The Rogue Prosecutor’s Survival Guide in Another World
**Chapter 11: Mosquito (6)**
I always say there is no dust-free life.
Even if you don’t deliberately harbor bad intentions, everyone makes mistakes.
Back when I lived in South Korea, something like this happened.
At a quiet rural railroad crossing.
A man on a bicycle dismounted, waiting for a train to pass.
The night was peaceful.
But that peace didn’t last long.
A car suddenly tore down the right side of the tracks where the man stood waiting.
Crash!
The car slammed into the left corner of the approaching train and was dragged roughly twenty meters in the direction it was traveling.
Screech!
The train’s brakes worked differently from the car’s.
At the time, trains used an air-pressure brake system. They built up compressed air in a tank and then, through control valves and cylinders, moved pistons to press brake pads against the wheels.
I won’t drag you through the engineering details.
Simply put, trains could not stop suddenly.
Thankfully, the car driver walked away unharmed.
But the man on the bicycle fell from the shock of the collision.
He just stumbled.
Then.
The man on the bicycle sued the car driver.
For making him fall.
Of course, the car driver had clearly violated the railroad crossing’s stop signal, so he was at fault.
But from the bicyclist’s perspective, that didn’t necessarily mean he owed compensation.
He hadn’t intended to cause harm by deliberately creating an accident.
The court ruled that the collision and the bicyclist’s injury were causally linked, so the driver had to pay.
The crimes ordinary people commit are usually like this.
Careless negligence that accidentally crosses into criminal territory.
Unlike vicious criminals who commit crimes with full awareness and malice for no other reason.
So, what about Mosquito?
I suddenly wondered whether the vicious criminal who had slain over a hundred hunters looked like us, or whether he really was the three-headed monster standing in front of us.
***
“Marian, attack the eyes.”
Whoosh.
Three arrows shot from Marian’s hand at once.
Boosted by the wind spirit’s enhancement, they sped up and flew in three different directions.
To kill Cerberus, you had to strike the lower body straight on.
Marian was trying to draw its attention that way…
“Missed.”
The arrow headed for Cerberus’s leg was snatched out of the air by a Sand Giant Kraken hiding under the sand.
“Switch places and try again. This time, aim from above down.”
The essence of an attack is variables.
The same attack pattern creates a pattern that inevitably leads to defense.
Monsters have no intelligence or wisdom, but their survival instincts are far superior to ours.
So repeated patterns of attack lead directly to failure.
“Focus is peak.”
Cyrin swung his axe toward the Sand Giant Kraken’s leg and glanced sideways.
“Everyone focus!”
I surveyed the battlefield with the widest possible vision.
I gave the rest of the team instructions so Marian could secure the best attack position.
Cyrin for the Sand Giant Kraken.
Pyaje the office manager for the Stone Golem.
Leonik the priest for support from behind and disabling the Basilisk.
And I would finish Cerberus.
To speed things up, we had pushed the multiple monsters of the underground third floor into one area.
But the core target was Cerberus.
The key to the strategy was to approach and strike the lower body while Marian distracted Cerberus’s vision.
Marian had already taken a high position, spreading her legs in a stable stance.
“Pyaje office manager, head toward the Stone Golem side.”
“Yes, position locked.”
Pyaje swung her mace against the charging Stone Golem horde and kept swinging as she heard the boom of it turning to rubble.
The monsters that turned into light particles and vanished, leaving behind magic stones.
“Uraachacha.”
Every time Cyrin roared and swung his axe, the Kraken’s legs were chopped into neat slices like octopus tentacles.
“This is the roar timing!”
“It’s only the fourth time you’ve chopped!”
“Then this will be the fifth! Hah!”
Pyaje shouted in frustration at Cyrin.
The Kraken began roaring viciously after its fifth leg was severed.
At the same time, a massive flame erupted, burning everything within a fifty-meter radius.
So you had to chop five times, skip one, and strike again to reach its brain, the weakness.
“The monsters’ patterns are so consistent they’re almost boring. Brain is optional?”
Cyrin would mutter one line with every axe swing.
Unfortunately, since the monsters turned to magic stones, you couldn’t carry the bodies outside the dungeon for dissection, so anatomical data was hard to come by.
But every hunter who had tried it found the same result.
“Crushing the organs in the head kills them. What else could the brain be?”
No matter what, Cyrin was steadily making his way toward the Sand Giant Kraken’s brain.
Leonik the priest was quietly supporting us from behind with various divine powers.
“Protect us from evil by the power of holy light and the Holy Spirit.”
As Leonik chanted the prayer, a powerful shield of light appeared in front of us.
It protected us from Basilisk’s curse, which restricted movement and caused paralysis.
At the same time, I cast a temporary giantization blessing on Pyaje and a strength blessing on Cyrin.
“I feel like I’ve become a paladin.”
Cyrin’s impression as he brandished his rainbow axe, enhanced by aura and divine power, and slashed through everything.
There’s nothing more thrilling on a brutal battlefield than raw power and divine might.
Thanks to the adrenaline and excitement pouring out, Cyrin’s movements looked lighter than usual.
Then.
Kyaaaak!
Cerberus let out its fierce cry.
In the brief moment, Marian, who had reached the high ground, drove an arrow into one of Cerberus’s eyes.
“Senior, hit!”
Cerberus roared in pain and spewed a flame breath into the air.
“Charge! Marian, provide support!”
“Yes, senior!”
I quickly approached the leg of the thrashing Cerberus, trying to yank the arrow out of its eye.
When it felt the movement, Cerberus instinctively whipped its tail and sprayed poison to protect its body.
I silently watched, then flung a poison-resistant flask overhead and sprinted forward.
Marian’s protective magic poured down as I slid under Cerberus’s leg wrapped in ominous black smoke.
Huff.
It was hard to breathe.
I had fortified myself with all kinds of magic and flasks, but blocking poison that could seep through the respiratory system and skin was impossible.
The time I could stay there was only about fifteen seconds. I had to make one successful attack within that window.
I held the dagger in reverse grip and stabbed it into the spot where Cerberus’s leg and body connected.
I saw its poison-spitting tail charging toward me.
I rolled to dodge and drove the blade into its right rear leg.
“First attack successful.”
A faint wound appeared on Cerberus’s leg.
Thick skin covered it, so it was only a graze, but that was all we could do for now.
“Go!”
Marian, who had shifted position, loosed an arrow at Cerberus’s forehead, twisted her body in mid-air, and hit its second head on the right.
Seizing the opening, I approached again and swung the dagger at Cerberus’s leg.
We repeated this dozens of times.
My lungs felt like they were about to burst.
“Everyone fall back!”
Black flame breath began spewing from Cerberus’s mouth.
“Hum. It’s black breath.”
Pyaje shouted.
Black breath.
A higher-level variant of the Cerberus normally summoned on the third floor of the underground.
A feature of the Cerberus that appeared on the fifth floor.
“No wonder it was tough.”
Cyrin had figured it out too.
It was noticeably different from the normal difficulty.
“Do we need to revise the strategy?”
Leonik’s calm voice came from behind.
And I felt everyone’s eyes on me.
Eyes that said run or ask for help from another great clan.
“I’ll finish it quickly. Just watch that no one else approaches.”
‘Mana has accumulated enough.’
I had pushed the limit with the warcry, but I had been gathering mana the whole time.
Once I converted the gathered mana into power and revealed it, now was the time.
I spoke to everyone and clenched and unclenched my fist.
The vision darkened, and a deep blue light split the sky.
Boom.
Lightning struck exactly above Cerberus’s head.
“What is this?”
Cyrin’s bewildered voice came through the magic stone transmitter.
Instead of answering, I clenched and unclenched my fist again.
Boom.
Lightning struck again.
Cerberus foamed at the mouth and collapsed sideways.
I looked at Pyaje.
Already a rune cannon shell had been fired from Pyaje’s shoulder toward Cerberus.
Boom!
An explosion rocked the area, and one of Cerberus’s heads exploded into shards.
Without missing a beat, I kicked off the ground and charged forward.
Seeing my movement, everyone instinctively rushed in.
Pyaje gripped her mace while holding the rune cannon, Cyrin sprinted with his axe smeared in blood.
The legs of the Sand Giant Kraken hidden in the sand occasionally poked up above the ground, but we ignored it and kept cutting and running forward.
Far away, Marian, legs spread in a stable stance, kept loosing arrows, and Leonik poured divine power without restraint toward us.
“Stop dying… Argh!”
Cyrin’s aura-charged axe, the dwarf’s mace, and my dagger chopped Cerberus from three sides without mercy.
After fighting through the flame breath for about five minutes, dazzling light rose into the sky, and a large magic stone was left floating there.
Beside the magic stone, a chaotic light formed a small circle and spat out something unfamiliar.
“Ah! Senior, it’s the core!”
“It’s the core of a fifth-level Cerberus.”
Curiosity sparkled in everyone’s eyes.
Any dungeon hunter would be tempted by a core.
There was nothing like it for improving strength, agility, or resistance to specific attacks.
It wasn’t something obtainable from every monster, and a rare fifth-level Cerberus core was something everyone would covet.
“Oh my.”
A light of surprise crossed everyone’s faces.
“Wait a moment. We haven’t decided on the core distribution plan, have we?”
Their gazes were serious.
It looked like greed had taken hold.
“It’s perfect as a research subject.”
Even Leonik the priest fiddled with the empty flask hanging from his waist.
The only cheat key for extracting cores from the dungeon was a magic-processed flask.
The hungry eyes that said they wanted to take it out and research it instead of consuming it themselves.
But I personally opposed core consumption.
First, it didn’t taste good at all, and I felt an unpleasant mixture of emotions when it mixed with my own unique human soul.
Like turning into a monster?
I had actually heard of several hunters who suffered side effects after consuming high-level monster cores.
“I’m against core consumption.”
But there was no theoretical basis.
So it was left to individual choice.
“You’re a zealot of blind faith.”
“Does the core digestion function fail?”
“A pureblood loyalist.”
“Then exclude senior and we can…”
Even while relentlessly being scolded, a smile spread across their faces that couldn’t be helped.
Was this the level of happiness after removing one competitor?
I needed to step in and settle this.
“Since there’s no more time to waste on core distribution, decide within five minutes or take it in Leonik’s flask to finish the investigation and decide.”
“Sounds good.”
“Agreed.”
“If we put it in the flask, the core’s taste changes…”
Pyaje’s final words were cut short by the one who said she agreed.
Taste?
Was that something you could eat?
Whether Pyaje had read everyone’s gazes or not, she smiled faintly.
“If you mix this with pickled mushrooms, it really becomes a delicacy. Even the Blue Tiger chefs acknowledged it.”
Pyaje looked at the core inside the flask with sticky eyes.
“Mushrooms? The mushrooms growing in the mushroom cave on the fourth floor?”
Pyaje laughed loudly and nodded at Cyrin’s question.
“Our mushroom cave is the way, right? We have to complete the cooking recipe like this!”
After watching Pyaje wrapped in pure joy for a while, Cyrin shrugged and opened the portal to the fourth floor underground.
---
**⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙**
**⚡ SKILL ACTIVATED ⚡**
**Mana Conversion Complete** Power has been fully transformed and is ready for deployment. All team members on standby.
**⚔ STATUS ⚔**
**Strength: 92** **Agility: 87** **Mana: 85** **Vitality: 91**
**💥 CRITICAL HIT! 💥**
**-47 HP** Cerberus’s head shattered.
**📜 NEW QUEST 📜**
**Title: Core Harvest and Culinary Discovery** **Location: Underground Mushroom Cave, Fourth Floor** **Reward: Rare Monster Core + Culinary Bonus Experience**
**🔥 BERSERK MODE 🔥**
**All Stats +15%** Cyrin’s axe swings became faster and more precise.
**🗡 ITEM ACQUIRED 🗡**
**Name: Poison-Resistant Flask** **Grade: Legendary** **Properties:** Blocks 90% of monster poison for 15 seconds. **Effect:** Can be used to safely extract cores.