Chapter 42

Chapter 42
Chapter 42

Chapter Title: Hamburg Showdown

—

I had broadcasted threats over the comms as if I were prepared to start strafing the area at any moment, but precisely as I anticipated, no retaliation followed. The rotors of the helicopter I occupied continued their steady, rhythmic thrumming as we pressed on toward Hamburg.

It appeared they realized that further verbal warnings were a waste of breath, as the radio remained silent from that point forward.

“Hamburg is likely in a state of total chaos by this hour.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Hunter. We’re going to be over Hamburg momentarily. What’s the plan for my protection?”

The pilot’s voice was laced with clear trepidation as he questioned me.

“Relax. You aren’t in any danger.”

“If you say so.”

To be perfectly honest, I did briefly debate whether he actually deserved my protection. This pilot was an employee of the Mazurka syndicate, after all—one of the many parasites feeding off the local population just like the rest of those criminals.

I caught myself.

Regardless of his affiliations, I couldn’t simply toss him to the wolves. He had, after all, gambled his life to pilot this bird all the way to this destination.

Besides, I wasn’t some divine arbiter of fate. It wasn’t my place to decide who was worthy of drawing their next breath.

Just as the pilot predicted, the skyline of Hamburg soon stretched out beneath us. I reached for the radio, dialed into their frequency, and spoke.

“Are you going to provide landing coordinates, or am I just supposed to hover here? I’ve arrived.”

“…Fine. Look for the signal.”

A crimson flare streaked into the sky, leaving a trail of smoke. The helicopter banked toward the light. Down below, a landing pad marked with blinking beacons came into view… and something else.

“Well, look at that.”

A massive contingent of people had completely encircled the helipad.

“Are you certain… are you absolutely sure about this?”

“Just set it down. If you’re planning on retreating now, I’m stepping out mid-air.”

Whatever fate befell the aircraft after I disembarked was no longer my concern. That was the unspoken subtext, and the pilot seemed to catch the drift.

With a heavy sigh of resignation, he brought the chopper down onto the concrete pad.

“Hello there.”

Clutching my spear, I hopped out and offered a nonchalant wave to the assembly. Instantly, one of the men in the crowd loosed a bolt from a crossbow directly at me.

I snatched the flying projectile out of the air with a single hand and whipped it back at the attacker with interest. The bolt whistled through the wind and buried itself deep in the man’s shoulder.

“What’s the big idea? Firing at a guest without a word of welcome.”

I purposefully let the blade of my spear drag against the pavement as I took a slow, casual stroll forward. The harsh grinding of metal on asphalt rang out through the air.

Among the crowd, roughly twenty were confirmed hunters. The remainder were merely armed locals.

“Are you Yoo Chan-seok, the hunter?”

“That’s me. Who am I speaking to?”

The armed civilians looked visibly intimidated by my confirmation, but the hunters remained stone-faced. The man speaking must have been the commander of this warlord faction known as Kaiser.

He was outfitted in crisp military fatigues, sporting a medal on his chest—though the merit behind it was anyone’s guess.

“I am Daniel Lois of Kaiser.”

The man’s face was twisted in a grimace as he gave his name.

“Explain why you are trespassing on our territory.”

“I filed a formal request to allow the Siberian transit train through your borders, but I never received a courtesy reply.”

In response, he shifted his hand toward his sidearm and stated,

“We have internal matters to attend to. Nobody here wants a bloodbath, so turn around and leave.”

I flashed a grin at him.

“Is that right? Do you honestly think I hitched a ride on a helicopter and flew all this way just to go home empty-handed?”

“I’ve heard you’ve been making quite a name for yourself back in Korea. It seems a little bit of early fame has turned into massive overconfidence.”

Daniel gave a subtle signal with his head, and the surrounding hunters began to slowly tighten the circle around me.

“You aren’t the only hunter on the planet. Walk away while we’re still being polite.”

One of the men punctuated the statement with a threat.

“I’m well aware I’m not the only one. But there aren’t many out there who can actually take me.”

And looking at this group, none of them were in that elite bracket.

“You’ve got a bigger mouth than you do talent.”

“Keep talking trash until you actually see what I’m capable of.”

I began circulating the mana I had stored throughout my system and launched myself off the asphalt. In the blink of an eye, I was standing directly in front of the man who had just insulted me.

“Guh… ugh?!”

In a blur of motion, three rapid punches buried themselves in his midsection. As he collapsed forward, coughing up blood with his legs giving way, I drove my knee upward into his chin.

One down. The remaining hunters recoiled instantly, shouting,

“We are going to lodge a formal grievance with the Korean Hunter Association for this!”

“Be my guest.”

Up until this point, I had tried to play the role of the civilized professional. But after witnessing the disaster in Warsaw, I had shifted my perspective and my goals.

Moving forward, I didn’t give a damn if the world viewed me as a thug or a gentleman. I was going to do what was necessary.

“The real question is how many of you will actually be alive to complain when I’m finished.”

Lopco and Veramin, if I recalled correctly? These men weren’t their top-tier elites, nor had they committed their entire force to this confrontation.

One of the Great Eight, Ristorante, controlled the southern region where Kaiser was headquartered. They couldn’t afford to move every single asset here just to deal with me.

“Bring it on.”

They had clearly expected that capturing me once I landed would be a simple task.

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇

Yoo Chan-seok’s sheer gall left the assembled hunters stunned, nearly speechless. This Korean newcomer was standing alone against twenty seasoned hunters.

His level of assurance suggested he either had a trump card hidden away—or he was completely delusional.

The hunters traded silent, questioning looks.

His combat prowess was undeniably higher than anyone currently on the field. Rumors had spread like wildfire through the hunter community that he had cleared a Rank-2 Erosion Core by himself. However, they still believed they had a fighting chance.

Actually, they liked their odds.

They would use their superior numbers to distribute the load and minimize casualties.

A simple rotation of attackers would handle this.

Nobody possessed an infinite supply of mana.

It didn’t matter how talented one individual was; if twenty people took turns wearing him down, his mana reserves would eventually hit zero. A hunter stripped of mana was as useless as a vehicle with a dry fuel tank.

Besides, there was no concrete proof he was actually the titan who had soloed that Rank-2 Erosion Core in Korea.

‘His mana capacity looks about the same as ours, doesn’t it?’

The actual volume of mana detected within Yoo Chan-seok’s body didn’t seem particularly extraordinary.

“I don’t enjoy ganging up on a fellow hunter who’s just trying to make a living.”

“Save the tears for when you’re on the ground.”

Yoo Chan-seok didn’t wait for them to coordinate. With a thunderous crack of displaced air, he lunged forward, gripping his spear like a club and swinging it with full force into a hunter’s lower leg.

The sound of the bone snapping was sickeningly audible as it pierced the skin.

“A… aaargh!”

The opening move removed one opponent from the board entirely. He had funneled every bit of his mana into that single, devastating strike.

With nineteen opponents remaining, nobody expected him to expend that much energy so early. You didn’t dump your reserves like that unless you wanted to be beaten to death once the crowd closed in.

“This… this actually works in our favor…!”

One hunter started to voice their advantage, but his words died in his throat.

Yoo Chan-seok had just pulverized another man’s leg with the exact same velocity and power. It made no sense.

“His mana should have been depleted after that first hit!”

“His mana levels haven’t dropped at all!”

One of the observing hunters finally caught on and screamed in disbelief. The total mana Yoo Chan-seok had started with hadn’t diminished by a single fraction.

“I’m handing out wheelchairs today, gentlemen.”

The spear whirled in Yoo Chan-seok’s grip with a low hum. His most famous technique was well-documented: jet-black flames erupting from the spearhead. Yet currently, there wasn’t so much as a spark.

“Charge him! Use our numbers to pin him down!”

At that command, the hunters swarmed. Within minutes, they began to experience something utterly surreal.

What kind of fighting style was this?

It didn’t feel like Yoo Chan-seok was aiming his spear at them. It felt as though they were inadvertently throwing themselves into the path of his weapon.

“Dammit, we’ve dealt with high-level targets before!”

Furthermore, trying to land a hit on him felt wrong. You would be certain your strike had connected, only to find he wasn’t there.

They had never faced anything like this. It wasn’t that his movements were too fast to see. They could see him, they believed their strikes were on target—only to realize a split second later that they had missed. This sense of spatial wrongness was entirely new.

The hunters simply couldn’t grasp the mechanics of the battle they were losing.

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇

They initiated a move, and I adjusted my spear to intercept. Before their brains could even register their own intended actions, my spear was already waiting at the coordinate their bodies were heading toward.

By the time they realized the mistake, it was too late; they felt as though they had lunged onto my blade, getting cracked and broken in the process.

This was the benefit of having a nervous system overclocked by mana.

“Is this… predictive combat?”

“No way. How long has he even been a hunter? There’s no way he’s reached that level of mastery yet.”

“But he’s not just beating us with raw stats!”

They were back to shouting their technical jargon. To put it in gaming terms, it was an issue of input latency. Ping, essentially.

They were playing a high-stakes shooter with 120ms of lag, while I was operating on a local 20ms connection.

You know that rage in a game when you’re positive you pulled the trigger first but you’re the one who dies? That’s exactly what was happening to them.

“You guys aren’t up to the task. I’ve got plenty of experience dealing with crowds.”

Even if our mana capacities looked identical on the surface, I didn’t suffer from exhaustion. To keep up with my relentless pace, they had to burn through their own reserves just to stay standing.

“Hahaha! Look out!”

Steel clashed against steel. The pavement was uprooted, and bodies were sent tumbling from impacts they couldn’t deflect.

I vaulted into the air, seized a man who had been knocked skyward by his hair, and slammed him into a nearby wall. The brickwork spiderwebbed under the force; he slumped to the ground, unconscious and foaming at the mouth.

“What, taking a nap already? Get up, you cowards!”

Did they really think I was going down today?

“Kill him! Just kill the bastard!”

Bolts of lightning tore down from the clouds; a hunter shrouded in a crimson aura charged at me. Arrows made of dark energy were loosed in my direction; a wave of telekinetic pressure tried to pin me to the ground.

A freezing fog rolled across the pad to kill my line of sight, while a hidden assassin lunged from the shadows with a blade.

“There we go, I knew you had some fight in you.”

I spun away, letting the lightning strike empty air, grabbed one of the dark arrows mid-flight, and hurled it at the telekinetic. It buried itself in his shoulder.

“Guh… ugh.”

The pressure lifted instantly. I swung my spear in a massive arc through the mist; the sheer wind force blew the fog back onto the charging crimson hunter.

Disoriented and chilled, he stumbled. I closed the gap and drove an uppercut deep into his stomach.

As he was lifted off his feet, I followed up with a barrage of kicks to his midsection.

From that point on, I proceeded to systematically dismantle them, one by one.