Chapter Ten – Armies of Golems
The Gate swallowed them with a sound like a dying star—a deep, resonant BWOOOONG that vibrated in their teeth and bones. One moment they were in the shattered Seoul plaza, the next they were… elsewhere.
The group of hunters, plus [Uchiha Sasuke], transferred inside the Gate's designated transit center. In the next instant, they found themselves in a place resembling a particularly clichéd version of hell.
Crunch. Sizzle.
[Go Joon-Hee]'s polished shoes landed on brittle, charred ground. The air hit them like a furnace blast—dry, sulfurous, and thick enough to taste of ash and regret. It was a devastated, pulverized land. A dark earth without forests, only with ignited rocks and rivers of glowing lava that bubbled with ominous glugs and pops. The sky was a bruised purple, choked with ember-like particles floating in a heat haze.
This was an S-Rank Gate, presenting a realistic picture of a hell that could be embodied.
Yet, [Uchiha Sasuke] showed no expression. Not a raised eyebrow, not a twitch of the lip. His face was a masterpiece of apathy. He simply looked at the pure energy—the Mana—that proliferated in most areas around the place. It felt… sticky. And wrong.
"What a ridiculous affair," he muttered, his voice flat and cutting through the hellish ambiance. "How can such energy be so illogical to this degree?"
The existence of this dimension, this method of transition, made Sasuke feel as if he were inside a poorly written joke. There were no spatial coordinates. Even using the Rinnegan, the space they had transitioned into seemed protected by Gate-specific, hidden access codes. It was like trying to hack a firewall with a kunai. He would need a significant amount of time to decipher those codes because, without them, he might not be able to exit this Gate using his Rinnegan's space-time ninjutsu.
Sniff. Sniff.
Hunter [Cha Hae-In]'s nose, a legendary S-Rank weapon in its own right, twitched violently. She swiftly smelled the scents of creatures approaching—a stench of molten rock, ozone, and primal aggression.
Shiiing!
She drew her sword in one fluid motion, the sound a clear, cold promise of violence in the oppressive heat.
Beside her, [Baek Yoon-Ho] also prepared for combat. A low, predatory growl rumbled in his chest. Grrr… His golden eyes narrowed, locking onto the direction the horde was coming from. His fingers elongated slightly, claws tipping them with a series of faint snickt sounds.
Armies of monsters resembling golems. Their bodies were like volcanic rock, with rivulets of lava flowing through cracks in their stony hides. They moved with a grating, grinding noise—SCRAAAAAPE… CRUNCH… SCRAAAAAPE—shaking the ground with each heavy step. Dozens of them. Their collective energy signature was similar to A-Rank hunters.
"[Baek Yoon-Ho], don't intervene yet," said [Choi Jong-In], adjusting his glasses with an elegant flick of his finger. Click.
His tone was calm, analytical. What was happening directly in front of them was already… being handled.
CRACK-BOOM!
A storm of lightning, born from nowhere, erupted among the front line of the golem army. [Uchiha Sasuke] had launched it in the shape of an explosive lightning ball using his Chidori techniques. It wasn't a fancy name, just pure, concentrated annihilation.
The visual was absurd. One moment, a line of hulking, lava-spewing rock monsters. The next, a blinding white-blue flash, followed by a deafening KABOOM that sent shattered stone and globs of cooling magma flying in all directions. The concussive wave hit the hunters, making their clothes flap violently. Whoosh!
The golems weren't just defeated; they were disassembled. Unmade.
"This is astonishing," [Choi Jong-In] breathed, his analytical mind momentarily overridden by sheer awe. "This control, this rapid generation of lightning… it's astounding in every sense of the word. I can feel the gulf in skill just by comparing it to my own flame conjuration."
The red-haired leader of the Hunters Guild was mesmerized and, simultaneously, trying to deconstruct the impossibility. The strange-eyed hunter used no incantation, no magic circle, no visible device to wield such devastatingly high-level power, easily comparable to S-Rank. And at the same time, he was certain the power of those lightning bolts wasn't the hunter's full strength. It was a casual flick of the wrist. A bored sigh given electrified form.
Fizzle… pop. A small, lone lava blob landed near [Baek Yoon-Ho]'s foot and solidified with a sad plink.
"We just need to follow him. Follow him and understand how he handles this," declared [Go Joon-Hee], the President and leader of the Hunter Association.
He moved ahead of the S-Rank hunters and began walking behind [Uchiha Sasuke], his steps measured and calm on the brittle ground. Crunch. Crunch.
The President watched the young man's movements with intense focus. At first, Sasuke was quiet, evaluating the place. With his strange eyes—that unsettling swirl of purple and red—he looked up at the angry, mana-choked sky.
"He's analyzing the energy in the sky," the President mused internally. Crunch. "He seems greatly perplexed by the energy as well. Does that mean he doesn't know what Mana is? That's an additional piece of information to add to the scant few I've gathered."
His long experience in identifying most dangers, plus profiling people over a lifetime, was helping President [Go Joon-Hee] understand the nature of the youth before him at an accelerated pace. However, what was happening next was also accelerating.
The armies of golems, strong enough to defeat most ordinary A-Rank hunters, were being pulverized. The difference in power between that strange-eyed youth who spoke Japanese and the hellish denizens was vast, in every sense of the word.
ZAP! CRACK! BOOM!
Each lightning strike sent shockwave explosions that dispatched those creatures to their end without a single moment of hesitation. Moreover, the young man was staring at the ground, at the rocks, at the very fabric of the dimension, as if appraising it. At several moments, he muttered strange words.
[Go Joon-Hee], his hearing sharpened by decades of survival, tried to catch and comprehend these snippets.
"Chakra is unstable here…" Sasuke muttered, kicking a small rock which skittered and clacked against a larger one.
"The Sharingan can't penetrate this closed space…"
"Perhaps this place is a separate dimension that prevents my exit…"
Every word the strange teenager uttered entered the head of the Hunter Association President like a new riddle added to the already substantial pile of enigmas. But it confirmed his previous decision—he must try to understand this youth, understand his danger completely, and execute a plan to either neutralize this threat or deal with him within sufficient parameters.
Of course, he couldn't fully deduce the meanings of such words, but he grasped some of the content. It seemed this youth also possessed the ability to transition, or perhaps could come and go somehow from this Gate. Maybe he had a rare and coveted space-time skill.
Naturally, President [Go Joon-Hee] didn't know the full extent of [Sasuke]'s abilities or his desperate desire to leave and understand this place and the new energy. The reason Sasuke didn't ask the people with him was because he wanted to focus entirely on figuring this out alone. His desire to collaborate, to share with his eyes and work through human emotions with anyone else during this period, was completely undesirable.
As for using force to achieve his goals, he found it completely useless here as well. In the end, he wasn't going to use his full power in front of people who didn't seem like a threat to him.
[Sasuke]'s sole desire now was to find a way using these new concepts he was learning inside this… prison cell.
As for the monsters? They were never his match. Using ordinary lightning strikes, he was able to shatter their defenses easily. Moreover, his Sharingan eyes were able to make them appear incredibly slow to him, their movements predictable and lumbering. It also identified their weak points—crystals in their center that were the source of their power. They were like puppets, which confirmed that someone was manipulating them from inside.
And according to the information Sasuke had gotten from that old man following him, the person who could manipulate these creatures must be the one who created this prison cell—the "Dungeon Master." As long as he defeated that being, he would end this dungeon and be able to exit this place.
But to gain the best benefit from entering this place in the first place, the last survivor of the Uchiha clan decided to conduct a very thorough investigation and miss nothing.
SKREEEEEEE!
A sharp, grating cry erupted from the stone golems as they charged toward the terrifying purple aura emanating from the black-haired youth with red and purple eyes. He wasn't even looking at them. He was simply measuring the height of the space, its density, and understanding the model of the barrier before him that prevented concentrating the Rinnegan's density to manipulate space and open an exit portal.
WHOOSH! CRUNCH!
Of course, the stone golems, resembling trolls made of volcanic rock and lava, launched several long-range attacks—hurling giant, molten boulders. THUMP. WHOOSH.
Sasuke's eyes didn't even glance their way. With movements fluid and graceful as a dance, he evaded each attack individually. Swish. Lean. Step. He studied these creatures while simultaneously studying the "strings" of chakra—or rather, mana—that controlled the volcanic rock golems, which he had now internally dubbed "Volcanic Puppets."
These creatures were weak to him, and he finished each one with a precisely directed strike around their energy core. In the end, the only interesting spectacle in all of this was the scene of those glowing crystals falling and scattering. He would catch them mid-air with a casual swipe, analyze them for a second with a glance, and then discard them with a dismissive flick of his wrist. Tink. Tink. Tink. They landed in the ashy dirt.
Scramble. Scramble.
Of course, the Korean hunters walking behind him—all four of them S-Rank—were scrambling to pick up those very crystals. Clink. Clink.
"[Cha Hae-In], catch that one!" [Baek Yoon-Ho] grunted, snatching a fist-sized ruby-like crystal from the air before it hit a lava flow.
The crystals were extremely valuable, known as A-Rank magic stones. Even for most S-Rank hunters, these stones were very important for crafting enhanced armor, weapons, and even swords. It was like watching billionaires scramble for pennies, but these were magic pennies that could buy a castle.
But for them, this wasn't the main issue. The main event was the destruction unfolding before them. Hundreds of golems were being eradicated. Perhaps one of them could accomplish this task, but it would require hours of continuous, exhausting combat. But the person—the teenager—before them, who didn't seem very old, was fighting them as if they were sleeping birds. He could finish them in one strike.
They were even surprised he wasn't destroying the crystals in the process, which was a very difficult feat, especially when facing creatures of this level that were A-Rank monsters or even higher, depending on the amount of magic in the Gate itself, which was definitely S-Rank.
Crunch. [Baek Yoon-Ho] stepped on a golem's smoldering head to catch a particularly sparkly crystal. He turned to the President, his voice a low rumble.
"Sir President, do you have any information about this boy from what he's been saying?" [Baek Yoon-Ho] asked, moving closer. Crunch. Crunch.
The President didn't lift his gaze from Sasuke's back, but he spoke quietly to the three hunters. "It's possible this hunter isn't even familiar with what anything in this place is… or even with the Gate itself."
[Cha Hae-In] and [Baek Yoon-Ho] were taken aback. Swish. She decapitated a lone, stray golem that had stumbled too close, her sword moving faster than the eye could follow.
But [Choi Jong-In], who had understood most of the muttered words and was observing closely (and was fluent in Japanese), spoke up. Click. He adjusted his glasses again.
"It seems the place he comes from, or wants to go to, is called the 'Land of Fire.' Within a place or a strange land called the 'Land of Elements' or the 'Elemental Nations.'"
Silence followed, broken only by the distant crackle of lightning, the sizzle of lava, and the soft, incessant crunch of four of Korea's most powerful people tiptoeing through a hellscape, following a moody teenager who was treating an S-Rank dungeon like a mildly irritating museum exhibit.
The comedy was blacker than the volcanic rock. The punchline was that they were the audience, and the show was an existential crisis with really good special effects.
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Author's Note:
Thank you for braving the lava fields and dodging magical shrapnel with us,dear readers! We hope your eyebrows haven't been singed off by all that casual lightning. Remember, if you see a moody teen with glowing eyes dissecting reality, just... pick up the magic rocks and follow quietly.
❤️😊
See you in the next infernal chapter!
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