Chapter 30

Foreign Race

When I hurried to the place where the rest of the party was, the first thing that caught my eye was Secretary Kim's blood-stained and torn combat suit and two relatively fine D-class guild members.

"Oh, Team Leader!"

Right after he made a happy expression, he was surprised to see that Park Chang-hee wasn't with me.

"What about the Expedition Leader?"

I had confirmed that his injuries have already been neatly healed with potions.

There was just a battle here, and Secretary Kim had gotten injured quite a bit, so the red stone reacted, but it looked like he won, anyway. The next thing that caught my eye was the opponent who had died while fighting against him.

"Is that...?"

"As the system message saying that the boundary had collapsed sounded, it suddenly appeared and rushed toward us. From now on, all of us must quickly retreat out of the gate according to the government-mandated protocol. You know that, right? However, the Expedition Leader..."

He spoke with a curious expression, but instead of answering Secretary Kim, I approached the fallen creature and looked at it.

Blue scales covered its skin. The overall shape of the body resembled a dog. There were six shiny eyeballs on the front of the head, without even an eyelid.

It looked slightly different from any creature I knew, because this was a creature that had already been modified so much that it was difficult to find traces of the original being.

"···Fuck!"

Another profanity came out of my mouth.

This was because I found a symbol that I could read on the corpse's forehead. The non-earth text was similar to an autograph left on the work by a craftsman who had completed a classy product.

In other words, what I was seeing was what was engraved by a person who modified this beast. And the name of the races that used these letters was...

"Ersmann, those fucking pricks!"

Ersmann was the one who always stayed at the bottom when ranking the races that we wanted to encounter in the dungeon.

There were many reasons, but to pick three things off the list:

Firstly, when encountering other beings from other dimensions during exploration, they attacked and plundered first if they seemed weak. They had such a unique moral notion.

Secondly, they did not feel appalled at eating the meat of a civilized race, and they possessed a liberal food culture that digested anything well without being picky about race.

Lastly, if the meat did not suit their taste, they had a nasty habit of killing them after harassing them for a long time, instead of eating it quickly and cleanly.

'There's nothing good that comes out by facing them. No, we will be 100% attacked at this party level.'

Ersmann's notoriety was exceptionally high in the dimension that humans were the main population. This was because the meat of most mammals, including humans, were awful to their taste.

"The Team Leader Park Chang-hee decided to move separately. He should have heard the system message, too. We should move quickly. I will explain the details on the move."

Secretary Kim nodded without saying something, as if he had foreseen something. Even if he didn't think I had killed him, he would have expected there was a good reason for this.

The other two guild members also stiffly moved. Rather than being convinced of me, who wasn't the expedition leader, we had to stop all work according to the protocol anyway and withdraw as soon as possible.

We were also on the way back to Earth when...

'Damn, it's too late!'

Mana chunks that gleam from a distance approached us at high speed.

Unfortunately, those who crossed the border were the strongest among Ersmann's Awakened.

Piii! Piiiii!

With no time to run away further, we were surrounded by a group of foreign races that appeared with the wind in an instant.

The number of opponents in total was sixteen. I clenched my jaw at the misfortune that had befallen us.

'It's the worst!'

The Dungeon Gate connected to the Earth was an E-class, and was limited to the number of five, but as it expanded from the other side, the rank and the number of people that could enter increased slowly. It seemed that the ones who corresponded to the rank had all gotten dispatched.

Even if I estimated this with what I could see, no one had an active Mana of below 20,000. When it was measured to the scale of the Earth, everyone was rated S-class. Sixteen guys were all one level stronger than Park Chang-hee.

On the other hand, I...

-Active Mana: 14,500 (+9,700) / 4,800

-Potential Mana: 81,000

It was only this much, thanks to absorbing all the remaining active Mana in Park Chang-hee's body.

'There is no chance to win with a head-on match.'

Secretary Kim and other guild members were also nervous and prepared for battle. Holding a weapon, they wrapped the entire body with a Mana shield. It was a natural stance that came up from training.

Ersmann, who I encountered after a long time, was still bizarre and disgusting. A mixed face of cockroaches and stag beetles, and brown skin was covering their entire body. The arms, covered with small sharp thorns, pointed to us. They exchanged their language at high speed while keeping us surrounded.

Piiiiii!

Among them, the biggest Ersmann came forward. Its gaze touched the corpse of the modified life form.

He screamed.

Piiiiiiii!

That, in our language, meant this:

"My baby! Who killed my baby?!"

It didn't exactly mean that it bore that animal, but that it had lost a loved and endeared modified beast. It seemed that he was the owner of the pattern.

Piiiiiiiiiii!

They looked at us and went wild.

"A monkey? Such a livestock feed dares to do this to my baby?"

Just as the future earthlings would call them cockroaches, Ersmann called humans in a similar manner.

"I will kill you!"

A green bubble swelled in its mouth, expressing feelings of rabidness.

'It is pissed off. In this way, instead of cruelly playing with us, they will instantly...'

As soon as I said that, mana quickly concentrated in the Ersmann's chest. I knew what it was about to do, but the time to respond was tight. I began to shout.

"Everyone! Immediately, let disable the Mana shield!"

It was the same as saying to disarm in front of a foreign race.

However, there was not enough time to explain the reasons in detail as much as I could compress it, as short as possible! At that moment, I tried to spit out the next word.

Weeing!

In a short period of less than a second, Secretary Kim's expression had changed from light of suspicion to a face that was determined to do something, then clenched his teeth and disabled the shield. The Mana that had been released to the outside was collected and stored in the core. He believed in me.

However...

The remaining two guild members did not listen to me. Following the E-class hunter's instructions who came to the dungeon for the first time today, it would not be easy to discard the protective equipment in front of the enemy.

I yelled.

"If you release Mana, it will at...!"

He didn't wait for me to complete my sentence.

Booooooooooooo!

His chest swelled, and a black mist emanated from his mouth. It turned out to be a swarm of insects the size of a fly, about thousands or tens of thousands in number.

All of those objects covered the inside of the large cave, with blue Mana enveloping their bodies.

Then...

"Ahhhhhhhhh! Hel...!"

"Ahhhhhh!"

The scream did not even last a few seconds.

The black insect swarm ran toward the two guild members who had not disarmed the Mana shield. It broke through the barrier, tore and dug into the flesh, and ate their blood and meat.

There was no time for Secretary Kim and me to run over and help.

After a brief moment...

Boooooooooooong!

The worms returned to Ersmann's mouth, and the torn bodies of two guild members remained on the floor.

Secretary Kim turned to look at me with a disturbed expression. Meanwhile, I gave all my attention to Ersmann.

"How did it know?"

This all felt puzzling.

What Ersmann just unfolded was an intricate technique that grafted enchant-based skills and manipulation-based skills into a modified creature. Those insects, whose vision had been deteriorated, detected, and attacked creatures that emitted Mana to the outside, all while excluding the Ersmanns.

Most of the dungeon monsters and Awakened surrounded their body with Mana to protect them, so this was obviously a method they often used.

"Secretary Kim, do not attack. We can't win."

He looked like he wanted to ask a lot of questions, but he followed my instructions.

I looked around them. There was sixteen with more than 20,000 Mana. What skill could I use to finish them all at once?

The list began to spread in my head. I could see many possible skills. There were many ways. However, the problem was...

'None of these can be activated with my Mana right now.'

While contemplating, it prepared for the next attack. If the bug refused to work, it would eventually plan to rip us apart themselves. There was no more time.

At that moment...

I saw a backpack thrown to the floor—a backpack with Mana cores collected from here.

'This is it!'

[Body Transformation (Rank: E)!]

Ersmann guys didn't waste limited skill slots with translation magic.

Anyway, the races they encountered in the dungeon were targets to attack and kill, or targets to avoid and escape in advance. It was between those two.

In an instant, my vocal cords changed shape. Since the human body could not correctly pronounce their language, the structure had been changed a little.

In that state, I began to shout.

Piiiiii! Piiii!

"You, children of 'Leah'! Do you interact with the children of 'Geruit'? If so, you've probably heard the rumors. The story of the human race that they met in a dungeon with acid rain."

Those who were trying to attack stopped, taken aback by my words.

Secretary Kim looked at me with an indescribable expression. It was full of feelings of wanting to ask what the hell I was doing now. At this critical moment, I found myself suddenly beeping and screaming strangely.

But then...

Piiii! Piiiii!

Ersmann thusly replied. "What are you? How do you know our language?"

When the cockroach-like guy responded to me, and it seemed that the appearance that we were able to converse to each other took place, Secretary Kim's expression changed as if he himself felt more shocked.

I kept shouting.

"Have you heard the rumors? I am a resident of the world where the children of 'Geruit' attacked and were retaliated against!"

For Ersmann, there was no concept of a state, and blood relation replaced it. Looking at the guys' appearances in front of me right now, they must be all born from eggs laid by an entity named 'Leah.'

This fact was unknown to Korea, but several months ago, an American guild met the Ersmann in a vast dungeon where more than 100 people could enter, and was thusly annihilated.

The US government's response to the situation was reliable. They put a tactical nuclear bomb in the gate and exploded it. No matter how much Mana shield protected the Ersmann, they could not overcome the high heat and shock waves. Critically, as they could not overcome the radiation, it ended up annihilating them.

Now he looked at me as if baffled.

I picked up a backpack with Mana cores and threw it at them.

Piiiiii!

"Your purpose is Mana core anyway, right? In exchange for taking it, let us go. Killing the remaining two will lead to dire retaliation, just as the last time the children of 'Geruit' were wiped out!"

Of course, it was unlikely that the US government would retaliate for us, but I was screaming now and thinking about it later because they still lacked information about the Earth.

Piiii!

"I'll take this first."

The Ersmann, who were looking from behind, came forward and smelled the backpack, then turned it over to open. It revealed the core in it to everyone.

Piii!

"What? There aren't that many."

As if it was a given, he put down the lump of slime he was holding and removed its snout. Inside, it contained many Mana cores that they had collected so far, incomparable to what we collected.

While one packed the core from behind, the guy who confronted me moved forward.

Pii!

"You know our language, but don't know how we function, huh?"

No, I knew.

I quickly changed my vocal cords back to human ones. I then began to whisper.

"Secretary Kim, when I signal, stick close to me."

He nodded quietly.

I saw the movement of the being that was collecting Mana cores from behind. They turned our backpacks over and tried to pour the contents into a slime mass that served as their bag.

Piii!

He spoke as if mocking us. "Retribution? That's funny. We, in the first place..."

Those guys didn't care about those.

Clink!

From behind, the Mana core in the backpack poured down. I did not miss the opportunity when they were exposed to the environment.

Piiii!

"...We don't worry about retaliation!"

At that moment...

I took an Iponia crystal from my arms and threw it with all my might! It hit one of the Mana cores that had fallen into Ersmann's slime bag accurately.

The Iponia crystal was broken, and the Mana in it began to leak out.

Initially, the skill in it only affected the 'caster' himself. Still, if it was activated from outside the body like that, the first to contact was recognized as the caster—an anomaly, only possible with Iponia's crystals.

I then shouted.

"Now!"

Secretary Kim stuck to me. Ersmann pulled out a thorn and ran.

I then triggered an item.

[Mirage's Shield]

-Item Description: Creates a powerful shield surrounding the caster for 3 minutes after activation. As long as the shield is maintained, the user is also limited in movement.

※ Please note that it cannot be reused once activated.

The colors around us fluctuated, creating a blurry shield. It completely wrapped up Secretary Kim and me.

Shortly after the shield was completely formed, I saw the Mana crystals that fell into the pockets of the Ersmanns swayed. The crystal of Iponia that was broken in contact with it, the skill in it was...

[Deep Sea Swimming (Rank: D, Active)]

You can swim in the deep sea by stably maintaining the caster's internal pressure above 7,183psi.

This was when an intense pressure over 500 times the normal atmospheric pressure was applied to the inside of the Mana core.

Boosh!

The blue light swallowed everything up.