Chapter 761
No matter how powerful a monster is, unless it possesses regenerative abilities that surpass a troll’s, it will die if its neck or heart is pierced.
Just like now.
Swish!
A neck jerked back in haste. But it was already too late to evade the spearhead driving forward without pause.
No, my strike had been far too fast and far too precise to let it escape.
Squelch!
The spearhead pierced the Adam’s apple, tore through flesh and bone, and burst out the other side.
Its eyes flew wide open in agony. From its slightly parted mouth came the sound of boiling blood and phlegm.
Gurgle. Gurgle…
It really did have tenacious vitality.
But now it was time to put an end to it.
“Farewell.”
Whoosh!
The flames infused into the spearhead exploded. A neck as thick as a tree trunk was severed in an instant and sent flying through the air.
Ding.
[You have defeated [Lv.140 Minotauros Lord]!]
[You have acquired a massive amount of experience and fame!]
[Level Up!]
As the system notifications rang in my ears, I slowly turned around.
The battlefield had fallen silent.
The humans and monsters who had been locked in fierce combat just moments ago were all staring at me.
At me, standing before the collapsed corpse of the monster.
At me, who was hope to some and a calamity itself to others.
And toward those who had all stopped as if by prior agreement, I kicked the Minotauros Lord’s head rolling across the ground.
Whoosh, thud!
The severed head shot high into the air, then dropped into the center of the battlefield.
The kickoff that signaled the start of this battle’s second half.
No, its final act.
But to move the players who had lost their nerve, a word from the referee was needed.
“What are you doing? Kill every last one.”
The eyes of two entirely different races widened at the same time, but the emotions inside them were different.
Humans felt joy.
Monsters felt fear.
And the moment those countless gazes carrying different emotions left me and turned toward one another—
“Waaaaah!”
With a deafening roar, the wave of humans, now certain of victory, crashed down on the monsters.
Screeeech! Squelch!
“Come at me, you damn monster bastards!”
But why was that guy always at the very front?
‘Is he the Lee Wan-yong of the monster world or something?’
Shaking my head at the sight of Skeleton King cleaving through monsters left and right with his halberd, I charged toward the already half-collapsed monster ranks.
Swish swish swish, slash!
Right.
The battle wasn’t over yet.
Only slaughter remained.
The slaughter that began at dusk did not end until deep into the night.
The Minotauros legion, having lost its leader and been seized by fear, collapsed in an instant and scattered in every direction. Somehow, I ended up as the field commander, and I decided their fate with a single, simple order.
“Pursue them. Even if you have to turn the entire city upside down.”
What followed was truly a hunt.
True to the name Hunter, they became hunters and ground the already shattered Minotauros legion into dust.
“You sons of bitches!”
“Jonas, this is for you! Kill them all!”
Whoosh! Crash!
“Groooaan!”
A Hunter’s life is one where a single stroke of bad luck can end everything.
But how many people can accept a comrade’s death as just part of the job?
The grief they had felt again and again throughout the day turned into immense rage, and another name for victory was retaliation.
“Minotauros group spotted! They’re moving toward the international airport!”
“What should we do?”
“Huh?”
“Please give us your orders!”
Uh…
I was caught a little off guard.
I had no idea why they were asking me, an outsider, when each unit had its own team leader and there was even a military commander directing the rear.
Still, the answer itself was simple.
“What are you doing wasting time asking? Go kill them.”
“Thank you! Team 3, with me!”
“Waaaaah!”
“Ubermensch told us to slaughter all the monster bastards!”
“Follow Ubermensch! Break their bones and tear their flesh! Drink their blood!”
“Ubermensch! Ubermensch!”
“Flesh and bones! Bones and flesh!”
What the hell. That’s terrifying.
Just listening to the chants echoing from every direction, you’d think this was the Aztec Empire, not Germany.
Of course, there was a huge difference: they were hunting monsters, the invaders, not humans.
“Still… maybe don’t drink the blood.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Team Leader Choi Minwoo, who had been looking at me strangely, wiped the blood splattered across his face and spoke.
“It seems most of them have been dealt with by now. The German Federal Army has deployed the reserve forces they kept in the rear, and the enemy is on the verge of annihilation.”
“Even so, a lot of them still got away.”
“They’ve deployed drones to track every last one. None of them will escape.”
I nodded and asked the most important question.
“Casualties?”
“From what has been confirmed so far, around fifteen hundred. Of those, about a thousand are dead. The rest are seriously injured, but not in life-threatening condition.”
This was a world where science and magic had fused together.
Most injuries could be treated with surgery, and with healing magic and potions added on top of that, even severed limbs could recover enough to move without issue within a month.
But what weighed on my heart right now was the number of dead.
“A thousand…”
Too many people had lost their lives.
Even though I came as fast as I could, even though I fought with everything I had, I still couldn’t stop their deaths.
“Jin Taekyung.”
At Team Leader Choi Minwoo’s low call, I shook my head.
“It’s fine. I know what you’re going to say.”
From an objective standpoint, today’s battle was a clear and overwhelming victory.
We had crushed a Minotauros legion nearly ten thousand strong, killed the S-Class monster leading them, and minimized our own losses.
But that didn’t mean the smaller wound hurt any less.
The Hunters were proof enough, exhausted and still chasing monsters down in the name of revenge.
We had unquestionably won a great victory.
And at the same time, we were still groaning in pain.
‘From long ago, and without end even now.’
War was like that.
A wheel of pain where there were no true winners or losers, only those who managed to inflict deeper wounds.
But even knowing that, fighting was the duty given to me.
And so was stopping the one who, from the darkness behind the scenes, had reached out and begun spinning that wheel of pain once more.
– What about that bastard, Michael Silbert?
Hearing my Mental Transmission, Team Leader Choi Minwoo answered without so much as the slightest change in expression.
– I heard he finished his work in South Africa and is now on his way to Munich.
– He was one step too late this time.
– This was never part of the original plan to begin with.
The scale of the Odin Guild was truly immense.
With branches all over the world, it could respond quickly by nature, but even so, it would never have been able to pull off what it had done if not for this.
This entire incident, with the Prophet used as nothing more than a tool.
To outsiders, it may have looked like indiscriminate terrorism by a crazed fanatic, but Michael Silbert, the one manipulating everything from behind the scenes, knew exactly when and where the terror would strike.
‘The South Africa Monster Wave was probably one of them too.’
But there was always an exception.
I had intervened in the Munich Monster Wave, which Michael Silbert had failed to foresee, and prevented the disaster one step ahead of him.
No, more than that, I had gained the power to block his path from now on.
The support of the masses that had swung back to me.
And their trust.
“What’s wrong?”
“…Nothing. It’s nothing.”
I answered shortly and looked around.
The ruined city.
The streets littered with corpses and flooded with blood.
A wave of nausea suddenly rose in me.
As if I had used the lives of more than a thousand people as a tool.
As if I too had become a monster no different from Michael Silbert or the Prophet.
But…
I had done everything I could.
Call it self-justification or me trying to comfort myself, I didn’t care.
I had tried to save as many lives as possible. I had fought through gritted teeth to stop an even greater calamity.
And as a result, I had become the greatest obstacle in this world to Michael Silbert.
‘Quest Window, open.’
Ding.
A hologram window unfolded with a familiar chime.
The very same Main Quest, unchanged by even a single character from the first time I saw it.
‘[Upheaval].’
I mouthed the word inwardly.
Even after killing the Minotauros Lord, the biggest cause of this Monster Wave, and annihilating a full ten thousand monsters, the system remained silent.
As if this was still far from enough.
As if it would only acknowledge my task as complete once I had crushed every one of Michael Silbert’s schemes and brought him utterly to ruin, or taken his life.
And it was right then, as I silently stared at the hologram window hanging in the air—
Wooooooo—
“…”
I abruptly turned my head.
Far away, in the dark sky where ordinary eyes could never have seen it clearly, a faint light was approaching.
‘That is…?’
Doubt.
Speculation.
And certainty.
My tangled thoughts passed through all three before arriving at an answer.
Team Leader Choi Minwoo, who realized it a moment later than I did, spoke in a subdued voice.
“He’s here.”
“Yes.”
Crack.
The hand gripping the spear shaft turned white.
Watching the rapidly approaching light, I muttered,
“He’s here.”
Simon, a journalist with nearly a decade of experience, was overwhelmed by excitement and tension.
‘This is a scoop. A real scoop.’
His smartphone was already crammed with every kind of memo and temporary headline he had typed out hours earlier.
– A monster legion led by the S-Class monster Minotauros Lord.
– Estimated strength: 10,000. A massive horde.
– Urban warfare erupts in central Munich.
– Battle situation turning unfavorable for humanity. Then Jin Taekyung appears.
– S-Class Hunter Joel Schumacher in crisis, saved by the true Transcender. Jin Taekyung is Ubermensch?
– Great victory! Scoop! Are you watching, News Director? You pig-ass bastard. Why the hell were you blaming me for Daniel Daisuke’s rally getting canceled?
Tap. Tap tap tap.
Simon, busily tapping away at the screen, suddenly stopped and erased the last memo.
Even though the News Director had screamed at him half a day ago over the cancellation of the anti-Jin Taekyung rally, just remembering that the one who had sent him here was also that same man softened his heart a little.
‘Right. Well, these things happen. The higher-ups have been hounding him a lot lately.’
Taking the fall for one’s superior was also part of being a subordinate.
Nodding to himself, Simon typed a new memo.
The meeting of two heroes.
– Jin Taekyung and Michael Silbert. Reunited in Munich!
And just as Simon typed the final exclamation point, a powerful gust of wind swept over him and the gathered members of the press corps.
Whoooosh.
“He’s here!”
“Is that the Odin Guild?”
“It is! That’s the Guild Master’s private aircraft!”
Shouts erupted from every direction.
Simon, who had been admiring the massive aircraft slowly descending onto a clearing nearby, hurried forward after the press corps, which had begun moving like a tide.
Today, here, he had no idea what was about to happen.