Infinite Evolution Hunter [NOVEL] - chapter 38
A gate with a break alert on the Hunter app was one that had not broken in my previous life.
In the last year before I died, breaks were happening so frequently that things were hazy,
but I remembered this period clearly.
I did not know the cause, but that was not important now.
What mattered was stopping it.
“Na-young, let’s go.”
I synced my in-ear device to the Hunter app and put it in one ear.
With this, all hunters deployed to stop the break could communicate
with each other and receive instructions from the command center.
“Okay.”
Knowing how serious a break was, Na-young nodded with a grave expression.
Sang-heon, who was not with us today, was supposed to link up with us on site.
“Let’s run there.”
“Huh?”
“In a break, vehicles are not very useful. It is not far, so let’s run.”
I wrapped my suit around my body and picked Na-young up in my arms.
Then I launched myself in the direction of the break.
Cutting through the wind, I sprinted between the tightly packed cars on the road.
To take a straight line to the site, I leapt over building rooftops and cut across a mountain.
After about fifteen minutes of running through the wind, I started to hear people screaming.
Unluckily, the gate that had broken this time was not far from a populated area.
“Damn…”
Even though we had arrived only fifteen minutes after the alert,
a large number of monsters had already flowed out.
Right in front of me, a civilian was about to be attacked by an orc.
Without stopping my run, I kicked the orc’s head clean off and kept heading toward the gate.
“Ji-seok, what about those people?!”
As I passed fleeing civilians and continued toward the gate, Na-young questioned me.
“Blocking the front of the gate comes first!
If we fight here, it will never end!”
Even if I ran around killing monsters out here,
it would be meaningless if they kept pouring out and spreading in every direction.
That is why we had to stop additional monsters from coming out of the gate first.
Soon, I saw the twenty-meter-wide red gate.
The sky around it was stained red, and the gate radiated a chilling presence.
To someone who did not know any better, it might even look beautiful,
but to anyone who had experienced it, it was a nightmare.
Hundreds of monsters were pouring out in front of it.
Unlike normal gates that usually had only one or two kinds of monsters,
this one was spewing everything from F-rank goblins to C-rank cerberuses.
At the very front, a dual-sword hunter was using his entire body to hold the line.
His movements were quick and sharp, but the fact that he struggled against a C-rank cerberus
meant he was at best C-rank himself.
It would be great if he had party members backing him up,
but the hunters nearby were struggling even against ogres,
so they were no help to him.
Several military helicopters fired machine guns and missiles toward the gate,
blasting apart low-rank monsters like goblins and werewolves,
but the number of monsters pouring out of the gate
far exceeded the number they killed.
And modern weapons had little effect on large monsters like ogres and above.
Just one A-rank hunter would have made a huge difference,
but unfortunately, it seemed none had arrived yet.
“Calling the field commander. I’m going to use a wide-area control spell right in front of the gate!
Then I will hold the front, so please support the other hunters in line with that!”
I pressed the in-ear button and sent the message.
In the Bureau’s command center, the operator filtered hunter messages
and only relayed the ones suitable for the situation to the field commander.
It was up to the commander and operator now.
“Na-young! Wide-area Blind right in front of the gate!”
I set Na-young down on a building rooftop.
“O… okay!”
Her Blind spread wide in front of the gate,
blinding the monsters as they came out.
The mass of monsters stumbled and crashed into one another,
some even attacking their own kind.
The spell did not cover the entire battlefield,
but just blocking the area directly in front of the gate was an enormous help.
“Stay here, Na-young!”
I put Na-young down and grabbed a mana stone in my hand to absorb it.
Using the absorbed energy, I enlarged myself to five meters tall
and leapt into the monster horde.
It was the largest I had ever grown.
My suit could not fully cover my expanded body,
so my shoulders and arms were exposed.
I landed, crushing small monsters underfoot,
and kicked an ogre in front of me, sending it flying.
I left the small fry to the other hunters and the military,
and focused only on mid-sized monsters, D-rank and above.
Any monsters in my path to those targets
were simply run over and killed by my charge.
Ahead of me, the dual-sword hunter was struggling.
I jumped high and stomped the ogre next to him from above,
then kicked a cerberus beside it, sending it flying.
[Hunter Lee Dong-bin! From now on, take the left side relative to the gate.
The enlarged Hunter Lee Ji-seok who just charged in will take the right side.]
“Y-yes, understood!”
Dual-sword hunter Lee Dong-bin answered energetically.
The tension on his face eased after seeing me arrive.
I cleaned up the large monsters around Dong-bin
and moved on to my next targets.
“Commander, I do not need healing! Have the healers support the other hunters!”
I relayed that to the commander as I felt healing spells hit me as well.
Under the command center’s direction,
we finally formed a defensive line in front of the gate.
Now that the monsters could no longer break through,
all we had to do was hold the area and mop up those that had already escaped.
“We can do this!”
Hunters who had resigned themselves to dying here
began to feel hope.
A break ends after a certain amount of time.
More hunters would keep arriving,
so it seemed we would be able to stop it.
“…Wh… what is that…”
A mage behind the line, casting spells,
raised his hand and pointed above the gate.
A gigantic head emerged
at a height of around ten meters.
It was far above the range of Na-young’s Blind.
“…I… it’s a troll!”
The troll, ten meters tall and dragging a massive tree like a club,
tilted its head as the monsters around its feet milled about in confusion,
then casually kicked them out of Na-young’s Blind zone.
Small monsters were squashed flat,
but many others were kicked out of the blinded area.
The helicopters fired missiles at the troll.
“Graaaar!”
Modern weapons did not work on a B-rank monster like a troll,
but they certainly managed to enrage it.
The troll scooped up a mass of small monsters, dirt, and rocks from the ground
and hurled it at the helicopters.
The spread of goblins, dirt, and rocks was too wide for the helicopters to dodge.
The goblins and rocks were shredded,
but the rotor blades snapped.
The helicopter lost control and crashed into the monsters below.
“Damn…”
The defensive line we had just barely formed
was about to be shattered by a single troll.
The command center also grasped the gravity of the situation.
They mobilized all the mages and ordered them
to focus their spells on the troll first.
But C-rank spells left only minor wounds
on its tough skin,
and even those healed quickly.
From its vantage point, even my five-meter-tall, enlarged self
must have looked like a mere bug,
because it did not spare me a glance.
Instead, it headed straight toward the makeshift command post
where hunters and soldiers were clustered together.
If we let it be, our forces would be massacred.
I plowed through the small fry like a tank,
shouldering them aside as I chased after the troll.
Then I kicked off the ground,
leaping up to latch onto its neck.
Like a child riding on an adult’s back.
“Gra?”
Sensing the weight on its back, the troll looked over its shoulder.
I shaped the life-energy aura around my fist into a blade,
and drove it into the troll’s neck.
“Graaaaaaah!”
It thrashed in pain.
But I could not form a blade large enough
to sever that massive neck.
I still lacked the life energy.
I pulled my fist back to stab again.
Surprisingly fast hands for such a huge body
grabbed me and slammed me into the ground,
crushing the monsters beneath me at the same time.
Before I could even get up,
the troll’s foot came down, stomping me and the surrounding monsters alike.
Consumed by rage, it stomped me over and over,
as if trying to grind me into the earth.
In the midst of the onslaught, the stomping suddenly stopped.
“Graaaaaaaah!!”
I heard the troll’s scream.
When I pushed myself up from the ground,
I saw the troll writhing in agony.
Seeing the flesh peeling off its face,
I knew it was Na-young’s Corruption.
Even its face melted under Corruption,
but as the emblem of vitality,
the troll quickly regenerated the wounds on its head.
Then it located Na-young, who had cursed it.
Far angrier than it had been after the missile strikes,
it charged toward her.
“No!”
I got to my feet and slammed an aura-charged fist into its knee.
If I could not pierce through,
I would send the energy inside and destroy it from within.
But that consumed even more energy than shaping it into a blade.
I had already spent a huge amount of life energy,
but there was no time to worry about that.
The troll’s knee bent in a direction it never should have,
and it dropped to the ground, catching itself with its hands.
“W… we got it!”
One of the hunters cried out a premature victory.
The troll, still very much alive,
smashed its giant fist down toward me from its kneeling position.
I slipped past the blow and rushed inside its reach.
With its knees bent, its head was lowered.
I swung an aura-clad fist straight into its nose.
Its nose exploded and its head snapped back.
I had hoped that would finish it,
but I still lacked the power to kill a B-rank monster in one blow.
The troll jerked its head forward again and opened its jaws wide.
I jumped up to avoid its mouth,
spun once in midair,
and brought my heel down on the crown of its head,
packed with aura.
Its skull shattered,
and its head slammed into the ground.
[Your level has increased.]
There was no time to celebrate the level up.
There were still far too many enemies.
I drove my fingers into the troll’s neck and drained its life energy.
Taking it down was good,
but the expenditure had been enormous.
“Now we really got it! We won!”
The same hunter who had shouted too early before
cried out again.
At that exact moment, more trolls
began to walk out of the gate in a line.
“Shut up, will you!”
The hunters around him shouted in irritation.
It had taken everything we had to bring down just one,
and now at least five more had appeared.
And there was no guarantee five was the limit.
I had raised my level this much in less than a year,
but had that really been the best I could do?
I regretted not pushing even further.
Still, I could not give up.
I continued absorbing life energy,
preparing for the next round.
It did not take long
for the freshly emerged trolls to notice their fallen comrade
and me standing beside the corpse.
The group of trolls, brandishing their clubs,
charged toward me,
radiating a pressure unlike anything I had ever felt,
even in my previous life.
“All right. Let’s see this through to the end.”
I stopped absorbing and charged the troll pack head-on.
The lead troll raised its club overhead.
Before it could bring it down,
I kicked off the ground,
leaping up to drop-kick it in the nose.
Even if I was smaller than they were,
I was still heavy and fast.
The troll that took my drop-kick
toppled backward.
Another troll swung its club at me
as I lay sprawled atop the fallen one.
I rolled quickly aside,
and the club smashed into the chest of the troll beneath me.
“Graaaaah!”
Crushed by its own kin’s blow,
the troll let out a pained scream,
its chest half caved in.
It would have been best if it died,
but a severe wound like that would at least take time to heal.
The remaining four glared at me murderously
and closed their encirclement.
Being half-big was the worst—
it only made me a larger target.
I canceled my enlargement and wove between their legs,
kicking their ankles with aura-coated strikes.
One troll’s leg snapped and it fell.
With just one target,
it would have been easier for them to catch me,
but with four trolls all trying to snatch at one small, fast opponent,
they only got in each other’s way.
The trolls’ rampage crushed monsters still pouring out of the gate.
Somehow, I managed to keep them from reaching the command post,
but I could not land a decisive blow.
To make matters worse,
the one that had been downed got back up,
bringing the total back to five.
“Damn it…”
I could not help cursing.
At that moment, a flash of light flared,
and a hairline crack appeared
along the neck of one of the trolls.