Chapter 151. Maze Hunter (1)
The fiends entered the Dungeon in groups of four, with a total of eight teams. The team that Seo Jun-Ho belonged to was a mess that would have collapsed even without him, but the other teams were different.
"A wall mantis."
"It"s tricky, but it’s not that difficult."
"Maintain a distance from the wall. It doesn’t have a presence, so it"s annoying to fight it at such a close distance."
"Listen carefully. The sound of scissors is the only way to notice its approach.”
They were all experienced fiends. All the remaining fiends were those who had more experience and higher levels than the three musketeers Seo Jun-Ho had killed. Therefore, they were vigilant.
"That"s strange…"
"We went down a blocked road and came back a little bit, but...”
"Don"t you think the terrain has changed somewhat?"
The atmosphere inside the maze, which was made up of walls of darkness on all sides, was damp and gloomy. In particular, when faced with a blocked road after walking for a long time, curse words naturally came out of the fiends’ mouths. In a word, everyone"s nerves were on edge, and they were very sensitive to changes. Thanks to this, they realized at once that the terrain had changed.
"...Why is it blocked here, too? Is it a moving maze?”
"d.a.m.n it, we’re in the heart of a mountain!”
"A moving maze of wall mantises? It’s the worst combination...”
Three fiends spat on the floor and got annoyed, but one person disagreed.
"I beg to differ..."
He was a fiend who had previously entered maze-type Gates and Dungeons.
“In the case of moving mazes, the entire maze changes at regular intervals. Moreover, it is common to be accompanied by a thundering, ground-shaking earthquake."
"What? Then...”
"Are you saying this is not a moving maze?"
"But this wall definitely didn"t exist before..."
The suspicious eyes of four fiends turned to the wall of darkness. Like the other walls of the maze, the walls that reached the ceiling had no special corners.
“Gates and Dungeons are places where unexpected variables can occur. Overconfidence is forbidden.”
"Yeah, this was definitely not a dead-end, unless we"re all crazy."
"Let"s take a look at the remaining road. If that’s also a dead-end... Should we go left this time?"
The fiends turned away and took their eyes off the wall of darkness.
Rumbling.
The wall moved. The funny thing was that the other walls were still, only one wall in the back moved.
"What…?!"
"d.a.m.n it, first of all, keep your distance from the wall!"
"Run forward!"
The fiends stomped the floor and dashed out. The moving speed of the wall was not that fast, so they should be able to reach the fork in the road before the moving wall could reach them.
"The road on the right is a dead-end! We went there before!"
"Then, the choices are straight ahead and left… Huh?”
They saw it…
Rumbling!
Walls of darkness were charging toward them from all four directions.
"What? What the h.e.l.l is this…?!”
"Hey! What"s going on?"
"I-I don"t know. I"ve never seen a maze like this before!”
In the ever-tightening s.p.a.ce, through the sounds of the walls approaching, they heard the sound they never wanted to hear.
Slice, slice.
"Wha… what?! What was that metallic sound?!"
"…It"s a wall mantis."
"It"s not just one."
Wall mantises had no lower body. That was the biggest reason why only their upper bodies would stick out of the wall. They were also called wall mantises because they could only move through walls.
Rumble!
The walls of darkness from all directions had finally trapped the fiends. Only the soft-lighted jewels in the ceiling of the maze shone on them.
“…”
“...”
Silence fell in the small s.p.a.ce as if it was a solitary cell. They didn’t dare to breathe. The fiends were so close that they could even hear each other"s feeble breathing. Just as one was conscious enough about eating popcorn in a silent movie theater, they couldn’t even recklessly swallow their saliva.
Slice, slice.
And the chilling sound was heard again…
Gulp!
Eventually, one of the fiends could not withstand the tension and his throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed a mouthful of saliva.
Slicesliceslicesliceslice!!
The metal sound began to grow louder and louder. It was proof that the wall mantises were approaching after discovering their prey. The fiends cursed at the unpleasant neurosis-inducing sounds.
“d.a.m.n it!"
"I can’t die yet, I have an unfulfilled dream…!”
"Wall! Break down the wall! We have to get out of here somehow!"
The four fiends attacked madly at the walls to try and break them down. The final struggle they showed was quite strong.
Kkuuk…
However, the wall mantises were eventually able to have their meals.
***
Crunch!
w.a.n.g-Heon lightly flicked his finger and the head of a wall mantis burst open.
"Bugs."
In twisting mazes like this, even finding the way out was tiring work. Naturally, he felt uncomfortable because even the wall mantises on the wall were obstructing him.
“…”
Turning around, he looked at the magician. The magician’s expression looked rather grave as he stared blankly into the air.
"Banjo, is something wrong?" w.a.n.g-Heon asked.
The magician, Banjo, came to his senses and spoke, "Oh, that"s… There’s a corner that’s a little strange."
"A strange corner?"
"The fiends who entered this Dungeon with us are above level 90, right?”
"That"s right…"
"But why are their levels so... Wait, one more team?” Banjo frowned.
"Make it understandable. What the h.e.l.l is going on?"
"It is the wall mantises."
"Wall mantises?"
At some point, Stan and Hicks, the other team members, gathered around w.a.n.g-Heon and the magician. Banjo looked back at them and nodded. "Yes, in the current Dungeon... Fiends are being killed by the wall mantises."
"I think that’s understandable, though?"
"Wall mantises are pretty tricky enemies when you first encounter them, so there being deaths are...”
Stan and Hicks muttered as if it had been normal. In fact, if it weren’t for w.a.n.g-Heon, they would have been injured in their first encounter with the wall mantises too.
"Is it very serious?" w.a.n.g-Heon asked.
Since the usually cautious Banjo had such a grim expression, it likely meant that the issue wasn’t light.
"…So far, 15 of them have been killed."
“…!”
Fifteen people. It meant that about four teams, roughly half of the fiends who had entered the Dungeon, had been killed by the wall mantises. The certainly abnormal numbers made everyone"s expressions turn serious.
"Did you find out using the Causality of Death? Is there a possibility that there could be errors mixed in there…”
"No, my skill accurately determines the immediate cause of the target"s death."
The skill was telling him that the lives of the fiends had certainly been taken by the wall mantises.
"What...?!"
Banjo"s face twisted all of a sudden because the information his skill was telling him had been updated once again.
"Nineteen, twenty-three... Six people were killed at once!"
“…”
It was unbelievable. The surprise attacks of the wall mantises were tricky, but it was definitely not enough for level 90 fiends to be so helpless against it.
"…There’s a bug in our midst.”
w.a.n.g-Heon"s eyes turned cold. He looked around and spoke, “From now on, no one is allowed to approach. If someone approaches without permission, they’ll die."
“…!”
"Yes, yes!"
Even if it was an ally, if it was determined that the person posed a risk to their safety, the person would be mercilessly killed. The three gulped at w.a.n.g-Heon"s ruthlessness.
Receiving their nervous gazes, w.a.n.g-Heon ordered, "Hicks, find the survivors. We"ll have to clean up the back before we hunt the boss.”
"Understood..." Hicks nodded with a glint in his eyes.
***
"Ahhhhh!"
"Ple-please...!”
Seo Jun-Ho watched the fiends die from afar and spoke, "With this, it’s twenty-seven. Are we done with the cleanup?”
"You are lucky. You cleaned up every other team without running into the leader,” replied the Frost Queen.
"...That’s bad luck. I wanted to get rid of the magician as soon as possible.”
It was presumed that Stan and the magician were probably with w.a.n.g-Heon.
"If I had gotten rid of him beforehand, I would have been able to proceed much more comfortably than now.”
Seo Jun-Ho could have been next to w.a.n.g-Heon disguised as a fiend by now. He would have been comfortably planning a surprise attack at the critical moment.
Craack.
"It’s happening again."
Seo Jun-Ho had been tapping his twitching facial muscles since earlier. His face kept changing as the end of the transformation’s duration got closer and closer.
"The Curse of Bitter Cold will soon be lifted, too," reminded the Frost Queen.
"Yeah, there"s only an hour left," replied Seo Jun-Ho.
He was planning to make sure he was safe and move only after the curse was lifted. There was no particular need for him to find w.a.n.g-Heon and fight with them right now.
"Let"s look at their memories first."
When Seo Jun-Ho flicked his finger, the Wall of Darkness collapsed. In the first place, it was a wall made up of his power, Watchguard of Darkness.
Padadak! Padadak!
When the wall was torn down, the wall mantises that had been hiding in it fell to the floor. The wall mantises didn’t have lower bodies, so they struggled to return to the wall as they sc.r.a.ped the floor with their forelimbs.
Crunch!
Seo Jun-Ho"s heavy feet stepped on their heads one after another and burst them open. He was burning the bridge after crossing it. Now that the hunt for these worthless people was over, these monsters no longer had any use.
"Mmmm…"
Crouching on the floor, Seo Jun-Ho looked through the fiends’ memories. Since all the information they knew was different from each other, there was a lot of information he had to go through.
"There are a lot of fiends gathering at the Schumern territory these days. It"s near Dustang where Arthur is, so let"s stop by there."
"The Seven Squadrons… These guys only know the existence of the Squadrons, not their members or their leaders."
There was nothing big to worry about. He would soon be able to find out when he got rid of w.a.n.g-Heon, a member of a Squadron. The Frost Queen on his neck suddenly tapped him on the head like a djembe and urged him. “Contractor, if you have read all the memories, hurry up and get up.” [1]
"Don"t nag me."
Seo Jun-Ho slowly got up and closed his eyes. Maybe three seconds later, he muttered, "…Is it this way?"
His hand went out like a bolt of lightning toward the wall on the right.
"Kuuk...?!"
Surprisingly, Seo Jun-Ho had "pulled" something out of the wall.
"Is it an ability to become a painting? I see all kinds of strange skills nowadays."
Caught in the neck by Seo Jun-Ho, the fiend, Hicks, looked shocked.
‘H-how in the h.e.l.l?’
He had the ability to move along walls, floors, and ceilings freely by turning himself into a painting. It was Hicks’s ‘Painting’ skill. This skill was unrivaled in espionage and he would rarely be discovered when using it.
‘When I use my skill, even w.a.n.g-Heon-nim couldn"t find me easily…’
So how did this kid find out where he was?
"So, you"re the third member of w.a.n.g-Heon"s team..."
The last fiend teamed up with Stan, the magician, and w.a.n.g-Heon. Hicks’s reason for spying on Seo Jun-Ho was simple.
‘They must have finally realized what"s going on.’
Seo Jun-Ho smirked because it was already too late to turn it around. In the Dungeon, there were four... No, there were only three fiends left.
Snap!
Seo Jun-Ho broke Hicks"s neck and read his memory.
[There’s a bug in our midst.]
[Hicks, find the survivors. We"ll have to clean up the back before we hunt the boss.]
[Understood. I should be able to locate him with my Painting skill.]
Indeed, w.a.n.g-Heon"s judgment was excellent. He made a very selfish judgment without being swayed by personal feelings.
"But what will you do now?" muttered Seo Jun-Ho.
His choice resulted in the deaths of his men and the reduction of his overall forces. When Seo Jun-Ho was about to smile, he saw another part of the memory.
[If Hicks finds the enemy, then it"ll be your turn, Stan.]
[No problem. If my ability, Homing Instinct (C), and another ability, Perception Designation (F), are used together...]
“...!”
As soon as he saw that part of the memory, Seo Jun-Ho turned off the memory projection and widened his distance from Hicks"s body. He knew Stan"s skill through Gouf"s memory. Homing Instinct (C). This was a skill that would let him return to the place he designated as ‘home.’ However, the problem was that Gouf had only known about this one skill.
‘Who would have thought that it could be used in such a tricky way?!’
Perception Designation (F). If someone else had gotten it, it would be no different from trash. But from the moment it entered Stan"s hands, it had achieved a greater synergistic effect than most A-grade abilities.
"A skill to freely designate a target for one"s perception."
In other words, even if it was a human being, Stan could perceive that person as ‘home’ through this skill.
Wooooong.
In other words, the Homing Instinct (C) skill could be activated.
"What a surprise… The bug’s face is quite familiar."
w.a.n.g-Heon instantly appeared next to Hicks"s body. He looked at Seo Jun-Ho and grinned as if he was amused.
1. Djembe is a drum played with bare hands, originating from West Africa. ☜