Chapter 324

For a moment, he truly believed everything would be fine.

They had finally joined forces with the Korean hunters. Surely, things would work out now.

But the instant he laid eyes on that book, a wave of despair washed over him.

‘A grimoire...’

Every legendary item discovered so far had, without exception, originated from the magical planet Alphauri. There was no reason this one would suddenly prove to be the lone exception.

‘A true grimoire containing high-level sorcery!’

While Kim Giryeo stood frozen in shock—

Flutterrrr.

The figure in the bone mask raised the book.

And the item, like some deranged holy relic, began moving on its own.

With a sound like an entire flock of crows taking flight, it immediately activated the magic stored within it.

And the spell it unleashed was nothing short of a nightmare reborn.

“We have to hit the book...!”

“Kaagh!”

“Moom!”

“Waagh!”

“What is this...?!”

Dozens of arms emerged from a single point in the empty air of the cave.

The long, golden summons tangled and twisted together explosively, swelling in size at a terrifying rate. Their ends rose into the air and began groping in every direction with grotesque, unnatural movements.

Something had appeared.

And it immediately surged forward, driving away every creature in its path.

“What is that? That’s disgusting!”

Of course, calling them arms was merely a comparison based on Alphaurin anatomy.

To mammals, the summoned creature’s true appearance was bound to look thoroughly alien.

‘As expected, that’s what it was...’

Shhhvrrk.

The graveyard of otherworldly arms was supple and eerily fast.

Its golden extremities, nearly transparent like ethereal beings born from imagination, brushed aside every trivial piece of primitive magic hurled at them and continued advancing.

And by the time the golden wave crawling across the ground collided with the A-rank hunters—

astonishingly, the outcome of the battle had already been decided.

“Ack!”

“My skills aren’t working!”

“Why is that thing passing through the barrier...?”

“Waaaah!”

“Everyone, fall back...!”

“Jin Noona!”

A ‘low-grade’ miracle that could be activated even through primitive magic.

At the same time, it was exactly the sort of weapon that proved devastatingly effective against races with little resistance to it.

Compared to the caster, every A-rank hunter in the right-hand corridor was swept away in the blink of an eye.

‘Damn it, all those who haven’t made it into the hallway yet...!’

That mass of golden arms carried the [Mana Burn] effect, a technique once commonly used on Alphauri.

On Earth, it was sometimes mistranslated as [Soul Strike].

Even the slightest brush against one of the thinnest tendrils caused searing pain deep inside the body, and the alien hands seized any prey they sensed had weakened.

Within moments, every hunter they touched had entered a state of continuous mana drain.

‘This is the worst.’

It was a truly horrifying sight.

The A-rank Hunters who had only just appeared on the battlefield lost consciousness within seconds.

The creature summoned from the book could sense the very energy of living beings.

Fortunately, once an awakened individual’s magic had been nearly exhausted, the arms released them from their grasp, but...

‘That’s just barely surviving, not truly living.’

Was he really supposed to be grateful that no one had died from the [Mana Burn] yet?

An F-rank...

No—now barely an E-rank.

With his pitifully limited senses, he couldn’t even fully comprehend the scene unfolding before him.

“Boom!”

By the time the sound of friction reached his ears, even the left-hand corridor had fallen into chaos.

“Ahh!”

“Ugh!”

The S-rank hunters had tried to join the fight in their own way.

But in the end, even their efforts proved useless against a legendary-grade summoned creature.

The caster behind the summoning seemed rather inexperienced at handling third-party artifacts.

One Earthling managed to exploit that awkward control and redirect one of the golden arms toward the restraints binding him.

As a result, the powerful [Mana Burn] effect damaged the items holding him captive.

And so—

Thud.

The summoner was free.

“_ _”

His face was hidden behind a mask, making his expression impossible to read.

Still, Enzo Chiano straightened his posture with an air of unmistakable exhaustion.

‘He actually brought out that famous book and used it. At this point, he must not care about hiding his identity anymore.’

With the hand not holding the book, Enzo gripped the underside of his bone mask.

Then he casually tore it off and threw it away.

Seo Esther and Jung Haseong nearly froze at the sight of a face they clearly recognized from somewhere.

Kim Giryeo, on the other hand, immediately launched a decisive counterattack.

“Take your hands off the book right now! I’m telling you this for your own good—keeping that artifact active shortens your lifespan!”

In truth, he was bluffing.

The Book of Destruction had no known penalty that shortened its user’s lifespan.

But since it was widely known that Korea’s fourth S-rank possessed appraisal abilities, Kim Giryeo tried to exploit that fact and deceive the enemy, if only for a moment.

His attempt ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) failed.

Enzo dismissed the warning without a second thought.

Flap.

He didn’t waste another moment.

With the [Book of Destruction] on cooldown, Enzo immediately shifted to using his own awakened skill.

The towering foreigner’s next target was the only Korean awakened one who had not been caught by the swarm of golden arms.

“Huh?”

An F-rank and a B-rank hunter stood on the left side of the corridor.

Ahead of them, two of Korea’s S-rank hunters were occupying the summoned creature.

Which meant Enzo needed a separate way to deal with the remaining two.

Crackle, crackle, crackle...

A faint sound came from a dark corner of the cave, like a damaged power line sparking in the distance.

Seonwoo Yeon sensed the approaching danger and attempted to disrupt the caster, but no matter how fiercely she drove the wind, it was nearly impossible to match the speed of electricity.

And in the end—

Flash!

Plasma shot straight toward its target.

Kim Giryeo muttered something unintelligible and shoved Seonwoo Yeon aside.

“This is bad.”

That was his final action.

Just as he had said, there was no clear way to dodge it.

And leaving a B-rank Earthling in front of him would only have caused needless collateral damage.

Bzzzt!

The blond hunter gathered every last scrap of mana he had left and grabbed the association agent, dragging her down and to the side.

At that exact instant, the lightning bolt struck.

Cleanly.

Directly.

It hit its intended target without resistance.

Bang!

A weightless stream of energy had collided with a human body.

And yet the impact produced a deafening explosion that battered everyone’s ears.

“_ _”

Then what had become of the blond hunter who took the hit?

Seonwoo Yeon instinctively looked toward the place where her comrade had been thrown.

The man struck by the high-temperature plasma beam was in terrible condition.

“...!!”

Most horrifying of all was his head.

The attack had done more than burn away his hair and scalp.

His skull had fractured.

An injury anywhere else might have been survivable, but when half a human face had been blown apart, survival was almost inconceivable.

“Aaagh!”

“H, heup...”

“Ugh.”

They say that when the shock is too great, a person can’t even scream.

Perhaps this was exactly that kind of moment.

Seonwoo Yeon couldn’t even rise to her feet.

She simply remained there, gasping for breath and trembling.

Around the same time, the other two Koreans, convinced that Kim Giryeo was dead, finally broke.

The fearless curse user, someone who could normally eat without batting an eye while watching a well-made horror movie, was now shaking violently and screaming at the top of her lungs.

Clank.

Jung Haseong was so overwhelmed that he gave up on counterattacking altogether.

The Sunset Sword slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor like some cheap piece of plastic.

In truth, despite everything that had happened, he had vaguely been expecting something from that man.

“This can’t be happening...”

Kim Giryeo.

He had stopped an Inoogi.

He had even killed a Real Beast.

Somehow, whenever disaster struck, he was always the one they could rely on to turn the situation around.

Korea’s hunters had witnessed scenes like that again and again.

But when the fourth S-rank—the man who had overcome crisis after crisis—fell so suddenly and helplessly, all the accumulated pressure shattered at once.

Everyone descended into panic.

“Ha.”

Only after his enemies had been completely crushed, both mentally and physically, did Enzo finally speak in a calm voice.

The large brown-haired man returned the [Book of Destruction], still clinging to his hand, to his item box.

Just as the alien had warned him earlier, maintaining the summoned creature was steadily draining his mana and pushing him closer to his limit.

And Enzo wasn’t the only one reaching a critical point.

Ssk.

He tore off the continuous recovery device attached somewhere beneath his clothes and said,

“If using this legendary item really shortens your lifespan...”

For some reason, the AI voice from the translator sounded especially eerie today.

“Well, if it’s for the job, I suppose I can afford to burn through a little lifespan.”

But the statement that followed was so shocking that, had an Alphaurin heard it, they would have fainted for an entirely different reason.

Enzo had just declared that he would willingly sacrifice several years of his life if that was what it took to fulfill his company’s duties.

“H, heuk...”

Thud!

The golden summon vanished.

Haseong and Esther, who had been trapped in its grasp, collapsed onto the stone floor.

Seonwoo Yeon trembled as she stared at the scene before her.

It looked like hell made manifest.

Yet Enzo merely looked at the Koreans and smiled.

“See? All you have to do is turn a blind eye here, bow your head to one or two people there, and you can have the whole world beneath your feet.”

“_ _”

“It’s good to have something to do... It really is. I’m not interested in eternal youth or anything like that. I just want to stay safe while I’m alive. You Only Live Once! You know that, right?”

That brought the conversation to an end.

Enzo was wondering what to do with the long-haired woman who looked ready to pass out when he suddenly noticed that the far end of the corridor had become noticeably brighter.

“Huh?”

It was noon inside the dungeon.

Which meant that, according to its rules, the ant-hole chambers had merged back into a single space.

“What the. So that’s what happened to these bugs.”

The chamber filled with collapsed A-rank Hunters disappeared, and the interior of the gate fully reverted to its original abduction state.

As a result, the two Beasts who had fought Jung Haseong were returned to this floor as well.

“It’s just like strawberry jam!”

Hahaha.

The moment Enzo spotted his fellow Beast, he walked over and used an item.

It had originally been designed specifically to cure curses, but it also worked broadly against many different status ailments.

[Holy Water].

“Cough!”

“Cough!”

As expected.

The instant the first-grade [Holy Water], directly sourced from Europe, touched them, the red petrification began disappearing.

“H-Hy ain’t— What the hell did that bastard do to me...?!”

“That sword’s the problem! I swear, there was light coming out of that legendary sword!”

“By the way, why the heck are you practically naked again? Don’t tell me your mask and everything else got wrecked in a fight with a [Doppelgänger] or something?”

It was the moment when even the last shred of resistance disappeared.

Enzo Chiano.

That one Hunter alone had already seemed like an insurmountable wall.

And now even the remnants of the Beasts who had been petrified on the other floors had returned.

Was this a dream?

No...

As expected, this had to be a nightmare.

“Anyway...”

“Finally finished.”

“As expected, dungeons really are convenient. You could almost call them a natural EMP apocalypse.”

“...True. Using a book like this out in the open would’ve been difficult with so many eyes watching.”

Completely drained by the [Mana Burn], Esther and Haseong could do little more than move their eyes and track the enemy’s position.

Even in that state, Seo Esther still seemed determined to retaliate the moment her strength returned.

A poisonous gleam remained in her eyes.

Tak, tak.

Haseong, however, couldn’t escape his confusion.

In fact, the moment the Beasts began moving, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

Resignation.

And fear that surged up all at once.

“...____”

“...?”

But as he remained there with his eyes closed, isolated in the darkness, he gradually realized that something unfamiliar had been stirring in his chest for the past several seconds.

“Wait.”

What was this sensation?

It felt like the pounding that came after consuming roughly 400mg of caffeine.

Without any conscious effort on his part, his heart began constricting painfully.

In other words, a strange unease had suddenly come over him.

Something close to the anxiety that preceded a panic attack.

Unfamiliar with the abrupt change in his body, Haseong opened his eyes wide again.

“?”

But no matter how deeply he breathed, no matter what he tried, the violent pounding in his chest refused to subside.

“Wait a second, what the... what is this?”

And it wasn’t just him.

Everyone present was experiencing the same phenomenon.

Esther, lying sprawled across the ground with her thick violet hair spread around her like spilled blood.

The group of Beasts, who only moments ago had been on the verge of extinguishing the Koreans’ final breath.

All of them were visibly shaken by the same inexplicable sensation.

Because of the very nature of S-rank Hunters, they couldn’t immediately understand what they were experiencing.

There was, however, one exception.

Just one person—

“_ _”

A B-rank tracker employed by a South Korean government agency knew exactly what this sensation was.

‘It feels like rounding a corner only to find yourself face-to-face with something unimaginably huge... like opening your eyes and seeing a whale’s eye staring straight back at you.’

Because she had experienced this unnatural pounding sensation many times in this very place.

‘...The overwhelming presence of someone with a vastly higher awakening level...’

Had it appeared only in one small, localized area, perhaps no one would have noticed.

But when that violent pressure filled the entire space, identifying its source became almost impossible.

The Beasts tightened their grips on their weapons and looked around, searching for the cause of the sudden change.

And then—

at that very moment—

something finally moved at the edge of their vision.

Slightly.

Someone who had been slammed into the wall with enough force to leave a crater-like depression was silently rising to his feet.

Alone.