Chapter 48: Only One Left & Goliath's Gratitude

A/N :

" " : Dialogue,

' ' : Thought,

[ ] : System, Akasha, Minerva,

"Italicized text" : Telepathy,

« » : Artificial Intelligence,

| | : Sung Jin-Woo's System Panels, Sung Jin-Woo's System Messages,

"Bold text" : Shadows & Deathborns.

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Seoul, South Korea

Narrator POV

In the Chairman's office of the Hunter's Association, Go Gun-Hee was typing away on a laptop, when the phone on his desk suddenly rang. He answered the call, only to hear the voice of his wife asking if he was alright.

He smiled at her worry of him, and spent the next 15 minutes assuring her that he was fine. After he finished the call, he sighed. "Even now, she's still such a worrywart. I was just about to go back..." He started speaking, but stopped as he noticed that the environment around him felt notably different.

He then turned his head to the seats in the room, where he saw a man with blue skin and white hair, dressed in clothing reminiscent of a robe. This was none other than Sillad, the Monarch of Frost.

"I take it that you're one of the Monarchs." He said to Sillad, who grinned slyly. "Seeing how you can recognize that I'm a Monarch but not which one I am, I'm correct in assuming that you're just a mere human with an informant. I wonder, is it the Shadow Monarch that told you?" He asked as he got up from the seat.

Go Gun-Hee exhaled, calming himself. Although he truly felt danger when faced with Sillad, he remembered that Dante not only still had this place in his perception, he had also left one of his deathborns in his shadow.

"I see, so that's why you're all targeting each of the Hunters that contributed the most to humans. You can't properly track any of the Rulers' vessels, so you're just trying until you come across a Fragment of Brilliant Light." Go Gun-Hee said calmly, causing Sillad to raise a brow, wondering how Go Gun-Hee could be so confident.

"If only you knew how wrong you are." Sillad said with a scoff. "We've already found the location of all seven of you Fragments. We set out to break two already, you'll very likely be the third." He said, but Go Gun-Hee just shook his head.

"It's truly unfortunate that for all your planning and preparation, only two people were needed to render it moot and useless." Go Gun-Hee said, still maintaining his calm.

"You humans really like to overestimate yourselves." Sillad said, then quickly created and launched an ice lance at Go Gun-Hee, who remained unmoving. As it got close to him, the ice lance spontaneously crumbled to ice dust, much to Sillad's surprise.

"Huh, another one of these fools has shown up. Did they not understand that those three are already dead?" Sillad's eyes shook as he saw a deathborn that looked eerily like him rise out of Go Gun-Hee's shadow. This was none other than the deathborn raised from Sillad in another timeline, Escarcha.

"What are you?" Sillad asked, his mind shaken by what he was seeing. "I'm you but far better." Escarcha replied with a smug smile. "Is that so? I'd like to see you prove it." Sillad said, then released a large mass of ice in Go Gun-Hee's direction.

But before it could even reach Go Gun-Hee's table, it crumbled to dust once again. "So, did you see it this time?" Escarcha asked with a playful grin, which in Sillad's eyes, was one full of sadism. "It seems you didn't. Go ahead and attack again, I'll make it slower for you this time." Escarcha said, as he crooked his finger in a taunting gesture with a grin still plastered on his face.

Sillad gritted his teeth and released another massive attack with his ice, only for it to be reduced to dust once more. But this time, he noticed something move within the ice. He saw multiple tendrils of darkness move momentarily within the ice, before it was all broken down to dust.

"You saw it this time, but not clearly enough." Escarcha said, then sighed, looking at Sillad with palpable disinterest. "Well, no need to waste any more time. In sure that Master has already told the Shadow Monarch that you're here. And since he had the sense to leave some shadow soldiers moving about, he should be here, right about... Now." As Escarcha said that, Sung Jin-Woo used Shadow Exchange to switch places with a shadow soldier that was on top of the building, then rushed down the side of the building to Go Gun-Hee's office.

Escarcha then snapped his fingers, destroying the isolation barrier that Sillad had put up around the room, making way for Sung Jin-Woo to enter. "Greetings, Shadow Monarch. You'll have to excuse me. I've yet to reduce this fool to a defenseless pulp." Escarcha said, then released dark spears of ice that swiftly pierced through Sillad's body, and lodged themselves in him.

Before Sillad could make any reaction to the pain he felt, the spears of blackened ice exploded in a closed of ice dust, which Escarcha quickly controlled to wrap around Sillad's body like a restrictive armor, leaving only his neck exposed.

Like all of his fellow deathborns, Escarcha had received the ability to use death essence and the darkness element, in addition to their original abilities, making him multiple times deadlier than his original body, even when ignoring the drastic increase in their stats.

"Well, he's all yours, Shadow Monarch." Escarcha said, and without wasting any time, Sung Jin-Woo pulled out an S Rank longsword and activated Lacerate as he swung the sword at Sillad's neck.

Though he was conscious through all this, Sillad was unable to do anything to defend himself, and so he was beheaded by Sung Jin-Woo without any resistance, reducing the number of living Monarchs to just three.

...

Five days ago

São Paulo, Brazil

After catching a football match, Brazil's most powerful S Rank Hunter, Jonas Alvez began heading back to his penthouse home, when suddenly, his environment seemed to go quiet. He didn't hear the sound of the crickets, the birds, or even his own footsteps.

He noticed a figure approaching him, and when he focused his sight, he saw a man with a yellow mask of sorts over his mouth, and a red blob like thing on his chest. The man wore a tattered dark cloak and had two objects behind him. Unknown to Jonas, this was the Monarch of Transfiguration, Yogumunt, and he had come here to kill Jonas.

Unlike the other Hunters that Dante had initially planned on protecting, Jonas didn't have a deathborn in his shadow, and so would have been forced to fight Yogumunt. But just as he planned to prepare himself to fight, he passed out.

And Yogumunt who was walking towards him suddenly vanished. Yogumunt found himself in a room with metal walls, and chains on three of the walls. He wondered where he was and who had brought him here and tried to move to investigate.

But he was shocked as his body was fixed in place. Suddenly, the door, which he thought was one of the walls opened, revealing Dante, who had knocked out Jonas and teleported Yogumunt to the same room where he held Rakan, Tarnak and Queresha when Sung Jin-Woo killed them.

He wordlessly walked up to Yogumunt and tapped on his body a few times, then snapped his fingers. Suddenly, Yogumunt's entire being was flooded with unbearable pain. Before he could begin writhing, he was caught by a set of chains that came from behind him, and dragged to the wall.

Yogumunt, in his agony, had a realization. This person was responsible for the absence, and unknown to him, death of the three Monarchs that were sent to kill Christopher Reid. But unfortunately for him, this realization wasn't going to be helpful to him, or to Antares.

...

A day had passed since Sillad's attack on Go Gun-Hee, and Dante published the news of each attack that the Monarchs had orchestrated via the mainstream media.

While it caused a wave of alarm, it also brought a wave of gratitude from Brazil's citizens and the USA's citizens. Go Gun-Hee's wife personally thanked Dante and Sung Jin-Woo for protecting her husband as well.

Yogumunt was now dead, as Dante had given Aurora the order to guide Sung Jin-Woo to his heavily weakened body. Sung Jin-Woo followed after making sure that Go Gun-Hee was alright, and killed Yogumunt, making it so that he and Antares were now the only Monarchs left.

With the assurance that only one Monarch remained that held hostility towards humanity, many were tempted to relax, believing that the Shadow Monarch would protect them without fail, but they remembered Dante's words, where he said that Antares was the King of Dragons, which meant that the possibility of dragons with the same or greater levels of power than Kamish could appear.

So despite the multiple events that had taken place, Hunters around the world were kicking up their hunting and Gate clearing speed. However, Thomas Andre was preparing to go to Korea for a very important meeting.

...

Four days later

Sung Jin-Woo POV

Man, with the number of Gates that have been popping up recently, you'd think that all the Monarchs were still alive. Thankfully, Dante's deathborns have been more than picking up the slack, so we haven't been overwhelmed by the number of Gates.

Well, I'm done with hunting for today, so I'm just going to go in and drop the materials from this last Gate. «Hello, Jin-Woo. You've got a visitor.» Aurora says, as soon as I reach the reception table.

"Who is it?" I ask with a soft sigh. «Thomas Andre.» Oh, yeah. He did say that he wanted to have a meal with me after he finished recovering. "How long has he been here now?" I ask. «Two hours.» Damn. Well, I can't keep him waiting much longer.

Entering the elevator, I stop at the administrative floor, where the guild leader's office is, and where Thomas is, from what I'm sensing. What is surprising is that there aren't any reporters around the building, like something kept their attention away. It's probably Dante.

Upon reaching the floor, Thomas waved at me, looking fully recovered. "Well, you've definitely gotten better." I say I'm greeting, and he laughs. "And you've definitely been busy." He says, looking at the dust that has amassed on my cloak after clearing all those Gates.

"Yeah. It's been a while. I take it you're here for that meal." I say, and he nods, then gives me a feral grin. "Yeah, and I've got a fantastic gift for you. Trust me, you'll like it. Now, can we get to somewhere more comfortable? The gift is a bit too dangerous to hand over here." He says, and I nod, then we leave the building, and head to an expensive restaurant, where he booked out the entire place.

We enter, with some members of the Scavenger Guild, and one of them holding a case. We order some food to eat, and as anyone would expect from his size, Thomas eats a lot more than I do. He even uses a cooking fork to eat.

Halfway through the meal, with no speech or banter between us, he quickly wipes his mouth, and reveals a smile. "You don't know how long I've waited for this moment." He says, then snaps his fingers, and the Scavenger Guild's member holding the case comes forward and puts it on the table.

I don't feel any mana from the case, which could only mean that it is something made to seal something powerful, or at least keep that thing from releasing too much mana ro the environment for safety reasons.

"This is me showing my gratitude for sparing the lives of my guild members." He says and opens up the case. Immediately after, I feel a familiar mana signature, one I have gotten used to over the past few days. "That's from Kamish, isn't it?" I say, and his smile widens.

"That's correct." He says with a nod. "But how'd you get your hands on this? I may have raised Kamish as my summon, but even then, the body of Kamish is still with the Hunter Bureau." I say, with a raised brow.

"Back when we hunted Kamish, we handed over the corpse to the government, considering that we would get something more valuable than money if we did." He says, then takes a massive bit of the large steak he had ordered.

"But when it came to Kamish's largest and sharpest tooth, which I pulled out when he bit me, I was allowed to keep it as a souvenir." He says between bites. "I wanted to turn it into something useful, but saw that it was too short to be made into a sword, so I turned it into this pair of daggers. Who knew that would come in useful?" He says, his grin still on his face.

|Item: Kamish's Wrath

Item Class: ???

Type: Dagger

Attack +3,100

A high quality dagger crafted from the sharpest canine of a dragon. Its power aligns with the user's strength, and it is able to detect mana amounts. This making it a superb weapon depending on the user's ability.|

Holy shit. It's attack is +3,100?! I thought that the Demon King's Dagger was amazing, but it doesn't even begin to compare to this. And with this being a pair, it would be equivalent to me swinging a pair of broadswords in each hand.

Taking one of the daggers into my hand, I test it by giving it a few sharp swings. I can feel the sheer intensity of the mana resonating with the dagger. If I had this against Legia's soldiers or even Baran, I would have killed them much faster.

"Whoa there, Mr Sung! Even if I strengthen my defenses with my enhancement skills, those blades can still easily penetrate right through the. Don't tell me you're going to kill me with the gift you just received from me?" Thomas says with a small laugh.

I look at the daggers with a thoughtful gaze, then to Thomas. "So, How do you like my present, Mr Sung?" He asks, his smile muted, at least, when compared to the wide grin he normally sports. "You're really giving this to me for free?" I ask him, wondering if he has something else in mind.

"Free? I'm pretty sure that this exchange is to my advantage. For the lives of me and my guildmates, what I'm giving is dirt cheap." He says, folding his arms. "Then I'll accept it with pleasure." I say, putting the daggers back into the case. "Seeing you do so makes me happy too." He says, and we begin laughing, only to be interrupted by a sensation that only Hunters can feel.

"Mr Sung, just now..." He says, and I nod, letting him know that I felt it too. We quickly head outside and see the largest Gate that has ever formed on the planet. "I can't believe my eyes. It the first time I've ever seen one that big. It's far bigger than the one that Kamish came out of." Thomas says, pushing down his shades.

*Ringtone.* My phone rings, and I pick up the call, which is from Dante. "Yes?" I say, hearing electric humming coming from his side. "It's time for us to get you ready to receive the final parts of your "inheritance"." He says, and I look at the Gate, wondering just what is within it that is tied to the Shadow Monarch.

Chapter End.

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Word Count: 2,584

Thanks for reading!

Wanted to try this, so please feel free to participate. If we reach 50 Power Stones by 5 pm WAT tomorrow, I will release another chapter by Saturday.