'I know it's my fault.' HwanGi swung his sword with slight anger.
The bear didn't let his blade touch its fur, as a result, the bear swayed its vicious claws toward his blade.
Crashing together with the sharp edges, HwanGi and the bear began pushing one of them away while using all their strength to do so.
HwanGi gritted his teeth after enduring the pain that was inflicted upon him by the 'Forest' bear earlier. "My luck is so bad that you had to appear!"
Shouting at the bear to make him seem bigger, HwanGi let out an explosion of white flame toward the bear, sending flame to burn the furs in the process.
Even though it was only a split second moment, HwanGi had recalled his misfortune when he was drowning in the pain of his back injury.
'This forest was peaceful earlier and now, this bear suddenly appeared when I was just assigned a party.' HwanGi thought, having a glimpse of his party members protecting Maria and fighting off the boars that kept coming back.
"Why can't I be the one to suffer instead of them?" Feeling furious by the ideas of his friends or innocent people getting hurt because of his bad luck, triggered his trauma once more.
The wrath and the depression. They were overfilling his emotions continuously, entirely shading away his calm demeanor.
Unaware that his 'Divine Flame' was outbursting in a complete disarray in response to his emotions, the 'Forest' bear was screeching from the uncontrollable fire that shouldn't be burning its leafy fur, but it did.
At that moment of pushing his blade toward the bear's claws, almost putting a dent to it, HwanGi couldn't help but be reminded of his trauma once more, remembering the times everyone around him got injured or died in front of him numberless times.
"HwanGi! Look out!!" Raiden cried out while restraining the bear's legs with his lightning lasso.
In spite of the bear being immobilized by the lasso, it managed to build up strength to strike down its claws toward HwanGi.
"Huh?!" HwanGi jumped away from his original spot to avoid the bear's claws, realizing that this situation wasn't a right time for him to be trapped in his trauma.
"I need to kill that first before I sort out my trauma." HwanGi mumbled, grasping his sword before spawning a huge water tycoon under the bear to launch it up.
[Player '1' has activated the Skill, 'Vortex Wave' Lv. 2.]
Once the bear was above them, HwanGi used his 'Vortex Wave' to send himself upward. Ascending underneath the bear, HwanGi aimed his sword at the bear's bottom.
As for Raiden, he shot out six thunderbolts around HwanGi, sending them in the shape of a hexagon while setting them as pointers for his next attack.
Afterwards, HwanGi increased his launch by unleashing 'Divine Flame' below him, including his 'Vortex Wave', flying straight at the bear before penetrating a sword into the bear's bottom until it reached the bear's skull.
The 'Forest' bear who was bewildered, growled in slight fright and rage from the sharp blade being pierced through its skull.
Undoubtedly, HwanGi dealt a good blow on the 'Forest' bear, assuming he had subdued it somehow, and yet it surprisingly remained strong till the end.
The bear rotated itself before directing its pointy antlers toward HwanGi as he was falling. With all its might and speed, the bear came crashing down onto HwanGi, thrusting its antlers onto him.
Without knowing, HwanGi was caught off guard when he sensed the piercing pain coming from everywhere the antlers had punctured.
The pain was unbearable, but HwanGi endured it as best as he could so that he could think of a plan to move away before landing to the ground.
However, since the bear was extremely fast and powerful, HwanGi couldn't manage to plan out his escape while falling down.
'Darn..! I might not be able to move if I get crushed by the bear!' HwanGi mused when panicking a little.
Thankfully for him, a lightning lasso had appeared before HwanGi, causing him to grab it by instinct as he could feel the thunder circuiting through his veins.
And so, HwanGi painfully used 'Vortex Wave' to push the antlers out of his body after being pulled away by Raiden at the last second.
In an instance, the bear crash landed to the ground, cracking its skull by its hard antlers before fracturing a hole out of its head.
Because a hole had cracked open, the blood of the bear had ruptured out of its skull, creating a fountain of its blood.
And with the hexagon pointers, Raiden activated his skill, linking the pointers together to create an arc before electrocuting the bear with high voltages.
When HwanGi witnessed this scene, blood got onto his face, tirelessly standing up and leaning onto a tree to support himself upright.
With the bear gone, the boars stupidly watched as their king was no more, backing away steps by steps.
While the boars were baffled, Raiden rushed over to HwanGi hurriedly, giving him a HP potion. "Here, drink this."
HwanGi shook his head and took out his own HP potion, swallowing it all instead of Raiden's potion.
Without a doubt, Raiden was surprised when he saw HwanGi not accepting the HP potion.
"Why did you not take it?" Raiden asked.
HwanGi didn't want to respond to that question, presuming it was his fault that the apex predator emerged because of his rotten luck.
Instead of answering Raiden's question, HwanGi walked toward the bear as soon as the blood fountain stopped, pondering about the object that he had seen before.
"I didn't care about this thing while I was fighting. But now, I'm curious about what this is." HwanGi crouched down, glancing at the bear's antlers and noticing the strange piece on the antler.
Even though it was coated with blood, HwanGi was able to find it as he hovered his hand toward the object. Before taking it, he rubbed the blood away to have a clearer look of the item.
[Player '1' has obtained the 'Remnant of The Unknown Sword'.]
"A piece? It looks broken." HwanGi didn't know what this remnant was, but he thought it was important, thus he tried to clean more of the bloodstains.
Be that as it may, he was interrupted by Raiden who was telling him. "The boars aren't leaving, HwanGi."
"What?! But didn't you say they would?"
"I did. But this wasn't supposed to happen."
Shocked by this, HwanGi quickly stored the remnant in his inventory and stood up straight.
"HwanGi! What are we going to do?!" Alaine's shout was heard and HwanGi could see the wounds inflicted upon her.
Frostina, who was freezing the boars one by one, was shielding Maria and Alaine with her utmost.
"Ahhh!!" Including the scream made by Maria, HwanGi's eyes shook when he was still stuck in this serious situation.
HwanGi signalled to Raiden to move away, slowly going back to regroup. Upon regrouping, Frostina had summoned two giant golems to aid her.
Accompanied with the help of the golems, they were able to stand guard, waiting for the moment that the boars would strike.
"Golems..? ..! I have an idea." HwanGi realized after witnessing the golem standing in front of him.
In spite of him being suspicious of why Frostina didn't summon her golem's earlier, he figured she had her reasons for not doing so.
"Frostina. Can you order the golem to throw us out of here?" HwanGi asked Frostina.
Alaine overheard and argued. "Are you insane?! Do you think we can survive that?"
"I could soften our descent by using my skill." HwanGi added.
"But still, will that work?"
"Not unless we try. I'll help with our descent as well." After Frostina said that, she swiftly ordered the golem to lower its hand.
Frostina going onto her golem's hand, informed everyone. "Quickly get on."
HwanGi went on the golem's hand after waiting for everyone to get on. When he did, the boars began to move, charging at them at an insane speed.
Frostina's second golem came in and subdued the incoming boars while the first golem was preparing for a long throw.
Being tied up by Raiden's lasso to keep everyone together, all of them braced for the impact after the golem proceeded to toss them as far away from the boars, advancing through the air toward the right direction for their escort quest.
———
"A clever idea, HwanGi-ssi." As I was sitting on the tree branches, I witnessed the whole situation from there.
While wondering why the boars didn't run away after the 'Forest' bear was dead, I hopped down from the tree, catching the attention of the boars.
I smiled and walked over to the dead bear, ignoring the boars. "He really did kill this.."
The 'Forest' bear that was supposed to be half as strong as the Nature Dragon, was slaughtered by HwanGi with the help of Raiden.
"This is shocking. What's more shocking is that feeling of defeat I felt a moment ago, has disappeared." I rubbed my chin, trying to think of a reason for that odd feeling.
However, the boars didn't allow me to do as I please and they charged at me, overestimating that they could kill me.
"The feeling of great defeat stopped when HwanGi picked up something. What item did HwanGi obtain?" Entirely ignoring the boars, I continued to ponder.
Finally stopped thinking, I grasped my sword and used it to cut the bear's body, making it easy for me to store the meat. "It's a waste to keep this meat here."
The stomping of the boars vibrating the ground as I was butchering the bear, led me to get up after I finished.
"First quest." I ejected strings out of my fingers and began stabbing the boars with the strings.
[Imitation of 'Silk Threads' Lv. 2 has activated.]
"Completed." Connecting each boar together with the threads, I readied myself for a huge storm.
[Imitation of 'Thunderstorm' Lv. 3 has activated.]
The black clouds appeared as they began zapping their thunder aggressively, inescapably striking down the thunderbolt upon me.
[Hidden Skill, 'Simulation' Lv. 2 has offset the pain.]
Not screaming from the pain as the lightning circuited through the threads of my fingers to the boars, I added more voltages through the threads.
As soon as the boars were brutally electrocuted by the thundering threads, along with the clouds raining down thunders every second to take down more boars, it was only a matter of time when they would start to die.