83. Marking Territory

The first to sense that something was wrong was an Ogre making for the shore. It had been fighting the fierce current, arms and legs flailing, when it registered a black shape on the surface of the water. Bloodlust scattering off it, it drew closer, and then froze where it stood.

— Thud, thud-thud-thunk!

Strength enough to grind a house-sized boulder to powder gathered in the Ogre’s forearm. A 5th-Rank Martial-line Hunter who met it head-on would have had his arm shattered. It crushed an opponent outright, no Aura needed even to cut through hide, and now it drove down beneath the surface.

— Vwoom!

A fist the size of a compact car drove into the crown of the black shape’s head. Underwater the Ogre couldn’t bring its full might to bear, but the force was still enough that a clean hit would have left nothing to scrape up.

The Ogre belted out a victor’s roar.

— Crunch.

Along with the grisly sound of flesh and hide being mashed, a green fluid spread across the water. The Ogre’s eyes went round with pain.

It hauled its left arm up high and slammed it down into the sea again.

“Kao?”

The Scylla let its long body shiver and shudder, shedding the force packed into the blow with ease. The instant the arm it had raised came smashing down beneath the surface, the water swallowed most of the Ogre’s fearsome brute strength. What remained wasn’t negligible, but the Scylla had no mean durability of its own, and it took no real damage.

“Kroooar! Kroooar!!”

Steeped in terror, the Ogre threw its mouth wide and shrieked. It was struggling just to stay afloat on water where its feet couldn’t touch bottom, and ambushed in the middle of that, it wrung out every last drop of strength it had, yet it still couldn’t deal the Scylla any real damage.

“Kao. Kaoo.”

The Scylla let out a cry as if it were enjoying itself. Undead though it was, the monster had lost none of its living ferocity, and it tore into the Ogre.

— Crunch, crrrunch.

Three base-form Genocide Salmon, given an underwater fight, were enough to bring down a single Ogre. Given how much a single Stellar Rank’s difference counts for in combat power, the exchange ratio bordered on impossible. And this Scylla had gone further still: between Dark Blood and a spread of necromancy spells, it had outgrown its base form to match a top-tier 5th-Rank monster in a fight at sea.

— Glub, glub.

The Ogre, retching up green blood by the mouthful, sank beneath the surface. Before long, all four limbs torn away and its bulging eyes unable even to close, it met its end.

“Kroooar?”

“Guuuuuh!!”

Shrieks burst out here and there across the waters off Yeonpyeong Island. The carnage the Ogre had just suffered was only the beginning.

“What’s that, then?”

“That ain’t no fish.”

“Comrade. You ever seen a fish like that in the Yellow Sea?”

“First I ever laid eyes on.”

The men watching from the deck jabbered away. They were man-hunters. Their formal name was the Fifth Revolutionary Corps of the former North Korea, but no one ever bothered with it. These were people who treated others like livestock, tossing them to monsters as feed, and only a precious few of them showed any respect for men more monstrous than the monsters themselves.

“Look there. Ain’t that the Genocide Salmon?”

A man with shaggy hair, draped in a coat of fur-hide, came out onto the deck.

The man-hunters who’d been chatting snapped to a salute as one.

“At ease, the lot of you.”

“Loyalty!”

“I’m gonna take a dip, so just hold steady.”

“Battalion Commander, comrade. It’s dangerous!”

One of the man-hunters cried out. The shaggy-haired man was the supreme commander of the operation to take Yeonpyeong Island, and the third-ranked hunter of the Fifth Revolutionary Corps. He had crossed the wall of the 6th Rank, and as a Tamer, a job built around taming monsters, he could subdue an Ogre with his bare hands.

“Do I look weak to you, comrade?”

“N-no, sir!”

“Better this way, really. A Genocide Salmon’d make a fine bit of muscle for you all, wouldn’t it?”

Tame an ocean monster, and Hwanghae Province, northern Gyeonggi, and past them the whole West Sea would fall under the man-hunters’ dominion. The same handicap applied to Hunters: at sea they couldn’t bring their full strength to bear either, leaving them only a little better off than the monsters, which couldn’t move with any precision. Hunter or tamed monster, either one would have to win its battle aboard ship.

“Hold tight.”

Without hesitation, the shaggy-haired man dropped into the sea. Battalion Commander Joo Yeongmin spotted the black shape shimmering on the surface and grinned.

“Pleased to meet you!”

“Kaoo!”

The Scylla rushed him head-on and bit into Joo Yeongmin’s belly. Part of the fur coat tore, but it did the wearer no great harm.

“Punched through the bloodied Blood Bear hide, did it? Feisty little thing.”

Joo Yeongmin didn’t counterattack; he laid a hand atop the head of the Scylla clamped onto him. Blue mana coiled around his hand.

“You little thing, I’ll make a friend of you too.”

The skill poured the user’s mana into a monster to seize control of it, a Tamer-exclusive art that had become all but the emblem of the man-hunters.

That was when Yujin’s gaze turned toward Joo Yeongmin, still wrestling with the Scylla.

Doing something amusing, aren’t you.

So it was you, after all.

The damnable bastard who treasured monsters over people.

Seeing you again, it’s all the more a pleasure. You son of a bitch.

A sinister killing intent glistened in Yujin’s eyes.

Joo Yeongmin, the monster-lover.

Before the regression too, I went through plenty of grief because of you.

Right now he’s third in the man-hunters’ ranks, but later, after rising to the 7th Rank, he’d succeed in Taming even Eye-Patch.

He’s the one who’d shove the top-ranked one aside and climb to Legion Commander.

‘Right. Before the regression, when I smashed the man-hunters, he was the one who gave me the worst headache.’

But here’s the thing.

In this life, we’re meeting for the first time. You and I.

And yet you’d commit the outrage of trying to snatch a Necromancer’s minion?

— Claaang!

A trickle of red leaked from the corner of Joo Yeongmin’s mouth. He’d reached to Tame a dead thing already under Yujin’s dominion, caught the counterblow, and had his insides churned for it. In an ordinary Tamer, that would have been dangerous enough to bring on the first signs of a mana runaway.

“Took one to the gut, did I?”

He muttered it placidly, wiping the blood off with his fur coat.

“Battalion Commander, comrade!”

“Stay put. Come down here and you’ll all die.”

Joo Yeongmin looked squarely at Yujin aboard the little dinghy. The distance between them was over a kilometer. To a non-Awakened it would have been just enough to make out a silhouette, but the two of them saw each other clearly.

“Comrade. So you’re the one handling these little fellows?”

“That’s right. You highway-robbing bastard.”

“Name’s Joo Yeongmin. What’s yours, South Korean comrade?”

“Cheon Yujin.”

“Put that talent of yours to work for the Revolutionary Corps.”

Doesn’t even hit his blinker before he goes recruiting.

Yujin made a show of yawning.

“Is there some reason I’d want to keep company with you human butchers?”

“Comrade. Don’t you commune with the creatures of the new age too?”

“Where’s that dog barking from.”

Calling these half-baked things, conjured up from the mana of a gate, the new age or whatever?

Now as ever, the simple act of trading words with men like these turned his stomach. Yujin answered by raising his middle finger, and Joo Yeongmin’s expression sank deep.

“I’ll open your eyes for you, comrade.”

— Crrrack.

The jaw of the Scylla still clamped onto Joo Yeongmin was torn clean off. There was monstrous force behind that crude motion: with one hand he had ripped apart a Scylla that even an Ogre, the so-called king of the forest, hadn’t been able to shake loose.

“Kaoo!”

When the jawless Scylla pulled its body back, Joo Yeongmin’s hand, thrust out a beat too late, only churned the water.

“Fast little thing, ain’t it?”

Yujin pulled the Scylla back and swallowed hard.

I nearly lost a Scylla — one I can’t make any more of for a while — for nothing.

He called in ten more Scylla from the surrounding water and layered the buffs over them. Once he’d swapped his stats back with White Night, he triggered Unholy Command.

Unholy Command was a necromancy spell that cost little spirit-power and handed his undead a flat stat boost. Its one small drawback was the range, a hundred meters centered on the caster himself.

‘If I worried about that, I’d have to tuck my tail and run.’

It’s because the battlefield is the sea that I can even attempt a gamble like this.

If I’d run into the man-hunters’ third-ranked at the borderlands, I’d have thrown my undead at him and fled.

‘Keep the distance so I don’t get caught.’

Yujin bent his focus to controlling the Scylla pod. Even reinforced with holy spells, the pod wasn’t built for a head-on fight, so he kept his distance from Joo Yeongmin, circling and circling, fishing for an opening. The instant a blind spot showed, he’d send a Scylla darting in to chip away at the fur coat’s durability.

“That mouth of yours is plenty scary, comrade!”

Out here, where his feet found no bottom, Joo Yeongmin’s martial might ran at less than half its usual strength. The Scylla pod, by contrast, had only grown stronger, layered with holy spells and Unholy Command alike. And yet the bastard still wouldn’t give him an opening.

‘What are you talking about. A Tamer is a hybrid job with one foot in the Martial line.’

Two things governed how well a Taming took: the mana stat, and control. Joo Yeongmin was an extreme case, a man who’d poured most of his stats into raw physical power; what he lacked in the numbers he made up for, when he tamed, with an innate gift for mana control, or so Yujin had heard.

Quantity over quality, was it.

His one real drawback was that, since he didn’t belong to the Martial job group, his attacks and skills drew no correction bonus. Past that, he gave up nothing to a Hunter of the same Stellar Rank.

‘It’s about time I played my real hand too.’

Joo Yeongmin was steadily growing used to the Scylla pod’s speed. Even as he surveyed the battlefield, Yujin swiftly rearranged his spirit-power.

Rather than loose the magical armament at once, he held it suspended in midair. Even with the Cursed Fang pumping its power, it topped out at 3rd-Rank-magic strength, not enough to pierce the fur-hide the man wore.

Yujin calmly rearranged his spirit-power.

A black spear, made by converting spirit-power into dark-mana, appeared beside the Cursed Fang.

— Clap!

The instant he brought his two palms together as if in prayer, the Black Spear fastened onto the magical armament and began to spin like a drill, as though a whirlwind were rising up around it.

‘The two powers may differ in nature, but their essence is the same.’

Using the Cursed Fang as his axis, he set the spirit-power spinning, and the Black Spear’s dark-mana fell into the same flow and wove itself into one with it. The combination ran more potent than his Stellar Rank had any right to be.

Kronos’s voice rang with admiration. Instead of answering, Yujin sent the entire Scylla pod charging in at once.

“So you’ve made up your mind, then?”

Joo Yeongmin crooked a finger toward the cargo ship. The man-hunters hurled a boulder toward the spot where he floated.

— Sploosh.

The boulder sank the moment it dropped into the sea.

The Scylla pod slipped past the boulder by a hair and charged in.

Joo Yeongmin drew the boulder several meters back toward himself with mana, then used it as a foothold to spin his whole body around. A vivid blue light coiled up his forearm.

— Fwa-fwa-fwa-fwoom!

His Aura-laced fist caught the Scylla pod mid-lunge and sent them scattering in every direction.

And in that instant, Yujin didn’t miss the opening he’d bought by throwing the whole pod forward.

— Shhhhk!

The Cursed Fang came tearing in with ferocious speed. He’d woven the Bone Spear and the Black Spear together, two magics both built on the ‘spear,’ to wring out every last bit of destructive force, and aimed the point at the patch of fur coat the Scylla had already bitten and torn. Loosed in the exact gap of that instant, the magical armament punched through the weakened Blood Bear hide and wounded Joo Yeongmin.

“Kuagh.”

Red bloomed across his flank. With a short groan, Joo Yeongmin seized the magical armament buried in his skin.

“So that’s it — those little fellows you threw, that was the aim all along?”

“Coming to your senses a bit, are you.”

“Heh. This is downright fun.”

Joo Yeongmin bared his teeth in a grin and laughed.

The instant he took the wound, the man-hunters didn’t stay idle either.

“Save the Battalion Commander, comrade!”

“Quick, quick, loose the monsters into the sea!”

— Sploosh. Sploosh.

The big monsters splashed back into the sea and packed in thick around Joo Yeongmin. Bore in as the Scylla might, they couldn’t find a single gap.

“Running away, are you?”

“No matter. The sea’s against me, and I’ll die if this keeps up.”

Using the monsters as a shield, Joo Yeongmin climbed back up onto the cargo ship. Yujin didn’t give chase.

“Remember this. My name is Cheon Yujin. Representative of the Black Company.”

“Good. I’ll remember your name, comrade.”

The cargo ship drew steadily farther away. Yujin stared fixedly at the sight from atop the dinghy’s deck.

‘The others, maybe — but that one’s throat, I won’t be able to cut.’

The man was a 6th-Rank powerhouse. Even sinking the cargo ship would eat time, what with its solid durability and the defensive magic layered over it, and all the while it would be closing on land. If Joo Yeongmin simply soaked the damage and ran, it would be Yujin, pushed deep into enemy waters, who ended up in danger.

‘Why?’

‘I let those bastards see it on purpose. To make crystal clear whose sea this is.’

The man-hunters would have grasped it too: that even with a cargo ship at their backs, taking Yeonpyeong Island would be no easy thing.

Now you know good and well who owns this island, don’t you?

Yujin chuckled to himself, watching the cargo ship as it steadily drew farther away.