I Got A Legendary Sniper Rifle - Chapter 28

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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 28
Episode 28
Meanwhile, after a meeting between Donghyeon and other government officials, the talent search department and Director Seongnyun had fallen into a gloomy mood.
The other employees were also being quite cautious, matching the director’s temperament.
To be precise.
“Deputy Manager! Do we have any new information coming in?!”
“Nothing! Would that person leave traces wherever he goes?!”
“Still, what about his latest whereabouts or something!”
They were deliberately exaggerating their conversation to try and lift Seongnyun’s spirits.
Seongnyun stared blankly at the deputy manager and the employees before letting out a sigh.
“Sigh…”
“…Let’s just work quietly.”
“Yes, sir.”
The suddenly subdued employees planted themselves back in their seats.
Seongnyun spoke as if muttering to himself.
“Ilgyeok’s party members aren’t doing anything—they’re just climbing up floor by floor.”
Flinch—
“Our department doesn’t have anyone like that… Oh!”
“Why, why are you like that, Director?”
One of the section chiefs asked cautiously, sensing something in Seongnyun’s sudden exclamation.
Seongnyun spoke urgently.
“The people who’ve partied with Ilgyeok until now—we had an organized file on them, right?”
“Uh… we do have a file here.”
One employee brought what Seongnyun was looking for.
“Tarakdwaeji Minjoo… hmm, this person is just a Dark Mage, not Ilgyeok, they said.”
“Yes. We confirmed the ID.”
“Carrie Machine? Who is this person?”
“A troll hunter famous in the 20th Floor tier. But they kept joining the same party as Ilgyeok.”
“Balance adjustment?”
Two fixed members for now.
The rest were people from among those who posted reviews on Hunter Now, whom the Management Bureau thought had particularly high potential and had separately marked.
Of course, they had already coordinated closely(?) with Minjeong, with whom they’d shared IDs, and filtered by occupation.
“Hmm…”
“Um, could it be that you discovered something…?”
“Here, the Assassin from the 21st and 22nd Floors.”
“Ah, yes.”
“It was actually a different person?”
“Yes, the occupation was the same, but according to Minjeong’s account, their appearance was completely different.”
The employee observed Seongnyun’s expression.
His face had grown quite serious.
No matter how much Seongnyun was pushed around from all sides, he had risen to the position of department head at headquarters—he was far from being an incompetent man.
Rather, everyone acknowledged his abilities.
What did Seongnyun see with those eyes of his?
“Looking at it, aside from the two whose identities are known, the remaining three keep changing.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“But.”
Seongnyun picked up his pen and began marking the list directly.
The Assassin from the 21st Floor, the Assassin from the 22nd Floor, the Archer Hunter from the 23rd Floor.
“These people here.”
“Ah, but the Archer Hunter is a completely different class, isn’t he?”
“True, but the other two left afterword reviews, didn’t they?”
“Well….”
The employee nodded.
He understood what Seongnyun was trying to say, but this deduction relied far too heavily on intuition so far.
Suspecting a completely different person just because they didn’t leave an afterword review?
Just then, someone watching the computer suddenly shouted.
“The 24th Floor! The Ilgyeok party file for the 24th Floor has just come in!”
“Pull it up right away!”
By coincidence, information about the 24th Floor party had arrived.
As expected, Minjeong and Heeuwon were included.
And….
“A Healer?”
Everyone tilted their heads at the appearance of such an unexpected class.
A Healer.
Among so many classes, an exceptionally rare and precious one.
“Is there a Healer operating in the 20-floor range?”
“Well… not among the locals.”
Because of this, the Management Bureau had a fairly detailed grasp of the situation regarding Healers.
Healers were, separate from Hunters, an extremely important national resource.
“What’s the probability he came down from the upper floors?”
“Of course it’s possible. But given that it’s dawn….”
Seongnyun’s pen, which had been checking the two Assassins and the Archer Hunter earlier.
Scratch—
This time circled the word ‘Healer’.
Seongnyun looked up at the employee beside him with sharp eyes and asked.
“Isn’t it strange?”
“I have a rough idea what you mean….”
“The fact that they keep changing is actually more suspicious.”
A statement that it was suspicious precisely because there were so few clues to grasp.
At that, the employee who had been firmly criticized with remarks like “Ilgyeok must be the villain” or “He’s probably already on a smuggling ship headed abroad,” began clapping in agreement.
“Ah, understood!”
“…Deputy Manager?”
Of course, the gazes from others weren’t particularly warm, but there was something oddly hopeful mixed in.
Even if they didn’t like hearing it, he always managed to offer plausible opinions.
“Dark magic! Could it be an illusion created using dark magic?”
“…!!!!”
Based on what I’d uncovered so far, Ilgyeok was a Dark Mage.
If he’d acquired a skill related to illusions while climbing up to the 20th Floor tier?
Then this mysterious party composition would be entirely explained.
Once a plausible hypothesis was established, everything else fell into place rapidly.
“Carrie Machine! You said Carrie Machine was the last one remaining in the party, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct! Minjeong said so!”
“Bring her in! It’s really Carrie Machine!”
The talent recruitment department became abuzz with excitement at finally uncovering a substantive clue.
Who would have thought that Carrie Machine, the infamous F-rank washout from the 20th Floor tier that everyone dismissed, would be the person to uncover Ilgyeok’s secret!
“Do you have Carrie Machine’s contact information?”
“Yes, we do! When she first registered, she was so excited that she provided all sorts of optional information! Everything except her family emergency contact!”
“Isn’t that the most necessary part? Anyway, yes! This is it, this is the one!”
Thus, the talent recruitment department’s ‘Great Operation to Find Ilgyeok’ appeared to be picking up momentum….
Meanwhile, Seongnyun’s eyes grew distant as he watched the employees excitedly running about.
‘I need to find her quickly somehow. Ilgyeok will be challenging the 25th Floor soon….’
These days, even just searching Hunter Now yields quite useful information.
But naturally, it couldn’t compare to the highest-grade intelligence compiled by the Management Bureau and the state.
The SR Team’s selection also had the intention of conveying such information to promising prospects at the right time.
The reason for not disclosing it publicly was naturally to prevent the nation’s know-how from spreading to other countries.
In any case, if Ilgyeok truly was a Dark Mage, the 25th Floor might actually be fortunate.
‘By general assessment and by our standards, the 25th Floor favors Dark Mages. But.’
What if Ilgyeok wasn’t a Dark Mage?
What if, though I’d rather not imagine it, he possessed a characteristic suited for one-on-one combat rather than many-versus-many?
‘Then the 25th Floor would become hell….’
Based on the information about the 25th Floor he’d heard, Seongnyun painted that landscape in his mind.
It was a terror difficult for ordinary people to even imagine.
* * *
Several days later, at dawn.
Ihyeon, who had devised the strategy for conquering the 25th Floor, set foot on the 20th Floor tier’s common area once more.
The atmosphere here had also grown somewhat subdued due to Ilgyeok’s quiet movements over the past few days.
Certainly, they weren’t searching for Ilgyeok as zealously as they had on the 10th Floor tier.
Yet no matter what, with guild scouts and Hunters from the Management Bureau still roaming about, I had to keep my concealing cloak pulled tightly around me.
「South Korea, Main Tower 25th Floor. Will you enter?
Please select either ‘Solo’ conquest or ‘Party’ conquest.」
“….”
I paused briefly upon seeing the message that appeared in the entry zone.
I was reviewing the strategy I had laid out once more.
Mental rehearsal before the operation could never be overdone.
As long as it didn’t devolve into pointless delusion.
But I was a sniper who approached perfection in virtually every aspect.
I knew how to draw such boundaries clearly.
I steadied my breathing and nodded.
“Solo.”
「Entering now.」
With a simple notification, my body vanished from the entry zone.
「ID ‘Ilgyeok’ has entered the 25th Floor.」
As always, a small notification window appeared to everyone in the common area of the 20th Floor tier, but since it was such a late hour, it would become a topic of conversation only moments later….
I opened my eyes in a wasteland field.
Yet the atmosphere was distinctly different from before.
The stench of rotting corpses assaulted my nostrils.
Moreover, it was night, not day.
A desolate wind swept across, grazing my skin.
A vast plain with no cover to shield my body, not even a single common hill.
What set the 25th Floor apart from other floors wasn’t merely the absence of party members.
「Difficulty setting complete.
S+」
The strategy began immediately without a separate safe zone.
In truth, all floors before the 21st had been the same, so this was merely a return to the original format.
In my field of vision, across the plains, a single figure stood alone.
A Kobold draped in a black robe.
The fur revealed beneath was neither the typical dark brown of a common Kobold nor the yellow of a Royal Kobold.
Gray.
Dull gray fur, as if I were gazing upon the skin of a corpse, entered my vision.
‘Death Magician Kobold.’
In other words, a creature that was both Kobold and Necromancer.
It summoned Kobold Skeletons and Ghoul Kobolds infinitely.
However, the number of monsters summoned simultaneously varied depending on the difficulty grade.
Roughly 20 at D-rank, reaching 50 at B-rank.
The way to clear the 25th Floor was to cut through the infinitely spawning Undead and defeat the Death Magician Kobold.
But that was irrelevant to me, who possessed a sniper rifle, wasn’t it?
‘Normally, I could finish it with a single shot from a distance….’
There was a reason I had spent days devising a strategy.
The characteristic of the Death Magician was.
Creak— creak—
“…It’s begun.”
An instinct extraordinarily sensitive to life itself.
In other words, regardless of hidden stat values, as long as I remained alive, the Necromancer could summon only the dead around me—the living.
An army of corpses existing solely to steal life.
And when such a characteristic intertwined with the unprecedented S+ rank….
Crrrunch— Crrrunch crrrunch———
‘How many of these things are there?’
Dozens, hundreds of pale and half-rotted hands began clawing their way up from the earth around me.
As for me?
I carried neither my concealment cloak nor even a Maesek Gun.
My empty hands clenched tighter than usual.
The instinctive revulsion of the living.
At first glance, an overwhelming and hopeless legion of the dead.
Yet I remained steadfast.
‘Let’s begin.’
I was certain of a strategy that would end everything in a single shot.
After all, I had already been detected.
When I needed to secure even the slightest mobility.
That’s why I’d made my body as light and unencumbered as possible.
Whoosh—
First, I ran.
For a sniper, standing still meant only death.
One might think that a sniper waiting quietly at a distant vantage point wouldn’t require much stamina.
‘In the unit, few had better stamina than me.’
Not just me, but all snipers were actually required to have stronger stamina than other specialists.
And with stat bonuses added on top of that, however slight.
Whoosh— Whoosh—
Skeletal hands, or those of half-rotted undead, couldn’t properly grip my ankles.
There were many that barely grazed me due to their sheer numbers, but that was all.
And that direction was.
Tap tap tap—
‘Straight toward him!’
Remarkably, it was in a direct line with the Death Magician Kobold.
My speed was certainly quite fast.
However, the distance to the Death Magician Kobold was roughly 600 meters.
Surrounded by hundreds of skeletons, no matter how fast I ran, it was a distance I couldn’t reach.
Moreover, the undead that had been mere hands were now completely rising above the ground.
The complete emergence of the death legion.
Thud— Thud—
Now complete evasion was impossible.
I pushed away the grasping hands one by one with my shoulders, refusing to abandon my advance.
“I have no time to be caught by the likes of you.”
My rigid expression seemed to convey the desperation of the situation.
If someone were watching this scene, they would judge it thus:
A suicidal act.
No matter how skilled a warrior might be, they wouldn’t recklessly tear through the gaps between Undead like this.
Even if I somehow managed to seize the Death Magician Kobold, what then?
Surrounded by Undead on all sides—front, back, left, right, and even below—what remained of me?
Moreover, I didn’t possess the strength and stamina of a true warrior.
So it could only appear that I had chosen death of my own volition.
Yet my movements were remarkable.
Thwack—!
Piercing through.
Crack—!
Sometimes trampling.
Tap tap—
Sometimes rolling across the ground without hesitation.
Gradually drawing closer to the Death Magician Kobold.
Seeming to be caught, yet never caught.
Seeming to be buried, yet never buried—a relentless charge.
And finally, I—
“…arrived.”
—reached a position face to face with the Death Magician Kobold.
Up close, the Death Magician Kobold was even more sinister.
Fur devoid of any sheen.
Dead eyes that resembled a corpse it commanded.
But I had no time to concern myself with its appearance.
With an expression unchanged from the very beginning, I drew a sharp dagger from my breast.
And with my last ounce of strength, I drove the dagger into the Death Magician Kobold’s brow.
Thud—
But.
The dagger I thrust failed to pierce the Death Magician Kobold’s skin in the slightest.
A sound far too hollow for the finale of such a desperate charge.
My eyes met the Death Magician Kobold’s eyes.
The pupils in its dead eyes dilated slightly.
Keeeeh…
I lacked the ability to understand the speech of Kobolds.
But if I were to interpret it nonetheless—
‘You… aren’t you one of the living?’
—it might amount to something like that.

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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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