Copying Runes to Become the World's Strongest - Chapter 49

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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 49
Jeong Yunchang turned on his heel at once.
He bolted straight into the passage in front of him.
The moment he’d revealed himself to Hyeonjun, he’d activated Invisibility, a skill he’d never meant to use.
‘Survive first. Think later.’
E-Rank Monsters or not, if that many piled on him, he couldn’t guarantee anything.
And he wasn’t a Tank, either. He was an assassin.
Among Melee Dealers, he ranked near the bottom in defense.
Even a third of that horde would be a serious threat.
Thwack!
Then Jeong Yunchang felt a pain he couldn’t place.
All at once, the strength drained from his leg, and he pitched forward onto the ground.
At the same moment, Invisibility dropped away.
‘What?’
A foreign weight in the back of his thigh.
Puzzled, he twisted his head around to check his leg.
‘M-Magic Arrow?’
A blue-glowing arrow was lodged in his thigh.
It was Magic Arrow, a magic skill classified as beginner-level.
Who on earth had fired that?
“Yunchang.”
Jeong Yunchang jerked and lifted his head.
Hyeonjun, who had been fleeing from the Monsters, was already standing before him.
That strange scent from earlier hung in the air, stronger than ever, but Jeong Yunchang had no room to care about something like that.
“H-how do you know my… my name…?”
He had definitely given the alias Lee Muyong.
“Curious?”
“J-just help me! At this rate, I’m going to get crushed!”
Jeong Yunchang’s frantic shout.
Hyeonjun grinned and tapped his own temple with a finger, twice.
“Keep your head on straight.”
Leaving those words behind, Hyeonjun sprinted off with a whoosh toward the exit on the opposite side.
Jeong Yunchang stared at his retreating back, dumbstruck.
“You son of a bitch! You bastard!”
Kwoooong!
Pale with dread at the rumbling that grew stronger by the second, Jeong Yunchang looked behind him.
The Monsters had already closed in, almost within arm’s reach.
“Damn it…”
Then.
The horde of Monsters swallowed him whole.
.
.
.
Once out, Hyeonjun headed straight for a nearby river.
The map was already in his head, so he moved without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Found it.’
Soon the river came into view.
Murky, muddy water.
It looked dangerous enough, but there was nothing waiting beneath the surface.
Splash!
Hyeonjun threw himself into the river without a second thought.
Air bubbles rose, and soon his head broke through the surface.
“Pfah.”
Still in the water, he scanned his surroundings as if searching for something.
Kwooong!
Moments later, the ground trembled beneath them.
Past the brush, the Monsters that had tracked his scent came into view.
“Grrrr…”
“Kkkiiiing…”
From Monsters with mushroom caps atop human-like bodies to ones that looked like some fusion of fungus and beast.
Mushroom monsters of all kinds sniffed at the air and prowled along the riverbank.
Hyeonjun spotted them and quickly dove beneath the surface.
‘The scent works like a charm.’
The reason Hyeonjun could lure hundreds of monsters beyond the reach of their sight lay in one thing: scent.
Combining spores harvested from certain mushrooms produced a peculiar odor that was hard to come by in the jungle.
He had judged that if he gave off that smell and drew the monsters’ aggro, it wouldn’t easily fade.
‘So far, things have gone as planned.’
But the results exceeded his expectations.
Since he could only gather so many monsters on foot, he hadn’t expected so many to come at first.
Yet once the monsters had gathered to some degree and the noise began, the sound drew in aggro from other monsters too, and within no time he had managed to bring along several hundred.
‘I think they’ve left by now.’
He could feel the presences beyond the surface disappearing one by one.
But he didn’t come out right away.
‘I have to wait until the very end.’
Not a few dozen, but a whopping several hundred.
They probably hadn’t all followed him this far, but even if only half had, that still meant over a hundred.
He had to go back for Jeong Yunchang, so he intended to wait for as long as he could afford to.
‘And the scent needs to wash off.’
Diving into the river did serve to block his scent completely and hide him perfectly, but he also meant to wash the smell away.
If the scent stayed on him, the monsters would come hunting him again.
‘They’re not smart enough to find their way back to their own territory.’
They would have to use the one and only passage, and these creatures weren’t clever enough to take that route on their own.
In other words, from now on he had to stay hidden as much as possible, since he could run into them at any moment.
If they spotted him, dozens would come swarming right away.
‘Jungle river water isn’t just any water, so the scent should wash off completely.’
A few minutes later, Hyeonjun poked his head cautiously above the surface.
There was no one on the riverbank.
Only the footprints covering the ground showed that the monsters had come here and gone.
“The smell’s all gone.”
After checking his body for any lingering scent, Hyeonjun climbed out of the water.
Watching his surroundings, he carefully slipped into the jungle.
“Vvvee-eeek…”
A mushroom creature with a thick trunk, moving on four legs like a pig, passed right beside him.
Hyeonjun flinched and froze in his tracks.
‘Going along the ground might be dangerous.’
Hyeonjun lifted his head and looked up.
Trees filled the jungle.
Some monsters used these trees as a means of travel, but not many did.
‘Fine. Let’s head up there.’
Having made up his mind, Hyeonjun climbed up into the trees.
Up high, the jungle’s landscape came into much clearer view.
Here and there, he could see the monsters he had dragged along wandering about.
‘Good thing I came up.’
If he had moved along the ground, he would have had to stop every few steps.
“Hup.”
Hyeonjun leapt from tree to tree, moving forward by the skin of his teeth.
More than once he nearly fell, but he barely kept his balance and somehow held on.
‘This is taking quite a while.’
Still, he wasn’t worried.
Jeong Yunchang had taken a direct hit to his lower body.
He wouldn’t be able to run, let alone stand properly.
‘I’ve made it.’
Around the tunnel entrance, there wasn’t a single monster in sight.
He climbed down and checked the inside of the passage.
Only Jeong Yunchang lay there alone, with no monsters around.
‘He’s still alive, after all.’
Hyeonjun confirmed he was alive from the red dots that kept floating over his body.
Thanks to those weak points revealed by Discernment, Hyeonjun had been able to paralyze his lower body with a few shots of Magic Arrow.
‘I can’t believe he’s still unconscious.’
Even though quite a bit of time had passed since they’d arrived here, Jeong Yunchang still looked unconscious.
Even for a C-Rank, being trampled by that many Monsters must have shaken him badly.
Hyeonjun started forward, then hesitated.
“Just to be safe…”
[Activating .]
An arrow appeared beside Hyeonjun.
Hyeonjun advanced slowly toward Jeong Yunchang, and the arrow drifted after him, keeping pace.
The distance narrowed little by little.
Following Hyeonjun’s will, the arrow streaked through the air.
Thunk!
The arrow buried itself in the red mark on Jeong Yunchang’s arm.
“Aaagh!”
Jeong Yunchang screamed and convulsed, his upper body thrashing.
Watching him flop like a freshly caught fish, Hyeonjun grinned broadly.
“Ha! Knew it would go like this!”
“You son of a bitch!”
Even after he’d come to from passing out, his lower body refused to move.
With no other choice, Jeong Yunchang waited for Hyeonjun to come closer.
He’d planned to strike the back of the man’s head once he drew near, but…
In the end, it failed.
“I’ve got a lot to talk about…”
Hyeonjun glanced back over his shoulder.
Drawn by Jeong Yunchang’s shouting, Monsters were gathering one or two at a time near the passageway.
“We should get out of here first.”
Hyeonjun stood in front of Jeong Yunchang.
Jeong Yunchang glared up at him and thought.
‘He has to carry me out of here anyway. That’s when I’ll strike.’
Even if one arm was useless now, the other one was still there.
With that hand, I’ll pull out the throwing blades I’ve hidden in my clothes and go for an opening.
Once I subdue him, I’ll figure out the rest somehow.
“Hm, no, wait.”
“What’s not—”
Crack!
Hyeonjun kicked Jeong Yunchang square in the jaw.
Jeong Yunchang’s head snapped violently to the side, and he went out cold.
“Your skill list showed a bunch of weapons. When are you planning on taking them one by one?”
Not that I want to stick another arrow in his arm, either. That’d just draw more Monster aggro.
Hyeonjun hoisted the unconscious Jeong Yunchang onto his back and sprinted toward the Monsters pouring into the passageway.
***
“Mmm…”
Jeong Yunchang groaned and opened his eyes.
“You’re awake.”
Hyeonjun, who had been sitting beside him, shifted forward.
“Let’s keep this short and quick. Who sent you?”
“Sent me? What are you even—”
“Jeong Yunchang. Thirty-one years old. Trait: Unseen Blade. C-Rank, with Stats of 5, 11, 6, 4, and 3, in that order. Want me to recite your skill list too?”
“……”
Jeong Yunchang lost his words.
The last sliver of light in his eyes went out.
His mind went completely blank.
He’d survived countless crises, yet none of them compared to this one.
“You’ve been tailing me since right outside my house. Hiding yourself with Invisibility the whole time.”
“……”
“Last chance. Who sent you?”
Jeong Yunchang was thrown into confusion.
The man in front of him: Go Hyeonjun.
He’d been told this was just an ordinary E-Rank Hunter, and he’d assumed it was a simple abduction job.
But he was no ordinary Hunter.
And the odds that he wasn’t even E-Rank were extremely high.
‘Damn it… those bastards at the top…’
If they were going to hand out a job like this, they should’ve bothered to investigate properly.
Thanks to those bastards, my life is about to be over.
‘Lying won’t do any good, I bet.’
Judging by the circumstances, the guy has the power to see through things that can’t be seen.
In other words, even if he spits out a lie, he can tell that it’s a lie.
‘If I try to lie and get caught⋯⋯.’
Then I’ll really die.
The man standing before him was the type who would do exactly that.
‘At first he pretended to be an idiot to put me at ease, and then in the end he summoned Monsters in droves and crushed them. That’s not something a normal person could pull off.’
He could have handled it himself, and that would have been more than enough.
Yet he aimed precisely for a person’s thigh pressure point and paralyzed him, then disabled him by means no ordinary person would ever think of.
‘And on top of that, at the end he kicked me in the jaw and knocked me out⋯⋯.’
This guy is clearly a psychopath with a screw loose somewhere.
He simply uses that handsome face as a mask to hide his madness.
‘And he’s still so young, too⋯⋯.’
Suddenly, Hyeonjun’s past rose up in his mind.
Go Hyeonjun, who gripped knives and guns instead of pencils.
His childhood had been spent not in a schoolroom but on the battlefield.
While other children were learning their school subjects, he was learning how to kill people, how to torture them, how to make them suffer, how to hand out despair, and so on.
‘And then he retired young, without any sense of belonging, and settled in his homeland, where the same blood runs⋯⋯.’
Jeong Yunchang trembled all over.
The Supernatural Public Security Bureau had picked a fight with the wrong person, and not just any wrong person, either.
‘Th-the first thing is to save myself.’
After long deliberation, Jeong Yunchang finally parted his lips.
***
“They say they’ve secured two of them.”
The operations room of the Supernatural Public Security Bureau.
At the agent’s report, Chen Xuan’s brow creased.
“And the other one?”
“They say they still haven’t made contact with that side. We can’t get a GPS signal, either. Maybe they’re inside an Anomalous Space.”
“⋯⋯How much time is left until the assembly?”
“About five hours.”
Chen Xuan drummed his fingers on the desk, irritated.
He didn’t like it, but with the assembly time still a good while off, it was awkward to give any other orders.
“What about the other side?”
“Nothing unusual. The only thing worth noting is that Hunter Kang Daewoong of Seongsam has been contacting Kim Changdong, but he doesn’t seem suspicious yet.”
“Is that so? And the other one?”
“That one doesn’t seem to have any friends. His phone has been silent.”
Chen Xuan raised the corners of his mouth in a thin, sour smile, as if he had never been irritated at all.
“Isn’t it ridiculous?”
“Sir?”
“That all we have to do is watch those little hunks of metal in their hands, and we can know everything they’re doing and where they are.”
The two they had already successfully abducted had also been hacked through their smartphones, securing real-time movement and other necessary information.
“Ha, you’re right about that.”
“And those idiots have no idea.”
Chen Xuan tilted back his chair and leaned against it at ease.
“Wait three more hours. If there’s still no word after that, we transfer the two of them first.”
“Understood.”
As the agent turned to leave, Chen Xuan added one more thing.
“If before then you catch even a hint that they’ve noticed something, move immediately.”

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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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