#174
“Let’s go.”
The red flare in the crimson sky was faint but the most definite sign. As soon as Yoon Pa-ran spotted it, he immediately changed direction and ran at full speed.
Dan Joo-hyuk, who had been shoulder-to-shoulder with Yoon Pa-ran until now, started taking the lead. Yoon Pa-ran was concerned that Dan’s injuries hadn’t fully healed yet, so he ran hard to keep up.
When they finally arrived, a strange sight unfolded before them.
“Ka, kaheuk…!”
A hunter, presumably the one who fired the flare, was sprawled on the ground with injuries. There must have been a brief battle as several monsters had collapsed nearby.
The voices of hunters who had arrived before Yoon Pa-ran grew louder as they frantically surrounded the fallen hunter.
“Sh-shit, hurry up and heal him!”
“The potion isn’t working well!”
“Just pour in everything we’ve got!”
In front of these hunters was a strange colony of monsters. Monsters with different shapes and attributes were inexplicably clustered together in a dome formation.
The grotesquely clustered monsters remained quiet without attacking the hunters. This was bizarre behavior, unlike monsters that typically charge at humans on sight.
After maintaining this standoff for a while, part of the monster colony began to move again. It looked as if some monsters might break away to attack, so Yoon Pa-ran immediately stepped in front of the injured hunter upon arrival.
“Gather him up and fall back, everyone.”
“Y-yes!”
Dan Joo-hyuk naturally stood beside him.
From the front, the clustered monsters looked even more surreal. The more Yoon Pa-ran observed, the more he couldn’t shake the feeling that it resembled a giant egg.
As if protecting something in the center.
And hunters who had seen the flare continued to gather.
“Damn, what is that?”
“This is the only place where a flare went up, right?”
“Yeah. Everyone seems to have gathered, but what the hell…”
“Why aren’t the monsters attacking and just staying like that, damn it.”
The hunters each threw out bewildered comments as they arrived and saw the strangely clustered monsters.
Yoon Pa-ran was equally perplexed. Should they destroy it now?
Monsters with exceptionally hard outer shells were surrounding the exterior in a rounded formation, as if blocking intrusion from outside. Yoon Pa-ran carefully searched for a weak spot.
Then Dan Joo-hyuk leaned toward him and approached his ear.
“Mr. Yoon Pa-ran.”
“Yes?”
His whispered voice penetrated Yoon Pa-ran’s ear clearly despite the chaotic situation.
“Do you feel anything special?”
“Hmm…”
While he still didn’t feel anything particular, that monster colony was suspicious enough without any special feeling.
By the way, isn’t he a bit too close, even for a whisper?
His ear tickled. He could feel his fine hairs standing up with each of Dan Joo-hyuk’s breaths.
But Yoon Pa-ran soon remembered the presence of other hunters. Perhaps Dan wanted to be careful since many high-ranked hunters had good hearing.
Dan Joo-hyuk’s face, which Yoon Pa-ran glanced up at, seemed somewhat rigid. Was Dan feeling tense too?
“I’m not sure, but it looks suspicious, so I think we need to destroy it.”
“Right.”
Seeing that face, Yoon Pa-ran could confirm his thoughts. It seemed Dan was determined to hide Yoon Pa-ran’s abilities and was therefore more tense.
Focusing on what was right in front of them, Yoon Pa-ran failed to notice that the hunters behind them were looking at him and Dan with wavering eyes.
“Be careful.”
“What are you going to do?”
As soon as their conversation ended, Dan Joo-hyuk stepped slightly forward. Yoon Pa-ran asked urgently as Dan seemed about to do something.
At that moment, a huge wall of fire rose up, encircling the monster colony.
“Ah.”
Yoon Pa-ran let out an exclamation despite himself. Dan Joo-hyuk turned slightly and spoke.
The reddish firelight cast deep shadows on Dan Joo-hyuk’s face.
“For now… I’m preventing them from escaping.”
His gaze fixed firmly on Yoon Pa-ran. For some reason, Yoon Pa-ran couldn’t take his eyes off that face and stared blankly for a while.
After snapping back to reality, he encouraged him.
“Y-yeah. Good job.”
He had been worried about Dan Joo-hyuk’s deep injuries, but it seemed he had recovered enough to use his skills again.
Krrrrk…
As the wall of fire closed in from all sides, the monsters’ gloomy cries grew louder. Dan Joo-hyuk left only a portion of the fire wall open in the front, seemingly intending to limit the escape route for the monsters.
“Um, Hunter Yoon Pa-ran?”
At that moment, several hunters from behind called out. They probably wanted to signal the beginning of the charge.
Yoon Pa-ran, who had already drawn his sword, turned to them and said:
“Yeah, I’ll go ahead and clear a path. Help me if it looks like I’ll be surrounded.”
“Ah, yes.”
A hunter who appeared to be A-rank nodded respectfully to Yoon Pa-ran’s words. Yoon Pa-ran remembered him as somewhat stubborn, but fortunately, he seemed cooperative given the crisis.
“Hoo…”
With that, Yoon Pa-ran exhaled deeply and charged forward.
“…”
Dan Joo-hyuk, who had followed Yoon Pa-ran, swung his sword wide. As if deliberately infusing it with Yoon Pa-ran’s energy, a white flame shot forward in a semicircle.
Yoon Pa-ran, who had approached closely as if chasing Dan’s skill, swung his sword to add strength. Although he infused more [Sacred Energy] than Dan Joo-hyuk, their glowing white skills overlapped, making it difficult to distinguish whose was whose.
He had already made excuses for his skills suddenly displaying great power, but having them blend with Dan Joo-hyuk’s power was more reassuring.
With a loud boom, part of the monster wall collapsed. Monsters that had barely been scratched by other hunters’ attacks until now fell to the ground in fragments.
Yoon Pa-ran quickly stepped back, waiting for the next attack. He thought the monsters would now abandon their strange formation and counterattack.
“Hmm.”
But the monsters only huddled more tightly to fill the gap. Such control even after being directly attacked was extraordinarily strange.
“Looks like we found the right place,” Dan Joo-hyuk muttered with certainty.
Dan Joo-hyuk raised his sword to eye level and took a deep breath. A bright, massive flame began to grow from his sword.
When it had grown much longer than the sword itself, Dan Joo-hyuk swung it forcefully.
The ground trembled at the sound of the sword colliding with the monsters. Considering he didn’t use Yoon Pa-ran’s skill this time, Dan Joo-hyuk’s power was truly formidable.
The monsters where he attacked began to crumble bit by bit, just as when Yoon Pa-ran attacked. The fragments of the monsters’ bodies beat against the wall of fire like rain before turning into smoke.
As the monster wall that had been blocking their view partially collapsed, what was revealed was, surprisingly, a person.
A person holding something in their arms in the center of those monsters.
“Wh-what is that?”
“…a person?”
The hunters who had been preparing with their weapons behind them uttered with trembling voices. Yoon Pa-ran also stared blankly at the “person” inside.
He had thought someone might be moving with an axis item, but actually seeing a person appear in such a bizarre way was astounding.
Everyone was speechless at this unexpected situation. One of the hunters looked at the face of the person inside the monster colony and said in a startled voice:
“Wait, isn’t that a congressman?”
The murmuring grew louder. Several hunters confirmed that it seemed to be true and couldn’t hide their surprise.
Yoon Pa-ran belatedly confirmed the face of the person standing inside.
It was Kim Tae-jun, who had attacked Yoon Pa-ran with Park Jung-hoon on the winter mountain.
“You, damn, unbelieving bastards…!”
As someone recognized him, Kim Tae-jun slowly raised his head.
Kim Tae-jun’s eyes were fiercely raised toward the sky, unlike how they appeared on the news. Black smoke was rising from his open mouth. It was an eerie appearance, as if a fire was burning from within.
As they peeled away one layer of the monsters’ defensive wall, the energy that Yoon Pa-ran and Dan Joo-hyuk had been looking for flowed out. It was as if a dam holding the energy of the [■■■ fragment] had burst.
In that situation, Yoon Pa-ran’s gaze shifted to the huge sword that Kim Tae-jun was embracing.
So that’s the axis item.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
