My Assigned Hunters Climb the Tower - Chapter 30

========== CHAPTER 30 ==========

The party members sat down on the spot as if they had made a pact, gasping for breath. It wasn’t acting. They had actually expended a significant amount of stamina fighting inefficiently.

[Chat Window Reactions]

– Wow…… They actually caught it. That’s insane.

– Got goosebumps when they all rushed in at the end.

– That team really cleared it with teamwork. Their skills are a bit shaky, though.

– I’m gonna vote for that priest and the witch later. They’re working hard.

Go Gyeol turned off the tablet and slowly stood up. There was still no Eyeball Camera above his head, but the viewers were already deeply engrossed in their performance.

“Good work. It was excellent for acting.”

At Go Gyeol’s praise, Lee Seong-ha spat out blood-stained saliva and retorted in a low voice.

“Thanks for the praise, you Satan-like friend. Next time, just let me kill it quickly. I’m going to get muscle aches.”

Go Gyeol didn’t reply and picked up the small loot that had come out of the collapsed Knight’s remains.

World Rank 1? Shortest time record? Those flashy titles are fine to give to guys like Hwang Tae-ja.

When the door back to the lobby opened, what greeted them wasn’t enthusiastic cheers, but only moderate interest toward those who had luckily survived and returned.

Returning to the lobby after crossing the blue dimensional gate of the circular arena. Kang Ji-hyun felt a sense of incongruity as soon as she arrived and stopped walking.

“……What the. Why is it so empty?”

The crowd of 10,000 that had been bustling was nowhere to be seen; only a few thousand hunters were standing sparsely in the wide lobby. No sooner had Kang Ji-hyun’s question ended than a sharp buzzer sound that shook the entire tower rang out.

Ppiiiiiii—!

[Notification: Selection Match Stage 3, Bond of Destiny, has ended.]

[Confirmation: Current number of survivors: 4,821. Survival rate has dropped below 50%.]

“Half of them died? In just one team mission?”

Lee Seong-ha looked around in shock. The smell of blood vibrated throughout the lobby, and the expressions of the returning hunters were all dazed. It meant that many had either been executed at the entrance for failing to save their team, or had been torn apart and eaten by monsters inside the arena.

However, the tower didn’t even give them time to recover from the shock. Immediately, blood-red letters were engraved in the air, and the contents of the 4th Selection Match were revealed.

[Selection Match Stage 4: Masquerade]

[Task: Find and eliminate the 10 Doppelgangers hiding among the hunters.]

[Rule: The lobby exit will not open until all Doppelgangers are eliminated.]

[Warning: The Doppelganger looks exactly like the colleague sitting next to you.]

“Doppelganger……?”

It was the moment Kang Hoon was about to grab Go Gyeol’s hem in fear.

“Aaargh! Ugh, keuheok!”

A piercing scream erupted in the middle of the lobby. Where everyone’s gaze was drawn, a hunter who had been talking to a colleague just moments ago was rolling on the floor with a blue spear stuck in his chest. The one who wielded the spear was none other than the party member who had passed the arena with him.

“Hey! Are you crazy?! Why are you doing this all of a sudden!”

Surrounding hunters began to draw their weapons and distance themselves in shock. Distrust for one another covered the lobby in an instant like poison gas.

At that moment, the tower’s system forcibly overlaid a law once again.

[Special Effect: Veil of Truth is activated.]

[Notification: All party contracts are temporarily dissolved for fairness.]

“Uh……? Go Gyeol-hyung? Why is your face like that!”

Kang Hoon’s scream rang out. When Go Gyeol turned his head to look at his party members, what unfolded before his eyes was a bizarre sight.

Lee Seong-ha, Kang Ji-hyun, Kwon Do-geun, and even Kang Hoon.

Their facial features, which had been clear just moments ago, blurred as if digital noise had been applied, and soon they were crushed into unrecognizable mosaic forms.

It wasn’t just the party members. Nearly 5,000 hunters in the lobby were all standing there, wary of each other with the same mosaic faces. It was the start of a perfect Masquerade where one could only guess by physique and clothing, unable to be sure who was a real human, who was a monster, or even who was their own colleague.

Go Gyeol looked down at his hands. His senses were alive, but his own face, reflected in the eyes of others, must also be hideously crushed.

Go Gyeol’s eyes sank coldly beyond the mosaic. The Masquerade, which had caused the most casualties before his regression, had appeared.

5,000 hunters aiming at each other with crushed faces. Breaking through that terrible silence, Go Gyeol moved first. He reached out into the air and opened his subspace.

Seueuk—.

What rolled out from the gap in space were, unexpectedly, colorful glow bracelets that one might see at an exhibition or festival. Go Gyeol approached the four people whose physique and mana afterimages were familiar among the figures turned into mosaics, and put a bracelet on each of them.

“What is this…?”

A trembling voice flowed from near Kang Hoon’s crushed lips.

“It’s a marker. Since we can’t see faces, use this to identify each other. Yellow is Kang Ji-hyun, blue is Lee Seong-ha, green is Kwon Do-geun, and red is you, Kang Hoon.”

“Hy, Hyung, what about you?”

“I didn’t put one on. In the first place, I don’t have a camera (eyeball) attached, and I’m not a voting target. I’ll handle my own positioning. Don’t scatter.”

When they barely managed to form a line while confirming each other’s existence with the bracelets, tragedy struck without warning.

“Aaaaaargh!!”

The scream erupted in the center of the lobby. One of the two hunters who had been guarding back-to-back until just a moment ago plunged a dagger deep into the neck of the colleague standing next to them. Watching the colleague collapse, the perpetrator tilted their head. A bizarrely torn mouth overlapped on top of the mosaic-processed face.

It was a signal flare.

10 Doppelgangers wearing the skin of ordinary hunters revealed their true colors at the same time.

They were not satisfied with hiding. As if determined to annihilate the survivors, who had been reduced from 10,000 to half, they began to slaughter those around them with beast-like speed.

[Real-time Viewer Reactions – Republic of Korea Integrated Channel]

(Number of viewers: Exceeded 120 million)

dalongcah: Ah… what was that just now? I thought they were real colleagues, but they suddenly slit their throat?

HunterLove: Crazy, look at that! That area is being completely wiped out. The monster is too fast!

Baduk-nuni: Wow, that’s really gross… Since it’s mosaicked, I don’t know who is who, but the blood splattering is clearly visible.

Aengdu-dan: That’s a Doppelganger, right? Looking at how they use skills, they’re copying the skills of the person they just killed?

Sesang-jongmal: They stomped on the head of someone begging for their life… Please turn off the broadcast, this is torture.

TopRanker: The current situation in the lobby isn’t hunters catching monsters, it’s a festival where monsters are hunting hunters. It’s not 10 monsters, it’s like 10 disasters have been unleashed.

The Doppelgangers’ attacks were cruel and cunning. They instantly replicated the voices and skills of those they killed, shouting “Help me!”, “This guy is the monster!” to lure others.

Hunters, fallen into distrust, swung weapons at each other, and taking advantage of that chaos, the Doppelgangers ran even more wild. The lobby floor began to be dyed red in less than 5 minutes.

“……Hey, Go Gyeol.”

A figure wearing a blue glow bracelet approached Go Gyeol. The voice was Lee Seong-ha’s, but due to the mosaic face, it was impossible to tell what expression he was making. However, it was clear that the hand holding the staff was trembling slightly.

“Are you… just going to leave that alone? At this rate, it won’t be 10 monsters, we’ll all die.”

Go Gyeol replied while checking the coldly fluctuating viewer reaction numbers.

“I told you. Now is not the time for us to step up.”

In a scene filled only with screams and fresh blood, Go Gyeol analyzed the multi-angle footage transmitted by 10,000 Eyeball Cameras in real-time through the tablet screen.

“Seong-ha, 9 o’clock direction. Don’t attack, just slightly twist the gravity under that person’s feet.”

“Got it. It’s a friend’s request, so I have to listen.”

Lee Seong-ha, wearing the blue bracelet, lightly flicked his staff. Just before the Doppelganger’s blade could slice a hunter’s neck, gravity fluctuated minutely, and the hunter’s body staggered to the side. By a hair’s breadth, the blade only cut through the air.

“Ji-hyeon, 3 o’clock direction. Pull out a thorn vine very thinly and pull only that person’s waist backward.”

“You’re so annoying, really.”

When Kang Ji-hyun of the yellow bracelet flicked her finger, a rose vine, so thin it was invisible, crawled along the floor and snatched a hunter’s ankle. The moment the hunter fell backward, the Doppelganger’s spear was plunged deep into the spot where he had been standing.

In this way, the Gyeol party was creating miracle-like coincidences all over the battlefield. The hunters who received help, not even knowing why they survived, just thought they were lucky and distanced themselves again, and the Doppelgangers who missed their targets began to panic and reveal weaknesses.

“Kwon Do-geun-ssi, spread the fog wider to make their vision even blurrier. Kang Hoon, you, stiffen their muscles for just a brief moment only when they use their power.”

“Yes, Boss!”

Green and red, members wearing their respective bracelets moved perfectly under Go Gyeol’s command. The two secretly saved others’ lives. They never made a show of having saved them, nor did they draw attention by killing enemies.

At that moment, the giant golden Eyeball Camera floating on the lobby ceiling shook.

“Move aside! You monster bastards!”

Along with storm-like mana, Hwang Tae-ja dove into the center of the battlefield.

He captured the Doppelgangers for whom Go Gyeol’s party had cleverly created weaknesses. The monsters, whose movements had become sluggish from hiding their identities, were enough to become prey for the Rank 1.

Kwa-ang!

As Hwang Tae-ja’s greatsword swept the floor, three monsters wearing hunter skins turned into mud and burst at once.

“As expected of Hwang Tae-ja-nim!”

“Hwang Tae-ja is saving us!”

Cheers erupted from the mouths of the mosaic-processed hunters. Hwang Tae-ja received all those cheers and flew like lightning toward the remaining monsters that Go Gyeol’s party had laid the groundwork for.

Puuk! Kwajik!

In just 10 minutes, all 10 Doppelgangers had their lives ended by Hwang Tae-ja’s hand. The golden camera was broadcasting his heroic aspect to the whole world on a massive scale.

“……Haa, haa.”

After the battle ended and the mosaics slowly lifted, Kang Hoon of the red bracelet approached Go Gyeol and asked in a voice mixed with dissatisfaction.

“Hyung, I… I’m really curious, why didn’t we catch them ourselves? It’s practically the same as us identifying them all and creating the weaknesses, but that guy Hwang Tae-ja took all the credit.”

Lee Seong-ha also looked at Go Gyeol while brushing dust off his staff.

“I agree too. I used half of my mana saving those people, but the viewers are only chanting Hwang Tae-ja’s name.”

Go Gyeol turned off the tablet and scanned his surroundings, where the area above his head was still clean. And looking at his party members with coldly sunken eyes, he opened his mouth.

“We must not stand out right now. We need to stay in the background.”