-Vol 6: Dusk Of An Era-

-Outbreak(4)-

“Joy, what the hell is this?” Chiba, who had an aghast expression, pulled on Joy’s sleeves as she asked with a trembling voice. The sight before her was too horrifying to accept. The dungeon gate and the office of DCB attached to it; was now in a very horrible mess. Blood splattered all over the walls while severed body parts were as common as roadside rocks.

“I, I don’t know. Dammit! Not again! Chiba, careful of any ambush!!” Joy gritted his teeth as the scene of that day flashed through his eyes. It was the same as this.

“Mr. Joy, look at that!” Ena was the only one unaffected by the scene and kept a sense of level-headedness. She was the first one among the group to find the anomaly. It was a black humanoid thing walking in the distance while a body was dangling from its shoulders.

“That’s!” despite quite far away, Joy and Chiba both were powerful hunters and, as such, easily see the thing walking. It was a monster, or that was what they make it out to be. Its body was covered in a black tar-like substance which seemed to move as if they have a mind of their own.

“What the hell is that? A monster? What kind of monster?” Chiba asked frantically while taking a step back unconsciously. Suddenly they heard sounds of guns going off, and then a tentacle rose from the black humanoid figure’s torso and, in a flash, stretched to its front. When it returned, two bodies, wearing military garb weer dangling from it.

“Those are military? What happened to all the hunters? Why are military personnel fighting a monster in the premise of DCB?” Joy questioned before clenching his fist in anger and running off to the monster.

“Ena, back me up.”

“Alright.”

“Wait for me!!” Chiba also followed them while making her mind to not chicken out halfway. She had been determined to fight alongside Joy and Kenshin, how can she chicken out the face of just an unknown enemy?

As soon as Joy reached his reach, he employed a thunderous punch to the face of the enemy who as yet to be aware of his presence. As he did so, he saved the life of two military men who were its next target after it got their comrade. Kenshin had changed Joy’s brass knuckles to a pair of gauntlets with the same elemental property. Additionally, this pair of gauntlets also provides +500 DEF, which was just a plus of the deal. To icing the cake, the gauntlets came up with an attached skill, Thunder Snake, an AoE type skill.

It doesn’t consume any magic or stamina, but it had a cooldown time of 10 seconds. When used, it will create a huge thunder snake that would circle around the user, while striking everyone within the range. Of course, this skill doesn’t differentiate between friend and foe; as such, he had to be really careful where to use it.

Roar!!

The bast gave out a screeching roar, but overall it was fine. It only staggered due to the force behind his punch.

“Eh!” Joy’s eyes widened in surprise. He had punched it with everything he had and even boosted up his muscles twice, and yet all it amounted to was to make the beast just stumble! This seemed too surreal to be true. But Joy’s wasn’t a seasoned hunter for nothing; seeing that his power failed, he rolled back while shouting, “Chiba, use your magic on it. The strongest one!”

“Got it!” Chiba didn’t approach it and maintained a healthy distance. Then she started to conjure a large ice javelin before compressing it to as small as possible.

Picturization and manifestation, usage of skill contained these two steps. Of course, the more powerful a skill was, the more complex it would be, and the longer it would take to manifest as well as picturizing it. Hence the term ‘casting time.’

The skill she was using right now was definitely complex. As such, it was taking her longer to manifest. Despite that, it only took her 5 seconds to fully create a dagger sized ice spear before she let it loose towards the monster.

The spear took a fraction of second to reach the target before impaling its head. The place she aimed for in the first place. Unexpectedly, the ice spear slipped past its head before bursting behind it.

“What?” Chiba was surprised. It was her strongest attack, and yet the enemy easily shrugged it off!!

“So, it's immune to physical damage. That tar-like body of it wasn’t for the show I guess.” Joy mumbled as he deduced one of the abilities of the monster. Then he pulled out the radiation dictator from his pocket, but it was of no use. It was showing ‘0’ even when he was standing right in front of the monster.

“No, I don’t think its totally immune, though. Look! A part of its head has frozen stiff by sister Chiba.” Ena pointed out towards the back of the monster’s head, where a patch of white ice could be seen hanging off the tar, but she wasn’t finished.

“Also, I am feeling the same negative will from this monster as that thing we discovered in the dungeon, which appeared like a drop.”

“What?” both Chiba and Joy exclaimed in surprise and looked at Ena for clarification.

“Yes, you heard, right. That thing has the same feeling as the object inside red cloth… I think the mobster before us is probably a human hunter who got greedy and touched it. That negative will might have transformed it into this horrible monster…” Ena revealed with a cold and stiff face, her face when she was not bubbly.

“Are you serious? Then this thing was a hunter? Fuck!!” Joy cursed.

“Take Aim!! Fire!!!” just then a loud shout was heard in the distance. Looking at that direction, they found a bunch of military personnel held RPGs in their hands while aiming towards the monster.

“Shit!! Take cover, everyone.” Joy shouted while jumping at Chiba and covering her with his body. Ena stepped in front of Joy and spun her hammer around, creating a horizontal hurricane that blew away most of the impact of the blast. While Joy and Chiba were thrown off, all happened to Ena was that she only slid back a few centimeters.

She had successfully blocked the combined blast of 5 RPGs by just spinning her hammer. Well, even Joy can achieve something like that, hell he can even dodge them fine… but it was phenomenal for Chiba, who had yet to reach her first awakening.

“Wow!” she let loose a wonderous sigh while observing the complete unruffled form of Ena, standing with her hammer on the ground like a proud valkyrie. There were stars in Chiba’s eyes when she observed Ena’s form.

“Hmph! It's just a fraction of the master’s powers. No need to be surprised about it.” Although she claimed so, the proud glint in her eyes was clearly undeniable.

“It's half, not fraction, but half.” Joy corrected blandly. Kenshin had told about the complete details of this skill while they both were drunk one day, so he knew his creations would always be summoned with half of his total power in all aspects. Even intelligence.

“Anyway, we have finally found a way to defeat this thing. Chiba, I will boost you up, use your skill to freeze this ass up. Ena, shatter the frozen ice as soon as it forms over it. Let’s see if we can damage it that way.” Joy formulated the plan in an instant and assigned everyone a job each.

“Got it.” While Chiba acknowledged verbally, Ena only showed a thumbs up.

…

“What the hell is this thing? Even while being ganged up by 4 zombies with advanced skills, it still took a few respawns to kill it? What the hell is this tar-like substance?” Kenshin asked loudly while nudging the cold body of that looked like a dried-up corpse. As soon as its HP hit 0, the tar-like substance covering its body puddled around the body like a common liquid.

Even when he scanned the monster while it's alive, all he got was this…

[???][Lv ???]

[?????]

Definitely, it wasn’t the case of it being higher level than him, rather something else entirely. Kenshin’s experience was telling him so. Speaking of experience, he didn’t gain a single smear of EXP after killing this thing. It was totally a puzzling event.

“What the hell is this thing?” the bone fairy showed the same facial expression as Kenshin, a total and utter bewilderment.