The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 35

Chapter 35

“GRAAAUGH—!”

A massive monster over two meters tall filled the field of vision.

Beyond its flashing teeth, scraps of half-eaten human flesh clung messily, and from wounds all across its body, toxic mucus oozed thickly—the kind that dissolved flesh on contact.

Any ordinary person would have been rooted to the spot just from seeing it.

But the escort guard who faced it raised an arm and swung it at the monster without any change in expression.

Crunch—!

The moment the thruster at the elbow spat flame, a fist of special alloy crushed the monster’s face.

The fist buried deep inside the monster’s body.

Then a massive cannon barrel jutted from the guard’s arm, still lodged within the creature.

KRABOOM—!

The shell fired from there blew the monster’s body apart.

A gruesome scene where monster and human corpses were strewn together.

Monsters were rampaging and shells were detonating in the middle of the city—yet the view from outside the building was utterly peaceful.

Informants dispatched by the Pungyang Jo clan were rapidly suppressing information.

“Floor 47 secured. Continuing to advance. The intruder who attacked Young Master?”

-Currently engaged with Young Master Jo Seonghwan. After reviewing the combat footage, confirmed as a phase power user—’Imae mask,’ a senior member of Hahoe.

“Hahoe?”

The escort commander’s brow furrowed at the intelligence unit’s transmission.

A senior member of Hahoe.

Which meant the traitors were behind this disaster too.

Their plan must be to drive the monsters berserk in the middle of Hanseong, let them spill outside, and spread word of the Pungyang Jo clan’s secrets.

‘But they miscalculated.’

There was no way the mighty Pungyang Jo clan had set up a research facility in the heart of Hanseong without any contingency.

Flawlessly designed emergency containment walls and special artificial bodies built for monster suppression.

Even without the young master—a phase power user—on their side, this much was well within their ability to handle.

“Hm?”

Just then, as the escort guards were smoothly working through the monsters inside the building, one of them caught sight of a fragment of monster flesh.

A sight revolting enough to turn the stomach.

On top of that, what remained of the monster—just one arm, just a few fingers—was still writhing and moving.

Could it still be alive?

He’d received reports that their vitality was tenacious, but this was beyond what he’d imagined.

“Escort commander. Over there, the monster’s corpse…”

The guard who found it suspicious was just about to report to his superior when—

Crackle. Static.

A transmission came in from the guards who had moved to the floor below.

-This is Team 3! The large monster being contained on floor 39 is going berserk! Our current equipment can’t handle—!

“Confirmed. Hold position and maintain your firing line. Support incoming shortly.”

The escort commander finished the transmission with the guards ahead and turned to look at him.

“This isn’t the time to dawdle. Is it important?”

“N-no, sir.”

Meeting the escort commander’s gaze, the guard swallowed what he’d been about to say.

‘What matters right now is suppressing the monsters as quickly as possible. A shattered corpse twitching around—nothing’s going to come of it.’

And so, with the escort guards heading down to suppress the large monster on floor 39—

Twitch.

The monster flesh he’d been watching moments ago began to move, slowly.

The scraps of monster flesh stuck to the wall.

The scraps of human flesh sliced off by monster claws.

As though their chance had finally arrived, they inched and wriggled like larvae, all converging toward a single point.

And then, in the next moment—

Crack. Crack-crack……!

From the flesh gathered in one place, thin threads began forming—like the mycelium of a mushroom.

Thousands, tens of thousands of strands.

They tangled, connected, and fused with one another, beginning to form a single mass.

From the size of a fist to the size of a person.

From the size of a person to a massive lump of flesh exceeding five meters.

The corpses snowballing together, intertwining and knotting, swelled rapidly in size with a grotesque sound—

Gurgle—

From the completed red mass of flesh, dozens of mouths sprouted.

Human mouths. Beast mouths. Fish mouths. Insect mouths.

Even the mouths of mollusks whose species could not be identified.

“Hh—”

A single mass of hideous shape, as though every foul thing in the world had been kneaded together into one.

---

KRABOOM—!

An anti-tank rocket launched at speed exploded in midair.

A fierce pressure wave shaking the entire corridor, shot through with phase power.

Unable to push through that enormous storm, it had detonated before it could reach its target.

‘That’s all the heavy firearms I brought, spent. What’s left are a few grenades and two submachine guns…….’

Imae mask swallowed dryly and looked at the Pungyang Jo clan’s heir, Jo Seonghwan, standing across from him.

Cold eyes looking down at him.

But behind that composed exterior, undeniable impatience showed through.

“You’re awfully good at running from corner to corner. Like a rat.”

“Then try catching me properly. Or should I go down a floor and start carving up your escort guards?”

“You……!”

At Imae mask’s taunting voice, Jo Seonghwan’s face creased.

However incomplete, Imae mask was a phase power user.

By simply channeling phase power into a blade, he could cut through the escort guards’ artificial bodies like tofu.

But that was simply the difference between a phase power user and an ordinary person.

Against a powerful phase power user like Jo Seonghwan, a half-rate ability wielder like Imae mask was nothing but a foot soldier.

And yet…

‘It must be quite maddening. Being held up by a half-rate like me.’

Imae mask had succeeded in keeping Jo Seonghwan pinned for over five minutes.

Unlike Jo Seonghwan, who had only ever refined himself through drills in controlled conditions, Imae mask had real combat experience earned through countless actual battles.

But with his firearms exhausted, pushing the offensive further was impossible.

He didn’t want to admit it, but his limits were approaching.

Thud—!

A storm of phase power lifted Imae mask’s body into the air, and Jo Seonghwan’s flail came flying at him.

A force that would shatter an ordinary person’s entire body if the shockwave merely grazed them.

But Imae mask, his body reinforced with phase power, thrust out the armor fitted to his arm to meet the oncoming chain head.

KRABOOM—!

In the next instant, a sudden explosion disrupted Jo Seonghwan’s vision.

When he pushed through the smoke, what he saw was Imae mask with one arm billowing smoke.

The protective gear that had covered that arm had been torn away, exposing bare skin—and the exposed arm was scorched black.

“Reactive armor…! You mounted explosives on the armor to absorb the impact?”

Strapping something fit for an artificial body or a tank directly onto a human body.

Is he out of his mind?

While that thought crossed his mind, Imae mask drew the submachine gun at his hip and unleashed it at Jo Seonghwan.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat—!

He emptied an entire magazine of a hundred and twenty rounds—but not a single bullet reached Jo Seonghwan’s body.

A wall of wind wrapping around him.

A barrier made of phase power was guarding his body like iron.

“If you’d been wearing an artificial body, I probably would’ve been ground into mince long ago.”

With a special armored artificial body, bullets like these would mean nothing—it would have punched straight through and twisted his throat.

“But you nobles can’t do that.”

Imae mask said that and glanced at Jo Seonghwan, still facing him.

A body immaculate in the truest sense—not even the neural networks that assist daily life had been implanted, let alone an artificial body.

The nobility’s tradition of refusing artificial bodies under the principle of the body being a gift from one’s parents, and their fixation on ‘bodily purity.’

“A measure to draw out a phase power user’s strength to its fullest. Thanks to that, that vaunted phase power of yours is formidable enough to make anyone curse—but…”

“……!”

“Pouring out firepower like this nonstop, even dealing with a half-rate like me takes an age!”

KRABOOM—!

The moment the last of his rounds ran dry, Imae mask discarded the submachine gun without hesitation and primed a grenade.

Jo Seonghwan’s figure swallowed by smoke from the blast.

But in the very next moment—

“A lowly jester doesn’t know his place and runs wild.”

Jo Seonghwan’s flail, closing the distance, cracked into Imae mask’s arm.

With a crunching sound his arm broke—and only then did the sensor that had tracked Jo Seonghwan finally register a danger signal.

Even the specially made combat sensor hadn’t caught it in time.

KABOOM—!

Imae mask’s body was hurled far and slammed into the wall.

“Kgh……”!

The dull impact climbing up his spine. The pain of his arm shattered to pieces.

He nearly blacked out for a moment, but Imae mask forced his fading consciousness to hold.

As Jo Seonghwan had said—if he collapsed unconscious here, he would end up locked in the Pungyang Jo clan’s laboratory with his brain extracted.

“I’m at a disadvantage without an artificial body? You pour out firepower? Did you really think a few cheap tricks like that would be enough to handle me?”

Jo Seonghwan swept away the thick smoke with his flail and walked slowly forward.

Phase power pouring out in streams, and a wind raging so fierce one couldn’t open their eyes.

He looked for all the world like a demigod descended to earth.

“Stop you? A monster like you? No—there was never any chance of that.”

Right.

However inexperienced, however green this opponent might be, he was the heir of one of Joseon’s most distinguished families.

He himself, who couldn’t defeat even a single member of the royal guard—no matter how thoroughly he prepared, he could never land a scratch.

“The most I can do is five to ten minutes. Holding you in this spot for that brief time—that’s all.”

“If you know that, why did you go out of your way to pick this hopeless fight?”

“Why else.”

A clock surfaced in the corner of his vision.

Imae mask confirmed the operation’s elapsed time and spoke with a triumphant smile.

“Because holding you here—keeping you fixed to this spot—that was our objective from the start.”

“……What?”

The moment Jo Seonghwan’s expression twisted at those words—

-Young Master!

A voice came through the communicator in his ear.

It was from the escort guards who had been suppressing the monsters throughout the building.

“What happened?!”

Sensing that something had gone wrong, Jo Seonghwan shouted toward the communicator.

-Th-there’s been a sudden development in the central floors……!

“A sudden development? What does that mean?!”

-I don’t know! Suddenly the monster corpses are all gathering in one place…! Right now the cause……!

The urgent voice came through the communicator for only a moment.

Crackle. Static.

Heavy noise cut into the communicator, drowning out the guard’s voice.

Mechanical failure? At a time like this?

Jo Seonghwan frowned and checked the communicator fitted to his ear—only for a moment.

The communicator flickered its lights a few times as if in a death rattle, then went dead on the spot.

He tried turning it back on, but there was no response.

This wasn’t a simple malfunction or signal interference—the device itself had completely died.

“What’s going on, why would a perfectly working communicator suddenly—!”

He clenched his teeth at the maddening situation, and then—

As if something had swept across his mind, Jo Seonghwan shifted his gaze and looked around.

“Wait.”

Due to the sudden monster rampage, the inside of the research facility had been hell.

The corpses of the researchers—slaughtered without leaving a single survivor—had blanketed the entire building.

The monsters that had been burying their faces in those corpses had splattered mucus and filth in every direction.

On top of that, the escort guards who had gone out to suppress them had reduced the monsters’ shells to pulp.

Blood, flesh, filth, mucus.

Foul and horrific things no one could look at directly had coated the entire research facility.

And yet…….

“Why is it this clean?”

Everything was gone.

Monster corpses. Researcher corpses.

As if none of it had ever existed, everything was immaculate without a trace left behind.

“……Surely not.”

Corpses vanished without a trace.

A terrible stillness.

And every electronic device dead in an instant.

Tracing back through his memory, Jo Seonghwan was not long in finding the cause.

A database accessible only to senior officials of the Administration and certain royal guard commanders.

The first principle of monster combat, specified in records from the Great War.

[Incinerate all personnel killed by monsters, and all monster corpses, completely]

Not a fragment of flesh, not a drop of blood left behind.

If that was not done—the byproducts and biological tissue of monsters left unprocessed in time would coalesce into a single enormous mass.

And that mass would eventually…

“No.”

Thud—!

By the time he understood, it was already too late.

The moment Jo Seonghwan’s face drained to gray, a massive impact shook the entire building.

A sensation of numbness spreading through the entire body.

A power utterly alien—yet at the same time, somehow familiar.

Phase power.

“SCREEEEEEEEEEEE—!”

A shriek rang out through the building.

Phase power flooding through the entire structure surged without pause, and a creeping sense of wrongness kept disrupting the senses without cease.

And feeling that uncanny sensation, Jo Seonghwan understood instinctively what had just happened.

A Rift.

A Rift had opened—right in the middle of the research facility he had built with his own hands.

“Congratulations, Jo Seonghwan.”

Imae mask, standing across from him, opened his mouth, and Jo Seonghwan looked up belatedly and ground his teeth.

“The Pungyang Jo clan’s heir, Jo Seonghwan, conducted secret monster research hidden from the Administration’s oversight—and used those monsters to open a Rift in the middle of Hanseong.”

Imae mask, his back to the large hole blown through the wall, waved his hand for all to see.

Having finished his escape preparations, he pulled the safety pin from the smoke grenade he’d been holding—

“With this, you’re a traitor with no way out.”

And with those words, thick smoke billowing upward swallowed Imae mask’s silhouette completely.

“Stop right there! What sort of nonsense is a traitor like you—!”

A Rift opened? By me?

What does that mean?

Thinking that, Jo Seonghwan thrust his body toward the hole Imae mask had escaped through—

Fwooosh—!

In the next instant, searchlights descending from the sky poured down directly onto Jo Seonghwan.

Were these military helicopters dispatched by the clan?

Thinking that, Jo Seonghwan squinted and looked up at the sky—

“Ha……!”

The moment he saw the helicopter illuminating him, he let out a cry like a moan, mouth hanging open.

“You’ve finally gone and ruined everything, haven’t you. Jo Seonghwan.”

What was emblazoned on the side of the aircraft was not the Pungyang Jo clan’s crest—but the Andong Kim clan’s.

And looking down at him from that helicopter was the sole heir of the Andong Kim clan.

Kim Hyunwoo.