When I absorbed the violet energy from the dead Dark Elf, the entire world had turned red for an instant.
That red energy had settled inside me.
Back then, I hadn’t known what it was, so I had merely found it ominous.
But now, I thought I understood.
Death had clearly told me.
-The deaths you harvest are yours.
A staggering 7,282,998,103 deaths.
That was what Death had given me.
The reason the people from the Special Division had feared me was probably because my aura had literally made me feel like a ‘Slaughterer’ to them.
And the reason all the Dark Elves had died when I unleashed my Killing Intent was likely because of that red energy as well.
In that case—
‘It should work this time too.’
Grk?
Red light slowly began pouring from my body.
And in an instant, the entire world was flooded with red.
GRRRAAAAAK!
The Orcs attacking the party members abruptly froze and screamed.
Then, in the next moment—
THUD. THUD.
Every last one of them collapsed.
Just like the Dark Elves had.
SPLURT!
I pulled out the sword I had thrown and began severing the fallen Orcs’ heads one by one.
Stabbing them through the heart would have been enough, but this was a habit I couldn’t break.
SLASH.
Even though there was no chance these things would rise again as Zombies.
SLASH. SLASH.
At last, every Orc except one had lost its head.
The only one remaining was—
Grk… grrrk… grrrrk.
The one Orc that had looked unusual.
It stood frozen in place.
Now I could see it clearly.
The red light pouring from me was wrapped around the unusual Orc like shackles.
Grrrk….
The Orc’s terrified eyes trembled uncontrollably.
I—
SLASH.
—severed that Orc’s head as well.
At last, every Orc had been decapitated.
Then, when I turned my head toward the sound behind me—
“Ah.”
Every member of the party was lying unconscious on the ground.
‘The problem is that it affects my party members too.’
Would I be able to control its range once I became more proficient with it?
I drew the red light back into myself.
It was a strange new sensation.
Almost as though I had grown another arm.
As the red light was slowly absorbed into me, the Orcs’ bodies began to shrivel.
As though they had been harvested.
* * *
“Hey, hey! Are you coming around?”
Choi Yoon-seo slowly opened their eyes at the sound of a party member’s voice.
“Gasp!”
They remembered part of the mine collapsing.
They remembered the Orcs attacking.
And they remembered an Orc Warrior that had been too powerful for them to handle.
Lastly—
“Ah!”
The Porter!
That absurd dream where the Porter had suddenly appeared and slaughtered the Orcs.
“A dream! It was a dream!”
Choi Yoon-seo shouted as though they had finally figured it out.
The fact that they were still alive was proof.
It had been a horrible, nightmarish dream.
As if an Orc Warrior appearing inside a mere C-rank Gate wasn’t bad enough, they had even dreamed that the obnoxious Porter had saved them.
“What dream?! Get a grip!”
“Huh?”
“If you’re awake, get off already.”
Choi Yoon-seo had woken up on another party member’s back.
The moment their feet touched the ground—
“Urgh!”
Agonizing pain tore through their entire body as though every bone had been shattered.
‘My body hurts?’
Then surely—
“It wasn’t a dream…?”
“Enough with the nonsense!”
Kim Yu-bin finally snapped.
Only then did Choi Yoon-seo manage to look around.
The party members were in terrible shape.
And then—
“H-Hyeong-sik?”
Their companion, Jo Hyeong-sik, was soaked in blood that had poured down from his head.
“Hyeong-sik!”
“He’s alive.”
“Haa… haa….”
Choi Yoon-seo exhaled raggedly.
“But we need to hurry.”
“How…? That wasn’t a dream? Then how are we alive?”
“Hunter Kim Si-hyeon saved us.”
Kim Si-hyeon.
The Porter’s name.
“The Porter?!”
“Did you call me?”
“Gasp!”
Choi Yoon-seo nearly jumped out of their skin when Kim Si-hyeon suddenly appeared beside them.
Every party member was watching Kim Si-hyeon cautiously.
“There are Orcs ahead. Wait here.”
Leaving the newly awakened Choi Yoon-seo behind, Kim Si-hyeon walked forward alone.
Into the dark cave.
“What the hell happened…?”
“Exactly what I said. Hunter Kim Si-hyeon saved us. If it weren’t for Hunter Kim Si-hyeon… we’d all be dead.”
“The Porter really….”
Once Kim Si-hyeon disappeared from sight—
“Haa….”
The party members collapsed to the ground and let out ragged breaths.
“…What the hell is that guy?”
“No idea.”
“My legs are still shaking. Honestly, I don’t even remember how we got this far.”
The other party members were just as confused as Choi Yoon-seo.
“…Choi Yoon-seo.”
Kim Yu-bin looked at them.
“What the hell did you bring with you…?”
What did she mean, what had they brought?
All Choi Yoon-seo had done was hire a clueless D-rank Porter from the Mercenary Office who didn’t even understand Contribution-Based Distribution.
“…I passed out too, so I didn’t see it properly. But that was definitely Killing Intent, right? Just how powerful does Killing Intent have to be to completely immobilize an Orc Warrior? It was almost like… time itself had stopped.”
“Did you see that too? I only saw it after I came to, but every single dead Orc had its head….”
Only then—
“Gasp!”
Choi Yoon-seo remembered.
Being close to B-rank, they had endured the Killing Intent longer than anyone else and had been the last to lose consciousness.
As that overwhelming energy suddenly erupted and their consciousness began to fade, they had seen him walking forward at a leisurely pace, cutting off the Orcs’ heads one by one.
Tremble. Tremble.
Choi Yoon-seo’s body began to shake.
“With that level of Killing Intent… he can’t be an ordinary Hunter.”
Hunters capable of wielding Killing Intent were rare.
Even A-rank Hunters and above could usually do little more than release a faint trace of it.
And even that was an ability one could acquire only after taking countless lives.
“Choi Yoon-seo, you should know, right? To possess Killing Intent like that… just how many would someone have to…?”
“…….”
Choi Yoon-seo had once belonged to the Baeksu Guild, one of the country’s top ten guilds.
They had seen Hunters capable of wielding Killing Intent before.
But they could say with certainty—
“I-I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“…Even the Guild Master wasn’t that bad.”
“What?”
The Guild Master of the Baeksu Guild was an S-rank Hunter.
But even more famous than their rank was the story surrounding them.
‘A survivor of the Aeso Gate.’
The Aeso Gate had been an Anomalous Gate.
And it had been hell.
Thousands of people had been caught inside that Anomalous Gate, yet only three had survived.
Those three hadn’t lived because they had been exceptionally strong.
‘The escape condition of the Aeso Gate.’
Only three people could survive.
To escape alive, people had hunted other people.
The Guild Master of the Baeksu Guild had been one of those who survived that hell by any means necessary.
And yet the Killing Intent Kim Si-hyeon had displayed surpassed even theirs.
“At least… in the thousands….”
Choi Yoon-seo spoke with terror in their voice.
“At most… maybe ten thousand….”
The party members froze in horror as they realized what those numbers meant.
“You’re saying that’s how many people Hunter Kim Si-hyeon has killed?”
For a moment, everyone fell silent.
“What… the hell did I do?”
“Why are you asking us?!”
“We’re dead. We’re all dead…! What’s the point of surviving the Orcs?”
Because the thing beside them now was—
STEP. STEP.
—a true monster that made mere Monsters seem insignificant by comparison.
“I cleared out the Orcs ahead.”
Gulp.
The moment they saw Kim Si-hyeon return—
Choi Yoon-seo slammed their head against the ground and shouted.
“P-Please spare us!”
Kim Si-hyeon stopped where he stood.
“Please, spare us!”
“……?”
“You can do anything you want to me! Just please… spare the rest of the party!”
“Yoon-seo…!”
Choi Yoon-seo pleaded.
And the answer they received was—
“I’ll try.”
Fortunately, it was a reprieve.
Kim Si-hyeon slowly began walking again and disappeared from sight.
“Haa… haa….”
That was a Reaper.
A true Reaper that couldn’t even be compared to a Monster.
And if they wanted to survive an encounter with the Reaper, they would have to do absolutely anything it took.
* * *
Begging for their life with their head pressed all the way to the ground.
‘That ambush must’ve really terrified them of Orcs…….’
They were still just a kid.
Early to mid-twenties at most.
Dr. Richard had once told me—
-A man isn’t even a person until he turns twenty-seven.
He had said that a man younger than twenty-seven could never truly be considered an adult.
That was why I could understand the bravado Choi Yoon-seo had shown before.
But in the face of the fear of death, there was no need for such bravado.
“…They’re actually a pretty decent person.”
People really were precious.
After all, they hadn’t begged for their own life.
They had asked me to save their friends first.
It was a sentiment rarely found in a ruined world.
The world I had lived in was one where even family members had been reduced to tools for survival.
Grrk.
I continued toward the end of the cave.
I had to kill the Boss.
According to the party members, the Boss was most likely somewhere in the Orc settlement outside.
But I thought differently.
FWOOSH.
The red light I had released was telling me that the Boss was inside.
This red light was unusual.
Like a hunting hound tracking prey, it alerted me to the presence of living creatures.
Grrk.
As I made my way through the cave, merely releasing the red light was enough to leave the Orcs frozen in place.
SLASH.
They simply stood there with their eyes rolled back and foam spilling from their mouths.
Cutting off their heads was as easy as plowing through a horde of Zombies with a modified tank.
Kill.
Kill.
Kill.
Move forward.
It was as ordinary as everyday life.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing worth worrying about.
But when I reached the end, things were different.
Grrrrk.
One Orc.
Its enormous build and vivid green skin alone were enough to tell me.
“You’re the Boss.”
That thing was the Boss Monster of this Gate.
‘If I compared Monsters to Zombies…….’
An Orc was like an ordinary Zombie.
An Orc Warrior was like an enhanced Zombie.
The Dark Elves felt like Special Variants.
And now—
“…….”
That Boss Orc gave me a different feeling from all of them.
Of course, that didn’t mean I felt threatened by it.
It was already standing motionless before me, bound tightly by the red light.
But in the next instant—
GRRRAK.
Smoke began rising from its skin, and my survival instincts flared.
For the first time.
‘Danger.’
This was the first time my survival instincts had reacted this strongly since coming to this world.
GRRRAAAAAK!
Green smoke poured from the creature as its skin began to fester.
TAT!
I immediately charged forward and slashed at the Orc’s neck.
CLANG!
Orc hide was tough and durable.
The resistance when a blade sank into it made that obvious.
But this one was different.
It felt like striking steel.
CRAAACK!
Unable to withstand the impact, the sword shattered violently.
The blade was reduced to a fraction of its former length in an instant.
But that changed nothing.
With the broken sword still in my hand—
STAB!
—I drove the remaining blade into its neck.
GRRK! GRRRRK!
Its neck was as tough as steel.
SPLURT!
And yet it was severed all the same.
As the Boss Orc’s head came off, green light poured from its body.
It was different from the green energy that had made me feel threatened moments ago.
If anything—
‘Isn’t that similar to the violet energy the Dark Elf Boss left behind when it died?’
The red light pouring from my body surged toward it as though trying to devour it.
The green light struggled against the red.
But unlike before, it eventually scattered and disappeared.
At that moment, something flashed through my mind.
A single name surfaced.
“…Plague!”
The thing that had been flowing from the Boss Orc—
It was the energy of Plague that Death had told me about.