Monster Hunting [3]

The battle proceeded more smoothly than I thought. Jung Yeonhee and Lee Jongho were the main actors.

Lee Jongho's main focus point was his strength and he also possessed the authority 'Giantification'. On the other hand, Jung Yeonhee was an assassin with a quick movement skill.

The battle become much simpler with those two involved. I wasn't just sitting idle as well. I was performing my duty as the group's long ranger. And in less than a minute, more than half of the man-eating rats had already fallen.

Crack—

"Chweeeek—!"

A pained cry echoed through the air. A man-eating rat thrashed briefly before Lee Jongho's brute strength crushed its head beneath a metal pipe.

"They're weaker than I thought," he muttered, almost dismissively.

Though the rats were notorious for their speed rather than strength, they were still formidable foes. Yet Lee Jongho spoke as if killing them was a trivial matter.

His ability to effortlessly crush their heads raised a question — was it sheer strength stats or a skill at play?

Either way, he wasn't the only one in the spotlight.

Slash, slash—

Jung Yunhee moved swiftly, her blade slicing clean through the overgrown rats' necks. One by one, their heads thudded to the ground.

"Disgusting," she muttered, shaking blood off the sashimi knife without so much as a change in expression.

She was the opposite of Lee Jongho. If he was focused on strength, then she was focused on speed. Even so, it didn't mean her power was lacking.

Swish—!

Her knife glinted dangerously, finding its target.

Peok— Slash—!

"Chweeeek—!"

A sharp cry followed as the blade pierced a rat's eye, reaching its brain. The creature collapsed lifelessly without resistance.

"Hah…. Hah..."

Jung Yeonhee released an exhausted breath. Although she was somewhat strong, her only weakness was that her endurance was low. She should really invest in her endurance stats after this.

Grrr!

As if accessing the situation, the man-eating rats sprinted through the strong members. They were moderately smart so when they saw the battle was unfavourable for them, they changed their battle strategy.

They targeted the party's weakest members, with Angelica as one of their prime focuses. Her seemingly fragile appearance made her an easy mark—or so they thought. In truth, she was far more dangerous than she appeared.

Puok, Puok, Puok—!

Three man-eating rats leaped toward Angelica, aiming straight for her face. They moved swiftly, but she calmly sidestepped and drove her weapon into their heads one by one.

The impaled rats writhed on the ground, convulsing violently as if seized by death throes.

Angelica wielded a new weapon — a thorn-like bone, possibly from a monster. She must have acquired it while I was elsewhere. It seemed she had been keeping busy.

Despite the repulsive sight of the twisting rats, a satisfied smile spread across her face.

"Ha! ha! Ha! I did it. I can fight."

It was a creepy smile I have never before now. Was she slowly losing her grip on sanity?

As someone not originally from the novel, I couldn't be sure whether to worry.

Either way, the battle was nearing its end, though it wasn't going as smoothly as I had hoped.

I sighed.

"Ahhh! Stay away!"

"Die! Die! Die!"

The issue lay with the newcomers. They struggled against six man-eating rats, a pitiful sight considering their supposed status as elite assassins of the mainframe group.

Why are they this weak?

Gnaw—! Slice—

Lee Gyeong winced as a rat sank its teeth into her arm while she tried to fend them off with a knife. Kang Manshik, battling two rats simultaneously, was blindsided by another attack from behind.

If this kept up, they'd perish before I lifted a finger. While I had my own reasons for wanting them gone, it wasn't time for them to die, not yet. I still needed them for my exploration of that place.

Without further delay, I raised the Silver Demon and fired, taking down the six rats one by one.

Burst— Crack—!

"... Eh?"

Lee Gyeong blinked in surprise, her disbelief mirrored by Kang Manshik.

It had all happened so quickly they barely registered the sudden shift from chaos to silence. Their astonishment wasn't my concern, what mattered was that the immediate danger was gone.

As I approached them, their expressions softened, and they spoke hesitantly.

"Ah! Th-Thank you."

"Thank... Ack..."

Kang Manshik winced mid-sentence, clutching his shoulder where a rat had bitten him. I glanced at the injury and saw that the area had already started to darken, turning black.

Indeed, being bitten by a Nightmarish Terror was dangerous, regardless of their level on the Path of Corruption Sequence.

I retrieved an ointment from my inventory and tossed it his way.

"Rub that on your shoulder. It'll dull the pain. Though you probably won't be using that arm anytime soon."

"Excuse me, can you say that again?"

"Why are you asking questions? Rub it quickly. Do you want to lose that arm?"

The grim reality hit him hard. In an apocalyptic world, losing a limb was a death sentence. Without hesitation, he applied the ointment to his wounded shoulder.

[A few constellations are pleased by your goodwill.]

[200 coins have been received from donations.]

I ignored the message and scanned the surroundings, assessing the situation. The area had fallen silent once the last man-eating rat was pierced. With the exception of Kang Manshik, everyone had only minor injuries.

It was a solid performance.

One by one, everyone relaxed and settled on the ground. I stabbed my knife into the body of a man-eating rat. There was no manual, but I knew that opening it up would reveal what I was looking for.

Jung Yunhee watched me intently, curiosity flickering in her eyes.

"What are you doing?"

"As you can see, I'm looking for something. It should be somewhere inside here. Aha! Found it."

My hand grasped something and I pulled it from the body of the rat, a glowing orb covered in blood.

"Is that..."

Yes. This is a Nightmare Core."

I placed the core in my storage pouch, and a system notification popped up.

[One Nightmare Core has been obtained.]

[1 / 50]

Fifty cores. That was the amount required to pass the Sub Narrative. But finding fifty cores was far more difficult than I had anticipated.

In any case, the Nightmare cores were more fascinating than I initially thought.

Nightmares were lifeforms transformed into demon beasts through the corruption of miasma. As a result, they lose their physical bodies and gain magical ones, making activities like eating, sleeping, drinking, or even breathing irrelevant.

As long as they have energy, they can sustain themselves. The core is the manifestation of that energy.

"What exactly are cores?" Jung Yunhee asked.

I sighed and gave a simple explanation.

"Cores are essentially the organs of monsters. Think of them like hearts. If you open their chest, you should find them. The location might vary depending on the species."

"I see."

"Everyone, you can find cores by opening up the chests of the monsters!"

"Huh? Really?"

"If that is the case, then..."

The group eagerly looked at the fallen monsters with strange eyes. I even saw some of them licking their lips.

Without needing further direction, they began to work diligently.

My attention shifted to Angelica, who was skillfully cutting apart the dead monsters with her weapon.

I approached casually and raised a question.

"I'm curious. Angelica, when did you get that?"

"Oh, this?"

Angelica pointed at the thorn-like bone, and I nodded.

"Don't you already know? I used to live in the countryside in London before I came to South Korea. My father would take me camping and taught me some hunting skills."

"Ah, is that so? I forgot about that. It was an interesting story."

"It was really fun. I miss those peaceful days."

Angelica's expression shifted, tinged with sadness. It seemed like peace had become a distant memory.

If I had any experience in comforting others, I might have tried to cheer her up, but instead, I simply left her to her thoughts and focused on extracting more Nightmare cores.

"This..."

"It's glowing!"

Each person pulled out a core. It took about 30 minutes for everyone to gather their share of cores.

Lee Jongho looked at me and walked over.

"Jakga-ssi, how many cores did you get?"

"Seven."

"I got four. Wait, come again?"

"I got seven cores. The numbers are a bit low though. I killed around 15 ground rats, but I only got 7 cores."

I frowned slightly. This was the difficult part of the narrative. Even if you killed 20 monsters, it wasn't guaranteed you'd get 20 cores. Not every monster had a core formed within its body.

The core formation process differed from beast to beast. Unless you went after higher-sequence nightmares that had fully matured, you were stuck with the low-end ones.

Hunting higher-order nightmares was definitely not an option with our current strength.

Turning my gaze, I asked,

"How many did you get, Angelica?"

"I only got two."

"What about you, Yunhee?"

"I got five."

"Hmm."

As I thought, it was not enough. If we continued to hunt down monsters at this pace, we won't be able to gather enough cores for everyone.

"More importantly, what are we going to do about food?"

This time, it was Lee Gyeong that spoke out.

"If we want to survive, we need to find a good food source. We can't mindlessly hunt monsters all day long, we'll eventually get tired. How about we split up so we can cover more ground?"

[The character 'Lee Gyeong' has used the skill 'Charm' on you.]

[Personal Skill, 'Black Box' has activated.]

[The Skill 'Charm' has been negated.]

Her manipulation was on a cute level.

She was saying some reasonable words in order to win favour from the group and she even used the skill 'Charm' to reinforce her act.

I simply shook my head.

"There is no need. We won't be able to find any good conference stores or standing restaurants at this hour."

"Then what should we do?"

"It's pretty simple. We don't necessarily need to search for food. We just need to change our source of food."

I looked at the dead monsters scattered all over the floor.

"Hold on now... don't tell me?"

"Yes, we will have to eat the monsters."

Everyone looked at the dead man-eating rats with a complicated expression.

"Jakga-ssi, are you sure we can really use this for food?"

"Well, we have no choice whatsoever except you guys want to starve."

"Even if you say that... Eating those thing is just..."

"I don't really mind." Angelica spoke nonchalantly. "But how are we going to cook it? Should we make a fire?"

"No, not right now. We need to acquire two things before that. A temporary place to camp and a good hunting ground. There's also the problem about our hunting method as well.*

I began to think of a good solution. What to do? What to do?

"Ah!" Suddenly, a brilliant idea emerged. Why didn't I think of this sooner?

I looked at the newcomers, Lee Gyeong and Kang Manshik. For some reason, they appeared to be nervous when I was looking at them.

"W-Why are you looking at us like that?" Kang Manshik trembled for some reason.

"Sorry, I just thought of a brilliant idea."

"What do you want us to do?"

Lee Gyeong's question made me smile. What a smart girl.

"It's not a big story. You guys just need to do a simple task for me and in return, you can get cores without having to kill monsters."

"Get cores?"

"Without having to kill monsters?"

Their expressions lit up. Who would pass up the offer to get cores without killing monsters? It was an irresistible offer with no possibility of refusal.

"What do we need to do?"

Gyeong asked a slight excited voice. My smile widened even more.

"It's very simple actually."

A very simple yet dangerous job.

"You guys will be bait."