S-Classes That I Raised to Devour - Chapter 86

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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 86. The Burden of Command (6)
The Pirate Goblin Fortress on Drando Island.
The captain goblin, blindfolds fastened over both eyes, had found this day exceedingly satisfying.
He’d seized a transport vessel belonging to the Dralves and scraped together an enormous hoard of treasure and generous provisions.
“Eat, breed, and revel!”
Boom-boom!
He tore through the air with a pair of heavy muskets gripped in each hand, heralding the festival’s opening act.
The festival itself was a vile chaos incarnate—goblins stuffing their mouths with mountains of food while simultaneously seeking copulation.
“You elf-faced wretch! Today I’ll tear you to shreds and claim the Vice Captain’s seat!”
“You dwarf-bearded bastard! I’ll rip your guts right out!”
On one side, a blood-soaked skirmish erupted over the Vice Captain’s position, with shouts of kill and devour echoing from all directions in wild jubilation.
“Krek krek!”
The captain goblin savored that blood-reeking chaos, laughing with a rasping cackle.
Though the blindfolds robbed him of sight, the sounds alone painted a vivid picture in his mind of how his men’s blood vessels burst and ruptured.
In exchange for abandoning vision for the sake of style, his hearing had developed into something grotesquely hyperacute.
Just as the mad festival was reaching its crescendo—
The captain’s ears twitched minutely.
“Why have our numbers decreased?”
The goblin who had just killed the previous Vice Captain and claimed the position scratched his head as he answered.
“We rotated the guards, so a few went missing, sir.”
“You idiot. Then I should be hearing the footsteps of those who returned from rotation.”
“Er? I—I suppose you should?”
A goblin as vicious and greedy as these would never skip the festival. Something had gone wrong.
The captain goblin’s instinct sent a chill down his spine with a warning: intruders lurked within the fortress.
Bang!
The captain fired a musket into the air to seize everyone’s attention and declared sharply:
“An intruder has infiltrated us! Whoever finds and tears that wretch to death will claim the Vice Captain’s seat!”
“But, Captain! The Vice Captain is already—!”
Bang!
The new Vice Captain’s head exploded like a watermelon.
“Anyone else got complaints?”
“Gwahahaha! That’s our captain for you!”
“Intruder! Let’s tear him apart!”
“I’ll catch him first! Hyehehe!”
Drunk on the festival’s madness and the scent of blood, the pirate goblins scattered in all directions, gripping their weapons.
Night belonged to the pirates. The thick darkness was not a penalty for them but a perfect advantage.
Soon, the sounds of metal clashing and flesh tearing echoed from deep within the darkness—the intruder had been found.
The goblins scattered about would catch the scent of blood and swarm like flies, and the mysterious rat would be shredded into chunks of meat before long.
‘I hope it’s a human intruder.’
Tough dralven flesh was tasteless, but soft human meat was a delicacy beyond compare.
Just as the captain was savoring the thought of his subordinates bringing him fresh, tender human meat—
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh!
A crimson glow visible even through the blindfolds. His lips went bone-dry from the intense heat.
Boom!
The captain goblin leaped like a beast, dodging the fireball that crashed down upon him. The mere graze of heat in that instant melted the leather of his soles.
Whoosh-whoosh!
A raging inferno consumed the festival grounds entirely.
The captain’s prized extraordinary hearing was completely swallowed by the deafening roar of the scorching flames.
Through that hellish inferno, something massive tore through and charged forward.
Above his head, an overwhelming mass that crushed the very air.
Bang!
He fired a musket upward.
It was no ordinary bullet. It was buckshot congealed from crude, ferocious magic—a one-hit kill capable of grinding iron to powder.
Ting!
‘That thing’ descending upon his head brutally deflected the destructive magical buckshot.
The startled captain instinctively used his musket as a shield to block that merciless strike.
Crack, bang!
Both the musket and the thick arm gripping it were pulverized to mush, and the captain was driven into the ground at twice the speed of his upward leap.
Yet the captain goblin still clung to life. He was the master of this domain, after all. Even his arm, shattered like taffy, regenerated grotesquely in an instant.
But the landing site was the worst possible choice.
Vision obscured by pillars of fire and boiling earth; aside from the agony of burning flesh, every sound around him was consumed by the inferno’s roar.
“Where are you, you cowardly elf!”
He’d sent out all his subordinates, only to be struck blindside perfectly. Even his vaunted hearing lay deadened.
The captain gripped a poisoned dagger, his nerves wound tight, but he couldn’t read a single trace of the intruder’s presence through the wavering flames.
Whoosh!
Then the flames split apart, and that hideous something attacked once more.
The captain ground his teeth through the agony of his skin charring, threw himself into the inferno itself, and narrowly evaded the strike.
And just as he was driving into the creature’s blind spot, about to thrust his dagger into its waist—
Ting!
A blunt metal object snaked out and precisely blocked the extended dagger.
The moment that impact traveled through his wrist, the captain caught his attacker’s silhouette.
A human woman. Gripped in her hands: an enormous hammer as tall as she was.
What had blocked his dagger was the thick handle-end of the hammer that had just missed him.
“A human woman! My favorite meat!”
He concealed himself in the flames, burst out, and lunged at her. The octopus venom on his dagger was lethal enough to stop a heart from a mere brush against fabric.
Yet this human woman moved with infuriating speed. She wielded her massive club with such clean, economical arcs and footwork so light it seemed she’d take flight.
“Th-this doesn’t make sense. I’m the one attacking, so why does only my body hurt?”
The captain goblin desperately thrust his dagger again and again.
But those lethal attacks were deflected time and again by the woman’s hammer and her iron-clad footwork, and he found himself drying up from within, his stamina gnawed away by the inferno as he died of his own accord.
“I think I’m going to die like this. I’ll open my eyes.”
The captain goblin tore off both blindfolds with a wild gesture.
It was far more than simply regaining his sealed vision.
Fwoooosh!
A bizarre magic force that had been suppressed within the blindfolds consumed the captain’s entire body.
The turbulent shockwave of magic that shook the very ground extinguished even the fierce flames that ringed him like candle flames being snuffed out.
The moment a Semi-boss Tier monster, the pirate captain, released his true power.
“Now I’m twelve times stronger. I’ll kill you, hum—”
Crack!
Before the captain could finish speaking, the human woman’s hammer plunged vertically into the crown of his head.
That instant between tearing off the blindfolds and the explosive power fully adapting to his body—a brief but critical moment of complete defenselessness.
The human woman had closed the hammer’s range and waited with precision, perfectly exploiting that single-second gap, unleashing all her explosive power.
Crack, splinter.
The hammer’s impact was so grotesquely deforming that the goblin’s thick skull drove straight through his throat and caved completely into his torso.
That overwhelming destructive force extended through the captain’s body and into the earth itself, spiderwebbing the solid ground to ruin.
Thump.
The corpse of the pirate captain, his entire head sheared away, collapsed limply backward.
* * *
“Seeing it like this, they really are out of spec.”
Brian, who was originally hired to protect the rookies.
But now he was simply a gawking spectator munching popcorn, exclamations tumbling from his lips.
“Lure out the underlings, let the tank hold time, both dealers swarm the Semi-boss and take the head. After the Semi-boss is down, the tank cleans up the stragglers it was holding. Clean sweep.”
The entire sequence took just thirty minutes.
The time required to slaughter a force of a hundred pirate goblins and their captain.
“That’s a time-attack result you’d barely manage with a full party of A-grade Hunters.”
Much of it was thanks to Chae Mujin’s overpowered Buffs, but the first generation’s combat effectiveness, when properly leveraging those Buffs, was deserving of genuine praise.
Yet their mentor Chae Mujin himself offered no praise, only cutting feedback.
“Lee Minji. Your speed just now completely dominated the captain goblin. So why did you play so passively? With that spec, you shouldn’t be limited to defense and evasion. You had every reason to seize the initiative. If you’d pushed without hesitation, we’d have shaved ten more seconds off the raid timer.”
“Kim Yeoul. Once your support of Lee Minji finished, you should’ve gone back to help the tank. Why did you wait for Lee Minji instead? Did you think she’d lose? Did Choi Gangim handling a hundred goblins alone seem easier to you?”
“Choi Gangim. You’re being far too cautious. You have Adamantine Body, an A-grade trait. What are you doing with it? You’re only using the shield for defense, so your threat-hold crumbles and ten of them slip away.”
After pouring out this brutal feedback, Chae Mujin paused to catch his breath, then declared coldly:
“If you think I’m wrong, refute me right now. You’ve got five seconds.”
Chae Mujin’s five-second count was military-style. Subjectively, it barely felt like three.
“No? Then come with me. We need to sweep the fortress for any remaining stragglers.”
“I have something to—”
“Should’ve said it then.”
An unforgiving attitude that cut off any excuse the moment the window closed.
Brian didn’t think it harsh. He’d come to understand why Chae Mujin taught so severely.
‘If the target is S-grade, that level of feedback is actually remarkably gentle on Mujin’s part.’
Suddenly, a flash of curiosity struck Brian like lightning.
“Mujin.”
“Brian. Calling me so casually all of a sudden—it’s throwing me off.”
“And what are we, if we’re trying to kill each other?”
“In that case, should I call you Uncle?”
“Hey, do I really look that old?”
“Not old so much as mature.”
“In appearance?”
“In spirit.”
Brian chuckled at the shameless reply.
“Permission granted.”
“So, why’d you call me?”
“Do you actually know what S-grade means, or did you just pick it as their target?”
“I don’t know much. But at least S-grade can’t be this sloppy.”
“Ha, fair point.”
“Uncle, do you know something about S-grade?”
“Hmm…”
In just over two days, Chae Mujin had already grasped Brian’s nature.
This man was hiding something.
If someone who’d usually shrug and admit ignorance or knowledge was suddenly smacking his lips like this, it meant he was weighing whether to cross a line.
As the first generation’s curiosity visibly piqued, Brian waved his hand dismissively.
“You little brats get going. Let us adults have a confidential chat.”
Lee Minji immediately bristled.
“I’m twenty years old, thank you very much! A proper adult!”
“The way you’re bristling proves you’re a kid.”
“Kids. Stop whining and go thoroughly search the fortress. I’ll sum it up for you once I’ve heard everything.”
Chae Mujin herded the protesting first generation into the fortress.
Once they’d completely vanished from sight, Brian’s movements became serpentinely smooth as he surveyed the surroundings.
“How many S-grades do you think exist domestically?”
“None, right?”
“There are.”
“…?”
Chae Mujin was genuinely shocked. He was a Returnee.
He had witnessed everything, all the way to the destruction beyond year zero.
Even with all his knowledge from that previous timeline, South Korea had harbored no S-grade Hunters.
But there are some now?
“Just from what I know, there are at least three.”
Not just one, but three. And that was merely what Brian himself knew.
“But the Greatest Swordsman and the Association Chair aren’t S-grade—how could other S-grades exist?”
Undisputedly the first and second strongest forces in South Korea.
The moment those names emerged, Brian’s lips twisted strangely.
“Why do you assume they aren’t S-grade?”
“What? That’s because, obviously—”
Chae Mujin’s words caught in his throat.
Why did he assume they weren’t S-grade?
Because the Association’s official database classified them as A-grade, and they themselves had never once claimed that status. They were merely the pinnacle of A-grade, never declaring they’d crossed that threshold.
But witnessing Brian’s enigmatic smile, a chilling hypothesis suddenly materialized in Chae Mujin’s mind.
‘They deliberately hid their true S-grade status and lived that way? But why?’
It was unthinkable. Those heroes had endured the hellish collapse of South Korea itself, and even at the moment their very lives were snuffed out, they never fully revealed their S-grade power.
“Uncle, if the Greatest Swordsman and the Association Chair are S-grade, does that mean you’ve witnessed them using Divine Power?”
If an A-grade’s symbol was an Awakening Ability, then an S-grade’s was Divine Power.
Divine Power was a miracle nearly akin to the strength of gods—it twisted and shattered the very laws of physics governing the world.
Though Chae Mujin pressed with his voice lowered, Brian simply shrugged with his characteristic snake-like expression.
“Whoa there, I never said those gentlemen were S-grade with my own mouth. I was just testing why you’re so convinced.”
“…Then who are those three you mentioned?”
“Trade secret.”
“Did those people impose a gag order?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what? Are you imposing conditions because you won’t tell for free?”
“Mujin. Stop right here. You’re not yet qualified to enter that world.”
At Brian’s line-drawing words, a surge of heat kindled in Chae Mujin’s chest, but he quickly doused it as if cold water had been dumped over him.
Level 150 breakthrough.
Legendary Equipment fully equipped.
Multiple collected Skills at his disposal—
Yet he remained nothing but a speck of blood in the world of true powers. The evidence lay in his failure to fully suppress even Brian’s shadow clone, not his true form, over these past two days.
He bowed his head cleanly.
“I got carried away by the mention of domestic S-grades. I apologize for overstepping. Thank you for the hint.”
“Grateful already? I was about to drop a secret a hundred times more shocking than this.”
The mere existence of S-grades was enough to make Chae Mujin’s mind intertwine with his previous life’s knowledge and threaten to detonate.
But there’s an even greater secret than this?
Without thinking, Chae Mujin took a half-step closer to Brian.
“What is it? This important secret?”
Instead of answering, Brian hooked his finger and dragged him down to lip level.
Then, with eyes that blazed like a beast, he savagely scanned the thick darkness around them.
The first generation hadn’t yet returned from the fortress. All around was silent as a tomb.
Yet Brian’s vigilance was absolute, his gaze piercing even into the distance above, tracking every minute current of air, shutting out any possibility of a single trace of observation.
That chilling tension was contagious; Chae Mujin himself held his breath, swallowing hard.
Swish.
At last, Brian closed the distance until his lips were at Chae Mujin’s ear, and cupping his mouth completely with his palm, he whispered softly:

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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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