Chapter 19

Chapter 19

A hulking body nearly 5 meters tall. Where its head should have been, an old commercial refrigerator was embedded whole, and bluish cold air poured down like a waterfall through the crack in its door. Across its taut, swollen, leather-like skin, dozens of rusted hooks were embedded like tattoos, and in its hand was a Chinese cleaver as large as a house.

As the boss slowly rose, the ice on the storage floor cracked apart with a thunderous noise.

“Hey, Go Gyeol. Are you seriously telling me to catch that thing with this one steel pipe? Are you picking my burial spot here?”

Lee Seong-ha asked in a trembling voice as he adjusted his grip on the pipe in his hand.

Go Gyeol coldly scanned the Butcher’s movements and answered.

“I told you. The moment even 1 point of mana leaks out, the refrigerator on that thing’s head will absorb every bit of nearby mana and cause an absolute-zero explosion. If you don’t want to freeze to death in an instant, take out your brain and use only your muscles.”

“Fuck! Do you hear yourself?!”

“In exchange, I’ll give you the clear strategy so we can end this fast.”

“You promised!”

CRAAAASH—!

No sooner had he finished speaking than the Butcher slammed the Chinese cleaver down into the floor. The marble floor crumpled like paper, and massive fragments flew in every direction.

“Scatter! To the hook zone at 10 o’clock!”

At Go Gyeol’s order, the party members all threw themselves away at once.

The Butcher turned its body with a speed that did not suit its massive size and chased Lee Seong-ha. When the cleaver, more than 2 meters long, swung horizontally, the sound of tearing air filled the storage room.

“Aaaagh!”

Lee Seong-ha rolled across the floor and barely avoided the blade.

The wall grazed by the blade was destroyed as if gouged out.

“Kang Ji-hyun, now! Use the hooks!”

Kang Ji-hyun was already in the air. Suppressing her mana, she was moving through the forest of hooks on the ceiling using only the physical strength of her arms. The red whip flew like a snake and wrapped around one hook, and using the recoil, she landed behind the Butcher.

“Die, you monster bastard!”

Kang Ji-hyun drew a dagger and drove it down toward the place between the Butcher’s back muscles where the nerve bundle gathered. But with a CLANG, the dagger bounced off without sinking in. The Butcher’s skin had already frozen harder than steel.

“No good! The hit isn’t going in!”

“Obviously! That thing’s skin gets harder the lower the external temperature is! Kwon Do-geun, raise the temperature!”

“What? I’m a Water Hunter, so how am I supposed to raise the temperature!”

Kwon Do-geun shouted in panic. Go Gyeol dodged the Butcher’s second attack and shouted sharply.

“Think of the scene where you caused a steam explosion in a movie! Don’t use your mana. Force the moisture in the air to condense and generate friction heat!”

Kwon Do-geun stared blankly at Go Gyeol, then soon gritted his teeth. Right. This was a movie. Right now, he was playing the role of an engineer using overheated steam to strip away the enemy’s defense.

Kwon Do-geun visualized the air around the Butcher. He imagined tens of thousands of water droplets colliding with each other and producing heat. A fine mist that burst from his fingertips began wrapping around the Butcher. Cold air and steam collided, creating thick vapor, and the Butcher’s frozen-solid hide began to soften faintly.

“Now! Lee Seong-ha!”

“Good! ……You tin-can head!”

Lee Seong-ha leaped. Through the steam, he swung the steel pipe with all his strength toward the Butcher’s exposed knee joint.

CRACK—!

At last, the sound of impact changed. The center of the Butcher’s enormous body collapsed, and one knee touched the floor.

-ROOOOOOAR!!

The Butcher opened the refrigerator door on its head wide and roared.

What poured out from inside was not simple cold air. It was a “cursed chill,” mixed with the stench of already-rotten meat and the screams of souls steeped in pain from life. The temperature inside the storage room plunged below minus 40 degrees in an instant.

Frost settled on the party members’ eyebrows, and the air entering their lungs turned into blades. At that desperate moment, when their muscles froze and their movements dulled—

“Kang Hoon! Your turn!”

Kang Hoon was already sitting on the floor. His eyes had rolled back until only the whites remained, and black smoke continuously leaked from his mouth. Go Gyeol gripped Kang Hoon’s shoulder tightly, holding him so he would not let go of his connection to reality.

“Kang Hoon, feel it. Things colder than the chill filling this room right now. Pour all the freezing emotions felt by those abandoned around the world into that thing!”

“……U-uuuh…….”

Kang Hoon’s shadow expanded like a living monster. The sensations of “hunger,” “deficiency,” and “cold” felt by billions of humans around the world began to flow backward through the channel called Kang Hoon and into the Butcher.

[Curse: Hunger of Billions(Hunger of Billions)]

The Butcher’s movement stopped. The cooling device on its head spun with a mad sound, but its body had already been consumed by the Curse. The Butcher clutched its stomach and suffered. A fundamental hunger that could not be filled no matter how much it ate began gnawing at it from within.

“Lee Seong-ha, Ji-hyun! Look at the bundle of hooks hanging above the boss’s head! That’s the key power line!”

At the same time as Go Gyeol’s instruction, Kang Ji-hyun once again soared by riding the hooks. In midair, she swung her whip and wrapped it around the enormous pulley device fixed to the ceiling above the Butcher’s head.

“Lee Seong-ha, support it from below!”

Lee Seong-ha gathered the scattered remains of shopping carts on the floor and made a foothold. He wedged the steel pipe into the gap of the boss’s refrigerator door and forced the door open using the principle of leverage.

“It’s open! Ji-hyun!”

Kang Ji-hyun let go of the whip in midair and fell vertically toward the boss’s head. In her hand, at some point, was a sharp meat hook she had picked up.

“Eat well, you pig bastard!”

Kang Ji-hyun drove the hook into the complex power core tangled inside the boss’s open refrigerator.

-BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!!

At last, the boss’s cooling device could not endure the overload and exploded. Ice fragments and black liquid sprayed in every direction. With a death-cry scream, the boss toppled backward.

But Go Gyeol’s eyes were still fierce.

“Not yet. Its heart is still beating.”

Even while collapsed, the boss swung its Chinese cleaver and threatened the party members. It was its last struggle. Lee Seong-ha and Kang Ji-hyun, already drained of stamina, backed away while gasping roughly.

Kang Hoon was on the verge of fainting, and Kwon Do-geun did not even have the strength to move a finger.

Go Gyeol slowly walked forward. He stood before the boss’s enormous shadow and picked up Lee Seong-ha’s dented steel pipe from the floor.

“……Hey, Go Gyeol! What are you doing! Dodge!”

Lee Seong-ha shouted, but Go Gyeol did not stop. He walked right up to the boss’s eyes. The boss, its gaze blazing with hatred, tried to slam down the Chinese cleaver.

Go Gyeol did not dodge and looked at the boss. His gaze held not a single grain of mana, terribly ordinary and terribly cold.

“Now.”

The boss’s cooling device made a grotesque roar as it sucked in the remaining nearby mana for self-destruction. Bluish light surged wildly through the gap in the refrigerator door. Go Gyeol read that fleeting vibration. It was the Butcher’s final struggle pattern, one he had watched thousands of times before his Regression.

The moment the boss squeezed out its remaining strength and slammed down the Chinese cleaver, Go Gyeol tilted his head by a difference of a single handspan.

SWISH!

The blade grazed his cheek and crushed the floor, but Go Gyeol did not blink. Instead, he used the force of that downward strike as a foothold and lightly leaped onto the boss’s shoulder. It was a maneuver accomplished without mana’s help, using only the elasticity of muscle and perfect timing.

At the nape of the boss’s neck, through a gap in the opened armor plate, the internal mana circulation pipe was exposed.

“…….”

Go Gyeol coldly shoved the dented steel pipe deep into that gap. Then he put his full body weight into it and twisted the pipe vertically.

GRRRRIND, CRUNCH—!

Pure physical strength without a single shred of mana enhancement crushed the pipe. Coolant flowed backward, and the massive mana condensing inside the boss began to lose its path and surge violently.

“End.”

Go Gyeol murmured as he pushed the pipe in to the very end. It was both an order and a sentence.

The moment the vibration of the metal touching his fingertips reached its peak, Go Gyeol kicked off the boss’s body and flew backward.

-CRAAAAAASH!!!

With a massive vibration that shook the entire Fresh Storage, the boss’s gigantic body exploded from within. Go Gyeol’s strike, which had not used a single drop of mana, used the mana the boss had gathered itself as a detonator and made it self-destruct. The frost that had covered the ceiling scattered like snow, and the terrible stench was finally washed away.

Silence.

Kang Hoon, lying flat on the floor, barely opened his eyes. Beyond the thick fog, he saw Go Gyeol’s back standing indifferently on top of the broken boss’s remains.

“…….”

He threw away the half-torn pipe, then, as usual, straightened his clothes and checked his wristwatch. He looked like a perfect victor, without a single drop of sweat or a single mana wave felt from him.

“……We won.”

Kwon Do-geun laughed hollowly and sank to the floor. Lee Seong-ha sprawled out spread-eagle and cursed at the sky, while Kang Ji-hyun touched her own cheek with trembling hands and stared at Go Gyeol.

The sight of a human without even mana twisting such a monster to death purely with his body gave even them, Awakened as they were, something close to fearful awe.

Go Gyeol reached into the collapsed boss’s chest and pulled out a blue Mana Stone glowing coldly.

“Heart of Arcadia.”

To think the Heart, which had not appeared even after 20 runs before his Regression, came out in one try.

It seemed that ever since he regressed, his luck, at least, had been ridiculously good.

Putting the Mana Stone into his pocket, Go Gyeol said,

“You were 15 minutes slower than I expected. Especially Kang Hoon, your Curse activation timing is 0.5 seconds late. Once we return, start over with mental discipline training. Begin Kwon Do-geun’s education too.”

“……You Satanic bastard.”

Lee Seong-ha’s grumbling could be heard, but a very faint smile hung at the corner of Go Gyeol’s mouth.

“Let’s go. We should rest now.”