Baekho Guild.
The guild shining in second place in Korea’s rankings.
Though it fell short of Myth Guild, occupying second place among Korea’s numerous guilds boasted tremendous authority.
Of course, authority was something built up through force.
Just as job seekers flocked to large corporations, excellent hunters flocked to Baekho Guild.
Though their first choice was naturally Myth Guild, Baekho Guild still attracted a lot of truly excellent hunters.
Baekho Guild was divided into four tiers.
Team 1.
Team 2.
Team 3.
Team 4.
Naturally, Team 1 was the highest, and Team 4 was the lowest.
Of course, even the lowest-ranked Team 4 was on a different level from the bottom tiers of other guilds.
As befitting the second-ranked team in the country, even Team 4 was incredibly strong.
Naturally, the higher teams were even stronger still.
And now.
Among them, Team 3 had come to the scene.
Team 3 members, who received envious gazes not only within Baekho Guild but from other guilds as well.
But even though these Team 3 members had mobilized, the result was utterly horrific.
Those damned monster manticores.
They had been miserably defeated by them.
“Ugh…….”
Seong Taesam, the Team 3 leader.
He was sprawled out on the asphalt ground.
Having come to provide support after hearing about the dungeon break, he wanted nothing more than to jump up and fight.
But he couldn’t.
“M-my legs…….”
Seong Taesam’s legs were tragically lying some distance away.
Only the blood-soaked pant legs below the knees fluttered.
He couldn’t even stand, let alone fight.
“T-team members…….”
But what pained him more than his own injuries was the fact that so many of his team members had died.
Team members wearing the Baekho Guild armbands.
His subordinates who had been happily laughing and chatting in guild life just before deployment.
They were scattered across the collapsed urban area, covered in blood.
With heads missing or spilling out steaming entrails.
Even more horrific was the fact that some Team 3 members were still fighting.
Grrr!
A winged lion, the manticore, let out a roar.
With a chilling human face.
At that moment.
Aaaargh!
“Gah, h-heuk……!”
Aaaah!
The bodies of the Baekho Guild members bravely fighting the manticores were torn to shreds.
Their skin all over their bodies had been ripped apart by a single roar from the lion-like manticores.
Thud.
The corpses of the Team 3 members sprawled on the ground.
They added to the already piling bodies of Baekho Guild members.
And that wasn’t all.
The ten manticores rampaged here and there, swinging their powerful tails, biting with sharp teeth, or ramming with tank-like bodies.
With each such movement, more Baekho Guild member corpses were added.
“Haa…….”
Hot tears flowed from the Team 3 leader’s eyes.
The tears of an old man.
They were for the Baekho Guild members who had perished without even fully blooming.
Just as the Baekho Guild members had almost all become corpses, and all hope of subjugation had vanished.
Dududududududu!
A rumbling sound came from somewhere.
Seong Taesam flinched in surprise at the sudden rumbling.
It was loud enough to stop his tears.
When Seong Taesam turned his head.
“…?!”
He was utterly shocked.
The reason for his shock was simple.
An eight-lane road littered with corpses.
Deep blue skeletons were charging madly toward it.
“B-blue bones?”
Over a hundred skeletons.
Their color was ‘blue.’
Meaning they were all blue bones.
‘Even so, it won’t work.’
Though it was a considerable force, Seong Taesam was skeptical about the subjugation.
Blue bones were a realm that could only be reached by ascending to an extraordinary level as a necromancer, but manticores were even more powerful.
With ten manticores, there was even less hope.
Grrr!
Graaaar!
Grrrr!
As expected, the ten manticores began flying toward the blue bones.
After annihilating all of Baekho Guild’s Team 3 members, they now targeted the blue bones.
The human-faced lions flapping their massive wings.
Grrrrr!
The moment they let out powerful roars, Seong Taesam thought it was all over.
There was no way mere skeletons could withstand the roars that even the Baekho Guild members with considerable defense couldn’t endure.
But…….
“Huh?”
Surprisingly, the blue bones weren’t destroyed at all.
Not a single one was even scratched, let alone shattered.
Grrrrr!
Grr! Grrrr!
Graaaar!
Perhaps enraged by this fact.
The manticores began roaring even louder.
Seong Taesam felt blood trickling from his eardrums due to the tremendous roars.
Damage had reached him even at this distance.
“E-even this doesn’t work?”
Yet the blue bones weren’t destroyed in the slightest.
This is insane.
How could those stick-thin skeletons not be affected by such powerful lion roars?
Seong Taesam was in great shock.
When the blue bones, charging madly like that, approached the manticores.
Clatter! Clatter!
The massacre by the blue bones began.
Seong Taesam, the Team 3 leader, was astonished.
The battle was already over.
But Seong Taesam’s mouth wouldn’t close.
The reason was simple.
The battle that had unfolded moments ago was far too shocking.
‘Th-they hunted the manticores without any damage…….’
The manticores were truly powerful.
So powerful that even he, the Team 3 leader of Baekho Guild, couldn’t handle them.
Even with his Team 3 members cooperating, they couldn’t take down a single one.
‘And mere skeletons did that?’
Yet those ridiculously strong creatures had been taken down by mere skeletons.
Slicing them with bone swords.
Blowing off wings or legs with flashy elemental magics.
Even obliterating them with bone explosions of tremendous power, leaving no corpses behind.
Of course, the manticores resisted fiercely.
Swinging tails, biting with teeth, or charging with tank-like bodies, just as they had attacked the Baekho Guild members.
But the skeletons endured it all.
Some were crushed by the powerful attacks, but most withstood them unscathed.
‘And what was that electricity discharged every time they were hit?’
Moreover, every time the skeletons were hit, massive electricity burst from their bodies.
Electricity in the form similar to a mage’s Charged Bolt.
The manticores turned into pitch-black charred lumps and collapsed one by one from that electricity.
As the blue bones’ powerful attacks continued, the manticores fell in succession, and after battles where the fallen ones rose as skeletons continued.
Not a single manticore remained standing on the battlefield.
All that was left were reddish chunks of meat.
Murmur murmur.
It was then.
Voices came from the battlefield, now quiet after the successful subjugation.
Voices that were far too cheerful.
Swish.
Seong Taesam, the Team 3 leader, hurriedly turned his head there.
He could see it.
A man and woman in ‘Myth Guild’ uniforms happily conversing.
“Hahaha, good work. As expected from our maknae.”
“How are your skeletons so strong? They’re really scary, scary.”
“Wow, they’re already strong as blue bones, but how strong will they be as red bones? I’m really looking forward to it!”
“Good work, you punk. Thanks to you, I survived today too. You’re not just my savior, but my wife’s and my daughters’ as well.”
“Aigoo, I cleared a dungeon break without lifting a finger. I feel like a salary thief now? Hahaha.”
Somehow, a warm and friendly atmosphere.
The Myth Guild members who had succeeded in the subjugation were laughing while surrounding one man.
‘Is that guy the owner of these absurd skeletons? Hmm, who is he? It’s a face I’ve never seen.’
Seong Taesam felt puzzled.
If he was such a strong necromancer, he should know his face.
But the Myth Guild member surrounded by those people had a face he didn’t recognize.
Who is he?
Who on earth could sweep away these powerful manticores all by himself?
Forgetting even to collect his subordinates’ bodies, Seong Taesam walked toward them.
Using an iron pipe that had been lying on the asphalt as a crutch.
“E-excuse me…….”
Limping over, Seong Taesam spoke to the Myth Guild members.
The Myth Guild members, who had been laughing and chatting, looked his way.
“Hm, you’re from Baekho Guild. Are you alright?”
Cha Jihye, the team leader from Myth Guild, responded on behalf.
In truth, the relationship between Myth Guild and Baekho Guild wasn’t great.
Though it was Baekho Guild that unilaterally disliked them, either way, it wasn’t a good relationship.
Since they shared the common ground of being ‘hunters’ who risked their lives on the battlefield, Cha Jihye asked with concern nonetheless.
However, Seong Taesam wasn’t thinking about his own well-being.
No, he didn’t have the leisure to.
His mind was filled with thoughts of the astonishingly powerful ‘necromancer.’
“I-I’m fine. More importantly, who is this person?”
“Huh? Who?”
“The one controlling those skeletons. Who exactly is he?”
“Ah, you mean our Hunter Seo Juwon?”
“Yes? What did you just say?”
“Hunter Seo Juwon. You’re talking about Hunter Seo Juwon, the necromancer, right?”
“……!”
Seong Taesam’s mouth gaped open.
Seo Juwon.
Seong Taesam knew that name.
“S-Seo Juwon? You don’t mean the one who attended the Night of the Superhumans event……?”
“Ah, yes. That’s right. Hunter Seo Juwon attended the Night of the Superhumans event as our Guild Master Shin Daeho’s companion. But why? Is there a problem?”
“….!”
Even to Cha Jihye’s question, Seong Taesam just stood there with his mouth wide open.
Seo Juwon.
He was indeed the person he’d heard about in rumors.
‘So this is the guy who defeated Hunter Dokgo Young with a single skeleton?’
Baekho Guild’s top prospect was none other than ‘Dokgo Young.’
Dokgo Young, who received abundant love from Guild Leader Baek Inha.
A hunter with an incredibly bright future.
But he had suffered humiliation at the Night of the Superhumans event.
He had sparred with the companion of the Myth Guild Master at the banquet hall, and lost to a single skeleton summoned by that companion.
Not to an army of skeletons, but ‘just one.’
And that incident had become a huge issue within Baekho Guild, with no small number of opinions that the rumor was false.
Because it was absurd for someone as strong as Dokgo Young to lose to a single weak skeleton.
Seong Taesam had thought the same.
‘But with this person’s blue bones, it’s possible…….’
However, after seeing Seo Juwon’s skeletons in battle, Seong Taesam had no choice but to believe the rumor.
Seo Juwon’s blue bones.
Having witnessed with his own eyes their marvelous combat power as they massacred the manticores, he had no choice but to believe.
“Why? Do you have something to say to me?”
At that moment, Seo Juwon, who had been quietly listening, spoke up.
However, Seong Taesam trembled in his pupils and stepped back, saying.
“N-no! It’s nothing. Th-then, excuse me!”
With those words as his last, Seong Taesam, who had been backing away, fled the scene as if escaping.
Fleeing in a panic, forgetting his position as Team 3 leader.
He evaluated Seo Juwon like this.
‘That guy’s a monster……!’
A monster.
Seo Juwon, the necromancer who had massacred the manticores, was truly a ‘monster.’