WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Martial Arts Survival Guide ◈
Chapter 20: Still
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“Let’s goooo!”
Lee Seok-cheon shouted to raise his guild members’ spirits. Battle Aura, Blood Lion’s power, wrapped around his entire body. The guild members following him answered with powerful shouts of their own.
“Kill them!”
The hunters without powers shouted desperately. They were more eager than anyone else there, and they had to be more desperate, too. Hunting the monsters that appeared in the real world on the last day of every month offered better returns than hunting monsters in the Abyss. It was easier to gain levels and catch the monarchs’ attention. That meant a greater chance of receiving a power.
Of course, the danger was greater, too. Not only were there many monsters, but the ones that appeared in the real world were especially strong.
Even so, the number of hunters taking part in the end-of-month extermination never fell. The operation itself drew plenty of attention from the monarchs, and the chance to join forces with hundreds of other hunters made them brave. Someone else might die instead of them. Of course, that also meant they might die instead of someone else, but the madness of the crowd drove the hunters wild.
“The monsters have appeared!”
The reporters in the helicopters clutched their microphones and shouted. Inwardly, they were relieved. If flying monsters had appeared, things would have gone to shit.
“The hunters are advancing. Look! Lee Seok-cheon of the Heavenly King guild has used Blood Lion’s power!”
“Aaaaaah!”
“Can you hear that? War Cry! That’s War Cry. We can hear Lee Seok-cheon’s shout even from this height!”
Thanks to some generous lobbying, the reporters were keeping their coverage firmly focused on Heavenly King and Lee Seok-cheon. Even without that, Lee Seok-cheon and his guild had the skill to stand out in this operation no matter what they did. They had only gone to the trouble of lobbying to make certain of it.
“...Uh... But what’s that?”
One of the reporters sounded confused.
As Lee Seok-cheon, wrapped in Battle Aura, let out a thunderous War Cry, as Jeong Su-a cried out in surprise, and as the hunters at the front rushed forward to stop the advancing monsters, Baek Hyun kicked off the ground, leaped up, and ran through the air. Feeling the wind brush past him, he raced across the sky above everyone’s heads. The people on the ground didn’t even know he was running over them.
“Who the hell is that bastard?!”
They only noticed after he had passed. Lee Seok-cheon stopped shouting and cried out in surprise. Baek Hyun passed over Heavenly King’s formation, then cleared even the hunters at the front. He didn’t stop there. He went all the way to the middle of the monsters.
For a moment, the hunters’ minds went blank. All of them, hundreds of hunters, stared at Baek Hyun. They couldn’t understand what had happened. Close to the deep, deep Abyss. In the middle of hundreds of monsters. Baek Hyun stood still in midair.
He lowered his eyes and looked below. The monsters were looking up at him, growling. The monsters that had appeared this time were bugs the size of bulls. There were all sorts of them. Some resembled cockroaches, while others looked like camel crickets. There were mantises, house centipedes... Baek Hyun frowned in disgust.
‘Even after becoming a martial arts master, I still find bugs gross.’
With that thought, he drew up his internal energy. Small bugs were disgusting enough. Being this big only made them worse. The thought of those hairy legs touching his body was horrible.
Then he just had to keep them from touching him. He activated the Heaven-Shattering Divine Transformation Art. Black protective force aura surrounded his body.
“Battle Aura?”
Lee Seok-cheon sounded confused. They looked rather similar, but they were on different levels. Wrapped in protective force aura, Baek Hyun raised his right foot high.
As he dropped, he stamped his foot into the ground. Boooom! The earth didn’t turn over. The ground didn’t shake. None of those unnecessary effects occurred. His perfectly controlled power caused only the destruction he needed. The wave of qi spreading from that single stamp burst dozens of bugs.
No, he couldn’t even call it bursting them. No remains or blood were left behind. They had simply ceased to exist.
“Haha!”
Baek Hyun laughed in delight and raised both hands. Rrrrumble! Pitch-black light wrapped around them. It was a little disappointing that he couldn’t release his power freely, but there was nothing he could do about that. If he did, the people nearby would get caught in it and die in droves. Even the wall built to contain the monsters might collapse.
‘Control my strength.’
Keeping that in mind, Baek Hyun scattered force aura around him. Boom! Boom! Boom! He had held back, but its destructive power was still incredible. The charging monsters couldn’t even get close to him. They were swept up in the storm of force aura and vanished.
“Wh-what the hell is that bastard?”
Lee Seok-cheon cried out in shock. He had never seen that face before, but what he truly couldn’t understand was the “power” the man was using. At first, he had thought it was Blood Lion’s power, like his own. Baek Hyun’s protective force aura had looked similar to Blood Lion’s Battle Aura.
But the attacks he was using now? That destructive force sweeping through everything around him could match even Tempest’s power, which specialized in wiping out wide areas. Did that mean he was a mage? Was it a power from Tempest, High Lord, or Witch End? Had there been someone with that much strength?
“Wh-what should we do?”
A guild member asked hesitantly. Lee Seok-cheon ground his teeth at the question.
“What do you think? Run! Are you going to let that bastard kill them all?!”
Lee Seok-cheon shouted. He hadn’t held back from charging in alone because he was afraid of monsters like these. He could fight them perfectly well on his own. He was only hanging back a little to save his strength for the boss monster that would appear after they were all dead.
Even so, he couldn’t let one bastard show off like that. Killing the boss monster was Lee Seok-cheon’s job, but the glory of the operation belonged to Heavenly King.
“U-uaaaah!”
The hunters at the front rushed forward, despite their confusion. Glancing at them, Baek Hyun quietly clicked his tongue. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand their desperation, but things would become a bother once people mixed in with the monsters. If he’d known this would happen, perhaps he should have finished faster. With that thought, he raised his hands.
Poom.
A black sphere of force aura rose above his palm. It was the size of a fist, then swelled a little larger. Baek Hyun closed his hand once and opened it again. The sphere rippled and writhed in the air. He took a quick look around. Monsters were charging toward him. Hunters were charging at those monsters. He studied their movements, working out how they moved and how fast they were.
Then he clenched his fist.
Rat-a-tat-tat! The power compressed inside the sphere shot out in every direction. It became countless thin needles of force aura. They were as fine as threads, but they carried enough power to pierce anything they touched.
“...Urk...”
It had missed by the thickness of a sheet of paper. A thread passed dangerously close to a hunter swinging a sword. If the hunter had moved just a little farther forward, the thread of force aura would have pierced their body. Baek Hyun took another quick look around. No one had been killed or injured by his attack. Just as he had intended, it had killed only the monsters.
“Still got the touch.”
Baek Hyun grinned as he spoke. It had been quite a while since he had controlled his internal energy with such precision, but he was satisfied with what he had done.
No one moved, and no monsters remained that could move. His last attack had already wiped them all out. Lee Seok-cheon stared at Baek Hyun, speechless.
What was that?
He had no idea. Had that last attack been magic, too? That was magic? Heavenly King was considered one of Korea’s two leading guilds. He hadn’t become its leader through lobbying alone. He had a fair amount of knowledge. Among the Thirteen Monarchs of the Abyss, there were many different types of magic. Tempest’s elemental spirit magic specialized in large-scale destruction, while High Lord’s magic affected the mind. Witch End’s magic had a wide range of uses.
As far as Lee Seok-cheon could tell, Baek Hyun’s last attack hadn’t resembled the power of any of those three monarchs. If he had to choose something similar, it would be Thorns of Death, the Queen of Black Roses’ power.
‘Was there someone in Korea who contracted with the Queen of Black Roses and received her power...? No, an ordinary power couldn’t be that strong... At that level, he’d be comparable to an apostle candidate.’
Lee Seok-cheon swallowed. The Abyss Administration Bureau kept profiles on every hunter, including which monarch they had contracted with and what level they were. If a hunter in Korea had contracted with the Queen of Black Roses and received her power, it should have made the news long ago.
“That’s all the monsters.”
Muttering to himself, Baek Hyun looked around.
“Does the real thing come next?”
No one answered. Jeong Su-a stood some distance away, staring at him with her mouth open. She was just as shocked as Lee Seok-cheon.
‘An apostle candidate...? Of which monarch?’
Jeong Su-a had considerable confidence in her own strength. The Serpent of Regeneration was a picky monarch and rarely offered anyone a contract or power. The monarch’s power was that much stronger and more dangerous as a result. She was confident that, if she wanted, she could easily wipe out the monsters that had appeared, just as Baek Hyun had.
She didn’t because her ability couldn’t distinguish friend from foe. The same was true of most powers. Area-annihilation magic that struck a wide space didn’t distinguish between allies and enemies. In an online game, casting magic where an ally stood wouldn’t damage them. In reality, if you fired a gun at an ally, they would simply die. Magic was no different.
But Baek Hyun’s attack had, amazingly, distinguished perfectly between friend and foe. It wasn’t because it was that kind of attack. Baek Hyun himself had controlled it perfectly. The precision of his attack sent chills down Jeong Su-a’s spine. If he had been even slightly off... Just how many people would that attack have killed?
While they stood there, each shocked for different reasons,
Fwoosh.
An enormous light surged up from the Abyss. Baek Hyun raised his head and watched the light fall from the sky.
Booom!
The light landed in the middle of the many monster corpses. A huge monster rose from within it. The bugs that had appeared so far had been unnaturally large for bugs, but this boss monster was on another scale entirely, as befitted the last monster to appear. Looking at the scorpion, which was the size of a huge building, Baek Hyun clapped his hands. Clap! Clap!
“Another bug?”
Was a scorpion a bug, too?
The thought suddenly crossed his mind, but what did it matter whether a scorpion was a bug or not?
“No!”
Seeing Baek Hyun approach the boss monster, Lee Seok-cheon shouted.
“That bastard’s mine!”
His desperate War Cry tried to stop Baek Hyun in his tracks. Normally, War Cry was a shout that froze the bodies of those Lee Seok-cheon recognized as enemies. At that moment, he clearly recognized Baek Hyun as an enemy. But his War Cry couldn’t make Baek Hyun so much as flinch.
“You’ve got a fucking loud voice, mister.”
Grumbling, Baek Hyun leaped toward the scorpion.
His face twisting, Lee Seok-cheon leaped after him.
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