Brilliant aurora light overflowed from Min-jun's sword.
And that brilliant light soon traveled up the sword and began to envelop Min-jun's entire body.
At a sensation unlike anything he had ever experienced, Min-jun stared blankly for a moment, looking from his hands to the sword and back.
At first he wondered if it might be a Sword Aura, but it was common knowledge that a Sword Aura gave off blue light, not aurora light like this.
Besides, Min-jun's understanding of the sword wasn't deep enough to manifest sword energy.
So this aurora light had to be tied not to a Sword Aura, but to the dragon's power sleeping within the sword.
He couldn't be sure whether he had fully drawn out that power or not.
It was a state he had never experienced before either, so there was nothing he could say for certain.
But one thing was certain.
This intense power was surging up the sword and churning inside his body.
If he used it, he could overwhelm anyone, whatever the situation, whoever the opponent.
"Hyung-nim, wh-what on earth is—."
Flustered by the aurora light blossoming over Min-jun's whole body, Jun-hwi stammered.
"Jun-hwi. Just follow me for now."
"What? But—"
Before Jun-hwi could finish, Min-jun charged without hesitation toward where the Seo siblings stood.
It all happened so fast that even Jun-hwi, who had started chasing after Min-jun, was thrown.
"Is th-that bastard insane?"
The villains were no exception.
They, too, couldn't help but be thrown by this unexpected turn.
As far as they were concerned, Min-jun and Jun-hwi had only two options: fight the Antmen or run the other way.
Yet here they were, charging straight at them instead.
It was like a mouse gritting its teeth and charging at a cat.
"What are they even thinking?"
"Guess they want to go down kicking and screaming."
"Works for us...... wait, what's that wrapped around his sword? Don't tell me that's aura?"
"A mere D-rank with aura? Talk sense. You call that a Sword Aura."
They'd been thrown for a moment, but watching Min-jun charge toward them, the villains actually grinned.
They figured the two were being chased by Antmen anyway, so they were that desperate.
And so they took Min-jun's sudden move for nothing more than a reckless, life-or-death gamble before dying.
The aurora light surrounding Min-jun, they assumed, was just the effect of some item or gear.
But......
"Wh-What is that!"
Once again, Min-jun defied their expectations.
They'd been sure it was nothing but a last-ditch struggle before his strength gave out.
But Min-jun was bearing down on the three of them like a runaway locomotive, the air shrieking as he cut through it.
There was no way a D-rank Hunter could move that fast.
"Why, all of a sudden—."
"Th-That's a D-rank......?"
Faced with physical ability that defied common sense, even they had to get tense now.
Jun-hwi and the Antmen could be dealt with later.
The one they had to watch out for now was Min-jun.
As ranged dealers, the three put distance between themselves and Min-jun to make the most of their advantage and began concentrating their fire on him.
An ordinary D-rank Hunter would never be able to fully block such an attack.
Min-jun was faster than they'd expected, which made aiming hard, but that was fine.
They could just settle it with sheer volume.
The arrows and spells the three fired wildly began pouring down like a savage downpour.
However fast he was, dodging or blocking all of this would be impossible.
But.
"......What?"
Even as they fired off their spells, they had half worried they were overdoing it and wasting their strength for nothing.
Yet once again Min-jun overturned their expectations, deflecting every one of their attacks with nothing but a single sword as he charged at them with ferocious momentum.
Where the spells deflected by Min-jun's sword grazed the ground, the earth caved in.
"N-No way!"
To block this onslaught perfectly and alone, without taking damage, you'd have to be an A-rank Hunter at the very least.
But Min-jun looked unharmed.
Which meant—.
'What is he?'
But whatever Min-jun really was, this was no time to be wondering about it.
Since that strange aura had settled on Min-jun's sword, the tide of battle had turned completely.
Before they knew it, they'd gone from happily imagining how to devour their prey to worrying about how not to be devoured.
Once again, they squeezed out every bit of strength they had and launched an all-out assault.
Magic Missiles thick with mana cut through the air, and debuffs flew one after another to stop Min-jun's fierce charge.
But even that was useless.
Min-jun simply split or deflected the incoming Magic Missiles with his sword and kept charging, unharmed.
Most of the debuffs were nullified, and though a few did take hold, Min-jun paid them no mind and kept running.
On will alone.
Following behind Min-jun, Jun-hwi's jaw dropped at the sight.
'He's a D-rank Hunter, same as me?'
That was by no means the kind of performance a D-rank Hunter could put on.
No D-rank Hunter should be able to deflect, block, and slice through spells pouring down like rain with just a sword.
And he was so fast, too.
Jun-hwi was chasing him with everything he had, yet even at a glance, the gap between them had grown quite wide.
'We're saved.'
When they first showed their true colors, Jun-hwi had thought he was as good as dead.
But watching Min-jun's terrifying performance, he was certain now.
He wasn't going to die today, at least.
While he was entranced by Min-jun's exploits, Min-jun steadily closed the distance to the three.
"Wh-What is this?"
The villains struggled desperately to put distance between themselves and Min-jun, but the gap just wouldn't widen.
Movement speed buffs, scattering in different directions; nothing made a difference.
Realizing that, the three of them turned pale.
Now they were close enough for Min-jun's sword to reach.
"G-Get away, you bastard!"
Seo Yu-hyeon, closest to Min-jun, fought back by firing spells wildly.
But Min-jun lightly dodged some of the spells and knocked the rest aside with his sword.
Then he stabbed Seo Yu-hyeon in the shoulder with all his might.
"Aaaaargh!"
Seo Yu-hyeon clutched his shoulder and writhed in pain, but Min-jun didn't even spare him a glance, running straight for Seo Yu-ra and Seo Yu-seon.
Having watched Seo Yu-hyeon go down so easily, Seo Yu-seon and Seo Yu-ra gave up resisting and tried to flee.
The gap in strength was so overwhelming that resistance was meaningless.
But before they could even make their escape, they were rolling pathetically in the dirt.
After making sure they were completely incapacitated, Min-jun searched the three and found the artifact that locked subspaces.
As soon as he found it, Min-jun deactivated it and opened his own subspace.
'Among the artifacts Sia gave me....'
He remembered there was one that would be perfect for this situation.
Quickly rummaging through his subspace, Min-jun pulled out the artifact with a satisfied smile.
"Found it."
To make sure the villains couldn't escape, Min-jun quickly clapped the artifact onto all three Seo siblings, then checked on the battle.
The last time he'd checked, the Antmen had been well behind, but while he fought the Seo siblings and wrapped things up, they had closed to barely ten-odd meters away.
On top of that, who knew where they'd sprung from, but there were more than twice as many Antmen as when he'd first seen them.
And among the doubled horde of Antmen, he spotted Jun-hwi.
He seemed to have been running for his life well enough so far, but he looked to be reaching his limit.
'Me, as I am now.'
He could easily handle all those monsters.
He couldn't say exactly why, but Min-jun felt a strange certainty.
Then Min-jun charged at the approaching monsters without a shred of hesitation.
The Dragon Bone Sword in his hand began to shine even more brilliantly than before.
"Get out of the way!"
At Min-jun's urgent shout, Jun-hwi summoned his strength and veered aside, and the moment he saw him turn, Min-jun surrendered himself to instinct.
'Was my swordsmanship always this beautiful?'
Min-jun felt a strange sensation.
It felt as if he wasn't swinging the sword; the sword was leading him.
Something of the aurora light dwelling in the sword began to scatter far and wide, tracing beautiful arcs.
SKREEEEEEK—!
They hadn't even been cut by the blade, only touched by the light, yet every Antman chasing Jun-hwi went flying.
All of this happened in a matter of seconds.
Antman corpses underfoot everywhere, and three bound villains screaming at the top of their lungs.
It all felt so unreal to Jun-hwi that he wondered if he was so dizzy he was seeing things.
'What am I looking at right now?'
How on earth had this miracle come about?
He had so much he wanted to ask Min-jun.
But.
"......."
"Hyung-nim?"
Even at a glance, Min-jun looked to be in such bad shape that he could barely manage a word.
Had he poured out too much power at once?
The aurora light that had been blazing so brightly just moments ago had faded, too.
He was holding himself up with the sword like a cane, but he looked like he might keel over at any moment.
"Hyung-nim, are you okay? Hyung-nim! Snap out of it!"
Jun-hwi was on the verge of collapse himself, but the moment he saw Min-jun, he propped him up and laid him down on a flat spot.
'Nothing's seriously wrong with him, right?'
He hurriedly checked Min-jun's condition.
Fortunately, his life didn't seem to be in any real danger.
His pulse was beating, and seeing his fingers twitch faintly, he hadn't lost consciousness either.
He couldn't be sure, but it seemed Min-jun was exhausted from the aftermath of forcing out too much power.
Jun-hwi hurriedly took out a potion and fed it to Min-jun.
How much time had passed like that?
"Phew."
Min-jun opened his eyes and met Jun-hwi's gaze.
He couldn't exactly say he had fully recovered, but he could at least move.
"Are you okay?"
"Feels like I came back from the dead. Thanks."
"Don't say that. If it weren't for you, hyung-nim, I'd have been dead long ago."
Jun-hwi thanked him over and over for saving his life.
"But hyung-nim, what are you going to do now?"
The Gate exit that signaled a cleared raid had appeared, and the villains were all subdued, but one problem remained.
What to do with the villains.
The villains had all been stabbed and badly wounded, but Min-jun had taken a few measures when he bound them, so none of them were dead.
They just couldn't move because of the binding artifact.
"Fxck, kill me! Just kill me already!"
Seo Yu-seon, far from crying or begging, screamed curses as if she never tired.
"Hey. Shut up. If you want to die, die alone."
Seo Yu-ra snarled at Seo Yu-seon to shut her mouth.
"Please spare me. Please, just spare my life. Please? We have so many expensive artifacts. Just name it and I'll give you anything...."
Seo Yu-hyeon tried to beg for his life with the artifacts they'd taken from all the Hunters they'd killed.
"You call yourself a man, you bastard? Where's your pride? Hey, Yun Min-jun. Don't listen to those bastards, just kill us. I'd rather croak here than rot in the slammer."
As if she'd watched one noir film too many, Seo Yu-seon kept demanding to be killed.
But ignoring everything they said, Min-jun took from inside his clothes one of the artifacts he had seized from them.
"Jun-hwi. Do you know why I bothered keeping this trash alive instead of killing them?"
"...Because killing people doesn't sit right, even if they're villains?"
"Hardly."
An absurd artifact that could lock other Hunters' subspaces, or, conversely, force them open.
Min-jun had planned from the start to loot their subspaces with that artifact, and that was why he hadn't killed them.
Because a Hunter's subspace vanished the instant the Hunter died.
"You said you'd give me anything?"
"Y-Yes! Anything!"
Oblivious to what Min-jun was thinking, Seo Yu-hyeon nodded over and over.
"Why bother, when I have this?"
The moment he saw the artifact in Min-jun's hand, Seo Yu-hyeon belatedly realized.
He'd been so sure the plan would work that he'd gleefully blabbed about what that artifact did, and now he'd lost even the slightest room to bargain for his life.
"Th-That idxot bastard, seriously!"
"Strutting around like hot shit earlier. Fxcking brilliant move. Huh?"
Seo Yu-hyeon's face went rigid, while Seo Yu-ra and Seo Yu-seon heaped curses on their idiot partner, who knew how to do nothing but pose.
The three kept arguing and cursing after that, but paying them no mind, Min-jun used the artifact to force open all three of their subspaces.
Each time he opened one, the two of them gasped in amazement.
"You sure raked in a lot. How many people did you kill to get this much?"
"Seriously. These trash bastards."
Jun-hwi, watching from beside him, chimed in.
Artifacts of every kind kept coming, no matter how many he pulled out.
What's more, having built their wealth through all sorts of crimes, from robbery-murder to drugs and smuggling, their subspaces were packed not only with every kind of artifact but with pure gold and jewels.
There was so much of it that it filled Min-jun's subspace.
A little while later.
"Right. I've got all the artifacts, so let's wrap this up."
It was time to send the villains to hell.
Some might ask whether killing them was right, villains or not, but under International Hunter Law it counted as self-defense, so it didn't matter in the slightest.
"Any last words?"
With a chilling look, Min-jun raised his sword and glared at the three.
Seo Yu-seon kept up her proud act to the very end, saying this was for the best, while Seo Yu-ra spat out curses too foul to repeat.
But then.
Perhaps figuring it was over for him anyway, Seo Yu-hyeon opened his mouth.
"Gigolo bastard."
His expression was more vile than ever as he said it.
"You used that pretty face to seduce some clueless rich madam and squeeze gear out of her, right? Ha, I should've gotten my face redone and seduced some clueless bitch so I could live easy. Like you."
Did he think he had nothing left to lose?
Seo Yu-hyeon couldn't control his mouth even at the very end, insulting Min-jun and Sia.
"I'm curious, so let me ask you just one thing. Hey, how much does your sugar mama pay you a month?"
"How old's your madam? She's not married, is she?"
Once Seo Yu-hyeon opened fire, Seo Yu-seon and Seo Yu-ra joined in, smirking as they poured out insults too profane to repeat.
It wasn't worth listening to any longer.
His face hard, Min-jun took off their heads.
Ever since he'd learned to wield sword energy, the sword energy Min-jun gave off had always been a brilliant aurora light.
But in this moment, his sword energy shone a deep blood red.