***
In any case, Han-eol had succeeded in a guided transfer for the first time.
And yet rather than rejoicing, Han-eol fell into serious deliberation.
'I failed twice before, so what is the cause of succeeding now? Is it just a simple coincidence?'
Han-eol wrung his head over it.
Even so, it only consumed time, and finding an answer right away was difficult.
'Let us think about that later. First I should handle the urgent business.'
Han-eol drove a transmitter into the ground right in front of the rippling blue mist.
Setting it up this way would make it easier for Han-eol to return later to his departure point and go back to Mid-Land Seoul.
Han-eol switched on the receiver, confirmed that it communicated properly with the transmitter, and then moved off in the direction the watch hand pointed.
Even when the guided transfer succeeded, the place of arrival was bound to vary each time. Naturally the position Han-eol had arrived at last time and his position now were different.
Previously Han-eol had encountered the demon beast riding the disc only after traveling for several hours.
But this time he arrived at the place where he had buried the mother metal in a mere ten minutes.
'Huh? I was transferred this close to last time's battlefield? This is dangerous.'
Struck by fear, Han-eol flattened himself to the ground on the spot.
'If this place happens to be a demon beast hunting ground, it would not be strange to take long-range fire at any moment. The companions of the demon beast I luckily finished off last time could be prowling around here.'
Han-eol lay low without stirring for quite a long while.
Fortunately no particular ambush occurred.
'Whew~. It seems to be all right.'
After a good long while Han-eol let out a sigh of relief, then crawled to his target point in a prone position. Then he took out a spade there, carefully dug the ground, and pulled out the disc. Along with it, Han-eol collected the demon spirit stone he had buried together last time.
Last time Han-eol had taken the demon beast's sudden assault and suffered serious wounds. Because of that his vest had been damaged and his recovery potion used up.
Accordingly Han-eol had had no choice but to withdraw to Mid-Land Seoul even after finishing off the demon beast.
But now Han-eol had come prepared all over again.
'So I ought to take one step further than last time.'
Han-eol strained to work up his courage.
Han-eol was a self-preservation-first sort of man who valued his own body above anything else in the world. He absolutely did not want reckless challenges.
But merely lying low unconditionally would not make Han-eol any safer. Since he had been assigned to the Shinseong Group's Pioneer Corps, Han-eol was fated to enter the Highland ceaselessly for the time being. And there was no guarantee the guided transfer would succeed each time.
'If anything, the odds of the guided transfer failing may be higher.'
In that case Han-eol would have to build up his skills by any means.
That was precisely the only way Han-eol could survive in this dangerous Highland, and the reason Han-eol had pushed himself to work up courage today.
Han-eol had a good handle on objectively assessing himself.
'Stats like Defense Power, Vitality, and the various resistances do not look likely to rise easily. Attack Power goes without saying.'
Over the past two weeks Han-eol had trained truly as hard as he could.
Not because he liked training, but because his life was on the line.
But unlike his physical-category fellow recruits who grew by leaps and bounds through the training routine, Han-eol was almost at a standstill.
'My growth graph must be more wretched than not only the physical category but even the mage category.'
At this rate, the possibility of Han-eol surviving three years was thin.
'Will I be able to survive until I peel off the Rookie label three years from now and apply for conversion to a desk position?'
The answer was despairing.
If Han-eol succeeded in the guided transfer every time and was protected at a relatively safe base camp, that might be another matter, but if he landed alone in a dangerous region as he did now, the odds of him losing his life before long were over ninety percent. At the very least, that was the judgment Han-eol made.
'Then what is my way to live?'
Han-eol pinned his hopes on Highland relics.
The A-grade vest and recovery potion that were currently Han-eol's lifelines.
Where had such things come from?
Of course, the places that manufactured the defensive item and the potion were Shinseong Group affiliates.
But their materials were unquestionably procured from the Highland, and the manufacturing methods had originated from relics obtained in the Highland.
And that was hardly all.
In the case of S-grade weapons and armor, which went beyond A-grade and were issued only to the Shinseong Group's owner family, the majority were not crafted by humanity but were relics luckily discovered in the Highland.
Even the finest Master Artisans of Mid-Land's various cities had rarely succeeded in crafting an S-grade item.
Ex-grade items, which went beyond S-grade, were of an even higher order, and humanity had yet to make an Ex-grade item directly.
The Ex weapons and armor renowned throughout the world were all Highland relics.
'That is exactly the kind of armor I have to find.'
Han-eol did not even hope for Ex-grade armor. He merely wanted to get his hands on one more piece of S-grade, or failing that, A-grade armor with this opportunity.
As it happened, Han-eol had already unearthed one relic.
The disc the demon beast had ridden.
'Last time the situation was so urgent that I could not even examine it properly.'
Han-eol intended to take the disc he had buried last time back out and look it over meticulously.
The disc was about forty centimeters in diameter with eight mana stones (mana crystals charged with energy) embedded in it, and it was far lighter than Han-eol expected.
'About the weight of a puffed rice cracker. But how do you operate this disc?'
Han-eol pressed at the disc here and there and turned it over to inspect it.
It was at that very moment.
The sky suddenly darkens.
A chilling wave of force begins from tens of thousands of kilometers beyond the horizon and, in the blink of an eye, sweeps over the place where Han-eol is.
'Hup?'
Before he knew it, Han-eol clutched the disc to himself and curled his body into a ball.
***
At that very moment, from high above Han-eol's head, from dizzying heights, a resounding sound was heard.
"λοοβ, οββη οββη, ζζ."
The demon beast that had nearly driven Han-eol to death last time had used a language much like this.
'I am fucked.'
Han-eol's face went white in an instant.
At that moment Han-eol's body was drawn by an irresistible force and abducted to a height of some hundred meters in the blink of an eye.
The sky was already full of pitch-black storm clouds.
This place was arid wasteland with not a single cloud, so Han-eol could not comprehend when the clear sky had turned so dark and dim.
Among those murky clouds, bright yellow charges raged, crackle, crackle. And boring through those charges, a sleek airship shaped like a fallen leaf descended.
The airship's material looked similar to the disc Han-eol clutched tight.
However, unlike the disc a mere forty centimeters in diameter, the airship that had appeared through the clouds looked to be thirty meters in length alone and a good ten meters wide.
This was like a wealthy man's yacht cutting leisurely across the Han River.
No, its form was flat, so it was closer to a board than a yacht.
From the front of that flat airship, a long hand shot out.
"Uwah?"
Han-eol's body, having surged into the air, rose even faster and was seized by the collar in a long, pallid grip.
Next, an inscrutable language bored into Han-eol's ears.
"λοοβ, οββη οββη, ζζ."
Even in his dazed state, Han-eol barely managed to open his eyelids and take in the being atop the airship.
The being that now had Han-eol by the collar had an inverted-triangle skull.
Its two arms were grotesquely long.
Its height was a hand's span taller than Han-eol.
Also striking was the way the eight long tails the other possessed swayed left and right like the heads of cobras eyeing their prey.
The bipedal demon beast with its bizarre appearance stood bolt upright atop the airship, blasting a chilling glare from three eyes, and peculiarly, each of those eyes was filled with two pupils.
'Damn it.'
The moment he saw the other, Han-eol's heart plunged.
The demon beast Han-eol had killed here in this wasteland last time had looked much like this thing.
The inverted-triangle skull.
The unusually long arms.
However, last time's demon beast had been as short as a dwarf.
By contrast, the demon beast now holding Han-eol by the collar was taller than Han-eol.
Last time's demon beast had one tail; this demon beast had eight tails.
Last time's demon beast had two eyes; this demon beast had a third eye between its two eyes.
This was obvious to anyone.
'The demon beast that attacked me last time must have been a cub. And this demon beast will be that thing's mother or a being further up the line.'
"ββββ!"
As evidence, the demon beast holding Han-eol by the collar saw the demon spirit stone in Han-eol's hand, split its maw wide, and howled. The glare the demon beast gave off grew several times deeper.
Han-eol quietly hid the hand holding the demon spirit stone behind his back.
Even so, it was too late.
Was the demon spirit stone in Han-eol's possession not the very spoil he had gouged out of the cub (?) demon beast's chest with the ultra-vibration blade?
'I am done for.'
Han-eol felt as if he would lose his mind.
In any case, the demon beast, enraged to the extreme at losing its cub (?), seemed to have no intention of killing Han-eol gently.
Well, if the other had bristled its eight tails at high altitude and gone in for long-range fire, Han-eol would have died without even a chance to drink the A-grade potion.
From the tail sections of the demon beast swaying before his eyes, a whine rang out over and over, weeeeng― weeeeng―.
At the hollow tail tips, sharp needles were poking their heads out, and the thickness of the spinning needles was chilling.
If the needle that had bored through Han-eol's back before was the thickness of a pencil lead, then this demon beast's eight needles were as thick as four of Han-eol's fingers laid together.
'If something like that bores into a body, it would not be a matter of a hole being punched; it would be torn to shreds.'
Merely dangling by the collar at a dizzying altitude was enough to make him lightheaded, and at the sight of eight chilling needles aimed at his skull and torso, Han-eol's vision went darker still.
Even so, it was not that Han-eol had no hope at all.
If this demon beast had blown Han-eol's head off from long range the moment it appeared, that might be another matter, but drawing Han-eol in close like this was itself a great mistake.
Even while wetting himself with fear, Han-eol steadied his mental state and concentrated on the demon beast's soul.
Immediately Han-eol's viewpoint changed.
The demon beast's soul had turned into a figure within a two-dimensional plane.
***
The figure Han-eol looked down at was as follows.
1-3
'Whoa.'
Han-eol was first startled by the figure's complexity.
Let the two layers of hexagram fortress surrounding the soul pass.
Let the eight tails and needles pass as well.
Fearsome as its appearance was, what stood out above all was that the demon beast's soul was extraordinary.
First, this demon beast had thorn-like things sprouting from its soul.
Also, unlike other souls, it was peculiar that two of the demon beast's tails were connected directly to the soul.
Not only the Shinseong Group's Head of Human Resources and the 1st Assault Corps Leader, but every living thing Han-eol had witnessed up to now, all the way through the Snow Wolf tribe and last time's cub demon beast, had had no soul directly connected to a fortress (barrier) or a means of attack (horns, tails).
'Surely the soul will still come out?'
Han-eol was struck by fear.
The only means of attack available to Han-eol right now was precisely soul-plucking.
'But what if that does not work?'
Han-eol had no recourse whatsoever.
'Please come out!'
Han-eol poured out his will as if in a fit.