Evolution Theory of the Hunter (ETH)
Volume 1 Chapter 51
[Previous] [Table of Contents] [Next]
Tap.
Right when I was trying to raise my Reflex ability, an item dropped from one of the monsters.
“Holy cow! An item from the start!”
Jung Sooah scooped up the item. It was a cane. A level 2 amplification cane to be more exact. This item helped to increase the user’s chances of successfully casting a spell. It was perfect for manager Kim.
“Oh. Isn’t that mine?”
“You can use it for now. But we’ll be putting it up for auction as soon as we leave the dungeon.”
“I’ll still be buying it so..”
“If you name a cheap price, I’ll vote against it. You have a lot of money right? Didn’t you say that when you got fired, they paid you a healthy amount as severance?”
Jung Sooah trumpeted out loud.
“Kkeung. That’s my retirement fund.”
“But why’d you get fired?”
Cho Youngoo asked.
“LIttle rotten bastards. I made a small mistake and the director tried to demote me and send me off to some rural place.”
“So you got mad and quit?”
“Quit my butt. I went to the director and gave him piece of my mind.”
“What’d you say?”
“To please over look it that one time…but he didn’t listen. And then bam!”
“You hit him?”
“No. He hit me. He’s a hunter too, you see. I used to follow him whenever he went on a raid…bastard.”
“Wow. So you just let him hit you?”
“What else could I do? If I got fired, there was nowhere else for me to go. But then that bastard said this.”
Manager Kim let out a deep sigh.
“If you resign now I’ll give you a good amount of severance pay.”
“So you said yes?”
“A circumstance warranted it. One of the employees I managed went over to the competition, you see. But it was my fault for not spotting it sooner.
“Hm…so that employee was giving the competition company intel.”
“Well I later found out that it was all masterminded by the director. When he thought that he was going to get caught, he just used me as the scapegoat.”
Manager Kim was shaking with anger at this point. From how angry he was, we could tell he wasn’t lying. But you never know what a person is really thinking so I’ll chalk it up to believing half of it. It could also have been that the both were in cahoots and Manager Kim was the only one who got caught. Who knows.
In that time, the monsters finished evaporating. A total of 6 ores dropped – one of them a blisolnite. I stored the other 5 ores into the manual. They were automatically being applied toward the upgrade tab.
I explained this feature as a kind of invisible backpack to everyone. Since there were items that served similar functions, no one thought it suspicious.
But I did sense they were a bit envious.
“Shall we continue?”
The next point was about a 10 minute walk. We were planning to fight if a monster appeared and to move on if one didn’t.
This method would be the best in trying to find survivors as well.
We continued in this manner for several points.
“It’s very quiet, isn’t it?”
Han Joonseok whispered. Somehow the silence made it seem like whispering was mandatory.
There wasn’t a monster in sight.
Were those 9 monsters it?
I motioned everyone to stop.
We were standing exactly where a monster should appear. The ground was covered in weeds that came up to your ankles. When I looked down and examined closer, I couldn’t find what should have been there.
Footsteps, blood, any other hint that someone or something had been here.
“There has never been a fight in this location.”
“Maybe they lured the monsters away? Maybe they ran and were caught by the monsters somewhere else? It could be any number of reasons.”
Han Joonseok responded. That was true.
- They might have lured the monsters inadvertantly while running away
- They purposely lured the monsters away
- They killed the monsters using a spell where the fight might have lasted a minute
- Or they never stepped foot here
1 was highly unlikely. If they had been running away, there would have been some caught and killed..which we should have seen evidence of on our way here. But not a drop.
Number 2 was the most likely possibility. And number 3 & 4 were highly improbable.
I tried to look for an area where they might have purposely lured monsters to hunt. There were too many.
But the most likely place was an area about 50 meters off north of the hill. If I were the hunter, I would have chosen that spot.
***
“Is it here? The spot you were talking about?”
“Yeh. But no sign of anyone here either.”
“It’s going to be hard looking for them this way. What do you think about going to the last point and working backwards from there?”
“Ok. Let’s do that.”
I nodded my head
***
There were a total of 10 monster points at the Baeksapyoung dungeon. Compared to other dungeons, this dungeon was far larger – which resulted in more distance between each point. For this reason, if you wanted to clear the entire dungeon in less than two hours, you had to employ some unconventional methods.
And we were able to discover that method at the last point.
“What…what is this…”
There were dozens of bodies lying around. No monsters though. But seeing as there were dropped items here and there, it was clear that a battle had taken place here.
Altogether, there were 32 corpses.
All but 8 had died here on this spot.
“It looks as if they had lured all the monsters to this spot. Those 9 we encountered were just monsters that slipped through the cracks.”
Han Joonseok surmised.
There were 3 points of entry – each wide enough to allow just three people to pass through at once.
On examining where the bodies lay, it looks like there were about 10 hunters appointed at each of the entrances.
This was thought out.
It was definitely a waste of time for 40 hunters to go as a group from point to point to kill monsters. But it was also dangerous to split the group into 2 or 3 teams to cover more than one point at once.
This was because every point had a different number of monsters. You could get lucky and run into a small number…or you could get unlucky and run into far too many. There wasn’t a way to predict which points would have how many monsters and split the team in that way.
That’s when they probably came up with this.
Instead of dividing up the team, they needed to call the monsters to them. Because the last point had three entrances, they probably used two of the entrypoints to lure the monsters and divide the team according to how many monsters came through via either point. The last entry point was probably left as an escape route.
“Crazy bastards.”
I couldn’t keep myself from cursing.
This was not a plan. In theory, it was a perfect. If the monsters moved in the way you wanted, this would have been the best way to hunt.
But, just because they called out to monsters from 3 points didn’t mean those would be the only monsters to appear. What would happen if monsters from other points decide to join the fray? The 9 lizardmen we had met probably formed a group in this very same manner.
Then I realized one thing.
If they had fallen into that kind of misfortune, there was no way that anyone would have made it alive. If in the small chance they did, they would have either made it out or we would have bumped into them on the way here.
But neither of the two happened.
Then where are the remaining 8?
That was when I heard a monster’s screech from the left entrypoint. An armored anteater popped up from beneath the ground.
KEEEEEE!
Another one appeared to the right. This was a predatory toad. It seemed the two were waiting at either sides…waiting for prey to appear.
The predatory toad swallows whole live humans and digests them slowly. If you are swallowed, it is said that you suffer for 30 minutes to an hour being digested.
“Ah.”
That’s when I realized.
There weren’t any survivors. The reason why the dungeon hadn’t reset even without any survivors was because of one reason.
Within the predatory toad’s stomach…there was still a living person…slowly being digested.
[Previous] [Table of Contents] [Next]
-
Moh Asad
·
Thanks for the chapter
-
marcosayde
·
gracias
-
Hidayat Adi Kurniawan
·
Mons Party Its Coming.
Thanks for the chapter.
-
endy budi
·
thanks
-
Jarred McFarlane
·
Thanks
-
Juan Topasna
·
Thanks for the chapter.
-
Mike S
·
Great chapter nicely detailed.
-
volexece
·
Thanks. Good game-like world novel
-
m om
·
Thanks
-
Aditya Kurniawan
·
Nice chapter!
-
amorais3895
·
Thanks for the chapter
-
God's Song Sect
·
Thanks for the meal
-
ApexAstral
·
Whoa not sure how to feel
-
shrykos
·
Thanks for the chapter.
-
Time 939
·
Thanks
-
None Beeswax
·
Thanks
-
hattorisan
·
Thanks for the new chapter
-
Gantz
·
40 hunters… plus the bodies are still there and their loot. Most of it will be lvl 1 stuff but the MC could probably use it as components for other weapons. Sometimes people disappear and sometimes they remain, clearly odd rules are meant to be broken.
-
LightNovelBarista
·
I think something is special about our MC….so whenever it’s something to do with him, weird stuff happen.
-
shortie
·
It wasn’t ‘their’ loot but the drops of the monsters they killed. The gear you have upon death will become useless which is why the MC threatened to off himself with the level 4 bow still in his hand earlier and why he pinched the level 3 sword before the thug died.
They might disappear once their entire ‘group’ die and a certain time passes rather than in the order that they died, this bit might lead to a new character… lets call them regurgitoaded for now ;). (In other words maybe someone will be saved from the toads?)
Other things I thought of was
Effort = result of the amount of effort he put in to kill the level 4 right at the start
Friendship = people working together to kill the wolf boss, also the boost is for the exact number of people initially involved in the battle with the wolf not the current party size.
Escape = result of being the bait to lead away to allow others to escape, only 5 again this being the party size at exact time of conflict?
Item compounding = no drops that time despite normally 1.5 lvl1 drop average plus an irregular
OP glasses = a crystalisation of the MC’s natural abilities which is information and porter.
-
-
Dave Nguyen
·
Disgusting toad is disgusting
-
da an
·
thanks…
-
sfasf asf
·
thanks for the chapter
-
Samuel Lin
·
Thanks for the chapter!
-
Nivanio Costa
·
Thanks for the chapter.
-
antowibowo
·
If my life is on the line i probably won’t mob monsters like in games. Paranoia is the way to go.
Thank you for the chapter. -
Skoll
·
Gnomgnomgnom xD thanks
-
victor tiilikainen
·
Thank you for the chapter!
-
KiwiCaramelo
·
Too greedy this living beings, don’t eat more that you can chew
Thanks for the Chappie, Barista-
·
those*
-
-
Simon C
·
thanks for the chapter
-
Albert Imbar
·
Digested alive, man…talk about torture
-
Stan Lee Stanley
·
Like damnnn… that’s just so brutal….30 minutes of being digested ….
-
·
Maybe it was like all those fan service scenarios where their clothes melts first and they then realize their are in some deep #$%^.
-
-
-
plouf
·
Thanks
-
tsun dere
·
Woah, thats creepy!
On an unrelated note anyone else have trouble remembering all the characters names? i’m considering rereading the chapters and making a cheat sheet 😛
-
·
Theres a little glossary that you can refer/help add to on the Table of Contents page 😉
-
·
i totally missed the glossary! O_o, btw i think someone is trolling cuz all the characters are named “A female porter. She is physically big and strong. Has a huge crush on MC. Feisty and forward personality” and thats also their description
-
·
I just fixed it. Someone has no life. I might have to make edits only available to people logged into gmail.
-
-
-
-
amja
·
Thanks. Eww yuck, imagine inside toad tummy
-
·
Yah slooowly being digested whole lol
-
·
Hmm must feel good…
-
-
-
copy331
·
Worst ways to die in a dungeon 101
-
babygiant4xl
·
guess those guys overestimaed themselves. thanks for the chapter
-
·
you can say that again!
-
-
ce05
·
i wonder if fed monsters give better loot.
also thank you for the chapter 🙂
-
zachary jimerson
·
poor fella or gal but hey they save em and maybe they rich or leader of the troop and bam nice reward
-
robot
·
oh god
-
Matt Damon
·
Omnomnomnom makes the toad.
Leave a ReplyYour email is safe with us.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
49 Comments
Leave your reply.