# Chapter 197
“Left.”
“Me too.”
Sano responded only by raising one eyebrow. But Iyeon had already sunk into his own thoughts without even seeing whether Sano raised his eyebrow or dismissed it.
Dumugwi swallows its prey along with water when devouring it. The captured prey is carried by the water current until it settles inside. To the plaza-like place where Iyeon had first fallen, just past the throat in the initial part of Dumugwi’s body.
Iyeon turned around and retraced his steps. His stride, which had been steady, gradually quickened until it almost turned into a run. Bones clattered beneath his feet as he stepped on them. Soon he arrived again at the place where shallow water was rippling.
“It’s here.”
At his dazed murmur, Sano, who had been walking with heavy steps behind him, gazed at the scene Iyeon was looking at. Even though Iyeon was shining his flashlight, a fog-like darkness was thickly spread, making it difficult to see ahead properly. Iyeon raised his hand.
Considering there was no reaction when he created the flashlight, this much should be fine as long as he didn’t use his superpower directly on Dumugwi’s skin. Pure white sand floated in the air, emitting light and revealing every corner of the spacious area.
He had thought it was quite a large space, but once the parts hidden by darkness were revealed, it was even bigger than he’d expected. The enormous height, about two or three times that of the corridor, and the wide breadth looked majestic. Beneath the shallow rippling water, bone fragments were scattered everywhere, and among them—probably having entered along with Iyeon or Sano—a few small fish could be seen barely swimming.
And above them were two huge holes leading to the throat.
“Are you suggesting we go back out?”
Sano stood beside Iyeon. The head Sano and Iyeon had entered through was the left one, so from the inside, it was the right hole.
“Dumugwi’s mouth is so precise that when closed, it feels like there’s no gap. Unless it opens willingly, it’s not easy to open it with external force.”
“…You’ve tried opening it?”
“From the outside.”
He’d tried everything. It seemed Sano hadn’t been obediently captured by the tentacles like Iyeon.
That wasn’t what he was thinking about now anyway. Iyeon shook his head.
“Not there.”
“Then?”
“We should go where we haven’t been.”
Sano’s gaze shifted from the right hole to the left one. A mutant with two heads that deliberately used only one to capture prey. The interior of the right head that couldn’t be known through ordinary methods.
It was a plausible hypothesis.
“Let’s go.”
As Iyeon lightly waved his hand, the white sand gathered again. What it created was a large, pure white paper airplane. It wasn’t the crooked, abstract shape he had drawn before, but a very beautiful and neat form.
“So you can make something proper too.”
“Hey, making something that matches a drawing is harder, you know?”
“It would be harder with that kind of drawing.”
The paper airplane carrying the two, who were bickering as they got on, lightly took off. Following its refreshing movement, the wind blew their bangs.
“It might be heavily guarded.”
If the right head was indeed where the gem core was located, it would react much more sensitively than walking through other areas. Perhaps an attack would come as soon as they entered. In response to Sano’s warning, Iyeon shrugged.
“Weren’t you the one who tore apart the tentacles outside? You can do the same thing here.”
As they were talking, the paper airplane entered the left throat. The inside of the giant mutant’s head was as spacious as the corridor they had walked through, so the paper airplane could fly quickly through it without touching the walls.
“I can’t do that here.”
“Huh? Why?”
It was the first time he’d heard Je Sano admit with his own mouth that he couldn’t do something. At the puzzled question, Sano lightly clenched and unclenched his fist as if measuring his own strength.
“Unlike outside, my ability is limited here.”
“What?”
Sano was someone who usually drew upon the power of the ground he stood on. That’s why everything had become a mess where Sano fought with the tentacles in the lake before entering Dumugwi. Because he freely controlled all kinds of minerals buried in the lake bottom.
As long as he lived on Earth, he could be considered almost invincible, but Sano did have a few weaknesses. For example, places without soil. Like outside the stratosphere or in the middle of the vast ocean, places like that.
“Isn’t there nothing here?”
Though the inside of Dumugwi looked like a cave, what it was made of wasn’t Earth’s materials. No minerals, no ores, nothing.
This was the skin of a mutant. Beyond Sano’s power.
Here, all Sano could handle was his own body.
Only then did Iyeon realize why Sano hadn’t recklessly destroyed everything and had stayed for over two hours.
As long as the gem core was alive, Dumugwi’s skin boasted tremendous hardness. The inside seemed slightly weaker than the outside, but still, ordinary force was far from enough. It went without saying that trying to manipulate the bone fragments scattered inside Dumugwi would not even buy time.
Sano’s abilities included body mineral synchronization, so he could attack to some extent using that ability, but he lacked the absolute strength to destroy Dumugwi’s walls. It was similar to having a bulldozer confiscated and being left with only a shovel. It wasn’t that the shovel was weak; it was that the bulldozer was too strong.
While taking care of himself wouldn’t be difficult, it wasn’t enough to overwhelm the endlessly growing internal tentacles of Dumugwi. In this case, there was no point in deliberately coming inside. That’s what he had been pondering about. Whether to go back out and destroy it from the outside even if it took a long time, or somehow find a way to destroy the gem core from the inside.
Crack, snap.
At that moment, they heard something splitting. Both of them looked ahead simultaneously.
Tentacles that detected the intruders were emerging, splitting the inner wall. They were so dense that one couldn’t proceed without tearing them away. The movement of each writhing tentacle looked like a different living being, making them appear particularly threatening.
“What did I tell you.”
Sano looked at Iyeon at the light voice. Surprisingly, Iyeon was smiling playfully.
Iyeon was not specialized in using superpowers to kill opponents. That was his personality to begin with, and it was also distant from his ability’s characteristics. In this aspect, objectively speaking, Sano was definitely superior to Iyeon. Perhaps even now, when all he could handle was his own body, Sano might do better. Credit where credit was due.
There was no time to whine endlessly about what couldn’t be done. What he could do now was not that.
“Je Sano, you’ve never properly used the terrain configuration function, right?”
Abilities don’t have to be used solely for direct attacks to be useful.
“Now, this is the simplified terrain configuration function.”
White particles were spreading like a halo behind Iyeon’s back.
“Pick whatever you want.”
Soon, the pure white sand pile covered the entire head of Dumugwi.
*
“Noona, maybe we should mobilize other support hunters…”
Quite some time had passed since Iyeon went in. Even though he knew it would take much longer to deal with a top-tier mutant, Jongchan found himself anxiously staring at the lake’s surface. Underwater combat had almost nothing that outsiders could visually confirm. Jonghee calmed the restless Jongchan.
“Wait. Don’t be unnecessarily fidgety.”
“But how can we trust that flaky person!”
When Jongchan rushed forward and shouted, Jonghee pushed his face away as if he was being noisy.
“If someone with abilities like that couldn’t help Sano-nim, then no support hunter would be able to help.”
The lake was separated from the outside by the solid barrier that Iyeon and Sano had set up. Not only that, but thanks to the bright lights they had turned on, even though it was past midnight, the surroundings were bright enough to see all the glimmers on the lake’s surface.
“That’s…”
Jongchan pursed his lips. His noona was right. Though he had expected it, seeing it in reality was overwhelmingly impressive.
He didn’t know exactly who Iyeon was or what circumstances he had. Not only did Sano never mention it, but he also couldn’t find any records.
However, the two of them had faithfully helped Sano for years as he searched for someone, and they knew that someone was Jung Iyeon. Based on the information they had obtained at that time, they could roughly guess what kind of abilities he had.
The record that he was a low-tier hunter was completely fraudulent. After analyzing Iyeon’s superpower assessment video and Cho Jeonryeok video until their eyes nearly fell out, Jongchan and Jonghee concluded that his implementation ability was so precise that it perfectly realized even crude drawings. To think of disguising oneself with poor drawing skills was truly an eccentric idea.
Iyeon’s true ability was extraordinary even to the two of them, whose standards had been raised by working with Sano. Unbelievably, he seemed to be on par with Sano.
