The Second Coming of Gluttony - Chapter 47

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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 47. First Experience (2)

It was no mistake.
A sharp wind whistled past, scraping his ears like sandpaper—it stung.
The two beasts hauling the carriage ran at full gallop while Maktan cracked his whip and bellowed without pause.
“I don’t like the feel of this.”
The giant clicked his tongue and shouted, his flat-topped Helm catching the light like an upturned bucket.
“Did we really have to come through the forest?”
“This road’s my livelihood, sir! There wasn’t a problem nine days ago, I tell you!”
Maktan answered without turning around.
“How often have you traveled it?”
“Three months!”
“Blast it, three months is enough time for tracks to cover the whole cursed place.”
The warrior muttered low and flattened his body against the carriage.
“Seol. You too—keep your head down.”
Alex, bending at the waist, yanked Seol Jihoo toward him.
“Listen carefully. From now on, you don’t leave my side, no matter what. Understand?”
Alex’s voice was measured, but every trace of humor had drained from his face. That grave expression wound the tension in Seol Jihoo’s chest tighter still.
The young man sank onto his knees, gripping his two spears with all his strength. At the same moment, he activated Nine Eyes.
‘Damn.’
A sharp intake of breath.
He swallowed the curse that nearly escaped. The entire forest glowed crimson. Everywhere his sight touched was nothing but orange.
Approach with caution.
The problem was they’d already arrived at a place they shouldn’t have approached. He’d never been in a situation like this before.
They shouldn’t have come to this place in the first place. He’d fallen asleep without even realizing he was walking into the tiger’s mouth.
Seol Jihoo was about to urge them to flee as quickly as possible, but when he saw Maktan swinging his whip in a cold sweat, he clamped his mouth shut. The carriage had been traveling at maximum speed ever since they woke.
‘What do I do?’
Red and black meant immediate retreat—but orange was dangerous enough. He’d learned the hard way not to underestimate even yellow, the caution advisory tier.
As Seol Jihoo’s face hardened, Alex drew out a Cross no larger than his palm.
The world fell silent. Only the thundering of hooves shaking the earth and Alex quietly murmuring an incantation.
As an unbearable hush stretched on, the giant ground his teeth. Archer still lay with her ear pressed to the ground, utterly motionless.
“Say something.”
“…….”
“Hey! Distance, direction, numbers—anything! Just give me something!”
“…I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, I’m telling you—I don’t know.”
The woman set her jaw and wore an expression of confusion.
“There’s definitely some strange noise mixed in… but it’s too faint to gauge properly.”
“Ha! Are you actually a tracker?”
When the warrior sighed aloud, Archer’s eyes flashed open.
“What?”
“For hell’s sake, a Level 3 girl who doesn’t know anything—how does that even work?”
“Shut your mouth! Am I a Superior Rank? You need to keep your feet on the ground to Sense anything—what do you want me to do from here?”
The woman’s pride was wounded, and she snapped back sharply. The giant had no reply, just heaved heavy sighs.
“Make a decision now! Keep running? Stop? Hurry!”
Maktan asked in an anxious voice.
“Damn it, what choice do we have. Stop!”
“No! Keep going!”
The moment the giant spoke, the woman cried out sharply. Maktan, who’d been reaching for the reins, swore under his breath.
The dark-skinned man growled, his expression one of sheer disbelief.
“Are you trying to get us killed fighting right now, woman?”
“And you know better? What happens if we stop and they surround us?”
“How am I supposed to know if there’s an ambush ahead? Stop the carriage, let’s dismount!”
“Enough, enough!”
Alex, unable to bear it any longer, stepped between them. The Cross in his hand pulsed with clean, bright light.
“Archer is the Header of this expedition, whether it’s a team or an expedition party. Let’s hear her out, shall we? Hugo.”
From the way he spoke the name, it was clear the two were acquainted.
Alex turned his gaze to Archer after placating Hugo.
“I’ll defer to your judgment, but honestly, I’d prefer we stop at a suitable place and conduct a proper Detection. We need information to formulate a strategy.”
“I know that much. The problem is there’s no suitable place.”
Archer spoke curtly, her brows drawing together as she worked her jaw.
“Something feels wrong. It’s like we’re being herded.”
Alex’s eyes flickered.
“Damn it! Look at that! This woman’s just sitting here going on about feelings!”
Hugo swore as well. His massive frame was pressed flat to the carriage floor, but he was practically vibrating with agitation.
Alex took a breath and spoke with measured patience.
“If you’re just guessing, I can’t trust that. The odds are fifty-fifty either way. It’s better we stop the carriage now and use Detection to gather real information.”
Archer snorted derisively and turned back to face forward.
“Fine. But give me thirty seconds—no, fifteen seconds. I can’t be certain, but it feels like a pack of Riders.”
Alex didn’t object even to that. It was a reasonable point, and if Archer happened to be right, stopping the carriage would be suicide.
“Maktan! Slow down gradually—don’t brake hard! We need to be able to bolt again if we have to!”
“Understood!”
“All right. But what—?”
Alex turned back to Archer and stopped mid-sentence, his face going blank. Her eyes blazed brilliantly for an instant before the light vanished. She straightened subtly and leaned her face over the carriage railing.
“Hey! Hey! What are you doing? Sit down, now!”
Hugo yelped in alarm. Ignoring him entirely, the woman scanned left, right, and forward in quick succession, then nodded.
“It’s not a herding. We can stop gradually.”
“Never mind about herding—just get down!”
“Stop yelling at me!”
Archer snapped irritably, covering her ears.
“Are you stupid? If I were about to be shot, that driver would’ve been hit long ago!”
Hugo’s expression was one of pure exasperation. His mouth hung open, doubt written plainly across his face.
“You’re… really Level 3?”
“Ha.”
The woman tilted her chin and laughed softly. Her face said the matter was beyond reasoning with. She placed a hand on her hip and opened her mouth to speak. That was when it happened.
Whip! Whip!
The faint whistle of projectiles cutting through air.
“Anyway—”
Thunk.
Her words cut off.
Archer’s eyes rolled back, her head lolling. Her shoulders sagged slowly, and then—thud—she pitched forward onto her face.
Her body convulsed briefly before going slack. She was dead.
Alex caught sight of the long dart embedded in the back of her skull and his face contorted.
“Stupid fool!”
Hugo cursed as well.
Seol Jihoo felt as though he were trapped in a fever dream. The confident woman from moments ago had transformed into a corpse in an instant. It was like drowning in a nightmare.
Alex plucked the dart free, his brow furrowing.
“Wait… this can’t be…”
In the next moment, an animal’s mournful cry pierced the air.
Before anyone could react, the carriage lurched violently to one side and began to tip.
“Ahhhhh!”
Alex flailed his arms as he fell.
Seol Jihoo tumbled as well, his body suddenly weightless.
Even as he managed to keep hold of his spear, he could see with horrible clarity—the sensation of falling, of something giving way in his gut—what lay before him.
Maktan, his neck thrown back, both arms dangling lifelessly, a dart lodged in his forehead.
As the carriage flipped, the three passengers were hurled clear. The young man crashed and rolled through the brush.
“What the hell! This wasn’t Riders—it was a Mole pack!”
Hugo’s roar was audible even through the chaos, but there was no time to dwell on it. Suddenly, four pale arms erupted from the earth. Four hands, each gripping a sharp Dagger.
!
Seol Jihoo had no time to process the stabbing thrust. He hurled his spear and rolled backward, tucking into a tumble and springing to his feet. Four Daggers now quivered in the earth where he’d lain. A chill ran down his spine.
No time to panic at what these creatures were—he had to recover his spear.
He snatched up the nearest one, then drove it hard into the earth where the arms had pierced through.
Thud.
The spearpoint bit into soft soil and then—resistance. Something solid. The sensation of striking carapace.
He drove it deeper, twisting savagely, and two of the four arms jerked and thrashed violently.
Then two intact arms pressed against the earth, trying to haul themselves up. He wrenched the spear free and drove it down again, pinning them once more. The creature thrashed anew.
“Hugo! Come on!”
The young man came to with a start at the urgent call.
Alex, still on the ground, was gripping his pale forearms with both hands, resisting with all his might. His shoulders trembled from the strain, but the dagger kept closing the distance inch by inch.
The carriage had overturned, scattering the creatures farther than expected. Seol Jihoo drew his spear. Dirt sprayed as the tip emerged, trailing thick blood.
The reinforced circuits burned hot as mana surged through them. He gathered his strength in his right arm, pushed lightly off his feet, and hurled the spear with all his force.
Thwack!
The spear, saturated with mana, drove cleanly past Alex’s side.
“Ugh!”
Alex’s eyes snapped sideways reflexively. The pressure on his arms eased at once. He threw his weakened forearms aside and scrambled to his feet.
“Huh?”
Hugo arrived a beat late, staring at the young man. Then he shouted.
“There! Under the left side!”
Seol Jihoo, in the middle of retrieving a spear he’d missed, leaped. A blade scraped past his feet. He planted both legs and thrust the spear down, then felt a tickle under his soles and jerked his left foot up at once.
Thud! An arm thrust up through the soil—he sidestepped it with a footwork flourish and drove the spear down instead. The dirt pile bloomed red with blood.
“Hah!”
Having dispatched three or four of them single-handedly in rapid succession, Hugo burst into laughter with a look of “Now that’s what I call a fighter!” before suddenly hoisting a massive Battle Axe high and bringing it down on the earth with all his strength.
Bang!
The sound was too enormous to have come from an axe strike alone. Seol Jihoo’s eardrums rang. Soil scattered in all directions; a sharp tremor ran through his body. Whether it was mana or some ability didn’t matter—the raw physical force was enough to send a chill down his spine.
“This is the best way to deal with those mole bastards.”
Hugo bared his teeth and slung the Battle Axe over his shoulder. Seol Jihoo, thinking the battle was still ongoing, couldn’t quite make sense of the warrior’s actions—but the priest apparently could.
“Nice! Hugo! Our turn now!”
Alex, retrieving the Cross he’d dropped, let his eyes glint with hunger.
“You filthy wretches. The moment you come up, that’s the day we bury you.”
The meaning became clear soon enough. Centered on where Hugo’s axe had struck, more than a dozen arms erupted from the soil, thrashing upward like a chorus of the damned.
“Alex!”
Hugo gripped his Battle Axe again and bellowed.
“I know.”
Alex grunted in pain, braced one hand against his ribs, and thrust the Cross forward.
“Lushu Ru Rushria!”
The Cross blazed with radiant light. Simultaneously, everything crawling up from the earth froze mid-motion.
“Harvest time.”
Hugo dove forward, seized one of the arms, and yanked. A grotesque creature emerged—like a log with limbs, its body wrapped in hide like bark.
Hugo snapped it clean in half with casual force, then kept pulling them up, dispatching each without pause.
When the spell wore off, the remaining creatures finally clawed their way up, but their numbers had dwindled to six or seven. And they were reeling, as if struck by some great shock.
Seeing the young man scanning the ground around him, Alex spoke.
“It’s fine. It’s over.”
“Over?”
“Yeah. The Drive naturally hate mana. If you flood the earth with it, they all panic and bolt to the surface.”
“The Drive?”
Alex smiled bitterly at the barrage of questions. But this man was his savior.
“Think of them as fish on land. They swim through the soil.”
Seol Jihoo tilted his head. He couldn’t quite picture creatures swimming through earth.
“Anyway, unless they kill all three of us in one ambush, they’re finished. Hugo’s a Level 4 Barbarian Warrior. The Drive are tricky to deal with when they’re hiding underground, but in a straight fight, it’s no contest.”
Alex gestured ahead. Hugo was handling the Drive that charged him like children, carving through them with his axe in clean, satisfying strokes. Watching him work was almost cathartic.
Alex continued.
“Truth is, the Drive are pretty cunning and methodical. These particular ones especially—they’ve tangled with Earthborn before.”
“How can you tell?”
“Simple. Where’d they get those daggers?”
“Ah.”
“And when they realized we have an Archer among us, they dug deep and tried to create chaos—can’t be spotted that way. They spread out, watched for their moment, and the instant they saw an opening, they struck. One of them goes down, and they act immediately. That takes strategy.”
“Frightening creatures.”
“Exactly! And that Archer from before—”
Alex bristled with anger before catching himself. No use cursing the dead.
“Anyway, that’s not all. Since they’re pack hunters, they have herding instincts, and also… hehehehe.”
Alex suddenly chuckled and swung his pointing finger from Hugo toward Seol Jihoo. The young man glanced down at his chest and gasped. Four or five needle-thin spikes were embedded in his armor—likely shot during the chaos.
“They’re intelligent enough to divide roles. Ah, never mind. The one that was sniping probably got away by now.”
Alex stopped Seol Jihoo as he began to scan the surroundings, then tilted his head uncertainly.
“Huh. That’s strange, though. I’ve never heard of the Drive appearing in Haramegro before.”
“Done!”
Hugo, having crushed the skull of the last Drive, threw both hands up in victory.
“Good work, Hugo.”
“What work? It was like eating rice cakes while lying down. Anyway, are you alright?”
Hugo strode over and asked. Alex laughed weakly.
“Truth is, I took a direct hit.”
“Then get healed first, will you? You need to stay alive long enough to thank him for this.”
“Pfft! Yeah, yeah, that’s the way.”
Alex collapsed and fished a small vial from his pocket. While the priest groaned through the treatment, Hugo stood by, studying Seol Jihoo with an intent gaze.
“Hey, your footwork earlier was pretty flashy, wasn’t it? You’re really Level 1?”
“I’m doubting it too. I’d believe it more if Seol were Level 3 and the archer were Level 1.”
Alex, his face twisted in disgust, dribbled Healing Potion along his ribs as he spoke. Hugo nodded in deep agreement.
“That damned woman. I’ve been alive this long and never seen a tracker like that. Honest to gods, I thought she was going to drive me mad.”
“She’s not a tracker.”
Alex smirked.
“Obviously not Level 3, either. Level 2 at best? And probably just reached it?”
“What?”
Hugo stared at him as if he’d sprouted a second head. Alex exhaled, looking relieved, and continued.
“I saw it clearly. Just for a moment, but her eyes flashed. If I’m not mistaken, that was Eagle Eye, not Clairvoyance. You do know that Clairvoyance is a core skill Archer-types learn at Level 3, right?”
“Wait, Eagle Eye is a Level 2….”
Hugo trailed off, lost in thought, then his face darkened sharply.
“That bitch! She’s been deceiving us from the start!”
“So what? Half the people in Haramegro lie about their levels. Plenty of them refuse to open their Status Window, making all sorts of excuses.”
“Still, where’d she get that combat longbow? The gear looked solid too.”
“Must’ve been a Spawn gift or something.”
Alex rose calmly and spoke.
“Seol. I’m going to give you some advice. You won. But this fight was far from clean. You did better than we expected, sure, but for Hugo and me, it was sloppy at best.”
Seol Jihoo nodded slowly. He understood what Alex was getting at.
If they’d followed Alex and Hugo’s plan from the start, they could have handled the enemy easily. No matter what role the archer played as Header, once you give real authority to someone this green, you learn what happens the hard way.
This battle had taught him that lesson bone-deep.
“Damn. If I’d known we were being herded, I wouldn’t have worried at all.”
Hugo grumbled.
“Like I knew we were being herded either… Anyway.”
Alex surveyed the area around them. Maktan and the female archer were dead. The carriage was destroyed.
“Of all places, right at the midpoint… Ugh.”
Still, Alex held onto a thread of hope and asked.
“Anyone got a good idea?”
Of course, nobody raised their hand.
…….
…….
…….
The giant, the priest, and the young man sighed at the same time.

(To be continued in the next part)

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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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