207. Operation Swesi Annihilation

“Kuhuhum…”

“Herb. So you’ve finally regained your senses?”

“Damn it. So it wasn’t a dream. Kuhu.”

“…”

The man chugged the water in the room to sate his ravenous thirst.

With sleep circles under his eyes and a heavy body due to yesterday night’s inebriation, he came closer.

Blinking his half open eyes slowly, he opened his mouth.

“There are 100 good things about drinking, but there is one negative. Yesterday night was that sole negative. It makes me remember some useless things time to time.”

“I expected a hangover when you mentioned a negative, but I guess I was wrong.”

“My lad. If I’m a proper drunkard, then don’t you think I should be enjoying the hangover as well. Kuhuhu!”

“…”

“Now. I must be heading off. Despite meeting for the first time, it seems I’m quite heavily indebted to you.”

“My name is Guardian. Don’t you remember? Mister Herb.”

“Ahem…”

The man who had turned his back to me and was heading out the door hesitated at my question, letting out a fake cough.

Holding onto the doorknob, he wasn’t able leave nor turn around to face me.

“Didn’t you say that you would wish me the best in the afterlife?”

“It seems that I’ve made a mistake while being drunk. I am sorry for that.”

“Mister Herb. No matter what you do, I will still go to where the Swesi is located. But not only are you giving up, now you’re trying to run away as well?”

“…”

“If you really must, then you can go back down this path. I entrusted the owner of the store with some money, so go ahead and spend the rest of your life finding out the good points of alcohol. However, I know that you won’t be able to live comfortably for even a single moment because of that one single negative point you told me before. How can someone live with such a heavy weight on their heart?”

“Huhu… You’re a real smooth talker. Do you think you can do it? I’m asking if you can change the world with such a small action.”

“Hmm. I dunno. That’s why I’m trying to struggle for a bit. A very minuscule amount, so little that no one will notice.”

“Ahahaha! You’re far more insane than I thought. I’ll wish you a happy afterlife later. I shouldn’t go bothering the reaper with a pointless prayer. And I feel like it’d be a waste of a talent for someone like you to die right now.”

“Then…”

“With the castle door at your back from where we first met, keep going straight. If you do that, you’ll be stopped by a giant rocky mountain. Their headquarters are somewhere on that mountain. Even getting there won’t be easy. I wish you victory in battle, Protector.”

“Thank you. If I find your daughter…”

“Kuhu. Didn’t I tell you that it’s been 10 years since? I have decided not to have any false hope. Decided on forgetting the word hope in a world like this. Thank you for your words at least. Thanks to you, I was able to recall the face of my child in such a long time. Guess that means that I need to raise another glass in her name. I’ll see you again.”

****

After Herb disappeared from view, I immediately tore the return scroll to head for the castle entrance.

I was traveling to do recon on the enemy’s headquarters.

Despite all the light due to it being early in the morning, there was no way that I’d be discovered because I was using Mass Stealth Jutsu and only doing a very general sweeping reconnaissance.

From the start, one of the rules in the bet between Barub and I was that we weren’t allowed to use any skills that allowed us to discover the identities of our opponent.

However, it was possible that this rule only categorized Barub and I as opponents.

While I would be using Stealth and Silent, I was planning to observe them from as far away as possible.

As I said before, I couldn’t take them all out by the roots at once.

I planned to take them down bit by bit, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the first attack would determine the outcome of the plan to annihilate all of Swesi.

The Swesi organization isn’t stupid.

Not only that, but they had an incredible amount of fighting force.

They even have connections with many powerful nobles, so there was no way they’d be an easy opponent.

After the first attack, they would shore up their defenses, and their response times against intruders would become more rapid.

That is why during this first attack when they don’t have their guard up, I need to gain as many benefits as possible, which means that I have to achieve the most amount of growth possible.

Just like how it is with most organizations, those with great power tend to not show themselves under the spotlight.

Similar to Park Hyun’s radical faction, those who hung around the entrance are the weak ones in comparison to the rest of the organization.

The truly powerful big bosses don’t usually bother taking action is what I mean.

In today’s reconnaissance, I will be focusing on the number of those acting as guards and the response they have to an attack.

I was going over there to find out who out of them would serve as the first sacrifices.

Just like Herb said, with the castle entrance directly behind me, I continued going forward.

As expected, it didn’t take long for me to find out that I had entered the tier 1 hunting grounds.

I could hear the howls of monsters all over the place, and even saw a few Protectors engrossed in hunting.

Despite whichever direction I headed out towards, I would come in contact with monsters because of how they were spread like tree rings with the castle as the center.

This meant that while I didn’t know what tier of the hunting grounds Swesi’s headquarters was located, I knew that it existed within the hunting zones.

It made me wonder just how Herb managed to get near their headquarters the first time he arrived, since he wasn’t a Protector.

However, he could’ve hired Protectors as guards to slowly travel through the hunting grounds, so that suspicion disappeared quickly.

“Is that it?”

After running for a long time, the rocky mountain finally came into view.

If I climb over that, Swesi’s headquarters should be there.

The rocky mountain was around the 3rd tier hunting grounds.

Since I’ve been looking at the encyclopedia enough to memorize the contents, I was able to tell the gist of where I was just by looking at the monsters around me.

The rocky mountain was very artificial looking compared to what I had seen so far in Hell’s environment, and it was pointlessly tall and had a rough surface.

This type of terrain was the first I’ve encountered in this zone that was composed entirely of low hills and plains.

Since I couldn’t tell how far it stretched on for me to attempt going around it, I casted Silent and Stealth Jutsu to cover myself before jumping up.

If this was my average day, I would’ve jumped up to the peak in one go, but I only jumped up to height where I knew I wouldn’t cause damage to the terrain upon landing.

It was because starting now, I could not afford to be noticed by anyone.

It was a must that I did not leave any evidence of my presence behind.

After leaping up a couple times, I felt as though something was off.

Enough time had passed where I would’ve had more than enough time to climb to the peak two or three times, but I still couldn’t see the peak that was surrounded by clouds.

Not only that, but surprisingly I wasn’t able to see any monsters or even a peek of them.

It was almost as if I was looking at the well developed areas near the castle.

“Damn it. It’s almost as if I’ve come under hypnosis. Should I have tried going around the mountain?”

Finally, I was able to go over the mountain and arrive on the ground.

But something was off.

I thought that the rocky mountain was just really tall, but the monsters by the ground were completely different from the monsters found in the tier 3 zone.

Of course. This was the tier 7 hunting grounds.

I had only climbed over a mountain and come down, but I had somehow gone 4 tiers further out.

Because I hadn’t even a single monster the entire time I traveled, it felt as though I had traveled through a different dimension to get here.

However, since these monsters were still easy for me to take care of, it didn’t worry me that much.

As Herb had informed me, I had ran in a straight line from the castle’s entrance, and I was able to see a building that appeared to be Swesi’s headquarters the moment I descended the mountain.

It was a giant structure that reminded me of the buildings found within the castle that I had to enter through to see the Festival of Blood.

It was a castle that looked like bats would fly out and Dracula would show his face at any moment.

I was not able to hide my surprise that a place like this existed within the hunting grounds.

As with each step I took to get closer to that structure, I was cautious of even the sand and dust.

It was then.

“KUWEHH!”

“…”

I could hear a monster’s howl and the sound of conversations between people from a place not far away from where I was.

At the place where the sound of coming from, many personnel gathered to push back the monster and began the process of taking down the monster.

Perhaps due to the building being built within the hunting grounds, it was normal for monsters to come after it.

However, seeing how their group was taking down the monster made the corners of my lip go up.

It was because there were a vast number of personnel stationed outside the castle.

It must be to guard against monsters and intruders.

It was a shame that they weren’t gathered all in one place, but there were about 100 to 150 of them.

The other reason was that they were defeating a tier 7 monster with ease.

This meant that each of them were at least far stronger than a tier 7 in terms of strength.

If I was able to defeat them all and take their powers, the amount I get would be enormous.

You could say that this was a great start.

After observing them for a bit, it seemed that the personnel stationed outside the building had finished taking care of the monsters nearby.

Groups in 5 to 6 patrolled around the building, and it looked as though the items obtained from defeating the monster were put into someone’s Mobile Storage that was open by the entrance of the building.

Next to the Mobile Storage was a person who seemed to hold some amount of position, and it looked as though they were diligently scribbling on their ledger.

There wasn’t a single person who was moving on their own and apart from the rest of the group.

If that was the case, I would’ve been able to capture one and drag them back to interrogate them for intel.

Pushing aside my regret, I increased our distance.

After confirming this scene, I didn’t do much else.

All I did was to tear the return scroll far away from them.

To take them down effectively and assuredly, I believed that I needed to prepare for it at least a little.

Firstly, I was able to get a general grasp of how strong they were by seeing how fast they defeated the monsters.

They were weak enough that if I managed to gather them up and hit them with everything I had, I would be able to take them out in one attack.

I wasn’t sure of the personnel inside the building, but I was positive that the Protectors outside of it were just about that strong.

I tore open the scroll to warp to the 7th tier hunting grounds.

You would think it strange for me to head to a hunting ground when I should be focusing on coming up with a plan to storm the building.

And on top of that, I headed for the 7th tier hunting grounds instead of the unexplored territories.

But the reason for doing so was simple.

I had a plan to gather them all here.

“Time to run.”

I ran across the 7th tier hunting grounds with an appropriate amount of speed.

Perhaps due to running past the boundaries between the tier zones, I saw a few 8th tier monsters time to time.

An incredible amount of monsters who had been aggroed by me were following me, and as I turned around, I could see them arranged in a wide area in front of me.

“It doesn’t taste good to fry food too much. I think a medium should be fine. First, let’s put them on a skewer.”

“KUWUH!”

“KERUK! KERURUK!”

In an instant, many golem hands rose out of the ground and grounded them.

I had used the Bind skill.

Since it wasn’t a single target skill, I was able to hold down all the monsters in front of me.

With their movements sealed, each of the monsters let out the Fear howling skill and were taking an offense stance.

Monsters with ranged attacks out of the bunch were also launching projectiles towards me already.

“The meat is so fresh that it’s flying and running around.”

I casted Hold and Silent on top of that.

They became living taxidermy, and weren’t even able to let their Fear howl skill go beyond the Silent spell.

I don’t have a hobby of torturing monsters like this in a psychopathic fashion.

However, this was part of the preparation I needed to group up the Swesi guards in one spot.

“Now, shall I roast them up?”