Tower Defense (3)
23rd Wave Begins: B-class Undead × 1,000 + Undead Shaman × 500 + Wraith Knight × 100
“It’s started.”
The 16th-floor trial, which had begun with eleven teams, now had only seven left.
Four teams had already been eliminated.
A quick look around at the survivors made the situation plain: three teams from the Cheongryong Guild, the Black Tiger Guild led by twin martial artist brothers, Buyeo Guild led by support specialist Yu Giha, a team made up of ordinary hunters, and Kim Jun’s team.
[Buyeo Guild Base]
“Resonate.”
Yu Giha’s voice rang out across the battlefield.
Woo-oong—!
Golden magic circles unfolded around him, enveloping his guild members one by one.
“Harder than steel.”
“Faster than the wind.”
“Hotter than flame.”
Each time Yu Giha unleashed another command, a different-colored aura flared to life around his guild members’ bodies.
[Silver — Defense Increased]
[Blue — Agility Increased]
[Red — Attack Power Increased]
“Waaaaah!”
Empowered by the buffs, the guild members roared in unison and charged straight into the undead horde.
Buyeo Guild’s leader, Yu Giha, was a tactical support specialist who excelled at mass buffs.
He was nothing like Kim Jun’s Dragon Tongue, but as an S-class hunter who wielded Guardian Words, every word he spoke could change the face of the battlefield.
“Hold formation.”
With a sweep of his baton, Yu Giha sent his members forward in a perfect line.
Thanks to investing most of the coins they earned from killing monsters into towers and upgrades, they were holding out—painfully, but steadily.
[Black Tiger Guild Base]
“Diamond-Crashing Barrage.”
“Mountain-Splitting Kick.”
Bang—!
Thwack—!
Whenever the twin martial artist brothers, Park Cheolmin and Park Cheolsoo, landed a blow, the undead’s heads and chests exploded into pieces.
The sight of them mowing down dozens in an instant was monstrous, in the truest sense of the word.
But soon the brothers both frowned.
“We’re almost out of potions.”
“Damn it, we should’ve invested in towers sooner.”
There were only a handful of buildings around their base.
Their choice not to build aggressively had come back to bite them.
By this point, erecting a Lunarium Tower with infinite durability meant spending a massive amount just to patch all the places that had already been breached.
And if they settled for temporary fixes with stone-wall or iron-wall towers, the defenses would just collapse again before long. It was a waste either way.
Sweat trickled down the brothers’ brows.
“We should’ve done it like that from the beginning.”
Their eyes were fixed on the fortress built on the flat ground below.
[Cheongryong Guild Base 1]
[Cheongryong Guild Base 2]
[Cheongryong Guild Base 3]
Kugu-gugugung—!
The mountainside trembled as Wraith Knights charged again.
Fireballs and toxic mist tangled together, turning the battlefield into utter chaos.
Command Fortress Durability: 278/1000
“Damn it, it’s been chipped down again!”
“No way—we’re going to lose the fortress like this!”
The potions were gone, and even restoring mana had become a struggle.
Their line was already in disarray, and there was no one left with the spare strength to help a collapsing comrade back onto his feet.
And then.
“We can’t hold this any longer!”
The deputy commander at Base Two shouted at the top of his lungs.
He forcibly pulled out the pile of coins in his hand and entered them into the system window.
Lunarium Tower × 20 Purchase Complete
Durability: ∞
Bang, bang, bang!
Massive walls shot up from the ground, cleaving the earth open as they rose.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing on your own?”
Han Seojin shouted, his face red with fury.
“The coins are supposed to go into the guild fund! How dare you ignore my order?”
Then the deputy commander at Base Three snapped back.
“Order? This isn’t an order, it’s suicide! What are we supposed to stop them with? Our fingernails and fists?”
“Exactly! The fortress is already half destroyed—how long do you expect us to keep taking this?”
“Guild Leader, we want to live too!”
All the voices that had been bottled up finally exploded.
One by one, the guild members pulled out their coins and began erecting towers of their own.
“You, you, you—! Stop! Stop it! I said stop right now!”
Han Seojin’s shouting no longer worked.
The commanders gritted their teeth and held their ground.
“If we keep listening to you, we’ll all die. From this moment on, we choose.”
Koooom—!
The Lunarium walls rose again, enclosing the base.
The three blue banners still fluttered together in the wind, but...
“You motherfucking bastards!”
“I’m in command here now!”
“Invest every last coin we’ve got! I’ll take responsibility!”
The Cheongryong Guild beneath them was no longer one unit.
And yet the command fortress remained in the same place.
The monsters were coming in three times the numbers, and they barely had any coins left in hand.
“Guild Leader! Share some coins with us! At this rate, we’re all dead!”
“Shut up! You defied my orders! Why the hell should I save you?”
“F-fuck you! It was our money to begin with! Give it back—give it back now!”
Even with the enemy at their doorstep, even with comrades dropping around them, they were still snarling at one another.
Then it happened.
Keeheeheehee—!
Wings beat overhead.
“W-what is that?”
“An undead... wyvern?”
A massive skeletal dragon looked down from the sky.
Blue fire burned in its eye sockets, and rotten flesh hung in strips between its bones.
“Kuooooh!”
The wyvern opened its jaws and spewed a stream of toxic breath.
Sszzzzzt—!
“Gah! My armor’s melting!”
The hunters’ armor began to dissolve wherever the breath touched it.
At the same time, on the ground below—
Thud! Thud! Thud!
With earthshaking footsteps, the Undead Lord appeared.
A colossal skeletal knight over four meters tall, carrying a sword as long as a man was tall.
Creak—
The defense line was breaking.
“Th-this isn’t right...”
Han Seojin’s face went pale.
“Krrrrrrrr!”
When the Undead Lord swung its sword, the wind pressure alone sliced through several trees.
“Run! Everyone, run!”
But it was already too late.
Keehee-ing—! Keehee-ing—!
One thousand Wraith Knights poured down the mountainside like a waterfall.
The sound of hoofbeats thundered like lightning.
“Hold the line!”
“I can’t hold them!”
The Wraith Knights leaped over the newly built palisade.
Thwuk—!
“Ghk!”
The first casualty fell. An A-class hunter, pierced clean through by a spear, crumpled to the ground.
“Aaaah!”
Once the line was breached, it began to collapse in a chain reaction.
The Wraith Knights flooded into the camp, and behind them the undead horde surged forward like a tide.
“Build the towers—hurry!”
“We don’t have any coins left!”
They tried to throw up stone walls, even if only as a last resort, but—
Creak—!
Crash!
One swing from the Undead Lord’s sword and every tower under construction was smashed to pieces.
“Kuooooh!”
Above them, the undead wyvern kept spraying toxic breath without pause. The earth itself began to melt.
Before anyone could even make sense of that hopeless disaster—
25th Wave Begins: B-class Wraith Knight × 2,000 + Undead Wyvern × 100 + Undead Lord × 1
“We haven’t even finished the 24th wave yet!”
There was no point even dreaming of clearing the 16th floor anymore.
From now on, survival was the only goal.
But they were on the summit of a steep mountain. There was nowhere to run.
Except for one person.
“Damn it all!”
Han Seojin started moving, abandoning his guild members behind him.
“Guild Leader? Where are you going?”
“Guild Leader! You’re abandoning us?”
“Get a grip! He already abandoned us!”
Han Seojin erected an Ice Pillar and climbed it.
Then he started leaping from pillar to pillar, withdrawing from the battlefield.
Undead wyverns chased after him, but by then Han Seojin was already fleeing down the mountain.
“That bastard...”
“He really left us behind.”
Shock and despair washed across the faces of the Cheongryong Guild members.
Their guild leader was running off alone, abandoning comrades he had fought beside for three years, five years—everyone.
They had worked there with a certain pride, after all, enjoying the best pay anyone could ask for in purely financial terms.
And in the end, they realized they had been nothing more than disposable parts to Han Seojin.
Thwuk—!
“Ghk!”
“Ugh... help...”
The dead began to pile up one after another.
A comrade skewered by a Wraith Knight’s blade coughed up blood and collapsed.
“Everyone! Don’t give up!”
Ryu Aran stepped in front of the remaining hunters.
“We still have hope! If we unite as one, we can hold out!”
She had never abandoned her comrades.
As an S-class hunter, she had her pride—and as deputy guild leader, her duty.
“Deputy Guild Leader...”
“As long as the deputy guild leader is still here... we’ll be okay!”
She was nothing like Han Seojin.
Maybe, just maybe, with her...
But before that seed of hope could even take root—
“Humans.”
“Humans.”
“Humans.”
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“...T-three of them?”
Someone let out a hollow laugh.
“Ha... ha ha... ha ha ha!”
Normally, even one Undead Lord would have been more than enough to overwhelm them.
But thanks to Han Seojin’s idiotic move of placing three command fortresses side by side, the monsters had come in triple the number.
The entire world seemed to shake.
Three Undead Lords slowly revealed themselves.
Massive skeletons over four meters tall, with scraps of rotten flesh dangling and clattering from their bones, blue flames burning eerily in their eye sockets.
“I’ll... kill you all.”
“I’ll... kill you all.”
“I’ll... kill you all.”
Their low, sinister voices seeped deep into the bones.
Ryu Aran’s legs began to tremble on their own.
[Monster Info: Undead Lord]
[Rank: A]
[Level: 40]
Could it be done? If she staked her life on it... could she save the guild members?
But the answer was obvious.
Even she, an S-class hunter, was nothing more than an insect before these monsters.
“Die.”
“Die.”
“Die.”
The three Undead Lords raised their swords at once.
Creak—!
Just the force of lifting them shattered the trees around them into splinters.
“This... isn’t winnable. There’s no way we can win...”
Hope in the guild members’ eyes guttered out.
Only despair remained, cold as darkness.
“We’re dead... We’re really going to die here.”
A massive shadow swallowed the sky above their heads.
Whoooooom—
The swords were about to come crashing down when—
“Slash.”
Shaaaak—!
Black-red flames erupted.
In an instant, a blazing trail spread outward in all directions, like the arc of a giant axe splitting the sky.
Thud—!
Bang! Bang!
Without even a chance to scream, the heads of the three Undead Lords flew into the air, scorched red, before rolling across the ground.
Their enormous bodies collapsed a beat later, and the entire mountain range trembled with the impact.
“Kiiieeek!”
“Krrrrrk—!”
At the same time, the undead wyverns circling overhead were engulfed by Black Flame and rained down like falling embers.
Wings snapped, burning wreckage scattered everywhere, and the mountainside was buried beneath the debris.
In the blink of an eye, the battlefield fell silent.
The Cheongryong Guild members, who had been drowning in despair only moments ago, stood frozen as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
“Hah... hah...”
“We’re alive... we’re really alive...?”
Someone muttered it under their breath.
And then, through the sea of ash and flame, a man emerged.
His dragon eyes flashed.
From his back, demonic wings spilled black-red fire.
His gaze was calm and cold, and each step he took rang out with heavy weight.
As if the fight they had just witnessed was nothing more than a warm-up.
Swish—
He lifted his greatsword.
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