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Not even Baek Jiwoon himself could have known that would be his last words.
Right after, something flew toward the back of his head with a thud. His body wobbled as he stared blankly at the blood splattering into the air.
Ah, my life has been quite eventful.
In the fading world, Han Dokyeom stood still like a solitary stake, and Baek Jiwoon lamented his own situation, worrying about that gentleman even in this state. Dali… at least you, take care of your brother.
His blinking eyes slowly closed without strength, but even then, he kept capturing Han Dokyeom in his vision, motionless like a driven nail.
When he finally crashed onto the cold floor with a splat, Baek Jiwoon’s world turned pitch black.
Without a single ray of light.
***
Somewhere, a drop of water fell with a plink. A musty smell, like rotting wood mixed with moisture and moss, filled the air.
When the falling droplet hit his cheek, Baek Jiwoon flinched and came to his senses. His body felt heavy, as if he had been submerged in a black swamp and suddenly pulled up.
As he opened his frowning eyes, a blurry scene flickered before him. A voice came right after.
“Awake?”
Baek Jiwoon startled and opened his eyes wide. He quickly looked up above him. A hunter was sitting on a rock, throwing a knife in the air and looking down at him. Judging by the unfamiliar face, he was probably a Chinese hunter.
No, why a Chinese hunter…
Before he could even finish the thought, Baek Jiwoon’s expression hardened. The events before the world turned black flashed through his mind.
The Lamia swarm blocking his path, the female monster carrying bait to lure prey. And the terrifying sensation that struck the back of his head, leaving behind… Han Dokyeom.
Baek Jiwoon snapped back to reality. Right, it was a trap.
“…Hyung. Dokyeom hyung, where is he! Dali, where are you!”
As soon as he tried to get up, the ropes tightly wound around his wrists caught his eye. He suddenly stopped moving.
It was because of a sound from afar. No, a scream.
Pieeeeek-!! Piek!!
“…Dali.”
The ceiling soared endlessly, dizzyingly high. A few beams of light faintly illuminated the dark cave.
Dali was beyond those beams. He was tied by a collar to the cave wall, straining his neck with veins popping, shouting stubbornly.
Pieeeeek-!!
It was definitely a sight Baek Jiwoon had never seen before. Dali, with his eyes wide open, wailing and jerking his bound body, looked like an animal caught in a trap, fighting between life and death. Dali cried out with all his might, filled with killing intent.
“What are you looking at, Dali…”
Why are you so anxious.
Following Dali’s gaze, his own eyes traced a line. And there, Baek Jiwoon witnessed something indescribable.
…What is that?
A pitch-black something in the place where a few beams of light converged. Its form was so unclear that he couldn’t tell if it was a person, a monster, or even a living thing.
As his gaze shifted, someone finally came into view. It was Han Dokyeom, sitting with his hands tied in front and his back hunched.
Kneeling before a dark, tumor-like, squirming form.
“Hyung… why are you there…”
For a moment, it seemed Dokyeom’s head turned slightly back, but then someone roughly grabbed his shoulder and turned him around.
Two men in combat suits, backlit by intense light, were pressing down on Dokyeom from both sides, subduing him. The moment he saw that, Baek Jiwoon’s veins bulged on his neck.
“What are you bastards doing! Untie this right now! I said untie it!”
“You’d better stay put.”
It was the Chinese hunter next to Baek Jiwoon who answered his furious shout. Baek Jiwoon’s bloodshot eyes snapped to the side. The hunter was idly tossing and catching his knife.
“We have something to check, so we can’t untie you yet. Once that’s done, we might let you go, so behave.”
“Let me go? f*ck off, you bastards. Do you expect me to believe that? The Lamia were your doing, right? Luring us in on purpose? What, do you have a skill to control monsters? Oh, so we were completely deceived and ended up like this? That’s a f*cking joke, a dog would laugh at that!”
Meanwhile, from up ahead, a faint voice came.
“What do we do if he won’t open his mouth?”
“We don’t have time, so hurry it up. If we drag in more hostages, we might get discovered.”
“I’d like to, but… what skill do I have if this bastard won’t even budge? At this point, I wonder if ‘Fusion’ or whatever is even possible. Our words aren’t getting through.”
A soldier’s boot pressed down on Dokyeom’s thigh. His thin body immediately bent forward.
“See, even with threats, he won’t open his mouth.”
It had already been 30 minutes since the E-rank they’d worked so hard to catch clamped his mouth shut and held out like he was dead. So they were naturally frustrated.
“The video footage obtained from Korea was confirmed to be original, and the seal matches. It’s not an unreliable story. Anyway, we just need to bring back the result.”
“Even so… would ‘Fusion’ work with that guy?”
At those muttered words, Dokyeom let out a bitter laugh inwardly. His gaze, which had been dead and unfocused, turned forward. One side of his vision was covered in blood, red, and his tinnitus was severe, as if something was wrong.
In that hazy world, something pitch-black that didn’t even catch light flickered. Just a few steps away. Even its size and shape were grotesquely clumped.
Kkureuk-
What should he even call this?
A half-formed monster, neither human nor animal, wriggled on the ground. The Chinese hunters’ goal was to force Dokyeom to fuse with this hideous creature.
Kkureuk- Kkok-
It was once a life that should have been a hunter. Now it was just a monster that had lost its ego.
This was someone’s first creation and a failure. An accident, leaving only animal instincts, a writhing lump of flesh barely alive.
“Let’s fuse while we’re being friendly, Hunter Han Dokyeom. Ah… the pronunciation is hard. Han Dokyeom… Han Dokyeom. Well… with the translation skill, it doesn’t matter?”
The hunter rolled Dokyeom’s name around in his mouth a few times, tilted his head, then scratched the back of his head. His attitude and atmosphere were somehow lazy and languid, but his eyes were as cold as a wild beast’s.
Of course.
An S-rank, no less.
The sensations he felt when he first confirmed their skills. The violent stimulation, like having the back of his neck bitten off alive, Dokyeom still remembered.
Once would have been better. Dokyeom experienced that moment three times, and finally, accepting this absurd reality, he clenched his mouth tight.
There were three of them. Three S-rank hunters, not one, were lurking in this place.
At first, he didn’t know they were S-rank and used
Why was it ‘impossible’ with Taeseongyeon but ‘possible’ with them?
‘
Orias himself had told him that. As he said, Dokyeom had lost consciousness twice when using
How should he interpret this?
When he first opened his eyes here, Dokyeom saw at least six hunters. Beyond the musty smell, all he could see was a desolate, enclosed space. On one side, reptile eggs were piled up, and around him, cocoon threads hung like hammocks, creating a bizarre scene.
It would be a relief if it were merely bizarre. On the web-like curtains, human-sized cocoons hung in clusters, and every one of them had a hand or foot sticking out somewhere.
Those were the ‘prey’ for the Lamia about to hatch. Also, they were the people Dokyeom was looking for.
The missing ones who had lost contact in the gate. Even if that were the case, considering there were only four of them, it was hardly a situation to be happy about finding them. Moreover,
Seusseusseus-
The Lamia carrying bait was still luring search teams here. That A-rank hunter, still alive, was impaled on the Lamia’s fangs, being dragged helplessly.
That way, they had already lured in over six search team hunters. The situation itself was disadvantageous for Dokyeom.
And the one making all this possible was the hunter with the
‘If possible, I need to take him out first.’
As long as that hunter controlled the monsters, Korea had no chance in this place. And Dali was also affected by that
That was why Dali was wailing while tied to that shabby collar. Because he was bound by the skill like a shackle, unable to move his body.
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