Into the Dungeon (11)
Before we split up, we agreed to regroup on Dosan-daero after the mission was over.
Since the main gate had been shut down, I headed back to the rendezvous point.
Jaryong led the way with Cream beside him, and the interns followed close behind.
Slash!
Jaryong’s sword split a monster clean in half. As the boar-like thing’s legs were severed, Cream kept up the assault with a barrage of white arrowheads.
“Squeee!”
Thanks to the two of them working together, we were able to carve a path forward quickly.
“Looks like the numbers really have dropped.”
“Yeah. The wave’s stopped too.”
With the main gate sealed, the other gates had disappeared as well. The monsters could no longer pour through from the other side.
That made the battle much easier.
Jaryong and Cream both turned their eyes to me.
“Hey. Hunter Choi. You worked hard.”
“Guess we ended up owing you.”
Their shoulders had relaxed now, and smiles returned to their faces. They no longer bristled just because we belonged to different guilds.
We had all been fated to die on Yanghwa Bridge, but having come back from the edge of the grave, we were now bound together by a hard-earned camaraderie.
Jaryong gave me a thumbs-up.
“You’re the hero who put down this multi-gate incident.”
As if agreeing, Cream nodded.
“Seriously. He’s the real-life hero, all right.”
I hadn’t done it to earn praise or recognition. I’d simply done what a hero was supposed to do.
“Want to join our guild? We can promise you better conditions than Dio.”
“You’ve got some nerve. If you were recommending Superior, I might’ve considered it.”
“Hmph. That place is just a gathering of holier-than-thou prudes.”
“Still better than a bunch of stinking country bumpkins.”
“There you go, poking the bear again!”
While Jaryong and Cream bickered back and forth, we had already reached our destination.
At the sight before them, the hunters’ faces darkened.
In the middle of the eight-lane road stood a massive monster.
Its over-two-meter-tall body was a slick, pale-pink slab of flesh that glistened wetly in the light. It looked like a human brain with limbs.
Its name was Cancer Golem.
Because of that hideous appearance, people also called it a cancer cell.
“So after Batter, now we get this?”
“It’s just one thing after another.”
Jaryong and Cream groaned at the sight of the new enemy.
Ordinarily, a golem didn’t wander around on its own like that. It was supposed to follow a summoner’s orders and stand guard at the mouth of a cave or temple.
They were called gatekeepers from hell.
For a summoner’s puppet to be running wild all by itself…
It must be because the gate was closed.
The golem, cut off from its master, had turned into a rabid dog that had broken free of its chains and fled.
“Squeak!”
The Cancer Golem brought its fist down and crushed one of the Cerberuses to death.
“……What the hell. Why Cerberus?”
“Doesn’t it even recognize its own side?”
Monsters rarely slaughtered their own kind.
Everyone was puzzled.
But I alone noticed the anomaly.
No way.
It might simply have been following the summoner’s original command.
Kill anything that comes near! Or something like that.
Or maybe it has some other agenda.
People might say, Why not just leave it alone if you don’t get close?
Unfortunately, that wasn’t how Cancer Golems worked. If they strayed from their designated area, they wandered aimlessly. If we left it alone…
Gangnam would end up a total wreck.
I hurriedly started formulating a strategy.
The only weapon I currently had was Allusia.
It was a power that could brainwash monsters with low intelligence.
It didn’t work on humans.
And on me, it was an exception.
However, I couldn’t cast a mental spell on a golem.
It was already under the summoner’s powerful curse.
Then what do I do?
Not just me, but the hunters facing it were also afraid to make a careless move.
“Tch! What’s the damn weakness of this thing?”
“Destroy the core.”
“Like that’s easy.”
“Then attack it for now!”
Unlike other golems, the Cancer Golem had a peculiar trait: the more damage it took, the more it grew, as if the cancer cells were spreading.
The hunters managed to nick it here and there, but every time they did, the wounds seemed to close up in an instant—and then its body swelled larger still.
Crunch. Crunch-crack.
The Cancer Golem grew until it was as big as a city bus.
“Don’t provoke it for nothing!”
“Yeah. It doesn’t work anyway!”
For hunters whose specialties were physical strikes, a Cancer Golem that only got stronger the more it was hit was an absolute nightmare.
“Move!”
Then a booming voice rang out, and someone stepped forward.
It was Na Sang-min, the head of the Dio Guild.
He vanished from sight in an instant, spear in hand.
Whoosh.
At a speed the eye could never hope to follow, he reappeared in the air before anyone realized it.
He had aimed straight for the back of the Cancer Golem’s head.
The spear punched through the monster’s face and burst out the other side.
The Cancer Golem’s limbs sagged.
“Did he do it?”
“He took it out…”
Then the monster’s head swelled up like a balloon.
And with even more violence than before, it began flailing its arms and legs.
“Tch.”
Na Sang-min clicked his tongue and pulled his spear free.
Watching from the sidelines, Bong Seon of the Jincheon Guild also clicked his tongue.
“Tsk-tsk. I told you. It wouldn’t work. Now it’s even bigger. So what are you going to do?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If you hadn’t failed in the first place, none of this would’ve happened.”
Because Bong Seon had failed to wipe it out, the Cancer Golem had burst out of the gate and into the open.
“You’re saying you could’ve done better?”
“Obviously. Pathetic bastard.”
“What did you call me?”
Na Sang-min and Bong Seon glared at each other as if they were about to leap at one another on the spot.
While they were busy trading glares, Vulkan of the Superior Guild stepped in.
He drew back his golden bowstring.
“Thunder Bow!”
The arrow crackling with lightning struck the Cancer Golem’s heart.
The monster shuddered as if it had been electrocuted.
Soot bloomed around the chest, and the stench of burning flesh filled the air.
For a moment, there was a glimmer of hope.
That hope died almost immediately.
“Grrraaaah!”
The Cancer Golem hammered its own chest with its fists, as if performing CPR on itself.
Its entire body fattened, swelling twice as thick as before.
Its head didn’t work. Its heart didn’t work either.
At this rate, we’re done for.
Like a stone golem smashing apart only to reassemble itself again, that mass of cells would keep growing forever unless we destroyed its core.
The problem was—
“Where the hell is the core?”
“Isn’t it usually in the skull or the chest?”
“Could be in the dantian…?”
Nobody knew where the core was.
“Graaahhh!!!”
The Cancer Golem grew again.
By now, its face was no longer visible from below.
Its enormous hand shot up into the sky.
“Move!”
“Ugh!”
The hunters scattered in a panic.
If they couldn’t bring the Cancer Golem down, this fight would never end.
Na Sang-min, Bong Seon, and Vulkan—the leaders of each guild—were all standing on the same battlefield, and yet even together they couldn’t get the upper hand.
The reason was simple.
The matchup was terrible.
Na Sang-min and Bong Seon both used power-type mana.
Vulkan used energy-type mana.
That kind of thing would be devastating against an opponent vulnerable to physical blows and long-range attacks.
But for that monster that grew stronger with every hit, it was poison.
It wasn’t as if the Cancer Golem could defeat S-rank hunters.
But the reverse wasn’t easy either: S-rank hunters couldn’t easily subdue the Cancer Golem.
In the end, the guild masters reached a consensus.
“We have to finish it before it regenerates.”
“Agreed.”
“Let’s divide the area.”
The tactic was simple.
Just like I’d done against Batter, they planned to wear it down through sheer endurance and drag it into a contest of raw power.
“Dio, regroup!”
“Jincheon, move in!”
“Superior, over here!”
The voices of the S-rank hunters echoed thunderously across the road.
Na Sang-min spoke.
“We’re not breaking through in one point. We’re hammering it from every direction. We’re taking its back side. Crush everything from its fingers to its toes. The moment you find the core, tear it out. Got it?”
The hunters nodded with grim determination.
“Yes, sir!”
Na Sang-min’s eyes met mine.
“Choi Yongki. Why aren’t you answering?”
His tone wasn’t accusatory.
He knew the main gate had been closed. Which meant I’d done my job well.
“You’ve got another trick up your sleeve this time?”
The entire Dio Guild looked at me.
An S-rank hunter asking an F-rank hunter for advice.
Whatever his violent, foul-mouthed personality, Na Sang-min clearly had the makings of a good leader.
But—
“No. I don’t know.”
I didn’t know where the Cancer Golem’s core was either.
That much had been confirmed in my previous life.
The core of that cancer-cell monster didn’t have a fixed location.
Unlike other golems, Cancer was far more devious than it looked.
“But I think I know something.”
I did have a rough idea of where it might be.
If my guess is right…
Na Sang-min didn’t bark at me or lose his temper.
By now, he trusted me enough.
“Fine. Choi Yongki, you move on your own. I’ll cover the other guilds.”
Na Sang-min gripped his spear and turned away.
“Charge!”
Dio. Jincheon. Superior.
And the rest of the guilds besides.
The hunters launched their full assault.
Like an army of ants swarming a fat pink sausage, they rushed in from every side.
“Graaah! Grrraaaah!!!”
Blades and weapons of every kind dug into the Cancer Golem.
Its flesh tore, then regenerated.
It was gouged apart, then regenerated again.
The brutal struggle dragged on without end.
Bits of flesh that had been ripped free from the Cancer Golem twitched on the ground.
I didn’t join the melee.
Instead, I kept dodging around, picking up stones and checking the places where its body had broken apart.
Bong Seon and Vulkan both shouted at me in protest.
“What the hell is that bastard doing?”
“What exactly are you doing right now?”
Na Sang-min swung his spear.
“Ignore him! He’s Dio Guild’s… no, all of our savior.”
He added,
“He’s the one who shut down the main gate.”
At that, Bong Seon and Vulkan both shut their mouths.
As time passed, the hunters’ fierce momentum gradually began to fade.
“Hah… Haaah… This thing never ends…”
“Where the hell is the core…?”
“Does it even have one to begin with?”
The hunters were breathing hard.
The first to wear out was our side.
Meanwhile, the Cancer Golem’s size…
Thud.
Every time it took a step, the ground caved in beneath it.
“It’s… building-sized now.”
“How are we supposed to bring that down?”
The hunters, having lost their fighting spirit, let their shoulders slump.
At this rate, it looked like the Cancer Golem might grow to the size of an entire island.
We’d need to drop the core on it somehow to end this, and even that might not be enough.
Though that wasn’t even possible.
Why did hunters exist?
To eliminate monsters as efficiently as possible, with minimal damage.
If you just annihilated them with indiscriminate firepower, the losses were even greater.
Bong Seon let out a long breath.
“Let’s pull back for now. I heard an S-rank mage is on the way from Gyeonggi…”
“Go to hell! You want us to run away like cowards?”
Na Sang-min grabbed Bong Seon by the collar.
“Fuck! Then what the hell do you want us to do?”
“Do anything! Just try something!”
Vulkan didn’t stop either of them.
From the way his golden bow slipped lower in his hand, it seemed even he was beginning to think about giving up.
In the smoky battlefield, I dragged in ragged breaths and scoured every corner of the area before running toward one spot.
Even after the Cancer Golem’s body had been reduced to a minced heap of flesh, no core appeared—and neither did any opening I could exploit.
This is it.
I stopped at my destination.
On the ground lay a Cerberus corpse.
It was the place where the Cancer Golem had crushed the Cerberus to death with a single fist.
Inside the dog’s belly, I could see a dark purple mass throbbing faintly.
“Found it.”
I reached out and grabbed it.
A warm pulse, like a beating heart, spread through my palm.
The Cancer Golem looked brutish, but it had a cunning side to it.
Killing the Cerberus at the start had been a decoy.
It hid the core underground.
The Cancer Golem suddenly stopped moving.
Like a madman whose shame had just been exposed, it came rushing straight for me in a frenzy.
Bang! Bang! KRAAANG!!!
The ground shook with every step.
“Graaah!!!”
The Cancer Golem spread both arms wide and leaped through the air.
It was so massive that if it crashed down like that, any hunter caught beneath it would die instantly.
“Damn it.”
“S-save me!”
“……Honey.”
In that split second,
some shut their eyes tight.
Some began to pray.
Some dropped to their knees in despair, calling out to the people they loved.
A black shadow swallowed me whole.
“You’re tiresome as hell. Get lost.”
I looked up and clenched my fist around the thing in my hand.
When the balloon-thin sac burst, hot violet blood ran down my wrist.
The Cancer Golem that had been blocking out the sky exploded like a charge going off.
Shards of bone and cartilage danced through the air.
The massive slab of fatty flesh rained down like greasy hail.
Whoosh…
The hunters, drenched by the downpour of gore, trembled as they tried to make sense of what had just happened.
“……We’re alive.”
I brushed the grime from my hand and brought the long war to an end.
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