Auto Hunting

No. 167

Ka-Velin felt the heat coming from the red-hot blade in front of his face. The Queen’s Hug was already too shabby for a suit, but Yoo-seong wasn’t taking it off.

Despite its condition, as long as he was wearing it, it would allow him to use the Flame Psy.

“When you first talked to me, you spoke as if you had more information to give,” Yoo-seong began. “But all you had to tell me was a bunch of lies.”

Ka-Velin knew human languages, but as a Gray, he didn’t know human tones or the nuances of gestures. Despite that, it wasn’t hard for him to recognize that Yoo-seong’s voice was dripping with venom.

“I hope, this time, you’ll tell me something of actual value.”

-If I do… will you spare my life?

“Of course not. No way,” Yoo-seong spat. “But I will be pretty upset if I gain nothing from speaking with you. I don’t think I could get rid of my anger just by killing you.”

-Yes… you…

“Shut up unless you’re going to say something valuable.” Yoo-seong was dead serious.

Still, the trembling creature before him seemed… just like a human.

‘No,’ Yoo-seong thought as he hardened his heart. Rather, it was the leader of a race that regarded humans as livestock. Disgust filled him once more.

“The same rule: I ask; you answer,” he said firmly.

-If I do so, are you saying that you will spare the lives of our group?

Yoo-seong nodded. “First question. You just said ‘our group.’ Are there more of your race in other places? Other communities?”

-Yes.

“Apart from you, there must be other races in this place who ruled the Earth with you, right?”

-How do you know that…

“If you had been the only ones, you could have compelled the other humans to capture the king.”

The Grays had the power to brainwash and control humans. A rebellion wouldn’t have happened if they had been the only ones in control, which meant that not all of the ruling classes had mind-control abilities.

Of course, Yoo-seong had just been speculating about that, but Ka-Velin had now confirmed it himself.

“Then, are you keeping in touch with the other races?”

-……

Suddenly…

Huwook-!

Ka-Velin felt his body losing balance, tilting to the right. In his moment of hesitation, Yoo-seong had cut his left arm off.

[email protected]#%%&%^$$%!!!

“I see. So you can make sounds with your mouth,” Yoo-seong calmly observed, indifferent to the screams of the creature before him.

Ka-Velin’s arm had been cut off above the elbow. Because the blade was coated with unimaginable heat, his entire shoulder had been burned off and turned black immediately.

“I have no other option than to do this if you don’t answer my questions,” Yoo-seong warned.

[email protected]#%&&&&&……!

“Besides, I can’t even tell if you were lying or not. So, if I think you are lying, I’ll just swing my blade again.” Yoo-seong raised it as if to drive home his point. “At least it will be difficult for you to lie if you’re going crazy with pain,” he added.

Then he stared into the dark pools of Ka-Velin’s eyes.

“So don’t tinker in your head over what to say. Just answer me straight out.”

It was then that Ka-Velin realized that his death was inevitable.

“Now, I will ask you again. Are you keeping in touch with the other races?”

-Yes.

“Even so, there don’t seem to be a lot of exchanges, seeing how independently you rule this wasteland.”

-We only get in touch when we exchange necessary resources.

Yoo-seong nodded. Even if the races didn’t appear to be very close, they must have at least one shared purpose.

‘Opening the cracks and destroying humanity.’

“The technology to open the cracks… are you the only race that can do this?”

-No.

“Are you causing the cracks to reopen after we close them?”

-Yes.

“Then why haven’t you taken any action other than reopening the cracks?”

The Thunder Ape that had appeared in Tokyo’s unclosed crack.

The Habaek that had appeared in Korea.

These were flukes in which a divine-level entity had come through an unclosed crack. However, in the unclosed cracks in other parts of the world, such as the one in Hawaii, only the natural monsters that could be found on the terrain had appeared.

No intelligent race, such as the Grays, had come out. If only the Grays had wanted to, they could have unleashed monsters such as the giant stone snake to unleash hell upon humanity.

-Because… we want to see you destroy yourselves.

“What?”

-At first, the cracks were just to gather information… about the sloppy society you’ve built.

Hatred began to overpower the fear in Ka-Velin’s voice.

-The complete trust in the class they call hunters… the ignorance of livestock.

“How scared you must have been to keep waiting for twenty years,” Yoo-seong mocked.

-Have you ever thought about it? The chaos a crack that doesn’t close can bring to your ignorant kind?

Of course, Yoo-seong understood what Ka-Velin was saying. The world would be turned upside down. Perhaps it was already being overturned right now.

-Your simple capacity for reason will be consumed by fear, and you will destroy each other. That is when we will appear to finish you off.

“I get it. We’re done.”

Suddenly, Yoo-seong’s left arm pierced through Ka-Velin’s lower abdomen. The movement was so sudden that the Gray couldn’t even scream this time.

“I don’t know if anything you told me was useful, but this sure is.”

Through the veins of his left arm, Yoo-seong felt himself absorbing the Gray’s CE.

“I have no intention of listening to you anymore.”

Soon, all the CE in Ka-Velin’s core was absorbed. His life ended with it.

Goo Goo Goo-!

The snake’s massive body began to writhe as it regained full control of its body once more.

Yoo-seong pressed the button immediately. He then concentrated Aura on his Blade, which was now covered in flames.

Sook-!

The tip of the blade made contact with the wall of the serpent’s stomach. Even though Yoo-seong did not apply any force, the blade easily broke through the flesh due to its enormous heat. At the very next moment…

Taang-!

Yoo-seong began bursting forward with flaming Explosive Acceleration.

Taang-!

Taang-!

He cast Explosive Acceleration several times, whipping his Blade before him as he went. The inside of the stone snake was heating up like crazy. Before long, Yoo-seong could feel the outside air blowing into the serpent’s cramped insides.

He escaped through the same hellish mouth he had entered by.

“Huuh!”

He stayed in the air after he jumped out, observing the disaster unfolding below him.

“I said I would spare them,” he muttered to himself, “but I don’t need to save them.”

The stone snake’s massive head crashed down onto the garbage towers.

Thud-!

Then it began to thrash around in pain.

From among the buildings, countless Grays began jumping out and running. However, their weak physique made it impossible for them to escape the wild thrashings of the massive snake.

Several others of them stood still with their arms outstretched as if trying to control the snake.

However, it was impossible.

It seemed that only their leader had possessed the power to control such a large and powerful creature.

The stone snake convulsed for a few more minutes as its internal organs continued burning.

Finally…

Goo Goo-!

After it breathed its last, only a cloud of dust remained in the place that had once been home to the Grays.

Auto-Hunt made Yoo-seong land on the now-still snake corpse.

“………?”

Immediately after hitting the surface of the shell…

Tatak-!

His legs began moving.

‘Are we not done yet?’ Yoo-seong thought as the Aura Blade appeared once more on his wrist.

Kaang-!

The snake was clearly dead, but Auto-Hunt began striking its hard-rock skin.

Kaang-!

Kaaang-!

Only then did Yoo-seong figure out what Auto-Hunt was trying to do.

‘The Queen’s Hug.’

His trustworthy armor only had scraps left of itself. It would be more accurate to say that it covered a few parts of his body than to call it a suit.

Kaaang-!

After hundreds of speedy slashes, Auto-Hunt retrieved a fist-sized fragment from the stone serpent.

‘The earthly dragon’s core…’

It was the part of the creature that devoted all its energy to strengthening its shell.

After picking it up, Auto-Hunt began to move again. It made Yoo-seong run from the head to the snake’s tail, slashing and picking up fragments as he went.

Kaang-!

Kaang-!

Once Auto-Hunt had gathered a pile of stone skin fragments, Yoo-seong’s hand was placed over them.

‘Combination.’

The Queen’s Hug would soon be reborn using the scales that Auto-Hunt had just collected.

Yoo-seong hesitated for a moment.

‘The Queen’s Hug.’

It was made out of the Queen Gray Ant shell, the first four-star monster that he had hunted solo, and Sung-wook.

It had saved Yoo-seong’s life several times in the past.

‘If I synthesize it…’

It would be as if he had made a new suit with new materials.

He tapped the remaining scrap of the Queen’s Hug on his chest and gave it a brief goodbye.

‘Good work, friend.’

Then, he placed his hand over the pile once more, focused on the Combination button before him, and blinked.

Pa-oh-!

There came a short flash of light.

The fragments under his hand disappeared, and he felt something heavy on his body.

“Wow… that’s amazing,” a voice from behind him said in Korean.

Yoo-seong immediately turned his head.

A young Caucasian male, probably about twenty years old, was staring back at him.