Copying Runes to Become the World's Strongest - Chapter 37

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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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Chapter 37
Hunters scattered in every direction.
Everyone knew the ruins didn’t have just one entrance.
Hyeonjun watched them go with an easy, unhurried air.
Nam Jaewoon, standing well away from the ruins, stared at him with a puzzled frown.
‘Aren’t you heading out?’
Since the score was measured by the weight of Magic Stones, the advantage belonged to whoever brought down the most Monsters.
To rack up points, the most common strategy was to move fast and clear more enemies than everyone else.
From that standpoint, Hyeonjun’s leisurely attitude was hard to understand.
‘Is he that confident?’
After a while longer, Hyeonjun finally started moving.
The trouble was, he wasn’t heading toward the ruins. He was making for the forest that surrounded them.
Only then did Nam Jaewoon grasp what Hyeonjun had in mind.
‘No way.’
A secret passage inside the ruins.
Not many people knew it existed.
No, you could safely say almost nobody did.
The Hunting Ground itself was unpopular, and not many Hunters bothered to search all the way out there.
‘Did someone tell him about it beforehand?’
That couldn’t be it either.
If the information had leaked, it would have come through someone in the Guild, but Hyeonjun didn’t belong to any Guild.
‘And it’s not as if he’s close with the Guild Hunters.’
Far from being close, they seemed to be nursing a serious grudge against him.
They were by no means the kind of people who would share valuable information.
That left only one conclusion.
He must have known about it from the very beginning.
‘But how?’
Nam Jaewoon was dumbfounded.
First the top score on the Written Exam, and now a secret passage through the ruins.
The amount of information he had was clearly far beyond that of an ordinary Hunter.
‘Hunters who are well-versed in theory are usually weak in combat…’
Among Hunters, those strong in theory tend to fall behind their peers in raw strength.
Since their martial power is lacking to begin with, they try to make up for it with knowledge.
Support-type Hunters who fight from behind are generally like that.
But Hyeonjun was the complete opposite.
He was physically stronger than anyone here, and at the same time he knew more than anyone.
‘Interesting.’
The more Nam Jaewoon watched him, the fresher Hyeonjun seemed.
So much so that Nam Jaewoon, who until yesterday hadn’t given the matter a second thought, now wanted to bring Hyeonjun into the Management Bureau.
‘He’d be a perfect fit for the Management Bureau.’
The Management Bureau is full of special cases, people who work at a desk but also get out into the field.
Hyeonjun could make a fine civil servant.
‘But even with a blade at my throat, he wouldn’t do something like that.’
Unless you were some kind of extreme patriot, who in their right mind would do such a crazy thing?
Nam Jaewoon gave up on the idea right away.
Even making the offer was a bit of an imposition.
‘Hm?’
Just then, a group came out of the inner part of the ruins.
They were Guild-affiliated Hunters.
They looked around, then moved off in the direction Hyeonjun had disappeared.
‘Doesn’t look like they’re following him to help.’
If that had been the plan, they would have gone together from the start.
‘Then why?’
Why would they pretend to enter the ruins and still chase Hyeonjun down?
Nam Jaewoon’s eyes narrowed.
‘They mean to get in his way.’
He had a rough idea of the reason.
‘They want to take the first place from him just to save face.’
Or else, they must have judged that their standing in the Guild would be at risk.
Though, to be fair, that standing probably isn’t worth much to begin with.
Without even that, an E-Rank Hunter would feel as though the world had come to an end.
‘I expected them to take the Magic Stones, but ganging up on the top-ranked player right from the start?’
I had no intention of stopping them.
After all, I had told them from the outset that the only rule was to keep to the time limit.
Whatever scenes unfolded, I had concluded they would all reveal something of the Hunters’ potential and promise.
‘I wonder what kind of performance Hunter Go Hyeonjun will put on.’
Five against one.
This fight would be nothing like the one against the Robot.
They could use their Traits, after all.
‘This should be interesting.’
Nam Jaewoon stepped away and moved behind the Ruins.
Inside the tent set up there, several monitors displayed the inside of the Hunting Ground.
“Everything’s running normally.”
The Awakened from the Management Bureau sitting in front of the monitors.
His Trait, Communication Network, allowed real-time field monitoring even from inside the Gate.
“Any combat detection?”
“No problems.”
Across the central main monitor, multiple sites flickered past in quick succession.
All of them were places where combat was currently underway.
It was a function that detected fighting in real time and projected it onto the screen.
“There. Switch this screen to the side path. Put up a map on the other one.”
One monitor showed a side path through the Ruins.
The adjacent screen shifted into something like an in-game minimap.
One dot moving ahead, and five more dots trailing far behind it.
The Communication Network Trait applied to the watch was relaying the Hunters’ positions in real time.
“Huh. Someone’s actually using the side path.”
“I didn’t expect anyone I know to be among them.”
“I was torn about whether to install cameras there till the very end, but it worked out. Isn’t that area a bit dangerous, though?”
“It’s dangerous to go alone. That’s where the strongest Blood Vine in the Ruins is.”
Before the training began, I had checked the entire Hunting Ground in advance, just in case something went wrong.
Not only the inside of the Ruins, but also the surrounding forest and even the side paths through the Ruins that few people ever visited.
‘Normal use of the Ruins’ side path is impossible.’
The Ruins were already a Hunting Ground that few people visited.
Who would ever travel through a hidden passage like that?
It was only natural that the Blood Vine rooted there would grow unimpeded, without anyone interfering.
‘Any other Hunter would have run over and tried to stop them, but…’
With Hyeonjun, though, the story was different.
Two crises might strike at the same time.
Anticipation flickered in Nam Jaewoon’s eyes.
***
Once the mound of earth was cleared away, a collapsed stone staircase emerged, hidden beneath the thick undergrowth of the forest.
Hyeonjun entered the interior of the Ruins by way of those stairs.
A passage damp with moisture.
A cold chill brushed against his skin.
‘We’ve only gone a little underground, and it’s already completely different from outside.’
Hyeonjun pulled out his smartphone and shone the Light ahead of him.
A corridor draped with crimson vines.
How far had he walked down that corridor?
The smell of blood began to drift through the air.
‘It’s going to show up any moment now.’
Soon, Hyeonjun’s footsteps came to a halt.
Vines came into view, swaying softly as if stroking the empty air.
‘A Blood Vine.’
Hyeonjun immediately activated Discernment.
Information about the Blood Vine appeared before him.
At the same time, red dots appeared across the stems covering the corridor.
‘It’s this big?’
The far end of the corridor was too dark to see clearly.
Thanks to the countless weak points marked across his field of vision, he could gauge the creature’s size in advance.
‘Should I just give up on the Key?’
Far bigger than an ordinary Blood Vine.
It was clear this wasn’t going to be an easy fight.
Hyeonjun hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.
‘Let’s give it a try.’
Hyeonjun drew his dagger and checked the red dots once more.
‘I need to find the core.’
The monster’s vital point, the ‘core,’ should be darker and larger than any ordinary weak spot. Just like the villain he’d faced in the basement of that building.
Swish-swish-SHNK!
But Blood Vine didn’t give Hyeonjun the time to observe at his leisure.
The moment it spotted the intruder, it launched its attack.
Hyeonjun twisted his body, dodging the vines that came lashing at him.
‘It’s not impossible to avoid them.’
The problem was that this was a corridor.
The space was too cramped, leaving few paths for evasion.
And with the monster’s vines covering the entire hallway, attacks could come from anywhere.
‘This corridor itself favors Blood Vine.’
That was surely why it had managed to claim this space so thoroughly.
Hyeonjun fell back and began racking his brain for another approach.
‘Should I try attacking from range?’
Honestly, the odds of success weren’t high.
It would deflect any ranged attack that came its way.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
There was no harm in trying.
[Activating .]
Hyeonjun instantly invoked the skill and fired at the weak point.
Whoosh!
A vine that had emerged from the darkness knocked the arrow aside.
The blue-light arrow struck the wall, breaking apart into particles and vanishing.
‘Didn’t work, as expected.’
Just as he’d predicted, a simple ranged attack was useless.
‘Ranged attacks alone won’t do it.’
Hyeonjun conjured another arrow and fired it.
At the same time, he kicked off the ground and charged toward the red dot.
Pat!
The Magic Arrow shattered into fragments as it hit a vine.
Hyeonjun shot forward like an arrow through the gap it left behind.
Belatedly aware of Hyeonjun’s presence, the vines lashed out, but—
his dagger had already cut in close to Blood Vine.
Shunk!
The dagger sliced cleanly across the red dot.
The vine froze in midair and writhed in agony, as if it were screaming.
But it didn’t stop completely, as if its life had been severed.
‘So that wasn’t the core.’
Still, he’d bought some time.
When he struck the weak point, the other vines froze too.
Hyeonjun swept his eyes quickly over the red dots.
One of them had to be different in size. That had to be the vital point.
‘Not this one, not that one either…’
Whiiish!
Another vine came whipping toward him.
Its recovery speed was excessive.
‘It’s no pushover after all.’
Blood Vine.
Among E-Rank monsters, it was quite a challenging one.
So much so that among E-Rank Hunters, there’s a joke that whether you can take this thing down decides if you’re D-Grade material or not.
‘But it’s not so tough that I can’t handle it.’
Hyeonjun tilted his head and slipped past the vine with ease.
Having grown a little more used to it, evading became easier than before.
Shunk!
Dodging the attacks, Hyeonjun closed in on a red dot and sliced it off.
The vines that had suddenly stopped in their tracks.
Hyeonjun advanced quickly toward another red dot.
‘Strike the weak point to stop its movement, then move on to the next weak point.’
Hyeonjun advanced with a simple, clear plan.
The gaps between the red dots were fairly wide, so a few attacks came his way, but he dodged every one with ease.
Swish!
Blade strike after blade strike.
At the end of it, deep within the corridor, he spotted a dot far larger than the others.
“Found you.”
Then, as if sensing danger, vines came lashing at him from every direction.
From their sheer number to their speed.
They felt different from the attacks so far.
“It’s putting up a fierce fight.”
Hyeonjun stepped back.
Confident as he was in his evasion, dodging vines that swarmed like a spider’s web was no easy task.
‘If they were just a little slower, maybe.’
Then a thought flashed through Hyeonjun’s mind.
He remembered yesterday, when they had been running the basic stamina test.
The moment he had used his newly acquired Analysis skill on Nam Jaewoon while running around the gym.
‘Time moved slowly back then. I think it lasts until I select a target.’
Maybe he could use that to dodge Blood Vine’s attacks?
‘Let’s give it a try.’
Hyeonjun closed in on Blood Vine’s weak point.
Dozens of vines rushed toward him, as if they had been waiting for this moment.
‘Now!’
[Activating .]
In that instant, the vines began to move slowly, as though time had stopped.
Hyeonjun slipped his body through the gaps between the dozens of vines.
They were moving incredibly slowly.
‘It’s a shame I slow down along with them.’
It wasn’t a big problem.
Once he knew the path of each attack, dodging was a piece of cake.
‘I’ll dodge this one here, and move like this over there.’
Having roughly mapped out the path and sketched his next movements in his mind, Hyeonjun released the skill.
Pa-bak!
The moment the skill ended, Hyeonjun moved exactly as he had planned.
The sharp vines stabbed at empty air and slammed into the floor.
His movements were as if he had stopped time, read the future, and returned.
Blood Vine seemed rattled too, as its vines halted in midair.
Tap!
In an instant he slipped out of the attacks, and without missing the opening, he dashed straight for the weak point.
Thrust!
The dagger punched through the large red dot.
The sharp blade pierced Blood Vine’s shell and drove deep into its core.
The vines that had been rushing toward Hyeonjun belatedly froze in midair.
Hyeonjun glanced back.
“Quite a sight.”
The vines, like a monster’s grasping hands, had reached right up to his face.
Hyeonjun was smiling, but the corners of his mouth trembled faintly.
Splat.
A moment later, the vines turned grayish and dropped to the floor.
The vines clinging to the walls also lost their grip and fell, forming a graveyard of plants.
“One down, for now.”
Hyeonjun harvested a Magic Stone from near the core.
Given its size, the Magic Stone was quite heavy.
“That was worth the time I spent on it.”
Hyeonjun was about to leave, but his eyes caught on the shell.
The shell wrapped around Blood Vine’s core was relatively sturdy compared to the other stems.
“What if I stack these up and use them as a shield?”
They couldn’t stop a dagger, but stacked together they would make a sturdy enough shield to withstand ordinary attacks with ease.
Hyeonjun hesitated for a moment, then moved quickly.
.
.
.
Ruins, side passage.
The five hunters who had been chasing Hyeonjun stopped short when they saw the Blood Vine tendrils piled along the corridor.
“W-what is this?”
“Blood Vine. I’ve never seen one this big…”
“He took this down by himself?”
The hunters’ eyes turned toward Han Chanwoo, the one who had formed the group.
Han Chanwoo’s pupils wavered, clearly rattled. He hadn’t expected this sight either.
Still, he tried hard to hide his feelings and keep them from showing.
“It was already dead, wasn’t it?”
The branches were gray and bone-dry.
Anyone could see they’d been dead for a long time.
Han Chanwoo had tossed the words out carelessly, but they carried a fair amount of conviction.
“Oh, is that so?”
“Even if he did fight it, so what? If anything, this is our chance. He’s got to be worn out by now. He might even be injured.”
“Y-yeah, you’re right! There’s no way someone who fought something like this would still be fine!”
“Let’s go!”
As if they’d forgotten they had ever been frightened, the hunters set their feet moving again. Their steps were far more spirited than before.

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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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