NOVEL NEXT Episode 9
Kang Chagyeong’s unique skill
It was likely at least an A-rank skill. Given he was the protagonist, there was a good chance it was even S-rank.
A privilege bestowed solely by divine favor. It struck me anew as unfair and unjust.
I narrowed my eyes and looked down at the C-rank monster. Blue light scattered beneath the monster as it thrashed about.
Kang Chagyeong, who had been hanging from its underside, suddenly sprang up onto the monster’s back.
As he nimbly ran across the monster’s body, blue light emanated from him.
As I expected, white light mixed in whenever Tito earnestly drew a cut. The building lobby flashed chaotically, like a nightclub.
-Crack!
With the sound of a hard shell splitting, the centipede began frantically climbing up the hole it had bored through.
The monster’s shell, which even heavy machinery couldn’t have scratched, was half-shattered and gaping open.
The bright blue light that had been shining at the very bottom of the hole moments ago rose up. It was clearly the aftermath of the strike Kang Chagyeong had just dealt.
The monster, writhing in pain, reached the rooftop again, slamming its massive body this way and that. Kang Chagyeong’s eyes blazed as he gripped the monster’s tattered shell.
And the moment Kang Chagyeong swung his fist, the inside of what had looked like a red veil flashed blue. The blue light was so intense, like a falling comet, that I couldn’t tell exactly which part of the monster he had struck.
-Boom!
It was a sound that gave the impression of an explosion rather than something being hit. The impact was so strong that the C-rank monster shattered into pieces mid-air.
Viscous slime rained down, and an eyeball that had been attached to the monster’s back rolled to my feet.
“Ew, gross. What is this?”
The eyeball, still blinking, couldn’t have been more disgusting. Without hesitation, I kicked it back into the hole.
Kang Chagyeong, who had landed on the rooftop using the centipede’s body as a cushion, showed no signs of fatigue. As his hair fluttered in the wind pressure, I could be certain that Kang Chagyeong was South Korea’s fifth S-rank Hunter.
That was the true power befitting an S-rank skill—not just peeking at what Tito was doing.
Director Park stared at Kang Chagyeong with his mouth agape, while the assistant director pulled out the camcorder he had kept in his pocket, not missing the moment.
Thomas’s face, precariously standing at the edge of the hole, had turned deathly pale.
-Screech!
Simultaneously, the cries of all sorts of monsters in the building rang out like a terrible chorus. Kang Chagyeong, enveloped in blue mist, just muttered something with his head bowed.
I lowered my stance and slowly backed away towards the opposite side of the hole. Just when I thought I’d managed to dodge well, all the monsters in the building rushed towards the hole at once.
Dozens of pairs of red monster eyes glowed eerily from the dark depths.
Their appearances were uniformly hideous as they leaped up, using crumbling concrete and rebar as springboards.
Director Park and the assistant director fled in terror to the opposite side of the rooftop, unlike Thomas, who seemed to be doing his best just to stay pressed against the building’s corner wall.
You shouldn’t expect monsters to show mercy when encountering a human who can’t move. A human-shaped monster, its exposed skin bubbling up like boiling porridge, turned its head towards Thomas.
“Uh… Ahhh!”
His shrill scream only drew the attention of the other monsters following behind.
The excited howls of the monsters, Thomas’s final scream, the sound of fangs sinking in while moving the lower jaw, the sound of something snapping—all mixed into a horrific symphony.
Less than a minute passed, and when the monsters turned around, their mouths were covered in blood. Tito only drew one cut of Thomas’s blood-stained employee ID, marking his final moments.
I turned my head away, unable to bear the sight of unedited reality. With the unintentional brief distraction that Thomas had provided now gone, the monsters all poked their heads out above the hole without exception.
[SYSTEM:
If only the contract condition had been to become the monsters’ favorite character instead of Tito’s. I was incredibly popular, but only among monsters.
The monsters that spotted me rushed at me blindly. Fear washed over me in waves. It was amazing that I was even standing here instead of running away.
Kang Chagyeong, who had been muttering like a drenched chick, finally came to her senses at the monsters’ collective rush that couldn’t be ignored.
Blue light gathered around his arm as he clenched his fist, but the monsters didn’t even glance at him as they charged towards me.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
“Kang Chagyeong! When they gather, blast them all at once!”
There was only one strategy left. As I shouted at the top of my lungs, a hesitant look flashed across Kang Chagyeong’s face.
“I’ll be fine!!”
In this situation, if Tito wasn’t a psychopath, there was no way he would kill me.
Even though I was F-rank, he had gone to the trouble of awakening me. It didn’t make sense to kill me off so soon.
I couldn’t think realistically. This world moved strictly according to the will of its creator, Tito.
“Just hit them!”
I shouted, trusting only in Tito.
The monsters rushing towards me at almost the same speed collided with each other, creating chaos. Among the massive bodies, I gritted my teeth and moved, searching for gaps.
In this mayhem, the truly annoying ones were the smaller monsters. Being small and fast, they spotted me and opened their maws first.
-Crunch!
An ominous sound came from my left ankle as a dog-like monster bit into it. It hurt so much that I couldn’t even scream.
Instinctively, I reached out and grabbed the sparsely furred dog’s neck. The monster thrashed wildly, trying to shake off my hand. I hooked its neck in the crook of my elbow and applied as much force as I could.
-Crunch. With a sound like crushing a lollipop with molars, the monster’s limbs convulsed.
And then its hind legs, riddled with savage claws, raked across my thigh. It was a final act of desperation.
“!!”
A deep red line was drawn across my thigh under my school uniform skirt. Blood gushed from the open wound, causing a moment of dizziness, but I scraped together all my willpower to avoid fainting.
That’s when it happened.
-Crack!
A massive lizard-type monster, enraged by my dodging and counterattacks, slammed its tail down on the ground.
Along with the sound of the floor breaking, my body, which had risen about 10 cm into the air, was driven straight down.
“Haa, ha……”
This was my limit now. I physically couldn’t move even a little. This was the outcome of a life-or-death struggle that had lasted less than 10 seconds.
Behind the monsters rushing at me as I lay covered in wounds large and small, I saw a blue light.
A deep blue energy enveloped Kang Chagyeong’s entire body as he leaped nearly 10 m high. The energy undulated, taking shape like a living spirit.
As his swinging fist plummeted towards me like a meteor, I momentarily lost consciousness.
When I pushed my eyelids open, the lingering wind was blowing towards me, carrying dust.
Ah. I’m not dead.
[SYSTEM: The gate in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul has been unsealed.
The camcorder in the assistant director’s hand captured Kang Chagyeong standing coolly with his fist clenched, then panned to me, sprawled out as if hit by a truck.
The protagonist’s buff is no joke, really.
Under the clear sky where the veil had disappeared, a helicopter was flying in wide circles. Looking only at the blue sky with the tata-tata sound, it couldn’t have been more peaceful.
As I lay there, barely clinging to life, monster blood flowed towards me, carrying pieces of internal organs on its back.
It was disgusting, but I couldn’t move an inch. As I was taking an unwanted blood bath in monster extract, I heard a commotion from the direction of the gaping hole.
Hunters had arrived.
The hunters in white combat uniforms looked incredulously at the mountain of dismembered monster corpses piled up next to me.
“Is it really over?”
As Kang Chagyeong muttered in an exhausted voice, the gazes of the hunters, who had been looking around, all fixed on him.
When they saw the bluish energy billowing out from between Kang Chagyeong’s torn school uniform shirt like freshly opened dry ice, their expressions changed markedly.
It was a rough hint that our protagonist was strong. They were just fooling around in front of a critical patient who should have been rushed to the emergency room. My thoughts naturally turned sour as my body was in too much pain.
While Kang Chagyeong stood upright on both feet like a proper biped, my body was crumpled like someone who had been hit by a hit-and-run driver.
I had no intention of trying to stand up out of pride. If I had to express the current pain on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be about 13.
“…Please save me.”
Unlike Kang Chagyeong’s resolute, protagonist-like line, my voice squeaked like a dying mouse. Only then did a female hunter notice my existence and approach me.
Ugh, I groaned as I wiped my blood-soaked eyes, and I could easily read the hunter’s nameplate.
Nam Han-ju.
She was a combat hunter working for Seoul. Even though I wasn’t particularly interested in hunters, I knew her name and face because her unique skill was A-rank.
Right now, A-rank or whatever… I just wished she would give me a morphine shot because I was dying of pain.
Nam Han-ju silently examined my body from head to toe. As a bonus, she clicked her tongue sympathetically at the sight of my bruised and swollen areas where I had been beaten and broken.
“Your eyeballs aren’t burst. That’s fortunate.”
Nam Han-ju said in a rather casual tone after checking my pupils by flipping my eyelids.
Rolling up her combat uniform sleeves to her elbows, she dragged away the huge lizard head that had been crushing my lower body. She gripped the monster’s lower jaw with both hands, without any protective gear.
Another hunter, who was checking the fallen monster corpse by nudging it with his shoe tip, spoke in a lukewarm voice.
“They’re all gathered in one place, just right for cleaning up. Looks like we’ll be able to leave work early today, huh?”
“What are you talking about? It’ll take quite a while to clean up this mess.”
Nam Han-ju replied nonchalantly, then quickly switched to a businesslike tone and muttered.
“This is Hunter Nam Han-ju. Gate situation confirmed to be terminated. Requesting deployment of civilian forces.”
While waiting for the regular forces that would soon arrive, she approached me again, sprawled out like common trash, and knelt on one knee.
“How much did you get hit?”
“…A hell of a lot.”
“Hmm, is that so…?”
While I was having this pointless conversation with Nam Han-ju, bright flashes from Tito’s drawing were popping off only around Kang Chagyeong.
As she brushed aside my bangs that were stuck to my forehead with blood, Nam Han-ju asked, “Does it hurt?”
Can’t you see I’m gasping for breath? I threw a silent, reproachful look, too weak to answer such a ridiculous question.
Nam Han-ju turned her head to confirm that the only support hunter was busy providing first aid to Director Park and the assistant director. She then looked back at me and pulled out a handkerchief from inside her uniform.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
Nam Han-ju asked with a smile as she pressed hard on my torn wound with the clean handkerchief to stop the bleeding. At that moment, Tito ostentatiously threw a spark into an oil drum.
「Tito pauses his pen for a moment, pondering what to order for lunch.」
Curses involuntarily spilled out because of the creator who was sitting there contemplating lunch menus in the middle of all this.
“Ah. What the hell…”
“Wow. They say kids these days are scary, and they’re right.”
Nam Han-ju, with a surprised expression, pushed the earphone she had in one ear deeper. Then, as she stood up, straightening her bent knee, she said,
“Two awakened individuals, presumed to be minors, found at the scene. Requesting support from the Awakened Specialized Unit.”
The sirens of fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances blared, their emergency lights on, intertwining like a cacophony.
With that sound, my consciousness cut off abruptly, as if a switch had been flipped.