Chapter 496: How to Open a Suitcase |
An uncleared gate has vanished.
A few seconds later, I mulled over the sentence Esther had spoken once more. However, there wasn't much that could be done inside a gym like this.
Just what kind of Gismche flips over its own dinner table?
To analyze this anomaly, I needed more information.
***
(No Entry: Authorized Personnel Only)
Come to think of it, not long ago I would have had to sneak into a place like this by controlling flies.
Honestly, even now, sneaking in by hiding inside animal corpses is still more convenient than online searches.
This was happening just a few minutes later.
[Beep.]
[Beep.]
[Beep.]
I watched the scenes displayed on the monitors intently, but still couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on.
The gates really are disappearing at an abnormal speed.
Light-blue electronic dots began appearing over my tri-colored vision. For reference, those round dots marked the locations of gates across the country. The problem was that a vast number of those light-blue dots suddenly went dark all at once.
beep.Bee-beep.New recruits, answer the phones and memo the coordinates they give you!
Ah, yes!
Hello! This is the Gate Safety Management Department.
Eavesdropping on the calls that the Association staff were hurriedly taking, it was clear the chaos on the streets was no small matter either.
They worked so hard to secure high-profit gates like the [Dimensional Treasure Vault], only for the hunting grounds to evaporate within a few hours...
It was horrifying. Of course, monsters were beasts that treated humanity like starving tigers would, so in that sense, having none at all was safer. Still, such a sudden eviction was disconcerting.
Ah! Seriously, I've seen everything in my life, but this? When are we going to finish correcting all these coordinates?
Even after hearing that nests of dangerous creatures were disappearing, my heart remained unsettled.
This feels bad overall.
If all the world's gates vanished like this, that would be nice, but...
Looking at the disasters Earth's monsters have caused since the [Dungeon Shock], honestly, what comes next is obvious.
The opponent was that vicious other world. Something unpleasant was bound to happen again, and sure enough, people's uneasy reactions soon followed.
Hunters! It seems other countries are facing the same situation as us!
Breaking news is already coming out overseas!
Furthermore, analyzing the words I was hearing, this phenomenon wasn't just happening in South Korea; it was occurring worldwide.
Hunter Esther. What's the status of the gates owned by the [Korean Magic Tower]?
We operate our mines by stationing guards inside cleared hunting grounds.
Hmm.
So the spaces with people inside aren't collapsing either. For now, most of our owned assets should be fine.
A hunger strike by alien creatures, or invaders simply fed up with Earth's ecology and shutting down operations—positive interpretations weren't impossible if you tried. Still, I didn't think things would end here, so I kept a defensive stance for a while.
Hm?
It took less time than expected for an additional special phenomenon to appear.
Wait a moment. Unless I'm mistaken... doesn't it look like thirteen red gates suddenly appeared on the map? Is this rate correct?!
What?!
The rate of Red Gate occurrence is somewhat strange.
Sssshk.
At first, it was only enough for an S-rank hunter to notice, but after a few seconds, the changes grew so drastic that even civilians with poor visual acuity could clearly see them.
[Thud.] [Thud.] [Thud.]
The map is turning bright red.
The red dots increased rapidly at a rate of nearly one per second. If that were the case, the outside world would now be mostly stripped of ordinary hunting grounds and filled with time bombs that could explode at any moment.
Are most of the newly generated gates concentrated near the capital...?
Gago!
It's really just like Gryeo-ssi said!
Bizarre monsters were crossing over from the other world, and realizing this, Earth's people began preparations without even taking a breath.
Immediately issue alerts to nearby residents!
Could the S-rank hunters head to the sites right away?
Yes!
Yes, yes.
No one knew what kind of monsters might emerge from those red gates. Looked at another way, that also meant there was a chance that only F-rank fodder would pour out en masse.
However—
Even low-rank monsters are more than threatening enough to modern humans.
Just recalling how this body had ended up limping was enough to tell that this situation wouldn't be easy.
.
.
[Anomalous Mutation], where a gate of a certain rank turns into something entirely different in terms of danger. [Artifacts], seemingly prepared to lure sentient beings into other dimensions. Add to that [Break], [EX-rank] difficulty, and other peculiar traits.
Come to think of it, dungeons often seemed to stir up mystery haphazardly, but when you looked beneath the surface, they frequently had quite deliberate purposes. Thus, just as an Alphauri-born archmage had predicted, the gate evaporation phenomenon quickly developed into a disaster.
Nothing good for humanity ever happened.
This is the area where the red gates are densely clustered, correct?
Yes! Hunter Jeong Haseong!
Please maintain strict vehicle control from now on. And naturally, make sure to guide the citizens so they can join up with the Magic Tower side or Hunter Kim Gi-yeo's side—
Thud!Thud!Additionally, the sudden reduction of anomalous otherworldy zones was apparently comparable to a human body's extremities gradually dying off from necrosis. Once the energy that had flowed into so-called 'unnecessary' parts vanished, something unknown was born immediately.
Thud!Thud!These were the new monsters that appeared.
[UHOOOOO]
Their footsteps were wet and sticky, like slogging through mud during monsoon season, and they leapt around by launching their bodies like frogs.
[Name: [Temporary] Misaligned Corpse]
Did some related organization just throw together a random name?
Click.
Even though several years had passed since the Dungeon Shock, the hunter who still held the top rank was using an analysis device.
[Rank: E]
The screen changed.
The temporary name fits again. Come to think of it, I remember seeing a documentary saying there are standard terms commonly used depending on monster bats...
True to the name 'corpse,' the creature had a grotesque appearance, yet its actual danger level placed it near the bottom of the pyramid.
Is the analyzer malfunctioning?
To describe their exterior closely, the monsters really did resemble Earth frogs to a fair extent. The problem lay in how they moved.
Thud!An amphibian-type monster walking bipedally on muscular legs, and when it jumped with that sticky sound, it even left behind a grotesque residue. It was deeply unpleasant.
Well, gate monsters being like this isn't surprising.
On site, Jeong Haseong waved his hand, once again keenly aware of the monster's threat.
Whoosh!The analyzer said the enemy was E-rank.
Then maybe it's not an error after all?
Jeong Haseong fired the minimum amount of flame he could manage at the enemies. Even that small skill was enough to melt them down in droves.
They really are all E-rank. Their defense is terrible...
A string of perfectly normal reactions. Holding onto the hope that his mother and his new home would remain safe, Jeong Haseong resumed his work.
Ziing.In fact, dealing with a Red Gate was actually simpler than dealing with a Blue one.
Just defeat every enemy that comes out of the passage, and it's over.
Jeong Ha Seong clarified his goal. Then he immediately started a fire. He aimed only at the monster coordinates to ensure the exterior walls of the buildings erected by the workers wouldn't burn. Even if the beast thrashed around and fire threatened to spread to the roadside trees, he consciously shifted the direction of the flames.
The fact that I can do this now is all thanks to Hunter Kim Giyee. I must never forget that.
The top-ranked hunter displayed an even more refined level of ability utilization as the seasons changed. He credited it all to the alien's lessons, but in truth, that additional growth was only possible thanks to effort accumulated in the field. Regardless of the process, the conclusion was simple. Jeong Haseong could now operate smoothly even in the heart of the city.
Dumble!It happened only seconds later. The opposing side violently shattered that carefully built sense of normalcy.
Hm?
Honestly, at first, he thought he had missed his skill because the distance was far. However, as Jeong Ha-seong stared intently in the direction of the enemy, he gradually noticed an anomaly.
Whoosh!One individual burned under a weak flame.
Tik.Meanwhile, another monster right beside it casually deflected a flame of the same intensity.
If this were a unique [Active Skill] of a new monster... there was no preparatory motion at all.
All the monsters pouring out of that gate looked identical. Then why did some individuals have such drastically different resistance to fire?
What is this?
For now, he killed every monster he could see to prevent damage to the city.
Leap!However, as the rank 1 hunter engaged in such active subjugation, the identity of the uneasy feeling he'd had since earlier was quickly revealed.
Huh?!
In that split second of realization, a monster leapt into a nearby position. And this was a moment where even an S-rank hunter had briefly lost track of an enemy.
Their jump speeds differ by individual, and their defense and attack power too!
The interpretation shifted immediately.
Crunch.
Jeong Haseong, who had been focusing on long-range interception, had the skin near his forearm torn by the teeth of an enemy individual.
Their pure mana levels themselves are completely different from one another!
Their faces all looked exactly the same, and even when analyzed with a device created by Earth's humanity, they all registered as E-rank—yet their cores were entirely different monstrous lifeforms.
Unclassifiable Rank Monsters—
If the opponent possessed such special techniques, the story became simple.
Then how on earth are we supposed to deploy hunters?
This was a modern society where hunting systems were fully established. But managing forces without being able to gauge the difference between enemies would inevitably throw disaster management into chaos.
***
@#~
A sound crackled from the mass-issued walkie-talkie given to Association officials.
[Everyone @&~]
Perhaps due to frequent field use, the walkie-talkie speaker, clogged with dust and metal shavings, spat out garbled voices.
Retreat?
Despite the barely intelligible audio, the owner of the radio, Seonwoo Yeon, grasped the meaning perfectly.
A sudden order for a full retreat!
For reference, the place where she stood was in front of a cultural asset in Seoul that had almost been attacked by fire monsters not too long ago. Jeong Ha-seong was an S-rank hunter anyway, so he could withstand almost any monster, but since the Association staff were in an entirely different situation, it seemed an evacuation order had been issued as a priority.
Step.
Seonwoo Yeon immediately shifted her stance. She returned the radio to her waist and began withdrawing from the danger zone. A high-grade awakener—rare among public servants—she had been eliminating monsters from a more forward position than most.
If the higher-ups say move, you move.
So she pulled back immediately upon hearing the Association's command, but a certain technical shortcoming surfaced.
Splat.Splat.These monsters were different from the [Sadist] that had appeared before. They had no wings. If she had cleverly used wind skills to flee into the air, this wouldn't have happened.
Huh?
Even so, the ears of an B-rank awakener picked up a strange sound.
Splat!It was the leaping sound of a monster with sticky feet.
Heeuk!
The problem was the distance it covered in a single jump. Wondering where an eerie sound was coming from, she turned her head, only to find the enemy's body right in front of her. And the true capability of this so-called ordinary monster was actually high A-rank.
However, since Seonwoo Yeon had no idea they were unrankable, she turned her body to hunt the fast-leaping monster that had suddenly appeared.
That startled me!