Episode 162
Wheeik-!
The sound of whips slicing through the air resonated within the vicinity.
Tada-!
Whips extended from two opposite directions and caught each of Yoo-seong’s arms. It was a tool called EE-Whip (Electric Eel Whip).
The hunters who had thrown the whips then activated the winders that were attached to their hips.
The equipment used the hunter’s CE as fuel for its motor. In addition, the winders were connected to the hunters’ suits. This meant that, even without the motor, the hunters could pull their prey simply by moving backward.
The EE-Whip had been designed with such tremendous efficiency that it could pull a dozen tons while only consuming five hundred CE.
Thanks to that, despite being mass-produced equipment, it had a high rating of 4-stars (★★★★).
Despite that, the EE-Whip’s restraining strength alone wouldn’t be enough to stop Yoo-seong.
However…
“……!”
An electric shock flowed through the whips and into Yoo-seong’s body.
The EE-Whip’s mechanism could convert its user’s CE into an electric shock. Of course, compared to a real Thunderbolt Psy, the quality of the attack could be considered lacking. But, on the other hand, the fact that a mass-produced item could have this function…
“Uggghh!”
Yoo-seong collapsed as eight electricity-charged whips wound around his limbs and body.
As their eight colleagues restrained Yoo-seong, the other five hunters went to work.
Cheek-!
An elongated rod popped out from each of their arms.
This was the Needle Harpoon.
Like the EE-Whip, it was a mass-produced, four-star weapon. It had the thickness of a normal iron rod but was shaped like a needle with one pointed end.
What made it dangerous was not the needle’s sharp point but the built-in gunpowder mechanism deep within. When the tip of the rod came in contact with its target, and the hunter pulled the trigger, an explosion produced by the synthesis of the gunpowder and the hunter’s CE promptly erupted from the tip of the needle.
The machine artificially created a high-level Aura technique comparable to the efficiency of Yoo-seong’s Blade.
Even beasts with tough armor, such as the Gray Ant Queen, had proved to be helpless against the Needle Harpoon.
There were a lot of tools like the EE-Whip and the Needle Harpoon that represented the hunting industry in the United States.
A hunter did not need to be exceptional to deliver excellent results. The privileges of science and technology would soon fill their deficiencies.
Tick-!
His neck.
His left side.
His right thigh and the back of his left calf.
The middle of his abdomen.
Yoo-seong could feel pressure on five different parts of his body.
In the next moment…
Furoong-!
The five hunters turned their attack up to the maximum. The tremendous impact of the Needle poured into Yoo-seong’s body.
The sharp explosion that followed made the hunters bounce back. Then, after the glare had subsided, they carefully assessed their prey.
The attack seemed to have been a success. Yoo-seong was lying face down on the ground, with blood coming out of his mouth.
However… that was it.
Strangely, other than the blood coming out of Yoo-seong’s mouth, he didn’t seem to have any other injuries. It was the same even on the five pressure points the Needle Harpoon had aimed at.
The moment the Needle Harpoon touched him, Yoo-seong had prepared for impact by concentrating Aura on those five points.
It wasn’t as easy as it sounded, even for a hunter. To disperse Aura in five points at such accuracy was almost like acrobatics. Perhaps, if the thirteen hunters around Yoo-seong had been in a normal state of mind, they would have paused in wonder and awe at what they had just witnessed.
However…
They weren’t sane.
Cheolkup-!
Without any pause in the action, the hunters began installing replacements for the worn-out tips of their Needle Harpoons.
Yoo-seong began to stand up with eight whips wrapped around his limbs and body.
Just then…
“Huh?!”
Yoo-seong’s body suddenly drooped forward. The hunters holding him with their whips were pulled by the sudden change in Yoo-seong’s center of gravity.
Yoo-seong did not miss the gap. He concentrated a massive amount of Aura on his right arm and…
Bang-!
He swung it up as hard as he possibly could. The whips around his right arm had such strength that they did not break, but the hunters holding on to his right arm were thrown upwards in the process.
Go-oh-oh-!
Next, a blue light fluttered on Yoo-seong’s left arm as he pulled out his Aura Blade.
Of course, he wouldn’t be able to swing his left arm, but the momentum of his right arm had brought the whips in the direction of his left arm’s Blade.
Kwaang-!
The whip snapped upon contact with the sharp Aura Blade.
Yoo-seong felt his right arm come free, but he didn’t have time to rejoice.
Huwook-!
He immediately leaned back as a Needle Harpoon pierced through the space where his head had just been. The hunter who’d tried to stab him was going in the direction of the Aura Blade’s tip and trying to turn away, but it proved too late for him.
The end of the Blade pierced through the hunter’s chest.
“Haaab!” Yoo-seong swung his right leg, where he had also placed a massive amount of Aura.
Just like when he’d swung his arm, the hunters who were holding his leg were thrown forward with tremendous force.
The two hunters who had been restraining his legs then smashed against two more hunters charging at Yoo-seong with their Needle Harpoons.
Yoo-seong immediately swung his Blade and cut off the whips around his right leg.
He didn’t rush to remove all the whips that still bound him, though. In doing so, he was restraining the hunters’ movements as much as they were restraining him.
Now, he began to hunt them one by one.
Taah-!
He began pulling each hunter to him without moving a single step. Then, once within reach, he stabbed them with his Blade. Because his arms were restrained and he couldn’t press the button, he used Volcanic Martial Arts instead.
The Plum Blossoms that filled the room with each attack were at a lower efficiency level than Auto-Hunt, but it was still too much for these hunters to handle.
Soon, there were only two hunters with Needle Harpoons left.
“….”
“….”
As if finally realizing that it was impossible to defeat Yoo-seong, they tried to escape in different directions. However…
Whoo-!
Yoo-seong swung the arm and leg that were still bound by the whips. The bodies of the hunters attached to the end of the whip acted like his weapons, smashing against their escaping colleagues.
Poof-!
That turned out to be the end of the battle.
All in all, it took Yoo-seong a minute and twenty-one seconds to finish off the thirteen hunters. All of them were rigid with Yoo-seong’s Blood technique, yet they were still alive.
Yoo-seong’s attacks were made only to incapacitate them, not finish them off.
Even the Aura blade wounds he’d left on them wouldn’t leave scars.
Yoo-seong checked his body’s condition. He had suffered a mild internal injury from the electric shocks, but it wouldn’t interfere with his actions.
‘I would be fully recovered after thirty minutes of rest,’ he thought.
It was an obvious victory and success, but…
‘Damn it,’ he cursed himself.
He thought back to the battle he’d just had. Without Auto-Hunt, there were several instances in which he felt his action had been lacking.
For example, after getting a whip wrapped around his left arm, he could have tried to avoid the other incoming whips rather than suffering the electric shocks. Besides that, he was thinking about how he had swung the Aura Blade using the patterns for the Plum Sword in Volcanic Martial Arts. Ways he could have been more efficient were passing through Yoo-seong’s head in retrospect.
If someone else had known what Yoo-seong was thinking about right now, they would probably have thought he had gone insane. His performance had been more than outstanding. The fourteen hunters he’d just overpowered were gold-ranked veterans at the minimum.
It was also a team with first-rate equipment.
That team could have captured a six- to seven-star monster alive with no difficulty.
Perhaps other hunters had already experienced the same introspection as Yoo-seong was for the purpose of doing better at the next opportunity. However, they wouldn’t have felt as Yoo-seong did right then. He felt depressed at his perceived weaknesses.
‘What are you doing? This is not the time to think about it,’ he realized.
He shook his head and began to move. ‘Next time. You have more battles ahead.’
Bang-!
Yoo-seong went out of the building and began running on the outer wall.
He used his Enhancement tattoo to detect his prey without having to press Auto-Hunt.
There was the fifteenth CE vessel, the monster that had controlled the hunters from the roof of the building.
Despite its powerful manipulative ability, it seemed physically weak.
In fact, it was trying to escape, but it had only managed to descend one floor so far. Yoo-seong pressed the button as he neared his target.
Pagang-!
Auto-Hunt immediately made him burst through the building’s window into a floor just below the rooftop.
Then Yoo-seong’s eyes widened as his leg stretched out and smashed against the beast.
‘Is this a… Gray?’
His mouth hung open in surprise as he confirmed the monster’s appearance before him.
It was probably the exact image people imagined when they heard the word “alien.” A large, inverted-triangle-shaped head, disproportionate to its tiny body. A pair of deep, liquid black eyes that took up much of its face.
Its limbs were just like that of a grade-school-age child.
-….
The creature seemed to be saying something.
Was it because of the damage it had just suffered, or was it because of fear? Even Yoo-seong’s enhanced hearing couldn’t make out what the sound was.
Anyway, Auto-Hunt didn’t seem to think that what it was saying was important.
Pak-!
With Auto-Hunt, Yoo-seong struck the creature’s throat, rendering it unconscious in an instant.
“It’s not dead,” Yoo-seong assured himself. Auto-Hunt’s primary purpose was to capture, not to kill.
‘This is not the time to worry about its condition…’ he thought.
The Gray would not be alone. There had to be other monsters with the remaining hunters under their control.
Not only that, they could probably control other monsters within this area.
As he had just experienced, the Gray’s physical capabilities were not something to worry about.
However…
In this small, gray-curtained area, there were seventy more hunters of the same skill that Yoo-seong had just encountered.
subduing the Miracle Boy Version Two.
‘This is going to be a pretty annoying fight,’ he realized.
Suddenly, he heard something from the sky.
Huh oh oh oh oh-!
‘Could it be…?’
Just as he recognized what the sound was…
Bang-!
With Auto-Hunt, he grabbed the Gray by the nape and jumped out of the building. Arriving on the first floor in an instant, he immediately carried the bodies of the stunned hunters down to the basement.
Kwaaang-!
This was because the cause of the explosions he had just heard was…
“Those bastards!” he muttered furiously.
It wasn’t any monster. It was the US Military bombing Nashville.
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