VROOOOM—!
A motorcycle roared across the stone pavement of the medieval fortress.
The person creating that spectacularly incongruous sight was none other than Joo Do-gyeom.
Holding the heavy Great Axe in one hand, he charged straight ahead without caring about the Orcs staring at him from every direction.
“Snort-! A human?”
“Foolhardy bastard!”
Orcs rushed toward him from every direction.
The brave nonhuman race knew no fear.
The result was horrific.
The first Orc leaped at him from the front.
Its torso could not withstand Joo Do-gyeom’s strike, amplified by the motorcycle’s speed and force, and was split in half.
“Snooort-! Insolent human......!”
The next Orc, which raised its glaive with a nasal grunt, met no different a fate.
Joo Do-gyeom turned the Great Axe sideways and swung it like a hammer, instantly reducing the Orc’s body to pulp.
The axe whipped around him like a storm.
The motorcycle raced onward.
Green blood sprayed through the air.
“Snort-! Catch him!”
“He’s only one human...... Guh-!”
“Urgh-!”
The Orcs’ grunts, roars, screams, and deaths.
Kim Han-yul watched the scene from the shadow of a collapsed house in the distance and trembled without realizing it.
‘How the hell does that make any sense?!’
She had seen him do something similar in Zombie Burst, but she still could not get used to the sight of him racing forward with such a massive weapon in one hand while steering the motorcycle with the other.
There was a limit to how far something could defy common sense.
When she thought about it, this was not something that could be accomplished through strength alone.
Kim Han-yul had been staring blankly for a moment when she shook her head and came to her senses.
‘This isn’t the time for that. I need to move.’
The longer she took, the greater the burden on Joo Do-gyeom.
It was easy to forget because he was so overwhelming,
but he currently had no sight.
‘......This is seriously absurd.’
In any case.
When he told her to prepare a deadly poison, she had formed a vague guess.
Was the goal to poison the Orcs?
Was he planning to release it into a well?
However, Joo Do-gyeom’s answer had gone against her expectations.
-A well is useless. An Orc’s stomach is practically made of muscle, so it can digest most poisons.
Of course, things would be different with a genuine deadly poison made by a proper poison master.
Unfortunately, Kim Han-yul’s poison was Manifested deadly poison.
Even if she released it into the well, it might not amount to so much as indigestion medicine for the Orcs.
And even with a genuine deadly poison, it would accomplish nothing if the Orcs saw a few who drank the well water go into convulsions and stopped using it.
They could certainly be worn down that way, but Orcs had better stamina than humans and required less water.
Who knew when they would finally collapse?
The Hunters waiting them out might collapse first.
That was why the real method Joo Do-gyeom had taught her was something else.
-Over there. Can you see it, Kim Han-yul?
-Where...... Ah, that white building?
-It’s a temple.
-A temple?
The exterior was badly damaged, but it certainly looked like one.
-There is a statue of a goddess deep inside. Offer the water purifier filled with deadly poison before it.
-......That’s all?
-Yes. That will be enough.
An offering.
In other words, she was to present it.
Poison, to a god.
The god would then collect the offering and send rain across the entire Dungeon over the course of several days.
Rain that retained the nature of whatever had been offered.
Offer water, and a welcome rain would fall.
Offer poison, and poisonous rain would fall.
The stronger the poison, the stronger the rain.
It was an undiscovered Hidden Piece for clearing this Dungeon.
-All right. I’ll do it. But...... why does it have to be inside the water purifier?
As always, the answer came immediately.
-An offering includes the vessel. And that purifier keeps whatever it contains in its purest possible state. The vessel will increase the purity of your deadly poison.
Only then did she understand.
Why her Team Leader had made her prepare that expensive and cumbersome Magitech Special Water Purifier, a task that had taken an entire week.
From the very beginning, everything had been set up for this Dungeon.
Even as she ran, she could not help wondering.
‘Seriously...... how did he even learn this?’
This was a clearing method unknown to the world.
If it was true, the difficulty of this entire Dungeon would plummet.
Simply bringing along one proper poison master would be enough to remove it from eleventh place on the list of the worst Dungeons.
Her questions were deepening when a remembered voice pierced her mind.
-Hmm, Kim Han-yul. With your deadly poison, I think you should at least be able to make a Rain of Weakening fall.
Her temper flared.
‘Who are you looking down on?!’
She wanted to shout, but held it in.
She knew who was single-handedly drawing the aggression of hundreds of Orcs by causing a tremendous commotion in the distance.
A Hunter who could do something like that alone inside Occupied Margrave’s Fortress?
There probably was not one even among B-Rank Hunters, let alone D-Rank Hunters.
She was certain of it.
‘What a completely insane monster.’
She clicked her tongue inwardly.
Yet exhilaration filled her eyes.
All her grumbling came from concern.
That was simply her nature.
She challenged what others called impossible and felt a thrill when she overcame it.
Joo Do-gyeom truly was a Team Leader capable of guiding Kim Han-yul perfectly.
‘He’s so fucking cool.’
Enough to completely erase her initial worry and discomfort.
Of course, she had no intention of ever saying that aloud.
She believed every team needed someone like her to handle the nagging.
‘......Though our Team Leader is definitely in the “I’ve got a plan for everything” camp.’
But who knew?
She was moving with that thought when—
“Snort......? A human?”
An Orc heading toward Joo Do-gyeom spotted Kim Han-yul.
Kim Han-yul raised her gun with dry eyes.
A silenced Mana pistol.
The weapon was normally appealing for its thunderous gunfire, but she had remanifested it with a suppressor for stealth.
It was a privilege of the Manifestationist, for whom imagination itself served as the blueprint.
PFFT-! PFFT-!
The Orc dropped to one knee beneath the muffled shots.
Its balance collapsed.
Kim Han-yul fired repeatedly at its head.
PFFT-PFFT-PFFT—!
No matter how thick an Orc’s hide or how hard its bones, it could not remain unharmed after three Mana bullets struck the exact center of its head in concentrated fire.
Its huge body collapsed at the mouth of the alley in an instant.
A thought naturally occurred to her.
‘Summoning Mark Two would make this a hundred times easier, right?’
But she could not.
Its size was one problem, and it was so noisy that using it would instantly reveal her entire position.
‘......Team Leader said he’d give our Mark Two a chance to shine later.’
Who had said that?
Her Team Leader.
For another reason, she could not create a motorcycle either.
‘Because Team Leader is riding it.’
One of the weaknesses of a Manifestationist.
She could not create a second copy of an object that had already been Manifested and currently existed.
Team Leader had taken off with the only motorcycle, while the Manifestationist herself was sneaking around with nothing but her two legs and a single gun.
‘Just my luck.’
Even as she went through all that trouble,
Kim Han-yul found herself smiling.
The ruined temple began to come into view.
Was it because Joo Do-gyeom had drawn away all the aggression?
The area was unnaturally quiet.
She could not sense a single Orc nearby.
VROOOOM—!
‘Well, I can hear his motorcycle all the way from here.’
In any case, there was the half-collapsed stone roof.
The moss-covered pillars.
And the pitch-black darkness leading farther inside.
Kim Han-yul did not hesitate.
‘Let’s go in.’
She did not know whether this was truly real, but she had to do what her Team Leader told her first.
Kim Han-yul quickly melted into the darkness.
***
At the same time.
Joo Do-gyeom was still racing down the fortress’s main avenue.
“Snort-! Stop him! Trap the bastard in the plaza!”
“Warriors, raise your spears! Destroy the horseless iron steed first! Snooort-!”
Orcs were not Zombies.
They possessed intelligence, language, and tactics.
Before long, they had erected a wall of spears in Joo Do-gyeom’s path and begun hiding axemen in every alley.
A fairly military response.
They truly were an occupying army that had conquered a fortress.
The only problem was that they had chosen the wrong opponent.
‘A wall of spears.’
Joo Do-gyeom did not slow down.
Instead, he drew up Internal Energy from his dantian and made it collide head-on within his Qi channels.
RUMBLE—!
Something exploded inside his head.
Detonation Art, Divine Beast Latent Power Art.
『Skill, Divine Beast Latent Power Art, advances to 3-Star.』
『Temporary Strength Grade increase D- => C-』
The enormous strength of a divine beast exploded through every muscle in his body.
The backlash?
It would come again this time.
But he intended to hole up somewhere for the several days while the rain fell anyway.
He could simply sleep through the backlash as well.
The Great Axe, carrying that explosive strength, smashed into the very center of the spear wall.
CRAAASH—!
“Screeech-!”
“We can’t stop him......!”
Spears snapped, shields folded, and the entire formation behind them collapsed.
The motorcycle passed leisurely through the hole.
The Orcs’ fury thundered behind him.
“What kind of human is that?! Snort!”
“He’s no human! He’s a demon wearing human skin!”
A demon.
Joo Do-gyeom thought that might not be entirely wrong.
The unwelcome guest inside his brain had been writhing with excitement for some time.
‘Be quiet.’
Suppressing the madness with a single command, Joo Do-gyeom recalled the source of this clearing method.
‘The Poison King.’
In the distant future, he had been one of the ten strongest Hunters belonging to the Integrated Asian Fortress City.
Tang Hao, a Chinese man who called himself the last descendant of the Sichuan Tang Clan.
Known as the Poison King because he was the greatest in all humanity when it came to poison, he had once casually revealed the method for clearing this Dungeon over drinks.
-Occupied Margrave’s Fortress? Heh heh. To a poisoner, that Dungeon is a storehouse. A storehouse.
Offer poison to the statue of the goddess and make poisonous rain fall.
Then sweep up the weakened Orcs.
There were only two requirements.
Someone capable of drawing away the mass of Orcs stationed around the goddess’s temple, and the deadly poison mentioned earlier.
What could be farmed that way were high-grade Mana Stones that were difficult to obtain from B-Rank Dungeons.
And a fairly useful magic tool obtainable only from the Orc Great Warrior.
Of course, there was no guarantee the latter would drop on the first attempt.
‘If it doesn’t, we can just run the Dungeon until it does.’
Kim Han-yul seemed to think they would clear this Dungeon once and be done with it, but unfortunately, Joo Do-gyeom’s plan was to farm it repeatedly until he obtained what he needed.
Kim Han-yul would probably grow accustomed to it soon.
She tended to complain, but Joo Do-gyeom could see it clearly.
‘She was enjoying herself.’
Did she have madness lodged inside her head like he did?
He would have to ask her later.
It was a thought that would have horrified Kim Han-yul had she known.
Even as he continued cutting down the Orc horde, Joo Do-gyeom’s head suddenly snapped to the side.
“Snooort-! Make wayyyy-!”
Amid the commotion, the Orcs near the inner castle abruptly split to either side.
The figure walking through them was a giant at least two heads taller than the Orcs he had encountered thus far.
His entire body was covered in old scars and black tattoos.
An Orc Centurion.
The bastard slammed its two-handed axe into the ground with a THUD and roared.
“Human! I, Karga of the Red Fang Tribe, will take your head.”
“Snooort-!”
“It’s the Centurion! Snort-!”
“Ooooooh-!”
The Orcs’ morale soared, and cheers erupted.
Then—
FWOOSH—!
A mass of scorching heat flew toward him with the sound of flames igniting somewhere nearby.
It was a fireball launched by an Orc Shaman hidden on a rooftop.
Even amid the countless noises, Ripple Perception Qigong, now at 4-Star, read its trajectory through sound and vibration.
The Sure-Kill Eye perceived the red point formed upon the flame.
Joo Do-gyeom remained standing and casually swung the Great Axe without even paying attention to the fireball.
A moment later.
CRACK—!
With the sound of a glass bell shattering, the fireball split in half and vanished.
Only sparks too meager to even be called remnants fell to the ground on either side and scattered futilely.
Silence followed.
“......”
“He...... cut magic? Snort......”
One of the Orcs muttered.
Even Karga, who had been striding forward so confidently, froze in place for a moment.
It was only natural.
Magic could not be cut without Aura.
That was common knowledge not only among humans but among Orc Warriors as well.
How?
The question surfaced naturally.
Joo Do-gyeom, however, remained calm.
The Heavenly Killer was a power capable of killing even Authority and Immortality.
Naturally, it could cut something as trivial as magic.
‘Honestly.’
He even felt that once the supposedly absolute rules within a Dungeon entered a realm he could perceive, he might be able to kill those as well.
In the meantime, Karga, the Orc Centurion, shouted, “Snort-! Shaman, dodge!”
At that very moment, Joo Do-gyeom lightly flicked a finger filled with the Internal Energy he had prepared even while lost in thought.
『Skill, Shadowless Finger Flick, advances to 2-Star.』
SWISH—!
The finger force tore through the air and pierced the Shaman between the eyebrows.
“Sno......!”
It could not even finish half its scream.
Still gripping its staff, the Shaman pitched forward, rolled down the roof, and fell onto the plaza.
THUD-.
A single heavy sound.
As the surrounding Orcs’ gazes gathered there—
SWOOOOSH—!
The sound of something cutting through the wind rang out.
Everyone followed it.
Joo Do-gyeom had already kicked off the motorcycle and leaped into the air.
Holding the Great Axe, which was as tall as he was, high above his head, he had reached the space directly over Karga, the Orc Centurion.
Karga’s eyes flew open as he raised his glaive defensively and shouted, “How dare you......!”
A moment later, it happened in an instant.
SCHLCK—!
Karga’s body split perfectly down the middle and fell to the ground in two pieces.
The glaive he had raised horizontally to block the strike met the same fate.
And so, following the Orc Shaman, even the Centurion fell.
After instantly killing two monsters that could be considered elites among the Orc horde, Joo Do-gyeom kicked off the ground and shot upward once more.
It was Lightning Flash Flight.
His destination was the seat of his motorcycle again.
Joo Do-gyeom landed on it like an acrobat and lightly pulled the accelerator once more.
Then, again—
VROOOOM—!
The roar of the engine, now a sound of terror to the Orcs, reverberated across the fortress.