The Only Weakness
"Has it always been like this? Everyone so fixated on backstabbing that the front line gets completely neglected."
"Yes.... The front draws their attention while the usual tactic is to strike from the rear...."
"Backstabbing isn't a tactic at all. If you can't kill it with one decisive blow, you'll only provoke its anger."
Besides, the scales covering those Gargos bastards were the real problem. Ordinary blades couldn't even scratch them.
Aiming for the gaps between the scales and stabbing could force some damage, but the muscles underneath were just as hard as the scales themselves. Deep, penetrating attacks weren't easy.
The only spot that could truly be called a weakness was, as expected, the eyes.
Given their massive bodies and heads, the creatures had eyes roughly the size of an adult fist exposed. The actual eyeballs inside were far larger.
Compared to the rest of their bodies, the eyelids lacked scales and were relatively thin, so arrows fired by an archer with real strength would occasionally pierce through and lodge in the eyeball.
He couldn't expect anything like that from this girl right now, but if the eyes were open, there shouldn't be a problem. The real issue was that they weren't fixed targets.
Kaaaaah!
Whoosh—.
"Don't block it! Dodge!"
Suddenly one of the Gargos began swinging its tree-trunk arms, sweeping across a wide area and sending the surrounding encirclement into chaos.
The decision to dodge rather than block had been correct. That wasn't an attack you could simply stop. Fighting a Gargos—or any similarly massive, overwhelmingly powerful monster—meant making it waste swings on empty air to drain its stamina while accumulating damage and blood loss.
In this case, it didn't look like any of them had any real intention of killing the creatures. They probably lacked the ability, and clearly none of them had ever killed one before.
"They're just buying time."
"Yes. They said it would disappear if we held out for a set amount of time."
At Jo Yun-jeong's answer, Kang Tae-sung glanced down at the remaining quest time.
About twenty-one minutes.
Nearly nine minutes had already passed. If things continued like this, they should be able to endure the rest without much trouble.
But.
Are you really going to settle for just holding on?
Desperately clinging to survival invited collapse. To truly survive, you had to push forward. You needed to advance now so you could withstand the moments when you'd inevitably be forced back later.
The same applied to the rifts.
He didn't know the cause or the underlying theory, but accepting them as routine simply because they'd existed since the beginning was no different from living with a tiger's den right next to your house.
If I want comfort, I have to kill them.
A faint bloodthirst flickered in Kang Tae-sung's eyes.
"It's the eyes. You have to hit the eyes. Their intelligence is low, so they repeat almost identical movements. Keep the trajectory of the eyes in mind ahead of time."
"Yes!"
It was information she'd never heard from anyone, so Jo Yun-jeong answered quickly, her voice startled.
Methods for dealing with monsters—strategies—were the exact kind of know-how that hunters tried their hardest to keep hidden from each other.
For commonly known monsters, strategies varied so widely that they might not seem important. But for creatures like these that no one could handle alone, even if a strategy existed, the unwritten rule was to keep silent about the method.
There was no special reason.
Monster strategies translated directly into profit, and no one wanted to do others any favors.
Watching Kang Tae-sung share such valuable information so casually, Jo Yun-jeong found it impossible to see him as a novice hunter who had only awakened the night before.
Just as he had instructed, she selected one of the large monsters displaying consistent movements—the closest one.
She tracked the trajectory of its massive eyes with her own as the creature shifted its body, noting how and where they moved. At some point, when Kang Tae-sung stopped advancing and stood still, she pressed close against his back.
"......?"
Wondering why he had stopped, she peeked past him and saw no one standing in front.
The spacing between people nearby was also wide enough that they wouldn't bump shoulders.
"Roughly four meters. This should be certain, right?"
Kang Tae-sung, standing firm ahead of her, spoke.
"Fr-front line."
What she saw beyond him was one of the monster's heavy legs, tall enough to surpass a person's height.
Kwaaaang—!
"......"
The Gargos had kicked as if punting a soccer ball. Unlike the other humans before, this one hadn't dodged sideways but had blocked the blow completely.
-Krr?
-What the? He blocked it?
-Who?
Murmurs rose from nearby, but they quickly died out in the heat of battle.
"Not bad at all."
Kang Tae-sung adjusted his grip on the vehicle door, its front heavily crumpled, and tore out the airbag that had burst outward with his fingers.
He figured he could block the same attack two or three more times. Sure enough, an identical kick came flying toward him once again.
Crunch!
But the sound was different this time. Instead of simply blocking, he had raised the door horizontally and shoved it forward.
"Mommy!"
Pushed back roughly two meters, carving two deep furrows into the road, Kang Tae-sung walked forward again. He picked up another steel-plate shield that someone had dropped, lying on the ground in place of the ruined car door.
Jo Yun-jeong, who had been pushed along with him and landed hard on her backside, quickly stood up when she saw him advancing once more. She adjusted her bow and gripped the string.
And then she understood.
Kang Tae-sung hadn't simply defended earlier—he had counterattacked.
"One of that thing's legs is broken!"
"What?"
"Where?!"
Like a pack of hyenas scenting rotten meat, the people who had been stalling against the other monsters spotted that one of this Gargos's legs was snapped at the shin and began shouting at the top of their lungs.
As the overall encirclement started to collapse, the team leaders urgently yelled to restore order. But some, acting as if a single broken leg meant the monster was on death's door, began moving prematurely. Each tried to seize the rear position first.
The encirclement that had kept the three monsters clustered together split into two groups as people forced their way in.
"It was a coincidence, you idiots!"
"Are you not maintaining the encirclement? Do you all want to die?!"
Killing the monsters that emerged from the rift was not part of their response plan. Of course it depended on what kind of monster appeared, but against something this powerful, the smartest move was to buy time and hold out until the rift vanished.
Some claimed that failing to handle rifts properly was the reason they kept appearing, but there was no evidence to support that theory.
Especially in a major city like Seoul, where several or even dozens of rifts appeared daily, the same time-buying approach was used everywhere. It couldn't be called the wrong response.
But when the limping creature with one ruined leg had its other leg shattered and collapsed, the greed of the humans around it swelled to its absolute limit.
Those whose spears had broken from stabbing so furiously snatched up discarded ones nearby, or took them from anyone who looked weak. Shield-bearers stopped using them for defense and began smashing the creature's hard scales, hoping to gain even a sliver of experience.
"You can't kill it with a single arrow. The higher your expectations, the more your arrow tip will waver."
Five shots.
Jo Yun-jeong had already wasted that many arrows and was on the verge of tears when Kang Tae-sung, no longer holding a shield, stood beside her and spoke.
"Do you want to kill it?"
"Yes."
"It's far too early for that."
"......"
"Right now, just one solid hit to the eye. Even managing that would be a tremendous achievement. Set your sights on that much."
At Kang Tae-sung's blunt statement that her current skill could never kill the monster, Jo Yun-jeong actually felt the pressure ease.
Perhaps that was why.
A touch of natural calm began to return to her eyes, which had been clouded with tension.
As she slowly drew back the bowstring, Kang Tae-sung raised his right hand slightly beside her. He bit the tip of one finger just enough to draw blood, then flicked it onto the arrowhead protruding from her bow.
Jo Yun-jeong was so focused on the Gargos flailing on its knees that she didn't notice the gesture at all.
When her right hand released the string, the arrow flew with a light thwong and buried itself precisely into the left eye of the Gargos that had been pounding down with both fists.
Kraaaaaaaaah!
It didn't sink in to the fletching, but for the monster it was no more than a toothpick in the eye.
Still, compared to the chaotic mess of spears and shields being swung wildly, it inflicted far more meaningful damage.
Sudden Quest: Rift Clearance
The time limit has ended.
Achievements will be distributed according to the results.
The quest has ended.
Right after that.
As if time had slipped away unnoticed, the notification appeared that the quest time had expired. The three Gargos that had been there, along with the other monsters faintly visible beyond the rift—seemingly ready to pour through at any moment—vanished completely.
Perhaps if they had killed all three Gargos, it would have triggered a defense-style wave of additional monsters. That was Kang Tae-sung's guess, but it remained nothing more than speculation for now.
Kang Tae-sung, who had shattered both legs of one of the creatures, received two points as his share of the achievements. There was no noticeable experience gain—probably because so many people had participated.
"Disappointed?"
"Ah, no."
Even though she had struck the eye, Jo Yun-jeong did not awaken from that single achievement.
At Kang Tae-sung's question, she smiled awkwardly and shook her head. He couldn't tell whether her trembling hands came from the excitement of a successful shot or the frustration of failing to awaken.
"There's blood on your hand...."
She quickly composed herself and spoke while looking at Kang Tae-sung's hand.
"It's nothing."
Perhaps thinking he might be injured, she had begun pulling out a surprisingly clean handkerchief from her pocket. But when she saw him casually rubbing his hands together and then revealing clean skin afterward, she quietly put it away again.
She never realized that Kang Tae-sung had drawn his own blood and applied it to her arrowhead. He saw no need to tell her.
============== Author's Note ==============
To be continued next time...