Chapter 95: Huh, a Barrier? (2)
‘Dust or tiny bugs?’
How strange.
It’s definitely chilly today, so why is my tear duct sweating so much?
But I don’t have time to wallow in gloom.
This is none other than the epicenter of the incident.
“Huh!”
“How did you get inside there…?”
“Appraiser, are you okay?”
I signaled to the shocked Hunters outside.
“I’m fine. Everyone, calm down.”
Since getting in was easy, I could leave anytime if I just focused.
I had no reason to be anxious at all.
No, on the contrary, this is a good opportunity.
It’s easier to discover weaknesses from inside the barrier.
“Hmm.”
I rolled my eyes and glanced at the monster in the center of the flowerbed.
Then I cautiously asked the staff outside the barrier.
“Seonwoo-yeon Hunter?”
“Yes?”
“But that monster… does it make physical attacks at all?”
Seonwoo-yeon shook her head.
“No. According to the registered information, Baron Hwa-won only deals mental damage…”
Then the outcome is in.
I pointed behind me with my thumb and said,
“Then since I’m already inside, I’ll take a quick look around before coming back out.”
“Pardon?”
“It’ll make things easier to work. Maybe the barrier itself is a weak structure inside.”
At this, Seonwoo-yeon let out a surprised, high-pitched voice.
“No, but still that’s…”
Just by looking at her gaze, I could roughly guess what she was going to say, but thankfully, there wasn’t much overall opposition.
“Oh! Will you really do that?”
“Well, as long as I can break through the barrier….”
“Shouldn’t be a problem, right?”
“Right. You’re still blocking the hypnosis well!”
Other Hunters seemed to generally agree with my statements.
Baron Hwa-won was just a simple boss that only fired off mental attacks. And considering this situation has already been going on for three hours…
‘Everyone must want it over quickly.’
Five minutes.
I promised I’d be back in five minutes and immediately set out to investigate the barrier.
‘With so many flowers, there’s not even a scent.’
Rustle, rustle.
The lush plants blooming on the ground touched the soles of my shoes.
But I ignored all that sensation and focused on the barrier.
‘Let’s see… roughly what’s the structure…? Wow, is that monster really supporting such a large barrier by itself?’
Seriously. Wait, thinking about it just makes me angrier.
How could someone like me, a once-in-a-lifetime genius, be compared to dust?
Sure, I’m stuck in this lousy body for now, but back in the day…
“Hmm?”
Then.
I shifted my gaze upon sensing an unusual magic around me.
A substance containing large mana despite its small volume.
This had to be the pattern of the magic stone commonly found in gates.
‘A magic stone in a flowerbed?’
I bent down to inspect the ground.
What I found was a shy blue jewel peeking out between flower buds.
‘Oh.’
Upon closer inspection, it was a rare, high-quality magic stone.
And uniquely, there were metal prongs around it, like a ring. Such rarity is usually considered a good factor in the market.
‘It’s clearly a valuable item.’
I don’t know why this precious thing is just lying around, but it doesn’t seem to react dangerously either…
Glance.
Others probably couldn’t see well from a distance what I was doing.
‘Hehe, what a lucky find.’
Without a second thought, I picked up the magic stone.
I carefully opened the flower bud and snagged whatever was inside.
“────!!”
“Aah!”
“My ear!”
But I didn’t expect that small action would lead to this result.
“Ugh!”
Suddenly, an annoying high-pitched sound erupted from somewhere.
And the source of the sound was none other than the ruler of this flowerbed.
“────!”
Baron Hwa-won howled, trembling all over.
As if about to collapse, it wailed horrendously into the air.
‘I’m sorry! Baron!’
I thought this was a bad signal and tensed up, but what followed was an even more ridiculous scene.
Crash!
What in the world is happening?
Baron Hwa-won immediately turned to dust and disappeared.
Moreover, the flowers that were blooming gracefully wilted instantly, and in the end, even the barrier crumbled.
“What?”
All of this happened in the blink of an eye.
“Huh?”
And it happened the moment I pulled out the magic stone.
*
At this point, I couldn’t help but realize.
That magic stone was none other than the monster’s power source.
But with an F-Class removing the power source abruptly, the Baron must have faced a drastic energy shortage…
-Now let’s see, is that monster really supporting such a large barrier by itself?
But as I mentioned earlier, that monster maintained the barrier by using the mana from its own body.
In other words, an enormous amount of mana was being consumed from its body every second.
‘Ah…’
So what…?
To sum it up, Baron Hwa-won was killed by being drained of mana from the barrier he had set up.
Effectively, he died a self-destructive death.
‘What the hell is this guy doing?’
If this were Alphauri, wouldn’t this be noted as one of the top three dumbest ways to die?
[Magic Stone -> Baron Hwa-won -> Barrier]
Of course, accidents happen when you connect things this way.
[Magic Stone -> Barrier]
If energy was supplied directly like this, he wouldn’t have had to die. It would have even been easier to develop this way.
In other words, this is an accident that a Great Mage would not at all comprehend…
‘What on earth?’
I’d overlook the inefficiency of using a magic stone.
But why was such an important item just lying around in the flowerbed?
‘Does he have no survival instincts?’
Kim Gi-ryeo was baffled by the opponent’s careless actions, but in reality, this was his misunderstanding.
Baron Hwa-won had indeed taken some precautions.
-Flowerbed?
First of all, that monster had created more than ten thousand flowers in the barrier to protect its power source.
The petals covered the stone, preventing mana from being drained and constantly moving its position.
-Hehe, what a lucky find.
But some oblivious and competent Great Mage figured this out immediately.
“────!”
Moreover, Baron Hwa-won’s final attack was effortlessly blocked at the very moment he was about to die.
Even squeezing every bit of strength out, ultimately, his means of attack was still mental magic.
“────!”
The powerful hypnosis that would make an A-Class barf was ineffective against this Hunter.
Ugh, too loud!
A B-Class monster couldn’t interfere with Kim Gi-ryeo’s mind from the start.
That man’s brain was controlled by a greater and unknown existence.
Crash!
Thus, Baron Hwa-won felt his hypnosis rebound and faced a powerless death.
That was all there was to it.
“Phew.”
But how could we catch on to such a complex situation?
Kim Gi-ryeo thought of this incident as simple luck. He didn’t think much of it.
“Well, that worked out…”
But at that moment.
“Huh?”
The Awakened outside the barrier came running in a panic as if charmed by something.
“Hunt–Hunter! What on earth did you just do?”
“B-Baron Hwa-won was taken down in an instant…”
“Even if we all rushed at him, we could never take him down that fast!”
What followed were parrot-like questions.
How did you kill the boss? Why did the barrier disappear? What did you do back there?
As the sentences poured in, Gi-ryeo blinked in confusion.
“He just kind of died on his own?”
“Huh?”
“I didn’t do anything special; he just died. I only picked up the magic stone…”
But Gi-ryeo suddenly felt a strange gaze during the conversation and hurriedly stopped speaking.
Click.
The sharp shutter sound.
Right after reincarnation, I had no idea what that meant, but now I could roughly picture it.
‘A camera!’
Someone was taking photos nearby.
“Hmm?”
And finding the photographer wasn’t too hard.
Just a slight turn of my head, and there was an Earthling running over with a camera as big as a cannon.
“A reporter!”
“Wow, this is some hyena behavior. How does he know the boss is dead and runs over so fast?”
“Did they already remove the controls outside?”
As soon as Gi-ryeo heard the word ‘reporter,’ his expression hardened.
‘No kidnappings, please…’
He learned long ago that becoming famous as an F-Class was no good.
Of course, since he was at the incident site, he had to prepare for some exposure, but he didn’t have the courage to engage with reporters.
“Huff, huff! Hello, Hunters! May I have a moment for an interview?”
So, Gi-ryeo took this chance while the reporter engaged with the A-Class Hunters to quietly prepare.
“So how did you take down the Baron?”
“Oh, that wasn’t us; it was that appraiser over there… Wait a second?”
Simply put, he was put on the spot.
*
That evening.
YTV’s 6 o’clock news reported on the defeat of Baron Hwa-won.
[The hunt for Baron Hwa-won that started in the morning has finally concluded.]
But the online reactions were indifferent.
Thanks to the efforts of the Hunters who were dispatched today, the incident was resolved safely.
People didn’t show much interest in such bland content.
[Comments 0]
[Happy: 2] [Sad: 0] [Angry: 0]
In the end, the follow-up report on the Hanshin incident recorded low views as it got buried in the ocean of information.
But…
[Comment 88]
This post sparked explosive reactions compared to the article.
The results of the Baron Hwa-won hunt.
Despite covering the same topic, why were people so interested in this post?
The reason was right in the content of the body.
This SNS post was, to be precise, correcting the media’s misleading report.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Wow, YTV News;;
I watched it for the first time in forever because they said I’d be on it.
They just said ‘the Hunters dispatched captured the boss’
and cut it off, lol.
Then they just pieced together my interview and aired it. No way, people will think I killed the boss~~
Baron, it was not us who killed him!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This account named National Fool Network was a nickname used by a certain A-Class Hunter in Korea.
Since he was an Awakened belonging to a famous Hunter team, it was only natural that his post would catch the attention of netizens.
[Huhㅠㅠㅠ Wasn’t your team the one to kill the boss?]
[Then who got the kill?]
The comment count on the post began to gradually increase.
[A certain appraiser came and took him down in three seconds.]
[Bro, have you been drinking?]
[I’m serious;]
[? lol]
[No, seriously, some appraiser took down the boss in three seconds and just walked away. I didn’t believe it either, but thinking back, it’s ridiculous, lol.]
The A-Class Hunter wrote the post, recalling the events from that morning.
[We were all gathered, a lot of B-Class Hunters and I, trying to figure out how to break the barrier, and then suddenly a staff member brought someone in. But then I heard the story, and it turns out that person was an appraiser. He came to use his analysis skills.
So I thought, oh, alright, and I was just watching for a bit when….]
[Yeah, yeah]
[Out of nowhere, that appraiser just breezes through the barrier;]
It was truly shocking.
A figure of an unknown man passed through the impregnable fortress that even A-Class Hunters couldn’t deal with as if it were nothing.
‘What kind of skill did he use?’
At the initial stage of the situation.
The ordinary people were evacuated so well that they didn’t even notice the conditions for passing through the barrier.
As the information became more imbalanced, misunderstandings couldn’t help but grow larger.
[Moreover, just when we were amazed by that, the appraiser started fiddling around inside the barrier, and suddenly the boss just kicked the bucket??]
[Wow]
[What on earth did he do? But ultimately, I didn’t hear how he did it. He just suddenly left… ]
He typed on the keyboard in disappointment.
[Anyway, that person did it all.]
[So who is that appraiser?]
The A-Class Hunter couldn’t flatly respond to that question. For this reason.
[I was curious about him too, so I watched the news, but no one really covered it clearly. It seems he declined the interview.]
Although he was capable enough to handle the boss monster in an instant, he totally avoided exposing his identity to the media.
[Do you remember what he looked like?]
[Yep, but it seems he doesn’t want his face known, so I’ll keep it a secret. I just wanted to clarify that we didn’t kill Baron Hwa-won.]
People showed great interest in that mysterious Awakened.
[I think I know who it is.]
[Whoa, who is it?]
[I don’t know the name, but I just saw him from afar; he had blond hair??]
[Blond beauty appraiser, whoaa, everyone else has everything but me for real.]
[Is he crazy?]
Now speculations were starting to circulate in a much more public arena, not just in a fringe anonymous forum.
