๐๐ก๐๐ฉ๐ญ๐๐ซ ๐๐๐: ๐๐ซ๐๐ข๐ง๐ข๐ง๐ 2
Japan and Russia issued emergency alerts on a scale comparable to a national emergency.
They were facing their second-ever S-rank gate.
A calamity that set back a nation’s future by a decade with just one occurrence, they had already experienced it twice.
Prime Minister Yamada slammed the ashtray on his desk to the floor.
With a loud crash, the cigarette and ash, now only a filter, scattered messily on the carpet.
“Those damn bastards. . . How dare they, how dare they break their promise?!”
Unable to control his anger, he pounded his fist on the armrest of the sofa.
“Calm down, Prime Minister.”
Cabinet Secretary Tamura tried to appease him, his deep wrinkles creasing further.
“Do I look calm to you right now?! Those sons of b*tches broke their promise in the blink of an eye. . . And I had to endure the humiliation of being called a traitor. . . Ugh!”
Yamada massaged his dry face, which was flushed red.
Anger and uncontrolled emotions were tangled up in his mind with reason, and he couldn’t unravel them.
It hadn’t been long ago.
A man had broken into the official residence where Yamada lived and held a knife to his neck.
The man had introduced himself as. . . ใPandemoniumใ.
He had told him not to get involved in the gate incident that would soon occur in Korea.
He had said that if he kept his promise, he would ensure that no gates would ever appear in Japan.
Despite all the criticism and condemnation from the international community, he had stuck to his guns and refused to provide support, but this was the result he got.
“It couldn’t be helped. You shouldn’t have made such a pact.”
“Tamura! Are you trying to lecture me now?!”
“Isn’t it true? There are already seven gates that have opened simultaneously in Japan. And one of them is S-rank.”
“. . . . . .”
“You’ll have to figure out how to deal with the falling approval ratings on your own. But even if this gate is handled well, you’ll still have to take responsibility for colluding with ใPandemoniumใ.”
Tamura’s thinly veiled threat made Yamada grit his teeth so hard that they creaked.
Tamura was the maternal uncle of Yoshimura, the Liberal Democratic Party’s candidate for the next prime minister.
‘๐๐ฐ ๐’๐ฎ ๐ซ๐ถ๐ด๐ต ๐ข ๐ฑ๐ข๐ธ๐ฏ ๐ต๐ฐ ๐ฃ๐ฆ ๐ฅ๐ช๐ด๐ค๐ข๐ณ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ธ?’
Yamada felt like his head was going to explode from the pressure, both internal and external.
Knock, knock.
“Mr. Prime Minister. The Guild Leaders and the Twenty have gathered.”
“I understand. I’ll be there shortly.”
Now, all he could trust were the current top rankers and their guilds, as well as the heroes who had stopped the last S-rank gate.
Yamada glared at Tamura and walked towards the conference room.
๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท
Russia, Krasnoyarsk, downstream of the Yenisei River.
About a thousand soldiers and over twenty T-14 tanks were on standby, preparing for battle near the newly opened S-rank gate.
They couldn’t shake the tense expressions on their faces as they stared at the ominous presence in the center.
A deep, rumbling darkness.
Hundreds of Hunters had already been deployed beyond that murky, pitch-black darkness.
Mikhail was one of those Hunters.
As the [Black Tiger Guild]’s Vice Guild Leader, he had entered the S-rank gate and was in the midst of a fierce battle.
He had risked his life countless times in service to his country, but this kind of chaos was a first for him.
Of course, that was because the elite Russian hunters, who were supposed to be invincible, had scattered in all directions within 20 minutes of deployment.
It wasn’t by choice.
‘๐๐ฉ๐ฆ๐บ’๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ช๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ด๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ด ๐ต๐ฐ ๐ฃ๐ฆ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฅ!’
They had no choice but to disperse when dozens of hippogriffs the size of houses swooped down on them.
They snatched people up like mice, impaling them with their claws and pecking at them with their beaks.
If it hadn’t been for Alexander, ranked 2nd in Russia, and Lavr, ranked 3rd, they might have been completely overwhelmed.
Thanks to them killing a few of the hippogriffs, the Hunters were able to gather their mana, even as they were scattered far and wide.
But that didn’t last long.
A horde of tens of thousands of rats appeared.
Each one was as big as a wolf.
“This is crazy. . . This isn’t even a battle.”
Mikhail fired off his skills while protecting the support-type Hunters.
The rats kept coming, no matter how many he killed.
Support-type Hunters kept getting injured and killed because the rats burrowed into the ground and then suddenly popped up from beneath them.
‘๐๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ณ๐ข๐ต๐ฆ. . . ๐๐ฆ’๐ณ๐ฆ ๐จ๐ฐ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ต๐ฐ ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ. . .! ๐๐ฆ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ท๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฐ ๐ง๐ช๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ข๐ต ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฅ๐ฆ.’
Just then, someone tapped him on the back and spoke to him.
“There’s a suspicious person over there. Mikhail, let’s go together.”
Hunter Lavr.
Mikhail nodded and followed him.
Sure enough, there was a strange person surrounded by rats on a hilltop.
Despite the fact that she should have been torn to pieces by now, ‘she’ looked very comfortable, with only her face exposed above the rats.
Lavr pointed his sword at her and demanded,
“If I remember correctly, you’re not on the Hunter list. Who are you? Are these rats your doing?”
A murderous aura spread around him as he slowly approached her.
“Kukuku. A handsome Big Brother has come to visit me. Would you like to have a drink?”
“An S-rank gate monster with this much intelligence. Or maybe I should think of you as the mastermind behind this terrorism.”
Lavr glared at her with cold eyes.
The overwhelming pressure pushed down on the rats, crushing them.
The enchanting beauty, Ruslana, looked over his appearance and slowly rose to her feet.
“Mastermind? I’m just a humble helper.”
A voluptuous body, completely unclothed.
Mikhail instinctively turned his head away.
Ruslana found his reaction amusing and opened her mouth with a faint smile.
“What do you say, Big Brothers? Would you like to have some passionate fun with me?”
“She’s definitely out of her mind. In the name of great Russia, I shall kill you.”
It was Lavr who cut her off.
Lavr, who had dashed forward like a bullet, swung his sword down on her in a deadly arc.
It was a movement as fast as Lightning Flash.
One of Russia’s finest swordsmen had mercilessly cut his opponent in half.
And then,
Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang!!
A deafening explosion erupted, along with a spray of blood.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaak!!”
It was only natural that a scream would follow.
After all, if the sword hadn’t been properly embedded, the excruciating pain would have been enough to kill him.
However, the scream didn’t belong to the woman.
“H-Hunter Lavr?”
“Ugh. . . . . .”
Mikhail swallowed hard as he looked at Lavr’s mangled body.
For some reason, his sword had exploded like a glass bottle, and the shards were embedded all over his body.
Lavr writhed in agony, spilling blood.
“Kukuku, Big Brother’s cries are so beautiful. Please entertain me more.”
Ruslana’s sultry voice rang out sweetly, and then,
Bang!!
Lavr’s head exploded like a watermelon.
“Wh. . . . . . . . .?”
Mikhail’s mind couldn’t keep up with the sudden turn of events.
Lavr was a High Ranker.
He wasn’t the kind of Hunter who could be killed so easily.
“H-Hunter Lavr. . . ?”
Mikhail muttered, his voice almost empty.
“Kukuku. Dancing alone is no fun. How about we dance together now?”
Ruslana, covered in blood, hummed a tune as she approached Mikhail.
“Th, that, aaaah! Get awayyyy!”
Mikhail’s fist flew out at her, triggered by her creepy gaze.
Paaaaaaaaaaaa!
A punch that landed squarely on her jaw.
However, it wasn’t Ruslana’s jaw that exploded, but Mikhail’s hand.
“My, my. You don’t learn.”
Ruslana swung her fist at him, who was at a loss for what to do.
With an earth-shattering roar, Mikhail’s body exploded and crumpled into a bloody mess.
“Ugh, how boring. If I had known this would happen, I would have told Crowel to do it.”
She snapped her fingers, ordering the rats to ‘devour’ him.
Should she advance and have a go at that guy called Alexander? Maybe she could meet a ‘Mistelteinn’ member while she was at it.
As she was thinking this, a message came from her subordinate.
” What is it?”
โRuslana-nim. . . ‘He’ has appeared here. . . . . .
“Who is ‘he’?”
โHe’s the Hunter who killed ‘Jackal-nim’. . . . . .
Ruslana’s eyes sparkled.
The guy who killed that crazy terrorist? How much fun will he be?
“Kukuku, I understand. I’ll come to you.”
๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท
โKrrrrrrr.
Volk’s sharp claws tore through the body of the monster that had lunged at him.
“Elder!! How much farther?!”
“Are you deaf?! My ears are ringing!”
“
Red Ear clicked his tongue and slowly poured mana into the magic item.
In an instant, the boiling alcohol-like aura dimly illuminated the surroundings, casting long shadows.
Thud, thud, thud!
Hundreds of sea urchin-shaped mana clusters surged out of the ground and began to cling to the monsters in the vicinity.
“Ah-ming, now!”
Ah-sul, who had been sensing the mana, signaled her at the right moment.
Ah-ming nodded and charged forward like a wild beast, carrying the huge warhammer on her back.
โKyaaaaaaaaa!
The monsters, unable to shake off the mana clusters, rushed towards her, but,
Kaboom, kaboom, kaboom!
The sea urchin-shaped mana clusters that came into contact with the warhammer exploded in a chain reaction, deafening the surroundings.
That was just the beginning.
Volk’s claws pierced through the monsters, joining Ah-ming’s fierce attack, and Momo, who followed behind, twisted the necks of the ones that hadn’t died yet.
It was a pretty decent four-way combo play.
A faint smile appeared on Siwoo’s lips as he watched from behind.
“Now you’re getting the hang of it. 30 points.”
ใ๐๐ญ’๐ฌ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐๐ฏ๐๐ง ๐๐ฌ ๐ ๐จ๐จ๐ ๐๐ฌ ๐ฆ๐ฒ ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฐ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฌ. ๐๐ ๐ฉ๐จ๐ข๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ.ใ
Hwang Jeong-gu and Chu Ha-min’s faces turned pale when they heard that.
Only 30 points, even now.
They had been training for an hour since entering the gate.
They had fought monsters over and over again, trying to coordinate their attacks, strengthen their mana control, and increase their skill casting speed.
This kind of training method was something that everyone went through when they were beginners, so it shouldn’t have been too difficult, but the problem was that this was an ‘S-rank gate’.
A place where even A-rank Hunters could suffer fatal injuries from a single moment of carelessness.
In fact, Hwang Jeong-gu and Chu Ha-min were fighting for their lives, their muscles aching as if they were about to tear.
Actually, their muscles had torn and their bones had snapped a few times.
If this had been ordinary training, they would have stopped by that point and gone back outside the gate.
However, their teacher and instructor was Siwoo, who was far from ordinary.
โโSenior! My stomach is killing me!!
โThere, healing complete. Go back to fighting.
โใOkay, next idiot.ใ
โGreat master. . . I think my thigh is going to fall off. . . . . .
โYes, healing complete. You go fight too.
โใNext imbecile.ใ
Siwoo’s hands moved incredibly fast, as if he were mending a broken doll.
“Big Brother, I’m sleepy.”
Sion suddenly slumped against his sleeve, looking exhausted from using so much power.
“Are you? Shall we sleep for a bit? Lo-an!”
“Yes, master.”
“Carry her.”
“. . . . . .Yes?”
“I told you to carry Sion.”
“Ugh, gross, your gaze.”
As Lo-an reluctantly approached and bent down, Sion flopped onto his back.
She grabbed Lo-an’s neatly tied hair and shook it around like a toy.
“Now, just for a little while. . . .”
“Pigtails.”
“Master??”
“That’s right, Sion. Is this how pigtails look?”
“Yep.”
“Protect her with all your might so she doesn’t wake up.”
“H-How can I do that in this position?”
“You’re a High Ranker, aren’t you?”
“. . . . . . . . . . . . .”
“Fighting.”
Siwoo chuckled and turned to Han Tae-chi.
“Is your item working properly?”
“The magic is overflowing, so the item’s response is very good! I think it will be operational in about an hour!”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Yes, President, I’m so excited!”
“But it looks like we’re going to be short on time, so be prepared.”
” Yes?”
Sensing the ominous magic approaching from the front, Siwoo drew his Balmung.
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