The Time-Limited Leader Makes the Raid a Success - Chapter 64



Only Noblemtl

Episode 65

65. Where are you hiding?

-Gilma? He came back and went out to look around the north.

“north?”

Kang Mu-hyeok tilted his head.

Although Pyo Beom-hee simply relayed the message without any questions, he couldn’t help but raise a question mark since he clearly knew what Joo Se-ah was doing.

‘You’re looking north?’

Ironwill’s headquarters were located at the northern tip of Bukpocheon. It was a narrow terrain with mountains extending from the Sanjeong Lake all the way to the regional border.

That meant there was no place for the orc tribe to hide.

“Was there nothing else to say?”

-There wasn’t much to it. As soon as I came in, I grabbed the ‘meal kit’ for the gate and the ‘exploration kit’.

“Are you talking about the exploration kit?”

-They said it would take several days.

At that moment, a hypothesis flashed through Kang Moo-hyuk’s mind.

Ju Se-ah, who is straightforward in her self-expression, left a message by lumping it together with the word ‘North’, which may have been because she found it difficult to name a specific location.

Moreover, for someone who would not be caught by most monsters with just his own abilities to use a search kit meant that he would have to completely disguise himself.

There were only a few places in South Korea where a hunter of Joo Se-ah’s caliber would have to be so careful, and one such place happened to be above Bukpocheon.

It was a place that even Kang Mu-hyeok had forgotten about.

‘Is it Cheorwon?’

If you were a South Korean hunter, you would be treated like an idiot if you said you were exploring there. No, it was a place you wouldn’t even consider.

Even though monsters can resist modern weapons, they are not invincible. It was difficult to survive in a place like Cheorwon that was half mines and half dirt.

Even if they could survive, it was not a suitable place for tribal monsters like orcs to gather and live.

Monsters aren’t farmers, and since there are many mouths to feed, they have to support their tribe through hunting.

However, since the area is full of mines, movement is restricted, so hunting is out of the question.

Even hunters are reluctant to enter this area because they have to worry more about mines than monsters.

‘If the guild leader wanted to go there, there must be a reason for him to do so. He’s an experienced hunter.’

The intuition of a seasoned hunter sometimes exceeded Kang Mu-hyeok’s expectations.

This kind of intuition is usually divided into insight and sarcasm by a hair’s breadth.

The on-site order was to distinguish this one point. The pinnacle of that order was the expedition. Joo Se Ah was a capable ace and party leader who had been hunting in the Tier Guild expedition.

Her intuition and judgment were worthy of respect.

-What? Why aren’t you talking all of a sudden? Is something going on? Wait a minute. Looking at the captain like this… Is the north really Cheorwon? Did Gilma go into Cheorwon? Why in that damn place?

“That’s right. Team Leader Pyo’s reaction is typical. I don’t usually think about going to check out Cheorwon.”

But what if there really are orcs there?

‘I have a question about this part.’

Why didn’t the orcs come to Bukpocheon until now?

And why have the orcs come down south now?

‘There must be something that has changed. There is only one most likely condition that has changed from before.’

The Goblin Godmother has disappeared.

‘Monsters don’t always get along well with each other. When there are tribes fighting against tribes with limited resources, it’s natural that they’ll fight for power. In that sense, the Goblin Matriarch would definitely have been the natural enemy of the Orcs.’

Orcs, physical monsters far removed from magic, were particularly vulnerable to psychic attacks.

Goblin Matriarch was an evolved form that was the ultimate in this field, so she would not have been able to look south so rashly.

As Joo Se-ah opened up new possibilities, Kang Moo-hyuk’s brain began to draw dozens of situations.

During the brief pause in conversation with Pyobumhee, thoughts developed without pause, and flowed to the stage of making plans in case of an emergency.

-Looking at the fact that you’re not saying anything, I guess you’re thinking about it again.

“Oh? Sorry. I have some issues.”

-I’m not going to say anything since it’s the manager’s job to draw the big picture. Whatever it is, shouldn’t we first catch and kill those orc kids who crawled into Nampocheon?

“Yes. We have to deal with them first before we can respond to the next threat.”

Since it was an answer close to a monologue, Pyo Beom-hee did not ask a separate question.

But tension rose as the word threat came out of Kang Mu-hyeok’s mouth. He realized that he wasn’t talking about the orcs that had infiltrated Nampocheon.

‘So. You guys. Where are you hiding?’

Kang Moo-hyuk looked at the last movements of the orcs captured on CCTV.

* * *

The land that Joo Se-ah stepped on was a land that had rejected human footsteps for the past several decades.

Cheorwon County.

North Korea collapsed two weeks after the first gate, known as the Gates of Hell, opened.

The government urgently built a defensive line along the Military Demarcation Line to block the monsters rushing south.

They deployed troops near the Military Demarcation Line connecting Paju-si, Yeoncheon-gun, Cheorwon-gun, Yanggu-gun, Inje-gun, and Goseong-gun, and scattered a large number of landmines.

In Cheorwon County, which was the main invasion route of the double monsters, tens of thousands of mines were installed, which is half of the total number of mines scattered along the entire defensive line.

Even after that, until the Hunter was born, landmines were dropped continuously, so even the military did not know exactly how many mines were installed.

After the chaos, the area from the DMZ to Cheorwon became a chaotic zone comparable to the ‘Magic Realm’ in the three northeastern provinces of China, with monsters and landmines all over the place.

So, some people call this place the devil’s paradise of the Korean peninsula.

‘It’s strange that the monsters in Cheorwon haven’t gone out yet. The government has only designated this place as ‘forbidden’ and hasn’t tried to get it back. Anyway, it’s a strange place.’

Even after recovering the former North Korean territory, it was difficult for Joo Se-ah to understand why such a dangerous zone in the center of the Korean Peninsula was left as it was.

Looking back, I wondered if the government was intentionally controlling information about Cheorwon.

It was not covered in the media, and the guild and related organizations all treated Cheorwon as a land that did not exist in the first place.

If it weren’t for the recent orc invasion, Cheorwon would have become such a completely forgotten land that even Joo Sea wouldn’t have been able to recall it.

Click─

“huh?”

Kwaaaaaah!

Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet exploded. The ground flipped over. Soon, the dust settled and Joo Se Ah’s figure was revealed.

Although I was able to protect myself with Mana for a moment, my armor coat almost turned into rags.

“How much is this?”

It could withstand a few mines, but the armor coat was something of a consumable item. It was a waste to use it unless you were fighting monsters.

The armor worn under the armor coat was also a custom-made product, so I didn’t want it to get scratched by explosives that weren’t even from monsters.

Joo Se Ah carefully checked her equipment as if she was handling a luxury bag, in case she got her fingerprints on it, and then looked back at the rice paddy ridges spread out in front of her.

At first glance, it looked peaceful, but here and there, landmines were visible. Some were scattered with bones, suspected to be debris from explosions.

Joo Se Ah looked at the huge rice field where landmines were planted instead of rice paddies, looking perplexed.

‘I’ll have to use up all my mana to get through here.’

I should have brought some supporters.

Although it was possible to create a shield with mana, the shield that applied mana control rather than the supporter’s skill was less effective.

You could run out of mana before you even get out of the minefield, which may be as large as you think.

Besides, this kind of drinking might attract the attention of monsters.

There was no need to make a fuss and make the monsters wary when you didn’t know which monsters were there and how big they were, or how the monster ecosystem in Cheorwon worked.

While she was thinking for a long time, something caught her eye.

“There is no law that says you have to die.”

Joo Seah discovered a telephone pole placed along the outer road of a rice paddy ridge.

There were some utility poles that had fallen over and broken at the waist along the way, but it was easy enough to step on and cross.

“Ugh!”

Joo Se-ah climbed up a telephone pole and jumped to the next one, moving for a long time as if crossing a stepping stone.

We encountered monsters here and there, but none of them were very threatening.

But what was strange was that most of the monsters moved around without stepping on the mines.

Joo Sea went down to the ground, thinking that the minefield was over, but soon after, she ended up stepping on a second mine.

Kwaaang!

“Eh, eh! Eight, dirt… . Thud! No, how do they get around like that?”

Jusea, who had been observing the monsters closely, soon found out the reason.

‘Smell? You know by smell?’

Suspicion soon became certainty.

A monster that looked like a wild boar called ‘Molar Nose’ was sniffing around with its nose buried in the ground, changing direction.

It was a distance that could have been reached quickly if you went straight, but after going around for a while, you finally got onto the asphalt road that the guy wanted. It seemed that after living in Cheorwon for a long time, he had come to understand that the road was a safe zone.

Joo Seah followed the path that the wisdom tooth nose had taken and went up the road. The open road led north.

She adjusted the bag on her shoulder. She reached behind her back and checked the handle of the longsword over her shoulder.

It was the first time in a long time that I had pulled out my main weapon other than my fists.

“Oh my, we’re not even entering the gate. Did I overdo it? Bring all the regular weapons.”

Maybe it is not Kang Mu-hyeok but himself who is tightly bound to the shadow of the Goblin Godmother.

She walked away, chuckling.

* * *

“Ugh, dust.”

“Is this your car? I can’t tell if it’s a supercar or a tractor.”

Choi Mi-ran desperately tried to brush away the accumulated dust on her horse, but it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t just dust that had accumulated over a day or two. It had been left in the guild-only parking lot on the border of Bukpocheon for months, so it was difficult to find its original color without a steam wash.

Her colleague, Kim Seong-hyeon, clicked his tongue and said.

“Yeah, like other hunters, I told you to pay money and leave it to a management company.”

“How much money are they taking?!”

“Or you could just sell it like I did. I told you over and over again that you wouldn’t have enough money to ride it in Pocheon.”

“No. This is a kid that can’t be sold. Do you know how hard I worked to get this kid? And as if that wasn’t enough, I pulled him out with a loan. And I haven’t even paid it all off yet.”

“If that’s the case, why don’t you just put a mana cartridge in it? You should at least have an engine protection device so you can drive it in special areas.”

“Don’t you know that it’s a money-eating hippopotamus? If you drive it around Bukpocheon, you won’t be able to afford it even if you borrow money from private lenders.”

Kim Sung-hyun fell into deep thought as he watched Choi Mi-ran waver.

‘Should I really trust this girl and go hunting?’

It’s because the rank doesn’t go up any further than C+, but Choi Miran was a decent supporter in the hunting grounds.

He is quick-witted and has nimble hands.

Although the number of skills is small, the variations (ways of use) are good, so I never felt any lack of skill when hunting monsters of that level.

But I’m still anxious.

‘But he’s really a fucking temper.’

Fortunately, things have become a bit more docile since the new leader took office.

Choi Mi-ran, who had just dusted herself off, started the car.

“Hey, get on.”

“Are you driving this? I heard it gets so dirty it’s like a piece of shit that it’s worthless.”

“I sold your car. I told you to hurry because we didn’t have enough search personnel, so you should take my car.”

“When did you work so hard, Sister…? Oh, it’s because of the bonus? You said you hung it around the orc’s neck.”

“If you’re a hunter, it’s money! I’ll become a slave to capitalism!”

“What are you talking about, shamefully? As if you were some kind of pirate king.”

Kim Seong-hyeon opened the passenger door, fumbling around.

“Hold it in your hand so it doesn’t get scratched by the car.”

“Yes, yes. I will ride carefully so that you don’t get hurt, my precious wife… … .”

Suddenly a shadow appeared over his head. Kim Sung-hyun stopped getting into the car and turned around.

At the same time, a piece of blue metal flew before his eyes.

“……dot!”

bang!

As Kim Sung-hyun rolled on the floor, a scream erupted from inside the car.

“Kkiyaak! My car!”

Kim Sung-hyun could see what had attacked him.

It was an axe.

And the one who wielded that weapon.

“Hey, I can’t see you here. What is it? What is it? What hit you?”

“Sister! Orc! Orc!”

“Orcs, what the hell? Why them?”

“Back! Back!”

Kim Sung-hyun gave a hasty warning without any explanation.

There were two orcs.

Besides the orc that had attacked him, another one was approaching the driver’s seat.

Choi Mi-ran absentmindedly checked the rear view mirror.

A familiar monster’s face appeared.

She tried to get out of the car in a hurry, but gave up and quickly fell forward onto the gear.

An axe was driven into the roof of the driver’s seat.

Boom!

“Stop it! You orc bastard!”