Chapter 90
“Damn it, what now.”
A Gate opened in the middle of a road in downtown Seoul, and a huge number of cars were stuck in traffic. Even at a distance too far for a civilian phone’s magic-sensing function to pick up, the vehicles had already come to a standstill.
ㅡDing-ding
“Oh, hey. Looks like a Gate broke open up ahead.”
“Why, did you get some call or something?”
“You don’t turn off safety alert texts while you’re out? Turn them on.”
“I turned them off when they were sending those damn poop balloons.”
It happened to be 9 a.m., when traffic was heavy. In an instant, even Hunter vehicles couldn’t move properly on the road, jammed solid by the cars.
ㅡThud thud thud thud….
“What is it, what’s that sound.”
“Shit, is it a monster..?!”
The unidentified thumping sound kept getting closer and closer. For some reason, it was coming not from the front where the Gate had burst open and blocked traffic, but from behind.
Right now, the road was packed with cars, so the side mirrors couldn’t properly show what was happening.
ㅡWhirr
“Hey, hey, roll the window up, you asshole! What if something dangerous is coming!”
“No, I was just going to check for a second…. Wait, what is that.”
“Why, what is it?”
ㅡThud, thud, thud, thud….
On the silent road where no one could move and everything had stopped, two women were riding atop a giant mechanical horse, racing between the cars.
“Whoa... what the hell is that.”
* * * * *
“Wow, it’s huge.”
I turned the car—the most expensive thing in our house after me, Ophelia, Minyumi, Suri, and Daengdaeng—into a golem. Since all the cars on the road had stopped, there was no way to move, so I did it like this.
As expected, expensive cars really were something else. What came out was a horse that was insanely huge, incredibly strong, and fast. And this time, I hadn’t just made it from a car like last time—I’d also put in the composite rare metal Ophelia had made as a test and some magic stone too.
“Woooah.”
“Princess, please hold on tight so you don’t fall off.”
“Yep, hehe.”
I’d originally planned to go between the cars, but it was so massive that it would’ve been impossible unless the gaps were pretty wide. After veering off the road a few times too, we reached the place where the Gate had appeared in an instant at incredible speed.
“W-what is that.”
“A Hunter?”
Some Hunters nearby were thankfully keeping the monsters that came out of the Gate under control, but with no proper police line set up, it was still a dangerous situation.
ㅡSnort..!!
With Ophelia’s top-notch riding skills, she stopped Lois (the horse’s name; I named it) and immediately entered combat mode.
“Princess, Suri and Minyumi.”
Ophelia surged forward quickly, drawing blue threads to wipe out the monsters coming this way.
“Minyumi! Suri! Respond to the princess’s call— !!”
ㅡWuuung..!!
Bright sky-blue magic hummed at my fingertips, and Suri and Minyumi appeared before me in an instant.
ㅡClack!
ㅡKiiit..!
“Charge! Wipe out the monsters!”
ㅡKwaaaang!!
Minyumi blasted forward at incredible speed, boosters roaring from its back, while Suri shot up into the sky in a flash. I practiced the pose and voice tone like crazy just to make it look cool..!
“Hehe... mm, it’s cold.”
A padded jacket doesn’t really look cool, so I stuffed hand warmers into every nook and cranny, but cold is cold.
ㅡSshhk..!
While I was summoning Suri and Minyumi, Ophelia had already come back after slicing up a few monsters that looked like furious six-legged hippos.
“Well done.”
“Hehe, really?”
Because this was right in the middle of downtown Seoul, a lot of Hunters had rushed in even though the Gate looked low-ranked. Aside from a few cars that had been too close and got damaged, the damage stopped at the asphalt being busted up.
“Whoa, it’s Union!”
And surprisingly, the Union Guild—said to show up with odds similar to winning the lottery—had arrived even faster than Nova’s patrol team.
And even more than that, Kim Hyukseon, a veteran Union Guild Hunter who’s hard to even see in person and one of the very top Hunters in one-on-one combat against medium-to-small monsters, had shown up too.
“Let’s finish this as quickly as possible.”
“Yes!”
It feels different from what I saw on the gallery. Unlike the image of them always crawling in late, ganging up on the boss monster, and leaving with only the magic stones, about six people—roughly half the raid party—had already been thrown into the fight before even the mid-boss appeared, and they were leading the battle proactively.
“Hey! Are you with a guild?!”
“N-no!”
“Then step back for a moment! You could get caught up in this!”
A Union Hunter who looked like a commander, probably a buffer, pushed back a few people who were near the Gate and gave the Union Hunters a powerful buff.
ㅡCrackle..!
“Woooah..!”
As an enormous amount of magic power was released, the footwork of Union’s six Hunters instantly became unbelievably fast.
ㅡSwaaaash!!
And there was even someone shooting arrows from atop a truck a little behind us. Arrows imbued with powerful magic curved like guided missiles and crushed the head of a bluish gorilla monster.
“Hooeek..!”
“I should join in too.”
“O-Ophelia?!”
“Princess, please move a little farther back. If need be, you can infuse Daengdaeng with magic power!”
“Ah, okay!”
ㅡBeep-beep!!
Ophelia suddenly leaped high into the air with a thud-!, then strung blue threads like a spiderweb between the nearby traffic lights and street signs to make footholds.
Chararak—!
She landed on them precisely as if tightrope-walking, then lifted a huge sniper rifle and started helping Suri and Minyumi in the fight.
ㅡKwooooaar!!!
The giant, berserk gorilla tried to block Suri’s Bird Strike, which came stabbing down from the sky, by slamming both hands into the ground and lifting up thickly split pieces of asphalt with its hands.
But that attempt was immediately pointless.
ㅡBang!!!
Ophelia’s sniper rifle cleanly pierced its forearm, and the asphalt it had lifted over its head fell onto its own face before dropping back to the ground.
In the meantime, Suri’s Ultimate Omega Bird Strike powered up even more, and just before landing, it spun its sharp, blade-like wings at high speed and turned it into a gore-rilla.
“That was so freaking cool—!!!”
There were a lot of Hunters participating, but the Gate itself wasn’t exactly low-difficulty. More importantly, the most numerous trash mobs were some kind of tongue-lolling, crazy deer? gazelle? thing.
“There!! They’re running away!!”
“Hooeek!!”
The pro Hunters tried to follow the gazelles to reduce civilian damage, but they were fast and could jump like five meters at a time, so it wasn’t easy.
“D-Daengdaeng—!!”
ㅡGrrrrr..!!!
As magic power was swiftly infused into it, Daengdaeng’s size increased 500-fold, and it darted between the cars, crunching down on the backs of the gazelles’ necks as they fled from the Hunters.
“Woooah!! Smash them all to bits—!!”
Just in case, I was holding a pistol too, but the gazelles didn’t make any threatening moves toward me at all. I guess even they could tell I wasn’t an easy opponent.
ㅡGrrrrr..!!!
“Ah, you were there too.”
Actually, it was because the huge, muscle-packed Lois behind me was stomping around and pouring out a menacing aura.
“Hehe, anyway, doesn’t that mean I’m amazing!”
“Princess, give Minyumi a boost.”
“Ah, did something appear?”
In the meantime, Ophelia came down from the blue spiderweb she had made in the sky, withdrew her gun, hoisted me up in one go, and retreated a little farther back.
“I think the boss is about to appear.”
“Eep. What about the mid-boss?”
“There.”
Where Ophelia pointed was a gigantic radioactive rhinoceros, its head separated from its body and rolling around. As expected, Kim Hyukseon had already taken it down in an instant before we even realized it had appeared.
‘Kim Hyukseon... he’s incredibly strong after all.’
A top-tier A-rank Hunter was coolly shaking the blood off his two swords atop the corpse beneath his feet.
Then the navy-colored Gate, which looked like a hole had been punched in the air, made a woo-woo-woong, wa-wa-wa-wang sound as it wriggled around and spat out a super-giant polluted elephant like it was throwing up.
“Ugh!! It’s so ugly!!”
Its trunk was stretched long as if someone had grabbed and yanked it, and spikes were jutting up all over. It was even split in two, so it had two trunks.
ㅡKiiiiiieek!!!!
The boss elephant let out a dying metallic roar the moment it appeared, putting on its entrance cutscene right away. It instantly swept away the monster corpses around it with its two-pronged whip trunk, then began walking forward with great majesty.
And standing in its way were Kim Hyukseon, a top-tier A-rank Hunter and core damage dealer of Union’s main raid force, and our ridiculously cool super-ultimate omega hyper-strong Minyumi (probably S-rank).
“...What is this.”
ㅡClick!
Minyumi gave Kim Hyukseon a thumbs-up, then set its stance and immediately fired the boosters on its back and charged.
“Hey, hey!”
Kim Hyukseon picked up speed, sticking close behind Minyumi as it charged ahead first.
“Hey, are you even human?”
ㅡNod-nod
“Damn. What is it? Doesn’t look like it.”
Even the Union Guild members nearby were astonished at Minyumi’s agility, which was moving nearly neck and neck with Kim Hyukseon’s speed—something most Hunters couldn’t even come close to.
“What the hell is that thing? It’s keeping up with Hyukseon hyung’s speed?”
“The gear on its back must be ridiculously expensive.”
“To withstand that output in the first place, its rank itself would have to be high.”
“That bird too, and that wolf over there. Where did they all come from?”
They were showering Minyumi with praise for its fighting power. Just as the giant boss elephant’s whip strike swept across the asphalt and rushed toward Minyumi with enough force to crush the ground,
ㅡKWAAAANG!!
Minyumi angled its boosters sharply toward the ground and shot up into the sky in an instant. With its shield briefly deactivated, Minyumi’s gaze flicked toward me for a moment.
‘Now..!’
“Minyumi—!!! You’ve got this—!!!”
At the moment its thrust reached its limit, the boosters pointed skyward and a bright blue aura wrapped around Minyumi’s body. Enveloped in immense magic power and driven by jet-like booster thrust, Minyumi’s blade turned downward.
ㅡKWAAAAAAAANG!!!!!
With a sound like a meteor falling, Minyumi’s blade sliced through the giant elephant’s back and flank, and the road surface shattered with a crunch.
ㅡKwoooong..!!!
Dust rose high, with fragments scattering around. Then a “koo-woong!” sound echoed once more from within the dust, and before long Minyumi swung its blade and burst out of the haze.
“Hooouuung!!! Great job, Minyumi-ang!!!!”
ㅡClick!!
When the dust settled, all that remained was the gigantic polluted elephant, lying on its side and snoring away while spilling out what looked like a bowl of guts-and-blood gukbap.
I could feel the Union Guild’s eyes, which had been watching the scene in disbelief, turning toward me as Minyumi came over.
‘Heh-heh, that’s right! It’s me, Eve!!’
Then came Fenrir Daengdaeng, having feasted on the gazelles, and Suri, who snapped its wings shut and landed quickly at my side. Even Ophelia, leading Lois, came up close.
“Princess, good work.”
“Ehehe, everyone did amazingly!!”
The road situation wasn’t great, but we handled it incredibly quickly. I could even feel the people in the cars cracking their doors open and peeking out at me.
And then.
“Nice to meet you. I don’t recognize your face, so are you perhaps a civilian Hunter?”
“Eh.”
The Union Guild was talking to Ophelia, not me.
‘This world is messed up. I’ll smash everything to bits.’
I’m going toxic.