The Beast in the Gate
Black Manticore was the king of the Hallasan Gate.
All day long, it sprawled lazily atop the mountain’s summit, wearing an air of indolent repose.
That wasn’t because it was born sluggish by nature. It was conserving its strength in full, every last drop, hiding away its fangs and claws so that when some intruder set foot in its territory, it could rip them apart without mercy.
And yet…
“Chomp, chomp!”
Right now, the king’s dignity was nowhere to be seen. It had become nothing more than prey.
The pupils that had lost their light vanished into the maw of a new king.
The thing that had newly crowned itself king looked a lot like Black Manticore.
A lion’s luxuriant mane, a thick torso, bat wings, a scorpion tail with a venomous stinger, and so on.
There was only one difference.
Its head.
Black Manticore had the head of a lion, but the new king did not.
A gaunt human head.
Ji Sang-wook’s head.
“Ji Sang-wook…!”
Then a voice called out his name.
Ji Sang-wook lifted his head with a dull, lifeless stare and looked around.
Red, bloody chunks dripped from the meat clenched in his jaws.
The hunters had drawn their weapons and surrounded him.
They looked unable to decide whether they should attack.
It was understandable. They weren’t comrades, but they had crossed paths enough times in the same gate to know each other’s faces.
That was their mistake.
They had surrendered the initiative to him.
Ji Sang-wook, his body transformed like a manticore’s, lunged at the hunters.
“Block him!”
“No, don’t block—dodge! We can’t stop that with our level!”
Another mistake.
They weren’t one unified party.
Two or three parties had been hastily lumped together, and no one had been clearly designated to take command.
“Hah—move! Just move!”
The hunter who barely escaped Ji Sang-wook’s claws yelled in alarm.
He had seen the ground shattered by those claws begin to corrode.
It was poison.
The hunter who had shouted not to block but to dodge cried out again.
“I’m in charge now!”
No one objected.
They knew she had the clearest grasp of the situation among them.
Watching Ji Sang-wook continue his assault, she began barking orders.
Thanks to that, perhaps?
The hunters, who had initially been out of sync, quickly started to find their rhythm.
They caught on to one another’s habits and strengths, and though crude, their party coordination began to take shape.
Of course, that was all it was.
No matter how well the gears meshed, facing the monster before them was a hopeless task.
The thing they were fighting possessed the power to smash every one of those gears flat.
The fact that they couldn’t even hold the line and kept being driven back was proof enough.
“……?”
“Huh?”
Then it happened.
Ji Sang-wook, who had been savagely attacking the hunters, suddenly turned his body.
Using the bat wings on his back, he flew low and returned to where he had originally been.
Yes, where he had originally been.
The place where the still-uneaten hunk of meat lay.
“W-we’re alive…?”
The hunter who had first noticed the poison in the claws muttered under his breath.
At once, ten hunters turned and glared at him.
We’re alive.
Did we beat it?
We can get out of here!
Those were exactly the kinds of things hunters should never say.
Once you said them, or heard them, your luck went to hell.
Thinking they had better withdraw before things got even worse, the hunters began to increase the distance between themselves and Ji Sang-wook little by little.
They were preparing to run.
“Stop…!”
The order came down.
The hunters immediately froze where they were, halting their retreat.
They didn’t understand why they had to stop, but they stayed put all the same.
They didn’t understand it, but obeying orders without question was precisely why they had survived as hunters until now.
Still frozen, they looked at the hunter who had given the order.
She was glaring at Ji Sang-wook, her lower lip bitten hard between her teeth.
Ji Sang-wook kept tearing at the meat even as his gaze remained fixed on the hunters.
Seeing that, the hunters understood.
He had returned to his meal after putting distance between himself and his prey, but if the new prey tried to flee, he would come after them again.
And this time, he would not let them live the way he had now.
They cursed their miserable lot as prey that couldn’t move an inch.
“Damn it!”
“This is all your fault for saying we were alive.”
“Huh? You’re blaming me for this?”
“Then whose fault would it—”
“Enough. Setting up the defense line comes first.”
The hunters agreed with her and moved at once.
As long as they didn’t get any farther away, he wouldn’t attack.
That meant they at least had time to prepare for the next assault.
They couldn’t waste a precious second, so they began setting traps and building a defensive line.
Of course, they knew it too.
Something like a makeshift defense line would barely buy them a moment before collapsing.
But no one bothered to point out that uncomfortable truth.
They just kept building, clinging to every extra second of survival they could squeeze out of fate.
“Saessak, you really felt that way?”
Then a man’s voice rang out.
The hunters turned and looked at one another.
Soon they realized the voice did not belong to any of them.
Come to think of it, the direction it had come from wasn’t from their side at all. It had come from the path leading up to the summit.
They turned toward the source of the voice.
“What? No, no, that’s not what I meant. Why would hyung doubt you?”
“Don’t get sulky over something this small, okay?”
“Are you even listening to me? Hey, Saessak? White Sprout?”
A man stood there, muttering to himself.
He had his hair tied back, and in the gate—where neither cell service nor internet reached—he was holding a smartphone.
Not just holding it, either. He was staring at the screen and talking to it over and over as though he were on a call with someone.
For a split second, the thought Is he insane? flashed through the hunters’ minds before disappearing.
If he were crazy, the gatekeeper would never have let him in. More importantly, the gate’s mana pressure would have crushed him to death already.
Then what the hell was that man doing?
As they stared in confusion, the man shook his head. Each time he did, the short ponytail tied at the back of his head swung back and forth.
“Baek Do-woon…?”
The hunter who had been giving orders muttered a name.
Only then did the others recognize him.
Hunters, as people do when they recognize someone they know, started blurting things out one after another.
“It is him! It’s Baek Do-woon!”
“Baek Do-woon? Who’s that?”
“Come on, you know, that guy who’s been all over TV lately!”
“TV? Oh, you mean Baek Do-hee’s older brother?”
“Yeah, that guy!”
“Why would someone that amazing be here?”
The hunters’ chattering gazes turned toward Do-woon.
He let out a long sigh, then slipped his smartphone into his pocket.
“All right, let’s clear the quest first.”
Do-woon said something strange and started walking forward.
Maybe he noticed the hunters staring at him, because he gave them a bright smile and greeted them.
“Hello?”
He smiled with a cheerfulness utterly unbefitting someone standing before a monster.
As a result, the hunters ended up greeting him back just as casually.
“Ah, yes. Hello.”
“Man, you all must’ve had your hands full because of that bastard.”
“Huh? No, not at all. It’s nothing like that, um, yes?”
“I’ll take care of it from here. That okay?”
“Well, of course….”
“Then it’s settled. That one’s mine.”
With that, he passed the hunters and kept walking.
Watching his back, a single thought rose in all their minds at once.
One hunter muttered it aloud.
“He seems like he’s missing a screw, doesn’t he?”
Ten hunters turned to look at him simultaneously.
The hunter shrugged, lips twisted in a smirk.
“What? Why. I’m right, aren’t I? You were all thinking it too.”
“…….”
The hunters couldn’t argue and simply stared ahead.
What mattered right now wasn’t what they thought of him.
What mattered was that he was the man who had fought A-class hunter Kim Mu-yeon and won.
Especially important was the fact that he was the one who had killed Kim Mu-yeon after Kim Mu-yeon used Heart Break and briefly wielded the power of an S-class hunter.
If it was him, then maybe he really could stop the Ji Sang-wook who had become a monster.
“W-wait, what if he just walks in like that?” someone muttered anxiously.
Do-woon was walking out there barehanded, with no weapon at all.
That wasn’t all.
He wasn’t wearing armor either, just casual clothes.
No matter how strong he was, shouldn’t he at least draw a weapon and put on some armor?
“Hey—”
“Wait! Ji Sang-wook’s looking this way!”
The hunters hastily gripped their weapons.
They were preparing for battle.
But Do-woon, who had stepped forward, raised his left hand and pressed his palm downward.
It meant for them to stay still.
Their gazes all converged on one person. The one they had already chosen as their commander.
She nodded, intending to follow Do-woon’s lead.
That much was obvious.
Right now, their only way to survive was to listen to him.
Even if he did seem like a man missing a screw.
“Hey, long time no see.”
Do-woon said to Ji Sang-wook.
The answer that came back was not human speech. It was the fierce roar of a beast.
The hunters were dumbfounded.
No matter how you looked at it, Ji Sang-wook was a monster.
Trying to talk to him would only get you a beast’s growl in return.
And yet Do-woon kept going.
“If you’re a person, then stop barking and talk, idiot.”
“Grrrr!”
“Fine. If you really want me to treat you like an animal, I’ll do just that.”
Ji Sang-wook, growling low, crouched down.
He looked completely different from when he had faced the eleven hunters before.
Now he looked like prey crouching before a predator.
Crack!
Before anyone realized it, Do-woon’s right fist had slammed into Ji Sang-wook’s face.
No, not quite his face—his mouth. Do-woon’s fist had gone into Ji Sang-wook’s mouth, teeth shattering under the blow.
“Ugh, disgusting.”
He yanked his fist back out of the beast’s mouth.
In his right hand was a long glass bottle, somehow already there. The bottle was shattered, so the contents inside couldn’t be seen.
A whistling sound leaked through the gaps in Ji Sang-wook’s broken teeth.
Then—
“…Baek Do-woon?”
Out of the mouth came not a beast’s growl, but a human voice.
His dull, unfocused eyes filled with life.
Seeing that, the hunters were taken aback.
They hadn’t thought for a second that Ji Sang-wook, after becoming a monster, would still have any human will left in him.
Which meant they were desperate to know just what Do-woon had done to him.
From the fact that he had thrown some kind of glass bottle, they could tell only one thing: he had given him a potion of some kind.
A potion capable of snapping the mind of a transformed monster back into place.
It had to be a rare and expensive one.
“A-ah! Baek Do-woon!”
“Oh, want to fight?”
“Please!”
“Huh?”
Tears spilled from Ji Sang-wook’s eyes.
A voice of pleading seeped from his mouth.
“Kill me…!”
At that, the hunters let out faint breaths through their teeth.
They still didn’t know why he had become a monster, but they could tell this transformation had not come about by his own will.
So they looked at Do-woon, the one Ji Sang-wook had begged to kill him.
They expected they knew what he would say.
All right, Ji Sang-wook. I’ll do it.
That was how they thought he would answer.
If he was anything like the Knight Lee Tae-cheon they knew, he surely would have said something like that.
And Do-woon was the knight’s closest friend.
Birds of a feather flock together, as they say, so he would probably answer just like his friend.
“Kill you?”
“Yeah. It’s my last request. Please, kill me.”
Ji Sang-wook pleaded once more.
Hearing that request, Do-woon answered in a flat voice.
“Nope.”
The words that came out of his mouth were nowhere near what they had expected.