Episode 15
Chapter 6: Monster (2)
The surprised students all stopped their attacks, but the dog that had been on the receiving end had no intention of staying still. When the annoying attacks before its eyes ceased, the dog charged at the human in front of it.
“Aack!”
Seeing the dog suddenly charge, the surprised student let out a scream and closed his eyes.
“Yelp!”
But there was no attack from the dog lunging at him; instead, only the dog’s pained cry rang out. The back of another person was visible before his eyes.
“You’re in the way. Get out of here, fast.”
Yeonghun shouted at the students standing there blankly.
He had rushed in urgently and struck the dog with his fist when it tried to bite the student in front of him. His fist smashed into the dog’s face, and due to the habitually reinforced dimensional power, the dog sprayed blood and was flung backward.
“As expected.”
Yeonghun frowned, looking at the dog spraying blood. He could see with his own eyes that the impact was weak due to the repulsion between dimensional powers. An ability user’s dimensional power without a weapon was a sorry state.
In his current state, the dimensional powers canceled each other out, leaving him fighting the monster dogs with his physical abilities alone.
The dog that had collapsed bleeding from Yeonghun’s attack—no, the F-rank monster—slowly rose to its feet. As expected, it was no ordinary dog.
The monsters that had crossed over from the dimension were different from ordinary animals in more ways than just being unaffected by ordinary people’s attacks. Their basic physical abilities were greatly enhanced.
“Hurry up and go. We need to take Gyeongtae to the hospital.”
The other students had already all fled.
Only the student who had stopped his friends from fleeing a moment ago to protect the fallen student remained, along with one other student.
That student looked at his friend trembling in fear beside him and made a decision. In the end, he supported his injured friend from both sides and left the area.
“I’ll go down and bring people.”
Those were the last words the student left as he departed.
Yeonghun smirked at his words. There were still many people in this world who were wet behind the ears. Seeing someone worrying about business that wasn’t his own, Yeonghun felt a rather strange sensation.
“Now that everyone’s out of the way, shall we get started?”
Yeonghun drew up the dimensional power throughout his entire body. Though the amount was still small, the firmly anchored dimensional power began to wrap around his whole body. Light began to gather at the ends of his outstretched hands.
The other monster dogs began to move cautiously after one of them was injured by Yeonghun’s hand. The dogs began to circle around Yeonghun.
‘Four in total, one injured.’
Yeonghun took in the dogs circling him. They were more numerous than expected, but it didn’t matter. He had fought this many times before.
‘Quick resolution.’
He immediately charged at the dog with the wounded face right before his eyes. If there was a leader, take down the leader; if there was no leader, take down the weakest—that was the basic way he had fought in combat all this time.
The dogs all flinched at his sudden charge. And that became an opportunity for Yeonghun.
Charging at the dog still bleeding, he plunged his glowing fingertips into its neck.
Crunch!
His hand was half-buried in the dog’s neck. And he gripped his hand embedded in the neck and tore out its throat. Blood gushed from the half-torn neck.
‘One.’
Its body structure wasn’t much different from ordinary animals anyway. At this level, it could no longer participate in the fight. Yeonghun shook the blood from his hand and charged at the dog beside him.
“Grrr.”
When Yeonghun charged at it, that dog instead lowered its body and tried to pounce at Yeonghun. The dog’s claws and fangs began to lengthen.
The true form of the F-type monster feral dog began to reveal itself. The feral dog planted its feet and hurled its body at the charging Yeonghun.
The other feral dogs’ claws and fangs began to lengthen as well.
They all began to go on guard against Yeonghun.
Rip!
Yeonghun’s shirt got caught on the fangs of the feral dog charging at him and was torn long. Yeonghun had dodged the feral dog’s attack to the side, but his clothes had gotten caught on its fangs.
‘Damn it, that’s a week’s living expenses!’
Yeonghun frowned and plunged his hand into the side of the feral dog brushing past him. His fingertips were glowing brightly.
Thud!
A loud sound came from the feral dog’s side, and it tumbled away. There were four finger-sized holes in the feral dog’s side, and blood gushed from them.
And the other feral dogs charged at Yeonghun, who was frowning because his hand hurt from using excessive force while angry.
A band of light formed on the back of Yeonghun’s hand. Yeonghun also hurled his body at the feral dogs.
Yeonghun’s hands danced among the feral dogs.
***
“Hurry. That person can’t stop them all alone.”
A student and some neighborhood adults were climbing the mountain.
The student who had spoken to Yeonghun kept his promise.
The student took his friend down below, put his other friend and the injured friend into a passing car, and sent them off.
And he had asked the neighborhood elders to come up to the vacant lot where Yeonghun was.
“If what you say is true, that person probably ran away too. You don’t need to worry so much.”
One of the elders following calmed the student down as he rushed too much.
“Still, stray dogs that don’t flinch no matter how much you hit them? That’s way too exaggerated.”
Another young man shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the student’s words. Still, he was simply grateful that they had followed.
Soon after, they turned the corner, and the sight of the vacant lot that appeared before them left them speechless with shock.
“Gasp!”
Crossing over a small hill, what they saw in the vacant lot was the fallen carcasses of dogs strewn in every direction. Carcasses with half-torn necks, carcasses with holes in their stomachs, dog carcasses riddled with holes and tears everywhere were scattered all around.
Everyone retched at the horrific sight and frowned.
The student covered his mouth with his hand and approached the dog with the half-torn neck.
Examining the dog carefully, it was cut open at the chest as well as the neck. The flesh inside was dug up as if something had been excavated from within.
He lifted the scrap of cloth caught in the dog’s fangs. There was no blood anywhere on it.
It was clear that the man he had seen moments ago had killed all these dogs and left. To think he had killed several monster-like dogs that wouldn’t flinch no matter how much they were beaten, bare-handed and not just one—he was definitely no ordinary person.
He thought of the special people who had been causing a stir on the internet lately. Perhaps that man had been an ability user too.
“It seems a lion of justice like Superman still remains.”
The student smirked, holding the piece of clothing.
***
“The earnings are pretty decent in their own way.”
The lion of justice thought of the dimensional cores inside his thermos and was satisfied.
The remaining two feral dogs were quickly taken care of by Yeonghun. At first his movements were a bit awkward, but as time passed, it felt like his skills from the other dimension were returning. As expected, actual combat was the most effective.
He still felt a bit cold. Yeonghun shivered, holding his workout jacket that was torn all over.
He had been startled that the monsters appeared absurdly quickly, but they were bound to appear anyway. Yeonghun, who had been mentally prepared, was able to calm down quickly.
The appearance of monsters was the worst situation for this world, but for Yeonghun it was merely something that had to happen. Yeonghun had actually been worried that his abilities would no longer improve through training alone, so he was even glad the monsters had appeared.
An ability user’s dimensional power strengthening and leveling up were basically only possible through fighting monsters. It was because the ability user’s dimensional power grew stronger through the repulsion between dimensional powers.
That was precisely why fighting stronger monsters made dimensional power increase faster.
Of course, monsters also had their dimensional power strengthened when fighting ability users. That was one of the reasons they had to be sure to kill monsters when they fought.
If they failed to keep killing monsters and left them alone, there was no telling where a monster of tremendous level might appear.
Yeonghun was very disappointed that he couldn’t know how much his dimensional power had increased. He needed a dimensional power detector, but there was no way to acquire one right now.
‘Four uncontaminated dimensional cores.’
He felt he would probably have to use them to strengthen his own dimensional power. If it were the other world, he might have been able to sell them for a considerable sum, but he felt he needed to watch the situation a bit longer. For now, improving his own abilities was most important.
Yeonghun returned home and checked the internet. There was no way monsters had appeared only around him.
After searching for a long time, he finally found stories about strange beasts.
Stories of dogs, cats, and wild animals attacking people in many countries and leisurely disappearing even after being shot and stabbed were posted on the internet.
But swept up in the many rumors still circulating, almost no one believed them.
When Yeonghun checked the first date that videos appeared, he found that posts had started going up two days ago.
‘If it’s been two days, the government or that company called Link System should have noticed.’
If they had known about the monsters’ appearance beforehand, they would have definitely caught on immediately with just this level of stories.
But no separate contact had come yet. And so time passed.
Eventually, the monsters began to become an issue. Videos began to be uploaded, and articles began to come out on the news.
Eventually, three days after Yeonghun caught the monster, an article about monsters was broadcast on the evening news.
And that night, Yeonghun received a phone call.
The content of the call was an emergency summons, as expected. He was told to come to the city hall the next day.
Yeonghun readily accepted, and the next morning he headed to the city hall.
There were hardly any ability users consulting at the office now. Apparently quite a few people had registered shortly after he did, but it seemed the number of people registering had decreased as time passed.
And it was clear that newly appearing ability users were now down to only a few per day in Seoul.
The assembly place was not this office but the one next to it. Yeonghun followed the guide signs and entered the office.
It was a large office as well, but all the furniture inside had been cleared and chairs were lined up in rows. It looked like some kind of presentation hall.
Many people were seated.
He could see at least 20 to 30 people. And since he wasn’t late, it was clear more people would come after him.
One of them was someone Yeonghun knew as well. Yeonghun sat down in a seat and saw her.
“Hello.”
Eunseo greeted Yeonghun neatly. Today as well, she wore a suit with neatly arranged long straight hair.
Yeonghun nodded to her and sat in an empty chair.
He looked around. Few people seemed to be connecting the appearance of the monsters with this summons. After all, it hadn’t yet been revealed that only ability users could kill monsters.
Shortly after, the front door of the meeting room opened and several people entered. One was the man in a suit he had seen during the examination; the others were people he was seeing for the first time.
Two looked like public officials, while another was a man who appeared to be in his mid-30s, boasted a height in the late 180-centimeter range, and had an enormous build. He looked just like an MMA fighter.
The man in the suit looked around at the people gathered by the long conference table, then stood at the front of the meeting room and began to speak.
“Thank you for coming. I am O Insik of Link System. You may call me Manager O.”
And he introduced the two people in front. As Yeonghun had expected, they were from the government side.
And he introduced the large man standing beside him.
“This is Mr. Seo Donghyeok, an ability user. He is an ability user affiliated with our company.”
Yeonghun remembered who he was upon hearing this.
He had never seen his face, but he had seen his name in a newspaper from the other world.
He still remembered the headline of the article that bore his name.
“[Troubles in Dimensional Connector Development. This Time, Korean Test Agent Reduced to Vegetative State]”
And below that, among the names of the deceased, the name Seo Donghyeok had been written.