Chapter 761

No matter how powerful a monster was, unless it possessed regenerative abilities equal to or greater than a Troll’s, it was bound to die if its neck or heart was pierced.

Just like now.

Whoosh!

The Minotaur Lord jerked its neck back. Too late to avoid the spearhead driving toward it.

No—my strike was too fast and precise to let it escape.

Crunch!

The spearhead pierced its throat, cut through flesh and bone, and burst out the other side.

Its eyes went wide with pain. Blood and phlegm rattled in its slightly open mouth.

Grrk. Grrrk…

What tenacious vitality.

But it was time to put a period to it.

“Goodbye.”

Boom!

The flame carried by my spearhead exploded. Its tree-thick neck snapped in an instant, sending its head flying.

System

• Defeated Lv. 140 Minotaur Lord!
• Gained a large amount of EXP and Fame!
• Level Up!

As the System notification rang in my ears, I slowly turned around.

The battlefield had fallen silent. Humans and monsters who had been fighting fiercely moments ago were all staring at me.

At me, standing before the monster’s crumpled corpse.

At me, who looked like hope to some and nothing short of disaster to others.

They had stopped as if by agreement. I kicked the Minotaur Lord’s head where it lay on the ground.

Whoooosh—clang!

The severed head soared high into the sky and landed at the center of the battlefield.

Kickoff for the second half. No, for the final period of overtime.

But the stunned players needed a word from the referee to get moving.

“What are you waiting for? Wipe them all out.”

“…!”

—…!

Human and monster eyes widened at the same time, though for different reasons.

Joy for the humans.

Fear for the monsters.

And at the moment countless gazes filled with those different emotions left me and met one another—

“Waaaaaaaah!”

A roar loud enough to leave my ears ringing rose as a wave of humans certain of victory swept over the monsters.

Shreeeek! Crunch!

“All of you, come at me! You fucking monsters!”

“…”

Why was that bastard always out in front?

The monster world’s Yi Wan-yong, or something.¹

I shook my head at the sight of the Skeleton King hacking through monsters left and right with his halberd, then charged into their already half-broken ranks.

Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh! Slash!

Right.

The battle wasn’t over. All that remained was the slaughter.

The slaughter began around sunset and ended deep into the night.

With their leader dead, the fear-stricken Minotaur army fell apart in an instant and scattered in every direction. Somewhere along the way, I had become the field commander. I settled their fate with one simple order.

“Chase them. Turn the whole city upside down if you have to.”

After that, it was a hunt.

True to their name, the Hunters ground the already shattered Minotaur army into dust.

“You bastards!”

“This is revenge for Jonas! Kill every last one of them!”

Whoooosh! Crunch!

—Kaaaaaah!

A Hunter could die from a single stroke of bad luck. But how many people could accept a comrade’s death as just part of the job?

All the grief they had felt today turned to rage. Victory became another word for revenge.

“Minotaurs spotted! They’re headed toward the international airport!”

“What should we do?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your orders, please!”

“…?”

That caught me off guard.

Never mind the military commander handling the rear guard—these Hunters had their own team leaders. Why ask an outsider like me? Still, the answer was simple enough.

“What are you waiting for? Instead of wasting time asking me this, go kill them.”

“Thank you! Team Three, follow me!”

“Waaaaaah!”

“Übermensch has ordered us to slaughter every last monster!”

“Follow Übermensch! Crush their flesh and bones, and drink their blood!”

“Übermensch! Übermensch!”

“Flesh and bone! Bone and flesh!”

“…”

What the fuck. That was scary.

Judging by the shouts echoing from every direction, this wasn’t Germany anymore. It was the Aztec Empire at minimum.

Granted, they were hunting invading monsters rather than people. That was a pretty big difference.

“Still, it would probably be better not to drink the blood…”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Team Leader Choi gave me a strange look, wiped the blood from his face, and spoke.

“It seems most of them have been dealt with. The German Armed Forces deployed the rear guard they had held back, and I hear they’re right on the verge of annihilating the rest.”

“Quite a few escaped.”

“They’re tracking them all with drones. They won’t get away.”

I nodded and asked what mattered most.

“What about casualties?”

“About fifteen hundred reported so far. Nearly a thousand dead. The rest are seriously injured, but their lives aren’t in danger.”

Science and magic had come together in this world.

Most injuries could be treated with surgery, and with healing magic and potions added to the mix, even someone who had lost a limb could recover enough to move around without difficulty within a month.

But the number of dead weighed on me.

“A thousand…”

Far too many people had died.

I had arrived as fast as I could and fought with everything I had. I still hadn’t been able to save them.

“Mr. Jin.”

At Team Leader Choi’s quiet call, I shook my head.

“I’m fine. I know what you’re going to say.”

Objectively, today’s battle had been a decisive victory. We had crushed an army of nearly ten thousand Minotaurs, killed the S-rank monster leading them, and kept our losses to a minimum.

But a wound didn’t stop hurting just because it was smaller than it could have been.

The exhausted Hunters still chasing monsters for revenge were proof of that. We had won a great victory, and we were in pain.

We had been for a long time. We still were.

That was war.

A wheel of suffering with no real winners or losers, where the outcome depended on who inflicted the greater wounds.

Knowing that didn’t change my duty to fight. Or to stop the person reaching out from unseen darkness, setting that wheel spinning faster after its brief pause.

—What about him? Michael Silbert?

Team Leader Choi heard my Sound Transmission. Without so much as twitching an eyebrow, he moved his lips.

—He’s on his way to Munich now that he’s wrapped things up in South Africa, or so I heard.

—He was a step too late this time.

—This was never part of the plan.

Odin Guild was enormous. With branches all over the world, it could respond quickly—but even then, it couldn’t have accomplished what we had today.

Michael had used the Prophet as a tool to bring about this disaster.

To everyone else, it might look like the indiscriminate terror attack of a mad fanatic. But Michael Silbert, who had manipulated everything from behind the scenes, knew exactly when and where the terror would occur.

The Monster Wave in South Africa was probably one of them.

But there were exceptions.

I had intervened in the Munich Monster Wave, something Michael Silbert had failed to predict, and stopped the disaster before he could.

No.

And in doing so, I had gained the power to stand in his way: the public’s renewed support and trust.

“…”

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

I looked around. A ruined city. Bodies and pools of blood in every street.

I felt sick. As though I had used the deaths of more than a thousand people to further my own ends. As though I, too, had become a monster no different from Michael Silbert or the Prophet.

But…

I had done everything I could. Call it self-justification. Call it telling myself I’d won. I didn’t care.

I had tried to save as many lives as possible and fought through gritted teeth to prevent a greater disaster.

And as a result, I had become the only—and greatest—obstacle in this world capable of standing against Michael Silbert.

Open Quest window.

Ding.

A familiar chime sounded, and a holographic window unfolded before me. The same Main Quest, unchanged since I had first seen it.

Cataclysm.

I repeated the word reflected in my eyes.

I had killed the Minotaur Lord, the greatest cause of this Monster Wave, and wiped out nearly ten thousand monsters. Still, the System had said nothing.

As if there was still a long way to go.

As if it would only finish the mission assigned to me after I had shattered all of Michael Silbert’s plans and brought him to complete ruin—or ended his life.

I was staring silently at the window when—

Whooooom.

“…!”

I turned my head. Far off in the dark sky, beyond what an ordinary person could see, a faint light was approaching.

What is that?

A question. A guess. Then certainty.

My tangled thoughts worked through all three before reaching an answer.

Team Leader Choi noticed something was wrong a moment after I did and spoke in a subdued voice.

“He’s arrived.”

“Yes.”

Crrk.

My grip tightened on the spear shaft until my knuckles went white. I watched the light draw closer and muttered,

“He’s here.”

Simon, a reporter nearing his tenth year on the job, was bursting with excitement and nerves.

This is a scoop. A scoop.

His smartphone was full of notes and draft headlines he had been typing for hours.

An army of monsters led by the S-rank monster Minotaur Lord.

Estimated number: ten thousand. A massive force.

Central Munich. Urban battle breaks out.

The battle turns against humanity. And then Jin Taekyung finally appears.

S-rank Hunter Joel Schumacher in crisis, saved by a true transcendent being. Is Jin Taekyung Übermensch?

A great victory! A scoop! Are you seeing this, News Director? You bastard, you’re worse than a pig’s asshole. Why the fu— am I getting blamed because Daniel Daisuke got the rally canceled?

Tap. Tap-tap.

Simon stopped typing and deleted the last note.

The news director had shouted at him half a day ago over the cancellation of the rally against Jin Taekyung. But the man had also sent him here, and remembering that took some of the edge off his irritation.

Yeah, all right. Upper management’s been riding him hard lately.

Covering for your superior was also part of a subordinate’s duty. Simon nodded and entered a new note.

The meeting of two heroes.

Jin Taekyung and Michael Silbert meet again in Munich!

And just as Simon typed the final exclamation point, a powerful wind blew toward him and the countless other reporters.

Whoooosh.

“They’re here!”

“Is that Odin Guild?”

“Definitely! That’s the Guild Master’s private aircraft!”

Shouts broke out all around him. Simon watched in awe as the massive aircraft slowly descended toward a nearby open lot, then hurried after the reporters surging forward like a wave.

He had no idea what was about to happen there.