Evolution Theory of the Hunter Chapter 83

Volume 1 Chapter 83
 

[TN: Hey guys, I’ll be traveling from Fri-Wed so I might not get to do translations during that time! I’m driving cross country from New York to LA with my boyfriend! Eeek! Wish us luck!!]

“It’s close by.”

Screech.

At Park Hanbum’s words, Cho Youngoo brought the truck to a stop. Everyone geared up and carefully followed Park Hanbum to the bridge.

After walking about 1 kilometers, we saw a group of goblins sitting at the bottom of a hill.

Compared to anywhere else in the area, there were actually quite a lot of places to hide. There were lots of shrugs on this side but, once you cross the bridge, dense trees covered the land.

“I’ll go.”

“Will you be alright? What if you get hurt again?”

“Well I have this.”

Park Hanbum pointed to the mockingbird feather. This was an item that allowed the wearer to blend into their surroundings, so they are difficult to spot.

If he just moved carefully, he should be able to go unnoticed – at least by the goblins.

Park Hanbum returned after about an hour.

“Near the shrubs, there are about 30 goblins and 12 sasquatches.”

That meant a total of 42 monsters.

Though there were a lot of monsters, at our current level, it was definitely doable. In fact, I think it would take at least a hundred or more level 1 and level 2 monsters to be able to take down our party.

“Should we go in?”

Park Hanbum asked. I nodded my head in response.

Now that we’ve fought in quite a number of battles together, everyone pretty much knew their general roles and positions.

Park Hanbum usually rode his bike to distract the monsters. And while the monsters chased after him in a group, it was Cho Youngoo and my job to get in front of the group and attack them from there. Usually, the element of surprise was enough for us to take on all the monsters ourselves. But if this doesn’t work, we usually slip behind the monsters and work as a group with everyone else to slay them together.

Then, at some point during battle, we usually release Kelby to finish it up.

This would be how it played out again except for one small change due to the shrubs everywhere.

Vroom!

Park Hanbum revved his motorcycle and drove noisily past the area where the monsters were hiding.

As soon as he drove by a dart, as long as the entire length of a hand, flew out of the shrubs.

The dart landed in the exact spot the bike had been in just a moment before.

Park Hanbum shot out an arrow. The way that he shot his arrow, halfway turned on his bike mid-riding, was very reminiscent of a mongolian warrior atop a horse.

Vrooooooom!

After Park Hanbum drove away, the shrubs started to shake violently before several goblins jumped out from within.

We succeeded in luring them out. Not all. But no matter.

I took out a bottle of thinner from our backpack. I had packed about 10 bottles, so it shouldn’t be a problem to light the shrubs on fire.

Shatter!

I lightly tossed the glass bottle about 20 meters into the bushes.

“Yeonkyoung!”

“Ok, partyhead!”

I didn’t need to light it on fire myself. Yeonkyoung had the flame enchant, which she used on her arrow.

The arrow flew across the sky in a red flame and lodged in the shrubs.

Woosh!

In mere seconds, all shrubs in that general area caught on fire.

“EEEENG!”

“Kaaaa!”

About 20 goblins jumped out from the shrubs with a squeal. And the sasquatches joined in leaving their fiery hiding place.

We killed all of the monsters still in shock from the fire quite easily.

Kelby, as usual, ripped the remaining monsters to shreds with its powerful jaws. Manager Kim didn’t even have time to cast his sleep spell.

The monsters had dropped 2 level 1 items and 10 ores. Park Hanbum walked back towards us with 2 more ores in tow.

Then we waited for the fire in the shrubs to completely die down.

After we confirmed one more time that all the monsters were dead, I carefully walked to where the bridge was.

“So it’s made out of wood.”

The structure of the bridge was wide enough and looked sturdy enough for our truck to safely drive across it.

I was certain that amongst the monsters they’d had a skilled craftsmen.

But aside from its commendable structure, I was still unsure whether or not wood would be capable of withstanding the weight of the truck.

“It’s not as if I could just lift it and carry it across.”

I wanted to try and test putting something else onto the bridge first, but there was nothing that would’ve weighed close to the 3 ton weight of the truck.

I kept looking around for a large boulder when I spied the trees on the other side of the bridge.

They all had large trunks and were fairly tall.

I thought that trees of that size should be considerably heavy.

I crossed the bridge to the other side and cut down a tree with my Smash Sword.

With a cutting sound, the 50 cm wide tree was too easily sliced right through.

Creaaaak.

As soon as I shoved the tree, a large woosh sound preceded the tree before it fell crashing to the ground. Since I could lift the entire thing to the bridge, I cut the tree into 5 pieces and placed them all onto the bridge.

Creeak. Creak.

The bridge moved a bit and made some strange noises, but it didn’t seem it was in danger of collapsing.

“Wow.”

“I know, how could something like a goblin build such a sturdy bridge as this…”

“I was talking about you, Sunbeh Oppa.”

“Me? Why?”

“Not only did you cut down such a humongous tree in one swing, but you carried it all the way to the bridge. No matter how you look at it, that’s not something a normal person should be able to do.”

“I cut them into pieces so they weren’t that heavy.”

“But they should still weigh about 500 kg each.”

“I could do that much easily…”

I didn’t think it was difficult – at least for me. I threw the tree pieces into the river from atop the bridge.

Plunk! Plunk!

After throwing all five into the river, we slowly started to drive over to the bridge. With an anxious face, Cho Youngoo carefully drove onto the wooden goblin bridge.

Squeeak.

A sound like a rusty hinge makes reverberated in my ears as the bridge shuddered.

But the wood is naturally a resilient material. We were safe. At least we were as long as we didn’t hear the bottom of the bridge actually breaking.

It might have broken more easily were it older, but the bridge still looked relatively new.

Vroom.

Squeaak. Squeak.

And so the truck finally made it over the bridge. Every single party member let out a sigh of relief almost as soon as we made it across.

“Ha. I thought I’d pass out from holding my breath so long.”

Cho Youngoo shook his head and got out of the truck. He looked back at the bridge in wonder.

“But do you think it’ll still stay up by the time we come back?”

“It looks sturdy enough to be just fine even for a few months at least.”

We didn’t even need that much time. We should be able to load up on plenty of dropped items in a month.

I turned to look back in the direction of the marshes. We were now in the forested area.

The only thing connecting the two lands was the one wooden bridge. And if the bridge breaks, we would have no means of getting back.

Of course, worst case scenario, we could take the long way and walk until the river ended. But that was a hassle.

I walked back to the bridge to inspect it more carefully.

Seeing that there were areas that were considerably weakened by the truck riding across, I considered doing a bit of reinforcement work.

While I continued to inspect it in this way, a strange thought began to creep into my thoughts.

Would a goblin really be able to build such a sophisticated bridge as this?

I mean, they are clever – I’ll admit that much. They could do as much as create their own simple crossbow type of weapon to fire darts and other projectiles.

And there were some even more high level goblins who could create something even more complicated.

I’ve even heard stories that Level 10 Goblins could create items even beyond human comprehension.

If I considered this, it wasn’t too strange to think they might have created the bridge.

But the problem was, all the goblins we had hunted were level 1s.

If you were to compare the intelligence of a level 1 goblin to human standards, they were the equivalent of a 10 year old.

Would those monsters really have been able to use a sasquatch to create this kind of bridge?

I found it more and more difficult to believe as I kept thinking about it.

And then I became pretty sure that the goblins just happened to be near the bridge. The bridge itself was probably manmade.

If this was true, who was it that made this bridge?

Chapter end