WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the EX-Rank Pet Maker Hunters Obsess Over ◈
Chapter 77: Total Victory
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Bubble, bubble...
The entire battlefield felt as though it had been trapped inside a giant soap bubble.
The inside was dyed black as though filled with ink, making it difficult to see from the outside.
Naturally, the Hunters inside had terrible visibility as well.
Cold... Heavy... Pressure seemed to bear down from every direction, and the darkness was so deep that even light could not reach it.
Everyone was sinking deep beneath the sea.
Was this what it felt like to float in the abyss?
The red-eyed girl looked around and thought.
Unlike the other Hunters, she was used to darkness, so she could faintly make out her surroundings.
Most of the Hunters were drifting in the water while the Merfolk swam swiftly around them in circles.
‘...So they had a trump card like this.’
It was power wielded on a scale utterly unlike that of ordinary monsters.
Whether it had originally been human or Merfolk, the fish-headed creature holding that staff clearly would not be an easy opponent.
Thanks to the underwater-breathing items distributed before the operation, breathing was not difficult.
The Hunters could breathe underwater for around ten minutes, but even so, she could sense their unease.
Something was swimming around them, but they could not see it or respond.
Fear was slowly consuming the Hunters.
Even S-rank Hunters cannot fight properly in this environment.
The red-eyed girl observed the flow around her.
‘A barrier activated by sacrificing the blood of its own kind. At this level, it is not a Mental Image Projection. Could it be a Pseudo-Realm Barrier?’
It was merely a barrier that overlaid a false environment onto reality.
Its nature meant that drastically altering this space could break it, but its scale was far too large.
‘I will need to secure enough blood to undo it.’
The other side had already used the blood and flesh scattered across the battlefield. Since it was the flesh and blood of their own kind, they had priority from the start.
To secure blood for her spell, the girl pulled a red gemstone from her pocket.
‘This was not where I meant to use it. Tch...’
If humanity lost here, Britain would be finished. That did not suit her plans.
Just as she was about to accept a slight loss and break the barrier...
Swish!
Whoosh!
‘...What is that?’
Something sped past her.
Not just one thing, either. Several of them.
Soon afterward, she sensed a vast amount of blood spreading through the barrier.
There was only one thing that could mean.
‘They are hunting... the Merfolk!’
Crackle!!!
Blue light flashed in the darkness, briefly illuminating the battlefield.
Electricity released from a lizard-shaped magical beast was frying the Merfolk around it.
That was not all.
Another magical beast had the same lizardlike form, but it had fins and a larger body. It swam even faster than the Merfolk, snatching them up one by one in its jaws and biting them in half.
Some lizardlike forms blended into the darkness, while others had begun to shed their lizard shapes altogether.
The creatures she caught glimpses of were tearing through the front lines, slaughtering Merfolk.
Magical beasts that seemed even better suited to the environment than the Merfolk.
‘What...? Were there always magical beasts like that?’
As she wondered, the surroundings suddenly began to brighten.
‘Did someone create a light source?’
Someone had likely produced light with magic.
But that was an extremely dangerous choice. In an environment like this, a light source would become a target.
Wondering what brave mage had sacrificed themselves, she turned her head.
“Kruk... Kruk...”
Puhup!
Bubble, bubble!!!
She froze at the unexpected sight.
What the girl saw was an amphibian with a lantern on its head, like a deep-sea anglerfish.
The Merfolk that rushed at it were caught by its tongue and sucked into its mouth. Not long after, it spat them back out half-melted.
‘...What is that supposed to be?’
Where had that thing even come from?
She realized that something major had changed on this battlefield.
The magical beasts rampaging through this space as though it were their own home were rapidly increasing the amount of blood. Yet surprisingly, their allies were not suffering many casualties even in this environment.
Almost none of the blood spreading through the battlefield belonged to humans.
The reason was likely the turtle-shaped magical beasts behind them.
‘I do not know what is happening, but...’
This was an opportunity.
She swiftly formed hand seals and drew up mana. Soon, the blood spread throughout the space began to react.
[ Blood Realm Erosion ]
At her will, the blood began to erode into space itself.
‘Follow the flow and find the barrier's veins.’
Her transcendent affinity for mana let her sense the flows of mana driven like stakes into each point. Using the blood as a medium, she poured her mana into them.
[ Dead Blood Reversal ]
When outside mana was injected with pinpoint precision into the stakes composing the barrier, the barrier sustaining the false environment began to shudder as though cracking apart.
Then...
BOOM!!!!
Black seawater burst forth, and the barrier shattered.
“This is impossible...!!!”
The staff-wielding Merfolk cried out in shock.
It appeared to have been preparing something, but the barrier's destruction had apparently rendered it useless. It was furious.
“What... What are those things supposed to be?!”
Where it pointed, there was a lizard still chewing on Merfolk, a turtle spreading a sturdy barrier...
And an amphibian extending its tongue to abduct Merfolk in real time before digesting them.
Whoosh! Snap!
Aooorgh!!!
“Kruk... Kruk...”
Merfolk were snatched up and dragged away by the lightning-fast tongue.
The Hunters and even the opposing Merfolk stared at the magical beasts in bewilderment. They had taken on the form of predators seemingly evolved to prey on Mindless Merfolk.
Munch, munch... Ptooey!
The amphibian-shaped magical beast that had chewed up and spat out a Merfolk wriggled, then began swelling even larger.
The magical beasts on the battlefield continued growing, and their shapes changed in strange ways.
But the strangest part was the Hunters who appeared to be their owners.
“No!!! Ttorangi's become water-elemental!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Aaargh!!! No!! Why is it only getting bigger?! It looks even more disgusting now!!!”
“Hmm... I think our Kkabugi grew up well. I like it.”
“Fuck... The evolution speed is seriously weird...!!”
The owners fell to their knees and wailed while their magical beasts kept wriggling and transforming. It was such a bizarre sight that even the Merfolk could not understand it.
And YouTuber Petite Cream was filming it from a distance.
“...I do not know what happened inside that black soap bubble, but the magical beasts' forms have changed... drastically!! This is the power of Essentium, everyone!!!”
[ Chat ]
- Fuck, what is that...?
- What happened for them to change that much?
- What is with the fins? Why did it evolve like a serpent?
- Huh...? That toad keeps getting bigger. Fuck, it is going to burst at this rate.
- What the hell is happening?!
- Why is nobody moving??
- What? Dunno.
* * *
The staff-wielding Merfolk rolled its eyes.
Its planned operation had fallen apart.
There was a mage who had destroyed the barrier, and there were likely more beings here on the same level.
They were highly likely to be Apostle-tier beings.
Monsters favored by Transcendents, utterly unlike ordinary Hunters...!
Could it truly defeat them on land?
‘...No. It is dangerous to keep fighting here. There are too many variables, not just Apostles.’
The staff-wielding Merfolk glared at the magical beasts as though they were detestable.
“...Damn it... If not for those variables...!!”
It did not know what had happened or what those things were, but continuing the battle without knowing was far too dangerous.
Swish...
A lizard's shadow moved like a living thing, swimming across the ground. A turtle flew low through the air, releasing strange vapor around it. One of the amphibian magical beasts began burrowing into the ground.
‘Fuck... What is that now...?’
One of the turtles began to rise as though it were about to walk on two legs.
The Merfolk broke into a cold sweat at the ominous sight.
Not knowing what they might do next, the staff-wielding Merfolk fired a retreat signal into the sky.
Fweeeeee!
With a strange firework pattern rising into the sky, the Merfolk began returning to the sea.
“Hah... Fine. You win this time. Enjoy this small victory, humans... We will return. And those detestable magical beasts of yours...!! Next time, we will not let them be! I will skewer every last one before they get the chance to evolve!!!”
Grrr...
Pop!
As though it could not care less about the Merfolk's words, a horn sprouted from the lizard magical beast's head.
“Fuck...”
The staff-wielding Merfolk grimaced and turned toward the sea.
Inherited Merfolk, including the armored one, followed it back toward the water.
“...Where do you think you are going?”
Crrrack!!!
At those words, thousands of hands made of bone burst from the ground and seized the Colossal Merfolk's ankles.
“...!?”
Its feet were trapped in an instant, leaving the Colossal Merfolk unable to move.
When it hurriedly turned around...
At eye level, it saw a woman with hair split black and white, leaping through the air with a black aura-wreathed scythe in hand.
“...I wanted a giant's bones.”
The pale-skinned woman smiled coldly.
Slice!
As the scythe filled with black energy swung down, a crack appeared in empty space as though space itself had been cut apart.
Following that crack, the Colossal Merfolk's head separated from its body and fell to the ground.
THUD!!!
The fallen head wore an expression as though it could not understand what had happened to it.
“...Damn it!!!”
One of its main forces had been taken out unexpectedly. The staff-wielding Merfolk cursed, but it could not bring itself to retaliate.
In the end, all the Merfolk returned to the sea, leaving behind the Colossal Merfolk's corpse.
The battlefield was filled with blood and flesh, and the stench of fish hung heavily in the air, but every Merfolk had retreated.
That could only mean one thing.
“We won...”
It was not merely a victory.
The Hunters had suffered almost no casualties.
In other words, it was a total victory.
The Hunters who knew the Merfolk's strength from before blinked in disbelief, then...
“Waaaaaah!!!!!!!”
“We did it, damn it!!!!!!!”
“Hell yes... Britain's reward money is going to be sweet!!!!”
“Hah... We have not even driven out all the Merfolk yet, and you are already celebrating!”
Everyone screamed and enjoyed their victory in the war.
Then people turned sharply to look at the EVO Series magical beasts and Cheonseong's Hunters.
Apparently, they were too scared to approach the woman with half-black, half-white hair, so they shifted their attention to Cheonseong's Hunters instead.
“I saw those damned magical beasts protect me!!!”
“I saw it too!! That turtle put up a shield and blocked the Merfolk in that shitty space!!!”
“Congratulations on the MVP, you strange magical-beast trainers!!!”
“Khahaha!! Give them a good toss!!!”
“Uh, uh...?”
“Wai-”
The Hunters gathered around and began tossing the EVO magical beasts and their Cheonseong Hunter owners into the air.
It did not last long, though.
“Aaargh, fuck!!! This amphibian slime feels disgusting!!!!!!”
“Aaah, why are these serpent scales so sharp?! My hands are shredded!!!”
“Aaargh!! Damn it, I have been poisoned!!! Give me an antidote, hurry!!!!”
[ Breaking News ] Britain claims first victory against Merfolk army... “Major victory in kills and repulsion along North Sea coast”
[ Exclusive ] Britain escapes threat of annihilation... European front that had buckled under Merfolk offensive opens a new chapter of counterattack
[ Feature ] “The key force behind slaughtering the Merfolk swarm”... Yoo Hyun's EVO Series proves Britain's secret weapon of victory
[ Society ] “Perfect victory, unexpected emergency”... Around twenty Hunters sent for treatment with toxicity and hallucination symptoms after tossing EVO magical beasts into the air
* * *
A few days later
Hermes Research Institute
As I replayed bodycam footage and YouTube videos, I muttered.
“Hmm... That was Tier 2, right?”
“Huff, huff...”
[ You can consider it nearly certain. ]
That woman with the scythe had launched a clearly abnormal attack.
If it was an ability that did not look like an ordinary Hunter skill, it was usually safe to suspect Tier 2.
‘That power is absurd.’
I never expected her to cleanly cut off such a huge head...
“Still, it feels really familiar somehow.”
She had only appeared very briefly in the footage, but...
Was it just my imagination that she reminded me of the White and Black Twins I had seen at Masquerade's Round Table before?
Hmm... It was not like I could meet her and confirm it with my own eyes.
No, if that woman really was the one playing two roles, it would definitely be better not to meet her. She was obviously a psychopath. It would be insane to make contact for no reason.
[ Hey, look at this. You received an email. ]
Amon, who had been lying down and using a tablet PC, showed me the screen.
I skimmed through it. It was an email from the British government.
[ Director Yoo Hyun. We would like to request that you create magical beasts specialized for the war against the Merfolk, as well as marine magical beasts capable of escorting us across the sea. As compensation, we will begin with the Colossal Merfolk's corpse that we have secured... ]
Nothing else caught my eye.
“...The Colossal Merfolk's corpse?”
They were giving me the corpse of that creature, which was dozens of meters long?
The woman with the scythe had hunted it, so ownership should have belonged to her. It seemed they had somehow acquired it...?
As I hesitated as though considering it, Amon looked up at me.
[ Do not tell me... you are going? ]
“I will just go collect the colossal essence.”
How could I resist that? I needed to go cultivate a colossal magical beast immediately!
That was how I arrived in Britain.
And there, I encountered an unexpected person.
[ Name 》 Valentina Dracomir Bathory ]
[ Race 》 Human ]
[ Awakened Rank 》 S-rank ]
[ Position 》 Spatial Domination Mage ]
[ Combat Tendencies 》 Prefers environments where she can absorb a large amount of blood. Prefers to establish the front line through summons. Prefers to alter the battlefield environment in a favorable direction. ]
[ Areas for Improvement 》 Has a weakness where combat power sharply declines in environments where Blood Qi cannot be secured. Possesses a body vulnerable to Divine Power. It appears advisable to prepare a means of replenishing Blood Qi at any time. ]
[ Talent 》 Extraordinary Mana Control, Extraordinary Mana Affinity, Exceptional Battlefield Command, Excellent Charisma ]
[ This Awakened has reached Tier 2 through Blood Qi. ]
“So you are Yoo Hyun. I have seen your work.”
A blonde girl with noble poise stepped forward.
“Would you perhaps make a magical beast for me as well?”
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