VIP Early Access
Eksklusif untuk member VIP
Password Protected
Chapter ini dikunci dengan kode khusus
Chapter 295
Chapter 295: Awakener Hunting
The PMC Baek Woohyun had founded in "Reverse City" was an organization with an extraordinarily difficult—or perhaps impossible—objective: ordinary people, a neutral faction, gathering together to hunt Awakeners.
Had the founder been anyone other than the man who held "mentor" in one hand and "final boss" in the other, they would have been told not to bother with such reckless ambitions. The organization's very birth would have required a far more grueling process.
The "vigilante group" that had just begun to be discussed among the neutral faction was a perfect example of exactly that. Even after softening the objective from hunting to repelling, they had failed to properly assemble enough members and ended up forming later than the PMC.
In any case, what was certain was this: the PMC had been founded on the belief that "if it's the Hackphysical, maybe there's a way…?"—though roughly 70 percent of that belief was closer to the calculation that they simply needed to attach themselves to someone who was, at this point, a colossal corporation.
W.eb́ ṅо̊ ṽ ѐ l̆ Enû mӓ
That meant he was obligated to show his members a method worthy of those expectations, and so he had resolved to use this upcoming battle against an Awakener as a rehearsal for formal training.
His intention was to review, step by step, how an ordinary person with no supernatural ability could stand and fight against an Awakener who had one.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
It'll come in handy as teaching material too.
After all—seeing is believing.
Rather than rambling through explanations, showing a single video would do a far better job of driving the point home.
Baek Woohyun had even drawn up a plan to record this battle with the Awakener and use the footage as an example in training. Truly, he thought, you could not ask for a better case of killing 2 birds with 1 stone.
Еṅu̇ ḿа_
"Huu."
With a short exhale, Baek Woohyun moved quickly. Even for him, hunting an Awakener without adequate preparation was no simple task—and all the more so given the constraint of not using his supernatural ability.
Fortunately, the preparation needed to hunt the Awakener itself did not require much time. All he needed to do was make a few small adjustments to the booby traps and other things he had already laid throughout the logistics center while dealing with the armed guards.
From the start, he had predicted that if he kept causing mayhem here, they would send for an Awakener. So while turning the logistics center into his personal slaughterhouse, he had also kept himself ready to convert it into a hunting ground at any moment.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Ha, really. What a pain."
Some time passed after the armed guards stopped advancing to wait for Awakener support.
Е́n ǔ m̈а̇
With a grumble that seemed meant to be overheard, a man appeared—dressed entirely out of place for what had nearly become a battlefield, in a plain T-shirt and jeans.
He waved off the armed guards who brightened and moved to approach him, and said in a voice cool and flat:
"I'll handle it, so hang back and stay the hell out of the way. Keep that in mind—if you get hurt trying to help, that's not my problem."
"Understood! Everyone, fall back to the entrance!"
"Get the wounded!"
"……"
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
The man's manner of speaking was exceedingly arrogant, and the content itself was dripping with condescension—yet the armed guards accepted it without protest, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
Well, this was not the Research Facility with the Corporate Alliance as a powerful backer. Awakener assets that an underground outfit like Manmulsang could acquire were mostly like this.
Having dealt with many an Awakener who could best be described as a thug with a powerful ability, their reaction was natural enough.
But regardless of his overbearing personality, the simple fact that the man was an Awakener made him sufficiently threatening. Enough so that Baek Woohyun observed his every move with meticulous, unyielding attention.
The most important preparation for hunting an Awakener was, above all else, information. Predicting how the opponent would respond in a given situation made it far easier to work through.
That was precisely why Baek Woohyun did not move rashly, even as the Awakener stood before him with openings all over the place while dismissing the armed guards.
Е̊_ǹ ùm̂а̊
Never rush an Awakener hunt. Ever.
For an ordinary person without a supernatural ability to kill an Awakener, it was first necessary to pierce through the Particle Barrier—that absurdly overpowered defensive measure.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
At the same time, one could not afford to take a hit from the Awakener's own supernatural ability arts. That remained true even if one was fully equipped with protective gear.
Protective gear would let a person survive a supernatural ability art—but only survive it. It meant that a wound that would otherwise be fatal became merely one that would not kill. Not much more.
The moment even 1 hit landed, the probability of winning plummeted to well below half. So unless an absolutely golden opportunity presented itself, one must never gamble on the risk.
Was it for no reason that Baek Woohyun was telling himself not to rush and instead chose to observe the man's every move first? Everything he did had a reason behind it.
Е̄n̆ū m̊а̂. ĩ d̂
The members who would later watch this battle as teaching material would need to feel that truth for themselves, too. Without that understanding, they would never complete the training.
Slowly. Precisely. That is the only way to win an unfair fight.
The opponent needed only 1 hit to win—while one's own side had to land dozens, or even hundreds of blows without taking a single one before even reaching the same starting line.
It was exactly the unfair fight Baek Woohyun had in mind, a savage hell difficulty. That was also a testament to how high the wall between an ordinary person and an Awakener truly stood.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
But it is absolutely not impossible.
That was what Baek Woohyun was about to prove, starting now.
Е n umа̌. ĭ d
Click.
BOOM!
"Whoa!"
Pressing the detonator switch at the precise moment, Baek Woohyun detonated the bomb beside the Awakener man who was sauntering forward.
Simultaneously, he hurled a box of modest size toward a spot somewhat removed from the Awakener man—in the direction opposite to himself.
The box traced a gentle arc as it fell, and—surprisingly to anyone watching, though not to Baek Woohyun—the Awakener man reacted sharply to a sound mixed in among the blasts.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"You're there!"
SWOOSH!
The [Wind Blade] the Awakener man generated with a swing of his arm tore straight through the spot where the box had landed. The force of it sent chills down the spine.
Even with protective gear, taking that hit would have almost certainly left a wound close to grievous. If it had landed, that is.
Baek Woohyun had only thrown the box and remained hidden in his original position—there was no way the [Wind Blade] could have reached him. The supernatural ability art did nothing but carve up empty air.
The bonus was that the Awakener man had left his back completely exposed to Baek Woohyun, pivoting toward the box he had thrown in the opposite direction.
Еñ u m̃ӓ.ĭ ď
Rat-tat-tat!
"The—seriously, what?"
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
Having fired at the Awakener man's back, Baek Woohyun immediately vacated the spot. It was a clean retreat in which he willingly discarded even the gun he had just used.
He knew perfectly well that it would not do any real damage as long as the Particle Barrier was up, so not a shred of hesitation existed in his movement.
Thanks to that, the second attack the Awakener man unleashed once he realized he had been baited only struck the space Baek Woohyun had already abandoned.
Hit-and-run tactics so petty they almost felt underhanded. Yet that was precisely the combat style that anyone ordinary had to follow without exception when hunting an Awakener.
En̈ u m ä .і̀ d̊
With the power disparity as absolute as it was, a head-on confrontation was out of the question. The moment it came to that, the fight was already as good as lost.
There were only 2 situations where revealing oneself to the opponent was warranted: when the opponent was already a corpse, or when using that exposure as bait.
BANG! Rat-tat-tat! BANG!
"This bastard keeps pissing me off…!"
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
"……"
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Ѐ n̄ u mа . і̌ d̈
Baek Woohyun then attacked the Awakener man with truly every method at his disposal. It would not be an exaggeration to say he used everything available to him—firearms, booby traps, terrain features, and all.
Any observer with even a passing knowledge of military strategy would have been unable to hold back admiration at the seamlessly chained stratagems that followed. Baek Woohyun had not particularly aimed for it, but in using every means he had, it turned out that way.
Striking east while making noise in the west; striking while fire burns; startling the snake by beating the grass—and more.
At a glance, it looked like he had the Awakener man utterly at his mercy, the flow entirely in Baek Woohyun's favor—but
It's a close thing.
—no one understood better than Baek Woohyun himself that it was anything but.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
Everything he had done in the battle thus far had been aimed at one thing only: chipping away at the Awakener man's Particle Barrier as much as possible. In other words, it was closer to a desperate scramble just to reach the same starting line.
And even after deploying nearly every measure he had prepared in advance, that goal was still not achieved. That was why he thought it was close—the methods available to him were running out.
"Yeah, go ahead, keep hiding! I'll sweep the whole place clean! RAAAH—!"
CRASH-CRASH-CRASH-CRASH!
The Awakener man, his stress pushed to the breaking point by the relentless baiting, finally exploded. Rather than just catching the little rat that kept nibbling at him, he decided to obliterate everything—and unleashed his supernatural ability at full output.
It seemed the goods inside the logistics center no longer existed in his mind. He had not been minding them before either, but he had at least not been wiping everything out purely to clear his line of sight—until now.
Ѐńū m a
Either way, one thing was certain: the Awakener man's temper had boiled over to the top of his head. And that, put another way, meant his judgment had dulled—and Baek Woohyun's eyes gleamed cold.
The Awakener man's lethal art, which swept across the entire area, naturally failed to reach Baek Woohyun. If he were the kind of person to stand still and take that, he would have been a corpse long ago.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
He had already moved well out of the way the moment something felt off, and once again the Awakener man had done nothing but waste his energy. Needless to say, the goal of venting his fury had also gone unmet.
When one has swept the whole place and still failed to put down the nibbling rat that has been tormenting him, there is no way the rage is going to cool.
Rat-tat-tat!
"Ugh, seriously! You're pissing me the hell off!"
Е̄n̊ũm̂а
The Awakener man—voicing what many other Awakeners who would face the PMC in "Reverse City" in the future would say, only much sooner than any of them.
Baek Woohyun, who had continued his silent assault, soon detected that the opponent's Particle Barrier had weakened noticeably.
The Particle Barrier that had been radiating solidly was now rippling and wavering with each individual bullet that struck it!
Just a few more.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
But the Awakener man had not noticed. He had been grazed more than enough times already, and he had simply never been pushed to the limit of his Particle Barrier before.
To him, the Particle Barrier was an invincible shield. Against anyone who was not an Awakener, no amount of nibbling from a little rat would ever break through it.
W̆ е̊b̈ňõv̆ël̄ Е́ n̈ǔ m а
His perception was not unreasonable. Most Awakeners probably thought the same. Players were much the same way.
Rat-tat-tat, CRACK!
"I'll kill you—huh?"
The Awakener man's arrogance finally paid its price. The hail of bullets that had been nothing more than a scene repeated over and over to him reached him at last.
It was no more than a single round out of dozens—punching through his forearm—but that alone was more than enough to send the Awakener man plunging into chilling confusion.
For someone who had never once been wounded while carrying out Manmulsang's commissions, what greater shock could there be?
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Wha—?"
At last.
Looking at the Awakener man, too flustered to even finish his words, Baek Woohyun smiled—white and cold.
Konten Bab Belum Tersedia
Bab ini belum memiliki konten teks atau sedang dalam proses penyuntingan.
