Chapter 144
ㅡKWAAAANG!!
As Minyumi's booster unleashed a tremendous roar and spewed blue flames, the enemies were instantly knocked around in a chaotic flurry of bangs and thuds.
“Oh my God.”
For some reason, Minyumi seems to keep getting stronger even though we haven't really upgraded her since the last part swap, and while Utaha unnie isn't going all out, they look evenly matched from the outside.
Even so, a B+ rank instance gate still isn't easy. The 26 of us are split into the front line, middle, and rear, each doing our own jobs. The monsters that come out of here are giant humanoid monsters: minotaurs and trolls.
The two monsters are hostile toward each other, but for some reason they don't fight inside this gate. According to Nova's investigation team, it's apparently something like a border line? A ceasefire line? That kind of feeling.
ㅡKWOOOOOR!
“Nak-aeng.”
With Utaha unnie's absurdly overpowered combat strength, the front line—the part that should have been the hardest—is fighting completely comfortably. Of course, that's also because Minyumi is fighting incredibly well.
“How is it, Byeongho? Think we can get all the way to the boss?”
“If we just keep pushing forward like this, it seems like we can.”
The ones who decide whether the raiding party advances or retreats are the tanks and bruisers in the front line. Since the side that actually trades blows with the monsters up front has it harder, the front line checks their condition and decides whether we can keep going or whether it's time to go back.
Of course, if the back line pumps in healing and buffs at full power, the front line can hold out longer.
“Both eyes...!”
ㅡGRAAAH!
As Yeonwoo unnie sealed both of the minotaur's eyes with her overpowered combat prowess, it wildly flailed its greatsword around until the blade got stuck in the ground. In the meantime, Utaha unnie raced up the minotaur's buried greatsword and arm, tatatatata, and cleanly chopped off its neck.
ㅡTHUD!
“Ooh.”
Over there, while Byeongho sunbae blocked the troll's charge with a bang, Minyumi appeared behind it and sliced its head in half with a swish.
Choa just ran in at absurd speed and slammed the troll's knee with her gauntlet, bang!
Trolls are so heavy that if their knees start hurting, they turn into dumb sandbags that can't even walk properly. Then Gyeongwon sunbae pops flames on top of that dumb sandbag, and that's the end of it.
“Everyone's fighting so well....”
“P-please get healed~! It's healing time~!”
The Japanese exchange student who came to our class in a pair with Utaha unnie was a healer girl named Asakura Yui. She was super kind but kind of clumsy, so she was weirdly popular. She went to Gyeongwon sunbae's raiding party, which didn't have a healer, while on our side Sana unnie keeps healing us with multi-target heals even in the middle of battle.
“Oh, this is nice.”
After shaking the blood off his sword, Byeongho sunbae straightened his back and swept his gaze around. Monsters had died all over the place, and just in the area we could see there were about ten trolls and minotaurs over three meters tall lying dead.
“Gyeongwon, where's the base here? Let me see the map for a second.”
“It's Base 6. It's about 21 km from the entrance.”
“Might be about time to head out.”
The two raiding parties rested for a bit at a rest base the Nova Guild had set up. On the C-route we're taking, a mid-boss appears after about 25 km.
To rest for a moment and refuel, we ate the simple food brought by Min Harin unnie, the psychokinesis user from Gyeongwon sunbae's raiding party, and Kim Doyoon sunbae, who has the inventory skill, from our team.
“Oh, sandwiches.”
“Ahem. They're homemade.”
“Thanks, Eve. I'll eat well.”
“Yep.”
Apparently, as part of training they normally eat some absurdly brick-hard food, but since there are overseas S-rank hunters too, Ophelia said she'd solve the problem the school had been worrying over and made these instead. Everyone lavished praise on the ridiculously delicious sandwiches.
“Nyang nyang.”
“No, Bya. Do you eat things like this every day?”
“This? Hmm... I don't think it's every day.”
“Right?”
Utaha unnie, who'd been listening from the side, took a small bite of the sandwich and let out a faint laugh. I didn't really know what was so funny, but she was pretty when she smiled.
* * * * *
“We're going in all at once. If we succeed, we'll get the reward money, go back to our homeland, and live large.”
“A, understood....”
One assassin-class Awakened with a skill that suppresses noise, one low-rank earth mage. One archer-class Awakened with x-ray vision, and even the team leader who can erase traces of magic.
The four-member Chinese crew arrived near the gate owned by Nova at Gasan Digital Complex, with the assembled machine brought over from the mainland loaded in the car trunk.
The plan is this. The earth mage pushes the assembled gate-break inducing machine down beneath the ground, slowly shaving away the asphalt beneath it until it reaches directly under the gate. Then, through the tunnel that appears, they send the 300 kg of mana stones procured from a local businessman along the same route.
Another member suppresses the noise generated by this act so they won't be noticed. The team leader and the earth mage communicate in real time, and using the clairvoyance skill, they make sure it doesn't get caught on obstacles such as steel frames or power lines underground.
After all, most of those obstacles are scheduled to collapse once the gate rampage begins anyway, but it was to prevent the power lines from shorting against the machine and destroying the device.
“A little lower. Keep pushing it in straight.”
The Chinese crew's vehicle parked on the shoulder had been modified, with a hole punched through the center of the undercarriage and the chassis lowered. If they wandered around outside carrying a mysterious heavy machine about the size of an adult man's upper torso, they'd obviously get caught.
They parked the vehicle on the asphalt, lowered the machine through the hole in the car's floor, then drilled the asphalt to match it. They took great care to make sure it couldn't be seen from outside.
“Noise suppression is working properly, right?”
“It is.”
The gate was about 250 meters away from the shoulder where the vehicle was parked. It was just barely within range of the earth mage's magic.
“Done, it's all drilled through. The machine is right under the gate now.”
“Now just jam the mana stones straight into the path the machine made.”
“Confirmed.”
The mana stones, packed in tough burlap sacks, followed the exact route the machine had carved and came to rest near the machine. The earth mage pulled out a sharp stone shard from nearby, tore the sack open, and then compacted the machine and the spilling mana stones tightly into the soil.
ㅡWIIIIIIIIIING
“It worked..! Hurry up and cover the asphalt and move the car!”
“It's already covered! Go, go, go!”
Almost instantly, alarms announcing an open-type gate began ringing from the utility poles nearby. Originally, a gate is a hole formed when mana in the air condenses like a black hole.
That is why the academic consensus is that open-type gates do not occur around instance-type gates that periodically absorb a set amount of ambient mana.
The machine made in China grinds up mana stones packed full of mana and sprays them out, forcibly raising ambient mana saturation and artificially generating a gate.
“What? Where did a gate appear?”
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP- BEEP-BEEP-BEEP- BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-
“Uh, why is the gate status like this..?!”
If you inject a large amount of mana into an instance-type gate that absorbs mana, you can forcibly create a gate break. A normal gate break occurs when an instance-type gate reaches the end of its lifespan because it wasn't periodically replenished with the proper amount of mana.
But an artificially induced early gate break is caused by forcibly pumping in even more mana until it bursts. The more mana you force in, the more difficult the resulting gate break becomes.
The former is called a dissipation-type gate break, the latter a backflow-type gate break.
The ambient mana saturation around them was rapidly rising, and the utility poles fitted with mana detectors and the gate detection bureau had begun sensing danger, but no new gate was actually opening.
ㅡWOOOOOOONG..!!
The gate that Eve and the A-class students of Seoul Aegis had entered began to ripple.
* * * * *
ㅡKSSSHHH....
“This is Baek Sangjun.”
“Baek Sangjun-ssi! The gate status is abnormal! Please evacuate the students and guide them out as quickly as possible!”
“Huh? What the—understood.”
Having heard that something had gone wrong outside, Baek Sangjun, who was holding a radio near the entrance, immediately contacted the students.
“Guys, where are you now?”
“Ah, teacher. We're at Base 5 right now.”
“Hurry up and wrap things up, then come out by the shortest route. I'll come meet you, so hurry as fast as possible.”
“Huh? Did something happen?”
“It did. Hurry up and get out. I'm not joking.”
“...Yep, understood.”
ㅡclick
Baek Sangjun shoved the disconnected phone into his pocket, cracked his neck back and forth like he was loosening up, shook out his fingers, then stretched out a hand in front of him.
“Sea Wave.”
ㅡKUGUGUGUGUNG..!
A vibration rang up from beneath the ground, and soon a huge stream of water surged up from the floor, following the direction of Baek Sangjun's fingertips. As the unnatural cylindrical stream of water poured forward as if flowing through the inside of a thick hose, Baek Sangjun plunged his whole body into the stream and let himself be carried forward by the current.
* * * * *
“This is... a warning sign of a backflow-type gate break.”
“Why? A gate that was being well managed, why would it...?”
The Korea Hunter Association's gate detection team, Nova, the hunter guild under the Oseong Group, and even Aegis's faculty office exchanged information in real time and moved to grasp the situation.
“We don't know the reason. The ambient mana saturation suddenly shot up.... It's already impossible to stop. At this rate, the gate will collapse in 37 minutes.”
“The silver lining is that Japanese S-rank hunter Tennoji Utaha and Hunter Baek Sangjun are inside.”
Starting at 10 o'clock, it took Aegis's A-class students two hours to reach the 5th base at the 25 km mark. Of course, that was by following the route, and since they moved while slowly conserving stamina, it wouldn't take two hours to get back.
“If a backflow-type gate break begins, the monsters inside will go berserk, the environment will warp, and the students inside may not be able to get out of the gate.”
“Why now, of all times..!”
With even an overseas S-rank hunter present, if that really happened, it could cause a huge problem both at home and abroad.
“Hoo....”
“Geez, whether it's because I'm getting old or because of the situation, my head's throbbing.”
As Association Chairman Cheon Tae-seong and Aegis principal Han Baek-ryeong grew more and more worried, Cheon Tae-seong's personal mobile phone began to ring.
ㅡDoo-roo-roo, doo-roo-roo....
“At a time like this, who could it be...?”
[Ophelia, Eve Hunter's guardian]