Chapter 809

It was like watching a massive dam collapse.

Boom. Boom. KABOOM!

The most ferocious of the large monsters turned and fled.

Every time their several-meter-tall bodies¹ took a step, the enormous weight crushed corpses and smaller monsters underfoot like tofu.

Crunch! Crack-crunch!

—Kiiiiie!

—Kyargh!

Painful death cries rang out all around us, but not one of them belonged to a Hunter. At least on this battlefield today, the weak weren’t human. They were monsters.

The strong devour the weak.

Monsters followed the instincts stamped into them from birth. But this wasn’t the ferocity that had driven them to destroy cities and slaughter humans. What drove them now was something more primal.

Fear.

The S-rank monsters—so powerful the others hadn’t dared meet their eyes—were dead. So were most of the leaders who’d commanded the groups behind them.

Their threadbare chain of command had collapsed, and the ten-to-one gap in numbers was closing fast.

Several thousand monsters remained, by a rough count. But a beast that had lost the will to fight was easier prey than a herbivore.

And after the grueling battle they’d fought, the Hunters had no intention of ending the hunt just yet.

“They’re running! Wipe them out!”

“Don’t let a single one get away!”

“Aaaah!”

Bloodshot eyes. Weapons slick with flesh and blood.

Soaked from head to toe, the Hunters looked like people made of blood as they chased their prey. They bound slipping sword hilts tight with leather straps. Arms trembling from drawing bowstrings again and again reached for quivers at their sides.

They were exhausted. They wanted to collapse on the sticky sand and sleep.

But they couldn’t stop.

“Because of you bastards, Benjamin—Benjamin… You motherfuckers!”

Some had lost friends.

“N-no! Emma!”

Some had lost a comrade who was also a lover.

“Motherfucker. Were you in San Francisco a month ago, too? What? Damn it. Quit spewing shit I can’t understand and go to hell.”

Others had a recent wrong to avenge.

They had to kill monsters, again and again, until their anger was spent.

Shhk. Thud!

Monstrous cries rang out as green blood sprayed in every direction. An arrow flew in from somewhere, pierced an Orc’s head, and drove through a Troll’s ankle.

—Krrk.

The Hunters surrounded the staggering Troll. Scraping together the last of their mana, they poured it into their weapons. Dozens of blades hacked the monster to pieces.

Thump! Crack-crack-crack!

We’d fought against overwhelming numbers. The Hunters had suffered heavy losses, and the blood they’d shed had to be repaid in monsters.

“Die! Die!”

Hoarse shouts rang out here and there, voices raw from exhaustion and excitement.

The Hunters spat on the Troll’s corpse, chopped as fine as ground meat, then moved on with bloodshot eyes to find their next prey.

Boom! Boom-boom-boom!

Attack spells rained down.

Even now, thousands of monsters trampled corpses and their own kind as they surged south like a wave. The Hunters stood in their path like an enormous reef.

And I was at its center.

Whoosh!

A single diagonal downward sweep.

A razor-sharp gust shot along the spearhead and swept past the fleeing monsters.

Shraaaak.

Blood burst out instead of a scream, soaking into the sand.

But those lucky enough to escape the attack’s reach put more distance between us and ran faster.

Monsters had never even thought of their own kind as kin. Survival mattered more than fighting now, and they fled for their lives. Countless others were already scattering in every direction, slipping out of the encirclement.

I can’t let them get away. I have to take down as many as I can.

The battle was over. What we’d achieved would be remembered for generations and recorded in history as a great victory.

But more than five thousand monsters remained.

We’d killed so many, yet there were still enough to be called an army. Letting them escape today would leave the seeds of another disaster.

Still, we can’t chase them right now.

Everyone was exhausted from a long and brutal battle. Right now, the only things driving the Hunters were their anger and desire for revenge against the monsters. Nothing more, nothing less.

And I wasn’t the only one thinking it.

“Human!”

“Jin!”

The Skeleton King, who’d been holding the rear, and Magic Johnson, who’d fought his way through the monsters to reach me, came up on either side.

“We need to regroup as quickly as we can, then pursue them,” Magic Johnson said, short of breath. “We should split our forces into separate units.”

The Skeleton King cut down an injured ogre that had fallen behind before answering.

“I agree. My magical power is nearly depleted, but we can’t let this chance pass. I’ve already turned several Griffins into undead. They’ll give us enough of a view.”

I started to answer, then caught my breath. I steadied my ragged breathing and managed only a nod. The Skeleton King frowned.

“Human, are you all right?”

“It’s… it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

A lie.

My arms and legs felt as heavy as if they’d been soaked in water. The internal energy that had filled my dantian was running low.

More than anything, the dull ache I’d felt deep inside my body on and off throughout the battle was growing worse.

Damn debuff.

I kept my expression calm by force and recalled a System message I’d seen not long ago. It was among the notifications waiting for me when I’d woken from my long sleep after defeating Michael Silbert.

System

All things come with a price. But you have once again ignored repeated warnings and used power that surpasses your limits.

Information for the special debuff Damaged Body has been updated.

The special debuff Broken Body has been newly applied.

The existing stat penalties caused by debuffs remain unchanged, and the effects of the new debuff will also apply.

Muscles and Bones have weakened. The chance of injury has increased considerably.

Internal energy is consumed more rapidly. Your control over qi is no longer as free as before.

System

All things come with a price. But you have once again ignored repeated warnings and used power that surpasses your limits.

Information for the special debuff Broken Body has been updated.

The special debuff Shattered Body has been newly applied.

The existing stat penalties caused by debuffs remain unchanged, and the effects of the new debuff will also apply.

Muscles and Bones have weakened. The chance of injury has increased considerably.

Internal energy is consumed more rapidly. Your control over qi is no longer as free as before.

Shattered Body.

That was the price of ignoring the System’s warning.

One Annihilation’s unprecedented destructive power had eaten away at my body as well as my enemy’s life. It was damage no method could heal—not even leveling up.

Should I have avoided using One Annihilation against Michael Silbert?

The thought left a bitter taste in my mouth, but there was nothing I could do about it. Back then, I hadn’t had much choice beyond One Annihilation.

I pushed aside the potion Magic Johnson held out with a worried look.

“That won’t do it. If I use a potion now, I’ll only end up more exhausted.”

“But—”

“Pursuing them comes first. Especially…”

“Yes. The Prophet.”

The Skeleton King spoke quietly. He read the meaning in my eyes and clicked his tongue.

“We still haven’t found him. I was certain he was watching from somewhere, but it seems we were wrong.”

Magic Johnson added, “I haven’t found him either. Jin, maybe The Prophet was never here at all.”

“Never here? You mean this was a trap aimed at something else from the start?”

“I can’t be sure. But it’s possible.”

I thought for a moment, then shook my head.

Four S-rank monsters and an army of more than fifteen thousand monsters. That was far too much to use as bait for a mere trap.

So why hasn’t he shown himself?

The Prophet was an unpredictable powerhouse. He’d killed Siegfried Bassmann, a Grand Mage surrounded by all kinds of barriers, without leaving any obvious signs of a fight. He might be as powerful as Michael Silbert—or more so.

If he’d joined the battle, who knows how it would have turned out?

Even for me, fighting the Manticore Lord and the Lycanthrope Champion at once had been anything but easy. That would have been the perfect moment for The Prophet to show himself.

But he never did.

Even if the battle had been a trap and our main camp was his true target, it still made no sense.

Embarrassing as it was to say, I was the heart and head of the World Hunter Federation.

That left me with one conclusion.

“It’s not a trap.”

My thoughts had run long, but only a moment had passed. I looked at the Hunters still chasing the monsters like mad.

The Team Leaders—our lower-ranking commanders—were ordering them to stop, but the Hunters pursued their prey as though they couldn’t hear a word.

“I don’t know what The Prophet really wants, but… he planned for this situation, too.”

“What?”

“If we keep pursuing them without rest, the units will fall apart in no time. First, get the worked-up Hunters back under control as quickly as you can.”

“Jin.”

Magic Johnson fixed me with a grave look.

“I agree we need to regroup. But then why did The Prophet drive all those monsters into this desert?”

“One of two reasons. Either he thought they’d be enough to deal with us…”

I stopped, then forced out the rest.

“Or he’s already built a force so powerful he can afford to lose an army this size.”

“……!”

“……!”

The air around us went cold.

I looked at their rigid faces and kept one thought to myself.

One thing was certain. My instincts, pushed to their limit, had seized me with the force of a premonition.

The Prophet wants to face me.

The monsters’ cries receded into the distance. Only then, among the people collapsing one by one, did a wind begin to blow.

Heavy with the smell of blood, it spread through the cool night air.

One hundred and eighty-five.

That was how many people had fought more bravely than anyone else—and, because of that, had crossed a river they could never come back over.

But the survivors had to keep moving.

We hadn’t come here to win a battle. We’d come to kill The Prophet and uproot the disaster.

There’s no time.

The idea that the person running is more desperate than the one giving chase is complete bullshit. Especially when the person running has a bomb that could swallow the whole world.

“Everyone has finished regrouping.”

I opened my eyes at Team Leader Choi’s report.

I’d spent less than an hour circulating my energy, but my body felt much better. My mind had settled, too.

What the hell is The Prophet?

I’d been asking myself that for a long time.

The fifth Muninn. A being thought to be a monster, wielding magic that wasn’t human. The desert’s pope, leading countless fanatics.

The more I learned about him, the more I felt as if I were sinking into a swamp. What was he really? What did he want? And where was he now?

If the System had a physical form, I wanted to grab it by the collar and demand answers.

I’d take any debuff it gave me. Just give me one tiny clue.

Damn it.

I cursed under my breath and looked up at the darkening sky.

Daylight in the desert was brief, and the sky was gray, perhaps because of the distribution of magical power.

Just like Michael Silbert.

The monster who had been born human and died a monster.

And as my memories of him surfaced, one after another—

“……!”

A question flashed through my mind like a bolt of light.