“What—”

  A bright light flashed over the horde.

  The monsters stiffened, then their whole body started to glow. Fur bleached to white, and their eyes went from animal yellow to a crimson red.

  Thin rings of glowing letters suddenly appeared, spinning around their necks like collars.

  The beasts looked both holy and wrong at the same time.

  Before the horrified hunters could do anything, the C-rank monsters evolved into B-rank Divine Beasts, a celestial class monster.

  The boars, in unison, released a sharp and long squeal.

  [WARNING]

  [Curse: Hollow Squeal spreads through the air.]

  [Your body grows heavy.]

  [Strength and Mana stats have been suppressed by 25%.]

  [Movement speed and skill damage have been suppressed by 20%.]

  [The curse will presist until all the Beasts fall.]

  The curse spread fast, and every hunter felt it hit them like a truck.

  “I-I can’t move!” a mage yelled, and a boar slid through a gap and took him down before a tank could even turn around.

  The formation was useless now.

  With no specific targets, the monsters started attacking everyone in their vicinity.

  The hunters scattered, running for their lives.

  Though they didn’t know it, the dungeon portal, which had temporarily opened due to the rank change, had just let a new visitor in.

  Ryan had fallen back to a slab the size of a table and was straining to block a monster with his shield, using his last ounce of strength.

  He could feel the monster’s hot breath on his face.

  Even his mana was almost gone. This was it.

  He squeezed his eyelids shut as he saw the beast lower its heavy head, aiming its yellow, curved tusk right below his chin.

  The strike never landed.

  Ryan slowly opened his eyes.

  The boar was frozen, its snout peeled to expose its wet gums. Its ears were flat against its skull.

  It took one stiff step back, then another, like something had yanked a leash he couldn’t see.

  He blinked.

  The beast wasn’t looking at him anymore.

  Its eyes were focused somewhere past his shoulder. Every other monster in the pack were doing the exact same thing.

  Why?

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  He tried to move.

  But his legs turned to water, and he slumped back against the stone slab, his chest heaving up and down.

  He forced his head to turn, following the beast’s gaze. For a second, he thought the light was playing tricks on him.

  A man... was walking toward them.

  Ryan recognized the face. It was the F-rank hunter, Hunter Ashwell, who had warned their parties not to enter.

  He gritted his teeth and strained to push himself off the rock.

  That idiot.

  Ashwell must’ve entered the dungeon when none of them returned. Another person was about to die for nothing.

  The heroic, but suicial man hadn’t even raised his weapon. He looked frail, holding a useless, broken blade that had been snapped in half.

  Ryan fought for the breath to scream, to tell the fool to run, but his lungs burned and his throat was too dry. He braced himself to watch the monsters tear the newcomer apart just like they did with all the other targets.

  It took a heartbeat for his brain to catch up with his eyes.

  The monstesr weren’t atatcking.

  The tall man was parting the horde, walking through them without a single beast raising its tusks.

  They... had opened a path for him.

  Ryan held his breath without realizing as his focus narrowed entirely on the strange hunter and the monsters immediately around him.

  He lost track of the wider battlefield for a moment—the first time he’d slipped up like that since he’d started entering dungeons as a teenage B-ranker.

  [The Third Celestial Sphere within the visual field recognizes an approaching presence.]

  [The lesser descent of monsters cowers before the apex.]

  [Duration of fear: 12 minutes 32 seconds]

  His eyes darted between the monsters and the text, then locked onto the timer.

  12 minutes.

  He finally exhaled, his chest loosening as he recognized the signs of a crowd-control skill.

  Hunters who had been seconds from dying slowly raised their heads, stunned to see the slaughter had stopped.

  “Holy shit…” someone whispered from Ryan’s left.

  It had to be a high-tier [Bluff] skill. Or perhaps an effect from having a high Charisma stat, judging from the flavor text “apex.”

  Ashwell kept walking toward the center of the horde until every beast was frozen in place, an invisible pressure overriding their very will to survive.

  It was unbelievable.

  Ryan couldn’t tell if they were crouching in fear, or bowing to their king as they each bent their knees in a wide circle with Shane in the center.

  “What the hell are you waiting for? Kill them.”

  The command hit Ryan first, then the meaning.

  He launched himself off the rock, slammed the boar’s jaw with his shield, and hacked with his sword at the spot under its ear until it finally tore through its thick hide.

  It sagged into the dirt, dead.

  Around him, other hunters started attacking like madmen.

  They didn’t know how long the monsters would stay paralyzed, so they could not waste this miraculous chance to survive and return home.

  Ryan shoved another boar back with his shield and split its face open. A spear team pushed by him, pinning a group of monsters through the chests and throats, before a massive warhammer finished the job.

  Even as they were butchered, the monsters did not fight back, their eyes locked past the hunters toward Shane.

  But soon, Ryan’s mana pool hit zero.

  He took one short, hard breath and kept swinging his sword. Skills or not, all he needed was grit and the will to survive.

  It took relentless hacking to finally take a head. Then another.

  [Duration of fear: 8 seconds]

  But the monsters were tough, and they’d run out of time.

  The curse had crippled everyone, including Ryan, severly enough to drop him to a C-rank level. Even though he’d used every attack in his arsenal, there were still dozens of those cursed Celestial monsters remaining.

  “Stand back.”

  The exhausted hunters heard the new hunter’s voice loud and clear. As they staggered backward, the only sound filling the air was heavy breathing.

  The hunter turned his head barely enough for Ryan to see his profile. His mouth was a hard line as the anger deepened, like a bruise darkening.

  He held the broken blade low at his side. It wasn’t any fighting stance Ryan knew. The dark edge drank the light as it hummed with mana.

  Only a few days ago, Ryan couldn’t sense even the basic aura every Awakened had from Shane. The presence that anyone above F-rank would give off, the dividing line between a pro hunter and an amateur.

  Even now, Ryan couldn’t feel any significant aura from the man. If he wasn’t standing, Ryan would have assumed he was dead.

  But seeing Shane’s relaxed posture only deepened Ryan’s confusion.

  Maintaining that kind of composure in front of dozens of monsters took more than sheer nerves. It required prior experience hardened against the radiating pressure of a monster’s bloodlust.

  Ryan felt a flicker of hope, before he shut it down quickly.

  Because he’d seen the hunter fight. There was no way Ashwell could have gotten strong enough to solo a horde like this in only a few days.

  The monsters were only frozen because of some kind of short-term [Bluff] skill he’d acquired.

  The skill’s effect will wear off any second, and then…

  ...But wasn’t twelve minutes a little too long for a [Bluff] skill?

  Shane, who had been standing there with his arms hanging loose, suddenly drew up his mana, leveling the broken sword out in front of him horizontally.