Chapter 80 – A Second Family (Part Five)

Thud!

Struck by a spear of light that pierced its core, the giant lost its strength and collapsed.

The fierce battle had left it covered in wounds, despite its regenerative abilities.

“Phew…”

Breaking out in a cold sweat, Il-hyeon let out a sigh and wiped his forehead.

This one had put up a fierce resistance, giving him a great deal of trouble. It was also the ninth giant he had faced.

Worse, he had been forced to push himself, rushing to protect the defenseless civilians caught in the surprise Gate. Of course he was exhausted.

Valkyrie watched him from the side, her eyes filled with concern.

He had told her before that just summoning her consumed a considerable amount of his stamina, which now made her feel a pang of guilt.

‘I know the difficulty can vary wildly even within the same rank, but why are they this strong?’

Il-hyeon frowned.

He was certainly capable of subduing them with his abilities.

But each one had clung to life with a monstrous regenerative ability, making them incredibly difficult to take down.

Thankfully, his ability to instantly locate their cores gave him an advantage, allowing him to subdue them this efficiently. Any other Awakened would have struggled several times harder, or might have had to give up entirely.

He’d been told it was an A5-rank Gate, but the monsters were far stronger than expected. These seemed to be among the strongest of the B-rank monsters.

‘Considering there’s an ace monster in the mix, this has to be at least an A4-rank Gate…’

Normally, a B-rank Awakened taking on an A-rank Gate alone would be suicide. But Il-hyeon, with his three SSS-rank abilities, was an exception to the rule.

Still, an A4-rank Gate was an immense burden.

‘And why are the last ones sticking together?’

Five monsters remained.

One A-rank and four B-ranks.

It was a force capable of destroying a small nation, and the bigger problem was that these five monsters were moving as a pack.

At first, he thought their paths had simply overlapped, but contrary to his expectations, they hadn’t separated at all.

A single one was a disaster, but five of them rampaging together, destroying everything in sight, was a catastrophe.

It was highly unusual for such powerful ace monsters—not just regular ones—to move in a group.

‘Guess I’ll have to rely on this.’

Il-hyeon pulled an object from his coat.

It was the B-rank core he had taken from the giant.

Facing five ace monsters at once by himself was impossible. He would have to temporarily borrow power by absorbing the core.

Il-hyeon clenched his fist, and the core within his palm shattered, releasing a flood of Ether.

He didn’t absorb it completely, instead letting the power surge around his body. Il-hyeon clenched and unclenched his fist, looking down at his hand.

Coming from a large monster, and a B-rank core with a particularly high output at that, the amount of Ether was immense.

Lee Soo-yeon had warned him that this would strain his body, and it seemed some backlash was unavoidable this time as well.

But for now, he pushed aside any thoughts of the consequences and simply savored the power overflowing within him.

He located the pack of monsters and closed in.

“There they are.”

Landing atop a skyscraper, Il-hyeon spotted the monsters.

Four of the giants he had been fighting.

And with them, an A-rank monster that looked different from the rest.

The grotesque, crimson-bodied giant was actually smaller than the others.

Standing less than five meters tall, its movements were far quicker, and it was mercilessly crushing people as they fled in every direction.

Their screams reached his ears, and he moved at once.

Just as the red giant lifted its foot to crush a family huddled together in terror, an explosion erupted at its leg, knocking it off balance.

The hawk Il-hyeon had been riding swooped down, snatched the family, and carried them to safety. Landing on the ground, Il-hyeon stared down the monster before him.

The red giant, barely staggered by the powerful blast, looked down at Il-hyeon with gleaming eyes. For a moment, their gazes locked.

Boom!

In an instant, the red giant’s fist slammed down. The impact sent shockwaves through the ground, making it ripple like water.

It was clearly faster and stronger than the other giants.

Having dodged the blow, Il-hyeon used his ability on the ground beneath the monster, creating massive iron chains that coiled tightly around the red giant.

At the same time, Valkyrie descended from above, driving her spear straight down into the red giant’s head.

The fox then unleashed a torrent of flame, engulfing the giant’s lower body, while Il-hyeon caused the ground to sink, impaling its mangled legs on spikes that shot up from below.

They pressed their attack relentlessly, giving it no time to escape or regenerate, aiming to destroy its mobility first.

Crack!

But in that fleeting moment, the creature flexed its muscles, shattering the chains that bound it. It then swung a fist at Valkyrie, whose spear was still embedded in its head.

No one had expected it to counterattack while taking so many direct hits, and Valkyrie was unable to react in time.

Smash!

Sent flying by the blow, Valkyrie crashed through a building before tumbling across the ground.

With a sickening crunch, the red giant shrugged off the last of the chains and ripped the spikes from its lower body.

At the same time, its body regenerated at an incredible rate. It wasn’t just healing around the spikes; it was breaking them internally and forcing the fragments out as the flesh reformed.

“What a pain.”

Il-hyeon muttered, watching the red giant’s body return to its original state.

It seemed trying to immobilize it was pointless.

Once again, he read the flow of Ether to locate its core. It was in its head, right between the eyes.

Not an easy target, but better than the center of its chest.

Just then, Valkyrie emerged from the rubble of the shattered building.

Fortunately, she didn’t appear to be seriously injured. Light gathered in her empty hand, and a golden spear materialized once more.

But the situation was far from good.

The four other giants, drawn by the commotion, were closing in, smashing through buildings on all sides to surround him.

The giants, an imposing sight as they stood in a line, reached out with their arms and legs.

Swoosh! But the hawk that had rescued the family had returned, swooping down to carry Il-hyeon into the sky.

The A-rank red giant wouldn’t be an easy kill. Deciding to deal with the others first, Il-hyeon targeted the one farthest away.

“Whoa!”

The red giant casually picked up an overturned bus as if it were a toy and hurled it at him. Il-hyeon ducked, narrowly avoiding it.

As the bus grazed his hair, Il-hyeon, who had been looking for a projectile, used his transformation ability on it.

The bus crumpled in mid-air, twisting until it resembled a massive spike.

It then changed direction, hurtling toward one of the other monsters.

Smash!

The giant swung its fist, batting it away. The makeshift spike flew off and crashed into a butcher shop.

But in batting away the bus that had obscured its vision, the giant lost track of Il-hyeon for a moment. In that instant, he appeared behind its neck.

Stab!

He plunged his sword deep into the back of its neck, precisely where the core was located.

He twisted the blade, widening the wound, then immediately pulled it free and kicked off, spinning away.

Boom! At the same time, a massive explosion erupted.

The giant’s neck was torn to shreds.

As if on cue, Valkyrie’s spear came flying.

But what happened next was something Il-hyeon could never have imagined.

In the split second it took for the spear of light to reach its target, the giant’s wound completely healed.

The regeneration had begun almost simultaneously with the injury from his sword and the explosion. Unlike the others he’d fought, the speed was much faster, healing in an instant.

Il-hyeon couldn’t believe his eyes. The regeneration speed was absurdly fast, and it wasn’t a fluke.

He attacked two or three more times, but the result was the same.

As it regenerated, it even expelled Valkyrie’s spear from its neck.

All the nearby giants now had regeneration speeds nearly on par with the red giant’s.

“Don’t tell me…”

In the air, Il-hyeon turned his head to look at the red giant.

This sudden, absurd change could only mean one thing: the A-rank monster, staring his way with those gleaming eyes, was somehow affecting the other giants.

He guessed it had an ability that drastically boosted the regeneration of nearby giants, which explained why they were moving in a pack.

‘Do I have to use that method? It’ll take a lot of power, but…’

He recalled the most effective method he’d ever heard of for dealing with this kind of monster.

Annihilate it completely, leaving not even a trace behind.

If there’s no body to act as a focal point, there’s nothing to regenerate from.

Easier said than done, of course. Pulverizing such a massive monster in one go could prove even more difficult than targeting its core.

But for Il-hyeon, now powered up by the absorbed core, it was a viable option.

Crunch!

Valkyrie stabbed the red giant’s leg while it was distracted.

The spear pierced deep enough to hit bone, but the attack barely registered.

It was, however, enough to draw the red giant’s attention. The other giants followed suit, turning their focus from Il-hyeon in the sky to the target before them.

‘Good…’

With her drawing their fire, Il-hyeon was free to concentrate on gathering his power.

He closed his eyes, drawing up every last bit of Ether coursing through his body, and activated his summoning ability.

To minimize the power consumption, he summoned creatures with no combat ability of their own, each no bigger than a pebble.

With the power he saved, he imbued them with a single attribute and maximized their numbers.

Crack!

Tiny bugs began to emerge from every surface—the ground, buildings, and walls.

Beating their wings furiously, they took to the air, forming a massive, dark swarm.

Il-hyeon called them Explosion Bugs. Thousands of the black insects swarmed the giants, clinging to their bodies.

Il-hyeon unsummoned Valkyrie, who was still in the area, and then snapped his fingers.

Snap! Kaboom!

A deafening roar erupted from the cluster of giants as the bugs exploded. The initial blast set off a chain reaction, inflicting catastrophic damage so quickly that the giants had no time to regenerate.

The surrounding monsters were completely vaporized, leaving not a trace behind. Even the red giant’s lower body was blown away, leaving only shattered bone.

Of course, even in that state, the A-rank monster’s freakish regenerative ability was already kicking in.

Flesh began to writhe as its body tried to reform, but in that instant, Il-hyeon’s sword plunged between its eyes.

Struck in its core, the red giant’s body stopped regenerating and collapsed.

“Phew…”

Il-hyeon sat down on the mangled corpse of the giant.

He’d expended too much power at once and felt completely drained.

But a strange feeling made him pull the core from the monster’s head.

As a white light began to emanate from the core in his hand, Il-hyeon stared, mesmerized.

“…No way.”