Chapter 148 – Rank S (Part Five)

*Rumble!*

The cross-section of a building, cleanly sliced in half, was exposed.

The roof, cut at an angle, was sliding down, but Il-hyeon had no time to worry about it.

The monster’s powerful spear shot toward his heart.

*Clang!*

Astrid warped through space and blocked the thrust aimed at Il-hyeon.

She had managed to block the attack at the last second, but the creature’s immense strength sent her flying. Il-hyeon, who was behind her, collided with her and was thrown out of the collapsing building.

They crashed through five or six building walls before finally coming to a stop.

The moment Il-hyeon, covered in glass shards, pushed himself up to his knees, another intense, invisible wave of energy shot toward him.

Il-hyeon swung his sword, unleashing a massive slash. The two opposing energies tangled in mid-air and canceled each other out.

A deafening roar followed as a shockwave-driven wind swept through the area.

*CRASH!*

This time, the building sliced by the monster completely collapsed, sending a second shockwave ripping through the surroundings.

“Damn, it’s been raising hell.”

Amidst the thick dust and wind, Il-hyeon reached out a hand to help Astrid up.

Rubbing her arm, which was numb from the impact, Astrid first asked about Il-hyeon’s condition.

“Are you okay?”

“For now. But that bastard’s ability is…”

*Swoosh!*

Just then, the other team members warped through space and appeared beside Il-hyeon.

Hyeon-seo had sent Astrid first, then brought the remaining team members as soon as she had gathered enough power.

Even for Hyeon-seo, whose abilities had fewer restrictions than most, powers related to spatial teleportation weren’t something she could use as easily as breathing.

“What do we do about that thing now?”

Hyeon-seo asked, looking at the monster that had paused to prepare something.

Even though they were far away, the other team members were all aware of the creature’s ability.

“Try to hold back on any abilities we haven’t used yet. It’s copying our powers. I don’t know the extent of it, though.”

Il-hyeon replied, looking troubled.

One of their team’s greatest strengths was their abundance of powerful abilities, rare even on a global scale. The fact that the monster was copying and using them was a huge problem.

*’What have we used so far…?’*

Il-hyeon quickly reviewed the abilities he and his team had used in the fight.

Flight, lightning, regeneration, summoning, transformation, and spatial warp.

It seemed the creature had likely copied a total of six abilities, and it had already used five of them.

Fortunately, they hadn’t used psychokinesis or the force field ability during the fight, and Devour wasn’t the kind of power it could copy.

The one uncertainty was Hyeon-seo’s curse ability, which prevented an enemy’s regeneration. If it had copied that as well, even Seong-won, with his ultra-regeneration, would be in grave danger if exposed to an attack.

*Ssshh!*

Grayish-brown wings sprouted from the monster’s back.

Unlike Astrid’s or Marco’s, these six pairs of chitin-covered wings looked like those of an insect.

“This… we haven’t just created an absurd monster, have we…?”

*Whoosh!*

The creature, which they expected to fly straight in for an attack, suddenly changed direction.

It had chosen to escape the area rather than finish off the Awakened.

Given its unexpected move and incredible speed, there was no chance of catching it if they started now.

Any ordinary Awakened would have let it escape.

But in that instant, a translucent barrier enveloped the area, and the flying monster collided with it, unable to pass through.

The creature used its monstrous strength to strike the barrier several times with its spear, but the translucent wall that had stopped it didn’t budge.

Such crude physical methods were not enough to break the force field ability Hyeon-seo was maintaining.

Using the ability in front of the monster was tantamount to letting it copy another dangerous power, but it wasn’t Hyeon-seo’s fault.

If the first team had failed to handle it properly and let it escape the site, it might have absorbed hundreds of abilities.

Giving an S-rank monster, whose base specs were already overwhelming, that many abilities on top would lead to an unmanageable disaster.

“Stop this pointless struggle and get down here!”

Unlike the monster, Astrid and Marco, who had spread their single pairs of black wings, had already caught up to it and were swinging their swords.

*Clang! Clang! Clang!*

Three sharp blades clashed incessantly as the monster and the two Awakened became entangled.

They fought in a zigzag pattern across the sky, a fierce battle sparking with every blow.

Normally, in an aerial battle, Astrid and Marco, who could freely control their direction and acceleration, would have overwhelmed the monster.

But not now.

The monster was also maneuvering its newly formed wings as if they were its own, and the situation was no different from the fight on the ground.

“Kuh…!”

A wide swing from the creature’s spear deeply gouged Marco’s left wrist.

Tendons, bone, and nerves were completely severed, leaving it mangled. He could no longer use his left hand.

And the monster did not miss that opening.

*Thrust!*

The spear pierced through Marco’s abdomen, and blood gushed out.

The monster twisted the spear to widen the wound before tossing him down below.

Seeing this, Astrid couldn’t contain her rage and charged recklessly at the monster.

*CLANG! KRRRSH!*

Her wildly swung sword clashed with the creature’s spear.

Glaring at the monster’s detestable face, Astrid pressed her sword forward with all her might, putting pressure on the spear.

“I’ll blow you away right here…!”

*KRAKOOM!*

The bolt of lightning she had summoned with all her power crashed down on the creature’s head.

As her most powerful technique, the impact completely obliterated the monster’s head, and its body was torn to shreds.

However, Astrid, the user of the ability, was also caught in the lightning’s blast.

Though she wasn’t hit directly, she was severely electrocuted, her body paralyzed. Black smoke billowed from her mouth and body.

They all plummeted, sliding down and crashing into the concrete floor, shattering it on impact.

But the first to rise among them was the monster, its red eyes gleaming.

“Grrr…”

As expected, it began to restore its body using the ultra-regeneration ability it had stolen from Seong-won.

Once its head had reformed and its mangled arm was restored, it picked up its dropped spear and approached the fallen Astrid and Marco.

It then raised the spear to strike down and end their lives.

But just then, Astrid and Marco’s forms vanished through space, and at the same time, a powerful slash from Il-hyeon flew in and pierced the creature in an instant.

*SHIING!*

The monster quickly tried to deploy a force field to block his slash, but it was futile.

Blood poured from the creature’s severed shoulder.

“Gwaaak…!”

“I was surprised, but I’ve heard of creatures like you before.”

Il-hyeon said, striding toward the monster.

Monsters that copied their opponents’ abilities had appeared a few times in the past.

They weren’t high-rank monsters, so they hadn’t drawn much attention, but Il-hyeon had spent his free time since becoming an Awakened diligently studying monster cases and had heard of such instances.

*’When a monster that has copied an ability moves far away from the original Awakened owner, the effectiveness of that ability drastically decreases… There were only three such cases, though.’*

Il-hyeon’s hypothesis was spot on.

He had first sent Hyeon-seo and Seong-won far away, then had Hyeon-seo use her spatial warp to extract the two injured members.

As a result, the force field the monster hastily deployed couldn’t even block a single one of Il-hyeon’s attacks and shattered to pieces. The regeneration speed of its mangled body also slowed down considerably compared to what it had shown initially.

The creature’s body, which would previously heal without a trace in the blink of an eye, had yet to fully recover even as Il-hyeon was speaking to it. The difference was so stark it was as if it were a completely different ability.

Moreover, that wasn’t all he had learned from the case studies.

The creature could only use one ability at a time.

It couldn’t activate two copied abilities simultaneously.

Even while creating the flimsy force field to block Il-hyeon’s attack, its regeneration had stopped, albeit for a brief moment.

*Tzzt-tzzt!*

“Grrr…?”

The space around them shimmered, and a translucent barrier formed.

They were trapped, surrounded by a force field in a small space.

Hyeon-seo, who had created the force field, had actually opposed trapping the two of them together, arguing it was too dangerous, but Il-hyeon had insisted it was necessary.

As he said, this was the best method available to them right now.

A half-baked attack with multiple people would be no different from reactivating all of the monster’s copied abilities.

Hyeon-seo quickly accepted his reasoning, and thus, a stage was set for just the two of them.

“Let’s end this.”

Il-hyeon raised his sword.

The creature’s wounds had not yet properly healed.

He would end its life himself, right here and now.

* * *

At the very edge of the controlled zone.

Four Awakened, including Hyeon-seo, stood waiting on the street as an Aegis medical team helicopter, contacted by her, hurriedly approached.

The professional medical staff, all with extensive field experience, saw the two injured individuals and moved with practiced skill.

The medics who usually waited outside the site were familiar faces, but today there was a stranger among them.

It was Gwen, her white coat fluttering.

She quickly disembarked from the helicopter and went to Marco first, whose abdomen had a gaping hole from which blood was pouring.

A closer look revealed severe ruptures to his internal organs, and his overall condition was terrible, likely from falling from a great height.

“Ugh…”

Astrid, having just regained consciousness, opened her eyes.

Before her own condition, she saw Marco lying next to her on the verge of death, and her expression twisted.

Astrid weakly grabbed the hem of Gwen’s coat as she approached to check on her.

“You don’t need to check on me, hurry up and do something about him!”

Astrid, her skin charred black, said with a voice on the verge of tears.

Gwen was momentarily surprised by this completely different side of her but soon smiled reassuringly.

“Calm down. These wounds are definitely not fatal.”

For an ordinary person, the massive blood loss, fractures, organ damage, and shock would have been fatal ten times over, but Gwen knew very well the caliber of Awakened her patient was.

Judging by the reaction of the special kit, the wounds inflicted by the monster didn’t carry any curse-related abilities that would hinder treatment.

Of course, they were severe wounds that wouldn’t hold out for long if left untreated, but with her here, there was absolutely no chance of death from something like this.

“Stop the bleeding first. Get the equipment out.”