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Chapter 153: The Ruler of Incheon Pt. 3

“Whew…”

Yeo Seong-Gu wiped away the sweat running down his brow.

Incheon had been a thriving city. But now it had become a fortress full of trees and rocks due to the cataclysm.

Flicker.

And now it was becoming a burning hell.

“Uuugh!”

“Uuugh!”

Many of the monsters who had tried to attack the Hunters screamed in unison. Before they were even able to approach the party, parts of their body were burning to a crisp, falling to the ground.

Thud.

The Hunters opened their eyes wide as they guarded their surroundings.

The incredible sight before their eyes was all done by one person.

“The Underdog…”

The Hunter they had nicknamed the Underdog had done it alone.

Flicker! Flicker!

Lee Jun-Kyeong, the Underdog, walked forward in the lead. With every step he took, flames soared and swept away the approaching monsters.

The gathered Hunters had never seen such a wide area of effect skill. Not even the guild members of the League Guild, who had seen many S-Grade Hunters during their expeditions, had seen what was being unveiled in front of them.

There was only one Hunter who seemed to have the power to create hell.

Only one Hunter…

“He’s really creating hell on earth…”

The raging flames were melting the trees and rocks.

Even the remnants of the city, rubble made of concrete and iron, were melting like lava and flowing like a river.

It swept through the monsters that were trying to attack them.

All of this, this terrifying scene straight from the underworld, was done by the hands of one person.

“Uuugh!!”

The Underdog, Lee Jun-Kyeong, was building his kingdom of hell.

However, that hell was only for the monsters, not the humans.

As he walked forward, spewing flames from his hands, Lee Jun-Kyeong heard a notification ring in his ear.

[Your level has risen.]

***

The ability that Lee Jun-Kyeong had shown was overwhelming and terrifying.

Thus.

“Wow!!!”

It was a great help to the Hunters’ morale.

They were encouraged and bolstered by the sight of the monsters being swept away, obtaining the energy to deal with the endlessly rushing monster tide.

The battle had just begun, but soon, the monsters had begun to retreat.

“Push them to the side!”

It was a scene that wasn’t easily seen within a normal gate.

In a gate, there was a special type of monster called a boss monster that would hold domain over any monster that existed within a gate, but these boss monsters would never allow their underlings to retreat.

They would just use their hordes of monsters to just run toward the Hunters. It was a strategy that relied on these monsters to continue throwing the bodies of those under it at those that invaded its gates, exhausting them with the endless tide.

However, the monsters here were different.

As if they knew how to think properly, these monsters formed battle lines, attacked in strategic waves, and even knew to retreat systematically.

Before they knew it, the Hunters had been able to advance quite a distance due to their incredible momentum and the monsters’ movements.

Although there were a vast number of monsters left, they knew that the situation would get even better if they could just push their way into the Incheon City Hall.

“Wow!!”

The hopeful shouts of the Hunters were making Incheon ring. They tried to use this momentum to advance even further, but suddenly.

Zzt.

The flames that Lee Jun-Kyeong had been pouring out had stopped.

Lee Jun-Kyeong had suddenly stopped moving, and the Hunters looked at him with bewildered gazes, confused at his sudden actions that happened just as they were full of morale.

However, they soon found out why he had stopped the advance.

"Help me!"

The voices of people desperately begging for help were beginning to enter their ears.

“Please…! Save us!”

“Save us!!”

“Sto—!”

They could hear the screeching voices of survivors.

Suddenly, people had appeared in front of the Hunters who had been trying to chase after the retreating monsters.

They were floating in the air at the end of what seemed to be a tree branch, their faces twisting with pain.

All the Hunters could hear were their screams.

"Please…! Kill me…”

Lee Jun-Kyeong had stopped when he saw them.

As the Hunters stood speechless at the shocking sight, there was someone who ran out first.

“Ha-a-eup!”

It was Jeong In-Chang.

“Are you all right?!”

As soon as he had realized what was happening, he ran forward without caring about anything else to try to save the people.

His great sword tore through the trunk of a tree that had people tied to its branches, and those people were caught by the princess in her ogre combat form.

“Goongje!”

The rescued survivors were in horrible shape.

“Damn it…!”

As he saved the people, Jeong In-Chang bit his lips and cursed furiously.

It was a disastrous sight.

The people were thin and starving after a few days of being confined, and there were many who were missing one or two limbs as well.

Moreover.

“S…save me…”

These people continued to show up without an end.

The party wasn’t able to follow after the monsters anymore.

Lee Jun-Kyeong and his party were standing in front of the Incheon City Hall.

However.

“It looks like we’re stranded here,” Yeo Seong-Gu said with a frown.

***

The Hunters that had been quickly advancing toward the Incheon City Hall with Lee Jun-Kyeong in the lead had been stranded.

“Wat…water…please…”

“Please…!”

“Save us!”

They were stranded because of the screaming people.

Humans were being brought out endlessly.

Although they continued to try to save the people that were thrown out by the monsters quickly and continued their march forward, before they knew it, more people tied to the branches of a tree trunk would appear once again.

“S.. save me!”

Lee Jun-Kyeong was forced to put his flames away.

If he would use his Authority of Flames now, when these human shields that were tied to tree branches had shown up, then these ordinary people who had done no wrong would be burnt to cinders.

As Lee Jun-Kyeong’s flames went out and the Hunters had overextended themselves in order to rescue the stranded humans, the monsters began to attack again.

“Uuuuugh!”

Only a handful of Hunters were left blocking the monsters on the front lines.

Although Lee Jun-Kyeong, the princess, Jeong In-Chang, and Yeo Seong-Gu were still fighting against the monsters, the monsters were cleverly advancing, using the people as shields, taking back the ground they had lost.

“Sa… Save me…!”

If they engaged in battles against the monsters without any care for their surroundings or made use of any wide area of effect skills, it would end up being a massacre of the ordinary humans.

In the end.

“Retreat!”

Yeo Seong-Gu had no choice but to step back for a while.

Lee Jun-Kyeong and Jeong In-Chang also nodded in agreement.

There was no reason for them to force a victory at the expense of humans in this fight to save humanity.

“Damn it!”

Although Jeong In-Chang, who was filled with rage, swung his greatsword again, his greatsword had lost the edge that it had in battle, unlike before.

“Retreat! Fall back!"

The Hunters began to back down.

“...”

Carrying survivors on their backs, the faces of the Hunters who had to fall back were filled with an uncontrollable rage.

“We have to stop the monsters from going forward!” shouted Lee Jun-Kyeong.

Their retreat would only be possible after they gave the other Hunters time to retreat with the rescued survivors.

The Hunters had been divided.

“Agreed!”

“Understood!”

The strongest Hunters blocked the battlelines and killed the monsters that tried to cross them.

“Ugh…!”

The monsters continued to try to attack the rearguard, but fortunately, the number of monsters that got through them was small.

There was a stampede of monsters.

Swish!

Lee Jun-Kyeong swung his spear, killing a mysterious monster.

At the same time, he looked over at the Incheon City Hall.

“...”

There was a huge mana that he had been sensing since earlier.

‘It’s staring at me.’

He could feel it looking at himself.

As he gazed right back into that bastard’s eyes, Lee Jun-Kyeong then turned away.

“We’re retreating now too!”

***

"It\'s interesting."

Lee Jun-Kyeong hadn’t mistaken that gaze that was upon him.

The King of Alfheimr had been gazing upon the approaching Hunters from its fortress at Incheon City Hall.

The King of Alfheimr, Elfame, felt a mysterious feeling about the land that they had suddenly fallen upon, the Earth.

Beings that seemed to be called Hunters, from a race they called humans.

It was a developed civilization.

“So the doors are opening here and there on this land, it seems. The rest are also falling upon this land as well.”

Moreover, he could also feel the arrival of many kingdoms and tribes on this planet right now.

“How pitiful,” Elfame lamented sincerely.

It was a pitiful existence.

Having come to an unknown land that was called the Earth, they had been a race that had lost their hometown and had been subject to being wanderers for a seemingly endless era.

They were displaced people.

Moreover, there were others.

“You all are in the same boat as I am too.”

These beings that had entered through the doors were in the same boat as Elfame.

He had left his destroyed homeland and spent countless years in the gap between dimensions.

Moreover, he, who had been the most beautiful king of all, even among his entire people that had been known as the race of beauty, had become dark and muddy, forming into a corpse.

Just like their most abhorred enemy, the Dark Elves.

Moreover, that wasn’t the only change that they had faced.

The gap between dimensions was a place where life could never exist—a place imbued with many emotions, especially malice and many various auras of hatred.

“I am…”

The gap had affected their minds as much as their bodies.

Elfame, the King of Alfheimr, looked out once more.

The reason for his concern was simple.

There were two beings approaching this place, strong and strange beings.

Although he had stolen the knowledge about the Hunters from the humans, those beings seemed to surpass what he had absorbed.

“Still, how weak they are.”

Even still, Elfame tutted out loud.

They had enough strength to be among the strong, but the sight of them seemingly sacrificing themselves to save their own people was just an expression of how weak they truly were.

Someone who had that sort of strength, regardless of what was causing their people to die, should only move for their own benefit.

Nevertheless.

"How nice."

Elfame smiled slowly.

The weakness of the strong beings coming this way also meant that he had a chance to grow.

Although he was Elfame, the strongest being that caused trembles all throughout Alfheim with just a whisper of his name, he had, for centuries–no, millennia, been trapped in the gap between dimensions and had become quite weak.

He relished the fact that an opportunity for him to return to his greatest physical condition was coming out of its own will.

"Soldiers, push forward,” Elfame began to order once again.

“Use their kind as a shield, use their kind as your spear.”

“Uuuugh!”

“It’s time for me to see for myself what kind of race the humans are.”

Numerous trees began to move around Elfame.

In the Incheon City Hall, which had already become a fortress of Alfheimr.

At least here.

"I am a god."

***

“Just who the hell is that ruler?” Yeo Seong-Gu asked emphatically.

The Hunters had no choice but to eventually retreat and reform their battle lines.

Many of their fellow Hunters had to take their survivors back to Inha University, so they were left having to wait for their return.

In the meantime, the monsters attacked, and the raids had increased in intensity. Moreover, the level of the monsters had also increased.

They were being trapped.

The Hunters had always been the ones who had hunted the monsters, but at this moment, it was like they were being hunted instead.

Yeo Seong-Gu frowned as if he was irritated.

It wasn’t just him, either.

Many hunters, including Jeong In-Chang and the princess, felt the same way.

The monster attack and the feeling of being hunted by mindless creatures was not a good thing.

Moreover.

“Please…. Please save me…”

Some of the Hunters were even more infuriated at the condition of the people that were being used as the monsters’ weapons and shields.

Only a few of those who had been saved by the Hunters could be said to be normal. From their withered bodies to missing limbs, it was impossible to tell what sorts of horrors they had gone through.

There were even those that were foaming at the mouth like they were crazy.

“Just what the hell…”

Although they were still grateful that there were so many people that had survived, they were still indignant that someone, or something, had done this sort of torture to people while they were still breathing.

"That, that monster... It\'s a devil…"

Then, someone who had come to their senses grabbed a Hunter and spoke. Because the people hadn’t come to their senses up to this point, the Hunters hadn’t been able to actually hear the situation that had happened inside the walls of the City Hall.

"What the hell happened to you?" the Hunters quickly asked.

“Tha…that bastard…the h... Humans…” the survivor said, foaming at the mouth.

“It’s eating…”

After barely spitting out the last words, the survivor fainted on the spot.