10
10 - Shadow
A non-trivial scale of Erosion occurred in the center of Seoul, putting the city on emergency alert.
The military was deployed to create barricades at the Erosion's perimeter, and police and fire departments evacuated nearby residents further away.
Hunters summoned by the Hunter Management Bureau's conscription order were also on standby, ready to deploy at any moment.
Ma Du-sik, Seoul's mayor and an S-rank Hunter, was directly on site commanding everything.
"Has the core been detected yet?"
"Th-that is..."
"Why is this taking so long!"
At the command center, Ma Du-sik was anxiously waiting only for reports from the Management Bureau.
While skillfully handling reports coming up from the military, police, and fire departments, he focused all his attention on the Management Bureau side.
After all, the military and police could do nothing about the Erosion.
Neither cannons nor missiles worked on the dark red sphere that had swallowed part of the city.
To resolve the Erosion, they had to enter inside and destroy the core no matter what.
Hunters for evacuating citizens inside had already been deployed, and all that remained was to find and destroy the core.
Usually, core detection is performed from the outside to specify coordinates, and then an assault team is deployed.
Fighting monsters inside while protecting citizens and finding and destroying the core would be too arduous for a single team.
"Nothing is being detected, Mr. Mayor!"
However, the reports coming up from the Management Bureau were only frustrating.
"How does that make sense! If an Erosion occurs, there must be a core!"
"Even if you say that, there's no response on the detector..."
"Urgh."
Ma Du-sik pressed his forehead with a deeply furrowed face.
Cases where the core's location isn't displayed even after completely scanning the Erosion from the outside.
Such cases weren't unheard of.
The Magi inside could be tangled, preventing search magic from reaching properly, or the core could be moving too rapidly.
Or there could be some kind of concealment method that search magic couldn't detect.
In such cases, they ultimately had no choice but to search directly inside.
"How many A-rank Hunters are on standby?"
"26 A-rank and 62 B-rank Hunters are on standby."
"Whether that's enough... I'm not sure. Since we need to find a hidden core."
They had only this many on standby because they thought they'd just need to detect the core and make a single breakthrough.
"Issue additional conscription orders and contact everyone. Except for Hunters who are in Gates or abroad."
"Yes, sir!"
In reality, Shartia was searching extensively for the core inside, but Ma Du-sik didn't know this.
Shartia wasn't even a Seoul Hunter, and even if she were, it would be impossible to monitor every move.
How could he know that Shartia had wandered around the city as she pleased and entered the library on a whim?
Therefore, search personnel had to be organized on the largest scale possible.
It was fortunate that it wasn't in a mountainous area, but even so, how would one find a core that wasn't even caught by detectors?
With time and personnel, they could certainly find it, but until then, the city center would be paralyzed.
"The first search team is ready, Mr. Mayor!"
Still, they couldn't just sit idly.
"Deploy. This Erosion must be completely removed. If such a large black territory appeared in the heart of the city..."
Even without finishing the sentence, the Hunters knew.
An Erosion outside the city might be one thing, but inside wasn't acceptable.
Seoul was the city where they and their families lived.
***
It wasn't actually the sword vibrating or anything like that.
How should he put it?
Some kind of wave-like pulsation that only Jin-woo could feel was being transmitted from the sword to him.
Wooong-
Something that sounded like a heartbeat or a crying sound.
Jin-woo, who had been pondering the true meaning of it, suddenly voiced what came to mind.
'Do you want to eat that? That thing?'
Woong!
Jin-woo blinked his eyes.
He had asked just in case, but he never expected an actual response to come back.
Was this the ability of the Elf sword?
No, detecting the black flame was entirely his own power. It couldn't be the sword's ability.
However, it couldn't be said to be completely unrelated to the sword, because when he took out the iron sword he received from the Management Bureau and asked the same question, the iron sword gave no response.
'Maybe there's some kind of synergistic effect.'
Perhaps because both his ability and the sword were special, they created some kind of synergy with each other.
If so, he could deduce one fact.
His past life was something related to Elves.
Maybe his past life was an Elf entirely, like Shartia.
'But my flame isn't bud-shaped for that to be true.'
Shartia's flame, who had an Elf past life, was bud-shaped like an Elf. In contrast, his flame was identical to that of an ordinary human.
So it wasn't that his past life was an Elf either...
Yet it didn't seem completely unrelated either, and he couldn't figure it out at all.
'Well, whatever my past life was, it doesn't matter now.'
Though he was curious, what mattered in the end was this moment's present life.
Since the white sword wanted to eat the black flame so much, he should go feed it.
Leaving the library where safety was secured was dangerous, but since it was related to his ability, he couldn't not go.
Rather, this time, when there was an S-rank nearby, it might be the safest time to venture out.
"Shartia. I have something to take care of, so may I go out for a moment?"
"Right now? I wouldn't really recommend it... If it's the bathroom, just handle it in a corner. I won't look."
"No, it's because of my ability."
"Ah."
Shartia was about to stop Jin-woo's dangerous behavior, but if it was because of his ability, she couldn't just do that.
For Hunters, matters concerning abilities must be respected in any situation.
Whether awakening a new ability or developing an existing one.
Either way, it was entirely his right and up to his decision.
In this industry, there's even a saying that shooting someone in the head for forcibly restraining a Hunter trying to awaken an ability would be acquitted.
Still, it was dangerous.
She couldn't just send him off like this.
"Take this."
"A flower? Is it like a talisman?"
"Yes. It's like a temporary amulet I've imbued with my power. It will protect you when you're in danger."
"To do this much for me..."
Such kindness from someone he met for the first time today.
She was the second kindest person Jin-woo had met in his life.
Even the first, the Management Bureau civil servant, was just professionally kind, but Shartia wasn't even in that kind of relationship with him.
"I'll gratefully accept it."
Jin-woo gratefully received the flower and placed it in his coat's front pocket.
"Take care. Be careful."
"I'll be back."
Jin-woo tried to open the door of the lounge and leave.
However, the door wouldn't budge at all.
It wasn't the latch being locked and rattling, but rather it was frozen solid and wouldn't move.
Come to think of it, objects affected by Erosion lose their original function and nature and exist only as mediums where dark energy is condensed.
"Ah, let me open it for you now."
Seeing Jin-woo blocked by the door, Shartia gestured with her hand.
However.
Slash-
Before she could use her power, Jin-woo drew his sword and cut through the door.
The diagonally cut door split apart and fell to the floor.
Shartia's eyes widened slightly.
'...Didn't he say he awakened not long ago?'
It was the first time she'd seen a novice-level Hunter cut through Erosion energy so easily.
Maybe saying ‘not long ago’ was just talk, and he actually had some experience?
That would make sense, because that single swing had been etched in her eyes and wouldn't disappear.
She had seen Hunters swing swords hundreds of times, and among them, she'd even seen S-rank Hunters swing swords.
S-rank Hunters' swords were much more flashy and destructive, incomparable to Jin-woo's plain sword strike.
Yet what was imprinted in her eyes was Jin-woo's sword.
'Why... Why am I like this today?'
Why?
She couldn't understand why she was so drawn to him.
Just, just today, something felt strange.
From when she couldn't pass by the library, from when she entered the reading room and saw the man reading Elf books, her condition had been strange.
"It does cut."
Jin-woo, who had tilted his head, slung the sword over his shoulder and left.
Watching his retreating figure, Shartia gulped and swallowed.
'Should I... Share vision?'
She connected the pistil of the flower she had given Jin-woo with her own vision.
Despite the hesitant expression of ‘should I’, she had already connected it.
The flower pinned to Jin-woo's chest transmitted the frontal view to her retina.
'Are you crazy? Are you a stalker?'
Even while self-deprecating like that.
'No, no. It's for safety. If it gets dangerous, I need to go rescue him.'
There she was rationalizing it herself.
The two egos were evenly matched and knew no compromise, and ultimately, what won in the end was the latter.
She conveyed words through the flower with her last conscience and common sense.
"Um, Jin-woo. If it's okay, may I receive vision transmission through this flower?"
-Vision? You mean like watching through a remote camera?
"Yes. Since it might be dangerous..."
Her heart was beating thump thump as if she were doing something bad.
It was indeed something bad since she was asking for permission after already connecting.
Still, if Jin-woo said no, she was prepared to disconnect immediately. Though it would be very disappointing.
-That's fine. I'm grateful.
Permission was granted!
With a happy heart, she fixed her vision and continued what she had been doing.
'I need to find the core.'
The task of finding the Erosion's core.
Considering Jin-woo's safety, rather than doing useless things, it would be better to find and destroy the core as quickly as possible.
Of course, the same went for other citizens' safety.
'But where on earth is it? There's no way it wouldn't be discovered like this.'
Even though it was time she would have found it normally, she still hadn't located it.
While urgently searching for the core, one side of her vision also captured Jin-woo walking trudge trudge.
***
Outside the library was an even more exotic landscape.
Unlike the inside, which was mixed with buildings, this was already half forest.
All the trees and vines here originated from Shartia's power.
Passing through her forest, Jin-woo headed to the back of the library.
His destination was near the road, a bit further away.
The further he got from the library, the sharper Jin-woo's nerves became.
'The Magi is getting thicker too.'
Near the library was quite a comfortable space due to Shartia's energy.
The air might have been better than Seoul in reality if anything.
But the further he went, the more turbid the air became, and the sky began to turn black.
His destination was the road, but he couldn't just walk straight along the main road.
There were still many monsters roaming around, avoiding Shartia's vines.
Since Shartia prioritized people's evacuation and rescue over monster subjugation, monsters that hadn't attacked people were still left as they were.
'Let's stick to the corners as much as possible to avoid being detected.'
Jin-woo walked closely along the building side of the sidewalk.
If necessary, he planned to dash into the alleyways between buildings, thinking it would be easier to deal with monsters that way.
In wide open areas, he'd be attacked from all sides, but in alleyways, he'd only need to deal with front and back.
Therefore, Jin-woo's movement was from alley to alley.
Whether this was effective or the monsters simply weren't interested in people, Jin-woo was able to move quite far without being detected.
The latter was plausible too, since the ones bloodthirsty to bite people to death had already been strangled to death by vines.
That they were still roaming around intact meant they were ones without much interest in people.
Of course, no matter how uninterested they were, if he appeared right in front of them, they'd charge.
Therefore, Jin-woo moved as quietly as possible between alleyways, even suppressing his breathing.
It happened when he was passing through an alley.
An alley between buildings with a pharmacy and a hamburger shop.
Two eyes glowing in the darkness leaped up and pounced on Jin-woo's back.
Hwaaak!
Instantly, the flower on his chest glowed, and more than ten vine stems radiated out.
Those vines struck the leaping wolf at once. Though it was called a wolf, it was a grotesquely shaped wolf with four eyes and three mouths.
The vines wrapped around the wolf's body and constricted; meanwhile, Jin-woo swung his sword.
Chwaaaaak!
The wolf was split in half, and red blood poured out.
At the same time, the blue flame that had been burning in the wolf's core was cut and absorbed through the sword into Jin-woo.
'So this is how it protects me.'
The dozen or so vine stems that had spat out the dead wolf's corpse smoothly returned to the flower and were tucked away.
The flower was modestly pinned to Jin-woo's front pocket, acting innocent as if nothing had happened.
Jin-woo put the fallen monster's corpse into his inventory.
Meanwhile, seeing the flower's function changed his thinking a bit.
'Should I go a bit more boldly?'
If he had an amulet made directly by an S-rank Hunter, couldn't he proceed more boldly?
If there was no reason to hunt monsters, it would be different, but Jin-woo had a reason.
His ability was to cut and absorb the blue flames of living beings.
He didn't know what good came from absorbing them, but it wouldn't be bad.
He could think of it as accumulating experience points and leveling up.
Plus, each corpse was money, so it was too wasteful to give up.
However.
'No. Let me check what the black flame is first.'
Despite definitely thinking it was wasteful, Jin-woo gave up on that.
Hunting monsters en masse could wait until after checking the black flame.
Maybe that flame was the Erosion core that Shartia was searching for so desperately.
The city would be paralyzed because of the Erosion appearing in the city center, so he couldn't be doing this for a few coins.
The place Jin-woo arrived at was in front of a building.
'A movie theater?'
A movie theater building with CGV.
The presence of the black flame could be felt around the 6th or 7th floor.
The puzzling point was that this building was also completely wrapped in Shartia's vines.
If there was a core or something special here, there was no way Shartia wouldn't have discovered it.
Maybe the black flame wasn't such a special phenomenon after all?
'I'll know when I see.'
He walked up the non-moving escalator toward the 6th-floor screening room.
***
In the darkness of the screening room, there was a being continuing soundless breathing.
The walking lizard-like creature was covered in black scales and wore clothes made of similarly light-absorbing black cloth.
In its crossed hands in front of its chest, it held thick awl-like daggers made from dragon teeth.
The lizard, also called Shadow, was a dragon-type monster from the most powerful classification among monsters.
Dragon-types were species that appeared from at least the 3rd layer and above, not something a mediocre Hunter should mess with.
Shadow was low-grade among dragon-types, but still strong enough not to be ignored.
Especially as its specialty was hiding in shadows and ambushing as its name suggested, making it an even more troublesome species to deal with.
That monster was eliminating its breathing, slowing its heartbeat, and even lowering its body temperature to completely kill its presence.
Hiding meant there was a threatening target nearby.
Shadow was hiding to avoid the tree branches spread throughout this building and the surrounding area.
Kruung.
Annoying.
The power dwelling in those was at a level that even dragon-types couldn't take lightly.
Fighting head-on was out of the question, and even ambushing wouldn't be simple.
However, if it could just stay like this without being detected.
Time was on its side.
Power was gradually accumulating.
He could feel it.
Every time the Erosion spread throughout the city, the Magi in its heart increased.
It was turbid Magi with no trace of purity, but that made it powerful and destructive.
If this strong Magi accumulated and accumulated, it could easily kill even the opponent who had spread the vines.
He wasn't exactly sure how long it needed to accumulate, but that didn't matter.
A Shadow's lifespan easily reached a thousand years.
It could wait a hundred or two hundred years.
Then.
Light appeared.
"What. A person... No, you're not, are you?"
Kruung!?
Shadow felt like its eyes would go blind from the suddenly pouring light, yet couldn't close them.
It writhed its entire body with bloodshot eyes. But only parts of its fingers and toes could move.
It had been hiding by making its entire body corpse-like, and suddenly returning it to a living state required time.
Still, it forcibly moved its body, its Magi.
Because otherwise it would die!
Kruheung!
Due to the forcibly raised Magi, the energy channels throughout its body twisted.
At this rate, Magi's reversal was 100% likely, but it still didn't stop.
Thinking it was better than dying immediately, it prepared for reversal and forcibly drew up the evil Magi.
Somehow faster than the enemy's attack...
Stab-
A blade pierced its heart.
Shadow couldn't make it in time.
Keu, keureureuruk...
Watching the lizard-headed monster foaming at the mouth and collapsing, Jin-woo twisted and pulled out his sword.
The black flame that had been burning in its core was pierced by the sword, absorbed, and flowed into Jin-woo.