!”
A roar shook the air.
Had a new monster appeared?
No.
With the main gate closed, the multigate problem was solved.
That was the howl of a powerful adult creature that had already been outside the gate.
That roar...
The roar belonged to the boss monster that even an S-class hunter had failed to exterminate.
It was the so-called gatekeeper from hell.
Lee Ji-jun held out a hand to me.
I took it and pulled myself to my feet, only for my legs to nearly buckle beneath me.
“Boss! Are you okay?”
Bang Su-hwan rushed over and supported me.
No, I wasn’t okay.
I was wrecked from the battle with the Batters.
One ear was ringing, my stomach was throbbing, and nausea kept climbing up my throat.
Even so, I tightened my grip on White Revenge, reversed the blade, and started walking forward.
“Let’s go. We’re finishing this.”