Monster Hunting

─ Kieeeeeeek!!

From far away, the prey’s shriek echoed. The hunter steeled himself too.

Ready to hunt, and ready not to be hunted.

This was not some random riffraff like a goblin gang. It was the Cesspit Mage Tower’s cursed test subject, a level 3 hostile creature.

Showing himself and fighting it head-on would be no different from suicide. Every job had its own way of fighting.

‘Stealth.’

It was not even a spell, not even something you could really call a technique. It was merely an ‘action.’ It was not even a unique action limited to rogue-type jobs.

Erasing his presence, killing any sound, carefully hiding so the target would not notice him.

Anyone could do it.

How well you could do an action anyone could do was another matter.

「Dark Camelot — Guild City」 had five stats. Stamina, Dexterity, Mind, Will, and Charisma.

Among them, the stat that directly affected stealth-type performance for rogues was Dexterity.

When he built his character, Solomon had squeezed the other stats dry to push Dexterity to the extreme.

Solomon sharpened his senses more than ever.

Thankfully, ahead of him the flooded zone ended, and a tunnel he could actually walk on opened up.

The test subject’s scream was not a shout of discovery either. It was a shriek spat out in convulsions, tormented by pain with no end in sight.

Whatever had been done to it, the agony it suffered tore at his eardrums and stabbed in like needles.

“Goddamn…!”

The scream ripped through his eardrums and burrowed along the auditory nerve into the deep cortex of his brain. Blood was already dripping from both of Solomon’s ears.

Only then did Solomon realize it was not an ordinary scream.

A level 2 curse spell, 「Wave of Pain」.

With pain like an awl drilling straight into his brain, Solomon clenched his teeth. This was no longer a tabletop. Resisting this pain was not one hundred percent up to the dice, either.

‘…Is it, really?’

For now, he had no choice but to believe it.

[Curse Resistance Success!]

Right after, the pain digging into his mind stopped and a voice rang out. With not even a moment to recover, Solomon desperately focused.

‘There is no next time.’

He had endured it somehow this time, but honestly, he was not confident he could go through the same pain again and stay intact.

Even so, his movements were not rash. They could not be.

He had to approach the target’s back without being noticed, then drive in a single strike from behind.

「Sneak Attack」, the flower of the rogue line, the so-called backstab attack.

And that was not all Solomon was aiming for.

───

「Blade in the Dark」

: You can trigger a guaranteed melee critical hit once a day.

───

The Nightfall automatic crossbow was only insurance. The ideal scenario was detonating a guaranteed critical on top of a sneak attack from behind.

Killing it in one hit, without anything resembling a real fight.

Step.

—The distance closed.

No footsteps. No breathing. And yet Solomon was there.

‘There.’

The end of a bend in the wall. He focused on the presence he felt beyond it. As he concentrated, Solomon’s eyes shone with a dark, inorganic hue like obsidian.

One of the three spells he had learned as a 「Spell Assassin」, along with 「Shadow Mimicry」.

‘<Darkvision>.’

His sight pierced the wall blocking him, and the scene in the darkness beyond came into view. He saw it, turned at an angle with its back partly toward him.

A gaunt frame and limbs stretched freakishly long. Mucous skin caked with cesspit filth.

Where facial features should be, there was a long vertical mouth lined with teeth. Hundreds of teeth layered like a shark’s were busily tearing into something.

‘A human corpse….’

The face was mangled beyond recognition, and the organs were practically on display. The decay was severe too.

With no signs of resistance around, it was probably a vagrant who had been hunted and dragged here.

Solomon fought down the urge to vomit and steadied himself. Then he moved.

If it lifted its head and looked back, their eyes would meet with no escape. There was no room to retreat.

Even so, the distance shrank again.

‘Blade in the Dark, activate.’

As he murmured it inwardly, the hilt seemed to resonate in reply. Meanwhile, the test subject was exposing its back, completely defenseless, absorbed in eating.

Seven meters, six, five… The distance was steadily closing.

Sounds came from everywhere.

The flow of wastewater along the tunnel’s side, the test subject greedily tasting intestines, rats squeaking. And nowhere, any sound from Solomon.

And yet he was there.

Right behind it.

Silently, he adjusted his grip on the hilt.

‘「Sneak Attack」 ignores the target’s defense and evasion, and adds bonus damage—’

A critical hit multiplies final damage by two, no questions asked.

And on top of that, the level 2 trait that granted <Glass Die ⚅>, letting him add extra damage on attacks.

A one-hit-kill sneak attack that maximized damage through 「Blade in the Dark」 and the trait 「Glass Cannon」.

The math had no issues.

The problem was that all of it was just theory.

Because Solomon’s world was not a tabletop.

There was no such thing as hit points (HP) you could know by numbers. No way to quantify damage into neat values when attacking or being hit.

Even if a critical double damage hits, what is the baseline? No, before that, what even is a critical hit here? Bleeding volume? Wound depth?

Does blood spray twice as much and wounds become twice as deep? Does a stab that would stop at the ribs extend to the spleen?

It was then.

Squeak.

From beneath the victim’s torn jawbone, a sewer rat crawled up through the esophagus and suddenly popped its head out.

At the surprise dessert, the test subject paused its meal and stared at the rat.

But the rat was not looking at the test subject. The rat was looking at Solomon, like it was telling him to go to hell.

‘You little Ratatouille bastard…!’

Squeak.

Solomon looked at the test subject, the test subject looked at the rat, and the rat looked at Solomon.

In that crisscrossing line of sight, the test subject sensed something off.

“!”

His body moved on its own.

There was no room to hesitate. So he had to believe. Not in tabletop rules, not in numbers, not in dice.

He believed in this world.

More precisely, the world’s rule that there is no defense against a stab in the back.

Historically, how many kings and nobles, generals and politicians lost sleep fearing a knife in their back?

The fact that such people tried so hard to protect their backs was proof from the real world itself of how effective a sneak attack was.

Across all eras and all places, the history of people stabbing backs and getting stabbed back, spraying blood like fountains, said as much.

‘Sneak Attack is a broken attack.’

Thunk!

The blade shot forward.

And something stranger than ever happened, something he could not understand.

The tip sank into the test subject’s nape as if being sucked into a black hole.

The blade ran between the cervical vertebrae with no resistance at all, as if it were slicing empty air through the gaps in bone.

Chwaaaak!

The structure and logic of bones he did not even know danced through his fingertips on their own.

The blade did not stop, carving down again and again. Each time, blood sprayed, erupting destructively like water blasting from a high-pressure pump.

It was not even comparable to when he cut down the goblin gang. The difference was so overwhelming he could not help but realize it.

‘Critical sneak attack…!’

This sensation carved into his fingertips, this strike, was a critical hit exploding on top of a sneak attack.

Like an invisible current of fate pushing his back, he felt a ‘force’ driving his blade forward.

‘Blade in the Dark and Glass Cannon—’

Someone was rolling dice. Invisible dice.

He could not control what the dice showed. Solomon was not a god. Even so, he could control the process leading up to the roll, like right now.

‘Did I get it?!’

He dropped it in one hit, without anything resembling a fight. The sneak attack had become an assassination. As his heart raced faster than ever at that fact.

From far away, the sound of dice rolling echoed faintly.

‘Dice…?’

It was right at that moment.

[Stealth Detection Success!]

“!”

A freezing chill ran down his spine. By the time the voice sounded in his head, Solomon was already rolling across the floor.

Solomon’s high Dexterity affected not only stealth success rates, but also the ability to detect someone in stealth, like an instinct or passive detection.

And “it,” approaching in stealth, surged down from the sewer ceiling like a spider.

The moment Solomon rolled, freakishly long, sharp limbs stabbed into the floor where he had been, like spearheads. Kwajik! It was close. He barely avoided it and steadied himself.

‘Fuck, there’s another one!’

There was another test subject. He had not heard anything about there being two.

Its spear-like limbs pierced the tunnel floor, and the test subject turned its head. The long vertical mouth where a face should be opened. Not to bite.

The magical power writhing ominously up its throat was proof.

‘Wave of Pain!’

Solomon aimed the Nightfall crossbow without delay and pulled the trigger. The corrosive bolts in the first cartridge fired toward the monster’s torn-open maw.

Pook!

The scream swelling up its throat scattered without sound. The bolt had pierced its uvula and punched a hole through.

‘It hit clean.’

Along the bolt that had pierced its throat, corrosive venom spread.

Chiiiiik—!

Like it had been drenched in hydrochloric acid, its skin burned as bubbles boiled up. Swollen blisters burst, the outer layer scorched away, spilling pus.

But the test subject did not die from that. It did not stop.

With the scream that should have sounded muted and scattered, its harpoon-sharp limbs prepared to move.

In that moment, Solomon calmly recalled the specs Maya had told him about.

「From single shots to volleys of up to ten. Not burst-fire, but simultaneous fire, I’m telling you!」

Click, kkiririk.

He pushed with a finger and set the ‘multi-shot slider’ beside the trigger to maximum.

Then he pulled the trigger again.

It wasn’t a burst-fire that shoots ten in sequence. It was a simultaneous volley that drove in ten at once. Multi-shot.

The Nightfall XR-10 automatic crossbow that could volley up to ten. Excluding the one he had fired, the remaining nine bolts fired at the same time.

Cheolkeok!

As the next bolt cartridge swapped in, Solomon pulled the trigger again. Ten more. Cartridge swap. Ten more. He poured out enough bolts to punch through a beehive and then some.

Tadadadak!

Each volley’s stopping power firmly locked down the test subject’s movement, and by the time all three mounted cartridges were spent.

Thirty corrosive bolts perforated the test subject’s entire body like a beehive, turning it into a mass of boiling bubbles and blisters.

Just in case, Solomon moved his wrist. With a single snap, the cartridges in the Nightfall crossbow ejected, and the Quick Loader Belt’s spare cartridges swapped in with a chwareureuk sound.

In that situation, Solomon did not continue firing immediately. He paused, quietly adjusting the multi-shot slider down to around five.

Even after becoming a beehive from thirty bolts, even as its whole body melted under acid, the test subject was still moving.

But it was not movement that could threaten anyone. Even that did not last long.

Thud.

‘Did I get it….’

He had put thirty bolts into it. It would be strange if it did not die, especially with corrosive venom on top.

Even so, it took that much just to push it to the brink of death.

—In other words, a properly landed critical sneak attack had more killing power than thirty corrosive bolts.

As he realized that, goosebumps rose on him without thinking.

Only then did the second test subject fall silent. Solomon looked around without a word, not letting his guard down.

Two test subjects. Something this critical, and he either did not know or was not told? There was only one thing he could be sure of.

‘Someone lied.’

The liar was one of two.

The Cesspit Mage Tower, which claimed the experiment failed and the test subject escaped. Or Hog Roach, who passed that job to Solomon.

‘Or both.’

Only then did Solomon realize this business was a place where there was not a single person you could trust.

How precarious his situation was, and how many suspicious people were everywhere, demanding his doubt.

“Oh, you handled that nicely!”

That was when. A voice came, one with no intention of hiding.

“You pass.”

“!”

Right behind him.

Until the voice sounded, Solomon had not even felt the presence.

Somehow, a man was there, closing to less than a meter, the way Solomon had crept behind the monster.

He was a man in a crisp white suit, with ashen curly hair.

“Just like Hog said, your skill is beyond doubt. It’s a waste for talent like yours to rot in a trash heap like the Lowlands.”

Thankfully, he did not show hostility. Even so, Solomon silently set a finger over the Nightfall trigger and adjusted his grip on the hilt with his other hand.

“…Who are you?”

“Someone higher up than a pig.”

“How much higher?”

“By the difference between heaven and earth.”