Chapter 306

I’ve edited the entire chapter for literary flow, natural English prose, dialogue rhythm, consistency, and readability while preserving names, terminology, meaning, and the author’s paragraph structure.

Kim Giryeo was shouting from behind him, telling him to keep his eyes closed and maintain the barrier. Meanwhile, in front of him, tiny demons—so blurred that he could barely make out their shapes—darted around chaotically, driving him half mad.

“The analyzer says their weakness happens to be bright light and high heat. Haseong, try expanding your skill’s range a little more.”

“...Wait a second. Your vision is this messed up right now, and you still managed to read all that text?”

“Y-yeah...”

It was awful. But now that he was already inside the dungeon, there was no other choice.

Haseong soon focused on his teacher’s voice. Following the instructions of his fellow hunter, he ignited flames close to his body and tried to fight at close range as much as possible so that no one else would get caught in the blast.

But naturally, fighting like this was unbearably hot.

Even for a superhuman who could tolerate heat better than ordinary people, there were limits. Whenever the flickering flames briefly clung to his body, a paradoxical pain rose through his skin, as though its surface were being scraped with ice.

The longer he fought, the more his skin burned with a cold, stinging ache.

First of all, there was a clear gap between an A-rank dungeon and an S-rank hunter.

Jung Haseong, who had hunted so many different kinds of monsters that he was practically a walking database, somehow managed to continue making progress through the dungeon.

Surprisingly, things went smoothly.

“Tak!”

It was around the time he was blazing through the dungeon and burning down the enemies that swarmed toward him like moths.

Even while displaying such overwhelming power, the black-haired young man soon began to show signs of dissatisfaction.

“Seriously, why did I have to awaken with an attribute like this...”

Jung Haseong.

The number-one-ranked hunter in South Korea.

But what use was such a worthless title?

No matter how much he thought about it, he simply couldn’t bring himself to love his own talent.

More precisely, it was a skill he could never learn to love.

If only he had awakened with a curse attribute like Seo Esther’s—something that targeted only living creatures and spared the buildings people had built through blood and sweat.

Or better yet, an enhancement ability like Kang Changho’s, something perfectly suited for urban combat.

He didn’t even need anything that impressive.

Even if he had simply awakened with a water attribute—the exact opposite of what he had now—perhaps he wouldn’t have come to hate his own future this much.

At present, Jung Haseong continued steadily defeating his enemies.

3rd floor, 4th floor, 5th floor.

The enemies in this section were mostly living creatures, so Kim Giryeo—or, more precisely, [Hydra]—was able to provide a fair amount of support.

6th floor.

At that point, a familiar-looking boss appeared.

“That’s the one! Can you see it too?”

“Yes. Even upside down, that distinctive appearance is impossible to mistake.”

“No wonder it felt weaker than before... Damn, now that I look closely, the color of the epaulet is different. It only looks the same on the outside. Its mana level is A-rank.”

A variant of the steel monster that had appeared in the final battle of [Labyrinth of the 12th Month] had appeared here as well.

Kim Giryeo therefore stepped back and focused on support, but Jung Haseong made numerous mistakes while fighting it.

As the old saying went, “If the body is worth a thousand nyang, the eyes are worth nine hundred.”

Having his vision completely disrupted made an enormous difference.

“Back then, I could’ve just split it in half and killed it instantly.”

Whoong.

In the dark world behind his closed eyelids, the sound of something massive approaching reached him through the rushing air.

Jung Haseong instinctively raised his sword and braced the flat of the blade with his other hand.

“Boom!”

The monster’s iron fist broke through the wall of flames and slammed into his legendary sword.

After several rounds of trial and error, Haseong finally began to grasp the overall rhythm of the battle.

“If this keeps up...”

And at that moment, a memory of a past lesson flashed through his mind.

It had been back when the cold wind had yet to fade, when he had made only a single payment of thirty billion won.

Looking back on it now, perhaps he had been training for situations exactly like this all along.

“Jung Haseong, now that you mention it, I heard this gym keeps first-aid supplies too. Do you happen to know where they are?”

No matter how intelligent a genius he was, there was no way he could have predicted something as absurd as the Tower of a Hundred People incident and prepared this training in advance.

“...No, that can’t be right. But now that I think about it... somehow, it feels like even this might have been part of his plan.”

A being who clearly stood several steps above him.

Someone who had helped him realize this power, even if it meant roughly grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him forward.

The source of miracles.

Mana.

In the midst of this desperate crisis, Jung Haseong once again recalled how to sense the flow of mana, just as someone had once taught him.

And as a result, he was able to defeat the mechanical monster he encountered again in the Tower of a Hundred People with relative ease.

“Trust! Rumble rumble rumble...”

A body like that would take far too long to melt through with brute-force firepower anyway.

Just like the death it had suffered in the past, the crimson Sunset Sword pierced straight through its interior, and the monster met a swift, screaming end.

Then, once the gatekeeper was defeated—

What kind of scene awaited them next?

7th floor, 8th floor, 9th floor.

By the time they reached this point, surprisingly, everything had become fairly manageable.

“At first, I had no idea how I was supposed to fight like this.”

Apparently, learning while getting hit really did make things sink in faster.

And on top of that, there was a highly competent fellow hunter standing in one corner of the dungeon, correcting his flaws in real time.

Just as the Archmage had predicted.

In truth, clearing the Tower of a Hundred People was not the sort of ordeal that would cost anyone here their life.

It was dangerous enough that Giryeo had agreed to accompany him without thinking too deeply about it.

If the challenger had been an A-rank Awakener—the rank this dungeon was actually meant for—there would likely have been screaming and gnashing of teeth.

But the challenger here was an S-rank hunter who had even absorbed superior magical knowledge from another world.

And he was hardworking and relentless on top of that.

The premise itself was entirely different.

“That’s a relief. Come to think of it, I heard this gate has about ten floors in total. Then... does that mean the final boss is just ahead?”

Ssssk.

The man who had been crouching in a corner to avoid the flames stood up.

At that moment, Jung Haseong was finishing off the various bosses that had appeared throughout the higher floors, and simply by observing the flow of the battle, Giryeo had already become certain of his companion’s victory.

Then what would appear on the long-awaited 10th floor?

“Uhm?”

It was just as he began to relax, thinking the end of the workday was finally within reach.

“Kieeee...!”

The final beast on the floor let out a pitiful cry as it died.

Before they even had time to mourn its passing, the scenery changed once again.

The 10th floor.

Compared to every floor they had passed through so far, this chamber was exceptionally large.

Purple.

And upon closer inspection, the gaudily painted walls were dotted here and there with sparkling patterns reminiscent of shooting stars.

“This is the final opponent... of the Tower of a Hundred People.”

The two hunters, whose eyes had briefly been drawn to the vivid colors of the room, suddenly turned their gazes toward the center.

Tzzzzzt.

Dense mana was gathering in the middle of the chamber.

And the magical substance did not merely grow denser as it converged in one place.

Little by little, it began to take on a distinct form...

“What is that? That white thing?”

Jung Haseong, the neat-looking Korean man, suddenly furrowed his brows.

But despite the lack of any obvious change in his expression, the person who was truly the most shocked was someone else entirely.

“Oh my.”

For various reasons, his larynx seemed slightly more impaired than that of an ordinary person.

Soon, a strained voice escaped from the man.

“Is that thing... real?”

The moment Haseong heard those words, he turned his head.

Within his distorted vision, where up and down and left and right had all been reversed, Kim Giryeo was staring at the enemy that had appeared before them with an unusually grave expression.

For Hunter Kim Giryeo, who was normally indifferent to nearly everything, to react like that...

“What on earth is that monster?”

At last, they had come face-to-face with the glorious 10th-floor boss of the [Tower of a Hundred People].

The monster that appeared in the chamber looked like this.

It was as though a marble statue from an exhibition hall had suddenly come to life.

Its entire body was white, cold, and hard like stone.

Its head bore eyes, a nose, and a mouth that vaguely resembled those of a human.

As an added detail, something resembling long, wavy human hair was neatly intertwined around the crown of its head.

“No, wait a second. Now that I look at it properly, that thing is completely...!”

Realizing it a moment late, Jung Haseong shouted.

No matter how one looked at it, the creature that had just appeared was clearly modeled after the human body.

An imitation of an Earthling.

Jung Haseong had never encountered anything like it throughout his career as a hunter, and his body instinctively tensed from the discomfort.

But the hunter standing behind him was frightened for an entirely different reason.

“An entirely white body, and a form that closely resembles a human...”

The moment he saw an enemy with that appearance, one particular word flashed through his mind.

Angel.

Kim Giryeo immediately remembered that an “angel” was a religious symbol widely believed in by many humans.

And inwardly, he screamed.

“The most sacred form of monster!”

Jung Haseong standing in front of him might not understand, but to someone from Alphauri, this was nothing short of horrifying.

“A sign of [Descent]!”

His mouth fell open on its own.

The occupation process of a certain alien species consisted of three stages.

Even the intermediate stage, [Possession], progressing this quickly would have been shocking enough.

But now, [Descent]—the phenomenon that had once transformed half of Alphauri’s surface into a literal hellscape—seemed to be drawing near.

How could he possibly remain calm?

And to make matters worse, he was still an Archmage who had not recovered even a quarter—

No, not even the tiniest fraction—

of his former power.

The instant Giryeo pieced together the knowledge from his days as an Archmage, he was seized by fear.

What if this truly was a sign that [Descent] was beginning?

“Hunter Kim, what’s wrong?”

But after several seconds, the body he had taken over began correcting his misunderstanding.

“H, huh? Ah... Right. A proper angel isn’t complete without wings... Wait a second. Then that thing isn’t even the final form of the Gismche?”

Oh my.

He had panicked for nothing.

While Jung Haseong glanced back and forth between the monster and his companion in confusion, Giryeo finished organizing the indescribable mess of thoughts in his head and returned to reality.

The first thing he did after regaining his composure was pull out his analyzer.

And sure enough, the result matched his prediction.

“Beep.”

[???]

[Rank: S]

[Description: No description registered.]

“So now, whenever something falls outside the existing range, the device just displays the rank automatically?”

“Yes!”

“That thing in front of us is S-rank.”

“Yes?!”

At the blond man’s calm declaration, the national hero practically jumped in shock.

That’s right.

The final boss of the [Tower of a Hundred People] was, unbelievably, a being equal in rank to Jung Haseong himself.

“Damn analyzer!”

“No wonder I get startled every time you swear, Haseong.”

“Ah, I’m sorry?”

Back during the Nuckelavee incident, enemies of this level had been extraordinarily rare.

And yet lately, powerful monsters seemed to be appearing far too easily.

Another S-rank monster had emerged, following the recently named Champagne Janus, which had appeared during the Black Dragon King incident and in the Six-Legged Corridor.

Even so, Haseong wasn’t excessively shaken.

“It’s not just our country anymore.”

Recent academic studies confirming a clear rise in dungeon threat levels had already influenced a variety of sectors.

As a result, this year alone, two S-rank gates had been discovered overseas as well as in South Korea.

“Both were said to have relatively low threat levels, like the Six-Legged Corridor case, so they weren’t considered threats capable of destroying an entire nation...”

At this point, even if an enemy appeared capable of threatening the very top of the food chain, it was no longer something that could truly be called shocking.

So why had he suddenly cursed at the analyzer?

Because a dungeon was an extra-dimensional space, its mana density was not perfectly uniform throughout.

In fact, even the atmospheres of most planets were not uniform.

As a result, there were rare cases where monsters appeared whose rank did not match the measurement taken at the dungeon entrance.

It was a low-probability phenomenon.

If luck happened to favor the hunters, a C-rank monster might even appear inside a B-rank dungeon.

Which also meant that the opposite could happen.

All in all, it was an extremely troublesome system.

“Even after all that noise, it still hasn’t reacted. Is it a counterattack-type monster?”

And there was more bad news.

“The mana leaking outward doesn’t seem particularly remarkable, but the amount compressed inside it is no joke...”

“Is that so?”

“Well, I suppose that makes sense. The [Tower of a Hundred People] seems designed to always produce something equivalent to a dungeon boss, so it’s hardly surprising that something powerful showed up.”

The blond man standing behind him explained slowly.

“No matter how strong you are, Jung Haseong, if you tried to fight that thing alone, you’d probably end up being overwhelmed.”

So even a skilled hunter who had single-handedly crushed the previous nine floors should not attempt this battle recklessly.

“But it’s okay.”

It happened then.

Until now, the Awakener had remained quietly hidden near the stairs.

But he stepped forward.

As he tugged at the material covering the skin of his hand, he spoke.

“I’ll help you clear this floor.”

“—?!”

“But only this once. And as for when exactly I’ll step in—that’s still a secret. By now, your eyes should’ve adjusted well enough...”

“Hunter Kim.”

“If the dungeon really is as straightforward as it claimed at the entrance, then honestly... the trial wouldn’t be much fun at all.”

In truth, there was another reason he could only help once.

And it was shamelessly practical.

“Poor primitive. You’re getting your rent waived, so as the vanguard of sorcery, the least I can do is lend you a hand like this.”

The hunter took several steps forward until he stood shoulder to shoulder with Jung Haseong.

Then he once again drew upon the source of his current arrogance from his wrist and prepared for battle.

[Midnight Gloves]

(Excluding the tax for February of the following year, which he didn’t know about)

It was time to show off the true power of an item worth 100 billion won.