Chapter 26
Kim Jae-sik had found everything easy since he was little.
Whether it was studying or sports, he’d only have to try a little before people started telling him he was talented.
That was thanks to the B-rank skill he’d been born with, Superhuman.
It was also why, the moment he finished compulsory middle school, he decided he’d become a hunter right away.
He figured he’d be good at that too.
If his parents hadn’t stopped him, saying it was dangerous and he couldn’t, he would have done it for sure.
Instead, Jae-sik became a hunter after graduating high school and turning eighteen.
And not long after that, he’d already risen to E-class.
“Huff, huff…”
Kim Jae-sik steadied his breathing and looked ahead.
Three giant ants were creeping toward him, hesitantly.
They were afraid.
Only, the thing the giant ants were afraid of wasn’t him.
It was the ponytailed man in front, the one who took down two or three giant ants every time he swung his sword once.
They were scared of that man.
Baek Do-woon, the hunter who’d returned this time after recovering from an injury.
From Jae-sik’s point of view, Do-woon was absolutely not a D-class hunter.
What D-class hunter could keep advancing by himself while cutting down giant ants that surged in so many he couldn’t even count them at a glance? What D-class hunter could control the number of monsters so the people behind him had room to act?
At first, he let one through.
Then two, after that one went down.
And if those were cut down too, he would let three slip past without killing them.
“Haaah!”
A D-class hunter had that level of skill?
As if. At the very least, he was B-class!
Do-woon had said he was returning after an injury.
Surely, after getting hurt, he’d ground himself down to this level through sheer, grueling effort.
By contrast, what had Jae-sik been doing all this time?
He’d been wasting his high school years, leaning on the flimsy talent he’d been born with and telling himself he could get strong any time he wanted.
If he’d spent those three years working hard, Jae-sik, with his Superhuman skill, would probably be a C-class hunter by now.
He might even have reached B-class.
“S-sorry, huff, for, huff, that, Do-woon hyung.”
“Hm? For what?”
He didn’t know why.
Kim Jae-sik just felt like apologizing to Baek Do-woon, who was waiting for him.
When Do-woon asked back what he had to be sorry for, Jae-sik couldn’t come up with an answer.
He was embarrassed.
While hyung was working hard to return to hunting, I was just playing around.
He couldn’t say that, so Jae-sik only added another apology.
“I’m sorry…”
＊＊＊
I cut down the giant ants pouring at me like a flood.
I didn’t use Warm Touch or World Tree Swing.
There were a lot of them, but just swinging the longsword was enough.
The longsword Yu Jae-i had given me sliced through the giant ants’ bodies as neatly as if I were cutting tofu.
I hadn’t noticed in Hongyureung Gate because the situation had been urgent, but the reputation of a smithy ranked among the Hundred Great Smithies really wasn’t empty boasting.
Even when I swung it without putting any strength into my body at all, the longsword kept cleaving through the giant ants without hesitation.
The blade itself had outstanding cutting power.
“Haaah!”
I glanced at Kim Jae-sik, who was fighting the giant ants while shouting his battle cry.
He was dealing with the giant ants I deliberately let through without killing them.
I was checking his skills by sending only as many as he could handle.
At first it had been one at a time, but now that he’d gotten used to it, he was fighting three at once.
For a first-year hunter, Kim Jae-sik was clearly talented enough to make it to E-class already.
He looked like he’d rise to D-class pretty quickly.
Anything beyond that, I couldn’t say.
It was a level I hadn’t experienced myself.
People said getting from C-class to B-class was like plucking a star from the sky…
“S-sorry, huff, for that, Do-woon hyung.”
“For what?”
“I’m sorry…. You’re deliberately letting one or two through to match my pace, aren’t you?”
Oh. He noticed that?
I thought he’d be too busy fighting the giant ants to realize.
If he’d picked up on that, it meant he’d been watching me even while fighting.
He didn’t seem to have much breathing room against the giant ants.
Then Kim Jae-sik had a wide enough field of vision to keep track of the people around him while fighting.
That also meant he could watch his party members during combat and adjust to them accordingly.
With more experience, he’d eventually reach the level where he could predict what came next and move before it happened.
That was exactly the kind of thing a party needed.
Hm. Since things had worked out like this, maybe I should push it that way.
“Jae-sik.”
“Just, huff, call me casually, hyung.”
“Mm. Sure, I will. Can you move in sync with me?”
After I asked, Jae-sik hesitated for only a moment.
It wasn’t a long hesitation.
He tightened both hands around his spear and answered.
“...Yes!”
“Good. Then—”
The giant ants appeared again.
Right, what was there to explain? Life was live ammunition!
I cut off my explanation and charged straight at the giant ants.
I could feel Jae-sik, left behind alone for a moment, flustered behind me.
I swept one giant ant horizontally. Then I cut another on my right at a diagonal.
The first one was split cleanly in two and died, but the second only lost its legs and didn’t die.
The one that survived leapt at me.
At that moment,
“Haaah!”
Kim Jae-sik stabbed through its head with his spear.
Kill the ones I could kill outright, wound the ones I couldn’t finish cleanly, and let Jae-sik take care of the rest.
He carried out exactly the kind of play I wanted, and my lips lifted before I could help it.
Honestly, I was surprised too.
I hadn’t even explained properly, and he was already keeping up.
I’d wondered whether Jae-sik might not be able to support me, but at this rate I could probably pick up the tempo a little more.
I advanced while cutting down the ants faster than before.
Jae-sik followed a little behind, finishing off the giant ants I missed. Even while gasping and struggling for breath, he did his job.
After a few hours of pushing forward like that, the number of ants bursting out steadily decreased, until eventually none appeared at all.
Instead, the tunnel ended, and only a single hole leading downward appeared.
A rotten stench wafted up from that hole, along with a level of toxicity so strong it was visible to the eye.
“W-what… huff… what is…”
“You were going to ask what kind of hole it looked like, weren’t you?”
Jae-sik was already out of breath and couldn’t even manage to breathe properly, and now the stench of rot on top of it was making him miserable.
He nodded.
He slowly took care with the poisonous air and settled his breathing.
Even so, he didn’t sit down to rest.
He was preparing for monsters that might burst out from anywhere.
“Judging by the stench, I’d say it’s probably a morgue.”
“Then… should we head back?”
“We should. There shouldn’t be any live ants in a morgue… huh?”
“Hyung? What is it?”
I didn’t look at Jae-sik calling me.
My eyes were fixed on the bluish message window.
World Tree Seedling wants the Manager to enter the anthill morgue.
...Into the morgue? Why?
I scratched my chin and sank into thought, trying to figure out what the Seedling was after.
The morgue was exactly what it sounded like: a place where the giant ants’ corpses were gathered.
It was nothing but rotting bodies and filth.
It was strange to hear that it wanted me to go somewhere like that.
“Can you wait a second?”
“Uh, yes. Could I maybe stand a little farther away?”
“Go ahead.”
As soon as I gave permission, Jae-sik hurriedly moved away.
Apparently he couldn’t stand the stench of rotting corpses and the toxic air.
Thanks to the Manager of the World Tree skill, it didn’t hit me that hard.
Apparently foul odors counted as poison too.
I read the message again, then took my smartphone out of my pocket.
I still couldn’t understand what the Seedling intended, so I wanted to ask it face to face.
That was what I was thinking when I looked down at the screen, and the moment I did, I was speechless.
“…What are you doing?”
The Seedling had lowered both leaves and stood there with what looked exactly like its arms planted on its hips.
It was practically saying, Believe me just this once, Manager!
I could even feel a sort of swagger coming off it.
That expression was so cute I ended up grinning.
I still had no idea why it wanted this, though.
Still, well.
I decided to indulge it once.
I’d been rejecting the Seedling’s advice all the way here, so it was about time I listened for once.
“Jae-sik, I’m going down below for a bit.”
“Huh? You’re going where?”
“If it looks dangerous, run right away. Got it?”
“Wait, hold on! You’re really going down there—”
Seeing Jae-sik’s startled face, I jumped into the hole.
“You mean to…”
As I descended below the morgue, Jae-sik’s voice faded into the distance.
It was so dark I couldn’t see a thing ahead of me.
When my feet touched something, I knew I’d reached the bottom.
I took the luminescent stone Jae-sik had given me at the entrance of the anthill out of my magic pouch and lit up the area.
“Kheh…”
As expected, the morgue was piled high with giant ant corpses.
No, I wasn’t even sure “piled high” was the right way to put it.
That was because the giant ants’ corpses had rotted and dissolved in acidic fluid, turning into one enormous mass.
It was literally a gigantic lump of toxic miasma.
The Seedling advises sprinkling the soil sent to the mailbox to purify the toxic miasma.
“…Oh!”
I finally understood what the Seedling had wanted.
What would happen if I purified a toxic mass this huge by sprinkling soil over it?
The Skeleton Lord in Hongyureung Gate had been corruption itself.
To purify it was to make it die.
But the mass of toxicity in front of me wasn’t like that.
Even if it were purified, the energy itself wouldn’t disappear. It would remain.
In other words, it would create a massive pool of energy.
“Our Seedling is just way too smart.”
I looked down at my smartphone, and the Seedling was standing there just as always, both leaves spread wide open.
It was its usual pose.
Still, for some reason, it looked to me like a victory sign.
I opened the mailbox and pressed the receive button, and soil began blasting out of the smartphone in a furious stream.
This time, I braced myself so I wouldn’t become a human fountain again and scattered it evenly over the giant lump, making sure it was well covered.
The foul energy and stink slowly faded away.
In their place, I felt the fresh clarity of walking through a forest.
“W-whoa?”
When all the soil had been scattered, the giant mass of toxicity vanished completely.
That was right.
Literally, all the giant ant corpses that had filled the morgue had disappeared.
In their place, a round little lump, about the size of my fist, sat alone on the floor.
The Seedling conveys a satisfied feeling to the Manager.
“……?”
What the hell was this?
It was fine for it to be satisfied on its own, sure.
From the shape, it looked a lot like an elixir, but it didn’t exactly seem appetizing.
Maybe because it had only been a giant ant corpse a moment ago, I couldn’t shake the feeling that eating it as-is would be nasty.
Mm. Looks like I’ll have to take in the emotion and find out exactly what it is.
After deciding that, I put it into my magic pouch.
Then I looked up at the hole in the ceiling, thinking it was time to head back up.
“If I jump, I might be able to reach it, right?”
Just as I bent my knees and put strength into my legs, a white bone entered my field of view.
It was a skeleton.
Not the remains of a giant ant corpse left behind because it had missed the purification range, but the bones of a dead person after the flesh had rotted away.
“Why is this here?”
The Muju anthill was a zone directly managed as a special priority area by the Hunter Association.
Not even civilians, and not even hunters, could enter recklessly without taking a quest.
If there were bones in a place like this, that meant a hunter had come inside with a quest within the one-year period before dungeon mana weathered the body away, and died here.
“We’re veteran hunters who’ve been cleaning up the anthill dungeon flawlessly for two years without a single victim….”
That contradicted what Kim Jeong-cheol had said.
No way.
I checked the bones at once.
They were slightly dissolved by the giant ants’ acidic fluid.
Of course, the acid fluid itself wasn’t the direct cause of death.
It was the acid fluid of an E-rank monster.
It could melt skin, but it couldn’t dissolve bone all at once.
They’d dissolved after death.
“Knife marks….”
There was a stab wound from a blade on the back.
In other words,
“Figures. I always thought everything they did was nasty.”
Kim Jeong-cheol. Kwon O-seok. Han Gi-hae.
Those bastards were hunter killers.