5.

Nagato City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, was l not far from Kitakyushu. The beautiful terraced rice fields with the blue sea as a landscape was now a land of ghosts, but there was only a sense of silence. The port was desolate as well, the mighty port of Nagato looking like something built for ghost ships.

Two ships were slowly approaching the city in the chilly silence. The ship was none other than a passenger ship, and terrible one, at that. The passenger ship was so rusty it looked painted with rust instead of paint, and none of the equipment needed to fill the passenger ship was intact. The ferry only looked like a rusty lump floating on the sea.

A light shone on the ferry from Nagato Port. A dozen minutes after the light shone, five rubber boats arrived at Nagato Port, exhaling breathlessly. Rattling…

Click! It was a gun that welcomed those who arrived. The soldiers, who had been hiding in the darkness, pointed their guns at the rubber boats, and the people in the rubber boat raised their hands over their heads without any resistance, as if they were expecting it.

The conversation began in that state.

"Are you runaway troops?"

The question, which started in Japanese, was answered by a man on a rubber boat.

"Yes."

"What are the numbers?"

"There are 126 on the right and 134 on the left."

"More than I thought, I heard there were two hundred people coming."

"… when we left Pohang, there were more than a thousand people on seven-passenger ships."

"About eighty-hundred people dead. You are lucky, if you'd met the King of the Sea, you'd have been killed."

The conversation was both unilateral and provocative.

"Yes, if we'd just met the King of the Sea and all died, we wouldn't have had to do anything so annoying at night. It's annoying."

However, at the provocation, there was no change in the face of those who were riding in the rubber boat.

The man who tried to provoke them briefly clicked his tongue the moment he saw their expression.

'It's hard to get anything out of them.' The man realized that his provoking would not work, so he stopped, because he knew that it wasn't a place for it.

"Six people per boat, and move five boats. If the boat has more passengers, or if the number of boats increases, you will be killed immediately."

After the warning, the rubber boats began to move between the passenger ships and the port again.

There were those looking at the scene from a distance.

"Hiyoshi, I'm willing to do this for you, but this is dangerous."

"You know my situation, and you are talking like that?"

They were Inoue Mayor, a tall man with a thin face who oversaw Nagato City, and the Kyushu branch manager, Hiyoshi.

"I got a call from Tokyo to report on the situation in Kyushu. D-day is ten days away. If I can't show something good at that time, my job place will be Hokkaido only if I'm lucky."

"It's a very sensitive thing. It is likely that the sudden visit from Tokyo is for other reasons. I don't know what's going on in Tokyo, but I heard that they are not trying to catch you. If they wanted it, they would have caught you in the first place. If they raised the payment by one and a half times from the current payment, you would have to commit hara-kiri."

Hiyoshi did not want to talk about the topic anymore and handed the Mayor a bag he had in his hand instead. After Mayor Inoue picked up the bag, he beckoned to a man behind him and handed it over to him. That was all.

Mayor Inoue did not confirm such things as what was in the bag, whether it was promised, or whether the quantity was right or not.

'Damn it.' Hiyoshi knew that the Mayor Inoue's actions were not due to his faith or trust in himself. 'He's got my weak points right.'

The most obvious weakness of this situation was that Hiyoshi, the Kyushu branch manager, had helped more than 200 Korean soldiers get smuggled into the country without notifying Tokyo for his own benefit, let alone receiving their permission.

That was why Mayor Inoue did not immediately confirm the price of overlooking this smuggling. If Hiyoshi did not pay the right price to be paid, Mayor Inoue would report the whole situation to Tokyo immediately. In other words, Hiyoshi had no chance of making a mockery of Inoue. The weakness caught in this way would surely continue to be used against him.

Hiyoshi knew the fact better than anyone else. Inoue was also in a position to be demoted, and he had to use someone else as a stepping stone to climb.

'I've taken everything he has.'

In addition, the monster stones that handed over to Mayor Inoue for this transaction were almost all of the monster stones that Hiyoshi had collected in hand.

Hiyoshi put all his monster stones into one thing.

If there was no income here, his fate would no longer be his own. He would become a consumable, and he would be spent in any place where it was necessary.

'So somehow I must use these men to reverse my situation.'

Therefore, there was no room in the eyes of Hiyoshi looking at those who came into Nagato. It was not just the work of Hiyoshi. All of these people here were his accomplices, and at this moment they could not afford to care about anything else.

Of course, they couldn't even imagine that hundreds of people were sneaking onto the land from behind the passenger ship floating in the distance.

"All two hundred twenty-three of the First Special Operations Unit have arrived safely."

There was no one who imagined that as soon as they reached the land by swimming, they saluted in front of a man at full attention.

6.

The Kitakyushu campus at Waseda University...

This place, which had been ruined since the appearance of the monsters, had remained in ruins since then. There was no one to come to a university in a world where getting something from college was meaningless. But now the college gymnasium, which no one had any reason to visit, was filled with people.

The number of people gathered was about two hundred or so. However, the feeling of being crowded was not seen anywhere, even though it was not a small number. Rather, it seemed to be dispersed so that there was no crowding, even if people were overflowing.

The crowd was showing military discipline.

'Excellent.'

Kyushu branch manager Hiyoshi, who watched this from beside Kim Tae-hoon, admired it sincerely.

'They are elites of the elites.'

Hiyoshi had also suffered all sorts of hardships, and even though he was demoted, he could not have been the branch manager of a huge land called Kyushu, if he had not seen and done things. He had seen many people who did not lack the expressions of the best elite, not only seeing their performances closely, but also how they worked together.

But what they were showing now was perfect enough to make most of the flawless elites he remembered full of blemishes.

'I understand why they are sure of the green-grade monster hunt.'

'Once they kill the Ghost Turtle, there is no reason to be afraid of my evaluation right away.'

He was convinced that they would kill the green-grade monster, the Ghost Turtle.

'Then…' At this moment, expectations began to swell in the hearts of Hiyoshi.

'And then if I use them…' Furthermore, Hiyoshi began to imagine what he could get if he gained them, including Kim Tae-hoon, as his own soldiers. He imagined himself controlling and commanding a hunter group who could hunt green-grade monsters. The products of his imagination were so great that his face turned red.

'Maybe I can get to a higher position than I used to be.

It was Kim's voice that stopped his rosy dreams. "Everyone pay attention." Kim Tae-hoon continued, "We will pay silent tribute to the 892 victims."

In the Korean language that came out of his mouth for a long time, the man next to Hiyoshi immediately translated it.

"All, silent tribute."

Of course, the man did not need to interpret Kim's words right away. There was no one to not know the meaning of that since the gathered men standing upright bowed down at the word of Kim. After the moment of silence, Kim said again, "We take a day off and the preparation for a day. Three days from now, we will move to hunt the Ghost Turtle which has settled in Hakata Port, and the grade is green."

'Straightforwardness!' Hiyoshi and the interpreter who was rather surprised by the brutally unilateral notification, like a verbal sword.

'Oh, my God.'

'Hunting a green-grade monster is actually a death sentence. Even if they are the best hunters, those who will make a silent tribute for those who have died after this hunt will be fifty percent or less. That is, the survival rate is just fifty percent!'

'Their life is connected to the front or the back of a coin.'

But Kim just said such words in front of them, without giving them any time to prepare or make up for it.

'Huck!'

What was even more surprising was the expression of those who were told the brutalities of the one-sided.

'Nonsense, there's not a single person moving!

'If someone received such a ridiculous notice, he would either look hard or sigh briefly, or he will be moved to tears.'

But there was not a single person in the crowd who swayed.

"It is more dangerous than ever. Moreover, this is no longer our country. We have nothing to lean on but our backs; we cannot expect to be buried intact. It's more dangerous, desperate, and miserable than anything we've ever faced."

The same was true of Kim's repeated remarks. There was no agitation. Rather, in Kim's words, some people began to smile at the corners of their mouths.

'Wow, smiling? Smiling in this desperate situation?' Hiyoshi had never seen such men. No, he never even thought there would be such men.

"That's great, that's great, that's really great." After all, he was so surprised that Hiyoshi spoke out his inner words without knowing it.

"Kumum!" Hiyoshi, who noticed the fact, immediately covered his mouth with his fist and let out several coughs.

However, Kim did not look at Hiyoshi, and he finished his speech, studied his men. "Remember, this place is more dangerous than any other place, and we must perform the most dangerous mission in the most dangerous place."

At that, the smiles of the crowd began to get darker rather than disappearing. Some began to frown rather than endure a smile. It was unavoidable. This was the safest place in the world for them because it was near Kim Tae-hoon!

7.

It was a hundred meters long. A giant turtle, who could easily fill a school playground, was swimming slowly towards Hakata Port. As it approached, it began to get closer to the surface, and eventually, its shell came out of the water first.

The figure on the back of its shell looked like it had been engraved in the shape of the devil. What a horrible sight! It was not just a metaphor...

Kkiru kkiru! Several seagulls, who were rushing to escape from the appearance of the monster, fell from the sky paralyzed when they saw the evil ghost on its shell.

The fallen seagulls fell into the sea with small splashes, and they were gone.

Instant death.

The giant turtle set foot in the harbor of Hakata, with an eerie noise that would suit a monster.

Thump!

The four legs sticking out of the dreadful shell left their tracks clearly on the asphalt road. More footprints already filled the harbor of Hakata. This was not the first time the monstrous turtle had trampled through the Hakata Port; it walked through the port dozens or hundreds of times, and it was very hard to find an intact building among the countless buildings filling the port.

Goooooo!

Two long snake-like things appeared on its horrifying back shell. They were its heads. Two faces, not one, long like snakes, and ghastly like crocodiles, faced each other in the center of the shell where the devil was engraved.

Goooooo!

The eyes facing each other shone green. It was a sight that would be astonishing beyond the horrifying level, a sign that no one dared step on the back of this Ghost Turtle.

Thump!

A small thing fell on the shell as the two heads faced one another.

Ggooo? Ggooaa? In this ridiculous situation, the two heads focused on the thing which had fallen on its back with surprised eyes.

It was nothing but a man. A man with three Swords on his back, carrying a bag, and with black Eyes.

Kim Tae-hoon started hunting.

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Due to my current health, my uploads will be reduced to two chapters for a short time. Please bear with me and smite the bug that is eating at me as you do! Thank you! == Khan