EX-Rank Demonic Beast Hunter.
As the title suggested, the protagonist was a demonic beast hunter, and a wide variety of demonic beasts appeared throughout the story.
Among them were more than a few colossal creatures capable of toppling mountains or cleaving the sea apart in a single blow.
Yet one of the most devastating calamities of all was undoubtedly the final boss of Act One—the ‘Black-Gold Dragon.’
‘The only Gold Emperor Dragon still alive in the present era.’
For now, it remained asleep in its nest.
In only three years, however, it would awaken.
‘It’s on an entirely different level from undead creatures like Rot Dragons that merely resemble dragons. It’s a true dragon in every sense of the word.’
Its might was far too terrifying for a creature that was merely the final boss of Act One.
However, the return of the Black-Gold Dragon was only the beginning.
Starting in Act Two, powerful figures from lands across the sea would also begin to appear.
In any case, at the current point in Act One, there was no doubt that it was the most powerful demonic beast in existence.
‘Then why is the Black-Gold Dragon’s offspring in a place like this?’
The Black-Gold Dragon had originally possessed only one offspring.
According to the events described in the novel, however, it had died long ago.
Yet somehow, it had been wandering around this remote territory while bearing the false stigma of being a Rot Dragon.
‘I don’t know why, but what kind of coincidence is this...?’
Just then—
“Urgh!”
Kranol pressed hard against his perpetually throbbing temples.
It suddenly felt as though his head were about to split apart.
‘...It’s getting worse. This damned headache.’
His fits of madness had become more frequent lately.
Kranol hurriedly took an herb from inside his clothes and chewed it as he contemplated the situation.
‘In any case, what should I do now?’
He had accidentally saved the offspring of Act One’s final boss.
Kranol looked down at the golden hatchling, which was now breathing comfortably.
He did not deliberate for long.
‘I’m getting out of here.’
He knew how the novel EX-Rank Demonic Beast Hunter ended.
The world would face a desperate crisis, and a considerable portion of humanity would indeed perish.
However, Kranol knew where he needed to hide and what he needed to do to survive.
‘Saving humanity is the protagonist’s grand responsibility. I’m busy enough taking care of myself.’
His only goals were to cure his madness completely and avoid his bad ending.
Becoming entangled with the final boss’s offspring would only bring unnecessary trouble.
It had nothing whatsoever to do with his objective, and accidentally provoking it would merely earn him a powerful enemy.
“SKREEEEE?”
At that moment, the panting hatchling rose to its feet.
Its tiny eyes widened adorably, as if even it were startled.
The hellish agony that had tormented its body only moments ago had vanished without a trace.
After examining its body, which had regained its original brilliant golden hue, it opened its maw in astonishment.
“SKRYAAAA?!”
The golden hatchling looked up at Kranol with large, luminous eyes.
Its expression seemed to ask whether he had been the one to heal it.
Kranol ignored it and turned away.
‘There was no Rot Dragon here after all. I have to hurry and find another method.’
That meant all the preparations he had made until now had gone to waste.
If he wanted to cure his madness, he would have to devise an entirely new plan from the beginning.
Clutching his head as though it might shatter, he hurriedly fled.
“SKRYAAAA?”
The hatchling tilted its head as it watched his retreating back.
After a moment, it spread its wings slightly, and its entire body turned transparent.
The little creature began secretly following Kranol.
***
“Kranol tore down the A-rank request?”
“Maybe he only took it down. You see people like that sometimes, don’t you? They claim they’re looking over the information but never actually attempt the request.”
“No, it’s true. Someone saw him heading toward the decaying forest in the west.”
They were at the outer entrance of the Birsi Territory.
Several mercenaries leaned against the wall with their arms crossed, idly conversing.
They were discussing a monstrous rookie who had recently made a name for himself in the area.
“You called us here just for that?”
“Exactly. What does Kranol going off to die have to do with us?”
When the two men voiced their doubts, the remaining mercenary clicked his tongue.
“You idiots. Do you still not know Mad Dog Kranol?”
Mad Dog Kranol.
That was the nickname by which he was known among the mercenaries.
He was a terrifying newcomer who had appeared in the territory without warning.
‘Everyone let their guard down because he looked like a weak novice, only to get a harsh lesson.’
Kranol certainly appeared frail, without even a trained physique.
Yet his success rate with requests was astonishingly flawless.
Every request he tore from the wall was completed without fail.
‘Everyone was especially shocked during the ‘Find the Lord’s Wife’s Necklace’ request. No one knows how he did it, but he walked into a demonic beast’s nest alone and retrieved the discarded necklace. It was the same with the ‘Explore the Abandoned Church’ and ‘Drive Away the Five-Tailed Wolf’ requests.’
Every one of them had been a request that lacked sufficient clues or had fallen into a dead end with no apparent path to success.
Yet whenever Kranol took charge, the request was completed cleanly and without issue.
At times, he even acted so recklessly that it made others question whether he was truly a weakling, only to complete the request regardless.
That was why the monstrous rookie had earned the nickname ‘Mad Dog.’
Naturally, this made the other mercenaries jealous.
A newcomer who was weaker and less experienced than they were had become far more successful.
These three, in particular, were mercenaries who harbored a strong inferiority complex toward Kranol.
“Kranol must have taken all the rewards he has accumulated to complete this request. Every reward he received from his recent jobs was a sacred item. All we have to do is follow his trail and recover those expensive items from his corpse. We can take the profits without ever encountering the Rot Dragon.”
“Oh?”
“So we let him do all the work and reap the rewards?”
The two mercenaries finally understood and smiled maliciously.
The ‘High-Purity Holy Water’ from the abandoned church, the ‘Pure Silver Cross,’ the ‘Rod Stained with an Angel’s Tears,’ and more.
The quantity of rare rewards Kranol was presumed to have gathered by completing requests was considerable.
He had most likely collected them for the Rot Dragon subjugation request.
Therefore, they could make a handsome profit by stabbing Kranol in the back and robbing him.
“Huh? Hey! Look over there!”
One of the mercenaries pointed into the distance.
A man was walking toward the territory’s entrance.
It was Kranol Wizar.
Unexpectedly, however, his face was deathly pale, and his steps appeared unsteady.
“Well, look at that. He came back alive?”
“But he doesn’t look well. Did the Rot Dragon get him?”
“This is hilarious! It seems even the great Mad Dog Kranol couldn’t complete this request.”
Kranol did not even notice the mercenaries mocking him.
He had no attention to spare.
The dark circles beneath his eyes had deepened, and blood streamed from his nose across his ashen face.
‘Damn it.’
As he walked, Kranol suffered from a headache so severe that he felt he might collapse at any moment.
Until now, his symptoms of madness had never included bleeding.
His condition was worsening far more quickly than he had anticipated.
‘The herbs. I’m almost out of herbs now.’
Even the bitter herbs he had chewed so frequently that their taste clung to his breath were nearly gone.
He needed to find some way to resolve this crisis.
‘The Rot Dragon. I have to find a Rot Dragon somehow.’
He walked while frantically searching through his knowledge of the original story.
Then Kranol suddenly stopped.
“Boys.”
He spoke without even turning his head.
At the same time, the mercenaries who had been creeping up behind him flinched.
“You have no way of knowing this, but I’m not in my right mind at the moment.”
Kranol’s low voice sounded utterly exhausted.
“So get lost while I’m still asking politely.”
The three mercenaries did not even bother to scoff.
Instead, they drew their weapons and aimed them at Kranol.
“What is this fucking idiot saying when he already looks half-dead?”
“Even if you die here, all we have to do is dump your body in the western lands.”
“That’s right. Even if you disappear, everyone will assume the Rot Dragon killed you.”
The fact that they had revealed their plan meant one simple thing.
Kranol would not be leaving alive after hearing it.
The mercenaries charged at him with their blades drawn.
Kranol did not move a single step.
He merely flicked one finger.
“Huh?”
Two things happened at once.
The nearest sword crumbled and snapped.
The arm of the nearest mercenary burst apart.
“Wh-What?!”
“M-My arm! My arm!”
“What the fuck?! Wasn’t this bastard a weakling?”
He was a weakling.
At that moment, however, his magical power had been amplified.
This was one of the symptoms of Kranol’s madness.
‘The worse my madness becomes, the stronger my magic grows.’
When Kranol Wizar’s madness intensified, he became capable of wielding devastating magical power.
The problem was that his headaches also worsened, as did the agony coursing through his body.
Moreover, he increasingly lost control of himself and committed atrocities, brutally murdering others.
Drenched in blood, Kranol looked down at the severed arm and murmured languidly.
“I wonder if this works on your cock too?”
“Wh-What? Y-You lunatic! AAAAAARGH!”
That day, the three mercenaries learned a painful lesson.
They finally understood why he was called the Mad Dog.
***
Kranol breathed raggedly.
Before he knew it, three corpses lay before him.
No—strictly speaking, they could no longer be called corpses.
“Haa! Haa!”
Their limbs had been brutally torn apart and their bodies meticulously pulverized.
They had been reduced to blood and minced flesh, no longer retaining even the shape of human beings.
“I... I didn’t mean to go this far.”
Nauseated, Kranol clutched his face.
It had only been three months since he transmigrated into this world.
No matter how ruthless he might be, he was still a man from the modern world.
Yet the madness shattered even his most fundamental values.
“Ah, my head. My head hurts so much.”
Covered in the corpses’ blood, Kranol continued staggering forward.
Now that he had tasted blood, the madness was intensifying further.
The urge to slaughter rose within him again and again, and his heart pounded violently.
The pain was so unbearable that tears would not stop pouring from his eyes.
Then his vision began to sway.
‘Ah, fuck.’
In the end, Kranol collapsed before he had gone far.
If he lost consciousness in this state, he would undoubtedly try to kill someone else.
If the madness consumed him, he would lose his sense of self and ultimately follow the same path as in the original story.
‘So this is as far as I get, even after everything I did.’
With a trembling hand, Kranol took something out.
It was a reddish-brown poisonous herb, different from the herbs he usually chewed.
It was something he carried to take his own life.
Swallowing a single handful would be enough to kill him.
He had always kept it inside his clothes as a last resort.
‘Rather than becoming a calamity and massacring millions of innocent people, it would be better to die now...’
Naturally, he hesitated.
But he soon made his decision.
He would free himself from this agonizing existence.
Kranol stuffed a large amount of the poisonous herb into his mouth and chewed.
“Ghk. Cough.”
An incomparable burning numbness filled his mouth.
Gradually, the headache faded, and the strength drained from his entire body.
His blood-red vision slowly began to blur.
Then everything was swallowed by darkness devoid of even a trace of light.
At last, his breathing began to weaken....
“SKREEEEEEE!”
At that moment, a familiar cry rang out.
Kranol rubbed his rapidly dimming eyes.
Without warning, the hatchling with dazzling golden scales came flying toward him.
“Urgh! Cough! Ugh!”
Despite its tiny size, the creature flew with astonishing speed and slammed into his abdomen.
Kranol fell backward and spat out the poisonous herb he had been chewing.
He glared at the young demonic beast that had abruptly interrupted his suicide.
“SKREEEEEEE!”
The tearful hatchling buried its tiny head firmly against his chest.
It seemed to be desperately trying to stop him from taking his own life in the grip of madness.
At that moment, something appeared before his eyes.
[The Gold Emperor Dragon submits to you.]
[The latent condition for your hidden trait has been unlocked.]
[A new power, ‘Catastrophe Affinity,’ has been unlocked.]
“...What?”
Kranol’s face, smeared with blood and tears, twisted in disbelief.
It was the hidden trait that should not have awakened until the final stages of the story.
It was the power that transformed Kranol Wizar into an absurdly overpowered character comparable to the boss of the final arc.
That power had awakened here and now.