novelraw Chapter 111
Chapter 111
Chapter 111
Things were turning annoying fast.
Judging from Choi Yeoreum sitting up there in the sky with her legs crossed, it looked like she had not pulled any tricks to cause this mess.
“In the foreigners’ collective residential district, of all places, and right now?”
I already had a decent idea of what was going on. The aura pouring out of that foreigners’ district was something I had felt far too many times.
Maybe I should have caught on when the foreigners’ residential district came up during the meeting…
That thought did cross my mind.
“How am I supposed to predict that someone is going to scam a bunch of foreigners, kill fifteen hundred people in one go, and turn them into monsters?”
If I could see that coming, I would be a damned prophet instead of a Hunter. Anyway, the important thing was that my match with Choi Yeoreum was over because of this.
You ask if we can just fight again later?
What a joke. Whoever set this up had thrown fifteen hundred people into a meat grinder in order to stop this match and, while they were at it, to fish for a few extra benefits.
They had invested that much. No way they would let us have a rematch. I did not know what excuse they would use, but I was sure I would never get to face Choi Yeoreum again.
“Looks like we have to stop the duel for now.”
Once she finished her call, Choi Yeoreum glanced down at me, then dropped to the ground with a thud and held out her hand.
“What is this, something like a handshake of reconciliation?”
At my words, she answered,
“Handshake, my ass. I have to haul you to where this is blowing up. So hold out your collar.”
She looked extremely displeased.
“You are still coming along without fuss though.”
As she grabbed my collar, she answered,
“Do you know how many cameras are filming this place right now? If it were up to me, I would just go home.”
But because image management mattered, even Choi Yeoreum had no choice. She had to come with me to help suppress the incident in the foreigners’ district.
Whoever set the stage had done an impressive job.
“But there’s the fact that I was going to win…”
“I know that too, you bastard. It was only a matter of time. I am already in a foul mood, so how about you stop talking about it?”
With that retort, she lifted off while still holding my collar, flames blasting from her back as she shot forward in a high speed flight.
“Did you really have to take me like this.”
It felt like I was being dragged by the scruff of the neck. Actually no, that was exactly what was happening.
“Want me to carry you like a princess instead?”
“Oh my, will you really, my prince?”
I deliberately twisted my voice into something ridiculous. The very next moment, she swung the hand gripping my collar and threw me.
“…This girl really cannot take a joke huh.”
As I flew, I looked down at the foreigners’ residential district below and checked the situation while I fell.
“Are you children of Satan or what.”
Black goat heads, bat wings, and tridents. On top of that, the heavy stench of sulfur saturating the air left quite an impression.
They must have noticed me falling. Dozens of heads turned my way. Flames burned where their eyes should have been. They spread their wings and surged toward me all at once.
The sight was like a swarm of giant hornets bursting out of a nest after someone hit it with plastic pellets.
“Time to get started.”
As the ground rushed up toward me, I cloaked my body in Paradoxical Flame. What it burned was impact. I landed on both feet and the shock wave ignited as Paradoxical Flame. The blast spread out in all directions, then faded.
“Let us see how good goat meat really is for stamina.”
I watched the herd of goats closing in and braced my legs.
The mana in the air flowed into my body, then surged down my legs. With a roar, the asphalt shattered under my feet and my body accelerated. Wind screamed in my ears. The black goats that had been far away a heartbeat ago rushed up close in an instant.
My fist swung and smashed the skull of one of them. Its horn shattered and its head caved in.
I lifted my hand and flared up Paradoxical Flame, then drove it down into the ground.
“Reflexes.”
The blazing Paradoxical Flame burned away the reflexes of every monster rushing at me.
Once it hit them, they could see the attack coming, yet could not react. Naturally, they could not dodge even if they wanted to.
They were no different from scarecrows standing in place. They simply stood there, blank faced, watching the attack arrive while they took the hit.
“….”
As I kept crushing monster skulls, the ones not yet affected by the Paradoxical Flame started flapping their wings to flee.
At the same time, I felt a huge surge of mana. Flames rose like a wall and formed a massive dome that enclosed the entire foreigners’ residential district.
“Damn it, I burned way too much mana because of you. I cannot believe this is all I have left.”
It was the work of Choi Yeoreum, who still hovered in the sky.
“Did I threaten you or something?”
She had wasted mana just because she got mad on her own. Why was that my fault? Besides, what she said was not even true.
Even after raising that flaming dome around the entire district, Choi Yeoreum still had several times more mana left than Han Sang-ah.
“You handle the rest. It does not look like something you cannot do anyway. That dome will disappear in about three hours.”
She said exactly that much, then turned and flew off. I was left inside the flaming dome with the monsters.
“Three hours huh. That is more than enough.”
She had clearly set such a long duration just to annoy me.
It did not matter. I would just wipe out these things, then burn a hole in the dome with Paradoxical Flame and walk out.
“Friends, you cannot run now.”
Every last one of you is going to die in here. They had probably been people once, but now they were no longer human.
“Fifteen hundred of you.”
My thoughts grew muddled. Not everyone in the foreigners’ district had turned into monsters. And not much time had passed yet, so there were still plenty of people who had not managed to escape.
“Choi Yeoreum. You are really just leaving after doing this.”
I spat on the ground. In this situation, I could not save everyone. It was physically impossible.
To put it simply…
“If there is time to save one person, I kill one monster.”
That was the only way to save more people overall. Saving one person meant saving that one. But if I removed one monster, I prevented it from killing far more potential victims.
As fast as possible and as many as possible. I moved without stopping. Screams rang out. Cries for help echoed.
A child called for his parents. Someone missing an arm stumbled around clutching his torn off limb, letting out strange sounds.
I ignored every sight and every sound. While I guarded one person, a single monster could kill ten others.
I heightened my senses with mana and moved my limbs, purging any monsters I found the instant I located them. I repeated it nonstop. A torrent of scenes flashed past. A child with his head torn off. A woman with a hole through her stomach.
A man with all four limbs ripped off who could only groan. An old man who died with his bowels and bladder emptied. Men and women, young and old, painted thousands of different deaths and agonies.
“How am I supposed to stay sane after this.”
Silently, I smashed monster after monster. The number had already passed a hundred. Those who tried to flee, those who tried to resist. They all dropped like gnats sprayed with insecticide and piled up on the ground.
I pushed my senses further, reaching for the monsters at a greater distance. When one vaulted toward me with a trident, I grabbed the shaft with my hand and wrenched it away, then rammed it straight through the monster’s skull.
“I can at least use it for now.”
A trident was still a spear. I swung the stolen spear. It was only a flimsy stick so it would not last long. When it felt like it was about to snap, I hurled it at a distant monster, then took another spear from a different one.
“….”
My entire body was covered in the black slime pouring out of the heaps of corpses. I wiped my face with one hand, smearing the muck away, and stared at the creatures. They let out ugly, shrinking sounds as they shuffled backward.
I lunged at one of them, grabbed its head with my hand, and tore it off. Then I threw that head at another monster.
Skull met skull and both shattered. The headless body twitched for a moment, then went still.
“Well, I guess you guys can feel fear too in the end.”
Good. I plunged my hand into a collapsing wall and pushed. The entire wall ripped free. I flung it like a slab. The monsters that could not get out of the way were crushed in a single sweep.
Fifteen hundred of them? Even if several times that number came at me, I could take them all apart. More monsters only meant more victims.
“It is over.”
A few minutes later, I scanned the surroundings with mana sharpened senses, then spat on the ground. The black slime from the monsters mixed with my spit.
Sitting on top of a mountain of corpses, I clicked my tongue.
“A lot of them died.”
I was not talking about the monsters. I meant the people. They had probably never imagined they would die like this in a place like this. Truthfully, the monsters I was sitting on had been people too.
“I am sorry. But there was nothing else I could do.”
I patted the head of the corpse I sat on and muttered, then rummaged around for water.
“….”
Someone had collected rainwater. It smelled of earth and was muddy. So this was the foreigners’ district. They had said there was no investment in infrastructure. It looked like that had been true.
I scooped some up and drank, then spat out the grit left in my mouth. Time passed. The situation had been resolved, but there was not a single sign of the people who had somehow survived.
“Hello. Can you hear me.”
I contacted the Association through my smartphone.
— Hunter Yoo Chan-seok.
“The disturbance in the foreigners’ collective residential district is dealt with. Where should I gather the survivors?”
The Association President fell silent. I waited a moment, then gave a short, derisive laugh.
“So there is no rescue plan huh.”
— In the case of foreigners living in a collective residential district, they cannot leave the area except in situations defined by regulations.
Apparently, those regulations did not account for something like this.
“The foreigners turned into monsters.”
— Indeed.
Indeed, my ass.
“There really are a lot of people who think they are the only smart ones in the world, Mister President.”
— And what is that supposed to mean?
What do you think? I’ll explain it to you, so listen. Why are people so impatient?
“Now that foreigners have turned into monsters, people will use this as a pretext to tighten the entry procedures and conditions for them.”
More complicated procedures meant more places for bundles of cash to slip in. It was the same everywhere. Red tape got shortened with bribes.
“On top of that, people will start avoiding foreigners even more… And the ones who used to shout about foreigners’ rights will all shut their mouths.”
With fifteen hundred foreign nationals dead here, there was a lot to gain. When people were labeled as a risk, the public became very tolerant about their oppression.
“They will also argue that capable Hunters should cut back on outside activities and be used for internal security.”
That was the important part. The rest would happen, but would not affect me directly.
“Let me be clear. Do not think you can use this to put a leash on me.”
— I have no intention of trying that.
Of course he would say that. They all said that. Believing it would make me an idiot.
“One more thing. About the match with Hunter Choi Yeoreum.”
— We will decide that matter later through a meeting.
Decide through a meeting, my ass.
“Just keep Hunter Choi Yeoreum at rank three. Looks like everyone is desperate to do that anyway.”
The power of third place on the List of Hope did not come from the title itself. It came from the conviction that whoever held that spot truly had the skill to match it.
People had already seen me fight on equal footing with Choi Yeoreum and even seize the advantage. At this point, it no longer mattered whether my name officially appeared on the List of Hope.
My name, Yoo Chan-seok, already carried a value equal to a Hunter ranked third on that list. I had not been added to the list. But I had achieved something equivalent to being on it.
— In that case, is there anything you want in return?
“The crown.”
I don’t care about anything else, but I do need you to give me that.