My Assigned Hunters Climb the Tower - Chapter 19

========== CHAPTER 19 ==========

A giant standing 5 meters tall. Where its head should have been, an old commercial refrigerator was embedded, and blue cold air poured out from the door gap like a waterfall. Dozens of rusty hooks were embedded like tattoos on its taut, leather-like skin, and it held a Chinese cleaver the size of a house in its hand.

As the boss slowly rose, the ice on the storage floor cracked with a loud roar.

“Hey, Go Gyeol. Are you seriously telling me to take that thing down with just this steel pipe? Are you picking out my burial plot right here?”

Lee Seong-ha asked in a trembling voice, gripping the pipe in his hand tighter.

Go Gyeol answered, coldly scanning the Butcher’s movements.

“I told you. The moment you emit even 1 point of mana, the refrigerator on that thing’s head will absorb all surrounding mana and trigger an absolute zero explosion. If you don’t want to freeze to death in an instant, turn off your brain and just use your muscles.”

“F*ck! Is that even a thing to say?!”

“Instead, I’ll give you the strategy to finish this quickly.”

“You promised!”

Kwaaaaang-!

No sooner had he finished speaking than the Butcher slammed its Chinese cleaver into the floor. The marble floor crumpled like paper, and massive shards flew everywhere.

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

At Go Gyeol’s command, the party members threw themselves in all directions.

The Butcher turned with speed unbefitting its massive size and pursued Lee Seong-ha. As the over-2-meter Chinese cleaver swung horizontally, the sound of air tearing filled the storage room.

“Argh!”

Lee Seong-ha rolled on the floor, narrowly dodging the blade.

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

“Kang Ji-hyun, now! Use the hooks!”

Kang Ji-hyun was already in the air. She was navigating the forest of hooks on the ceiling using only her arm strength, suppressing her mana. Her red whip flew like a snake, coiled around a hook, and using the recoil, she landed behind the Butcher.

“Die, you monster bastard!”

Kang Ji-hyun drew her dagger and stabbed it between the Butcher’s back muscles, where the nerve bundles were concentrated. But with a clang! sound, the dagger couldn’t pierce it and bounced off. The Butcher’s skin was already frozen harder than steel.

“No way! It’s not taking damage!”

“Of course not! That thing’s skin has the property of getting harder the lower the external temperature is! Kwon Do-geun, raise the temperature!”

“What? How am I supposed to raise the temperature when I’m a Water Hunter!”

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

“Think back to the scene in the movie where you caused a steam explosion! Don’t use your mana, forcibly condense the moisture in the air to create frictional heat!”

Kwon Do-geun stared blankly at Go Gyeol, then gritted his teeth. Right, this is a movie. I’m playing the role of a technician stripping away the enemy’s defense with superheated steam.

Kwon Do-geun visualized the air around the Butcher. Imagining tens of thousands of water droplets colliding and generating heat. A fine water mist spewed from his fingertips and began to envelop the Butcher. Cold air and steam collided, creating a thick, foul vapor, and the Butcher’s frozen skin began to soften slightly.

“Now! Lee Seong-ha!”

“Alright! ……You tin-headed bastard!”

Lee Seong-ha leaped. He swung the steel pipe with all his might toward the Butcher’s knee joint, revealed through the steam.

Kwajik-!

Finally, the sound of the impact changed. The Butcher’s massive frame lost its center of gravity, and one knee hit the floor.

-Kwaaaaaaa!!

The Butcher roared, throwing open the refrigerator door on its head.

What poured out from inside wasn’t just cold air. It was ‘Cursed Cold,’ mixed with the stench of already rotting meat and the screams of souls imbued with the pain of their past lives. The temperature inside the storage room plummeted to below minus 40 degrees in an instant.

Frost settled on the party members’ eyebrows, and the air entering their lungs turned into blades. It was a desperate moment where muscles froze and movements slowed.

“Kang Hun! It’s your turn!”

Kang Hun was already slumped on the floor. His eyes were rolled back, leaving only the whites, and black smoke was constantly leaking from his mouth. Go Gyeol gripped Kang Hun’s shoulder tightly, holding him so he wouldn’t lose his tether to reality.

“Kang Hun, feel it. Things colder than the cold filling this room right now. Pour all those freezing emotions felt by the marginalized people all over the world into that thing!”

“……Ugh, ugh…….”

Kang Hun’s shadow expanded like a living monster. The sensations of ‘hunger,’ ‘deprivation,’ and ‘cold’ felt by billions of humans around the world began to flow backward through Kang Hun as a conduit into the Butcher.

[Curse: Hunger of Billions]

The Butcher’s movements stopped. The cooling device on its head whirred with a maddening sound, but its body was already consumed by the curse. The Butcher writhed, clutching its stomach. A primal hunger that could not be sated no matter how much it ate began to gnaw at its insides.

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

Simultaneously with Go Gyeol’s instruction, Kang Ji-hyun soared again, riding the hooks. She swung her whip in the air, wrapping it around the massive pulley device fixed to the ceiling above the boss’s head.

“Lee Seong-ha, support from below!”

Lee Seong-ha gathered the debris of shopping carts scattered on the floor to make a stepping platform. He jammed 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 her whip in the air and dropped vertically onto the boss’s head. In her hand, she was already holding a sharp meat hook she had picked up.

“Eat up, you pig bastard!”

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

-Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwang!!

Finally, the boss’s cooling device couldn’t withstand the overload and exploded. Ice shards and black liquid splattered everywhere. The boss fell backward, letting out a death rattle.

However, Go Gyeol’s eyes remained sharp.

‘Not yet. The heart is still beating.’

Even while fallen, the boss threatened the party members by swinging its Chinese cleaver. It was its final struggle. Lee Seong-ha and Kang Ji-hyun, whose stamina was already bottomed out, retreated while gasping for air.

Kang Hun was on the verge of fainting, and Kwon Do-geun also had no strength to lift a finger.

Go Gyeol walked forward slowly. He stood before the boss’s massive shadow and picked up Lee Seong-ha’s crushed steel pipe that had fallen to the floor.

“……Hey, Go Gyeol! What are you doing! Get out of there!”

Lee Seong-ha shouted, but Go Gyeol didn’t stop. He approached right in front of the boss. The boss emitted a gaze filled with hatred and tried to slam down the Chinese cleaver.

Go Gyeol didn’t dodge and looked at the boss. It was a terrifyingly ordinary yet chilling gaze, with not a single speck of mana felt.

‘Now.’

The boss’s cooling device made a bizarre roar as it sucked in the remaining mana in the vicinity for self-destruction. Blue light flickered through the gap in the refrigerator door as if running wild. Go Gyeol read that momentary vibration. It was the Butcher’s final struggle pattern that he had watched thousands of times before his regression.

The moment the boss squeezed out its remaining strength to slam down the Chinese cleaver, Go Gyeol twisted his head by a mere span.

Swish!

The blade grazed his cheek and crushed the floor, but Go Gyeol didn’t even blink. Instead, he used the force of that slam as a stepping stone and lightly leaped onto the boss’s shoulder. It was a maneuver achieved without the help of mana, only with muscle elasticity and perfect timing.

The internal mana circulation pipe was exposed through the gap where the armor plating on the boss’s nape had opened.

“…….”

Go Gyeol coldly jammed the crushed steel pipe deep into that gap. And with his full weight, he twisted the pipe vertically.

Grind, kwajik!

Pure physical strength, without a single bit of mana enhancement, crushed the pipe. Coolant backflowed, and the massive mana condensing inside the boss lost its way and began to churn.

“The end.”

Go Gyeol muttered as he pushed the pipe in all the way. 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.

-Kwaaaaaaaang!!!

The boss’s massive body exploded from within, accompanied by a massive tremor that shook the entire Fresh Storage. Go Gyeol’s strike, which didn’t use a single drop of mana, had caused the boss to self-destruct by using the mana it had gathered itself as a detonator. The frost that had covered the ceiling scattered like snow, and the foul stench was finally washed away.

Silence.

Kang Hun barely opened his eyes while lying on the floor. Beyond the thick fog, he saw Go Gyeol’s back standing indifferently on the debris of the broken boss.

“…….”

He threw away the half-shredded pipe, straightened his clothes as usual, and checked his wristwatch. It was the appearance of a perfect victor, with not a single drop of sweat or a single mana fluctuation felt.

“……We won.”

Kwon Do-geun laughed hollowly and sat down on the floor. Lee Seong-ha sprawled out, cursing toward the sky, and Kang Ji-hyun stared at Go Gyeol, touching her cheek with trembling hands.

The sight of a human without even mana purely twisting and killing such a monster with his body presented a sense of wonder bordering on terror, even to them, the Awakened.

Go Gyeol took out a blue magic stone that was shining coldly from inside the collapsed boss’s chest.

‘Heart of Arcadia’.

To think the heart, which didn’t drop even after 20 runs before his regression, came out right away on the first try.

It seemed his luck had been incredibly good since he regressed.

Go Gyeol, having put the magic stone in his pocket, said.

“You’re 15 minutes late compared to my expectations. Especially Kang Hun, your curse activation timing is 0.5 seconds late. When we return, start with mental training again. Start Kwon Do-geun’s training, too.”

“……You Satan-like bastard.”

Lee Seong-ha’s grumbling could be heard, but a very faint smile hung on Go Gyeol’s lips.

“Let’s go. Time to rest now.”