The lump of flesh beneath my feet squirmed.
Crushed steel plates and blood clotted together, making a grotesque scraping sound.
Regeneration.
It was a horrifically perverse rate of recovery.
I had no interest in standing still and watching the monster resurrect itself.
I kicked off the ground and shot upward.
—Shwoooosh.
In an instant, I put hundreds of meters of distance between us.
I spread my right palm wide and pointed it downward.
I drew up the mana within my body and pushed it into the center of my palm.
Blue light compressed, dyeing my vision white.
Aim. Fire.
—KWAAAAANG—!
A massive pillar of energy poured down toward the ground like a waterfall.
The regenerating flesh and earth evaporated wholesale.
An ear-splitting roar.
Dust within a radius of several kilometers surged up like a tidal wave.
I floated in midair, looking down.
A thick cloud of acrid dust completely obscured my view.
After pouring out that much, it should have burned down to the cellular level.
—Shiiiiik—!
That's when it happened.
A pitch-black shadow shot up through the dust cloud.
An elephant's trunk.
A massive hunk of metal wrapped in thousands of tons of steel armor sliced through the air like a whip.
I didn't dodge.
I wrapped mana around my entire body, pushing my physical durability to its limit.
I caught the extending trunk head-on.
—KWANG—!
A rupturing sound burst forth as if my palm would tear.
The steel surface crumpled, caught perfectly in my grip.
Brute strength.
The corner of my mouth twisted upward.
"Where do you think you're going?"
I injected mana into the trunk I'd caught and squeezed tight.
I twisted my body half a rotation in midair.
Using centrifugal force and overwhelming muscle power, I lifted the creature's main body on the ground wholesale.
—KUGUGUGUGUNG!
The mountain-range-sized beast's body was dragged up through the dust cloud into the air.
The massive hunk of metal thrashed about.
I changed direction and mercilessly hurled it toward the ground.
—KWAAAAANG—!!!
The earth split in two.
The crust twisted as if an earthquake had struck, and another massive crater was carved out.
The shockwave swept through the gorge once more.
—KRAAAAAAA!!
The beast let out a tearing roar.
Its back hide burst and bones broke, but it stubbornly rose again.
Metal fragments and rocks from the surroundings clung to the shattered areas, instantly filling the wounds.
Tenacious regeneration.
The creature opened its maw wide.
A blazing furnace-like light flashed from deep within its massive esophagus.
—KWAAAAA—!
A rupturing sound breaking the sound barrier.
Tens of thousands of compressed metal chunks poured toward the sky like anti-aircraft fire.
Each one was a massive mass weapon, as if made by compressing a tank's armor plate.
The sky turned pitch black.
A wide-area bombardment with no space to dodge.
Annoying.
Even waving my hand felt bothersome.
I deployed a mana field in a circle beneath my feet.
An overwhelming defensive barrier several meters thick.
—Tutututututuk—! Kwang!
The metal spikes shattered with ticking sounds as they struck the field.
Not a single crack appeared on the field's surface.
But the creature's attack didn't stop.
The shattered metal fragments regathered in midair, transforming into the shape of massive chains that flew toward my ankles.
"Where do you think you're going?"
I gathered mana at my toes and stomped on the extending chains.
—PAAT—!
The chains shattered into pieces and scattered.
Simultaneously, I kicked off the air and dove straight down.
If it kept getting up no matter how many times I slammed it, I just had to crush it until it couldn't get up anymore.
In an instant, I dropped onto the creature's crown.
I raised my right hand.
I compressed mana to the extreme and visualized the form of a massive hammer in my mind.
"Sit."
With that indifferent word, I drove my fist down.
—KWAAAAANG—!
An invisible impact struck the creature's back.
The beast's four massive legs buckled and were driven into the earth.
Crack.
The sound of its steel spine crumbling echoed through the gorge.
Dark red blood mixed with molten metal spewed from the creature's mouth.
But it wasn't over.
The creature sucked in abandoned Chinese military armored vehicles and metal scraps scattered on the ground through its trunk.
—Crunch crunch.
A chilling sound.
Its broken spine reconnected instantly.
The armor plating became much thicker than before.
A bizarre mechanism that grew harder the more it was hit, the more it consumed.
Persistent. I need to go eat.
Irritation welled up.
I kicked off the ground again and dove toward its face.
The massive lion's hindquarters sprang up, swinging sharp forepaws.
A trajectory that could split a building in two.
I didn't dodge and charged straight ahead.
—PUHK—!
My small fist struck the base of the creature's massive elephant trunk first.
The shockwave penetrated through the back of the monster's head.
"KIEEEEEEK—!"
With a pained scream, half the trunk was torn off.
I didn't stop.
I rotated my body in midair and drove a kick into its jaw.
—KANG—! KWAJIK!
The thick steel armor crumpled like paper and the entire mandible flew off.
The creature couldn't maintain its massive body and toppled sideways.
An overwhelming one-sided beating.
Blood and metal dust sprayed in all directions.
But the moment I blew off its jaw, the torn trunk grotesquely writhed and grew back.
Sharp metal fragments sprouted like blades from the cross-section of the shattered jaw, aiming for my neck.
A surprise attack from a blind spot.
"Get lost."
I swatted the blade away with my left hand.
The steel blade shattered the moment it touched my thin hand.
My mana-coated physical durability was hundreds of times harder than that scrap metal.
I leaped back into the sky to adjust distance.
The beast rose to its feet.
Its body had grown even more massive than before.
It seemed to have absorbed even trace minerals mixed in the surrounding dirt and rocks.
The beast roared and slammed its forepaw into the earth.
—UUUUUUNG—!
A bizarre magnetic wave.
All scrap iron and armored vehicle wreckage within a radius of dozens of kilometers floated into the air.
Tens of thousands of tons of scrap metal swirled, forming a massive storm centered on me.
A prison of steel.
A dense dome of metal chunks that didn't even let light in completely trapped me.
It intended to crush me to death.
Steel walls closed in from all sides with a terrible noise.
How boring.
I explosively released mana throughout my body.
—KWAAAAANG—!
A single mana release.
The tens of thousands of tons of steel dome trapping me burst outward in a sphere.
I shot upward through the metal fragments pouring down like rain.
The creature, which had focused only on defense, began changing form again.
Its massive trunk split into three branches and transformed into sharp spears.
The creature kicked off the ground and flew up, thrusting spears at me from all directions as I floated in the air.
Chang! Chaechang! Kwang!
Sparks flew as the mana field and steel spears collided.
I twisted my trajectory, dodging or deflecting all the spears.
The creature's attack speed gradually increased.
Lion claws and elephant spears alternated, dizzying my vision.
A tedious war of attrition.
Simple physical strikes wouldn't cut it.
Crush it and it reattaches, break it and it grows back harder.
If I kept hitting it like this, even pulling an all-nighter wouldn't be enough.
When will this even end? This is driving me crazy. I pressed my forehead and let out a short sigh.
Messy brawls aren't my style.
If I couldn't break through the limits of recovery with physical strikes, I had to disintegrate it at the cellular level without giving it a chance to regenerate.
This tedious back-and-forth ends here.
I raised my right hand and brought my index and middle fingers together.
I flicked lightly.
—Suhguhk. Suhguhguhguhk!
The steel hide was sliced like cutting tofu.
The creature's limbs separated, and its torso was dismantled into perfectly cubic pieces.
Blood poured down like a waterfall.
But it wasn't over.
The meat chunks diced into cubes extended disgusting blood vessels and pulled each other back together.
An absurd vitality.
At this point, I had a perfect guess about the beast's identity.
'It eats metal and grows. An elephant's trunk with a lion's hindquarters. And immortal regeneration.'
The form and habits were too clear.
A monster from imagination recorded in ancient legends.
Bulgasari.
An unkillable beast.
'Why is an East Asian legendary monster coming out of a Gate?'
The question crossed my mind.
It was on a different level from the goblins and orc hordes I'd been cutting down.
A creature recorded in Earth's legends had appeared from a Gate.
It felt too unsettling to dismiss as coincidence.
But philosophical pondering could wait until I was lying in bed later.
Right now, incinerating those annoying chunks of meat completely came first.
'The legend of the Bulgasari.'
The only way to kill a monster that ate metal and regenerated infinitely.
Only by melting it with scorching fire.
I extended my right hand into the air.
I converted the pure mana within my body into boiling ultra-high-temperature flames.
The surrounding atmosphere distorted like a heat haze as oxygen burned away.
Crimson flames gathered in my grip.
I brought both hands together in front of my chest.
An ultra-high-temperature ember compressed to the extreme rose between my fingers.
The surrounding atmosphere distorted like a heat haze as oxygen burned away.
I slowly pulled my right hand back.
A bizarre and peculiar posture, as if drawing an invisible bowstring.
The ember at my fingertips writhed as if devouring all surrounding light and heat.
The mana overload even created the illusion that space around the ember was burning pitch black.
Aim complete.
I looked down indifferently at the Bulgasari, which had finished regenerating and was roaring ferociously again.
I spat out in a dry voice.
"You said you'd devour everything. Try eating this."
I flicked my finger.
The compressed extreme-heat ember shot down toward the ground.
—Shwuuuuuk—!
The tiny ember that left my fingertip tore through the air.
The atmosphere burned pitch black along the trajectory of the pinpoint flame.
It landed precisely on the crown of the ferociously roaring Bulgasari.
That moment.
Not even an explosion could be heard.
The compressed absolute heat expanded mercilessly, swallowing all surrounding sound and air in one gulp.
—HWAAAAAAAAAK—!!!
A blinding flash erupted as if the sun had been dropped to the ground.
The tens of thousands of tons of steel armor covering the Bulgasari's torso melted like ice cream.
Overwhelming incineration that didn't even give it time to regenerate.
—KIEEEEEEEEK!!!
The monster's terrible death throes echoed through the gorge, but were soon buried in the massive flames and disappeared.
Bone, flesh, and fused metal burned away at the molecular level.
The Bulgasari legend was accurate.
Before overwhelming firepower, even an immortal monster became nothing but a handful of ash.
The flames gradually died down.
The barren rocks on the ground had melted red like lava from the heat and were bubbling.
I slowly lowered altitude and descended to the center of the crater.
Suffocating heat.
I blocked the hot air with a mana field and surveyed the surroundings.
The massive beast had vanished without a trace.
Only black ash and melted metal remained.
In the center, something small and round was faintly glowing.
I approached and reached out.
I pulled the object toward me with telekinesis.
What settled on my palm was a red bead about the size of a ping-pong ball.
"A Mana Stone?"
No.
Ordinary Mana Stones from Gates had rough, irregularly crystalline forms.
But this bead's surface was perfectly smooth, as if artificially polished.
Moreover, the wavelength of energy the bead contained.
It wasn't the turbid mana of rough, violent monsters.
Purely refined, eerily clear and hot energy.
Like an Inner Core from a martial arts novel.
The corrupted ancient text I'd seen in the guild master's office last time.
And now an East Asian legendary monster Bulgasari, plus this unidentified bead.
Too many things were suspiciously interlocking to dismiss as coincidence.
"What the hell is beyond the Gates?"
A bitter taste filled my mouth.
If I carelessly handed this bead over to the Association or government agents, I'd obviously be plagued with annoying investigations and summons again.
What mattered most to me right now was getting off work and resting.
I roughly shoved the bead deep into my training suit pocket.
Better to roll it around and analyze it alone in my room later.
I kicked off the ground and shot back into the air.
The operations commander's trembling voice came through the communicator in my ear.
—K-Kang Hunter-nim! The target's vital signs have completely disappeared! The operation is a great success!
"Cleanup's done, so handle the wreckage collection and aftermath yourselves. I'm leaving."
—Ah! Yes! Thank you for your hard work! Please return safely!
I cut the communication.
The fighter squadron waiting in the sky approached me, shaking their wings and forming an escort formation.
The operation was over.
Now I just needed to return to the penthouse, wash up cleanly, and shove the Korean beef omakase I'd promised my sister into my mouth.
I flew south.
Throughout the flight cutting through the metallic wind at supersonic speed, the red bead in my pocket emitted a faint warmth.
Legendary creatures and Inner Cores.
Terribly unsettling and creepy questions about the origin of Gates circled in my head.
It was an exhausting commute home.
