Chapter 80

Chapter 80
## Chapter 80: The Harbin Horde

Standing upon the charred terrain, still radiating heat from the intense magical discharge, I scanned the area to ensure the threat was neutralized before extinguishing my **Paradox Flame**.

“Report on our status?” I asked.

“Three fatalities, eight wounded. Two are in critical condition,” came the reply.

That meant ten percent of our fifty-man hunting party was effectively decommissioned after a single engagement. It was a sobering realization.

“I’m concerned about our sustainability at this rate,” someone muttered.

“Experience is the best teacher,” I countered. “The survivors are learning. They won’t be caught off guard so easily next time.”

Even if we encountered another wave of this magnitude, I was confident our efficiency would improve. However, my focus shifted toward **Nanami**. While we were engaged in melee, she had been a whirlwind of activity, identifying distant signatures on her radar and raining down magical artillery without pause.

One would expect her to be flagging, but **Nanami** appeared revitalized.

“**Fantasia Stream**!” she cried out.

She seemed to be relishing the chaos. At her command, a massive sphere of pink energy ascended into the clouds, acting as a high-altitude battery that peppered the horizon with concentrated mana bolts. The vibrations from the distant impacts traveled through the soles of my boots—a testament to her destructive reach.

There was no one quite like her. Perched in the back of the transport truck, grinning like a protagonist from a magical girl anime, she functioned as a sentient piece of heavy ordinance. What truly baffled me, however, was how little mana she seemed to be burning for such an immense output.

Suddenly, a lingering undead creature lunged from the dirt toward her.

“Not today!” **Nanami** barked, extending a palm. A narrow lance of pink light instantly bored a hole through the creature’s torso.

“Interesting,” I noted. “The mana signature didn’t change.”

Watching her closely, I finally deciphered the quirk in her technique. It was a bizarre, highly specialized form of energy management. The amount of mana she had expended to kill that single, close-range target was nearly identical to the cost of her massive long-range barrages.

“Is your energy consumption fixed per activation?” I asked.

**Nanami** let out a playful laugh. “That’s a professional secret!”

It wasn’t much of a secret anymore. Her efficiency was legendary because it followed a rigid rule: whether she was erasing a single target or glassing a square kilometer, the price was the same.

This was a double-edged sword. If she were swarmed in close quarters, she would burn through her entire reserve in minutes trying to pick off individual targets. But from a distance? She could turn a province into a wasteland before she even broke a sweat.

Noticing my grim expression, **Nanami** deactivated her radar and swapped her combat gear for something more casual.

“The hunting scene in Japan is lagging,” she remarked with a weary sigh. After dressing, she offered a blunt critique. “The elite talent migrated to Korea long ago. We’re left with a skeleton crew.”

The reality was that Japan’s defense largely relied on Korean mercenaries brought in under heavy contracts.

“The government wants local heroes, obviously,” she continued, “but the skill gap is a canyon.”

She nudged a dead monster with her boot.

“If this had been a squad of fifty Japanese hunters, they’d be dead, and these things would still be standing. You’re the exception, **Adakawa**.”

**Nanami** gave a self-deprecating smirk. “I’m a glass cannon by design. Look at **Se-eun**. She could snipe fifteen hunters of my caliber from ten kilometers away, close the distance in the blink of an eye, and finish the rest of us before we could blink. The disparity in infrastructure and raw talent between Korea and Japan is simply too large to fix.”

“What’s the situation in China?” I asked.

**Nanami** scoffed. “China is a failed state. The central government is gone. They’re trying to run things from a provisional setup in Nanjing, but they never recovered after **Gonzalo Ok**, one of the **Great Eight**, leveled the capital during the National People’s Congress. The leadership was decapitated in an instant.”

She looked at me squarely. “In Japan, I’m a celebrity. In Korea? I’m just another **Partner Hunter** in the middle of the pack.”

“That has to be a blow to the ego,” I remarked.

She shrugged. “It’s just the way the world works now.”

“How does the Japanese public feel about the Korean presence?”

**Nanami** let out a cynical laugh. “There are always protesters demanding the foreign hunters leave. But if the Korean guilds actually pulled out, those same people would be begging for them to come back within twenty-four hours. The world is addicted to Korean tactical support.”

“I imagine the diplomatic friction is a nightmare,” I said.

**Nanami** nodded. “But they honor their deals. Without them, half the globe would have been overrun by erosion zones by now. The locals might hate the arrogance, but they can’t survive without the muscle. Of course, the Japanese media likes to pretend I’m on the same level as your **Kang Hoon**, **Se-eun**, or **Sung Si-hoon**. I don’t correct them—it keeps the morale up.”

The conversation ended as the medics finished stabilizing the injured.

“Time to roll,” I announced.

**Nanami** shifted back into her combat form, her radar spinning up as she resumed her long-range suppression fire. The convoy began to crawl forward once more.

—

After several days of grueling travel, the skyline of Harbin finally appeared. **Nanami** checked her displays, her face turning pale.

“This is bad,” she whispered.

“Numbers?” **Jeong O-hun** asked.

“More than I can count,” she replied.

The city was a literal sea of the dead. The only silver lining was that they showed up clearly on the radar, meaning they were low-level drones rather than high-tier threats.

“They’ve converted the civilian population,” **Han Sang-ah** noted, sharpening the edge of her blade. “Harbin was in contact with the Nanjing government until recently. The last census placed the remaining population at two point five million.”

Once a metropolis of ten million, it was still a massive graveyard.

“If even a fraction of them turned… we’re looking at over a million hostiles,” I calculated.

“And we have forty combat-effective hunters left,” **Han Sang-ah** added, looking at me.

I stood up, adjusting my gear. “I’ll go in for a close-range recon.”

**Jeong O-hun** chimed in. “I’ve spotted a vantage point: the **Harbin Longta Tower**.”

“The Dragon Tower? It’s over three hundred meters tall,” I noted.

**Jeong O-hun** nodded. “If I can get to the observation deck, I’ll have a bird’s-eye view of the entire city. I can feed real-time coordinates to **Galmaegi**.”

He was the best marksman I had, and his vision was unparalleled. With him acting as our eye in the sky, we could coordinate a much larger force.

“The issue is the transit,” **Han Sang-ah** pointed out. “The tower is in the heart of the city.”

“Can you stay undetected?” she asked **Jeong O-hun**.

“If **Adakawa** creates enough of a distraction with her artillery on the outskirts, I can ghost my way to the center,” he replied.

The plan was forming: **Nanami** would anchor the eastern perimeter, drawing the horde’s attention with constant bombardment. **Jeong O-hun** would infiltrate from the south.

I activated my comms. “**Galmaegi Team**, what is the position of the main force?”

― “They’re roughly 250 kilometers out. ETA is two days.”

Forty hunters couldn’t hold a city of a million. We needed the backup.

― “Do you think the city is retakable once they arrive?”

“It’s possible,” I replied. “It’ll be bloody, but we have the **Talisman Drawing Method**.”

The undead were numerous but weak. **Exorcism Talismans** would cut through them like a hot knife through wax. If we combined our thousand-man main force with vehicles armored in talismans, we could carve a path through the million.

“If **Jeong O-hun** is on the **Longta Tower**, we’ll have total battlefield awareness,” I muttered. “It’s a gamble worth taking.”

I looked at the sniper. “But you aren’t going alone, **O-hun**. I’m coming with you.”

He slumped his shoulders. “Ugh, man.”

“Would you prefer **Sang-ah**?” I teased.

He glanced at her, then back at me with a sigh. “Fine. You it is.”

“I’m going to make sure you stay in one piece. Stop complaining.”

Our first hurdle was figuring out the sensory triggers of the Harbin horde. If they tracked by sound or smell, I could mask us with the **Paradox Flame**.

“What if they sense life force?” he asked.

“If I burn your life force, you’re a corpse,” I said flatly. “But I can mask the spiritual ‘exhaust’ you give off. It’ll keep us invisible.”

“Does that mean you’ll be too busy masking me to fight?”

“Having you in that tower is more valuable than me killing a few hundred zombies with fire. I’ve survived plenty of fights without the flame; I’ll be fine.”

“Alright,” he said, checking his rifle. “Let’s move.”

We began to hammer out the final details of the infiltration.

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