Chapter 43: That Just Leaves One (3)
"Graaaahhhh!!" The Buer's roar shook the entire passageway.
The demonic beast with a lion's head and five legs swallowed its saliva while looking hungrily at its prey. A delicious scent that it had never smelled before was wafting through the air from its prey.
The Buer opened its mouth and leaped toward them.
"Wh-What is this monster?!"
"B-Block!"
With fearful expressions, the party members took out their weapons. However, the Buer was so strong that it had taken out the party's tank with just one attack. There was no way that the remaining party members could block the Buer's attacks.
Crunch!!
"AARGG!! S-Save me!!"
The Buer bit the sword-wielding Player's lower body. The sword-wielder frantically stabbed the Buer with his sword to make it release him, but he couldn't get away from the sheer power of the Buer's jaws.
The Buer's bite split the sword-wielder into two, causing his organs to spill out.
"A-Ahhhh…"
Kang Seong-Soo's party members looked at the Buer with desperate expressions. It was a monster… a predator that devoured humans.
Normally, when Players faced monsters for the first time, they instinctively saw the creatur as predators and were afraid of them. However, as Players hunted and leveled up, that fear became weaker.
Seong-Soo's party had grown fast without experiencing dangerous situations, so they'd quickly forgotten about that fear. For them, monsters had been nothing more than beings who gave them experience points and money.
Yet, they were now filled with a fear they'd forgotten.
"Wh-What are you doing?! Attack!" Seong-Soo, who had lost his weapon, shouted at his party members.
Nevertheless, they struggled to take action. Their fear was devouring their rationality.
When the Buer saw that its prey were scared, it roared, "Graaaahhhh!"
Then the Buer aimed its foot, which had especially sharp claws, at the Player who was wielding a greatsword.
"Urgh!"
The Player raised his greatsword reflexively to defend himself, but the Buer's claws cleaved the greatsword in half and impaled the Player's skull.
"AARRGGHH!!!"
Crack. Crunch.
Then the Buer pulled its claws downward, ripping all the way through the Player's skull and into his ribs. A fountain of blood sprayed out as the Player's ribs broke and cracked open with a horrifying sound.
The Buer devoured the screaming Player whole.
"S-Seok-Hyun!" a Player wielding a rapier shouted.
He thrust the rapier at the Buer, but the rapier wasn't properly imbued with mana, so it failed to pierce the Buer's thick skin and broke. The Buer's long tongue instantly enveloped the rapier-wielding Player like a snake, constricting him until he exploded.
Upon seeing the horrible sight, the woman in the blue robe stopped casting magic.
Instead, she let out a shriek, "E-Eek!"
With a pale face, she turned around and began to run. "S-Save me!!"
She ran past Seong-Soo, heading toward the passageway's exit. The Buer turned its head and saw that its prey was running away.
"GRRRR," the Buer growled.
Its incomparably sharp claws elongated swiftly, doing so until they pierced through the robed woman from the back.
"Cough!"
The woman looked down at the monster's claws in disbelief, seemingly unable to believe that they had pierced through her. Red blood poured out of her mouth.
Crunch, crunch.
The fifth prey disappeared into the Buer's mouth.
"Wh-Wha… What in the world…" Seong-Soo crumbled onto the ground after watching his party members get devoured.
His pants became wet, and he looked at the Buer fearfully. Seong-Soo thought that he too would also be devoured soon.
"Huh…?"
Yet, unlike what he was expecting to happen, the Buer didn't attack him.
Instead of charging at him, the Buer yawned and curled up into a ball as if it had finished hunting for the day.
"It's full," Oh Kang-Woo stated.
"What are you…" Seong-Soo looked confusedly at Kang-Woo, who was calmly walking toward the monster.
Kang-Woo smirked and extended his right hand toward the Buer.
He explained, "Once a Buer is full, it won't attack you unless you attack it first."
It was quite easy to deal with a Buer that was full. The Buer just needed to be killed with the very first attack that it permitted before it would attack again.
Demonic energy began gathering in Kang-Woo's hand.
"Bident," he said.
The technique Bident had been named after the two-pronged spear of a certain ruler of the underworld in Greek mythology. The Authority of Dark Spears and the Authority of Hellfire had to be combined to use Bident, so it was a technique that only Kang-Woo could use.
An intense hellfire began burning at one end of the two-pronged spear. It was a technique that required quite a bit of time to prepare because he had to combine two different Authorities, but that didn't matter in the current situation.
Riiing.
[You have learned the skill Bident (Rank: S).]
[Techniques registered as skills can be used more easily and precisely.]
When a message window popped up saying that he had learned a new skill, the demonic spear in his hand was enveloped in hellfire. A terrifying amount of demonic energy spewed out of it.
Kang-Woo threw the spear at the Buer, who was still curled up.
Rumble!
The spear emitted such great power that it shook its surroundings, making it seem like there was an earthquake.
"ROOAARR!!"
Because the Buer was in the Full Stomach state, it had received the attack head-on without taking a defensive stance. The two-pronged spear pierced the Buer's thick skin, and the hellfire within it exploded from the inside. Even the strongest monster of the Second Hell wouldn't be able to handle such a powerful attack while completely defenseless.
Riiing.
[You have successfully eliminated the B-rank Rift Fragment.]
.
[Your level has risen by 6.]
[You have reached Level 40 and have unlocked your Fifth Awakening Trait.]
[The upper limit of bonus stat rewards for leveling up has risen. Demonic Energy has risen by 7.]
[Demonic Energy stat has reached 60. One of the conditions required to achieve the Ultimate Demonic Body has been fulfilled (1/3).]
As the Buer fell, Kang-Woo heard the chime of a bell, and blue message windows appeared in front of him.
'What the hell is this Ultimate Demonic Body?'
Kang-Woo tilted his head at the unexpected message.
'Sounds like something out of a martial arts novel.'
After reading that weird-sounding name, Kang-Woo opened his status window to check for more details about it.
[Information]
[Ultimate Demonic Body: The first step to becoming a Demon God.
*Condition 1: Demonic Energy stat reaches 60.
*Condition 2: ???
*Condition 3: ???]
'What's up with this uninformative description?'
Kang-Woo frowned.
The information window didn't say anything about what the Ultimate Demonic Body was and what effects it had. Nor did it mention what the other two conditions were.
'It says that it's the first step to becoming a Demon God, so I don't think it's a bad thing.'
Nevertheless, Kang-Woo already had some idea about the massive amount of power that he would probably be able to obtain by achieving the Ultimate Demonic Body.
'I've never seen anything like this even in Hell.'
He had never gotten anything like an Ultimate Demonic Body before, even when he became the lord of the Nine Hells.
Kang-Woo looked at the information window with great interest.
'I guess this more or less confirms my previous hypothesis.'
He was now sure that his suspicions were true; he could get even stronger than when he had been in Hell as long as he kept leveling up as a Player.
'I'll be able to become a god.'
He wasn't sure what kind of power he would obtain as an existence that surpassed a demon king… but the thought of it made his heart race excitedly.
"I thought that I no longer had the desire to become stronger, but I guess I was wrong."
Having the body of a demon strengthened one's desire for power. Kang-Woo had already become as strong as he could be in Hell, so he'd thought that he no longer had such desires. Nonetheless, after getting a hint about how to reach new heights, he was once again filled with an intense desire to become more powerful.
'First, I should devour the Buer's corpse.'
Kang-Woo needed the demonic energy inside the Buer to cool down his desire for power a bit. He technically had to conserve the corpse since he had entered the Gate as a variant monster investigator, but he had no reason to give up an immediate profit for the government.
'Leaving the head should be enough.'
Kang-Woo could just say that the rest of the body had been destroyed during the battle.
He walked toward the Buer's corpse and activated the Authority of Predation. Black smoke emerged from Kang-Woo and covered the corpse.
Chomp. Crunch.
As the flesh of the corpse was torn apart, the demonic energy of the Buer started to enter Kang-Woo's body.
[Demonic Energy has risen by 4.]
'As expected, demonic beasts give a lot more demonic energy.'
The fact that Kang-Woo's demonic energy stat had increased by four after reaching 60 meant that the Buer had possessed a massive amount of demonic energy.
'Oh. Come to think of it, I haven't checked my new Trait yet.'
He'd been so distracted with the Ultimate Demonic Body that he had forgotten to check the new Trait that he'd acquired with his Fifth Awakening.
Just as Kang-Woo was about to open his status window and check the Trait, he heard Seong-Soo's fearful voice.
"Wh-What the hell are you?" Seong-Soo trembled as he looked at Kang-Woo as if he were a monster.
Kang-Woo had eliminated the monster that had killed each of Seong-Soo's party members with just one attack, so it was unsurprising that Seong-Soo would react like that.
"Oh, right. There was still one left," Kang-Woo remarked.
He walked toward Seong-Soo with a grin.
"E-Eek! S-Stay away!"
Seong-Soo pathetically crawled backward, but Kang-Woo continued to walk toward him slowly.
"How unexpected. I was sure you would be the first one to die."
"D-Don't come any closer!"
"You're hurting my feelings. Aren't we party members?" Kang-Woo said.
He crouched down next to Seong-Soo and placed his hand on Seong-Soo's shoulder.
"A-Are you going to kill me?" Seong-Soo asked with a voice filled with fear.
Kang-Woo's eyes widened in shock as if he wasn't sure why Seong-Soo was asking something like that.
"What are you talking about? There's no way I would kill a party member," Kang-Woo replied.
"…"
"You seem to be misunderstanding something. I'm not that horrible of a person, Seong-Soo." Kang-Woo smiled and placed his hand on top of Seong-Soo's head. "There's still something you have to do, so you can't die yet."
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