Chapter 384

If a foreign sorcerer had been there, they would have explained it like this.

The [Delhi No. 1614] gate appeared to be a space designed by an exceptionally cunning core entity. The mechanism by which enemies reappeared—respawned—had been modified in a very particular way.

Specifically, it reacted to perception.

Simply put, late-stage enemies would not appear until the raiders physically entered a designated zone.

Even the cosmic beings capable of constructing something as sophisticated as a gate could not create matter from nothing, so they avoided spawning excessively powerful enemies without reason.

That was why the [Delhi No. 1614] gate functioned this way.

Once the raiders unlocked a hidden area, the system would immediately release the next enemy it had prepared, operating on the assumption that anyone capable of reaching that point was strong enough to face it.

On the other hand, if a dungeon break occurred without any particular area being opened, that itself served as evidence that humanity was still too weak.

In that sense, the mechanism conveniently doubled as a form of difficulty adjustment.

Anyway, at first glance, the system devised by a certain alien invader race seemed almost reasonable.

"Ah, seriously, what kind of disgusting mess is this—"

Unfortunately, the Korean raiders had remained trapped far longer than expected inside the "certain chamber" that served as the trigger for the latter half of the raid.

And because of that, a fundamental flaw emerged in what otherwise would have been a nearly perfect respawn system.

"Seal off the area!"

"Tell the residents to evacuate immediately! Move the schedule up! Hurry!"

Due to that small flaw, the [Delhi No. 1614] gate had overproduced late-stage monsters.

From the moment it detected the Awakened—including the country's number-one-ranked hunter—it repeatedly spawned enemies, causing their numbers to swell explosively far earlier than intended.

"What the hell went wrong this time?"

But the situation was far too serious to dismiss as a simple malfunction.

Jung Haseong swept his gaze over the surroundings with a devastated expression.

Normally, whenever he discovered some flaw in a gate, he would actually be pleased, thinking there might be a way to exploit it during the raid.

"A catastrophe full of flaws... There's really nothing to be happy about this time."

The thought crossed his mind only briefly.

There was no longer any time to dwell on it.

Wooong.

"Aaaaah!"

"Waaah!"

Jung Haseong wasted no words and immediately activated his skill.

"How far does the defensive line need to extend?"

"Up to that sign that says 'City Information'!"

A swarm of white wasps surged toward him.

If even one thing went wrong, those monsters could spill straight into the nearby residential area.

Whoosh!

"Kyaak!"

"It's all right! Stay where you are! Don't panic or make any sudden movements."

Jung Haseong first incinerated the ordinary monster—little more than an alien drone—that had latched onto an Association employee.

Then he set the wide field behind them ablaze.

"I'll open a path toward that sign so people can get through."

"Y-Yes!"

There was no better way to describe it than arson.

He had erected a wall of fire to prevent the dungeon creatures from crossing into human territory.

"Grrrrr."

"—!"

Swish!

Driven back by the heat, the artificial creatures hurriedly changed direction.

"Damn it!"

"Hunter Esther!"

At that moment, a strangely contradictory phrase came to mind.

He'd put out the urgent fire.

The problem was that the isolation created by the country's number-one-ranked hunter was far from perfect.

"Damn it. This is like trying to quench thirst with seawater."

The creatures inhabiting [Delhi No. 1614] just happened to be monsters that were extraordinarily sensitive to fluctuations in mana.

"Kwieeeek!"

The shriek sounded like a pig being slaughtered.

The instant Jung Haseong used his skill, the enemies detected the surge of mana from his body and charged toward him.

Naturally, the Awakened on the scene also began retreating in a hurry to avoid being surrounded, but—

"Hunter! Are you all right?"

"Let's not make a scene between professionals. Just focus on your own job. Over there! A boss-level monster is moving near the wall of fire."

In an instant, the entire battlefield descended into chaos.

Hunters were knocked to the ground, unable to properly deal with the white creatures swarming in from the air.

Curse-type ability users in particular were poorly matched against flying enemies, and several of them were badly wounded.

"If that gets you, paralytic toxin will spread through your veins!"

But an S-rank was still an S-rank, no matter how exhausted.

Trusting in her fundamental physical ability, Esther instead charged even farther forward.

"Hunter Seo!"

"No, I misjudged it. Still, it looks like my skills had some effect on the boss-level monster, even if only a little."

"Even so, that's dangerous..."

"I'll lure the stronger ones toward the center. Haseong, just make sure that wall doesn't go down!"

It was honestly difficult to say which part of the situation was the worst.

A swarm of lesser monsters seemed ready to breach the defensive line the moment their attention slipped.

There was, as expected, another formidable boss-level creature among them.

And on top of everything else, the gate had already broken, allowing all of this to spill into human territory.

"..."

Jung Haseong felt as though his head were about to explode.

"Hunter Kim Giryeo, of all times, apparently boarded a jet the moment he heard we'd escaped safely."

Naturally, their strongest safeguard—the fourth S-rank Hunter—still hadn't arrived.

But how were they supposed to hold out until that fair-haired man got here?

"Then it'll take hours. Whether we're waiting for Hunter Kim Giryeo to arrive or trying to bring in reinforcements from another country!"

The problems seemed endless.

[Delhi No. 1614] covered a vast area, and in accordance with the gate's usual mechanics, the monsters were scattered throughout it.

"How many mana potions have I had today?"

Fortunately, most of the surrounding terrain was open farmland with few buildings, so at least containment was possible.

"How many bottles do I even have left?"

In another ten minutes or so, even maintaining the flames would become uncertain.

Jung Haseong repeatedly assessed his own remaining strength until despair finally settled over him.

"I never even meant to prove anything."

Swoosh.

His thoughts were a tangled mess.

He tightened his grip on the [Sword of Sunset].

"Was it really so wrong to try surviving without depending on someone else? What exactly did we do to deserve this dungeon exploding—no, why did it have to explode at all?"

Out of habit, he gripped his weapon and moved to hunt.

He incinerated the small white creatures swarming around the nearby people.

Before their ashes even reached the ground, Korea's number-one-ranked hunter was already on the move again.

Taking advantage of the swarm's behavior—where disturbing one member caused the others to react—Jung Haseong first drew the bees clinging to weaker targets toward himself.

"Ugh!"

But that, too, had been arrogance.

The real reason he'd been able to deal with the bees so easily earlier was because the strange environment inside the otherworldly space had worked in his favor.

The moment the monsters escaped into the open air of Earth, they began darting around erratically, as if their previous behavior had never existed.

"I was so startled, I thought one of them was going straight into my ear..."

It wasn't as though he'd been careless with his defenses.

Even so, in the blink of an eye, deep scratches had appeared across the surface of his equipment.

Gulp.

Cold sweat broke out across his skin.

Truthfully, most of the major crises he'd faced until now had ultimately been battles against exhaustion.

Even then, he had never felt this desperately lacking in strength.

"So in the end, I really can't do anything by myself without Hunter Kim Giryeo, huh?"

He had hunted enormous beasts like tigers countless times.

And yet here he was, being thrown off balance by insects no larger than this.

"And they call me a hunter?"

If Kim Giryeo had been here, things never would have reached this point.

No.

He probably wouldn't have allowed an incident like this to happen in the first place.

Thoughts like that kept surfacing in Jung Haseong's mind, one after another, relentless in their self-reproach.

"Why did an S-rank gate have to appear at a time like this!"

What made the situation even more desperate was that, no matter how exhausted he became, there was no chance for him to rest.

From what he'd heard, Kim Giryeo had only just boarded a plane in India.

Thinking about it again, that meant there were still several hundred minutes left before he would even arrive in South Korea.

"We have to keep this up for several more hours..."

For a moment, the same thought seemed to pass through the minds of both S-ranks.

But thinking about it wouldn't change reality.

Jung Haseong forced himself back to the present and changed his approach.

"Still, we've already reduced the number of ordinary monsters this much."

Meanwhile, some distance away, Esther was caught in a rare struggle of her own.

Across the uneven, poorly maintained farmland, she leaped more than ten meters at a time, skillfully engaging the boss-level monsters.

"Could that be the evasive-type defensive method I've only heard about?"

Even while performing such demanding physical maneuvers, Esther continued hurling curses to restrict the monsters' movements.

But every creature had its limits.

So Jung Haseong pressed the battle forward, doing everything he could before his companion reached hers.

"Hunter Kim has taught me too much for me to end things here..."

Earlier, inside the dungeon, his attacks had simply bounced off the monster's exterior, leaving him shaken.

But thinking about it now, if the shell was that hard, there was still one method left to try.

"Let's blow it apart from the inside."

Simple enough to say.

In practice, however, it demanded an extreme degree of concentration because of the various currents of magical energy circulating through the monster's body.

"Now, while it's still standing still. This is our chance."

Like a marksman at match point, the hero held his breath.

Tik.

Still, he succeeded.

He forced his magic past the dizzying repulsive pressure created by the monster's internal energy.

The flames reached its vital organs.

Krrr!

At last, he'd managed to wound a boss-level enemy.

"What? How did you do that?"

"You have to concentrate really hard to pull it off..."

"Can you do it again?"

"If you give me enough time."

For reference, the monsters they were fighting had the appearance of living creatures, but they were nothing more than imitations without true souls.

Even after suffering internal damage, they continued charging forward, releasing their distinctive cries.

"Anyway, we've already dealt with almost all the small fry. There's not much else left to worry about. We can handle this."

In response, Korea's first- and second-ranked hunters attempted the same strategy once more.

The Awakened from the Korean Magic Tower lured the late-stage boss monsters farther away, avoiding direct confrontation.

Esther rapidly unleashed curse after curse, wearing down the enemies and restricting their movements.

Once the field was prepared, the greatest firepower on the Korean Peninsula would strike them where it mattered.

Taang!

This time, the instant the skill took effect, a cannon-like blast erupted from inside the monster's body.

"Yeah. I've practiced so much with Hunter Kim! I should at least be able to do this much..."

But Jung Haseong hadn't expected things to unfold this way.

"Hm?"

As the saying went, on an unlucky day, even falling backward could break your nose.

Crack!

And just as the saying suggested, the unexpected disaster came straight back at them.

Once the monster they were fighting sustained a certain amount of damage, its body split apart like a gigantic egg.

Something hidden inside began to emerge.

"Why is that..."

Wooong.

He really didn't want to experience the full meaning of adding insult to injury.

And yet, as though mocking the hunters' hopes, the S-rank boss finally revealed the secret it had been hiding.

"Something's coming out of it..."

The second powerful enemy in the [Delhi No. 1614] gate possessed a particular trait.

Upon death, it reproduced an entire dungeon's worth of machinery.

In other words, every white bee they had worked so hard to eliminate suddenly returned in full force.

For perhaps the first time that day, Jung Haseong's determination to keep pushing forward nearly broke.

Cough, cough.

Suddenly, a young female hunter nearby began choking.

"Director Seo?"

As if that ominous sound had been a signal, the crisis before them grew even worse.