Nonhyeon-dong Dungeon Explosion Incident (9)

“Everyone, go get me a list of the names and ability traits of the people fighting over there.”

After confirming that the real-time feeds Nemesis had brought were appearing one by one before her eyes, Hyeonseong briefly turned her gaze to the tactical staff.

“A list?”

“We need to know their ability traits to form the battle line, don’t we. And you all know your own guild members well, but you can’t possibly know the traits of every other guild mixed in there, can you?”

When each guild moved its raid team separately, there would have been no need to share a detailed roster. They could have planned operations by sharing only each team’s rough specialty and tactics.

But now, they had to mix every guild’s raid teams together into a single raid force. That meant every guild had to share the names of the Awakened assigned to their raid teams.

“We can show you ours right away, but…….”

Someone glanced toward where the Jinri Workshop staff were. The problem was the roster of the guild those people belonged to—the ones who had rampaged under the debuff and collapsed.

“Can’t you contact their guild?”

“Uh…….”

An awkward reaction came back to Hyeonseong’s question.

‘Right—if you ask why they didn’t get the raid roster from the on-site lead, they’d have to explain the current situation.’

Of course, just because someone stayed at the guild building did not mean they knew nothing about what was happening on-site. They might already know about the commotion that had erupted within the tactical team.

Even so, explaining it out loud was still burdensome. It was the kind of story that would make everyone uncomfortable, and that was only natural.

“Ask anyway. Feeling awkward is a problem for later.”

After saying what she needed to say, Hyeonseong turned her gaze back to the drone feeds Nemesis had brought.

‘This is the first time I’ve ever gotten data like this.’

Checking video data during a raid was not new in itself. Some raid teams often carried dungeon filming devices.

But operating a massive number of recording devices simultaneously like this was something Hyeonseong had never experienced. Naturally so—both the organizations and the environment capable of deploying filming drones in bulk were extremely limited.

‘It’s kind of dizzying, though.’

If Nemesis had truly succeeded in hacking every drone in the area, dozens of feeds were running at once before Hyeonseong’s eyes.

‘First, I need to sort them.’

Hyeonseong first categorized the feeds with almost no position changes by direction. The ones whose angles and viewpoints kept shifting in real time, she placed in the center.

Following Hyeonseong’s command, Nemesis rearranged the feeds in the blink of an eye.

‘Better. Now…….’

Using the organized feeds, she began a full situational read. Since she could now see places she could not from where she stood, the situation became clearer.

There were multiple Awakened who had been injured in areas Hyeonseong could not see well. Many were on the verge of running out of mana.

On top of that, she saw two people who looked like they had been hit by the Enemy Knight’s mental-type debuff. Like the tactical staff earlier, other people were holding down someone who was thrashing strangely.

‘So their debuff defense wasn’t perfect…….’

She quickly identified the direction of the problem as well. The issue was the range of the protective buff.

Assuming it was a around-B-rank skill that set a circular area, the two people being restrained and dragged away right now were among those who had just barely slipped outside that skill’s range.

‘And it’s not just those two who slipped out. Right now, only those two got unlucky or were weak enough to get hit—but if we leave it like this, more people like them are guaranteed to appear.’

Either the Awakened maintaining the buff would collapse from exhaustion, or those barely holding out outside the buff range would reach their limits.

Either way, it was obvious that the longer this dragged on, the worse it became.

‘So, ideally, we have to kill the Enemy Knight first…….’

Do-ol also used fear to trigger debuffs, but the more dangerous one was the Enemy Knight’s debuff that made allies fight each other. So by common sense, between the two, the Enemy Knight had to be struck first.

The problem was that the Enemy Knight was harder to handle than the other one.

Hiiihiiing—

“Damn it, it’s charging again!”

“Move left and right!”

KWA-A-A-AANG—!

In the footage—and beyond it, in the real battlefield—the Enemy Knight attempted a mounted charge, and the scene caught Hyeonseong’s eye.

‘The problem is that Enemy Knight and that horse are a set. That horse is an S-rank monster too.’

Just as the Constellation that had dropped the Enemy Knight here had said—damn one-plus-one.

‘It looks like they’re trying the standard approach and focusing the horse first, but…….’

The attacks toward the Enemy Knight were more concentrated on the horse than the rider. Everyone remembered the basics of dealing with a mounted knight-like enemy.

It was just that the horse being S-rank as well meant focused fire wasn’t producing much effect.

‘And there’s that buff sponsorship too.’

The Constellation using the name ‘Authority of Fusion Life Sciences’ must have had Ghost Coins rotting in its pockets—it was sending buffs not only to the rider, but to the horse as well. Just like the rider, the horse repeated a cycle of reviving whenever it was about to go down.

‘Seriously, what a disgusting bunch.’

After cursing inwardly a few times, Hyeonseong checked the feeds again and thought hard.

‘……Still, we have to start with the Enemy Knight. If it’s too hard, then at least the horse first, somehow.’

If she could easily dispose of Do-ol, Hyeonseong would have switched priorities without hesitation.

But Do-ol did not look easy to finish off either. The one that had appeared earlier and gotten pummeled was still rampaging vigorously.

‘It’s repeated Super Regeneration multiple times, but nothing looks noticeably worn down. Is that what it means to be S-rank?’

Even after checking several feeds from different angles, she saw no sign of Do-ol weakening. Judging by the shouted reports, the on-site assessment did not look much different.

‘Rather than betting on Do-ol weakening first, we hit the more dangerous one.’

Hyeonseong made the order of attack definite.

“Uh, we got the roster…….”

One of the tactical staff approached with a tablet.

“Uh…… doesn’t that make you dizzy?”

The staff member who approached pointed at the feeds Nemesis had pulled up. Since Hyeonseong had not bothered to lock privacy settings, the feeds were visible to others too.

“It’s urgent. What choice do I have?”

Hyeonseong answered, holding out her hand. The staff member passed her the tablet. On it was a roster of the Awakened from each guild currently fighting on-site.

‘Nemesis, can you copy and pull this data too?’

When she gave Nemesis another instruction, a message appeared confirming the command. Immediately after, the roster of the Awakened in battle appeared like a hologram over the video feeds.

‘Five A-ranks exactly, nineteen B-ranks, and C and D ranks are…….’

After returning the tablet, Hyeonseong quickly checked the grades and trait categories.

‘The ratios of melee, mid-range, and long-range are strangely even…….’

Hyeonseong quickly understood the cause of that odd trait distribution.

‘Because they hastily glued together small squad-level teams. The original mission was to clean up monsters that scattered everywhere when the dungeon blew, right?’

Because of that initial purpose, the grade and trait ratios of the people gathered at the battlefield were awkward for taking down two boss monsters.

‘With small teams, you can easily have teams with extreme quirks. Still, it doesn’t look unusable. In that case…….’

Before checking the info, Hyeonseong had planned to bundle every Awakened on-site into one raid force and move them together. But after seeing the info, it looked better to preserve each team’s individuality instead.

‘Even if we force-split and recombine everything into one raid force, we won’t be able to reinforce the frontline to the level we need. Only properly “standard” teams are worth splitting and merging.’

With her thoughts somewhat organized, Hyeonseong turned to the tactical staff.

“Do you have any good ideas?”

At her question, the tactical staff flinched reflexively. It seemed they hadn’t expected her to ask so suddenly.

“F-first, have each guild’s vanguard hold the front, then pull everyone else back……?”

“You still can’t let go of that ‘strategic retreat’ plan?”

“Whatever we do, we need to create distance first…….”

“Even if we do that now, it won’t even buy time properly. Even if the front holds, once positions shift…….”

“That’s it.”

Hyeonseong cut in between them.

“At this point, it’s hard to bind everyone into one unit. And it looks like we can’t bring in more people beyond this, so we can’t patch ambiguous positions either.”

“So what?”

Someone asked at Hyeonseong’s words.

“You said we can make a gap to shift positions. Tell everyone to return to their original teams. They move by team, grouped as their original team.”

“Team, not guild, right?”

Someone else asked. It was the core point. Hyeonseong turned her gaze to the person who asked—it had the Sinwol Guild logo on their outerwear.

“Yes. Like when you first tracked scattered monsters—move by team. Give each team what they’re good at.”

As she answered, Hyeonseong turned her gaze back to the field.

“But those raid teams weren’t made to fight a high-rank boss.”

Someone voiced doubt again.

“True. But it’s not like they lack the capability to fight a boss at all, right?”

There were quite a few teams with low average ranks. Even those teams, however, each had something they could contribute. Even if they lacked the raw power to kill a boss, they could still support.

“And it’s not like it has to be one team per boss in the first place. So what I’m thinking is…….”

As she explained, Hyeonseong issued a command to Nemesis in her mind. Two fist-sized circles and several coin-sized circles surrounding them appeared in the air.

“Basically, we treat each team as one Awakened unit and move them that way. And then Song Jiwoo and the others who joined as individuals rather than as teams shift positions as needed while fighting.”

Several more near-dot circles appeared between the circles. The dot-like circles approached and separated from different circles several times.

“This will make it easier to restore order and the attack-defense routine.”

“That part does make sense.”

“But then, situations where we need multiple Awakened of the same position at once…….”

“‘Basically’ means we can be flexible when we need to.”

Hyeonseong answered quickly to the continued critique.

“Well…… if you think about it, that’s kind of obvious.”

“It all sounds good, but…… doesn’t one problem still remain? When we need a strong defensive line.”

“Ah, that.”

With Hyeonseong’s reply, one more dot appeared on the formation hologram drawn with circles and dots. It was a dot placed between the two monster-circles.

Then a black line drew out from that dot, cutting across one of the monsters—like a barrier.

“I can hold one of them.”

“That means…….”

“I’ve more or less decided what to do, so I should head out. Communication will be…….”

Hyeonseong gave Nemesis an instruction. A hologram-like dialogue window appeared before the tactical staff’s eyes.

“We’ll use this. The Cybernetic Spirit’s messaging function seems pretty convenient. Alright, I’m going.”

“Wait!”

The tactical staff called out urgently, but Hyeonseong didn’t look back.

Hyeonseong began to move without hesitation.