Rescue Operation (3)

At the center of Class 3's classroom, a campfire was burning.

And then there was the sound.

Sizzle. Sizzle. Sizzle.

A slab of meat was cooking over the flames, and it smelled incredible. One by one, heads turned toward it. Everyone was starving. The sound and the aroma were so ridiculously good that looking came as an unconscious reflex.

Then they all turned away again.

They'd seen what it actually was — the repulsive flesh of the Boss Goblin. Nothing about it looked like something a human being should eat.

"Min-seong. Are you really going to eat that?"

"Yes. It's because of my trait. I don't have a choice."

"Even so, that's a bit…"

Kang Hyuk stared at me like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Honestly, it wasn't as if I wanted to eat it. My brain was screaming at me that this was disgusting — that much was only natural. But this was the Predator's trait. Eating this thing was the only way to raise my odds of surviving this godforsaken situation. So I didn't have a choice.

I drove a fork into the roasted body of the Boss Goblin. It had cooked through properly; the resistance was nothing like when the tines had sunk into raw flesh. I lifted a piece of the seared meat. Cooking it had definitely helped — it looked a little less like something you'd find in a nightmare.

Alright then.

I pushed the Boss Goblin meat into my mouth. This time, no blood ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dripped from it.

The moment I bit down, juices erupted across my tongue like a fountain, flooding every corner of my mouth, lighting up every last taste bud. I hadn't seasoned it at all, and yet there was a faint, clean saltiness to it — as if someone had dusted it with a pinch of finishing salt. The meat vanished so fast it was as though it had never been there.

I hate to admit it, but this is incredible.

Cooking it had taken the edge off the visual revulsion, and then there was this taste — this absurd, phenomenal taste. I actually found myself regretting how quickly each bite disappeared. So unlike the mindless gobbling from before, I ate this time the way you'd dine at a high-end restaurant, savoring every mouthful. A bottle of wine on the side would have made it perfect. That was the one small shame of it.

The moment predation completed, I absorbed the Roar ability the Boss Goblin had possessed. And with it, another message bloomed across my vision.

A class-exclusive skill, huh.

I was still turning over what it might be when a skill window unfolded in front of my eyes.

I'd figured a class-exclusive skill would be another eating-related ability. Instead, I'd been handed a summoning skill I never saw coming.

Is this a good thing?

It looked like I could summon one of each type of monster I'd predated. The Giant Rat and the Goblin didn't seem like they'd be much help. But the King Rat and the Boss Goblin — if I could put those two on the field, that would be a massive jump in our fighting strength.

And the Boss Goblin's weapon is still intact, too. It had been a dungeon boss, but the weapon it dropped wasn't anything ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠special — far worse than my knife, and so oversized that nobody else could really use it. If I could summon the thing again, I could just hand the weapon back to it.

There was one other item that had come out of the deal, though, and that one was actually good.

It was a consumable, sure — but those effects were overwhelming. I didn't have a use for it right this second, but there would absolutely come a moment when it would matter.

Right. There was a bonus reward, too.

Huh? That's it?

The description was so anemic compared to the skill that I didn't know whether to laugh. Not that it mattered. The skill and the ability I'd gained from eating the Boss Goblin were more than enough on their own. It was a bonus reward anyway.

Come to think of it, there was something else. An item I'd received as a dungeon-clear reward — the Golden Key. I pulled it out of my inventory.

So there's a chest somewhere?

Apparently there was still plenty hidden that I hadn't found. For now, though, it didn't look like I could use it.

"Huh? What's that? Is that real gold?"

"Hell if I know. What, you wanna take a bite and find out?"

The monster mukbang had barely ended before Jin-hwan sidled up next to me. I stopped him just as he was actually leaning in to sink his teeth into the key, then slipped it back into my inventory.

"Ssaem. Can you please just give it back?"

"Hey. Don't get cute with me."

"Please. I'll die without it."

There was a reason Jin-hwan was begging. When I'd gone looking for a lighter earlier, I'd pulled one out of his pocket — and didn't that seem a little off? What was a lighter doing in a high school senior's pocket? I'd gone through the rest of it and found cigarettes. The kid who'd sworn he was quitting had been sneaking smokes the whole time.

"You little—what ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠kind of Healer smokes cigarettes? Go read your Bible."

"Aw, Ssaem, come on! I'm an adult now!"

"Nope. You're still a student."

Granted, with the world the way it was now, it probably didn't matter much — but I still couldn't just sit back and watch a student smoke.

"Aww, Ssaaaem~"

I ignored Jin-hwan's ongoing stream of groveling and decided it was time to move. Nobody wanted to stay in that nightmare of a room — monster corpses and student bodies everywhere — so we relocated to the fourth floor, where things were at least a little less grim.

The dungeon in the main building had vanished, and no new monsters seemed to be appearing, so we stayed put and started talking through what to do next.

"Hyung, what were you planning to do once you got out?"

"No idea. The second I heard the Goblins would respawn, getting out was all I could think about."

Even if we did make it out of the building, there was nowhere obvious to go. Goblins were still wandering around outside, and beyond the school grounds there were other monsters entirely. Moving this many people into a place where we had no idea what kind of danger was waiting wasn't realistic. At this point, the building itself — almost cleared of Goblins — might actually be the safer option.

"What about waiting here for a rescue?"

It was possible that only this area had changed. If we could just hold out a little longer, maybe a rescue team would come. It was a judgment we could afford to make because the inside of the building was safe.

"But we'd need drinking water and food for that, wouldn't we?"

"Right. You haven't eaten anything since yesterday either, have you, hyung?"

"Yeah. I'm this close to starving to death."

"Food… food, huh…"

I was fine, personally. Eating monsters seemed to take care of that problem. Everyone else was the issue. These people had already gone more than a day without a meal. You could last weeks without food, maybe — but water was non-negotiable.

And then it hit me.

The School Cafeteria!

There had to be food they'd been prepping to cook yesterday, and water besides. If we could get our hands on the cafeteria's supplies, we'd have more than enough to hold out here.

Two days passed.

We got a lot done in that time. First we hunted down every last Goblin and Giant Rat still hiding in the building and killed them. Then we moved to the School Cafeteria to secure food. The problem was, the place was crawling with Goblins too. Most of the food had been wrecked because of them. Even so, we managed to scrape together enough water and rations to last a few days.

After that, we started turning the building into a fortress. We locked the entrance doors and stacked desks into barricades to keep monsters from getting in. Then we cleaned up the fourth floor — the one with the fewest monster corpses and human bodies — set up a living space, and that was where we'd been staying ever since.

"Ssaem. We're starting to run out of food."

"That so? Ration it a little more."

"We're already doing that."

There were nearly ten of us. No matter how carefully we stretched it, we needed a lot. To cut down on the number of mouths drawing from the supplies, I'd been eating monsters myself. Eating extra didn't give me any further effects — just a bit more fullness.

"No rescue's coming, no matter how long we wait."

"Yeah, hyung. I don't think this is just happening here."

"So what do we do now?"

"We'll have to go outside, won't we?"

It was time to make a move. Even if we stayed, we still needed to find more food. We sat down to figure out some way — any way — to break this stalemate.

And that was when it happened.

Jin-hwan, who'd been staring out the window, suddenly went rigid with shock.

"Wh-what the hell is that?!"

Everyone crowded to the window. The creature outside stood maybe two meters tall, a massive, hulking thing with a distinctly bear-like shape.

The schoolyard, which before had held nothing but Goblins, was now swarming with Bugbears.

You've got to be kidding me. New monsters?

I checked the front gate and the back gate. Both were packed solid with Bugbears.

Judging by what happened with the Goblins, these things are definitely going to form a dungeon here. I'd already lived through this once. We needed to move fast, before a dungeon could take shape — but we couldn't. The raw, overwhelming force of the Bugbears was right there in front of us.

The Goblins in the schoolyard spotted the Bugbears coming in and charged, daggers in hand. Roughly five Goblins swarmed each Bugbear, darting in and out, trying to throw off those huge, surprisingly agile bodies.

The Bugbears looked at them the way you'd look at gnats buzzing in your face. One of them brought its axe down and split a Goblin's skull in a single stroke.

And after that, it was a slaughter.

The Goblins kept coming, stabbing with their daggers, but they couldn't put a scratch in that thick Bugbear hide. The Bugbears, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying themselves — hunting Goblins one axe-blow at a time.

"The Goblins aren't even a match for them!"

"They're dying in a single swing."

"Sh-shouldn't we be running?"

The other students couldn't hide their fear. They stood at the window trembling, watching the massacre unfold. The Bugbears were that overwhelming — that terrifying. But both of the school's exits were already sealed off by them. We were trapped inside this building with nowhere to go.

"Huh?! There's someone out there!"

"What? Where?"

At Jin-ri's cry, every pair of eyes swung in the same direction. A survivor — someone who wasn't one of us — crouched in hiding near the flower beds, trying to stay out of the Bugbears' path.