Chapter 181: Episode 181

’Whoosh!’

As Hong Yul moved again, Park Seongjin gritted his teeth. His entire body was wracked with damage, but he wouldn’t let go of his shield, even if it killed him.

’If I let go, I die.’

He held onto the shield with every last ounce of his strength. This time, instead of a punch, Hong Yul grabbed the top of the shield.

Then, she forcefully slammed it into the ground. Overwhelming power. As the shield dug into the earth, Park Seongjin, who was holding it, lost his balance and staggered. No matter how hard he struggled, the shield wouldn’t budge. Now, nothing stood between them.

“Buh-bye.”

Hong Yul smiled faintly. But to Park Seongjin, that smiling face looked like a demon from hell. His entire body was steeped in fear, and without realizing it, tears streamed down his face.

“S-s-s-save me! President! I was forced into this, I had no choice—!”

Hong Yul lunged like a beast and headbutted him. Park Seongjin’s focus vanished, and he collapsed to the floor, his neck bent backward at a grotesque angle.

“Hah.”

She looked ahead. The terrified guild members were holding their weapons, their arms trembling violently.

’Ugh.’

Her vision wavered. The figures of her enemies split into dozens of images. It wasn’t just the fatigue; her condition was at its worst because of this damn gas. She placed a hand on her forehead and closed one eye.

“What are you doing? Come at me, all of you.”

It was then.

With a deafening roar, the entire crystal cave began to shake from a massive impact.

“The cave!” the guild members screamed.

The entire high ceiling of the cave was collapsing. Hong Yul looked up with a blank expression. The house-sized crystal debris falling toward her seemed to split into dozens of pieces.

“…Ah, fuck.”

* * *

In Daejeon, the attack on the Immortal was still ongoing. Every time the creature tried to move by drawing mana from the gate, a fierce onslaught from the hunters rained down on it. The Immortal couldn’t hold its ground, but the hunters were also beginning to tire.

“Ah!”

“The Immortal’s body is cracking!”

Cracks began to form on the body of the giant, transparent creature. And then.

[The Disaster has been cleared.]

A system message appeared for all the hunters in the vicinity.

“Okay!”

“We got the last one!”

Everyone raised their arms and cheered. It wasn’t without damage, but once again, Korea had survived a large-scale Disaster. With the knowledge that it was all over, everyone exchanged greetings in a cheerful atmosphere.

The Immortal was gone, and only the closing gate remained. The battle was over, but everyone on site remained in place, waiting for the heroes’ return.

“Someone’s coming out!”

With a flash of light, a group of hunters emerged from the gate. It was Frost and the Unix guild members. They were a mess, covered in dirt and monster blood. Many were being supported by their comrades as they exited, and quite a few were unconscious. The waiting medical teams immediately moved the injured to ambulances.

“To think Unix would take such a beating.”

“The battle must have been incredibly fierce.”

But it was strange that the expressions of the hunters coming out of the gate were all grim. They had undoubtedly won the battle, yet the atmosphere was heavy.

“What happened, Frost?” Im Namjin asked as he approached.

Frost, covered in wounds, lowered his head in shame.

“I’m sorry.”

Im Namjin looked at him, confused.

“We are the only survivors.”

“What did you say?” the hunters cried out in shock.

“The President! What about the Association President?”

“What happened to Blackguard and NIX?”

“Please, explain!”

At the people’s urging, Frost squeezed his eyes shut.

“The boss monster was a rank-9 irregular draconic monster.”

“…A rank-9?”

“All the parties that had already entered had been annihilated by that boss. Due to the successive battles, even Association President Hong Yul was in her worst condition, and we couldn’t guarantee a victory.”

Frost continued his explanation, his voice choked with tears. The vivid description of how she had entered the fire-breathing dragon’s body to destroy its heart drew a collective gasp from the crowd. In the end, the boss was cleared, but the president had chosen to self-destruct with the dragon in order to let everyone else escape.

“That can’t be…”

The hunters who heard the story sat down on the spot, dazed.

“Hunter Im Namjin! You can’t!”

Im Namjin, his eyes bloodshot, was trying to run toward the gate. The Enforcement Bureau agents clung to him, blocking his path with their bodies.

“The gate is about to close! If you go in now, you’ll never come out!”

Blood trickled from Im Namjin’s lip. “That’s impossible! How could she…! It’s impossible!”

Im Namjin stopped in his tracks and whipped around to face Frost.

“Hunter Frost.”

“Yes, sunbae.”

Im Namjin strode toward Frost. An unusual amount of mana flowed from his body. With every step, the concrete road where he stepped cracked and turned to dust.

“D-don’t get close!”

“You’ll be petrified if you touch him!”

No one could stop Im Namjin from approaching Frost. Finally, the two men faced each other one-on-one.

“That story you just told—there wasn’t a single lie in it, was there?”

“Of course not,” Frost replied, his voice laced with emotion. For an instant, his eyes turned cold. “Are you implying that you suspect me?”

’Crack. Crackle.’

As frost began to form beneath Frost’s feet, everyone recoiled in horror. The two men glared at each other, one kicking up dust, the other cold air.

“Enough!” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was commanding the military on site, shouted. “Both of you, stop! What do you think you’re doing in such a grave situation!”

The two men fell silent.

Im Namjin and Frost, who had been glaring at each other as if to kill, finally retracted their mana. Frost and the Unix guild members left in ambulances to receive treatment, while the other hunters stared blankly at the fading gate.

But in the end, no one else came out before the gate closed.

[Immortals Destroyed: 14/14]

[Republic of Korea, Immortal Disaster Completely Cleared.]

[List of Missing Hunters:

Certified Rank-1 Hong Yul – President of the Korean Hunter Association.

Certified Rank-3 Park Seongjin – Guild Master of Blackguard.

Certified Rank-3 Yu Jaehak – Guild Master of NIX.

And 78 others.]

This Immortal Disaster would be recorded as one of the worst to ever strike Korea.

* * *

[Association President Hong Yul, Missing in Disaster Dungeon.]

[Boss Monster of Final Immortal Dungeon Presumed to be a Rank-9 Irregular.]

[A Wave of Mourning from Around the World. “I can’t believe it.”]

[Her Heroic Final Act: Saving Her Comrades and Facing the Boss Monster One-on-One.]

The Republic of Korea was in chaos. Hong Yul, the nation’s greatest pride, was missing. And being declared missing in a dungeon with a closed gate was, for all intents and purposes, a death sentence. Even if she were alive, with the gate closed, there was no way out.

“…This is ridiculous,” Jin Bora said with hollow eyes, watching the news on the first floor. “Was she even someone who ’could’ die? How could this happen…?”

Everyone else had a similar reaction. They had all thought of the Association President as an invincible being, someone who would overcome any trial. It was only natural, given that her career was so brilliant that even the word ‘miracle’ wasn’t enough to describe it.

But now she was gone, and people couldn’t recover from the shock.

I was the same.

’She wasn’t someone who would go out like this.’

My chest ached as if it were being torn apart. She could be scary at times, but to me, she had been like an affectionate older sister. We had just gone to Hawaii together a few days ago, and then this… I couldn’t believe it.

“…Haa.”

To be honest, my mind was refusing to accept her death. I didn’t know if it was me being cold or just escaping reality, but all I could desperately think about was how I could get her out.

Of course, there were people who were even more shocked than I was.

’I wonder if Hong Yeon is okay.’

I still hadn’t been able to call her. She had deactivated the messenger app she occasionally used and had turned off her phone. The shock must be immense, but I could only hope she would pull through.

“I’m changing the channel,” Samia said, unable to watch the somber mood any longer.

But as expected, every channel was talking about the Association President.

“…And so, I express my deepest sorrow.”

Just then, President Park Jeongyang was reading a statement on a public broadcast.

“My fellow citizens, the Republic of Korea must continue to move forward. We must not be broken by any hardship, and we must stand on the past to leap into the future. I believe that is the noble will of the Association President, who faced the worst of monsters alone to save her young guild members. Until a second Hong Yul, a third Hong Yul appears! Our government and the Hunter Association will join forces to create a powerful Republic of Korea that can overcome any crisis!”

I listened to Park Jeongyang’s speech with my chin in my hand. It didn’t really register. Just then, Jin Bora spoke cautiously.

“Sunbae. What’s going to happen now?”

“I don’t know.”

I let out a long sigh. “Im Namjin is the next in line and will probably become the next Association President. He’s not as unconventional or progressive as Hong Yul, but he’s serious and level-headed. There’s no one better to handle this chaotic situation.”

I pretended to be calm as I explained the situation. I didn’t want Jin Bora or the others to see that I was shaken.

“Tower Master!”

Just then, Jeong Seojin, his hair disheveled, came running down the stairs from the second floor.

“I found it. Information about this Disaster.”

“I thought it was an original, but there was a record of it in Erendel?”

“Yes. It’s not much, but I dug through some old texts and managed to find a few lines.”

Jeong Seojin opened the ancient book, and I, Jin Bora, and Samia, who were sitting in the lobby, gathered around. Samia tilted her head.

“I can’t understand this book. It’s a strange language.”

“That’s because it’s in the language of Erendel. I’ll just explain the main points,” Jeong Seojin said, his eyes sharp.

“Of the fourteen Immortals that fell upon the Republic of Korea, the rank-9 Irregular dragon-type monster that Unix officially announced was nowhere to be found in the records.”

The others were stunned.

“To find a similar point, Unix claimed that Hong Yul fought the boss in a place called the crystal cave, but what’s listed in the records is a crystal dragon. Not an Irregular, just a rank-7 monster. Not even a boss monster.”

“Wait a minute, are you saying Unix lied?”

“Exactly.”

Jin Bora and Samia stared at Jeong Seojin, speechless.

“I know Unix’s methods, or more accurately, Frost’s methods, better than anyone. It’s easy to guess why Unix is lying.” Jeong Seojin let out a deep sigh. “Unix killed Association President Hong Yul.”

“Ah!”

“There’s no reason eight parties, including rank-3 hunters, couldn’t clear a dungeon like this. Blackguard and NIX must have also cooperated with Unix to attack the president. I don’t know why they couldn’t get out, but they were probably all killed by her, or they too were betrayed by Unix.”

I had never seen Jeong Seojin make such a definitive assumption before.

“Ah, sunbae! The president just announced he’s making a major announcement!” Jin Bora exclaimed.

“…Now?”

We all turned our gazes to the laptop. We could see Park Jeongyang receiving a document from an official and reading it.

“We must quickly resolve the current chaos. Judging that we cannot leave the crucial position of the Hunter Association President vacant for long, I would like to announce the next Association President right here and now.”

’Right here and now?’

A shocking declaration. The reporters scrambled as camera shutters flashed like crazy.

“The next Association President will be…”

Watching the video on the laptop, we swallowed hard and waited for the president’s next words.

“The certified rank-2 hunter from the Unix Guild, Frost.”

Before I knew it, the word “fuck” escaped my lips.

* * *

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep