A Hunter on Borrowed Time Keeps Surviving - Chapter 35

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 35.
『 You have entered the S-rank Dungeon “Corpse Swamp.” 』
〈S-rank Gate ― Ttukseom District 11〉
Dungeon Name: Corpse Swamp
Appearing Monsters: Morga
Estimated Clearance Time: Approximately 8 hours
Siul and the Choshin-seong Team stepped boldly into the dungeon.
In that instant, clammy moisture clung to their skin.
The swamp’s characteristic damp air brought a wave of discomfort.
And as the dungeon’s name suggested, a stench of decay drifted through the air.
“Watch your step in the mud.”
Heo Min-ho brushed mud from the hem of his pants, offering the warning.
Their surroundings lay submerged in murky fog and darkness, while black mud spread wide beneath their feet, making any hasty movement impossible.
‘Ah… brand new shoes…’
Siul’s once-white sneakers were already caked with mud, even along the laces.
The one silver lining was that beyond some soiled clothing, they hadn’t faced any real difficulty at the dungeon entrance.
“This definitely feels like a place where your strength gets sapped.”
One of the party members looked around and shared the observation.
The other members and Siul agreed.
That distinctive crushing pressure that always descended when entering an S-rank Dungeon.
A density of magical power incomparable to other dungeons.
Here, such things were barely felt.
‘It must mean the Boss’s power has weakened considerably.’
The heart governing the entire dungeon was undoubtedly the Boss.
When a dungeon showed such instability, it was fair to assume the Boss was in poor condition.
“According to the records, Director Jang Jin-yeong abandoned pursuit of the Boss and cleared every Morga on his way out. He did it for the next raid team that would be sent in.”
Heo Min-ho recited the record as written out of respect for his senior, though everyone knew the truth—that Jang Jin-yeong had simply vented his frustration on the lesser creatures.
“Just in case there are survivors, let’s stay alert.”
Heo Min-ho cautioned the team with the calm voice of a proper leader.
Then he took point, moving deeper into the swamp.
The rest of the party followed in unison.
* * *
They walked for forty-five minutes without pause since entering the dungeon.
Yet in all that time, not a single monster appeared.
“Yaaawn—”
One of the party members couldn’t resist and let out a yawn.
When Heo Min-ho shot him a sharp glare, he quickly covered his mouth.
“…Sorry.”
Boredom was beginning to creep in.
Siul, walking toward the back, suddenly stopped.
“Siul? What’s wrong?”
The party member directly ahead turned back with the question.
At that, the entire Choshin-seong Team turned to look behind them.
Siul stood motionless, staring at one corner of the chamber.
A shadow where the swamp’s darkness lay thick.
His gaze remained fixed there.
“You were right. There is a survivor—an unkilled monster.”
“What—what did you say?”
Just as the Choshin-seong Team’s eyes sharpened with vigilance toward the shadow, something stirred in the darkness.
Whoosh!
A massive head suddenly burst forth from the shadow.
“…!”
The creature was a serpent.
But its body dwarfed any ordinary snake beyond comparison.
Its length exceeded eight meters, and its thick, muscular form was covered in black scales that radiated deadly menace.
“Morga!”
Heo Min-ho reflexively shouted the creature’s name.
The moment it realized it had been discovered, it launched an immediate assault.
It drove its head straight at Siul, the one who had first sensed its presence.
Crack!
Morga’s yellow eyes gleamed with damp malevolence.
As he opened his mouth wide, violet liquid dripped freely from between his elongated fangs.
It was a poison that would kill any Hunter of C-rank or below with just a single drop.
Crack!
Just as Morga’s teeth closed in, nimble magical power flared from Siul’s feet.
【Skill ‘Ground Cleave’ activates.】
The ground erupted and split open.
Morga’s body plunged through the gaping swamp floor with a sickening lurch.
His balance shattered by the sudden collapse of terrain.
“Hisssss—!”
Morga staggered, his head rising again despite the fall.
In that instant, Siul descended onto Morga’s skull.
He landed with one knee bent, both hands pressed down upon the creature’s head.
【Skill ‘Flame Baptism’ activates.】
A tremendous inferno roared forth!!
Torrents of flame poured out in a devastating wave.
In seconds, Morga’s head and upper body were consumed by the blaze.
The stench of caustic poison mingled with the sound of burning flesh.
“Screeeeeeee—!!”
Morga’s shriek vanished before its echo could return.
The massive body collapsed lifelessly onto the swamp.
Its head was charred black, reduced to an unrecognizable mass.
“Wow….”
“That’s insane…!”
The party members rushed over with stunned expressions.
“Siul, are you alright? You’re not hurt anywhere…?”
“Are you stupid? He finished it in one shot—there’s no way he’s hurt.”
“I know that! I was just being polite!”
The party members bickered unnecessarily among themselves.
While Siul had dispatched the ambushing Morga with effortless grace, they had stood slack-jawed and useless—a humiliation they couldn’t quite shake.
“Truly exceptional, Siul.”
Heo Min-ho let out an impressed, self-deprecating laugh.
He praised Siul while reproaching himself for his own lapsed focus.
“After nearly forty minutes, your concentration never wavered for a moment.”
Heo Min-ho, as the team leader, had done his best to stay sharp, but around the thirty-minute mark his nerves had begun to fray.
Siul, by contrast, had detected the monster and countered the ambush flawlessly—the concentration of a true veteran.
‘That’s not quite it….’
Siul wiped his nose with one finger, laughing awkwardly.
In truth, he’d been yawning constantly from the rear of the formation.
Zero, in Invisibility mode, had simply detected Morga’s location and quietly relayed it to him.
“I was walking at the very back, you see. So the darker areas stood out more clearly to me.”
The Choshin-seong Team gazed at him with moved expressions.
‘And humble to boot!’
‘This is the bearing of a Hunter destined for rookie honors….’
‘This man is genuinely different….’
Their eyes shone so brightly without a word spoken that Siul, feeling uncomfortable, deliberately changed the subject.
“How much further to the Boss Room? We’ve been walking without rest the whole way—I think we should be arriving soon.”
Heo Min-ho pulled out a map and nodded slowly.
“We’re almost there. Just round the corner ahead, and we’ll be at the Boss Room entrance.”
It was a rare experience indeed.
To reach the Boss Room with only a single monster encounter and one battle.
‘Jang’s shameless arrangement really did mean licking off honey he’d spread himself.’
Siul swallowed a laugh internally.
Thanks to Jang Jin-yeong’s capricious stubbornness, both Siul and the Choshin-seong Team arrived before the Boss in peak condition.
* * *
The Boss Room door swung open, and Siul and the Choshin-seong Team stepped inside.
Judging by the volume of air that rushed out, a space opened far vaster than the swamp itself.
Yet that vastness remained invisible.
The entire Boss Room lay submerged in thick fog.
A murky gray veil consumed their vision so completely that even a party member standing only a few paces ahead appeared mere shadow.
“The fog is too thick….”
Someone muttered this, and Heo Min-ho thrust his hand into his inventory.
A single orb materialized in Heo Min-ho’s palm.
『 Light Orb 』 ― E-rank
Illuminates your field of vision.
He poured his mana into it, and warm light spread through the sphere.
Normally, a light source item of this grade should brighten a radius of several dozen meters.
But for some reason, only the area immediately around the orb glowed faintly—a few steps away, the thick fog remained impenetrable.
“……?”
Heo Min-ho’s eyes narrowed.
He grasped the Light Orb again and shook it.
There was nothing wrong with the item.
‘This fog….’
Heo Min-ho realized something and spun around urgently to alert his party members.
“The fog contains mana.”
The party members’ expressions hardened.
“Mana?”
“Not just mana. It’s barrier-type. It seems deliberately constructed to block vision.”
Heo Min-ho was so focused on explaining to his teammates that he didn’t notice what was approaching from the front.
Which led to what happened next.
“Since the fog seems too difficult to penetrate, everyone maintain formation, and the moment we spot the boss, we strike immediately….”
That was as far as Heo Min-ho got before the fog suddenly enveloped him.
The front-line party members flinched and looked around frantically.
“Min-ho?”
“Wait, where’d he—Min-ho!”
Calling out loudly yielded no response.
He’d been right there beside them just moments before, yet his presence had vanished entirely.
“What’s going on? What happened up front?”
The rear-guard members called toward the confused front line.
Siul craned his neck forward to assess the situation ahead.
‘Heo Min-ho disappeared?’
Based on their conversation, it seemed so—but something felt off.
Just moments before, Siul had sensed nothing unusual.
If an enemy had approached, he should have detected at least the faintest killing intent or movement.
But there had been no such sign, and instead….
‘It felt like Heo Min-ho broke formation on his own.’
That wasn’t what someone who’d just ordered everyone to hold position would do.
If so, there was only one logical conclusion.
‘Something drew him away.’
Siul raised his guard and slashed his longsword through the surrounding fog.
He swung it recklessly just in case an enemy was creeping near.
The barrier-type fog infused with mana meant he couldn’t trust what his eyes showed him alone.
“Huh?”
Then another commotion erupted from ahead.
“Hey, you—!”
The voice cut off mid-sentence with a sharp crack.
A party member’s presence vanished in an instant.
“Wait, what’s in front of us?”
“Did someone else just disappear?”
“Everyone close in!”
As the party members’ voices overlapped in confusion, a bizarre phenomenon unfolded in the chamber.
Like candles being snuffed out one by one, his teammates’ presences were erased in succession.
When he came to his senses, Siul stood alone.
The party member who’d been standing directly in front of him had vanished without a trace.
‘What on earth is happening—!’
Panic-stricken, Siul instinctively lunged forward.
But then something gripped his clothing from behind with sudden force.
“Grrrrk!”
It was Zero.
Though still cloaked in invisibility, the sensation of teeth clamping down on his garment was unmistakable.
“Woof!”
Zero barked loudly.
After multiple rounds of training, Zero would never bark so loudly outside without reason.
Which meant something urgent had appeared behind them that required immediate attention.
‘It’s behind us…!’
Sensing this instinctively, Siul tightened his grip on his longsword and spun around swiftly.
Beyond the mist behind them, a faint but unmistakable trace of magical power lingered.
Siul fixed his gaze in that direction.
A silhouette emerged.
A form gradually revealed itself through the haze.
What appeared first were eyes split vertically.
Two pupils gleaming crimson.
Then an enormous head pushed through the mist, and the long body connected to it continued to emerge without end.
Its flesh was blacker than the swamp’s mud.
Yet each scale shimmered like polished mirror glass.
The surface of the scales rippled, reflecting Siul’s startled face back at him.
‘This creature….’
Before the beast had fully revealed itself, Siul already knew what it was.
Body length of at least twenty meters.
A monster of vast magical power that moved with ghostly stealth, concealing its strength within its scales.
It was this dungeon’s boss—the Sin Morga.
“Hissssss—!”
The Sin Morga exhaled a breath laced with killing intent.
The surge of magical power it released was so immense it was hard to fathom how it had hidden such ferocity.
Yet something alarmed Siul even more than the oppressive force.
“Why… a number….”
Siul’s eyes trembled as he could not tear his gaze from one spot.
He was not shocked at the sight of the Sin Morga itself.
It was what appeared above the Sin Morga’s head.
【Threat Level: 9】
Limited-time Hunter Continues to Survive
Author |
Kutsumattsu
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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