Damn Hunter Life Chapter 24
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Against the backdrop of the black night sea, an even blacker black hole loomed.
This was the appearance of the first A-rank gate, the Busan Gate.
The scene under military control was chaotically littered with tangled debris and bloodstains. The red belonged to civilians or hunters, the blue was monster bodily fluids.
After the successors arrived, the outside was roughly cleaned up. Now the key was to defeat the boss monster inside the gate and close the rift.
Unlike the quiet outside.
“Jin Seol-woon! Fall back!”
A fierce battle was unfolding inside the gate.
The largest monster at the front was indeed a boss monster, but while it was huge and imposing, the fact that it charged at any living creature it encountered was no different from any common mob.
So theoretically, if they carefully avoided it while launching concentrated attacks to whittle down its health, it should be possible to defeat it.
But the monster’s rank wasn’t so lenient.
“Kugh…!”
Ma Cheon-ah, who had been about to swing her sword, was knocked back and crashed into the ground.
At the moment when she could have suffered major injuries that would prevent her from standing, Jin Seol-woon gritted his teeth and swung his arm.
Kuguugugung…!
The dragon familiar’s body used all its strength to ram into the boss monster, which was similar in size to itself. And from that impact, the dragon trembled and faded away.
The moment the dragon familiar exhausted its stamina and was reverse-summoned to its master, Jin Seol-woon also collapsed.
With the tanker with the strongest defense falling at the front, the remaining members…
Woo Sae-geon jumped down from the ox familiar he had been riding. He leaped like a bullet toward the front where the swarming monster horde was close, toward the center of the monsters where Jin Seol-woon had fallen, and shouted.
“Myo Cho-hui! Cover me!”
Rustle! Tree vines instantly grew from the ground, blocking the vicious monsters. A large green rabbit hopped out in the direction Myo Cho-hui’s hand pointed.
The successors’ familiars.
These beings in the form of the twelve zodiac animals had no personality and existed solely as tools for their masters.
The main role of familiars was as transportation within gates. Gates, especially stages, boasted vast spaces, so without familiars, strategy would often be delayed.
Additionally, earth attribute familiars serving as tankers had large size and hard skin, making them useful for ramming monsters. Dealer group familiars assisted with attacks, and water attribute familiars of healers shared some of the healing burden.
Moreover, the greatest advantage familiars possessed was that even when their master had used all their skills and was exhausted, they could fight to the end as long as the familiar’s stamina didn’t reach zero.
“…!”
The boss monster let out a piercing shriek—Kieek! The shockwave slammed directly into Myo Cho-hui’s small body.
Myo Cho-hui opened her tightly shut eyes. The rabbit familiar had blocked the shockwave in front of her instead. The familiar scattered into dust.
‘To summon a familiar again requires at least a day…’
Even as monsters swarmed toward her like bees, Woo Sae-geon’s twin swords remained steady and precise, scattering the severed torsos of five monsters along with tree vines through the air. However, he soon had to throw away one sword—to grab the fallen Jin Seol-woon.
“Damn…!”
Jin Seol-woon’s body was half-buried in the ground and wouldn’t come out easily. It seemed to be the aftermath of the dragon familiar’s reverse summoning.
While hastily embracing and dragging him out from behind, the area above Woo Sae-geon’s head darkened with the boss monster’s shadow.
Ma Cheon-ah, who had gotten up, screamed.
Ja Hyeong-woo, who was outside the gate, felt the terrible aura seeping from the entrance and whipped around to look at the gate.
When the successors arrived, dozens of monsters had already escaped from the gate and injured civilians. Therefore, after dealing with the monsters, two healers—Ja Hyeong-woo and Hae Mi-jun—were left outside to treat civilians while the remaining successors entered the gate.
After instructing all the civilians around to retreat beyond the safety zone, Ja Hyeong-woo crouched low and aimed at the rift.
A head large and hideous enough to swallow a person whole emerged first from the entrance. People’s screams echoed.
The boss monster had escaped outside the entrance.
‘Then surely, the four people who were inside the gate—!’
Ja Hyeong-woo couldn’t think any further and quickly jumped to avoid the spot. Bang! The boss monster’s attack struck where he had been.
“Take cover!”
Ja Hyeong-woo shouted toward the soldiers.
Of course, stages were more important than regular gates, but that didn’t mean blocking gates wasn’t important. Regular gates directly involved citizens’ lives.
While barely avoiding the boss monster’s attacks, Ja Hyeong-woo looked back at Hae Mi-jun. The youngest with the softest heart, who had never once risked the safety of a civilian on a single skill use…
Riding on the pig familiar he had recently manifested, he took on the role of directly luring the boss monster.
“My familiar is still fine! I’ll ride this and go around in a circle! In the meantime, Hyeong-woo hyung, please go into the gate and check if the others are safe…!”
Hae Mi-jun’s eyes welled up with tears, unable to bear the thought that they might be dead. However, the next instant, after roughly rubbing his eyes, Hae Mi-jun boldly climbed onto his familiar and galloped away.
From Hae Mi-jun’s image, one might have expected a cute, gentle pig that seemed useless in combat, but what he summoned was a wild boar the size of a house.
Temporarily freed from the boss monster, Ja Hyeong-woo was about to run toward the entrance when he stopped just in time.
Then a sigh of relief escaped.
Myo Cho-hui and Ma Cheon-ah, with all their limbs intact, suddenly emerged from inside the gate.
Ja Hyeong-woo quickly approached.
“What about Seol-woon and the leader?”
“They’re coming out behind us.”
Myo Cho-hui answered. Having shaken off his worry, Ja Hyeong-woo quickly and concisely conveyed the situation outside the gate. Including that Hae Mi-jun had lured the boss monster and was running toward the beach as a temporary measure.
Myo Cho-hui nodded and looked back at Ma Cheon-ah, who was hissing while soaked in monster fluids.
“Let’s return to school to rest and then come back. There’s a military unit behind us. They’ll buy us time while we gather our skill uses again.”
Ma Cheon-ah shook her head while breathing heavily from exhaustion.
“There’s one boss monster left.”
Just one left… Ma Cheon-ah muttered with lingering regret. However, Myo Cho-hui shook her head.
“You’ll die if you keep this up.”
“No! It’s not over yet! Even without skills, if we keep slashing with bare hands! It doesn’t make sense for us successors to borrow military strength!”
It was Woo Sae-geon, who had just emerged from the gate, who struck the back of the raging Ma Cheon-ah’s neck with his hand.
He was already carrying the unconscious Jin Seol-woon on one shoulder while catching the falling Ma Cheon-ah with his other arm.
“Do as Myo Cho-hui says. It’s already been discussed with the military.”
The leader had made the decision. Then in his judgment, this method was unavoidable.
The person who would least want to borrow outsiders’ help would be Woo Sae-geon himself.
The school return function had restrictions. It couldn’t be used inside gates or within a certain range of monsters. Therefore, now was the only time to return.
Woo Sae-geon naturally assumed he would remain and wait until Hae Mi-jun returned. He had Myo Cho-hui carry Ma Cheon-ah and return first, then tried to hand Jin Seol-woon over to Ja Hyeong-woo, but Ja Hyeong-woo resisted.
“I have one debuff skill left.”
Ja Hyeong-woo insisted that he should be the one to remain at the end.
“When Mi-jun comes back around with the boss, I’ll use the skill on the boss then immediately hand over the monster luring role to the military and return with Mi-jun right away. Please return first.”
The two men’s gazes clashed for a moment. Woo Sae-geon was the first to turn his head away.
“I trust you won’t do anything reckless.”
As requested, Ja Hyeong-woo remained alone.
The healer stayed behind, waiting for the other healer who had gone to lure monsters.
Ja Hyeong-woo’s motto.
Healers have no obligation to face monsters. They stay furthest from dirty and dangerous work.
Devoting healing skills to sacrificing tankers and sweating dealers is the healer’s only duty.
If he had to allocate one healing skill to himself due to his own injury, that would be humiliation.
But if both tankers and dealers were swept away and only the healer remained, then the story was different. What other options does a healer have in such a situation?
Ja Hyeong-woo thought of the unconscious tanker and the dealers who were bleeding and exhausted everywhere. He keenly felt his own inadequacy in not having the skill to recover them all at once.
‘If I had a familiar too…’
But I destroyed it by my own will. I thought that was right at the time.
Because it tried to kill Gang-hyeon.
Ja Hyeong-woo stood powerlessly, reminiscing about the past inappropriately for the situation.
I was wrong.
Maybe what Successor Woo Sae-geon said to me on that first day of combat was right.
‘He said your friend Gang-hyeon would ultimately ruin you and hold you back.’
Ja Hyeong-woo glanced at the water energy flowing through his body without expectation, then suddenly widened his eyes at a suddenly detected presence and doubted what he had just felt.
‘A familiar… is nearby?’
Gang-hyeon should have destroyed it. Was there some mistake?
“Hyeong-woo hyung!”
At that moment, Hae Mi-jun riding his wild boar approached, raising sand dust. Ja Hyeong-woo looked up.
As soon as he saw that scene, he grimly narrowed his brow.
‘Too close.’
The boss monster was sticking too close to the wild boar’s rear end. The wild boar’s speed didn’t seem very fast.
But instead of wasting time in bewilderment, Ja Hyeong-woo immediately prepared his debuff skill. Aiming his staff at the boss monster, he exchanged glances with the charging Hae Mi-jun.
“Huk!”
Crisis rapidly overwhelmed the two healers. The wild boar had been rammed by the boss monster. Hae Mi-jun was thrown out like a fallen leaf and rolled on the ground.
At that moment, Ja Hyeong-woo made a swift decision to protect someone younger than himself.
In addition to the debuff skill, he summoned a talisman, a long-range throwing weapon. The talisman flew toward the boss’s head like a bullet.
Of course, an attack from a healer who doesn’t mainly engage in combat wouldn’t work in the first place.
But since it drew the boss monster’s attention, since the boss monster turned away from Hae Mi-jun, that was enough.
Ja Hyeong-woo closed his eyes.
==
<Status>
The dog successor is approaching.
==
Gang-hyeon witnessed with his own eyes Ja Hyeong-woo standing still as if resigned, and the boss monster charging at him.
His sneakers struck the ground more sharply as he moved forward.
Toward the scene before his eyes that he absolutely must not miss.
==
/Successor Gang-hyeon, are you ready this time?
==
Instead of answering, Gang-hyeon ran faster, intercepting between Ja Hyeong-woo and the boss monster.
This was the first time the status window had referred to him as a successor.
Ja Hyeong-woo suddenly opened his eyes. White cloth fluttered at the edge of his vision, making him freeze in shock as he grasped the situation.
Gang-hyeon kicked off the ground, leaped up, and struck the ground with his left foot.
Kuguung—! The entire area shook. Following that, a crack starting from the sword Gang-hyeon had driven into the ground split through the earth with a ripping sound and shot toward the monster like an arrow.
It hit the boss monster’s body precisely.
It was a solid, direct hit that the monster, whose life had already been greatly reduced by the previous successors’ attacks, could no longer withstand.
The rupturing sound of the monster that had driven them to the brink of death made the entire area go deaf, then silence came.
“…”
Ja Hyeong-woo, who had been blankly listening only to his own surprised breathing, sensed something wrong.
The boss monster had been dead for a while, but Gang-hyeon, who had his back turned, wasn’t moving from that spot.
The foot that had pushed the ground to create a small mound of earth didn’t budge. The hand gripping the sword was also frozen in that same state.
Soon, instead of pulling out the sword driven into the ground, his grip slowly released the sword.
His thin body wearing only the white robe slowly tilted. His waist bent first. Then his ankle twisted.
Bright red blood gushed from his mouth.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
