Chapter 61

Until now, Suho had summoned shadow soldiers in two main ways.

One was to extract the shadows of magic beasts he had just killed and use them as soldiers on the spot. The other was to store corpses from earlier kills in the Shadow Dungeon, then extract their shadows when he needed them.

But now he had a third option: the Rotting Mummies swarming Ammut's pyramid.

Since they were essentially walking corpses, Suho didn't even need to fight them individually. They were like convenience-store rice triangles he could grab and eat as he passed by.

[Shadow Mummy Lv.1]

Normal Grade

That was how he had created these twenty Shadow Mummies.

Their stats were formidable enough to have given both the Scavenger Guild and the Asura Guild trouble: strength, agility, and a zombie-like tenacity. Above all, the decay poison seeping through their bandages relentlessly tormented nearby enemies.

That poison was precisely why Suho had wanted to keep his distance from the other hunters.

[KIEEEEE!]

CRACK! CRUNCH! SNAP!

The Shadow Mummies began ripping apart and snapping the Woodvines' thorny vines.

The thorns' paralytic poison? As if that would work on mummies.

Quite the opposite. The Shadow Mummies' decay poison contaminated the thorny vines, making them rot.

"KREEEE!"

The Woodvines launched a savage counterattack. The Shadow Mummies couldn't escape unscathed, either. Thorns caught their bandages and shredded them, while vines coiled around their limbs and tore them clean off.

But then...

WHOOOOSH!

Fresh black bandages immediately wrapped around them. With every injury restored, the messengers of death rose again. Their ferocity was truly that of evil spirits risen from hell.

[KYAAAA!]

The hunters were stunned.

"... My God."

"What am I looking at?"

"Don't tell me those are all summons...?"

Everything they thought they knew about summoners came crashing down.

Gu Dongjae, who had personally picked a fight with Suho earlier, looked particularly pale.

"Th-this is insane... What the hell is going on?"

So he didn't just control a summon that granted a strength buff?

No, at this point, Dongjae couldn't even be sure it had been a strength buff. Beru, the summon who had been there from the start, was merely floating in the air, yawning as he watched the battle.

'Wait! Come to think of it...'

Something suddenly dawned on Dongjae. His gaze fell to the bandages still wrapped around his wrist.

"These bandages... Don't tell me..."

The Baekho Guild healer who had treated his wrist reacted to those words.

"Oh!"

The bandage item that had moved on its own to wrap around his wrist. And those bandage-wrapped mummies fighting like demons up ahead!

"Those bandages weren't an item! They were summoning magic!"

Only then did several puzzling details fall into place.

Just then, something must have crossed Dongjae's mind. Deathly pale, he frantically began unraveling the bandages around his wrist.

"Aaaah! Aaaaaah!"

'No wonder he hurt me and then patched me up! I knew something was off from the start! He hasn't already cursed me or something, has he? Aaaah!'

He was terrified that the bandages might turn him into one of those black mummies.

Watching from a distance, Suho tilted his head.

"... What's his problem?"

[Indeed. That empty insect husk of a man is such a coward. Tsk, tsk.]

Clicking his tongue, Beru flitted over to Suho. Then he surveyed their surroundings with a serious expression.

[More importantly, Young Monarch, something feels wrong here.]

"I noticed it, too."

Leaving all the fighting to the mummies, Suho had been monitoring the presences around them for some time. At last, he spotted what was amiss.

BZZZ...

It was the faint buzz of a flying insect, audible if one listened closely.

Suho and Beru looked up at the same time.

'A bee.'

In the distance, an utterly ordinary... tiny little bee was flying through the air.

Of course, it was only a single bee. But did that make any sense?

"An ordinary bee living in a monster-infested place like this? With no flowers?"

[And surely those thorny vines don't produce nectar.]

"Exactly, right?"

Suho and Beru exchanged certain looks and nodded.

Lee Minsung, the A-rank villain. And the bee wings attached to his back.

'Could he be hiding somewhere in here?'

If so, it was quite a coincidence. But when Suho looked around again with that possibility in mind...

'A giant beehive?'

The building had an open central atrium. Was it his imagination that the entire Times Square building looked like one enormous hive?

Seen that way, they had already walked into the hive of their own accord.

BZZZZ...

Before he knew it, more and more bees were flying around.

Of course, no matter how many bees appeared, they posed no threat to hunters with superhuman strength.

"Hornets might be a little dangerous, but..."

His hair stood on end.

"...!"

Suddenly, Suho's Perception stat sounded a warning. He turned toward the source and opened his mouth.

"Wow. I had to say it."

Hornets.

BZZZZZZ!

Hundreds—no, thousands—of hornets were swarming toward them from all over Times Square in a black cloud.

"That could be a problem."

[Those are no ordinary hornets! Every single one of them contains mana!]

[Contaminated Hornet]

What exactly had contaminated them, and how? Whatever it was, the name sounded deeply ominous.

Suho hurriedly turned to the hunters and shouted.

"Everyone, be careful! That's no ordinary swarm!"

"...!"

The hunters finally looked up, their eyes widening. The Baekho Guild members, whose senses were sharper than those of ordinary hunters, seemed to have noticed sooner and immediately devised a response.

"Don't panic! There may be a lot of them, but they're still just flying insects!"

"Keep them away with defensive skills!"

"Summoners, intercept them with your Flame Bugs!"

"Y-yes!"

The hunters gritted their teeth and fought back.

FWOOSH! FWOOSH!

The Flame Bugs hastily took flight.

"Holy shit! This is a first!"

They already had their hands full with the swarming thorny vines, and now hornets?

But after everything Suho had experienced in just two days, this much hardly fazed him anymore.

Suho smoothly and calmly drew his twin swords from his inventory.

In the chaos, no one found it strange that swords had suddenly appeared in his hands. Even if anyone had noticed, there was nothing particularly unusual about a summoner summoning something.

After calmly assessing the situation, Suho shouted to the summoners.

"Detonate all your Flame Bugs in front of them at once!"

"What? But if they dodge...!"

As they had seen earlier, resummoning Flame Bugs took time. They had to use them as effectively as possible.

"I'll take care of that somehow!"

"All right!"

At Suho's confident words, the summoners moved their Flame Bugs without protest. Having already witnessed his abilities as a fellow summoner, they couldn't possibly dismiss what he said.

"Now!"

No sooner had Suho spoken than the many Flame Bugs exploded simultaneously in midair.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Just as the hornets were about to scatter to avoid the blasts...

[Using Skill: Storm Slash.]

ROOOOAR!

The perfectly timed, swirling sword strike engulfed both the Flame Bugs' crimson explosions and the hornets.

[You have defeated a Contaminated Hornet.]

...

A large portion of the black swarm turned to ash and drifted away.

"I-it worked!"

The hunters cheered. But the more knowledgeable Baekho Guild members stared wide-eyed for a different reason.

'How can a summoner have a skill like that?!'

The swordsmanship Suho had just displayed would have been perfectly at home among combat-oriented hunters.

No, even allowing for the skill itself, did he really have enough mana to unleash something that powerful while keeping twenty mummies summoned?

Dongjae's expression, in particular, defied description.

'Wh-wh-wh-what?! What the hell is that guy?!'

His fully healed wrist suddenly seemed to ache.

BZZZZZ!

But not all the hornets had been destroyed. More kept pouring in from every direction, relentlessly harassing the hunters. Eventually, they began hiding among the Woodvines' thorny vines.

That made the situation even trickier. Whenever the hunters fought a Woodvine, hornets would dart out silently from within and attack.

A sharp sting.

"Ngh!"

At last, Dongjae, who was fighting at the very front, was stung on the back of his hand. His arm immediately stiffened, revealing the true nature of the Contaminated Hornets.

"Aaaaaagh!"

Veins turned green and bulged across the back of his hand as though about to burst, writhing their way up his forearm.

It was clearly abnormal. Dongjae shuddered at his arm, which was swelling and pulsing as if it might explode at any moment.

"Healer! Healer!"

Unfortunately, he had been fighting at the front and was too far away to get back to the healer. The green veins consumed his arm and finally reached his shoulder...

Just then...

SLASH!

"...!"

Dongjae's entire arm was severed. Suho had appeared out of nowhere and cut it off without hesitation.

"Emergency treatment."

"... Aaaaaagh!"

SPURT!

You bastard! What kind of emergency treatment was this?!

Deathly pale, Dongjae toppled backward as blood gushed from his shoulder like a fountain.

CLINK.

[Purchased Item: Mummy's Bandages.]

[Using Item: Mummy's Bandages.]

WHIRR!

White bandages flew from Suho's hand and wound tightly around Dongjae's shoulder.

SNAP!

As they pulled taut, the bleeding miraculously stopped almost at once.

'This item's effect is amazing.'

The healer would handle the rest now. Suho could have used a potion, but there was no time. Besides, a B-rank healer from the Baekho Guild should be capable of regenerating even a severed arm.

'More importantly...'

Suho swiftly examined Dongjae's severed arm. The forearm had been contaminated an ominous dark green.

"Explain, you little know-it-all bug."

[Yessir.]

Beru had been studying Dongjae's forearm with a look of recognition for a while now.

[The Queen of Insects, the Monarch of Plagues, had a similar ability. Perhaps... this may be connected to the Monarch of Insects.]

Suho looked at Beru and asked,

"You said the Queen of Insects died in the war, too, right?"

[Yes. All the Monarchs are dead.]

"What was her name?"

[Querehsha, Queen of Insects and Monarch of Plagues.]

Beru answered immediately, his eyes flashing.

[She was an extremely powerful... crazy bitch.]

"Hmm. So what is this ability?"

[It injects poison into a body, turning it into a host for venomous insects.]

"A host?"

[That's the polite term. It's simply a zombie teeming with maggots. Once those maggots mature, though, they become more venomous insects like these.]

"That's the worst."

Suho lifted his head and glared at the swarms still flying toward them. Then he surveyed their surroundings again.

The truly terrible part was that the area was gradually becoming a maze.

The Woodvines made up only a tiny portion of the thorny vines covering Times Square. The countless remaining vines were writhing, intertwining, and merging into tall, intricate walls of thorns that had begun separating the hunters.

"It's dangerous to split up!"

"Quick, get over here!"

The hunters scrambled about, flustered by the thorn walls suddenly rising from the floor.

'Things in this dungeon just keep getting nastier.'

A labyrinth was being born—a living, moving labyrinth.

At this rate, the hunters would eventually lose their way and become separated. And there was no telling when those thorn walls might turn into Woodvines and attack.

The only creatures that could move freely through this complicated maze without losing their way were...

'Those bees.'

His first impression had been right after all. They had stepped into a giant hive, a kingdom of bees.

Suho suddenly thought back to what he knew about bees. Most were workers that moved according to orders.

Which ultimately meant...

"There must be someone behind this, controlling them from somewhere."

[I believe I can help with that.]

Beru promptly answered Suho's muttering.

"Huh? How would you know?"

[I can understand what they're saying, you know.]

"...!"

No wonder Beru's antennae had been twitching nonstop for a while now.