FLIA 130

After finishing their meal, they moved again. The slightly lowered morale soon recovered. Fortunately, they discovered a pharmacy that had not been looted.

They immediately understood why it had not been looted when they saw the swarm of monsters inside. Spiders with unusually long legs and bodies the size of 1-liter water bottles crawled everywhere. Their bright red abdomens made it clear they were venomous. This time even Yohan shuddered. No matter how used he became, contaminated insects were unbearable.

“Something like this can be handled easily if we are lucky.”

Lee Hyunmook said that and calmly opened the pharmacy door. Before the spiders could even react, he threw something inside and shut the door. A small grenade-like object rolled into the pharmacy and exploded with a pop. Colorless, odorless smoke spread in all directions. It was pesticide.

The spiders screeched at a pitch too high for human ears and went berserk. They did not die, but their movements slowed to a crawl, and they sprayed webs everywhere, even trapping their own kind. Lee Hyunmook looked at the Little Lamb team members whose eyes had gone wide and smiled.

“This time we were really lucky.”

Pesticides would hardly work on high-rank monsters. With that thought, Yohan put on the suffocating gas mask and, together with the Little Lamb Team, beat down the sluggish giant spiders. Their body fluids splattered, and their foul-smelling webs clung to them. Yohan badly wanted to purify it all but held himself back.

The pharmacy had quite a few usable medicines. After that, they also recovered a good amount of canned food, and their backpacks bulged. Everyone’s face brightened. Medicines and food like this could be partly kept for themselves, or they could be handed to the guild in exchange for money or traded for the medicine they wanted. Especially since medicine was the rarest resource in this age, it was a very good way to earn money.

That night, they cleared out monsters from an abandoned building and made it into a temporary base. The rookies, exhausted from being nervous all day, quickly fell asleep. When it was Yohan’s turn for watch, he grinned. In case one of the Little Lamb team members might overhear, he scribbled on the ground with the end of his spear.

‘Are you sleepy?’

Lee Hyunmook smiled and wrote back with the spear tip. ‘Not at all.’ Then he added another line.

‘How was today?’

‘A little boring, but just right.’

Since they were circling the outskirts even in the rift to look after the rookies, the expedition was mild to the point of being tame. The Little Lamb team members were struggling, but they were keeping up. In an age when human lives, especially awakeners’ lives, had become precious, a proper guild raised and nurtured its rookies like this. And with corruption building up, experienced awakeners were even harder to find, which made it all the more important.

Yohan glanced around and then shyly drew a small heart. Lee Hyunmook laughed and drew a fluffy round lump next to it. It looked like a sheep. Seo Yakrin, who had been watching their conversation, joined in. She quietly drew another heart on each side and scribbled on the ground.

‘Aren’t the kids really cute?”

Kids… maybe. From Seo Yakrin’s point of view, they must have seemed very young. After all, none of the Little Lamb team members were over twenty-five. Seo Yakrin then smirked and wrote.

‘Thinking of how much more they will chirp tomorrow already makes them cute.’

Chirp more tomorrow…? What was waiting for them? Yohan felt anxious when he saw Lee Hyunmook also laugh at that. Before he slept, he decided to take a photo to keep the sheep drawing Lee Hyunmook had made, but Seo Yakrin’s hearts had been wiped away without a trace, and Yohan chuckled.

The next day Yohan realized what Seo Yakrin had meant.

‘So this is what she was talking about…!’

In front of his eyes stood a gigantic chicken. A chicken… if it could be called that.

Kwaaak! Kwaaak!

Or was it a parrot? Maybe a pigeon, or even a duck? While Yohan thought such things, the monster bird shrieked. To be honest, it was not a bird but a dinosaur, more precisely a pterosaur. Its wings were barely a handspan, but its enormous hard beak and claws slammed into the ground with heavy noises.

“Uwaaaah!”

“Ah, shit!”

The Little Lamb team members nearby screamed and scattered. Compared to this four-meter-tall giant chicken rampaging violently, yesterday’s bipedal dog monster and poisonous spiders were nothing. The estimated danger level was rank 5. Of course, Lee Hyunmook and Seo Yakrin had not left them to actually fight a rank 5 monster. Seo Yakrin clapped her hands and encouraged them.

“Come on! Ten minutes left, ten minutes! Run! Do not just run blindly! Watch your surroundings too!”

“Ugh! Save me! I feel like I am dying!”

“It is fine. You will not die, you will not! Hold out!”

What the Taeyang Guild demanded from the rookies was only to endure. For a rank 5, this monster was not especially hard to handle. It did not use poison or acid, only physical attacks. Compared to awakeners’ abilities, it was a brute force or body reinforcement type.

One of the rookies screamed as he ran, barely dodging the beak’s strike, and rolled on the ground. The beak slammed down with a bang right above his head. The monster bird pecked again and again, unable to break through Seo Yakrin’s telekinesis, then gave up and searched for easier prey. The rookie trembled and could not get up, so Lee Hyunmook, who had been watching, said quietly.

“I have said it many times, but if you want to give up, you can give up anytime.”

Even with those words that never forced anyone, the rookie clenched his teeth, jumped to his feet, and shouted.

“…No! I will keep going!”

Compared to other guilds, the Taeyang Guild’s welfare benefits, salary, and commission conditions during expeditions were overwhelmingly good. He had to join a guild and had to hunt anyway, so whether he succeeded or failed, he had to endure in the Taeyang Guild. If he endured, wealth and honor would follow.

When Lee Hyunmook patted his shoulder in encouragement, the rookie gathered strength. Then he ran back inside the telekinetic barrier Seo Yakrin had set up. The space taken over by the monster bird was like a huge arena, filled with shouts and screams. The rookie forced himself forward, but he was already faltering when it happened.

“I will draw its attention, take a moment to catch your breath.”

“H-huh?”

The rookie looked up in surprise. It was his teammate, Yang Yohan. Fearlessly, Yohan charged at the monster bird and stabbed its ankle with his spear. The rookie’s mouth fell open.

Kwaaaak! Kwoooook!

The monster bird’s eyes swelled as if they would explode in rage. Then the bulging eyes locked onto Yohan. The enormous beak and claws mercilessly smashed at the enemy who had injured it. Bang, bang, bang! Explosive noises like at a construction site shattered the concrete floor.

But not a single blow landed. Yohan nimbly dodged every strike and even dared to stab the bird’s ankle again. The rookie unconsciously muttered.

“Hah… insane.”

As Yohan attacked the huge monster bird, he remembered the corrupted Seo Yakrin and the raids on the abyss core. He had gone through the harshest and toughest battles in the world, he felt like his nerves had grown thicker. Looking at a monster like this only reminded him of Yoon Seungryong’s chicken stew.

‘It does not even look that gross, if I could purify it and carve some meat off, it would be nice. The bone birds and flesh birds really tasted good.’

And he also thought this.

‘I cannot kill a monster on my own.’

Thanks to the training he had received from Lee Hyunmook and the others in the abyss, Yohan had become good at dodging attacks. The monster bird’s strikes were destructive, but the big movements made them easier to avoid. Yohan knew well that stabbing its ankle with his spear a couple of times did not deal much damage. If he had to fight it alone without purifying, he could, but killing it would take forever. It was the limit of a purifier with no real attack power.

Anyway, while Yohan drew its attention for a long time, the Little Lamb team members finally came to their senses. One of them shouted.

“Debuffer! Use your ability! If it targets you, the tanker will protect you!”

“O-okay!”

At last, the Little Lamb team started using their abilities. The debuffer, a support type, could inflict status effects on enemies like in games. The usual effects were confusion, sleep, slowing, and weakening.

As the purple energy released from the debuffer seeped into the monster bird, it staggered with a weakening debuff and lurched toward the support. When the debuffer scrambled to the tanker, the tanker used a defensive ability to block, and in that gap the two dealers attacked. Watching them finally respond like awakeners, Seo Yakrin smiled with satisfaction.

“Look at them chirping away, Team Leader. They are cute, really cute.”

Even though it was an easy raid, they were still in the middle of a fight, so Seo Yakrin’s tone toward the leader was more formal than usual.

“…Yes, cute.”

Lee Hyunmook nodded, but his eyes stayed fixed on Yohan. Seo Yakrin thought. “He must mean our youngest is cute.”