Chapter 272: Hunting 1
The crystal orb’s light was getting stronger, and he felt s.p.a.ce tearing apart. Junhyuk was already fully prepared.
So far, monsters appeared to activate people’s powers. To an ordinary person, even the lowest-ranking monsters from the battlefield were extremely dangerous to that person’s safety, which instigated them to activate their powers.
However, Junhyuk was different. He wanted more experience; he wanted to test out the living spirit on the monsters.
Snakes came out of the tear. They were twenty meters long, and thick enough for him to hug them with both arms and still not be able to touch his hands together. There were three of them.
Junhyuk frowned and murmured, “I’ve never seen you before!”
Hiss!
One of the giant snakes rushed toward him. He clicked his tongue and moved forward toward it, swinging his sword.
Slas.h.!.+
The snake was only a low-ranking monster, seemingly of a rank a little higher than the wolf. Still, it couldn’t take single blow from him, and its head fell off.
“First one,” he murmured with his sword down.
Another snake slithered toward him and wrapped around his body. The snake was trying to bite his head, but he used the Spatial Slash. Junhyuk had wanted to focus on the living spirit, but constricted by the snake, he felt he was unable to, so he just ended things quickly.
Slas.h.!.+
The Spatial Slash created a shockwave that swept through the remaining snake and killed it.
He lowered his sword and murmured, “Last time, it took a while…”
The first time he killed monsters, the sp.a.w.n rate from one wave to another had taken a good amount of time. However, when the iron soldier hunted down the poring, the waves had sp.a.w.ned quickly enough.
“How about this time?”
Junhyuk looked at the crystal orb and saw its light getting stronger, and s.p.a.ce tore apart again.
Wraiths came out of the tear, and as soon as they saw him, they attacked him. There were four of them, and he moved toward them.
Physical attacks wouldn’t work against wraiths, but he had the Frozen Rune Sword. He could stack the cold attribute, and it also had fixed poison damage, making it easy to deal with the wraiths.
He felt it was easy to use the living spirit while swinging his swords—it felt natural—and he noticed his swordsmans.h.i.+p was different from before. Junhyuk looked at his swords, and his eyes widened slightly.
“This is an interesting situation.”
The spirit was moving through his arteries toward one of his sword, easily pa.s.sing through his body to the sword, making it glow.
“Sword energy?” Junhyuk frowned and mumbled, “I can’t use them both at the same time…”
Junhyuk carried dual swords, and he wanted to infuse the living spirit to both of them, but he was unable to. He needed to divide the living spirit in two, but he couldn’t to do it yet.
So, he clicked his tongue and waited.
“Are more coming?”
After waiting a moment, s.p.a.ce tore open again, and three jaguars came out. Their claws were one meter long, and jaguars had sliced clean through an iron soldier before.
“They are getting stronger.”
Junhyuk liked the fact that the monsters were stronger. He moved toward them, and the jaguars moved like lightning. Left and right and center, the jaguars were rus.h.i.+ng toward him.
As he ran toward them, the one at the center slowed down, and as it slowed down, the ones on the left and right sped up. He had to deal with them quickly.
Clang!
He was shocked that the jaguars parried his swords with their claws, but the interesting part was that the swords got stuck to the claws, inflicting fixed damage to kill one and releasing a shockwave that killed all the surrounding jaguars.
He looked at the fallen jaguars and murmured, “What are these claws made of?”
His attack was high enough to work in the Dimensional Battlefield. He could even pierce heroes’ defenses to inflict damage, but the jaguars had blocked his sword. Looking at the claws, he set them aside and raised his sword again.
“How many will they send?”
The monsters were getting stronger. If they sent a buff monster, he would likely die like a dog. Nervous, he looked forward.
“I should be able to infuse the Spatial Slash with the living spirit as well.”
Even now, the Spatial Slash was strong enough, and he still had another power to activate. Even if he didn’t, he had to be able to use the living spirit with all of his powers.
He raised his sword as he watched s.p.a.ce tear apart again.
—
Elise couldn’t keep her mouth closed.
“So far, how many dimensional tears have appeared?”
[There have been twelve tears detected within South Korea.]
“But all monsters have disappeared?”
[Correct.]
“At what rate are the tears appearing?”
[About forty seconds between them.]
The tears were appearing too fast, and the detection wasn’t keeping up. However, every tear within South Korea had its monster reportedly disappear.
“It’s like someone is stealing all the monsters!”
If someone was stealing all of the monsters, that was something to be thankful for. They only caused humans harm.
“But we did not expect this. We can’t accept this situation!”
Currently, Guardians HQ had three novices and one expert. The iron soldiers were also there, so monsters weren’t really a problem. However, they couldn’t let their guards down because the tears were ongoing. Every time a tear appeared, a stronger monster came through it, and it was already the twelfth tear to open.
Someone was stealing monsters, and Elise was curious about whether that someone would be able to deal with the monsters OK.
“Someone must be able to deal with these monsters…?”
As she questioned things, she thought about Junhyuk, but even he couldn’t steal monsters from tears.
“I must check with him.”
—
He had his sword down and exhaled deeply. Twelve tears had opened so far, and the monsters’ bodies were piling up. He even got seven mana and seven blood stones.
When he picked up the mana stones, the trees and the living spirit responded ferociously. When the mana stones dropped, the trees wrapped them with their roots, and he felt betrayed by them.
Meanwhile, the living spirit tried to absorb the mana stones, and he had to quickly put them away in his Spatial Bag.
However, they did not respond to the blood stones. He thought that was interesting, but he didn’t have time to think about it then. Monsters were appearing every forty seconds, and Junhyuk couldn’t possibly continue for a day. There was a limit even for him.
“Whew, have they made up their minds?”
A stronger monster appeared with each tear, but their rankings didn’t increase dramatically. He could still deal with them for now.
He looked at s.p.a.ce tearing again and said, “A day right?”
However, when he saw what was coming out of the tear, he scowled hard. There were three ogres.
Junhyuk had killed a twin-headed ogre before, but he wasn’t at the point where he could ignore ogres yet. Still, he wasn’t too worried since he had something he could rely on.
Junhyuk could only infuse the living spirit into one sword for now, but he had now figured out how to do it at will and had found that out by repeatedly killing monsters.
He was winning big. He had gone beyond his physical limit and earned more strength, and even without using his powers, he was able to kill.
As he saw the ogres, he quickly used the Spatial Slash, to which the living spirit responded. Junhyuk thought the living spirit had left his body because he had used the Spatial Slash so quickly.
The Spatial Slash went through s.p.a.ce to kill the enemy. He could aim it wherever he wanted to, so he tried to send the living spirit where he wanted to in the same way.
After using the Spatial Slash, he felt the living spirit within him, like nothing had happened.
“It’s not moving away from me.”
He hadn’t known how the living spirit would respond, but he was satisfied with the result. All ogres had been killed. The Spatial Slash did its job, and the shockwave took care of the rest.
So, he walked over and checked the ogres, but found nothing useful. Junhyuk sat on one of the ogres’ bodies. Things were already in motion, and he couldn’t stop them now. If he left, that place would become the center of a newly created h.e.l.l City on Earth.
Looking ahead as he sat on the ogre, his cell phone rang. He checked the number to see it was Elise.
“Junhyuk?”
“Yes. What’s up?”
“Are you behind all this?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The monsters are disappearing right now!”
“I don’t know what is going on, but isn’t that a good thing?”
“The monsters are disappearing nonstop, so something bad might happen later!”
Junhyuk didn’t answer. He wanted to focus on keeping his strength.
“I have something to do right now. I’ll call you later.”
He hung up and looked ahead, wanting to know how strong of a monster would show up.
A little later, two twin-headed ogres appeared. Seeing them, he felt a little nervous. They were going to start sending the real monsters from now on.
Twin-headed ogres were high-ranking monsters on the battlefield. There, they were the strongest wandering monsters, so Junhyuk swallowed dry. After those, they might send buff monsters.
He inhaled deeply and raised his sword.
“Let’s rumble.”
He ran toward them, and the twin-headed ogres attacked him. They were carrying and swinging tree trunks, and he dodged between their attacks, quickly swinging the Frozen Rune Sword in the process.
A twin-headed ogre suddenly lost one of its legs, and Junhyuk learned how dangerous his sword could be with the living spirit infused to it.
The shockwave slowed down the ogres, and he smirked and slowly got up. Raising his sword again, he said, “I’ll play with you for a long time.”
Junhyuk had to kill the monsters before another tear appeared with more monsters, and he wanted to recover while fighting the ogres. He was only able think like that because he had better control of the living spirit.
The ogres knew they were slowed down, so they breathed fire.
Junhyuk faced the fire, but was not pushed back. He just frowned.
“So loud.”
He used the Spatial Slash, focusing on the living spirit. At that moment, the living spirit suddenly disappeared, and one of the ogres heads was beheaded. The shockwave beheaded the ogre’s other head, but the second ogre was rus.h.i.+ng toward him quickly. He dashed forward to meet it.
Hurrah!
Junhyuk dodged the ogre’s tree, then vaulted from the ogre’s knee, slas.h.i.+ng its ribs and elbow before beheading both of the ogre’s heads.
Junhyuk searched through the corpses and found heavy blood and mana stones.
“Worth it!”
He sat down smiling and recovering when, suddenly, the s.p.a.ce around him shook. He had already killed twin-headed ogres, so he didn’t expect anything more difficult, but he picked up both of his swords all the same.
However, what came out of the tear in s.p.a.ce was something completely unexpected.