My Assigned Hunters Climb the Tower - Chapter 39

========== CHAPTER 39 ==========

As soon as the air of the 2nd floor seeped into their lungs, sounds of retching erupted here and there.

The damp, earthy smell of the 1st floor was a luxury compared to this. This place reeked with a disgusting stench, as if thousands of tons of food waste and corpses were rotting mixed together. But the real problem was under their feet.

Sagak, sagagak—.

“……Ah, aack! What is this! My leg!”

“Hiiik! Bugs! Bugs are crawling up!”

The floor was already covered in tens of thousands of pale maggots. Larvae the size of finger joints were piled in layers, undulating like waves, and every time the hunters took a step, the grotesque sound of slime bursting filled the cave.

Kang Ji-hyeon’s face had already gone beyond pale to a translucent white. She couldn’t even lift her feet, standing there and trembling all over.

Because of her phobia of bugs, this situation was tens of thousands of times more horrific torture to her than the giant boss on the 1st floor.

The other hunters around them were already in chaos.

“Move! Get off me!”

“My sword won’t cut! It’s too soft, it won’t slice!”

Hwang Tae-ja and the hunters from the Hunter Bureau swung their swords and spewed flames, but there was no end to the bugs, no matter how many they killed.

Instead, the fluids flowing from the corpses of the dead bugs were attracting other bugs, creating a worst-case cycle.

Some hunters slipped on the pile of bugs and fell to the floor, and immediately, hundreds of larvae burrowed into the gaps in their armor.

“Go Gyeol…….”

Lee Seong-ha called out in a trembling voice, trying his best to maintain the face of a calm priest.

“I really…… want to crush them all in the name of the Lord, you know? But I’m so creeped out by even touching the floor that I can’t move. Do something.”

Go Gyeol calmly covered the tip of his nose and turned to look at Lee Seong-ha.

“Seong-ha.”

“Yeah, speak.”

“Float all our party members. Just about a meter off the ground.”

Lee Seong-ha’s eyes widened.

“You should’ve said so sooner! !”

As Lee Seong-ha lightly swung his staff, the bodies of the 5 party members, including Go Gyeol, floated up. As soon as they were separated from the white waves wriggling beneath their feet, Kang Hun wiped his tears, and Kwon Do-geun let out a sigh of relief.

The sight of the ‘Gyeol’ party moving leisurely while floating in the air was sheer shock to the other hunters struggling against the swarm of bugs.

[Wow, using a gravity skill like that is really smart.]

[The others are going crazy because maggots are getting into their shoes, but they’re the only ones peaceful lol]

[But look at that Witch hunter’s expression… looks like she’s about to cry any second]

Go Gyeol tapped the shoulder of Kang Ji-hyeon, who was still frozen.

“Ji-hyeon.”

“……Don’t talk to me. I’m on the verge of losing my mind right now.”

“Pull yourself together. Those things, they’re the bugs you hate the most.”

Kang Ji-hyeon turned her head and glared at Go Gyeol. Her eyes were filled with murderous intent.

Go Gyeol didn’t avoid her gaze and pointed to the egg sacs filling the entire 2nd floor.

“Don’t save your magic. If not now, you won’t have anywhere to use your magic until you pass the 2nd floor. Just pour it all out and burn them all.”

“Burn them?”

“Yeah. Neither physical nor curse attacks work on them. With the feeling of disinfecting this entire space, burn them all without leaving a single one.”

Those words flipped a switch in Kang Ji-hyeon’s head.

‘Disinfection’.

The moment that word struck her brain, fear turned into hatred.

The magic spewing from the tip of Ji-hyeon’s staff began to change from blue to an intense red.

“……Yeah. I’ll exterminate you. Without leaving a single one.”

Kang Ji-hyeon leaped into the air. Soaring up to near the cave ceiling with Lee Seong-ha’s gravity assistance, she aimed her staff downward.

“Burn to death! You filthy things! !!”

Instantly, the entire cave was covered in a massive flame that was blinding. The mad flames forged by the Witch’s mysophobia began to swallow the humid air of the 2nd floor and the swarm of bugs.

The flames spewing from the tip of Kang Ji-hyeon’s staff were not just the result of magic.

It was a karmic fire of purification born solely for ‘extermination,’ forged by her intense disgust and mysophobia toward bugs.

The flames burning in reddish-purple moved as if they were living creatures with their own will. Even while flowing over the swarm of maggots filling the marble floor, her delicate magic control didn’t touch a single hem of the clothes of the hunters who were crawling on the floor in terror. Every time the flames brushed past, the grotesque sagak-sagak sounds turned into a chi-i-ik death rattle without even being able to scream.

“Wow…… is that possible? To distinguish friend from foe so perfectly over such a wide range?”

A veteran hunter who was holding out with a shield in the corner dropped his jaw. As soon as the white larvae that had been pushed up to his feet touched Kang Ji-hyeon’s flames, they instantly turned into black ash and scattered.

Hwang Tae-ja, watching the scene, had his eyes flash. He grasped at once that Kang Ji-hyeon’s firepower was the key to clearing this area.

And he also knew that if he missed this moment, his position would be in jeopardy.

“All fire-type hunters and mages, listen up! Focus your firepower along that woman’s flames right now! Expand the range and burn them all without leaving a single one!”

The hunters, brought to their senses by Hwang Tae-ja’s booming command, unleashed their magic all at once.

“!”

“!”

Kang Ji-hyeon opened the path, and dozens of hunters followed, pouring out firepower. The entire 2nd floor was heated up like a giant furnace.

The sound of tens of thousands of larvae bursting and the foul smell of egg sacs burning vibrated, but the flames did not stop.

“Cough! Cough! The smoke is too thick!”

“What are the wind hunters doing! Circulate the air!”

Hwang Tae-ja’s instructions continued without a break.

“Wind-types, create an airflow toward the ceiling to extract the smoke! Water-type hunters, spray rain into the air to force the ash to settle so it doesn’t spread! Right now!”

When Kwon Do-geun looked at Go Gyeol at Hwang Tae-ja’s command, Go Gyeol nodded.

As the water hunters, including Kwon Do-geun, reached out their hands, thin streams of rain poured from the cave ceiling.

The acrid smoke and black ash were soaked by the moisture and settled to the floor, and visibility began to be secured slowly.

The last remaining larva burned to death at Kang Ji-hyeon’s feet, and all the grotesque egg sacs that had filled the walls fell off, having become lumps of charcoal. As the wave of life that had filled the 2nd floor completely subsided, only a terrible silence lingered in the lobby.

“Haa…… haa…….”

Kang Ji-hyeon, who had been floating in the air while leaning on her staff, slowly descended to the floor. Beads of sweat were forming on her forehead as she let out a sigh of relief. Lee Seong-ha, watching that scene, giggled and slung his staff over his shoulder.

“Hey, Ji-hyeon. You’re really something, you know. You tend to that huge rose garden in your yard, so why do you freak out over just a bug or two? It’s natural for bugs to swarm a flower garden.”

Kang Ji-hyeon narrowed her eyes and glared at Lee Seong-ha.

“The roses in my garden are crystals formed by my magic. They aren’t biological flowers. Naturally, filthy bugs don’t swarm them. Got it?”

“Oh, yes, my apologies. I’m too scared to even talk to you.”

Lee Seong-ha shrugged his shoulders and turned his head toward Go Gyeol. Kang Ji-hyeon also looked at Go Gyeol with desperate eyes. Her makeup was smudged and her hair was disheveled, but her eyes contained a pitiful plea, ‘Please tell me it’s over.’

“Go Gyeol…… the 2nd floor is over now, right? We’re going up now, right?”

Where did her usual haughtiness go? Seeing her looking like she was about to burst into tears any second, Go Gyeol indifferently turned off his tablet and raised one corner of his mouth.

“Well.”

“What? What do you mean ‘well’?”

Go Gyeol took a clean towel out of his sub-space, threw it to Ji-hyeon, and added cruelly.

“Ji-hyeon, you lack common sense. If a kindergartner comes home after getting beaten up outside, what would their parents do?”

“What does that…….”

“You killed ten thousand of their children, wouldn’t it be the natural course of events for the parent to come for revenge?”

As soon as Go Gyeol’s words ended—

“Kieeeeeeeeeek—!!!”

A high-frequency scream that felt like it would tear their eardrums apart struck the entire cave. It was an unpleasant noise that felt like it was scraping directly against their nervous system, on a different level from the roar of Gorg, the boss of the 1st floor.

Kugugugung!

The massive rock wall deep in the cave was torn apart like a sheet of paper. A huge shadow was cast through it.

A monster with a wingspan of 20 meters. Tens of thousands of compound eyes flashing blood-red, and fine hairs that looked harder than steel sprouting all over its body. Every time the creature flapped its wings, the filth that had settled as ash flew up again like a storm.

[Final Boss: Ruler of the Cradle – Avatar of Beelzebub]

“Crazy…… what is that…….”