Go Byeonggap thrust his sword out. There was no special technique, but it was a swift and heavy blow.

One karma soldier hurriedly stepped in to block. But the blade cut through the soldier’s spear shaft, then sliced his body apart in a diagonal line.

Go Byeonggap raised his sword from the downswing and immediately thrust again. Klochria dodged hastily, but took a wound on his left forearm. Go Byeonggap moved without pause, as if afflicted by an illness that permitted no rest.

“Damn it!”

The karma soldiers alone could not stop Go Byeonggap. Klochria shaped karma into a sword and gripped it. He swung the blade with the beastly senses of an SS-rank awakener. The attack was incredibly fast, heavy, and targeted the enemy’s openings.

But lo and behold, Go Byeonggap angled his blade slightly, deflected the attack with ease, and launched a counterattack with movements as fluid as flowing water.

To Klochria, it looked like nothing more than a flash of light. Then, parts of his body began to sting with heat.

“Kuuuugh…!”

Klochria’s body tilted as his fractured knee gave way. He radiated karma in a threatening aura, blocking the enemy’s approach. But Go Byeonggap pushed his own internal energy forward, neutralizing the storm, and walked on, unhurried.

The sword tip, which had been trembling subtly, shot forward like a viper’s snout. Klochria raised his arm on reflex. The blade pierced through his upper arm and drove into his left eye socket.

“Kkyaaaahk!”

A ghastly groan tore from Klochria’s throat.

Go Byeonggap felt a shadow fall over his head. Dozens of karma soldiers were dropping straight down. He pulled back calmly.

“You bastard!”

Clutching his ruined left eye, Klochria roared with fury.

“I felt it when I fought that Ariena before too… Back-alley tricksters like you never have real skill. The woman I faced earlier—now that was exquisite swordsmanship.”

“Don’t get cocky!”

The karma soldiers charged as one, aiming for Go Byeonggap. Warriors, lancers, and beasts brandished their weapons—a truly threatening sight. But Go Byeonggap felt no need to defend.

«Kerruk!»

«Protect the Lord!»

A horde of goblins burst from behind Go Byeonggap. With swords, spears, and claws leading the way, they threw themselves at the karma soldiers.

A flicker of despair crossed Klochria’s eyes. But only for a moment. Soon his gaze burned with rage as he conjured a mass of karma bullets.

‘Annoying attack. Not letting that slide.’

Go Byeonggap lunged fast, driving his shoulder into Klochria’s solar plexus.

“Khak—!”

The karma bullets forming in the air blurred and dissolved. Go Byeonggap gripped his sword in reverse and brought it down. The tip aimed dead-center at Klochria’s brow.

But it didn’t end in one blow. Just before the blade punched through his face, Klochria caught the sword’s edge with his bare hand. Blood streamed from his fingers.

“Slacking off, picking your nose in the back? All that talk about the Last Eighteen, and you’re nothing special!”

“Krrrr… I didn’t, I didn’t survive all those long years just to die like this!”

Klochria’s eyes flashed.

A chill ran down Go Byeonggap’s spine. He looked up on instinct—and what did he see? A sword was falling from the sky. No exaggeration: a blade the size of a building.

If that thing came down, the collateral damage here would be catastrophic. Klochria wouldn’t survive it either. Was he aiming for something like suicide? A hundred thoughts flashed through Go Byeonggap’s mind.

Just then—

«My Lord! Do not worry! I will block it!»

«Orka!»

Orka came bounding in with heavy strides. He swelled as he ran, his frame expanding until he towered over eight meters tall. He thrust both arms skyward, bracing to catch the colossal blade.

«Orka, stop! That’s suicide!»

«I’m fine! Leave it to me! Hyaaah—!»

Orka’s body hardened, taking on a bronze sheen. A moment later, the massive karma blade met his flesh.

Crack! Crunch! His legs drove into the earth, sinking fast as if the ground itself was swallowing them. The sound of twisting bones and tearing muscle reached Go Byeonggap clear as day.

The edge bit halfway through Orka’s shoulder, spilling blood freely. Still, Orka didn’t flinch or give ground.

«I’ll back you up!»

«Uwaaah!»

Dorma and Turka threw themselves in beside Orka.

Dorma wove black vines that coiled around the blade like serpents, squeezing tight. Turka channeled golden energy into Orka, and the blade that had been sinking into his body began to inch back out.

«Hyaaap!»

Crack!

The three goblins pooled their strength. What happened next was almost unbelievable: the building-sized karma sword split with a series of sharp cracks, then shattered outright.

The world bled blue as the blade fragments scattered into mist.

Go Byeonggap’s lips curled faintly upward. He turned his head and fixed Klochria with a glare. Klochria’s face looked like he was denying the reality before him.

“Making my men bleed comes with a steep price.”

“Th-that’s impossib—!”

Still in his downward-strike posture, Go Byeonggap unleashed a storm of internal energy. The arm Klochria had wrapped around the Sword God’s hilt dissolved into powder. The blade shot forward and crushed the enemy’s skull.

Klochria, one of the Last Eighteen and a genius of karma construction, was dead. With his death, his constructs faded from existence. The battle was over.

* * *

After killing Klochria, Go Byeonggap scouted the surroundings but found no further enemies. He formed up his subordinates and received the casualty report.

Four dead, forty-seven severely wounded.

«Bury the fallen in the graveyard with proper rites. Have stone tablets carved with their names. The wounded are to be treated under Bamond’s command.»

«Understood.»

«The war isn’t over yet. Mourning comes after. Stay sharp—don’t let your guard down.»

«Yes, sir!»

He sent the goblins away. His heart felt heavy. The dead never came back.

Off to one side, hunters were tending to the human casualties.

The humans had died in far greater numbers than the goblins. Most were low-rank awakeners who hadn’t survived the initial ambush—that was the biggest factor.

There had been plenty of debate, back when the first resistance force was being assembled, about whether to include lower-rank awakeners in the lineup. The argument went: in a battlefield where S-ranks and SS-ranks were trading blows, what use were D-ranks and C-ranks?

But in the end, the decision tilted toward including them. The hunters themselves wanted to fight, and more than anything, the leadership judged that every last ounce of strength had to be thrown into the grinder.

Squad A, which had started with just over a thousand members, had been cut in half after only two battles. The surviving hunters wore a conflicted look—unsure whether to despair that half of them were dead or marvel that half of them were still alive.

Squad A decided on a brief rest. They also needed to weed out the stragglers. The healers were running out of steam, their treatments growing sluggish.

It would have been good if Han Changhun had been assigned to Squad A. But right now, he was with Squad B—the same unit as Seo Sihui.

“Byeonggap, let me bum a cigarette. No—make it two.”

Jeong Seongyeong walked up to him. Her face was twisted with pain and a host of other ugly emotions.

Go Byeonggap handed over the cigarettes without a fuss and even lit one for her. As he did, he took in her condition. Blood from a cut on her forehead was tracing a path down her temple. Her left thigh, wrapped in a strip of torn fabric, was so soaked through you couldn’t even see the color of her skin anymore.

“You haven’t gotten treatment?”

“It’s fine. This is nothing.”

“Your leg looks pretty bad.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Jeong Seongyeong just blew out lungful after lungful of smoke. She sank into a long silence of bitter thought, then surfaced and spoke.

“Fuck. I’ve never once thought of myself as weak, you know? But lately, I can feel a wall.”

“Noona, you’re not actually weak, so what’s there to feel a wall about?”

“There are a shit-ton of people stronger than me out there. The things I can do are getting smaller and smaller.”

“What can you do? The world’s wide, so there’s bound to be strong people. And crazy ones, too. And to someone out there, Noona, you’re the wall. Nine out of ten of the guys laid out over there would see it that way.”

“I don’t know. I just feel powerless. …You keep getting stronger. When I first met you, you were weaker than me, and now I can’t even see how far ahead you’ve gotten.”

“Noona, are you—like, craving power or something?”

“Hey… do I look like some martial-arts master from a wuxia novel, craving power? It’s just… back when the world was normal, I could coast by on my own talents. Now that things have turned into this shithole, I feel like I’m nobody.”

Go Byeonggap couldn’t think of any words of comfort that fit. It wasn’t the right moment to be comforting anyone anyway. The ache of losing his own subordinates still throbbed in a corner of his heart.

He could guess what Jeong Seongyeong was feeling. It must feel like being thrown into a boundless ocean with nothing but a flimsy raft. Facing an ordeal too heavy to bear, your will to push forward gradually dries up.

Go Byeonggap was familiar with that kind of powerlessness. He’d been through it too many times before.

The crushing weight of becoming a species’ ruler—he, who was nothing more than a low-rank hunter—the anxiety, the responsibility to protect them, the loss he’d feel if they were gone.

Those emotions, if stirred late at night, made sleep impossible. When that happened, Byeonggap always soothed himself the same way: he narrowed his vision.

“What’s the point of looking far ahead? Just watch where you’re stepping. I’m telling you, narrow your view.”

“Narrow your view? What if you end up someplace wrong?”

“Then it can’t be helped. Isn’t that just how life works?”

“…Tch.”

Jeong Seongyeong let out a small laugh. She seemed a bit better.

Squad A took a short rest before resuming their move.

The shelling gradually died down. Had the military exhausted all their ammunition? Or had all the soldiers been slaughtered by enemies infiltrating their position?

‘Let it go.’

Byeonggap decided to quit worrying about things he couldn’t do a damn thing about. Stomping his feet on the inside wouldn’t change the situation he was facing, would it?

The low hills and scattered buildings fell away. Squad A had fully entered the city center. The first thing they saw was a line of Grugle corpses.

Rotting, blackened flesh covered the city everywhere. The stench wrapping around them from all sides made his head throb.

“Ugh! The smell!”

“Goddammit.”

The other hunters pinched their noses too. Up until then, everyone’s senses were most focused on the smell.

But the very next moment, the sight that unfolded—along with a thunderous roar that struck their eardrums—was enough to make them forget the stench.

“Th-that’s… what…”

“Huh…”

Something black shot into the sky. The mass, rising higher than any ordinary apartment building, soon surrendered to gravity and plummeted limply.

At first, they couldn’t tell what those tiny fragments were. But soon, they realized they were people and Grugle.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The deafening noise rang out in quick succession. Each time, a fountain of bodies splattered the sky.

“Over there—!”

An A-rank hunter’s head snapped back as if someone had yanked it from behind. It happened without a sound or a whisper, so some didn’t even notice. A long stick was lodged in the center of his brow.

The moment Byeonggap felt a chill run down his spine, he lunged forward and swung his sword.

CLANG!

“Kugh!”

Something slammed into his blade. Long and glowing blue, it was an arrow made of karma.

The arrow scattered on the ground soon vanished.

“What the fuck! Snipers again!?”

“Everyone, get into combat formation—cough!”

“What the hell! Where’s it coming from? Huh!?”

People forgot to breathe. Between the buildings, enemies revealed themselves. They shone brilliantly—so much so that they were beautiful.

But Go Byeonggap felt terror so deep the hairs on his whole body stood on end. A faint whimper slipped through his barely parted lips.

“Why… how?”

“Why… why is the Divine Army here?”

They were the Divine Legion, armed in platinum plate armor.