I stared blankly at the neck of the scout floating smoothly in the air.
“That feels good. This sword… it’s the real deal.”
The new great sword is impressive, but…
The neck is a vital spot, so hitting it always results in a guaranteed critical hit, significantly boosting damage. Plus, using two skills simultaneously—
It was refreshing to have no resistance at all when slicing off the neck of a hunter of a similar rank.
As I quickly tucked the floating head and the collapsing body into my space, I started taking out scouts one by one as they arrived in the prison.
– You have acquired a Fragment of Corrupted Life Potion. (17/100)
– You have acquired a Fragment of Corrupted Life Potion. (19/100)
“How have I killed three and not leveled up? Tch…”
Not to mention, I wasn’t dropping any decent loot or runes, so the farming fun was dwindling.
The magic power levels matched that of a C-rank, yet their gear and overall quality were pathetic.
“Just forced up abilities, I guess.”
They probably didn’t earn much experience in dungeons, either.
Sighing in disappointment, I headed toward the prison where my companions were trapped.
The prison door was shut with steel bars and a padlock, but—
I effortlessly tossed the entire cage into my space, getting rid of the door.
The cage was huge, far too massive for an average hunter to manage, but it was a piece of cake for me.
Once inside, I found two people pitifully huddled in a corner, shivering.
“Jin-kyeong, Ji-woo…”
“Uhee… Ueek…”
“Hehe, heehee…”
They seemed deeply under the influence of drugs, sprawled on the floor while making strange groans and giggles.
“Have they lost control over their magic…?”
Chains meant to control magic were strapped around their ankles and necks. These are typically used in Awakened Ones’ prisons…
Their eyes were completely vacant, pupils dilated, and they couldn’t even hold themselves up, but—
“At least they haven’t been subjected to something cruel. That’s a relief.”
Unlike the women in the other rooms, they weren’t naked, and I sensed no connection to goblins below, leading me to this conclusion.
In the last room, several female hunters, also under the effects of the drug, stood or lay twisted in strange postures.
“Should I give it a try? Ran, do it for me.”
Ran, tucked into the hood of my cloak, responded to my request by activating [Acceleration]. At the same time, a sensation I had never encountered before surged through my mind like lightning.
“Woooooah—”
It felt like an accident infinitely expanding, a feeling that seemed familiar yet utterly unknown.
At long last, my inventory ability greatly expanded.
“…… I can do it. I can store people.”
I approached Jin-kyeong first, who seemed dazed, reaching out my hand. She met my gaze, and though a flicker of light returned to her eyes, that was all.
As soon as my hand touched her, she transformed into a mass of blue light and was sucked into my space.
“Alright. Let’s hurry.”
As I added Ji-woo, I ramped up the pace.
My space was close to infinite; I stuffed every hunter in the room inside before moving on to the next.
“Heh……”
“Phew……”
The women in the next room looked far worse off.
It wasn’t just their eyes, dulled from the drugs.
“This must be where the real horrors are…”
They weren’t showing signs of being full yet, but the distinct movement of small beings inside their bellies was clear.
I moved through the room, hiding the increasingly pregnant women in my space. By the time I hit three hundred, I felt completely drained by this organization.
“Just how many guys are out here to keep this many female hunters stocked?”
I thought it was time to wipe out the mid to low-rank hunters in our country.
Moreover, in this much larger area than the prison where the hunters were held, there were hundreds of civilians—
And they looked in even worse shape than the hunters. Their inner beings were so faint.
“None of them are in good shape. It wouldn’t be surprising if they died any moment…”
Maybe they thought it was harder to work on civilians, so they started reaching out to hunters instead?
Hunters are definitely sturdier than civilians and therefore offer a longer-term advantage.
“This factory can’t be the only one. A larger one might even have real S-rankers managing it… Ugh, what to do about these bastards.”
As I suppressed the boiling rage within, I sensed hunter reactions far from where I stood, so I dashed in that direction.
On my way, I also sensed a disgusting otherworldly presence, so I detoured there first.
What I found was a goblin using a woman, shackled by a collar.
The woman was also bound with a collar connected to the wall, unable to escape, suggesting they were just thrown in here with no managing staff in sight.
– Ugh…! Ugh…! N-no… please, stop…! S-someone… save me—
The woman screamed for it to stop, but the goblin merely thrust harder.
“God damn it!”
I rushed in, severing the goblin’s neck, then lightly tapped the woman’s jaw, knocking her out.
It was as if doing this would help me forget the nightmare I had just witnessed; I really hoped it would.
After placing her into my space, I realized there was another room nearby filled with over a hundred goblins.
All of them were in heat, and it was clear the people running this factory had some scheme in play.
“…… Wall of Fire.”
I filled the enclosed space with walls of flame, burning them all to death.
– Kieeeek!!
– Kaaahhhh!!
They weren’t even giving me experience messages anymore, but I felt relief doing it anyway.
And just as I resumed my dash to the remaining women’s area, alarms suddenly blared in the underground space.
– Intruder detected! Intruder detected! Expand the encirclement as you narrow down to the area with the ‘Stone House’!!
A panicked older woman’s voice echoed loudly through the space.
“What, that’s expected. The disappearance of all the women and the massacre of the goblins would raise some alerts. But ‘Stone House’? That’s just too much!”
They referred to the fetal sac as a baby house, twisting the meaning to imply it carried evolution stones, which only made me angrier.
In that instant, I felt a strong urge to blow this godforsaken place apart.
Even if it collapsed this underground two-floor space, the hunters inside wouldn’t get hurt, but the chaos would probably give them a hard time at least.
Wwooosh—
“Huh?!”
– The skill [Skeleton Bomb] is awakening.
– Settings for ‘Time Bomb’ are now possible.
At that moment, the evolution of the skeleton bomb occurred, as if responding to my destructive desire.
“Thanks. These bastards need a major hit.”
I began hammering a hundred skeleton bombs into the ceiling at intervals while continuing to move.
The sharp-sensed hunters from the first reconnaissance team were narrowing their encirclement, but they couldn’t detect me zipping past.
However, A-rank sorcerers from the second reconnaissance team were activating detection magic as they approached, and that was stressful.
– Revealbane-!
– Detect Magic!
“That might be a bit tricky…”
Honestly, since [Stealth] is hard to categorize in the magical realm, I probably could slip past Detect Magic.
However, Revealbane was harder to deal with.
That spell is designed to detect threats to the caster, making it optimally tuned to pinpoint me at this moment as I worked hard planting bombs.
But the downside was that its range was narrower than Detect Magic.
I figured I wouldn’t be able to breeze through their detection barrier, so I needed another plan.
“How about I distract their attention a bit?”
I moved while detonating twenty of the skeleton bombs in succession.
KABOOM KABOOM KABOOM KABOOM─!!
As the explosions detonated with a delay, the dozens of hunters closing in quickly switched from detection stance to combat stance.
Taking advantage of that brief window, I slipped between them like a sliding ghost.
“Huh? Didn’t something just go past?”
“I didn’t feel anything. But be careful! There must be multiple individuals. If a fight breaks out, it’ll be quite the hassle!”
Fortunately, they let me slip right by. They were lax for their rank.
“I can keep people in my space for about 30 minutes.”
I still had plenty of time, but I sensed around thirty additional victims in another area, so I quickly made my way there.
“Phew—”
While I thought I’d be fine since I had an idea of what was going on, the horrific sight I witnessed upon arrival fractured my mental state.
“AAAHHHH──!”
“J-just kill me… please…”
What lay before me was the birthing ground for the hybrids of goblins and humans, where newborns were immediately wrapped in blankets and transported to another room.
The eyes of the female hunters who just gave birth had no glimmer of light left, yet instinctively, they reached out for the babies they had just birthed.
However, those babies were not in proper condition.
“Kiiee…! Kieee!!”
Already born with sharp teeth, the green hybrids were struggling to straighten their twisted bodies.
“From the very start, they’re born in a dysfunctional state… damn it.”
These newborns came into the world destined not to survive long after their delivery.
And deeper in the space were more uncomfortable hybrids laying neatly side by side, each of them clearly housing something inside.
“Are they feeding them mana stones and runes again…? Haven’t the female hunters already evolved through the potions? Is that not enough?”
The process involved using women who had consumed evolution potions to breed with goblins, then feeding the newly born babies mana stones and runes again.
I didn’t know how long they planned to keep the babies in that state, but the pitiful ones were already withering away, instinctively integrating mana stones and runes into their bodies to survive.
“This is how they dissolve the babies whole, manufacture products with those evolution potions, lure in female hunters, raise them as mothers, then reproduce the babies again… what a routine.”
I had a rough picture drawn, but I had no idea where to start.
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