# Chapter 89
As far as Dohyuk knew, nuclear energy was merely the source of monsters. It was a concept that restored already injured monsters to their original state; monsters didn’t even have the intelligence to utilize that energy to produce stronger power.
But what if that wasn’t the case?
He also considered the possibility that the nucleus might have borrowed the form of another life form, like in the Hochang Forest. But already before Dohyuk’s eyes, the nucleus that had lost its energy was crumbling like an empty shell. If the situation had been the same as in the Hochang Forest, the Underground Nation’s nucleus should have disappeared as well.
No matter how he looked at it, the conclusion was the same. The nuclear energy had been absorbed somewhere.
Without realizing it, Dohyuk muttered in a small voice.
“How is the dungeon being maintained?”
His anxiety intensified dramatically. He wanted to call out Junseo’s name loudly, but entering an S-class monster’s nest and blatantly revealing his intrusion would be suicidal. Dohyuk deliberately held his breath and diligently kept moving.
Perhaps due to the Agwi’s enormous size, its nest was also immense. It seemed endless no matter how much he walked.
‘Crunch. Crunch.’
As he walked aimlessly, a bone-chilling sound quietly echoed from the distance. Dohyuk swallowed his breath and walked a bit faster. The sound of a solid object being crushed combined with vulgar slurping noises made him feel like his hair was standing on end. The foul smell grew stronger.
‘Crunch. Crack. Crunch. Slurp, slurp.’
Dohyuk, who had been walking frantically, suddenly stopped.
The Agwi was there. A purple-skinned monster nearly 3 meters tall was completely preoccupied with slowly chewing and swallowing something, its black hair hanging down to its feet.
Dohyuk’s eyes widened. His bloodshot gaze fixed on something dangling in the Agwi’s arms. Though he couldn’t properly see anything due to the monster’s large back, he could clearly see a dark red garment repeatedly rustling between its arms. Each time the garment crumpled, powder of the same color fell with a patter.
Even from a distance, he could tell what it was. Blood that had dried over time.
For the first time in 12 years, Dohyuk found God again.
He was willing to give anything as payment. Even if he was told to crawl back into a dark cage, he would gladly comply.
‘Please, please, please. You have to be alive. Please.’
Between A-class and S-class, there exists an insurmountable difference. Theoretically, the title of A-class Esper was given to those who could hunt about three A-class monsters alone, and it took five such A-class Espers together to barely hunt an S-class monster.
This meant that Dohyuk, merely an A-class Esper, rushing alone at the Agwi, an S-class monster, was suicidal.
Cold sweat ran down the back of his neck at the chilling thought. But Dohyuk had no other options. If Junseo was already dead, there would be no reason for Dohyuk to continue living; and if Junseo was still alive, he needed to buy as much time as possible until Sangjun arrived at the nest with the party.
Is this how it feels to jump off a deep cliff?
Dohyuk rushed at the Agwi. There would be only one chance. He plunged his dagger into the monster’s nape, its most vulnerable spot. As his firm upper arm tensed, veins bulged on the back of his hand. Using the dagger as a medium, all kinds of poisonous energy flowed explosively into the Agwi.
[Arrghhh!]
The Agwi, who had been preoccupied with chewing its prey, howled while spitting out bodily fluids. As the poison bubbled and dissolved the flesh, the smell of decay stung his nose. He had tried to pierce through at once, but the Agwi’s skin was harder than expected. The force of the impact made his wrist throb painfully. If the dagger hadn’t been made of by-products, it would have broken in two long ago.
The convulsions were violent. Whatever the Agwi had been grasping and eating was slammed onto the ground. A garment stiffened with blood.
Dohyuk, who had constantly suspected it might be Junseo despite telling himself otherwise, unconsciously followed that lump with his gaze.
It was a mistake.
‘Wham!’
“Ugh!”
His head, which had been violently slammed against a hard rock, rang painfully. It was fortunate that he had instinctively taken a glancing blow from the Agwi’s attack; if he had been even slightly slower, his head would have been crushed by that fist before he could fly over there and hit his head against the rock. Dohyuk opened his tightly closed mouth to spit out blood coming up from his throat. He thought he might have suffered internal injuries from the strong impact. Still, the small wounds that had been heavily scraped against the sharp rock surface were already slowly healing.
Plus, there was a gain. What the Agwi had been chewing wasn’t Junseo’s body, but the wooden doll.
Despite the bleak reality of confronting an S-class monster, Dohyuk could breathe again at the possibility that Junseo might still be alive.
‘But why was it eating the wooden doll?’
The original purpose of the wooden doll was to find the location of the Agwi’s nest. The Agwi wouldn’t eat wood. It was enchanted by the doll’s energy, controlled it, and lured it to its nest, but after realizing the prey was fake, it would typically destroy the bait and search for new prey. This was the Agwi’s usual pattern.
So why was the Agwi tearing and eating the wooden doll like a feast? And where exactly was Junseo now?
He didn’t know. There wasn’t even time to leisurely theorize about various possibilities.
He focused his wavering gaze on the dagger stuck in the Agwi’s nape. Originally, the Agwi is a regenerating monster. But perhaps due to Dohyuk’s toxicity, the half-severed wound wasn’t regenerating. A blessing in disguise. It seemed that if he continued to attack and inflict wounds that couldn’t regenerate, perhaps one opportunity might present itself.
However, he was overwhelmingly outmatched in both weight class and strength.
The only ability Dohyuk had that could compete with the Agwi was agility. If so, the only option left was to move faster than the Agwi and secure the high ground. Attack by quickly digging in from a distance where the Agwi’s attacks couldn’t reach, then create distance again. The key was unpredictable movement.
What naturally came to mind was the most efficient weapon for one-on-one combat. It was also the weapon Dohyuk was most confident in handling.
Dohyuk curled his empty hand in the air. Soon, he concentrated his ability to shape a sharp Bowie knife. With his viscous poison energy densely tangled, the darkly colored weapon appeared almost deep purple as he gripped it while watching the Agwi.
After a brief standoff, the Agwi, which Dohyuk thought would attack first, didn’t move at all, so Dohyuk quickly approached it. His heavily dilated pupils fixated intently on the Agwi’s flank.
‘Slash.’
It was powerful enough to cut an ordinary person in half. The Agwi, suffering a long laceration, jumped high, causing the interior of the cave to reverberate as if an earthquake had struck.
Dohyuk approached the back of the monster at the maximum speed, grabbed the handle of his dagger embedded in its nape, and slashed downward vertically.
Unfortunately, as the Agwi twisted its body and Dohyuk had to dodge the widely swung arm, the wound wasn’t as deep as expected. A blood-curdling howl, as if blood foam was boiling, echoed through the cave again.
At that moment, Dohyuk faltered.
[Why!]
His dazed gaze turned toward the Agwi.
[It hurts! Why am I!]
Though it was clearly a howling sound, the meaning pierced into his mind. Like when hearing a foreign language one can speak—recognizing it as a foreign language while understanding its meaning.
The Agwi was continuously looking at Dohyuk, expressing its pain and asking about the cause and reason, but it didn’t show even a speck of malice toward Dohyuk.
In that moment, a shocking realization flashed through Dohyuk’s mind.
Could it be that the Agwi, like countless monsters he had passed on his way here, didn’t recognize him as an enemy?
Wait a minute.
He felt a sense of déjà vu. In an instant, his blood ran cold.
Dohyuk thought of the day when Lee Seoyeon had gone berserk during a mission.
‘That was dangerous.’
‘I know. I thought I was going to die. If the Tengu hadn’t suddenly stopped attacking, I would have been killed for sure. Why did it stop attacking?’
‘We must have successfully completed the hunt before it could attack. It probably didn’t stop attacking separately.’
‘I guess that makes sense. I must have seen it wrong.’
As she laughed playfully, her mouth corners rose refreshingly. The moment he directly faced that clear laughter, Dohyuk realized a bit late that the child he had been paying attention to, Seah, resembled her a lot.
Only then did he understand why he had shown such uncharacteristic concern for a middle school child who had lost her parents to monsters and been abandoned by society. Yet it was still ridiculous. Despite keeping a distance from Lee Seoyeon out of fear of being trapped in the past, he tried his best to hand a brilliant future to a child who resembled Seoyeon.
He might have projected himself or Seoyeon onto Seah’s face. In fact, he might have been vicariously satisfied by pretending not to while giving Seah what he had been continuously wishing for and struggling with. A selfish coward.
When he blinked, the memories fluttered. All the memories he had tried to suppress by pushing them down sprang up, making Dohyuk curl up, wanting to vomit everything out.
Seoyeon’s rampage was momentary. Starting from her neck and arms, the veins throughout her body turned dark blue, then all her veins burst and she suffered with bloodshot eyes.
It was on a completely different level from an ordinary Esper’s rampage.
It was much more rapid, seemed much more painful, and much more… monstrous.
