FWOOOOOOOOSH.
Feeling the cold wind slapping my face, I look down at the ground.
‘At least thirty floors up.......’
Before Doomsday, I wouldn’t even have been able to look down from this height out of fear.
If I just fall like this.
Even for me, there’s no way I’d get out of it without serious damage.
My [Assistant Chef]s have already been committed to blocking those shots.
They won’t have time to come protect me......
‘No helping it.’
The arrow that keeps shoving me away.
While I use one hand to keep that arrow from piercing through my stomach, at the same time—
KRAK.
With my other hand—
—I grab the shaft of the arrow.
“Since there’s nothing around to step on......”
It still has an enormous amount of force left in it.
A massive arrow ripping powerfully through the open air.
THOK.
I plant my foot on top of it.
The arrow is still flying with tremendous force packed into it.
That overwhelming power is such that
even if it has to lift my body, even if there’s recoil generated by my weight—
it can easily withstand it and serve as a foothold.
“Hrrrgh......!”
[Martial Art – Assists the effect of dietary cuisine.]
KRAK!
The moment I push off, using that gigantic arrow as a stepping stone—
only then does the arrow finally lose its power and snap.
Of course.
This alone is more than enough.
PAAANG!
Even if it did break—
the arrow fulfilled its role as a foothold in midair perfectly.
My body tears through the wind at tremendous speed.
With only one target in mind.
‘The top floor!’
CRAAAAASH!
Just like that—
I smash through the window of the highest floor and dive inside.
“Y-you... you...!”
And there—
I can see the enemy I was aiming for.
“Damn...!”
Slumped in the farthest corner,
hurriedly trying to stop the bleeding in a wounded shoulder.
He yanks his hand away from the wound
and, in a panic, snatches up his huge bow and snarls.
“You monster bastard...!”
“Talking about monsters—look who’s talking.”
In his eyes as he stares at me,
there’s nothing but pure fear.
*****
With his wounded shoulder hastily bandaged,
he sits in the deepest corner, barely hanging onto his bow.
“You... are you really human...?”
Anyway.
I see him like that and can’t help but give a bitter smile.
‘I knew this already, but seeing it with my own eyes doesn’t exactly feel good.’
Still, whatever.
Right now I just do what needs to be done.
“You’re curious whether I’m human, huh...... Well, I’ll answer that one later.”
Maybe he did prepare for this kind of assault,
because the path to him is packed with a ridiculous number of traps meant to stop anything from getting close.
There are probably even more invisible traps on top of the ones I can see.
“Conveniently, I’ve got plenty of questions for you too.”
After giving those traps a quick once-over,
I put strength into my legs.
PAAANG!
I kick off the floor and say,
“Let’s talk later.”
“......!”
BABABABABABANG!
THUDUDUDUDU......
The traps all trigger at once.
Firearms and every sort of mechanical device installed around the room come alive and target my body.
“You’re insane...!”
As if he has no intention of just watching,
the sniper also draws his bowstring toward me.
But.
I feel no fear.
[Ingredient Identification (Enhanced)]
[You gain Enlightenment of Advanced Recipe.]
[This enlightenment has already been acquired.......]
To me, the being in front of my eyes is nothing but an ingredient......
nothing more than prey.
*****
“Kahahah! This is all the strength you bastards have?!”
“Pathetic...! Pathetic!!!”
On the ground, the Expedition Force has opened the Wall and poured out, fighting the swarm of monsters.
Maybe because the battle situation is in their favor,
they’ve suddenly been filled with incredible courage.
“Kahahah... They’re, they’re pathetic, but still!”
The momentum from that courage is making the battle go very much in their favor,
but because the enemy numbers are so overwhelming,
it’s by no means an easy fight.
“There’s no end to them!”
Support fire is still pouring down constantly from atop the Wall,
and the Awakeners on the ground have cut down a staggering number of enemies, but the enemy line still shows no end.
“Huh...?”
“Captain!”
Just as the courage that had taken root in their hearts
starts to get pushed back by fatigue—
“......The enemies are beginning to retreat!”
“What?”
That massive horde of monsters suddenly loses its momentum and mill about in confusion,
then turn their backs and begin to flee.
‘What?’
Their numbers should still be overwhelmingly superior.
If they kept fighting, it would be a battlefield where victory would be hard to guarantee.
Yet even though there hasn’t been some huge shift in the battle, the monsters suddenly panic and retreat.
“What should we do, Captain?”
“What kind of question is that, of course we chase—”
He doesn’t know the exact reason,
but it’s rare to get a chance to inflict as much damage as when ambushing a retreating enemy.
Park Junggu, still under the effect of [Courage], is about to immediately give the order to pursue......
‘They all look like nothing but skeletons.’
Everyone still has the fire of battle alive in their eyes,
but from the continuous fighting their faces look pale enough to resemble living skulls.
Junggu shakes his head and says,
“Don’t... chase them. Let them go for now. Our side’s taken heavy damage too. If anything’s going to hit them while they run, the firepower on top of the Wall can handle it.”
“Yes, sir!”
“First, fall back inside the Wall and clean up our casualties. Everyone move!”
With that,
the Awakeners retreat inside the Wall and begin handling the damage.
“Oh my god, over here!”
As they return to the inside of the Wall,
the non-combat Awakeners who’d been on standby rush out to help them.
“Uncle Junggu! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m perfectly fine.”
Junggu steps inside the Wall and looks around.
All the Expedition’s combatants are injured, whether lightly or heavily.
But......
“Hah, those bastards were nothing!”
“This is the first time in my life I’ve ever earned this much experience at once...!”
“You think you’re the only one?”
The mood among the Awakeners
is better than it’s ever been.
‘Seriously... That battle was absurd.’
Debuffs were showered on the enemy while insane amounts of buffs were piled on our side.
Even though we were clearly ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) the ones ambushed first,
the final phase of the battle let them fight comfortably under supporting fire from atop the Wall......
in a situation overwhelmingly advantageous to their side.
‘I can’t believe a battle like this is even possible.’
Naturally,
the usual pattern of battle is nothing like this.
All Awakeners try however they can to avoid disadvantageous situations,
yet even against an equal number of monsters, most wins are narrow, hard-fought victories.
But this time, they achieved something close to a massacre against an enemy force far larger than their own.
‘Even I... earned an insane amount of experience. I’m not far off from reaching Lv.28.’
Every Awakener who took part in the battle, directly or indirectly, has earned a huge amount of experience.
To get this much experience from a single battle—
even Junggu, who’s been through countless fights, has never seen anything like it.
“Anyway, nothing special happen on the inside?”
“Ah, that...”
Junggu asks Han Iseo while getting treated by the healers.
It’s a question he throws out without much thought,
but Han Iseo hesitates for a moment before opening her mouth.
“Something did happen.”
“......What?”
“Mr. Jongdu... was attacked by monsters.”
At those words,
Park Junggu’s eyes fly wide in shock.
“Mr. Jongdu!?”
“Yes.”
“......Damn it! What happened to him?”
The Walls he builds are essential to their survival.
Losing him would mean immeasurable damage to the entire Association.
‘Should I have left some troops inside the Wall...!’
Junggu regrets that decision,
when—
“...I’m alive.”
“!?”
He turns his head toward the voice he hears.
Architect Kim Jongdu is approaching him with a hollow look on his face.
“You... how did you survive?”
Kim Jongdu is a non-combat Awakener.
Junggu wonders if maybe he somehow used that non-combat ability to survive,
but that’s not it.
“......I don’t know either.”
“Huh?”
“I just made a shelter in a safe spot and was hiding out... then the ground suddenly collapsed, and monsters that had dug a tunnel in came and attacked me.”
“......”
“I thought I was going to die just like that. But then...”
Jongdu speaks again, eyes trembling.
“From the shadow of the shelter... a huge red blade burst out.”
“What?”
“A red and black... unknown, ominous magic power. Two blades wrapped in that kind of power sliced apart the monsters attacking me in an instant... and then vanished.”
At that,
Junggu speaks as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing.
“Do you hear yourself right now?”
“That’s why I said I don’t know either.”
As if feeling fear,
Jongdu’s whole body trembles as he talks.
“I don’t know why it saved me or what it was... but the magic power was so terrifying, so ominous. It definitely saved me, but it was still so frightening I could feel it in my bones.”
“......”
“Red-black, ominous magic power, huh......”
“Trying to explain it in words, I don’t even know what to say. Ah, right!”
At that moment,
Jongdu points a finger toward the Wall gate and speaks.
“It was exactly like that magic power...!”
When they look where his finger is pointing,
what appears in Junggu’s eyes is......
TUP.
From the other side,
is the figure of a man walking toward them, step by steady step.
“It was... exactly that kind of magic power...”
“......”
“My god. Then that was...?”
As Jongdu’s eyes widen as if in realization,
the Awakeners inside the Wall are struck speechless
and just stare blankly at the man walking toward them.
“......Hey, Mr. Junggu.”
“......”
“You said you guys from the Northern Branch were the ones who found that man, right?”
Only one person
—Heo Yunchang, the spearman from the Eastern Branch—
manages to open his mouth, cold sweat running down his face.
“Where the hell... did you people even pick that up from.”
The man walking calmly through the gate into the Wall.
His entire body is drenched red with the enemy’s blood.
His clothes are roughly torn as if from heavy combat,
but there isn’t a single visible wound on his body.
In other words—
‘All that blood... belongs to the enemy.’
That’s not all.
A tremendous magic power that can’t quite be contained is leaking out of his body, refusing to settle.
That power is so overwhelming
it’s forming a blackish-red aura visible to the naked eye.
A magic power unbelievably ominous, yet impossibly strong.
His strangely lengthened hair, matted with blood, undulates in the air under the influence of that power.
GULP......
He’s clearly an ally,
but the sight he presents brings nothing but fear to everyone watching.
Even so,
the red glow in his eyes is nothing but calm.
‘Rather than a monster... yeah.’
Calling that thing a “monster” doesn’t quite fit.
‘Grim Reaper... No, an asura?’
Something that surpasses even monsters—
a being one step beyond.
DRAG... DRAG...
And—
in one of the man’s hands, something unknown is being held just by the back of its neck
and dragged along the ground.
“......What is that?”
THUD!
While no one else can bring themselves to speak,
Park Junggu musters his courage and asks.
The man, like a grim reaper, throws the form he has been dragging into the middle of the Awakeners and answers.
“The enemy commander.”
“......What?”
Only then
can Junggu understand why the enemies suddenly withdrew.
At the same time, the gathered people all have their breath catch for an instant.
That man never showed himself once during the entire battle.
Which means—
‘He took out... the enemy commander by himself.’
He charged into the enemy lines alone
and brought back the enemy leader’s head.
Junggu moves his feet and approaches the figure.
The enemy who attacked them.
He’s thinking he should at least see the face of the one who commanded them......
“......Huh?”
The blood-drenched figure thrown down in the middle of the snow.
Those who recognize that figure’s identity are horrified.
“T-that’s...”
Of course they are.
The person he threw down has a face all of them know very well.
“The Shooting Unit Captain......”
“It’s Ji Han.”
To them, he was someone they’d only been told had gone missing.
Before that, he was one of the figures who represented them.
“Why is... an Association executive here?”
Of the large guild known as the [Gyeonggi Province Survivors’ Association],
he was one of only five executives.
