WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
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◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈
Chapter 91: Soldiers - [5]
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Honestly, I was flustered. Since it had grown to five meters tall with Gigantification, I expected its force-field exoskeleton to be about as strong. I never thought it could withstand explosives powerful enough to blow up a building.
When one being possessed multiple abilities, could their strength vary depending on the user's aptitude for each one? That bastard seemed to be one of those cases.
Still, that last explosion must have drained that absurd force field significantly. If we piled on just a little more damage, it would eventually break.
I decided to believe that. Not because I had any solid grounds for it, but because I couldn't even attempt this fight otherwise.
"Uoooooooooooo!"
Tungtung roared and charged.
Its weight and leg strength were monstrous. Every time its feet hammered the ground, they produced a horrific sound like an earthquake. An ordinary person might die just from standing in front of that thing and hearing the noise it made.
Even I felt intimidated as I approached the source of that noise, but I endured it. I whispered to myself.
‘It's just in a heavier weight class than me.’
I ran toward it as well, firing the Hunter Rifle on full auto.
The autocannon rounds struck its face dead on, but each shot, powerful enough to tear apart an elephant, did little more than throw sand in its face.
My fire didn't even slow its charge.
The Ogre covered its face with one forearm and kept running.
I kept firing the Hunter Rifle for a moment, then decided I couldn't stop it with this alone. I let go of the rifle and grabbed my hammer.
I swung the hammer and used Spatial Teleportation at the same time.
Since I had begun swinging before teleporting, the hammer had already reached its destination by the time my Spatial Teleportation ended.
The moment my hammer struck the charging Ogre's head, its arm shot toward me.
Just before its huge hand could grab me, I barely escaped with Spatial Teleportation.
Apparently, the soldiers around us thought it was an incredible stunt. Cheers erupted behind me.
"Long live BabyMushroom!"
"Kim Geuk! Kim Geuk!"
Even after dodging that, my heart was pounding. Damn it, what was that just now?
I had teleported behind its head and ambushed it. The attack came from outside its field of vision, so its response should have been much slower. How had it counterattacked that quickly?
As I reeled from that, Baek Dambi's voice came through the radio.
"Be careful. It has Neural Acceleration!"
I groaned inwardly. Ah...
My own nervous system was developed enough to let me pull off things similar to Neural Acceleration, but that was nothing compared to someone with the real ability.
That made close combat far too risky. I picked up the Hunter Rifle again.
When I tried to block the Ogre's path and fire, I didn't even have time to pull the trigger.
It suddenly rushed toward me. Its force-field exoskeleton was nearly Superman-level, so its leap was more like a launched missile.
Once again, I barely escaped its charge with Spatial Teleportation.
After missing me again, the Ogre seemed to make a quick decision. I was a nuisance, but I kept disappearing, so I was hard to catch. It decided to ignore me and attack the other humans first.
There were far too many easy targets here.
The Ogre charged, not toward me, but toward the soldiers forming a wall of fire. Their rifle rounds did absolutely nothing to it.
Screams rang out among the soldiers in its path.
"Fuck!"
If it rammed into them like that, they'd be crushed as horribly as if a tank had run them over. I couldn't let that happen.
I stretched out my arms and teleported behind the charging Ogre. The instant I wrapped both arms around its ankle, I realized just how horrifically heavy its body was. I also realized that one movement of its leg could drag my entire body along.
Even so, I used my body like a lever and put everything into it.
Then I threw the Ogre with all my strength.
As far back as possible. I had Body Enhancement and a force-field exoskeleton too, so I had more than enough strength to throw a Monster that weighed several tons.
The Ogre flew through the air as though it had been launched from a catapult, roaring all the while.
"Aah!"
The soldiers who had narrowly escaped death seemed to cheer, but their voices were drowned out by its roar.
When the thrown Ogre crashed into the ground and rolled across it, I thought quickly.
I had to do something while that Monster was off balance. What?
Then I spotted a familiar Monster. A Deathclaw with bullets lodged in its legs, unable to move.
I teleported beside the Deathclaw, grabbed its front leg, and teleported again.
Right in front of the Ogre's face as it tried to get back up.
I drove the Deathclaw's front paw straight into it.
The hooked claws pierced the Ogre's eye.
The Deathclaw's force-field blades easily tore through that absurd force field and buried themselves deep in its face.
"Gruoooh!"
A roar like a scream erupted right in front of me. The infrasound that hit my whole body from the front froze me for an instant.
This time, I had teleported into its field of vision, so its counterattack came quickly too.
The Ogre swung its arm.
A force-field exoskeleton user's toughness and output were directly proportional. That meant if its toughness was absurd, the power it could produce was absurd too.
An irresistible force caught my body and sent me flying. My head was about to hit the ground first.
Just before that happened, I barely used Spatial Teleportation, and my flying body crashed into the seawater instead.
Water exploded upward as though a high-explosive shell had struck it. If I had hit the ground directly, my force field would have broken, and my body wouldn't have come away intact either.
Still, I had survived. I could keep fighting.
"Long live Incheon."
I teleported back to the battlefield and first checked how much damage my last attack had done.
The eyes were directly connected to the brain, and I had driven a blade that could cut through anything into one...
Had it died?
No. It hadn't died.
Disappointingly, it was alive.
Tungtung pulled the Deathclaw's ankle out of its eye and threw it to the ground. They said Super-Regeneration couldn't restore a completely destroyed brain, but it seemed perfectly capable of handling a brain that had been cut in half.
Still, the blow seemed to have caused it pain and made it feel threatened. It was staring straight at me.
This time, Tungtung roared directly at me. When its roar ended, a voice came from the radio in my front pocket.
"Kim Geuk! Can you hear me?"
It was that colonel. Looking toward the soldiers, I saw that he had come out to the scene himself and was speaking into a radio.
"I saw you throw that thing earlier. Can you do it again?"
"If I get the chance. Where?"
"Toward that ammunition depot!"
Ah, I roughly understood what he was planning.
I answered that I understood and looked at my enemy again.
Tungtung was standing perfectly still. The reason it wasn't charging at me was probably because it knew I'd just use Spatial Teleportation to escape if it came close.
Still, it was obvious that it was targeting me. Even while standing still, its eyes followed me.
It was waiting for me to move first. I could tell it planned to counterattack the instant I disappeared from its sight.
The thought of being counterattacked made my skin crawl.
One casual swing of its hand had nearly broken my force field earlier. If that monstrous hand caught me again, I was finished. In the worst case, if it grabbed me, I would be crushed without even being able to use Spatial Teleportation.
I needed to create an opening instead of moving recklessly. How?
I wasn't fighting alone, so something from outside intervened.
Voices filled with tension and excitement rang out.
"Fire!"
Golden streaks rained through the night.
Autocannon rounds. Even that monstrous thing couldn't completely ignore them.
It wasn't one or two people firing. All eleven were firing at once.
The soldiers, all awakened people, were firing. From every direction, they sprayed Tungtung with Hunter Rifle fire.
Whether it was panicking or instinctively trying to protect its eyes, Tungtung covered its face with its palms.
Its vision was blocked.
Because of that, it couldn't have seen the shadow falling from the sky.
The shadow cast by a transparent ice kite.
The ice kite had a wingspan of ten meters. The ice construct controlled by Baek Dambi carried a shell in its claws, one so large a person would need both hands to hold it.
Along with that high-explosive shell, the ice kite dove straight down.
The shell in its claws struck Tungtung's head first.
Then it exploded...
Great flames erupted from Tungtung's head. The ice bird couldn't endure that heat even for a moment and melted away, leaving steam to shroud its head thickly.
At the same time, its movements stopped. Had it been stunned?
No. Its force field was still there, so that wasn't it.
It was probably confused. A deafening blast had completely blocked its vision, so it couldn't tell what was happening.
That meant the opening was now.
I used Spatial Teleportation and grabbed Tungtung's ankle.
Then, just like before, I put my whole body into it and threw it again. Toward the ammunition depot, as I had been told.
Tungtung's huge body smashed through the dented steel wall of the ammunition depot. At that moment, the mortars, apparently already laid for that target, fired all at once.
Several shells came whistling down...
Flames surged up. Then an explosion, followed by another.
Flames rose again and again. Each blast was followed by another burst of fire and a deafening boom.
Horrifically, Tungtung still wasn't dead.
Roaring louder than the blasts, the huge Monster ran out through the flames.
"Cease fire! Cease fire!"
Tungtung emerged from the flames with its skin scorched. One of its eyeballs was half melted, and cloudy fluid streamed down its face.
At last, its force field had broken.
The moment I confirmed that, I had nothing holding me back.
It no longer had a force field, but I still did. That difference was enormous.
I teleported to a high position, then teleported again with the force of my fall behind me. When I brought down my hammer, the Ogre managed to block with both hands, perhaps because of the blow it had just taken.
But it wasn't an attack that could be stopped with bare hands.
My hammer punched through its palms and delivered the impact to its head.
Tungtung staggered. I teleported down and planted my feet on the ground.
Then I kicked its unsteady body hard, shoving it back into the fire.
Was it feeling pain from the flames even in its dazed state? It fell over and crawled on all fours, struggling to escape the flames. A Gate was open nearby. It desperately tried to enter it.
I stopped it.
I grabbed the ankle of the thing trying to escape while ignoring me and pulled. It had been crawling on all fours, but it fell completely over.
I dragged it deeper into the ammunition depot, into the middle of the flames. It still wouldn't give up. When it tried to rise and push off the ground, I hammered the back of its knee. Unable to endure it, it dropped to one knee.
That made the situation clear to it.
You can't leave this octagon unless you beat me first.
It understood that too. Still half-kneeling, it barely raised its upper body and punched at me.
I swung my hammer to meet it. A shockwave spread from the collision, and the hammer flew far away from my hand.
Only then did Tungtung seem to regain its confidence. It roared, and even as the infrasound made my body tingle, I moved and used Spatial Teleportation.
Twice. I teleported twice in a row.
Then I quickly returned with the Hunter Rifle and shoved it into the mouth it had opened to roar.
At that moment, the Ogre must have realized that it was in serious danger. With its accelerated nerves, it must have understood even more clearly how dangerous this situation was.
Tungtung grabbed the barrel and tightened its grip as if to crush it, but I had covered the Hunter Rifle with my force-field exoskeleton. Autocannon rounds poured out of the barrel before my force field could break.
Blood, flames, and autocannon rounds burst out from the back of the Ogre's huge head.
At the same time, my force field broke and I felt the heat of the nearby flames, but I didn't care.
I couldn't.
Elation flooded my mind. An elation I had never experienced before...
It consumed my mind, brief but intense, then vanished. I barely came to my senses and raised my head.
Instead of octagon spotlights, the military base's night lights shone down on me. I raised one hand high and declared my victory to everyone.
My name was being chanted in both my mind and reality.
"Kim Geuk! Kim Geuk!"
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Footnotes:
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