WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
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◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈
Chapter 98: Behemoth - [1]
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The Gate was growing in real time.
It took time for a Gate to swell large enough for Monsters to pass through. It would take even longer to grow large enough for Behemoth's surreal body to emerge.
Amid all this, transport planes began landing.
Hunters I knew disembarked from them.
Kim Hyeongman was the first one I noticed, his light green medical smock standing out right away. Had he been called in so urgently from his acupuncture clinic that he hadn't even had time to change?
I also saw Kang Junman, who had been a police officer, joined the Special Forces, and recently became a Hunter. Kim Yohan was there too, even though his Hunter contract with Seoul was supposed to end this September. Several other Hunters I had met through the Association had also arrived.
Most of them worked in Seoul, but as I had confirmed earlier, Hunters from across the metropolitan area had been called here as well.
A distinct Incheon accent caught my ear.
“What? Why did they call me to Seoul? Didn't I sign a contract with Incheon City?”
It was Nguyen. Naturally, the hunter team he usually led was with him too.
Men with all kinds of skin tones stepped off carrying Hunter Rifles. It looked like they had summoned every foreign awakened person who mainly worked in the metropolitan area outside Seoul as well.
Naito was nowhere to be seen. It seemed they hadn't called every Hunter, only A-rank Hunters. A wise decision. If they called in every mediocre Hunter who drove around in tow trucks, those idiots would only block the civilians' evacuation routes on the way here.
Then another transport plane unloaded some familiar faces. When I realized they were my hunter team, my eyes widened.
Even in this urgent situation, I walked over and asked.
“What? Why are you all here?”
Seong Munyeong answered with an expression that asked why I was even asking.
“Because the country called us?”
They were non-awakened people, so I hadn't expected them to be summoned. It seemed the National Security Ministry had specifically called them in to support me.
I was angry that they were doing something I hadn't even asked for. I growled.
“Go back. This isn't Incheon.”
Had some infrasound slipped out unconsciously?
Seong Munyeong flinched, but he still shook his head.
“You're going to fight here, right? How can we go back? Someone has to change the magazines on the Hunter Rifle while you spray bullets everywhere...”
“If you insist on staying, then only the people handling the Hunter Rifle should stay!”
Im Hyeongtaek asked in an awkward tone.
“Shouldn't someone stay beside the three of us while we change the Hunter Rifle magazines?”
It looked like they all intended to stay.
Should I call that reckless courage, or camaraderie?
Either way, I wanted to tell them to stop talking nonsense and get the hell out, but I didn't have time to argue.
“Ah!”
Jeong Jinyeong shouted and looked toward the sky.
Everyone, including me, turned that way.
Everyone recoiled with the same horrified expression as Jinyeong.
The Gate in the sky had expanded enough.
Behemoth finally stuck its face out of the Gate, which had swollen to dozens of meters wide.
Ah, that face...
A warped face like a deformed lion born from inbreeding. The face of a Manticore so ugly it was grotesque.
That hideous rock face was dozens of meters across, but the mane around it made it look much larger. Its head alone appeared nearly a hundred meters wide.
I had felt it before, but even that ugly face carried a supernatural majesty at that scale.
Something that seemed to have been sent down from the sky to punish humanity, a thing of apocalypse and divinity...
I couldn't look at that face for long. Shells and missiles flew in from every direction and mercilessly pounded it.
Explosions sent shards flying from Behemoth's face. Its enormous head was soon covered in flames and smoke.
Was it angry at receiving this kind of treatment the moment it appeared?
Behemoth's expression twisted clearly enough for me to see from afar. Its gaze changed...
Then a scarlet Heat Ray burst from Behemoth's crystal eye, embedded among the rock.
The beam was thick enough to swallow tanks whole.
The Heat Ray swept across the ground once, and every tank in its path vanished without a trace. Where a massive Black Panther tank had been, only something that might have been molten steel or lava remained on the ground.
If that touched me, force field or not, I'd die instantly. Fuck.
As though the tanks being wiped out was nothing unusual, more projectiles continued striking Behemoth's face. Explosions roared one after another amid the flames.
I shouted loudly enough to be heard through the noise.
“Stay in the rear at least! Got it?”
At least my team didn't refuse that.
“Huh? Yes...!”
Seong Munyeong nodded with wide eyes. I used Spatial Teleportation to move them farther back.
Even then, I couldn't relax.
Normally, Baek Dambi would take the most dangerous role at the front, but she couldn't stay with them now.
Baek Dambi had grown too much as an awakened person to fight alongside non-awakened people as before. Unlike before, Baek Dambi would move independently as an A-rank Hunter to eliminate powerful Monsters.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. Weak non-awakened people had to fight alone without an awakened person there to protect them? What kind of bullshit was that?
I would never accept it under normal circumstances, but there was no helping it now. The situation was far too urgent.
After sending my hunter team to the rear and moving Baek Dambi to where she was needed, I returned by myself with Spatial Teleportation to somewhere with a clear view of Behemoth.
At last, Behemoth stepped onto the ground from the Gate, which had grown large enough for not only its head but its entire body to pass through.
The sound that followed wasn't a simple thud.
I didn't know what kind of onomatopoeia could even describe it.
All I could say was that the entire world rang.
Concrete shook. Buildings swayed like reeds, while signs and road markers fell like leaves caught in a typhoon. Street trees were uprooted entirely and began rolling around everywhere.
That was just one step. Not even a step with its full weight on the ground, since most of its body was still inside the Gate.
What would happen once it began walking with its entire body?
I found out soon enough, even though I didn't want to.
Behemoth finally emerged completely and started walking.
The buildings around it collapsed.
It looked like they hadn't used enough steel reinforcement. Or maybe their earthquake-resistant designs were poor.
Either way, buildings crumpled and fell even though Behemoth's body didn't touch them.
A roar followed, like massive meteors hammering the earth over and over.
My ears went numb, and I was glad I had sent my hunter team far back. Non-awakened people wouldn't be able to endure that sound. They might bleed from both ears and die simply because they happened to be nearby.
The earthquake grew stronger too. The concrete didn't just shake, it rippled. If my body weighed anything close to normal, I wouldn't have been able to stay standing.
The sky was chaos as well.
Even more firepower was deployed to strike Behemoth now that it had fully emerged.
When I looked up, bombers were flying overhead and dropping aerial bombs without pause. Drones prepared to take Behemoth's Heat Rays in place of people also filled the air, making my head spin. Since Behemoth could see souls, had they loaded chickens onto the drones to make them seem manned?
It was true that Behemoth could shoot down anything with the Heat Ray at the end of its tail.
A Heat Ray fired from Behemoth's enormous tail melted a warplane that had just dropped an aerial bomb.
I couldn't even attempt to use Spatial Teleportation to save the pilot. The Heat Ray and the explosion were both too fast.
I turned away from that terrible sight.
The giant Monster wasn't what I needed to focus on. There was little I could do against Behemoth, and if I clung to its body while the Air Force bombed it nonstop, I'd get caught in the attack too.
I had to focus on the Monsters that would follow.
The Monsters that would march behind Behemoth, just like they had in Australia.
Sure enough, while Behemoth advanced through humanity's weapons with its huge, hard rock body, countless Monster silhouettes stirred within the Gate behind it. Those Monsters began emerging into reality.
The first to come out were packs of Deathclaws. There had to be hundreds of them at a glance.
The Ministry of National Defense seemed to have prepared to wipe them out in advance.
A volley rang out, and all sorts of shells poured toward the Deathclaws emerging from the Gate.
Yet the shells meant to devastate the Deathclaws' path didn't land where they should have.
The soldiers looked flustered as shells followed strange trajectories and struck random buildings instead.
They shouted as they discussed the problem. They weren't yelling because they were angry. With all this noise, they had no choice if they wanted to hear each other.
“Why are they missing so badly?”
“The ground's shaking too much! It's like firing mortars from a ship. If the ship rocks, you can't hit properly. The ground is swaying too much, so the impact points are off...”
The moment I saw shell after shell miss, I knew we were screwed.
When the Gate opened at the military base on Ganghwa Island last time, the soldiers had avoided injuries and casualties because the Gate's position was identified early, allowing them to concentrate their firepower on one location.
Because the Monsters' path had been narrowed, they had even managed to hit Force-Field Creatures with artillery fire, things that mortars could normally never hope to hit.
That should have been possible now too, but it wasn't.
The Deathclaws that emerged from the Gate didn't immediately face the artillery's firepower. They ran straight into different parts of the city.
There was barely any rifle fire directed at them either. Behemoth's body was too close for soldiers to fire from there. Any soldiers deployed in that area would have already failed to endure the aftereffects of Behemoth's movement.
I couldn't stand it anymore, so I used Spatial Teleportation to get there.
Monsters were charging toward me. I fired the Hunter Rifle in a rapid burst, and the Deathclaws running wildly exploded.
It felt satisfying for a moment, but only for a moment.
「Kim Geuk, get out of there! You can't enter Behemoth's field of vision! You'll be its highest-priority target!」
I knew that. I was just frustrated.
The instant Behemoth's tail turned toward me, I used Spatial Teleportation to leave. The next moment, I saw the spot where I had been melt under the fired Heat Ray, and I shuddered at its power.
After catching my breath, I waited for the Monsters that would keep pouring out of the Gate.
Huge, powerful Monsters with bodies tough enough to withstand punishment.
The true masters of Sword World. Awakened people like me had been called here to deal with those powerful Monsters.
Before long, they emerged from the Gate and set foot in Seoul.
Since the Gate was so large, the Monsters that came out varied in both size and type.
The first ones I saw were Ogres. It was absurd to see six of those huge creatures traveling together, as if they had built a friendship while following Behemoth around.
More absurdly, there were Deathclaws nearly seven meters long. I also saw that boar-like creature from before, Sandworms writhing among them, various elementals, and several other Monsters whose scientific names I couldn't recognize.
The first one to move quickly among them was a six-meter Ogre.
The Ogre wasn't stopped by the half-collapsed forest of buildings. It leaped over several buildings in an instant, then clung to one that was still mostly standing.
An autocannon and soldiers had been placed on that building's roof.
The Ogre targeted them. It stuck its fingers into the windows on each floor and climbed the building in an instant before roaring and lunging at the soldiers above.
Then I used Spatial Teleportation.
The soldiers' screams pierced my already numbed ears.
“Argh!”
An Ogre stood before me. I stretched out my hand toward the enormous Monster.
I shoved my fingers into the Ogre's open jaw and yanked my hand downward.
Pulled by my grip, the Ogre's body began falling from the building.
I fired the Hunter Rifle into the falling Ogre and tore its stomach apart.
The Ogre seemed to die the moment it hit the ground. I felt its soul being absorbed into me, and a thrill ran through my body.
After collecting myself, I asked the soldiers.
“Are you sure you can stay here? Shouldn't you move positions? I can use Spatial Teleportation to...”
Their eardrums seemed to have been severely damaged. They couldn't hear me.
I quickly typed out a message on my phone and showed it to them. A staff sergeant shook his head.
“No, thank you, but we'll stay. Again, thank you.”
It was frustrating to leave those weak non-awakened people somewhere so dangerous, but I had to.
There were too many other places I needed to go.
「Force-Field Creature! Any available Hunter, respond―」
“It's Kim Geuk. I'm going.”
I immediately threw myself from the building.
Once I had fallen far enough for gravity to give me enough momentum, I used Spatial Teleportation and pointed the Hunter Rifle's force-field-covered muzzle downward.
When I finished teleporting, a Deathclaw that had been rampaging while absorbing bullets with its body was directly below the Hunter Rifle's muzzle.
I pulled the trigger. Firing wildly, I smashed it with the muzzle.
“Bang!”
After killing the Force-Field Creature, I looked around and saw soldiers gasping with bloodshot eyes. They had barely regained their senses and muttered something like, “Th-thank...”
I could understand why they were so tense.
Three people had already died. There were wounded soldiers as well, but I couldn't take them to a hospital. At most, I could let them withdraw to the rear under the excuse of transporting the wounded.
I couldn't do anything more here. There were far too many places calling for me.
「Hunter Kim Geuk? As soon as things there are finished―」
“It's finished. I'm coming right away.”
I used Spatial Teleportation again and killed another huge, powerful Monster.
This time, it was something that resembled a boar. It had smashed through a wall made from three buses and crushed six soldiers to death beyond it. I drove the Hunter Rifle into its eye, pierced its brain, and killed it.
I had killed three major Monsters in an instant, but the Gate that had opened was a full hundred meters wide.
Countless Monsters poured out of it, including many powerful Monsters mixed among the horde.
There were far too many.
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Footnotes:
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