IOERG 06

Chapter 6

A heavy vibration surged up through the soles of his feet.

The pooled blood on the floor trembled finely. Beyond the corpses of the low-grade monsters strewn about in all directions, something massive was wriggling in the deepest darkness of the collapsed stone chamber.

Thud. Thud.

With every single step, stone dust showered down from the ceiling.

Chan-ho’s brow narrowed. Just as he was about to catch his breath, the situation granted him no respite.

The form of the creature emerging through the darkness was built differently from the very skeleton compared to the beasts he had dealt with earlier. With a hefty build that seemed like three adult men combined, its entire body was seamlessly encased in thick, dark-red carapace.

It was like a living, moving tank.

Pffft, pffft.

Hot steam spewed from the creature’s nostrils. The moment its ferocious glare locked directly onto Chan-ho, even the surrounding air felt heavily weighed down.

‘Crazy. Why the hell is something like that popping out in an F-rank dungeon?’

Chan-ho reflexively tried to clench his fists, only to grimace.

Throb.

The joints in both arms were screaming. It was the aftermath of recklessly pulling out maximum output while fending off the swarming horde earlier. His muscles pulled tight as if about to tear, and the area near his wrists wrapped in the gauntlets was numbly paralyzed.

Engaging in a head-on contest of strength against that brute mass of carapace?

That was no different from suicide. The survival instinct he had absorbed while rolling at the absolute bottom as a porter made every hair on his body stand on end in warning.

Instead of rashly stepping forward drunk on a sense of victory, he took a large step back without hesitation.

Tap.

Taking a backstep to widen the distance from the creature, Chan-ho calmed his breathing.

The creature began scraping its forepaws roughly against the floor. It was a sign right before a charge. Chan-ho’s gaze sharply swept over the timing of the creature’s shoulder muscles contracting and the shifting trajectory of its center of gravity.

The destructive power produced by the gauntlets was undeniably beyond standard. However, the body wielding them was still nothing more than an eternal FFF-rank. If he rashly charged in trusting only in raw power, it was obvious his arm bones would shatter first before he could break the creature’s carapace.

‘If I can’t beat it with power…’

Chan-ho’s eyes sank coldly.

‘I deflect it and return it.’

Grrrrr!

Along with a roar that seemed to tear his eardrums, the gatekeeper kicked off the ground.

KABOOM!

The pile of stones exploded outward in all directions. The speed produced by the massive giant was terrifyingly fast, unfitting for its size. Closing the distance right in front of Chan-ho in an instant, the creature raised its forepaw, which was the size of a rice tub.

A massive shadow poured down above his head. There was nowhere to run.

However, instead of fleeing, Chan-ho dropped his stance low and charged roughly straight into the creature’s chest.

The trajectory of the creature’s attack surged as if to crush his upper body. It was right before that destructive power touched Chan-ho’s shoulder.

Chan-ho raised his left arm wearing the gauntlet at an angle. Rather than blocking it head-on, he slid the black metal surface along the outer side of the creature’s forepaw.

Kkkk-clang!

Sparks flew alongside a terrifying metallic screech.

A dizzying vibration that felt like his bones were shaking transmitted through his arm, but Chan-ho gritted his teeth and endured. The geometric patterns on the gauntlets flashed so brightly it made his eyes sting.

BOOM.

The gatekeeper’s brute strike sliced through the air and slammed into the floor. Because Chan-ho shifted the direction of the force ever so minutely, the creature’s attack merely grazed past his body and ended up smashing the ground.

At the same time, taut energy surged into the inside of Chan-ho’s gauntlets. The equipment had absorbed a portion of the physical impact slammed down by the creature intact.

‘Now.’

It was the moment the gatekeeper lost balance, leaning heavily forward unable to overcome its own power.

Chan-ho instantly pulled the heavy energy accumulated in his left arm up into his right fist. Veins swelled to the point of bursting, and haze-like heat spewed from the gaps in the black metal.

His gaze precisely locked onto the fine seam where the carapace met, just beneath the creature’s thick neck. It was the center of mana hidden inside that brute shell.

Squeezing the elasticity of his waist to its limit, Chan-ho extended his right arm.

“Explode, you bastard!”

BOOM!

The impact energy compressed at the tip of the gauntlet wedged into the gap in the creature’s carapace and exploded.

A bursting sound echoed as something inside violently blew apart. It was the sound of the creature’s hard mana core shattering to pieces.

“Keeeeeek!”

The gatekeeper spat out a bizarre scream and bounded into the air.

Its multi-ton massive body bent back helplessly and tumbled across the floor. Thud, crash. Sweeping away the collapsed debris, the creature slammed into the ground, twitched a few times like a bug, and soon drew its last breath.

It was the moment its stubborn lifeline was completely severed.

The thick cloud of dirt dust slowly settled.

“Haah, whew.”

Chan-ho rested his hands on his knees, panting heavily. His entire body was drenched in sweat, and due to the output he pulled up at the very end, his right arm throbbed as if his insides were twisting.

However, the creature was dead, and he had survived.

Spitting on the floor, Chan-ho cracked his stiff neck to both sides. It was right then.

Semi-transparent letters hovered in the air, blocking his field of vision.

[Gauntlet of Heavenly Destruction has reached Adaptability Level 1.] [To prevent physical destruction of the user, current output is restricted to an extremely small portion.] [This equipment has been fully bound to the current user, ‘Lim Chan-ho’.] [Others cannot equip the item or receive transfer of ownership.] [As adaptability increases, sealed additional functions and output limits will be unlocked.]

“…”

Chan-ho silently stared at the letters in the air.

A warning that output was restricted to protect a body that couldn’t handle mana at all. Paradoxically, that also meant there was no way to even fathom where the limit of this gauntlet’s power lay.

If all the power had poured in without restriction, he certainly would have exploded into a lump of meat at the exact moment he blew that creature away earlier.

‘Fully bound, huh.’

Chan-ho let out a chuckle.

It meant no other guy could even slip a single finger into it. The one and only EX-rank equipment in the world had stuck like a leech to the body of an FFF-rank hunter who used to bounce around doing porter work. After confirming the clear structure that locked functions would sequentially unlock as his adaptability rose, a subtle thrill flowed down his spine.

However, there wasn’t much time to get lost in sentimentality.

Chan-ho turned his steps and walked toward the massive gatekeeper’s corpse.

There was no hesitation in his hands as he sliced open the creature’s belly and rummaged through its insides. It was familiar work he had repeated hundreds, thousands of times while working as a porter. As his fingertips fumbled through the blood-clotted organs, something heavy and hard caught on them one after another.

It was on a different level compared to the mana stones of ordinary monsters that gave off a murky light. Three top-grade mana stones emitting a brilliant blue light rolled down onto Chan-ho’s palm.

This alone held a value more than enough to easily cover several months of living expenses.

However, what caught Chan-ho’s eye was not the mana stones.

Near the creature’s shattered mana core were items giving off strange waves. A piece of black metal with an unpleasant texture he had never seen before in an ordinary dungeon, and an unidentified special crystal core emitting an irregularly murky light.

Chan-ho narrowed his eyes and rolled the fragments back and forth. It was a metal piece that gave off an eerie similarity to the material constituting the gauntlets.

‘This isn’t ordinary loot.’

He had an instinctive hunch.

The one and only EX-rank equipment in the world. And unidentified materials that seemed oddly connected to that equipment.

Chan-ho’s lips pressed tightly into a flat line.

What would happen if large guilds or money-crazed bastards in the outside world learned the true rank of this equipment? Even if they knew it was bound equipment that others couldn’t use, they wouldn’t give up. If it couldn’t be equipped, it was obvious they would chop off his arm entirely to shove it into a research lab.

A miraculous opportunity held by someone without power was not a blessing, but a disaster.

‘Nobody must know.’

Chan-ho roughly wiped his blood-stained hands on his clothes.

Picking up his worn backpack lying on the floor, he stuffed the gathered mana stones, black metal piece, and crystal core deep inside. After roughly rubbing away the bloodstains covering the gauntlets, he pulled down his loose outerwear sleeves to hide the weapon all the way to the back of his hands.

At a glance, it would look like he was just wearing cheap protective gear.

Slinging the backpack over his shoulder, Chan-ho turned toward the entrance of the collapsed stone chamber.

“First, I’m getting out of here.”