Artemis (1)
The sky was stained with fire, and the earth trembled beneath the roars of monsters.
The fortress once known as the city of knowledge and skills now stood in the middle of a vast battlefield.
“Hold the right wall!!”
“Catapults, aim and fire!!”
The soldiers’ shouts rang along the ramparts in echoing waves.
Dozens of siege weapons hurled fireballs into the sky, and for a brief moment their light turned the pitch-black heavens red.
But it still wasn’t enough.
Keieeeeeeee—!
Outside the walls, a horde of monsters surged forward like a black tide.
At their head was a worm as large as a building.
Crack—
Its enormous maw split open, and a torrent of crimson filth splashed over the walls.
Shrrrrrrrr—!
Stone and iron melted in an instant.
Soldiers scrambled away, screaming, but those who failed to dodge were swallowed whole by the corrosive spray.
“We can’t hold them! Fall back!”
“We have to hold! If they break through here, it’s over!!”
The desperate battle went on.
Crash—!
Then another shadow fell across the wall.
A massive shape, as if a whole forest had been uprooted and given form.
A dark orc.
Where an ordinary orc was only a warrior of around two meters, a dark orc was nearly twice that size.
Its torso twisted like a giant old tree, and the bark covering its body looked harder than steel armor.
When the monster’s axe slammed into the wall—
Bang!
the barricade of stone and iron split apart.
The defenders choked at the sight of the supposedly impregnable wall crumbling like paper.
“Stop it! The east gate is about to fall!”
But the cry was already hollow.
Of the four gates, the east gate was on the brink of collapse, and the north and west gates were barely holding at all.
The fortress was being swallowed little by little, but inevitably, by the monsters surging in like a black wave.
Defeat hung thick in the air.
“Someone… please…”
It was the kind of hopeless moment that drove people to pray.
Then—
Sweeeeeeeish──!
A gust of wind roared through the battlefield.
In that instant, from the east gate to the north, west, and south—something passed beneath every wall surrounding Artemis at once.
So fast the eye couldn’t follow it.
It was as if the world had been cut apart and stitched back together, and the thousands of monsters clinging to the walls froze along a perfect circular path.
“…W-what was that?”
“I couldn’t even see it move…”
“What just went by?”
The defenders’ eyes widened.
At the center of that sight was a sword, quietly seated in its scabbard.
And before it stood a woman with an expression as blank as stone.
Han Suin.
When she had drawn it, when she had cut, when she had sheathed it again—no one had seen a thing.
Only her hand slowly slipped away from the hilt.
Click—!
With the sound of the blade settling completely into its scabbard—
────────!
the bodies of the monsters climbing the walls from the east gate all the way to the south split apart at once.
Chwaaarrrrrrk—
Blue blood and black entrails burst free as thousands of monsters collapsed together in a single wave.
Han Suin’s strongest skill, awakened as a hidden class Blade.
Final Whisper.
Kim Jun carried the momentum forward.
Whoosh—!
As his crimson-black demonic wings spread wide, they blotted out even the sunlight for an instant.
His shadow fell across the heads of the dark orcs filling the battlefield.
“Krrr…?”
“Kwooo…?”
The great horde of orcs lifted their heads just in time to see—
Thud—!
—Kim Jun driving his greatsword deep into the ground.
“Ragna-Explosion.”
Rooooar!
The earth beneath Dragon Eater split open, and black cracks spread outward like a frenzy.
At first it felt like nothing more than a tremor.
Tak, tak-tak—
Then the ground itself fractured, and the battlefield convulsed.
Even the defenders standing atop the walls staggered, losing their footing.
Do-do-do-do-do-do—!
At the end of that mountain-shaking roar, the explosion finally came.
BoOOOOOM—!
As if a volcano had erupted, red lava gushed forth and swallowed the battlefield whole.
In an instant, the flat plain became a boiling sea.
“Kwooooooo!!”
The dark orcs screamed in agony.
A few tried to flee in panic, but—
“Like hell.”
The moment Kim Jun’s eyes swept across the field, a crimson-black brand seared itself onto every dark orc’s body.
Marked by a single glance, the seal became a shackle.
And then Dragon Tongue layered over it.
“Don’t move.”
Just those words.
At the force of that command, the thousands of enormous monsters froze where they stood.
Only their wide eyes trembled violently; not their arms, not their legs, not even their massive bodies moved.
From Kim Jun’s vantage point high above the battlefield, he could see everything.
Before the east gate stretched an endless army of black-brown monsters.
Farther out, they packed the foothills of the rocky mountains as far as the eye could see.
At a rough estimate, there were five thousand.
And all five thousand of those monsters had their feet sunk into lava that had risen to their ankles.
“Kwooooooo!!”
But they couldn’t run.
Once bound by Kim Jun’s Dragon Tongue, they could only scream in place no matter how desperately they struggled.
As the red lava rose to their waists, then their chests, then their throats—
their flesh charred, their bones emerged, and the battlefield filled with shrieks.
Fwoooooosh—!
Crimson-black flames devoured the dark orcs’ forms.
The monsters, denied even the right to thrash, slowly melted away standing upright.
And the battlefield became nothing but screams and fire.
Looking down on it all, Kim Jun stood suspended in the air like a judge, his black wings spread wide.
As if venting the frustration that had been suppressed all the way through the Dark Soul section, Kim Jun went on a rampage.
“Disappear.”
*
Artemis.
Among hunters, the city had a few other names.
The City of Skills. The Fortress of Knowledge.
That was because it was the only place where something like this was possible.
Skill fusion.
The act of combining two ordinary skills you already possessed and forging them into an entirely different kind of power.
It was something no other floor could even hope to imitate.
What’s more, centuries of accumulated knowledge still remained here.
Research materials stacked in every magic tower, countless experimental records—everything was waiting for hunters to use it.
If Thebes was where beginners built their foundations, then this was the very heart of the tower, where true climbers expanded and deepened their abilities.
Outside the gate, it was hell.
Broken siege weapons and heaps of corpses still lay scattered around, not yet cleared away.
But the moment they passed through the gate—
“…Huh.”
everyone in the party let out a breath at once.
The scene before them was nothing short of breathtaking.
White marble pillars stretched on endlessly, and in the center of the city stood a magic tower rising through the clouds, imposing and magnificent.
Even in the middle of a war, it was this beautiful.
“Is this… really the same world?”
Park Minsu muttered blankly.
Kim Jun grinned and pointed toward the central tower.
“See that? That’s the skill fusion facility.”
“Fusion facility?”
“It’s where you can create new skills or fuse existing ones together.”
“…!!”
Before Kim Jun had even finished explaining—
“I-I’ll see you laaaater!!”
Ryu Jia shouted as she sprang to her feet.
Then she bolted straight toward the tower.
“Hey, wait! Ryu Jia! Hey, you little brat!”
But by then, she had already vanished into the tower entrance.
The others tilted their heads in confusion, but Kim Jun alone understood why she was so excited.
Because she was a monster with dozens of skills.
For ordinary hunters, obtaining even one skill in a lifetime was difficult.
If they were lucky, maybe two. Truly exceptional people might get three.
But Ryu Jia was different.
The youngest S-class hunter in Korea, she had already possessed more than ten skills before the tower even appeared.
And every single one of them was rare and powerful.
If those skills could be fused properly…
Well, A-class would be a given, and maybe even higher. If she got lucky, she might even earn Adeline’s recognition and awaken right away…
Kim Jun fell into thought as well.
Which skills should I fuse?
The first that came to mind were his signature skills.
Explosion, the skill he had used ever since awakening as a hunter, and Diabolic Override, gained through his second awakening.
Skill: Explosion
Rank: C
Description: Causes a flame explosion at the tip of the sword upon each strike.
At a glance, it seemed simple.
But the destructive force of flames erupting as if a bomb went off at the end of every slash had already proven itself time and again.
And Diabolic Override was a passive skill that demonicized all skills for thirty seconds, greatly increasing their power.
What if a passive skill and an active skill were mixed together?
Hmm…
Other combinations began to surface in his mind as well.
What would happen, for example, if he fused Detection with Acceleration?
The lightning-fast burst of Acceleration, which carried him in a straight line.
What if that were combined with Detection, which sensed everything around him perfectly?
Would it come out exactly as I imagined?
It was possible.
If the magic tower of Artemis was involved, even that kind of miracle could be made real.
As long as the hunter’s own mana pool, imagination, and the compatibility between existing skills all lined up.
In fact, countless hunters in the past had created their own unique skills here.
Kim Jun felt the urge to run after Ryu Jia and rush into the tower right now.
But then—
Sniff, sniff—
A strong smell drifted into his nose, and he stopped in his tracks.
“Mm.”
“Haha…”
“Ugh…”
The others exchanged awkward looks and laughed weakly at one another.
It was easy to tell from their expressions that they were all thinking the same thing.
Come to think of it, they’d been running nonstop the entire time.
From the 21st floor to the 25th, they had fought monster after monster and climbed their way here, and now their entire bodies were covered in the marks of battle.
Black monster fluids had dried red on them, along with fur and fragments of scales from all sorts of creatures.
They were basically moving piles of trash.
“Let’s wash up first and find somewhere to rest.”
Kim Jun scratched his head as he spoke.
Fortunately, Artemis was lined with some of the finest accommodations in the world.
Luxurious inns equipped with all manner of magical facilities were waiting to take hunters’ money.
And one place in particular had caught Kim Jun’s eye.
Olympus Paradise.
“The name’s pretty grand, huh?”
“The price is pretty grand too…”
“You’re paying, right, hyung?”
“…?”
“HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
The building, which combined a massive magical hot spring with a penthouse that seemed to float above the clouds, was truly one of a kind.
Compared to Thebes’ stiff, creaking beds, it was on an entirely different level.
It felt as though the resting place of the gods had been brought straight down into the human world.
In fact, among hunters it was known as “heaven on earth.”
The reaction of anyone who stayed there even once was always the same: endless praise.
One night in a bed soft as clouds could wash away every trace of fatigue from the body.
And soaking in the special enchanted hot spring could even restore damaged mana circuits completely.
Just how incredible that effect was could be seen in the behavior of the hunters who came here.
There was no shortage of people who spent every last penny they earned from a full day of monster hunting on the room fee without hesitation.
“Let’s go warm ourselves up.”
“Let’s gOOO~!”
The four of them, excluding Ryu Jia, headed toward Olympus Paradise.
56