The First Hunter Chapter 18: The Flame-spurt Gator (1)

< Chapter 18. The Flame-spurt Gator (1).>

1.

The exercise field of Sungkonghoe University located in Guro-gu, Seoul.

Krrrr…

Now it had become a nightmarish stage.

Hundreds of alligators with fur coats that looked like the coats of wolves were filling the whole field.

They were in the middle of enjoying their meal. That was also a scene from a nightmare.

Crack, chomp!

The sound they made while crushing and eating their prey alive by using their strong jaw strength was the most terrifying thing in the world.

“AHHHHH!”

The screams and shouts humans were making as their prey was a good background music to the nightmare.

“S, save me. Please, plea….”

It was music that did not last for long.

Snap!

Three wolf-gators simultaneously bit the legs, torso and the head of the person while the human was still living alive crying their lungs out with desperation.

Crunch!

The human who was praying to God quickly became a piece of meat with the sound of bones breaking and vanished inside of the gators’ stomachs.

The scene was repeated here and there across the field.

The screams, human bodies getting crushed, and the terrifying sound of gators munching continued. The climax of that nightmare was the giant alligator that was positioned in the middle of the field.

Frrrr..!

Whenever the giant alligator breathed, red flames came out of its nose and mouth.

It was a flame-spurt gator, the leader of the hundreds of the wolf-gators. The tyrant that caused other monsters and wolf-gators to avoid eye contact!

But it did not look like it was in a good mood.  It couldn’t be.

It previously had a land.

Land filled with food to eat, with a lot of prey to hunt for its minions to fill their stomachs, a cozy and comfortable land. It had put a lot of effort to keep the land under its influence. It got rid of the wandering monsters that invaded its territory, burning and ripping through the monsters that challenged it.

But it lost its territory in one day.

The unknown reason of the other monster that the flame-spurt gator couldn’t even try to challenge.

It had to leave. Without knowing why, the flame gator had to start its journey to find a new settlement with its hundreds of minions.

What made it angrier was the questionable monster that popped out of nowhere. That monster started to hunt down its minions that were not only scouting but also foraging for the flame gator to feed. But for the flame gator the foraging was more of a warning than to feed it.

This is my territory.

Do not enter.

I will kill you all if you do.

Even thinking about it made the flame-gator’s body tremble with rage. It couldn’t accept such a threat against itself.

So the flame-gator waited for the right timing to find and rip that bastard apart.

KYAAA!

One wolf-gator approached the flame-gator. This wolf-gator looked the same as the other wolf-gators except for its orange eyes. It was trampling over the other wolf-gators that filled the exercise field and came close to the flame-gator.

It left a bone in front of the flame-gator that it had been carrying carefully in its mouth.

The flame-gator uncoiled its body as soon as it saw the bone. It lifted its body up and spurted out flames then growled towards the sky while standing on its two hind legs.

GOHHHH!

2.

The southern intersection of Yeokgok Station. The date and time on the big clock in front of Yeokgok station was stopped on December 31st, 2016.

Cars were also stopped there without their owners, and even the snow on the cars was frozen hard.

BANG!

It was around 300 wolf-gators that made time resume in that place.

Bang, bang!

The running pack of the wolf-gator pack could best be described with the word ‘deluge’.

The gators hit everything that was in their way, knocking things away and clearing their path.  It was like a wave of furry leather.

It seemed like nothing would be able to stop their rush.

But funny enough, the thing that made their sprint stop was a giant bone. It was clear that the bone was of a snake, yet it was too gigantic to just be called a snake.

The wolf-gators recoiled back with fear rather than trying to continue rushing forward.

Just seeing the bone they could easily realize that the monster of this skull would have been a monster that was similar to their leader.

Of course, they wouldn’t have been threatened by a skull. A dead thing wouldn’t frighten them. No matter how frightening the creature was, the skeleton of the creature couldn’t do anything to them. What was scaring them was what had turned the black snake, the skull’s owner,  into this.

On top of that, this was a warning. That anything that approached this territory would turn into this.

The fear started to spread among the wolf-gator pack.

Thud!

It was the flame-spurt gator that crushed that fear. Thud! The flame-gator that was at the end of the line started to go forward with large thumping sounds.

Thud! It didn’t seem like it wanted to keep it quiet.

No, rather it was putting even more strength into each footstep as if it were trying to make more noise. Those footsteps shook the ground and overrode the fear that existed in the wolf-gator pack.

Thud!

Finally, the flame-gator stood in front of the black snake’s skull and raised its body up. It shut its mouth while standing on its two feet, then it inflated its body.

Opened its mouth. KWAAAAA!

A giant flame came out of its mouth and started to burn the skull of the black snake.

It was a declaration of war. A declaration that it would kill the master of this land, and would take over the throne!

“Fire!”

The master of the land willingly took up the challenge.

BAM!

The war started.

3.

Kim Taehoon said that he would give her a week. But Kim Taehoon wasn’t able to precisely keep that promise. The time he was able to earn was not a week but 10 days, which was three days more than what he promised.

It was definitely enough time.

“Fire!” To secure ammunition and the weapons.

“Fire!” To recruit soldiers who would utilize those firearms.

BAMM! For those soldiers to remember the 2 years they served in the military and prepare for the battle.

And last, 10 days was also enough time to choose the battlefield and set it all up.

Naturally the Maek Guild did not turn down the challenge from the flame gator.

As soon as the flame-spurt gator started to expel fire from its mouth, the artillery corps that was waiting for the signal immediately started to fire.

The shelling from the artillery corps rained down on the wolf-gators with no mercy.

Kywaaaa!

The strong fur coats of the Gators were not very useful against the firearms. The wolf-gators started to get blown up alive.

It was an attack that the wolf-gator pack had never encountered. At the same time, it was also the first counterattack by the artillery corps that kept loading rounds inside the 60mm mortar.

“Fire!”

“FIREEEE!”

That was the reason why the soldiers’ screams contained such pent-up anger while they were responding to the fire signal. It was as if they were trying to overpower the sounds of the rounds.

“Motherf*cking monsters, all go to hell!”

When the Maek guild started to recruit soldiers who could utilize the ammo and weapons that were retrieved, such as rifles, submachine guns, and mortars they were worried that no one in their right mind, besides a very few, would go into a war because they wanted to.

It was dangerous for a civilian to participate in a war against monsters, not awakened.

There wouldn’t be zero volunteers but it would never be a flood of applications.

But those worries disappeared as soon as they started recruiting. There were tons of volunteers. Most of the men among the survivors had served in the military full time, but that was not the reason.

The rage, it was to express their rage towards the monsters since they had never had a chance to fight back as the monsters appeared.

“Whoa!”

‘Right, perfect shots.’

‘Will kill one more monster surely!’

So they were dead serious. No one was trying to be lazy, or skip out on training as they had back in the military times. Regardless of their age, the soldiers from the artillery corps tried to bring back the memories and knowledge they had from their past experience.

They showed their will to survive.

Kyaaa!

The same thing was occurring with the wolf-gators that were exposed to the extensive and continuous bombing. The flame-spurt gator was standing solid on its two hind legs, unmoving amidst the storm of bombs.

GOOHHHH!

Eventually the flame gator’s outcry exploded. That cry immediately changed the situation.

Kyaaaa!

The wolf-gators started to rush forward again, ignoring the bombing.

The fear the flame gator threw out was unavoidable by the civilians. The people who had been putting bombs non-stop into the mortar started to stop and became jumbled up like broken dolls.

Plop!

There were people who collapsed to the ground and started to have seizures with foam coming out of their mouths.

“Fall back!”

“Fall back!!!”

The awakened started to load the soldiers into the cars that were waiting nearby. They were planning to carry the people out from here since they couldn’t do anything after being exposed to fear. But not everyone was getting ready to fallback.

There were people who consumed the pills that would help them grow tolerance towards the fear and were waiting for the wolf-gators.

They were holding the percussion triggers to the claymores. They were the ones who decided to stay behind and earn time for their colleagues to escape.

Even though they took the pill to grow resistance to the fear, the flame-gator’s fear was too strong and they started to shiver. But they did not lose sight of the wolf-gator pack.

“Fire!”

They waited, and blew them up.

BAM BAM BAM!

A shower of steel marbles started to rain through the wolf-gators that were insanely running on the road.

Keeeehhh!

The effect was powerful. The wolf-gators in front instantly became piles of dead bodies.

But the wolf-gators did not stop. They kept going pushing through the dead bodies of their fellow monsters. It was terrifying.

‘Those f*ckin monsters!’

‘We’re the ones getting chased again even after the bomb shower!’

The bombing wasn’t heard anymore and the battle changed.

The flame-gator was getting ready to walk down the path created by the wolf-gators and their sprint. It was getting ready to smash, chomp, and burn with flames the people who were trying to run away.

Shhhhsh!

The thing that ended the flame-gator’s dash was a single sword strike which left a long wound along its body that hadn’t even been damaged by all those bombs.

Krrrrr!

Because of the stinging pain the flame gator started to scan the surroundings with its yellow eyes glowing.

KWAAA!

But the flame-gator’s eyes were not able to find what caused its pain.

Kim Taehoon, the cause of that pain was floating above the flame-gator’s head.

‘It’s been a while since I fired this at a living thing. Probably about 4 years?’

While holding a Panzerfaust 3[1]* anti-tank rocket launcher on his shoulder!

< Chapter 18. The Flame-spurt Gator (1). > The end.

[1] Looks like this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Panzerfaust3.jpg

Chapter end