Chapter 41 – No Time to Spare (Part One)

A massive Gate appeared in the heart of the city.

A crimson rift, dozens, even hundreds of times larger than a typical Gate, split the air.

The sheer size of the Gate sent nearby citizens screaming and fleeing in terror.

Thanks to the commotion, most people were alerted despite the late hour and began to evacuate.

In situations like this, casualties could usually be significantly reduced.

But this was no ordinary Gate.

Just two minutes after its appearance, before the wave analysis was even complete, it began to activate.

Two monstrous creatures emerged from the rift.

The Gate, having appeared in an instant and spat out two monsters, promptly vanished.

Two colossal monsters. With every step they took, several buildings collapsed at once, causing casualties.

Groooaaar!

A turtle monster made entirely of rock, with a massive body straight out of a kaiju film—a Tog.

It was an A-rank ace monster that had appeared several times before.

It possessed an annoyingly powerful ability: a shell with outstanding defense and vitality, coupled with the power to endlessly create and discharge rock monsters from its body.

*Thud! Thud!*

The two Togs rampaged across the city, and a woman was desperately fleeing from them.

“Pant, pant!”

A woman in her pajamas ran on, gasping for breath.

Her long, messy blonde hair flew behind her as she wove through the abandoned cars on the gridlocked road, glancing back.

The Tog was closing in fast, practically grinding buildings to dust as it advanced.

Outrunning such a colossal monster was impossible for an ordinary person.

*‘No!’*

The terrified woman, her face contorted in a grimace, started running again.

A sturdy overpass stood in the Tog’s path, but it crumbled helplessly.

Debris flew from the collapse.

The woman fleeing below was too stunned by the falling rubble to even think of moving.

“Aaaah!”

*Crash!*

A pile of broken debris crashed down where she had been standing.

But the woman was unharmed.

“Huh…?”

“Whew, that was close.”

Just before disaster struck, Il-hyeon had snatched the woman and carried her to safety.

The woman was clinging to Il-hyeon, her arms wrapped around his neck.

Il-hyeon verbally reassured the tearful woman as he set her down in a safe spot, far from the danger.

Many other evacuated citizens were gathered there.

Il-hyeon was about to turn back to stop the monster, offering her a final word of caution.

“It’s still not completely safe here, so first… Mmph!”

The woman grabbed Il-hyeon’s cheeks with both hands and pulled his face toward hers.

Their lips met in a deep kiss.

While Il-hyeon’s hands flailed in surprise, she wrapped her arms tightly around the back of his neck, almost hanging off him.

It was a long moment before their lips finally parted.

“Hah! Thank you…”

she said, her face slightly flushed.

He could feel the eyes of all the other citizens fixed on them.

One man watching even let out a playful whistle.

As Il-hyeon stared at her blankly, processing the unprecedented situation, a voice called out from across the way.

“Elena!”

“Dad?”

A middle-aged man rushed over.

The woman turned and ran into her father’s arms.

A touching reunion between a father and daughter, safe at last.

But Il-hyeon’s expression became utterly strange.

*‘Wait… isn’t that the guy from yesterday?’*

Il-hyeon rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

But his eyes weren’t deceiving him.

It was definitely the man he had seen at the soccer stadium the day before.

“Huh…”

* * *

*Swish!*

Six monsters fell simultaneously to Lee Soo-yeon’s sword.

They were the rock monsters continuously discharged from the Tog’s body.

Seok Pil-joon, Ghost, and Il-hyeon—who had just joined after rescuing a citizen—continued to thin the monsters’ ranks.

“Dammit, of all the places for this thing to show up, it had to be the middle of the city…”

Ghost grumbled, swinging his sword.

Besides its hard shell, the giant monster Tog had incredibly tenacious vitality.

To completely silence the beast, which would struggle and move even with most of its body destroyed, they had to remove its core—the monster’s equivalent of a heart.

The problem was that inside its massive body was an Ether core barely the size of a human fist.

To make matters worse, the core’s location within its body changed every time, making it difficult to know where to attack.

From the perspective of the Awakened fighting it, its sluggish movements and limited offensive options made it less threatening than other A-rank monsters. However, whenever it appeared in a major city like this, it always caused immense damage before it was taken down.

It endlessly created and spat out monsters, and its mere walking destroyed all surrounding structures.

In a city, not some remote area, the damage was bound to skyrocket.

“We’ve mostly contained the smaller monsters, so we’ll start attacking the main bodies now.”

“But it’ll be a while before we get the core locations, won’t it?”

“We don’t have time to leisurely wait for a core analysis,”

Lee Soo-yeon said.

If they had the luxury, they could have stalled until the analysis team pinpointed the cores, but the city was being destroyed in real-time.

*Crash!*

As if on cue, a building collapsed the moment she finished speaking.

At this point, they had to stop the main bodies, even if it meant using brute force.

But then, Il-hyeon, who had been quietly observing the two Togs, spoke up.

“The Tog on the left has its core behind its neck. The other one’s is in its upper chest area.”

“What? You can see the core locations?”

“Yes. Thanks to my Predation ability, I’ve recently been able to faintly sense the cores inside monsters.”

“Haha… Well done.”

Lee Soo-yeon let out an incredulous laugh at Il-hyeon’s words.

It seemed the deeper one delved into his ability, the more endless it became.

“This makes things much easier, then, doesn’t it?”

Seok Pil-joon said, slicing an oncoming monster in two.

“Right. I’ll take the one on the left. Il-hyeon, you take the right one. The other two of you, keep the spawning monsters at bay.”

“He definitely can’t do it alone.”

Even if it was relatively less threatening, an A-rank monster was still an A-rank monster.

With Il-hyeon’s current strength, it would take him ages just to pierce the outer shell, let alone destroy the core quickly.

Lee Soo-yeon then added briefly.

“Ghost will help him.”

“Aha, I understand.”

Ghost and Lee Soo-yeon. They had been working together for years, and Ghost, understanding her meaning immediately, replied.

With that, they all moved at once.

Lee Soo-yeon climbed the Tog’s leg, made her way to its back, and unleashed a torrent of attacks on its neck.

As her blade, shrouded in black energy, struck the rock shell, a loud clash echoed, and rock fragments shattered and fell away.

It seemed the shell wouldn’t last long against her monstrous strength.

Of course, the Tog didn’t just stand there.

It thrashed and twisted violently, and monsters created within its body poured out from its back, rushing at Lee Soo-yeon.

Amidst the chaos, Lee Soo-yeon simply batted away the monsters and continued her assault unfazed.

“Wait, I still don’t get what you meant…!”

Ghost grabbed his arm, turned intangible, and sank into the ground.

And Il-hyeon experienced a dizzying blur of scenery rushing past.

During that time, Ghost offered a simple explanation.

“I’m going to get you inside the Tog’s stomach. Just destroy the core from in there. Simple, right? For the record, I can’t go too deep because of the repulsion effect.”

“What?”

Before the disoriented Il-hyeon could even protest, he and Ghost shot up from the ground, passed through the Tog’s underbelly, and entered its body.

After dropping Il-hyeon off in a suitable spot, Ghost was ejected back outside, disappearing from view.

A dark space, with no light penetrating it.

Il-hyeon took out the lighter from his pocket, and the flame that flickered to life took the shape of a bird.

The summoned phoenix perched on Il-hyeon’s arm.

The creature’s brilliant light illuminated the surroundings.

Inside the Tog’s body, a vast space made entirely of rock came into view.

Within, the rocks that formed the Tog’s body were splitting and merging, continuously creating more monsters.

Moreover, as if sensing an intruder, the already-formed monsters were all looking his way.

Il-hyeon let out a short sigh and raised his sword.

“I hear the core output from these large monsters is pretty lucrative… Might as well give it a shot.”