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HELIO SCANS
[Translator - Hestia]
[Proofreader - Kaya]
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Chapter 43
The fight was far fiercer than expected.
No matter how strong a Black Orc was, it shouldn’t have posed any trouble for the guild members of Silken Lily, a team made up entirely of A-Rank heroes.
That’s how it had always been, and how it was supposed to stay.
But right now, the atmosphere was downright unsettling.
Crash!
A single strike crushed the Black Orc’s chest, killing it instantly.
At first glance, it looked like a flawless, routine kill—nothing out of the ordinary.
Yet Park Seungho, who’d landed that perfect spear strike, wore a rigid expression.
“…What the hell are these things…”
His words trailed off, and his face twisted in confusion.
Black Orcs were among the most common monsters found in Rifts across the entire world.
Park Seungho had fought them countless times before. He knew their weak points and exactly how to deal with them.
So when a Black Orc appeared in front of him, he hadn’t been worried in the slightest.
But the Black Orcs facing him now—they were different.
“No… way too different.”
Park Seungho glanced down at the spear in his hand.
It was a Grade-6 weapon.
Light, durable, and on top of that, it had a rare special function: Explosion.
Back when he bought it, it had cost him basically his entire life savings, and it had paid him back many times over by helping him rack up monster kills and build wealth far beyond his initial investment.
Against a monster like a Black Orc, even a grazing blow from this spear should have been enough to leave a fatal wound.
That’s how it had always been.
Ssshhh!
One of the Black Orcs suddenly charged at the unguarded Park Seungho.
Eyes blazing with murderous rage, it swung its iron sword at the back of his head, intent on killing him.
Thunk!
Park Seungho, who’d looked almost lost in thought, whipped his spear around and batted the iron sword away.
Clench—!
Gripping the spear tighter than usual, he thrust with everything he had.
The spear blade, infused with a bluish mana, slammed right into the Black Orc’s chest.
Boom!
It exploded.
The spear’s rare Explosion function had activated against the odds.
“……”
But the Black Orc merely had its chest blown apart as it was thrown back, spraying blood everywhere.
Its upper body should have been blasted to pieces, as if it had taken a direct hit from a bomb—but that wasn’t happening at all.
“These things… they’re seriously weird.”
Park Seungho’s face twisted. The other guild members wore pretty much the same expression.
“Why are these guys so strong?”
“They’re supposed to die, but they won’t!”
“Damn it! What the hell is going on?”
“Die! Just die already!”
Who would’ve thought they’d end up screaming like this against mere Black Orcs.
The members of the Silken Lily Guild found themselves thrown into chaos when enemies who should have died didn’t, and those who should have collapsed kept standing—even counterattacking.
When injuries started to appear because of nothing more than Black Orcs, Jeong Injoo’s expression hardened more than ever.
Seeing frustration spread across the faces of all 38 members of Silken Lily Guild, Jeong Injoo, as guild leader, had to make a decision.
“Jooyeon!”
Jooyeon had once confidently asked to be entrusted with the Black Orcs.
Shame or embarrassment didn’t matter anymore.
Protecting the guild members came first—even if it meant burying their own pride in the dirt, Jeong Injoo had no problem with that.
Hyun Jooyeon, who had just been biting her lip in frustration while the guild was outmatched, jumped into action the moment Jeong Injoo called for her.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
The instant her palms touched them, the upper bodies of the Black Orcs exploded.
It was the overwhelming attack power of an S-Rank hero on full display.
Hyun Jooyeon’s speed ranked second—no, probably third now—in all of South Korea.
Her combat style used that speed as a weapon, closing in to deliver mana-powered strikes.
In other words, she was a close-quarters fighter through and through, but people often thought that style held her back.
Hyun Jooyeon, with her beautiful looks rather than the typical muscular, rough image, didn’t exactly match this kind of fighting style, and truthfully, she didn’t even like it herself.
But since speed was her greatest asset, there was no choice but to fight this way.
Still, the only ones who could dare belittle Hyun Jooyeon’s fighting style were other S-Rank heroes.
For A-Rank heroes, she was an opponent they couldn’t even dream of facing.
Proving that point, the moment she started to move, the Black Orcs began to fall one after another.
In under a minute, Hyun Jooyeon had killed more than forty Black Orcs.
But no one was happy about it.
’Something’s definitely wrong with my body.’
She’d already noticed feeling heavy, but the effect was worse than she’d thought.
Considering that she’d once wiped out ninety Black Orcs in a single minute, taking down only thirty in the same time was a shock.
Now she understood why the Silken Lily guild members had struggled so much.
Why Jeong Injoo had swallowed all pride to ask for help.
Hyun Jooyeon only realized after directly facing these Black Orcs herself.
’Something’s wrong! No, this is completely messed up!’
No matter how much stronger the monsters in Brazil were than those elsewhere, there was no way they could have changed this much in just a few days.
Anyway, thanks to Hyun Jooyeon stepping in, the battle ended quickly.
Even if no one was critically wounded, 5 guild members had still ended up pretty badly injured.
“Does this even make sense? Are the Black Orcs here special or something? Back at the Rift last time, they weren’t even worth worrying about!”
Someone shouted in a mix of frustration and disbelief.
When they’d first arrived in Brazil and entered a Rift, the members of Silken Lily guild had also handled the Black Orcs.
They’d hunted them down easily, without a hitch.
“There’s definitely something wrong here! Even the Rift entrance felt weird!”
“Yeah, and there’s something off about us, too! It’s like we’ve been hit with a debuff or something!”
“A debuff? What are we, inside a video game or something?”
“Game or not, who cares? That’s exactly what it feels like right now! Who the hell would’ve imagined something like this ten years ago? Honestly, reality’s turning more game-like by the day!”
Annoyed by even the smallest words, the guild members started to argue.
Jeong Injoo had to step up and calm them down.
Meanwhile, Dojun was inspecting the Black Orc corpses.
⋯⋯⋯
“Kaisel, do you see this? Just my gut, but I think this is what’s making them stronger. Hm… it’s a little different from ordinary mana. If I had to name it… maybe Dark Mana? The name doesn’t matter so much. Listen carefully. When monsters get forcibly infused with Dark Mana like this, they get way stronger—at least twice as powerful. And the flow of mana around them also changes, in subtle ways. Pay attention to that.”
⋯⋯⋯
Dark Mana.
It wasn’t an official term.
A great scholar named Ryuntena had discovered it and just slapped that name on it.
What mattered was the nature of Dark Mana:
It boosted a monster’s power by at least twofold.
Incredibly, Dojun had found traces of Dark Mana inside the corpse of a Black Orc.
“What are you staring at so hard?”
Hyun Jooyeon came up next to Dojun, who was still carefully studying the Black Orc’s body.
“Look here—see this black wave-like stuff?”
Just as Dojun described, if you looked closely inside the Black Orc’s corpse, you could see a thin, shifting layer of something like a black ripple.
“What is that?”
“…I don’t know either. But it’s what made them stronger.”
“This stuff?”
Hyun Jooyeon stared again, eyes wide in surprise.
If Dojun hadn’t pointed it out, she never would have seen it.
That’s how hard Dark Mana was to detect unless you looked very closely.
’Why is Dark Mana showing up here?’
Dojun’s face was more tense than ever.
Back in the world that had been destroyed, the appearance of Dark Mana had accelerated the pace of ruin.
No—even when monsters first started pouring from the skies, their bodies already carried Dark Mana.
As time went on, even the monsters that had already existed started to absorb Dark Mana.
The result? Monsters that had once been easy to deal with became overwhelmingly powerful.
Could this really just be a coincidence?
Dojun didn’t think so.
He had a very bad feeling.
’Maybe…’
Dojun forcibly cut off the thought.
It was something he absolutely did not want to consider—something that must never happen.
’There’s nothing I can conclude for sure yet.’
But from now on, he decided he couldn’t afford to overlook even the smallest clue.
＊ ＊ ＊
Starting with the Black Orcs, even the Swamp Ghouls and the Delkates had grown stronger.
The Swamp Ghouls swung their rotting claws hard enough to tear through reinforced combat suits, and the stones hurled by the Delkates punched clean holes straight through them.
At this point, fear began to well up in the hearts of the Silken Lily guild members.
Even with a powerful ally like Dojun, it was separate from the growing terror of the monsters themselves.
What if the monsters weren’t just stronger here, but everywhere?
What if these changes didn’t stop with Brazil, but spread around the entire world?
No matter how powerful an A-Rank hero was, hunting monsters would inevitably become harder.
As for B-Ranks, C-Ranks, or even D-Ranks? They might have to change professions altogether.
No, they might even have to restructure the hero ranking system itself.
The current ranking framework would need a dramatic downward revision, at least two steps lower.
An A-Rank dropping to C-Rank?
Most heroes would suffer an unbearable sense of loss, and the entire system and order would collapse.
That would surely have a massive impact on the safety of the world.
After all, even the Rifts right in front of them would soon face monster waves.
“But come on, it can’t really get that bad, right? Maybe… maybe this place is just special. Remember how weird it was from the entrance onward? It has to be. For some reason, only THIS Rift is strange.”
One guild member tried to shake off his fear with those words.
“Yeah, that must be it! If other places went through changes like this, that’d basically be the apocalypse! Hahaha…”
They laughed, trying to lighten the mood by mentioning the end of the world—but the reaction was icy cold.
The guild member scratched his head awkwardly.
“S-Ranks really are built different.”
“Honestly, I used to think there wasn’t much of a gap between A-Rank and S-Rank. But after today? I get it now. A-Rank and S-Rank are like heaven and earth.”
“Don’t go around saying crap like that. If some hot-tempered S-Rank hero hears you, you’ll seriously get beaten to death.”
“Yeah, I know.”
While the Silken Lily guild members struggled against each monster they encountered, Dojun and Hyun Jooyeon still showed overwhelming strength.
Dojun was expected—he was basically beyond common sense to begin with—but Hyun Jooyeon was different.
She had shown noticeably weaker combat power than usual when facing the Black Orcs, so a few guild members quietly thought even she might not be the same inside this Rift.
Yet Hyun Jooyeon crushed that suspicion with brutal ease, hunting down the monsters single-handedly.
The damage she dealt was so devastating you might say anything brushing against her got obliterated.
“Hyun Jooyeon is human like us. You can see how exhausted she looks.”
Her face was clearly showing fatigue after defeating so many monsters.
In contrast…
“Seo Dojun is just…”
One guild member trailed off and shook his head.
Dojun, who had hunted more monsters than anyone, was still exactly the same as when they’d started.
His breathing hadn’t even become ragged once, and there wasn’t a hint of fatigue about him.
“But still, he takes this situation as seriously as we do. Look at him, his face is stiff the whole time.”
“True, back in the other Rift, or even when he fought Ryouma Takashi—how should I put it? It was like he had an unbreakable composure, you know? Like the world could collapse and he wouldn’t even flinch. But here, it’s different. You can see it.”
“Yeah, this must be the first time for him too, so he’s feeling the gravity of the situation.”
Even while the Silken Lily guild members were resting and eating, Dojun just kept scanning his surroundings with a rigid expression.
“You’re not going to eat?”
Hyun Jooyeon asked, and Dojun shook his head.
“I’m not really in the mood.”
Hyun Jooyeon wasn’t hungry either.
Still, she forced herself to eat, simply to keep her strength from dropping.
“Eat at least a little.”
She handed him some easily portable combat rations, and Dojun reluctantly accepted them.
“That thing you mentioned earlier, Dojun—what do you think it really is? What could possibly make the monsters this strong?”
She wasn’t asking because she expected an answer.
It was just something she blurted out, stifled by frustration.
“It’s simple.”
“Simple?”
Hyun Jooyeon’s eyes widened at the look on Dojun’s face, as if he had realized something.
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HELIO SCANS
[Translator - Hestia]
[Proofreader - Kaya]
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