Torch of Anti-Communism (3)
There was no option to pretend we hadn’t seen them and just let them go. I had no idea what schemes those commie bastards had for heading south, but once they achieved their objective, the military and police in the surrounding areas would inevitably mobilize en masse to hunt for traces of them. If a firefight broke out, it would be hard to imagine a worse scenario. Rather than watch the vanguard of public authority comb through my private territory while cleaning up the aftermath, it was far better to capture the intruders alive and hand them over as suspected spies. That way, the military and police, armed with their statements, would limit their search to the areas around their route. It would have been ideal if the ones visible now were the entirety of those who’d crossed the ceasefire line. I could simply kill them all, bury the bodies, and erase the incident entirely.
However, judging from the number of pre-dug trenches, there were at least three more separate squads of infiltrators operating independently. That made quietly burying the whole affair impossible. Doing so would only provoke an even more thorough search for the vanished ones.
My organization’s about to churn out a flood of meritorious service award recipients. With a sense of absurd amusement, I set out on this untimely human hunt.
Of course, I couldn’t use automatic weapons. We had to stage a scenario where civilian hunters out on a night hunt spotted suspicious figures, tracked them, clashed in combat, and captured them. Even the firefight couldn’t be started recklessly. If the commies claimed in their statements that we’d opened fire without provocation, the authorities would suspect us of being a thuggish hunter group eliminating rivals. Considering the public perception of hunters as a profession—and the endless rise in missing persons cases in the wilds—our organization wouldn’t receive commendations; we’d become targets for undercover investigations and surveillance.
So first, we needed a pretext. That’s why the gear I’d ordered my subordinates to carry included parabolic microphones and recorders. They were tools any ordinary hunter might plausibly have, selected for evidence gathering.
Sound intensity generally drops by about 40 decibels for every hundred meters of distance. Everyday human conversation falls between 40 and 60 decibels, so at a hundred meters—even in complete silence—the voices become hard to discern. At best, you’d catch that people are talking over there. Even for an Awakened with sharp hearing, in an environment with background noise, it would only be marginally better than a normal person’s.
A parabolic microphone, extending audible range by three times or more, was thus invaluable for hunters. With software enhancement, conversations a hundred meters away sounded like whispers in your ear—perfect for search and threat detection in forests cluttered with visual obstructions and mana fields that disrupted senses.
In the end, the most terrifying thing is other people. What night-hunting hunters feared most wasn’t powerful Awakened beasts. It was armed groups of fellow hunters. Parabolic mics had become as trendy as a fad among hunter leaders, much like gangsters staking out territories. Hunters clashed over hunting grounds too, so spotting rivals first was key to group survival.
Arriving on site, I checked my subordinates’ ambush positions, then aimed a parabolic antenna at the infiltrators busy preparing their meal. From a spot with minimal obstructions but no direct exposure, their conversation flowed clearly into my ear:
Giggles rippled at the squad leader’s joking rebuke.
Are these guys insane? For infiltrators who’d crossed the ceasefire fence, they lacked any tension—way too much so. Was it arrogance from their above-average Awakened powers? Their talk suggested the infiltration so far had been a breeze, and adding the typical Awakened confidence and sense of superiority explained their complacency.
They set up smartphone cameras on tripods and started grilling meat like they were live-streaming.
I’d seen every bizarre sight life could offer. Enough eavesdropping on their nonsense. I had a good idea of their intent now. Stopping the recording, I handed the mic to a subordinate, who immediately sent the file to HQ.
With evidence secured, we wouldn’t need lengthy explanations for starting the hunt. Claiming each one looked like a 2-billion-won bounty target should satisfy any investigators. Though whether they’d pay per head was questionable.
“A bit higher.”
I adjusted my subordinates’ positions while setting rough aim points. My all-seeing vision let me stand behind them, trace the line from their eye to the tritium glow of the sight, and correct it. Prep for opaque shots piercing foliage.
“Slowly left. Stop. Too far. Yeah, there.”
Our weapons were bows—off-the-shelf high-risk hunting models with average draw weights over 200 pounds (about 91 kg).
They call these “Over Guinness” in the trade. Before magic’s return, 200 pounds was the human max draw weight, earning the nickname “Guinness Pound” as humanity’s limit. Exceeding it became “Over Guinness,” a brag metric for cocky hunters. 400 was Double Guinness, 600 Triple. A Triple pulled over 30% more than the old weightlifting record (214 kg)—one-handed.
In this country, only me, Kyung-tae, and a few security detail could manage it in combat. Maybe single digits total.
After setting aim points for each ambush team in the encirclement, I instructed them all:
“Focus on rapid fire. Suppressive shooting. If they try closing in, keep distance at all costs.”
Even with pre-set positions and aims, arrows loosed without clear sightlines had low hit chances. My subordinates weren’t expert archers anyway. They could wield any automatic weapon like an extension of themselves, but bows? Not so much.
Suppression was their role. With overwhelming numbers pinning the commie bastards’ heads down, I could leisurely hunt even with my novice archery.
Prep done, I wrapped myself in telekinesis and rose into low airspace. Dark treetops carpeted the void below my feet.
The southbound agents included multiple dual-ability users beyond body enhancement. One with solid ignition powers delicately cooked a huge meat slab from inside out, controlling heat to avoid toughness. Not his first rodeo. The one called Sergeant Ju Young-ho by the “squad leader comrade.”
Blissfully unaware of their looming fate, the seated ones and sentries alike were laughably carefree.
If I could hunt Round Table bastards like this... A pity skyborne sniping and hit-and-run worked best for the relatively weaker me. Bows kept me low now, but with heavy weapons, I could project firepower from kilometers away safely.
But against Round Table imperialists? Near impossible. Human radar cross-section exceeds a Eurofighter Typhoon’s by five times—five times clearer on radar than a fighter jet. I’d watched for AWACS when killing puppeteer Westbutton. Fly bare over London? Heathrow’s control radar (111 km radius) would spot the “unidentified flyer” before any AWACS.
Simply put, rash air strikes invited SAMs. No Grand Magus survives a subsonic interceptor and frag warhead—pure death, unblockable, unavoidable.
Mana field expansion from flight, noise dampening, enhancement, posture control, recoil absorption, smokescreen/clouds for radar jamming only worsened it. Circuit allocation ballooned the field to kilometers. The instant my dominance edge touched another Grand Magus’s, they’d sense me instantly.
A great enemy above! No other explanation fit. Whales in ocean depths? Maybe. But in bird skies, what massive Awakened rivals a Grand Magus’s presence?
This was true Grand Magus engagement range. I couldn’t afford such exposure.