3
1.
He suddenly came to his senses at Seongmo-ran’s question.
As I looked at the Jeokbonghwan again, the vibration had stopped before I knew it. ‘Am I mistaken?’ Wasn’t that a bracelet hanging from my arm, not secured?
‘If you move the wrong way, you might waver, and then you might move on your own…’ ‘What the hell.’ Escaping reality is of no help in a situation like this.
The only way to solve a problem that arises is to face it squarely.
It could be a coincidence.
The bracelet might have shaken by chance…
But the blasphemous word ‘Cheonma’ came out of that damn monkey’s mouth.
If you interpret even this positively when such terribly ominous events have happened twice in a row, you are out of your mind.
And I’m not a weirdo.
“Where did the main force go?”
I pressed the stragglers, but no useful information came out.
Besides, there wasn’t anything I could do with guys who had lost their sense of direction to begin with.
I grabbed the hunter by the collar.
“……
“D-It’s a curse from a spirit… …, a spirit is watching us… …”
It is said that when a person experiences something too shocking, they lose their mind.
There are far too many people like this on the battlefield. Guys who have lived with death their entire lives, yet lose their minds when faced with an unexpected moment of misfortune.
If we don’t treat these guys quickly, it will cause bigger problems for our allies.
“Young Master Jin, what are you doing now…….”
“That’s a relief. Because I learned the treatment method.”
Poem, the curse of the spirit… … .”
puck!
The guy’s head tilts halfway, and his dazed gaze returns slightly.
“Burp…… Th-the spirit…….”
“Why is the guy who was bragging about hunting spirits now trembling in fear of a curse?”
You still need more treatment.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
As I struck only the most painful pressure point, the hunter thrashed his hands.
“S-Stop! Stop it! What on earth…!”
Oh, it looks like his head has finally been fixed.
I asked without lowering the hand I had raised toward him.
Where did the main force go?
“…….”
Are there still aftereffects?
A beating is the cure for the aftereffects…
“I-I will speak! I will speak, so…… lower your fist.”
The hunter, bleeding profusely from the corners of his mouth, pointed north with his trembling finger.
“Uh, over there… went over there.”
Take the lead.
“W-Do you intend to chase after them? Are you crazy? And even if you know the direction, there is already a half-day’s distance between us, so how are you supposed to chase after them…!”
Where are you selling your lies?
“You guys must have a way to track each other’s locations. Do you think I wouldn’t know?”
They aren’t the kind of guys to come into this labyrinthine place without even preparing to avoid getting lost.
Since there was no answer, I raised my blood-stained fist again, and the guy covered his face with both hands.
“Ah, I understand. I will guide you. Just who on earth is this human being called the Representative of Baekdo… Ah, no! I didn’t say anything…! Um, and I will absolutely not be leading the way…”
As soon as I let go of the hunter’s collar, he scurried backward.
“What on earth is this?”
Seong Moran frowned as if she had seen something terrible.
“Surely you aren’t thinking of chasing after the instructors? They wouldn’t just sit still… saying you interfered with them.”
“In my estimation, the instructors won’t be a big problem.”
After all, you only raise an issue when there really isn’t a big problem.#The group joined by the stragglers moved slowly.
Because they had to carry the injured on their backs to cross Cheonyeonjin.
Moreover, I also encountered a monster in the midst of that.
Two of them, which were barely visible when we went looking for them, appeared at once and startled the group.
“Destroy it!”
“four!”
Of course, thanks to the team members skilled in monster hunting, there were no major problems.
We chased the instructors based on the Daphne that hunters use to track each other.
And I was able to meet other dropouts.
This is.
That’s going to be a big problem.
Three people died among the stragglers found this time.
Most of those left behind are also in a state of severe injury.
Seong Moran could not hide her anger and burst out.
“Even if you are blinded by your faith, isn’t this crossing the line?”
I agree.
The instructors probably agree with that, too.
No matter how much spiritual power is obtained, if so many students die at the academy, the problem will spiral out of control.
“Hey, what happened?”
“jin……
So-un?
I tried to wake up the student who looked the most normal among the injured to hear the inside story, but…
“Spirit… we shouldn’t have hunted… Never mind. It’s our fault…”
He barely managed to utter just these words before collapsing.
Yang Ja-pyeong asked me while moaning.
What should I do?
Let’s take care of the injured first and get moving.
The number of injured has already exceeded half of the unharmed.
It was clear that dealing with monsters would be difficult if I took them with me, but I couldn’t just leave them behind either.
“The corpse is…….”
“I’ll leave it here for now. We’ll retrieve it later with the help of Namgwonmun.”
All right.”
Yang Ja-pyeong, who seemed to have a lot to say, soon nodded.
While forming a large formation to move again.
Chir-r-r.
A rumbling, unwelcome sound was heard.
“Damn it…….”
Five pairs of yellow eyes gleamed through the bushes.
After assuming a defensive posture, I quietly shouted toward the surroundings.
“Prepare for battle!”
As if they had been waiting for this moment, five monsters burst out simultaneously. I tried to move as fast as I could, but my speed gradually slowed down.
Most of the stragglers were injured and unable to move, or were of no help in terms of combat power, and in the midst of that, monsters kept popping up.
“Why on earth are there more and more……!”
Seongmoran screams, but there is no way a monster would respectfully back away upon hearing those words.
On the contrary, there were some monsters that attacked even more violently, as if aware that we were in a difficult situation, or exploited weaknesses to attack only the injured.
“Phew……!”
I have already dealt with nearly ten monsters.
Smack.
There was no capacity to absorb the arrogance.
There were so many eyes watching.
I distributed even the smallest spiritual pills and had the team members take them. After all, I didn’t have the energy to practice cultivation right now.
at that time.
“What is that?”
One of the students at the academy, who had a broken arm and was wearing a splint, pointed out our behavior.
I answered briefly.
The Inner Core of the Monster.
“A monster’s inner core? I didn’t know such a thing existed.”
What is he trying to say?
Have you been the only ones eating those things all this time?
Hmm, so I see you just wanted to spout some nonsense.
I answered, tilting my head to the side.
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
The sense of entitlement is deeply embedded in the mind, so it is not easily erased at any moment.
It means that even when one is in a situation where even bowing low would not be enough, the thought that one deserves to be treated well does not easily disappear.
“what?”
“Can you absorb this right now? It’s called an Inner Core, but surely it’s toxic. Ah, surely you aren’t asking me to wait patiently until you absorb it, are you?”
He cannot refute it, but he does not erase the look of dissatisfaction either.
And then all they could say was.
“Hmph! Just as I said, you shouldn’t associate with such scum.”
Unable to stand it any longer, Seong Moran jumped up and grabbed the guy by the collar.
“Hey, where did the other members of the Jeongdohoe you love so much go?”
“We are the ones who took care of you instead of Jeong Do-hoe, who abandoned you. Don’t you understand yet? Or do you want to stay alone in Mukrim and become delicious food for monsters?”
“……!”
A guy who seems to have realized his situation for the first time.
The guy’s expression was extremely confused.
As Seongmo-ran said, it is a moment where we can decide his life or death with just a single word from us.
Seong Moran shook off the hand gripping her collar as if she had touched something dirty and murmured softly.
“Don’t say a word until you leave Mukrim. If you do, I’ll throw you into Tianyuanzhen.”
That one remark from Seongmo-ran was effective.
Because the guys who had been silently venting their grievances until now have now shut their mouths tight.
I scanned the power supply and gave an order.
Moves again.
Even the guys who used to say they were tired and wanted to rest stopped complaining.
They clearly realized who held their leashes.
“Those who have consumed the Inner Elixir should practice intensive cultivation whenever they have a spare moment of rest. In the worst-case scenario, you might not have a single moment to rest.”
“Young Master Jin, is it really okay to stay like this?”
As Seongmo-ran said, continuing to move like this is inefficient.
“Why don’t we just take a few people out and send them to the base first?”
Doing as she says might actually be the best choice in a way.
However, I shook my head.
Now that the instructors have left the base, they won’t be able to get any help from there. If we leave them behind… they probably won’t be able to last even half a day.
I don’t know why, but the monsters have become more ferocious.
They are not monsters that were wary of and hiding from humans.
Literally, the demon realm became hell.
“Right now, the best course of action is to gather as many of the stranded personnel as possible and head back to the base. Before the other team members suffer further casualties.”
Thanks to the Virgin Mary, the speed became much faster.
After hunting two more monsters, the place we arrived at was.
Hmm.
For the first time, there was a large group of dropouts numbering thirty.
On one side, the corpse of someone who appeared to be a student and the carcass of a monster lay.
It appeared that they ended up like this while hunting monsters among themselves after falling behind.
“Who is in charge here?”
I called the person in charge out of the thirty people, but no one answered.
They just glare at us with hostile eyes.
“Is there no one who knows how to speak?”
When I asked again, a sarcastic voice came out from one side.
“I’m telling you, he’s a real jackal. How did he even know to come here?”
When Taoist masters pull their heads back to wear a crown, their eyes and forehead are revealed, taking on the shape of a horse’s head, and they are often teased as ‘Horse-nosed Taoist Masters.’
But this guy’s nose really looks like a horse’s nose.
“Hey, Malco. Are you in charge?”
“What happened?”
“Ha! Do you think I’m going to say anything?”
I quietly looked at the guy’s nose.
“Is it not just the nose that’s horse-like, but the head is also at the level of a horse’s head?”
“What?!”
“I saw a total of five bodies on the way here. They were all students from the academy. Don’t you understand what that means?”
“Surely you don’t think you’re not at fault just because you followed the instructor’s orders, do you?”
Suddenly, Malco’s nose wrinkled deeply.
Wow, did he really think that? This guy is a total heartless lunatic.
Spirits or not, a person is dead. If he was still chasing spirits until things reached this point, that bastard instructor must be a spy for the Black Sect.
As I hit him in the bone, Malco, who had been so arrogant just moments ago, screams as if he is about to collapse.
“W-There’s no way our senior would do that!”
Ah, was this guy from the Cheongseong faction?
I let out a sigh and took another step closer to him.
“What on earth happened?”
His gaze turned toward the stragglers we had brought.
Then, after a moment of silence with his head bowed.
“Uh, can we come along too?”
He looks up at me with the most pitiful eyes in the world.
Ugh, you idiot.
As expected, they are just immature brats.
Falling for the tricks of that bastard No Jin-ha, the instructor, and barely surviving death without knowing why.
I turned around and answered dryly.
If you follow me straight.
We chased the spirit but lost it. While we were resting, it reappeared with creatures that looked like its own offspring. We had to move in such a hurry that we couldn’t chase the main force.
I looked at Yangjapyeong.
He slowly shook his head.
Then again, even wild animals have maternal instincts, so it is their instinct not to run to where their young are when being chased by predators.
No matter how divine it is, it doesn’t make sense for it to reappear with its own offspring.
In the end, I had no choice but to face the truth I had been trying so hard to ignore.
What the instructors and academy students are chasing is not a divine spirit.
“What on earth are these idiots chasing?”
A certain ‘ominous’ word is tickling in the back of my mind, but I decided not to voice it.
If that’s really the case… that’s too pessimistic.
Damn it, even if my second life was cursed by a demon, that’s just too much.
I tried not to affirm or deny.
Didn’t Confucius say the same thing? That the mean is the best.
I clapped my hands once and looked around.
Get ready to move. What have you been doing all this time without even providing first aid?
While the stragglers received the antidote and were receiving first aid, I approached the monster.
The sorcerer Malco stops treating me and looks at me with a puzzled expression.
“What, what are you trying to do?”
Well, I guess I should. Even if I’m in a hurry, I still have to take care of what needs to be taken care of.
Of course, you guys are the ones who hunted it, though.
