Thumbs Up, Level Up

Chapter 202

He was almost six meters tall.

Just by looking at his gigantic body, it was clear that he was not a human. He was certainly humanoid in that he had a body that stood upright, with two arms, two legs, and one head, but that was pretty much it. Apart from the overall shape, nothing of him resembled a human.

His legs appeared reptilian and were covered in shiny scales. His torso was made of wood, but random clusters sprouted on it that looked like pieces of ore. Each of his arms appeared salvaged from a different animal: one arm was a gigantic claw, the other resembled the arm of a hairy gorilla. His head was the highlight—it was a dragon head, and there were nine horns growing on the forehead, making it look like he was wearing a crown.

All in all, he looked exactly like what people expected a boss monster to look like. Except that he was neither a boss, nor entirely a monster.

His name was Billy Gallagher. He was an American Hunter who, due to a twist of fate, had ended up being subdued by the dungeon that he was trying to conquer and turned into a monster.

He was a high-level Hunter who had come here after being guaranteed a large sum of money by the Philippine government. Billy Gallagher was a great Hunter by himself, and the teammates that he worked with were also world-famous talents. Obviously, he was confident about clearing this dungeon.

—We can easily clear a dungeon like this! The other Hunters died because they were idiots!

It was understandable; he had already cleared countless unknown dungeons in the past. If anything, the apparently infinite resources of the dungeon aroused his curiosity.

However, upon entering this place, all of them had died.

‘A transformed life. A perfect death.’

He felt intense thirst and pain. That was death.

However, he knew that if he went a little further, peace would come. He felt the gift of perfect death was waiting for him on the other side—a calm, comfortable and perfect death. It was the last gift that everyone would receive someday. That was when Billy Gallagher realized that the consequences of good and evil deeds had nothing to do with death.

Death was just a gift given to everyone. Through death, life would be complete and peace would be obtained.

‘Then is lift worthless? If the serenity of death is out there, why are we striving to survive?’

He died, yet he was not gifted the perfect death. He looked back with a sense of emptiness and thirst. There was still life there. There was a life he had lived so far, and there was still a life to live on. However, even then, he thought that his future was dim.

He had an unfortunate childhood, and after Awakening, he lived a life of revelry, intoxicated with power and wealth. After so many years of only pursuing pleasure, he really had no reason to live on. He was dead, and he ought to stay dead. As long as he turned his head and walked toward that perfect death, only tranquility awaited him.

“FUCK!!!”

He cursed in the air, embraced the void, and walked toward life. The life in front of him wasn’t very satisfying, probably was not as satisfying as the absolute tranquility that he would have gotten otherwise, but that was the life he lived. He couldn’t deny that, even though it was accompanied by constant pain.

That was how he was revived as a dungeon monster. And, in order to further extend his life and to be freed from this damn dungeon, he did something that no ordinary person would do.

He ate other Hunters.

This was how he became a huge monster with a dragon’s head.

But strangely, he felt no guilt. He was willing to do whatever it took to survive.

Now, he was wielding a greatsword more than three meters in length, a weapon befitting his giant body.

Boom!

In one swing of the greatsword, the skills and attacks that the enemies were throwing at him exploded in midair.

‘God, I love this shit. Violence is the best drug.’

The greater the size, the greater the violence one could unleash. Just like how a huge elephant could even crush lions, the destructive power of his physical body was great enough to overwhelm other Hunters without even requiring mana. His enemies were crushed like soda cans. As for when he used mana… The power that he could produce was simply titanic. And that power could be seen from his last sword attack. It was powerful enough to directly crush attack skills!

“Stop procrastinating and attack! We can’t let those Cultists beat us to the punch!” Billy shouted as he stepped forward.

“Metal Body! Titanium!”

His skin instantly turned black, with a metallic sheen. It was his original main skill, one that transformed his entire body into metal!

In that state, he moved forward mercilessly.

A huge boulder rolled down the mountain, coming right at him. The boulder glowed blue, clearly imbued with some kind of skill.

“Smash!”

He activated a skill and split the giant boulder vertically in half with his greatsword.

Boom!

The two halves tumbled down on each of his sides, colliding with those who came up behind him. There were screams and blood splattering, but he didn’t care and just activated another skill.

‘Overdrive!’

It was a skill that consumed a lot of his mana and, in exchange, dramatically increased his physical abilities.

‘With this I can go up—’

‘Boss! Enemies are attacking from the rear!’

He heard a telepathic voice from somewhere. It was one of the skills that any good team had, from the same category as the [Chain Link] that Ji-Cheok had bought.

‘What? Did the Cultists betray us?’

Billy was furious and stopped in his tracks. He turned his head and looked down at the ground.

The Eaters led by Billy Gallagher had joined hands with the Cultists this time. The two factions did not go to the extent of planning and acting in close cooperation with each other. They just decided to attack simultaneously from opposite sides of the rocky mountain.

‘They’re the Hunters from the previous—ARGH!!’

The voice of the communications officer scrambled and the telepathic communication was cut off.

Suddenly, Billy saw a group of beings jumping out of the forest and launching a large-scale attack. At a first glance, they looked like monsters from the dungeon, but when he looked closely, he saw that they were actually corpses. Also, it looked like they were lumping together into a giant monster.

It was the Abominations. Billy could see dozens of them popping out and attacking his Hunters who were in charge of buffing and healing others from the back. Then, he saw countless arrows pouring down like meteors and mana bullets pouring down like heavy rain.

He could no longer contain his anger at that sight.

“Krrrr!”

He made a weird noise.

‘Everyone! Turn around and kill those bastards!’

He also stopped advancing and ran back toward the bottom of the mountain.

Was there anything more enjoyable than destruction? Was there anything better than eating flesh and drinking blood?

* * *

Time Acceleration.

This was Ji-Han’s most powerful ability, beyond everything else he had. Ji-Han endowed all of the team members with the power of Time Acceleration. A distance that would have taken them at least several hours to walk was covered in just a few minutes.

When Ji-Cheok arrived at the bottom of the mountain, he saw the two factions attacking from both sides of the rocky mountain. One side was the Cultists and the other side was the Cannibals. The team arrived closer to the latter: the faction that relied on [Recovery by Eating] to prey on other Hunters.

As soon as they arrived, Ji-Byeok and Reable’s army of Undead jumped out in front.

“Grrr.”

“What the hell are those?”

“Abominations?! Who was in charge of our six?! How did you miss them?!”

“Stop them!”

The healers and ranged dealers screamed. Their bodies were still grossly mutated, but not as much as the ones in the cave. There was a Hunter with six eyes, a Hunter with two mouths, one with five arms, and one whose lower body was that of a spider.

Ha-Na’s arrows and Mu-Cheok’s bullets were the first to strike the enemies.

Woong.

However, the enemies swiftly used their defense skills. Since dozens of Hunters put up a shield in one concerted move, even attacks as strong as Ha-Na’s arrows and Mu-Cheok’s mana bullets could not penetrate the combined shield.

Ji-Cheok saw that and decided to speed up even more.

Ji-Cheok sent his Qi into his legs and used his [Heaven and Earth Warp Steps]. He instantly passed the Abominations, taking their place to spearhead the attack. He saw an enemy preparing to use a lightning skill, and as he estimated the point of impact, he ever-so-slightly shifted to the side.

Boom!

Lightning flashed past his head. He didn’t even have to block it with the [Guardian of Hope]. After dodging the lightning, he continued to run, and at the same time, he gathered his Qi into his swords.

All of this happened within the span of exactly five steps.

The Sword Qi blades almost instantly reached ten meters in length.

“What… What is that?!”

“How can an Aura Blade be that long?”

“That’s not an Aura Blade, that’s Sword Qi! He’s a cultivator!”

The enemies were panicking.

‘Hey guys. Instead of freaking out, you should’ve used one more skill!’

Ji-Cheok reached the enemy shields and immediately activated the main attack skill of his pair of swords: the [Sun and Moon Spirit]. This skill combined the power of the Sun and the Moon to create a massive explosion.

Woong!

Pssshhhh!

When he crossed the swords in front of him, the two Sword Qi blades instantly distorted and merged into one. The resulting Qi cluster took the shape of an orb, furiously spinning and forcing the two types of energy, hot and cold, to twist together.

In the blink of an eye, the enemy shields were shaken by a tremendous blast.

BOOM!

‘Wow! That’s intense!’

The shields were torn into shreds.

‘Cheok-Liang!’

?Yes, Master!?

He leaped off Ji-Cheok’s neck, shifting into his gigantic form. The moment he touched the ground, he jumped at the enemies whose shields were destroyed and ran wild. He could use the same skills as Ji-Cheok, thanks to their Synchronization, and he put them to full use: with Cthugha’s Steps, he left a long trail of flames behind him, and using Soul Telekinesis, he made sure that the enemies became closely acquainted with said flames.

“AAARGH!! Fire!! FIREEEE!!”

This particular flame also impacted the target’s mind besides burning them, and one of the enemies really did lose his mind. These people seemed to have failed to acquire mental protection skills even with their Recovery by Eating.

Not one to lag behind his own pet, Ji-Cheok brought out the ten-meter-long Sword Qi blades one more and went at it himself.

Slash! Slice!

Twelve of the enemy Hunters, who unfortunately happened to be in his path, were cut in twain in a single move and collapsed on the spot, bleeding fountains.

“ARGH!”

“That’s our enemy! Tie him up!”

One of the Hunters watching Ji-Cheok’s bloody sword dance tried to suppress him with a magic spell that looked similar to telekinesis.

‘Joke’s on you, you’re not the only one who can use telekinetic skills!’

“Activate Soul Telekinesis!”

Ji-Cheok’s skill canceled out the opponent’s, and at the same time, he extended his Sword Qi blades even more. In an instant, dozens of Hunters were cut to pieces by his now twenty-meter swords.

In the meantime, Ha-Na and Mu-Cheok’s ranged attacks rained down on them.

“Shield! Reactivate the shield!”

“No, just kill him first!”

“FUCK! Can’t you see I’m trying to use my shield spell right now?!”

It was truly pandemonium. Even in this chaotic situation, the nearby enemies were going all-out to kill Ji-Cheok and Cheok-Liang, but…that was easier said than done.

“Thunder God’s Hammer!”

Boom!

“Wait, did he just block that?!”

“What the hell is that big-ass shield?”

Ji-Cheok blocked the enemy’s lightning attack with the [Guardian of Hope], and activated another skill in the meantime.

Pi-pi-pi!

“ARGH!!”

This time, it was the Shadow skill. Under his command, all shadows on the ground turned into razor-sharp blades. While Ji-Cheok was leaping and attacking with his Sword Qi from above, his shadow blade was killing the enemies from below.

“Who the hell is that guy?!”

“Damn it! Just let us hit you once!”

Since they were in a dungeon with no TV or internet, nobody knew who he was. Thanks to that, Ji-Cheok was able to buy some time.

1. The word "eaters" is actually transliterated from English, but it's not used elsewhere, so we will be referring to this faction by the name "Cannibals," which is used consistently.