The Depths of the Underwater Prison
The cliff was so sheer it looked like it had been sliced by a blade.
Far below, waves crashed violently against the rocks.
The underwater prison of Izukaya was hidden beneath the steep cliff of a rocky island, submerged deep in the sea.
Beyond the horizon, a black speck appeared.
Was it a pile of garbage?
It looked like an entire landslide of uprooted trees had been swept together and sent drifting across the ocean.
It was Bahu's fleet.
Yet calling it a fleet felt wrong. It resembled a cursed island floating upon the sea.
Strange birds of unknown species circled above the island-like mass, while roots churned through the water like massive oars.
“The prison cliff is in sight!”
Baekju shouted loudly.
As an archer, his eyesight was exceptional.
Beside him, Sirius gripped his greatsword tightly.
Kwaaaaaah!
A sudden explosion erupted, sending a massive column of water shooting up from the seabed.
The Crusher had just punched through the wall.
Soon after, a huge burst of bubbles rose from the opposite side, breaking the surface.
Unlike the frontal breach from earlier, this time Bahu had pierced the rear wall—the one he would use to enter.
A scroll materialized above their heads.
Exclude all humans. Only undead and evil spirits may enter. Poison is present inside.
Your Majesty. This girl is immune to poison. Please grant me permission to enter!
Ah, I see. Then take Benedict with you as well.
Kim Hwang-je was startled to see the Supervisor replying through messages.
In any case, the black forest drifting across the sea swam over the waves like a dark cloud.
The forest extended long roots down into the depths.
It looked exactly like a giant jellyfish stretching countless tentacles toward the seabed.
The only difference was that these roots charged toward the fortress walls like throwing spears.
Kwaduduk!
The long roots lashed about wildly before several of them finally pierced through the hole.
Then, riding those roots, evil spirit trees and hordes of undead began pouring inside.
Benedict stood atop the crumbling underwater fortress wall.
He leaped onto the head of the charging Supervisor.
“Young lady, may I borrow some space?”
“Feel free to borrow as much as you like.”
The two-headed chibi Benedict nimbly stepped between the spikes embedded in her tights and climbed up to perch on her shoulder.
Beside them, Bahu—possessed by the power of curses—roared as he charged forward.
“Begin… the pillaging…! Steal… everything that can be turned into money…!”
Or perhaps he was simply an ordinary person desperately trying to repay his debt.
Bahu gripped his long spear and charged, slicing through several orcs in a single strike.
“Kiiiieeeek—!”
Behind him, the evil spirit trees let out bizarre war cries that sounded like splitting wood as they rushed in.
They impaled the orcs with their horn-like bodies and shoved them aside. In that opening—
“Kwaaaaaah!”
The undead orcs that followed thrust their long spears deep into their foes, skewering them.
“Hoo… Did we finally break through?”
Because most of the guards had been drawn to Jung Jong-hyun’s frontal assault, the pressure on Bahu was relatively light.
Kim Hwang-je debated whether to use the remaining poison gas but ultimately decided to leave it to Bahu.
While the undead would be fine, he had no idea how the evil spirit trees would react to such gas.
Instead, he slowly pulled the Crusher out from his own body.
“Uuuuuurgh!”
Putting it in was hard, but taking it out was even harder.
After barely managing to extract the Crusher, all the strength left his body.
“Mister, are you okay? Sorry I can only say that much…”
Poyu swam over and rubbed their face against his chest.
Covered in bubbles from head to toe, the little creature sparkled like a round, shiny marble.
“I wish I could be useful like Mister Benedict…”
Even their breath attack was nothing to scoff at, yet in almost every situation, Poyu rarely had a chance to step forward.
“It’s fine, Poyu. Just giving me foresight is more than enough. It’s plenty.”
It really was enough.
Kim Hwang-je hugged Poyu to his chest.
Finally able to relax a little, he leaned his back comfortably against the seabed.
“But mister, are all those people going to die…?”
Poyu pointed at the people in the status window who had encountered the dullahans.
“No, Poyu. They can’t die.”
He had to keep them alive so he could use them again and again.
Kim Hwang-je flinched at his own thoughts.
“Ahem.”
Yet when he observed them through World Observation, the hunters were truly receiving a harsh lesson…
Or rather, they were in the middle of receiving one?
The headless knights charged from beyond the wall, wielding swords blackened by curses.
The corridor was already gloomy—leaking water, moss-covered walls—but when the dullahans rushed through it, even the shadows grew thick and oppressive.
A hunter who saw them screamed.
“It’s undead!”
“Recognition code 443231. These are dullahans!”
They formed a semicircular formation.
“Damn it! These aren’t humanoids?”
“Boss, what are your orders?!”
“…We can fight them! Prepare anti-undead gas grenades!”
“Gas gas gas!”
The dullahans flailed their limbs wildly as they charged. The clattering of their bones sounded as lively as tap dancing.
But that lively sound soon transformed into a cacophony of war cries—mixing ominous dread with the screams of knights.
“Throw themmm!”
“Yessir!”
These were truly holy grenades.
Water blessed and purified by priests?
So-called holy water?
Or perhaps grenades packed with sacred silver orbs?
Of course, they had been blessed—but they were not water at all, nor were they silver grenades.
What they contained was high-concentration hydrofluoric acid blessed with divine power.
“Taste the chemical industry of the Kaya Group!”
All at once, the anti-undead gas grenades flew forward and exploded against the dullahans.
Thud—!
Thud—!
Fwooooooooosh!
“Kaaaagh!”
The high-concentration hydrofluoric acid remained liquid inside the shells, but the moment it leaked into the air, it turned into an explosive gas that engulfed the dullahans.
This acid bonded with calcium to form calcium fluoride.
The blessed hydrofluoric acid was infused with magical and divine power that rapidly triggered all kinds of chemical reactions.
“Kyaaaaagh!”
“Kyaaak!”
All around, the dullahans collapsed, unable to withstand their bodies turning into calcium fluoride.
The sound of them crumbling apart was like old ash disintegrating and collapsing.
“Eeeeeeeeh?”
Kim Hwang-je gaped in utter disbelief.
Ah. So this was what Seo Jun-seo meant when he said that inside a ‘dungeon,’ anything goes.
Ah. So Earth’s scientific power really is the strongest in the multiverse?!
Kim Hwang-je didn’t know this, but it was indeed cleaner in many ways to use a 1.2-megaton low-radiation nuclear warhead rather than dumping massive amounts of biochemical weapons on a field boss monster.
In fact, the fluorine-based or biochemical weapons exploding over there would be far harder to decontaminate, and if they leaked into a city, they would be even more dangerous.
“They’re coming!”
Through the white gas, eyes burning bright blue could be seen.
The remaining dullahans swung their swords to sweep away the hydrofluoric gas and charged forward.
“Begin close-quarters combat! Squad leaders to the front!”
“Move according to the system coordinated by the Hyper Warrior terminal! These are dullahans! No individual action!”
Jung Jong-hyun and the other squad leaders brought out their shields at the forefront and began tanking.
They spread out to the left and right, advancing precisely into the pressure points calculated by the computer—the center of the enemy’s breakthrough force.
Clatter-clatter-clatter! Boom!
The dullahans’ raised greatswords slammed into the shields.
Mages chanted spells to reinforce the tanks’ defense.
“First impact endured! Push them back!”
Not only that, the dealers who had spread out to the sides attacked from every direction with their weapons.
Hunters wielding short-range weapons like swords, spears, and axes stabbed at the dullahans up close,
while all kinds of long-range projectiles—arrows, bullets, crossbow bolts, thrown daggers—targeted the dullahans’ necks and chests.
“Engage!”
Meanwhile, the mages had fallen back and were chanting spells, while priests cast various types of enhancement magic.
The raid team moved with the precision of interlocking gears. Kim Hwang-je couldn’t help but clap in admiration.
“Fisherman. Can you see this?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Do you hunt like this too?”
“Well… These friends are quite weak, but they’ve formed a decent formation. We don’t fight like this.”
“Then how do you fight?”
The Fisherman scratched his head.
“We have soul-to-soul brawls.”
“Ah…”
Hmm… Wasn’t it wrong for humans to fight monsters that way?
But it felt awkward to ask such a direct question to a man who was naked except for the chains wrapped around him.
From what he remembered of the castle siege, it seemed the Fisherman was right.
“Indeed, Dave usually took down the large monsters by himself.”
Whether it was Billy or Scarabe, most of the time superhuman warriors like Dave fought one-on-one from the front.
The same went for powerful monsters.
The spearmen also fought giant monsters almost one-on-one. They simply killed whatever came up to their assigned position.
Even if they used a battle formation, it seemed they didn’t employ the same precise division of labor as Earth.
Earth, on the other hand, was different.
These Earthlings could never match the individual combat power of the people from the royal castle.
Instead, they succeeded in hunting through strict division of roles.
“Ah, the Industrial Revolution is what started this precise division of labor, right?”
Kim Hwang-je recalled something he had picked up somewhere.
“Wow, I really am smart.”
Of course, it was thanks to the crown’s +10 Intelligence.
Division of labor.
Division of labor, huh…
A farmer farming and a merchant selling bread was also division of labor.
A warrior hunting and an armorer making armor was division of labor too.
But that was merely pre-modern division of labor.
“Wasn’t it the pin factory?”
In Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, there was roughly this example.
If one person made pins, they could only produce one in twenty-four hours, so a hundred people would make only a hundred.
But if the process of making a pin was divided into eighteen steps, a hundred people could produce 480,000 pins in a single day.
Whether that was true or not, only Mr. Smith would know,
but in any case, this was modern division of labor—the very thing Jung Jong-hyun and his team were doing in their hunt.
“Wow, so none of this just happened by accident.”
Kim Hwang-je shouted while lying on the seabed.
Like a jobless bum watching YouTube, he scratched his belly and watched Jung Jong-hyun’s battle.
“Fisherman, watch carefully.”
“Yes?”
“Isn’t it cool how even the weak can combine their strength? There’s something to learn from them.”
“Yes, well… At the very least, their flailing looks kind of cute!”
“Hmm. We’ll have to get that equipment and those computers too.”
“Com… what?”
“There’s something like that.”
Inside the video, Jung Jong-hyun shouted loudly.
“Hunters with damaged helmets or detoxification devices, fall back!”
Under Jung Jong-hyun’s command, the battle was clearly tilting in the hunters’ favor.
But that wasn’t the end.
Suddenly the wall exploded, sending chunks of stone flying through the water.
And from within that chaos emerged a massive Master Dullahan three times the size of a normal one.
“It’s a super-large one!”
“It’s fine! This isn’t the boss room, it’s just a big regular mob!”
The Master Dullahan flapped its rotting cloak and charged fiercely, swinging its grotesque, bone-only legs.
“Kwaaaaaah!”
Boom!
“Aaaagh!”
With a single strike, Jung Jong-hyun was sent flying, and three tanks’ shields were shattered.
“Spare shields!”
A supporter pulled a shield from the bag on his back and threw it. The tanks hurriedly swapped shields and rushed forward, but—
In that brief moment, the Master Dullahan’s charge smashed into the rear healers, sending them flying, while its swinging greatsword hurled several mages aside.
“I’m hit! Ack!”
“Uwaaah!”
Boom!
When they slammed into the wall, their reinforced suits cracked and oxygen gushed out.
The internal pressure was always higher to prevent external poison gas from entering.
“Emergency treatment! Internal oxygen leak!”
“Tanks to the front!”
“Shield resistance coefficient approaching 0.7!”
“What? They can’t even take one hit? Our team?”
Jung Jong-hyun roared.
Boom!
As the Master Dullahan’s blade swung again, another tanker lost his shield and was sent flying backward.
“Use all the gas!”
They poured out another barrage of anti-undead gas, but it was completely blocked by the powerful protective barrier surrounding the Master Dullahan’s body and had no effect.
“It… resisted!”
From then on, the Master Dullahan’s body slams reliably slammed one healer after another into the wall.
“Damn it…!”
Jung Jong-hyun clicked his tongue.
Already four out of ten priests were incapacitated.
Three supporters were tied down just taking care of them.
They would soon run out of spare shields to throw.
It was clear they could no longer continue the fight.
“Everyone! This is enough! Use the return scrolls!”
“Yes! Full retreat! Retreat!”
“Hmph! Just you wait, you bastards. I’ll come back with an undead gas compound!”
“Cut the chatter! Use return scrolls! Dealers first, tanks last!”
But the dealer who tore his scroll first let out a scream.
“Boss!!”
“What?!”
“The scroll isn’t working!!”
“What?! This isn’t even a boss!”
Jung Jong-hyun bellowed.
Of course it wasn’t a boss.
But this wasn’t a dungeon either.
“Damn it…”
Blue flames wrapped around the charging Master Dullahan’s sword.
“Ah…!”
The instant that blue light fell over Jung Jong-hyun, a scroll unfurled wide above their heads.
The scroll spoke.
Do you desire power?