The Hunter's Gauntlets Crush the Bird Demon
Min Jihun tightened his loose grip on the machete in one hand, then curled the other into a fist and raised his knuckles like a boxer’s guard, ready to block any incoming strike.
‘If I want to close the distance on that long reach, I’ve got no choice but to get right up in his face…’
Jihun charged straight into the boss monster like a fresh prime Mike Tyson, weaving and ducking through the air with the same light-footed precision he used when he was in his prime. The moment the short, stocky hunter lunged, Huitzilopochtli whipped his clawed wings in a frantic arc, but Jihun’s enhanced combat instincts dodged every single swing without even raising a hand.
In the blink of an eye the two fighters were locked in a brutal, zero-distance brawl. A 2.3-meter half-human, half-bird monstrosity with iron-hard feathers and a 185-centimeter muscular hunter the same height as him. No more than one step of separation. This wasn’t the textbook two-to-three-meter range anyone trained for. It was the kind of savage, face-to-face scrap that turned into a wild dog fight—where the height difference, the reach advantage, and even the age gap meant nothing.
Instead, the shorter man had the clear edge in two ways. First, he could target the soft underbelly, the heart, the liver, and the spleen far more easily than a taller opponent ever could. Second, he could simply fold himself under the monster’s flailing arms, hook his shoulder against the boss’s waist, and use the smaller frame to jam every punch aimed at his head or torso while slipping into the narrow gaps the giant’s massive wings left behind.
Right now Jihun was swinging wildly, body-checking and upper-cutting like a total thug, yet he felt zero pain. The monster was swinging back like a wrecking ball, but every heavy impact landed on Jihun’s reinforced gauntlets and only the faint recoil traveled up his arms.
The gauntlets were the brand-new combat gloves Go Yunju had gifted him. They were embedded with magestones on the inside of the palms, and every time a fist connected the shock wave was tripled in return. Huitzilopochtli’s close-range style was sloppy at best; to a ten-year veteran boxer like Jihun it looked like nothing more than desperate thrashing.
And the backlash was already showing. Jihun’s fists kept hammering the feathered body, driving deeper with every hit. The monster’s posture crumbled, red blood sprayed from its mouth and beak, and the bleeding was clearly turning lethal.
“Come on, you bastard! Hit me harder! Or I’ll kill you!”
Shockwave Gauntlets
Click. Click. Click. Click.
His fists slammed against iron-hard feathers that should have absorbed everything, but the special gauntlets turned the impact into a devastating shockwave that traveled straight through the monster’s bones. The boss’s stance wobbled worse with every punch, and red blood began pouring from its beak and nostrils in thick ropes.
“Hit harder! Give it your all!”
Jihun kept stepping in and out, mixing body shots with devastating uppercuts, never once taking a clean hit. His muscles burned like they were tearing, but the pain was nothing compared to the raw will surging through him.
“I’ll turn you into nothing but chicken scraps today! How about that?!”
Shockwave Gauntlets
Each punch landed heavier than the last. One solid shot to the solar plexus, another to the jaw, and soon the monster was vomiting blood in ropes. Jihun could already see the finish line in his mind—then the first sign of a wall.
Glurk!
“Glurk…”
Huitzilopochtli’s head snapped back. A huge chunk of flesh and blackish fluid erupted from its beak, and its eyes rolled white. The same fatal backlash hit the user too. Every time the gauntlets amplified the shock, the user took the exact same damage in return.
‘Grr… I can still hold… I can still hold…’
‘No… I have to hold… it’s almost there… just a little longer… just a little longer…’
Jihun gritted his teeth through the white-hot agony ripping through his muscles. His chest, biceps, forearms, and back screamed in protest as he drove another uppercut straight into the boss’s chin. The monster staggered.
Then it saw its opening.
Huitzilopochtli’s wing snapped back and a massive spear materialized in its clawed hand. Jihun instinctively twisted away, but the monster was already too close—the spear was coming for his heart.
‘Almost… almost done…’
He launched himself sideways, clearing the deadly arc by inches. The boss’s eyes narrowed. That spear wasn’t meant for Jihun. It was a feint.
‘That damn bastard… he’s trying to trick me again?’
Jihun’s face twisted into a savage grin as the monster hurled itself forward to rip the spear out of the ground and leap skyward. In the same instant Han Sia’s voice cracked across the battlefield.
“Sia! Now! Now!”
“One team leader! Right now!!”
“What do I look like to you? You thought one Sandstorm would run out of mana? The price of that stupidity is your life, you feathered idiot!”
Sandstorm
But the second Sandstorm was swallowed by a single lazy wing flap. The monster’s intention was clear—it refused to take two of the same hit.
Jihun didn’t even have time to curse. He was already sprinting toward the gate, arms limp from exhaustion, legs somehow moving twice as fast thanks to Mr. Kim’s Hasten skill. Behind him the half-bird monster watched him with pure venom, then grabbed the spear from the ground and spread its wings.
It looked exactly like a sea eagle diving into the ocean at 100 km/h to snatch a fish.
Right then the three of them yelled at the top of their lungs.
“Sia!”
“Han Team Leader! Now!!”
“What do I look like to you? You thought one Sandstorm would run out of mana? The price of that stupidity is your life, you feathered idiot! Sandstorm! Desert gale, answer my call! Grant that demon even a single breath of air, Vacuum!”
Kim and Lee stared at the empty air, completely confused.
‘Didn’t the sandstorm work last time?’
‘Even a light breeze should have helped, right?’
Then the ground itself trembled. A shockwave rolled out from the gap like an earthquake. Thick smoke billowed up from the bottom of the canyon, and in the center of the tiny crater created by the blast stood a mangled, bloody mess of a monster—joints twisted at impossible angles, exactly like a painting by some deranged sculptor.
“Holy shit! I did it!”
Jihun threw his head back and roared with pure victory and relief. He remembered borrowing the rope from Mr. Kim in the forest, handing it to Lee, and tying the other end to the machete he’d planted in the ground like a stake. Now he just had to climb.
After all the trouble it hadn’t been much of a fight, but looking at the crushed bird monster lying against the wall like a discarded rag doll, Jihun couldn’t stop laughing.
“That should be enough to kill it, right?”
He peered into the crater where the sandstorm was still settling. He had no idea that the moment he spoke those words, the monster would somehow come back to life from the deepest levels of hell.