“Get ready.”

The members of Night Rat were well-accustomed to all-out brawls against multiple opponents. Back-alley fights were like that; whenever a squabble broke out with another criminal guild, the battle would always be a group affair. As a small, elite guild, Night Rat often had to face dozens, sometimes hundreds, of enemies at once, making one-on-ten fights a common occurrence.

Of course, even they had never fought against tens of thousands, but the guild members didn’t flinch. They were smiling as they watched the approaching enemy.

Hadn’t he said it before?

This was a den of madmen.

It was a place that had gathered only those who were not in their right minds, so there wasn’t a single hunter here normal enough to feel fear in a situation like this.

“Alright, engage.”

At the simple command, the guild members kicked off the ground in unison. Dozens of figures moved at their own varying speeds, charging toward the locust swarm.

BOOM, BOOM! CRASH!

In a flash, the two forces collided, and explosions erupted from all sides. Clouds of ashen smoke billowed up, and red flames flickered. Accustomed to individual destruction and every-man-for-himself survival, the guild members were clashing with the locusts not through cooperation, but by each pursuing their own best methods and maximum efficiency.

As a result, the battle broke out in multiple locations at once, demanding his full attention. Sa-yoon, who was taking in every single skirmish, stared with a weary expression at the locusts that were trapped within the massive domain Gyeongjin had deployed, ramming their bodies against an invisible barrier. To be honest, the sight of the creatures repeatedly smashing their bodies against the transparent wall until it was smeared with their own blood was quite grotesque, even for Sa-yoon, who had a strong stomach. He imagined this was what the apocalypse would look like if it were embodied in a living creature.

Crunch, crack!

Finally enraged, the locusts began to gnaw at the transparent wall. It was a chaotic battle, with fighting breaking out in one area while a siege was being laid on the barrier in another.

“Gyeongjin-hyung is surprisingly skilled,” Geon-joo remarked, watching Gyeongjin maintain his domain while under the quasi-protection of Chan-hee. It was the first time he had seen Gyeongjin use an ability other than his signature skill. Sa-yoon smiled with pride.

Han Gyeongjin possessed an exceptional talent for digging up information on people, and his know-how in information gathering and management was second to none. But that alone wouldn’t have been enough for him to survive for years as a member of Night Rat. The more famous one becomes, the more knives are aimed at their back.

The reason Gyeongjin, a non-combatant, had survived more than a hundred assassination attempts was all thanks to that skill: [Limited Domain Expansion].

It was a skill that trapped a designated target within a specific area.

As it consumed mental strength instead of mana, Gyeongjin himself was rendered immobile while casting and maintaining it, but if he held out long enough, Yen, Jongsik, or Chan-hee would eventually show up to rescue him. That was how he had survived.

“He’s not one of the strong who survived; he’s one of those who became strong by surviving.”

His ability, honed by facing a life-or-death threat almost weekly, was now shining even in an SSS-Rank Gate.

“Fuck! If I knew there were going to be this many, I never would have cast—keuk!”

“Hyung, hyung-nim! Don’t get excited!”

Although the user of said skill was currently coughing up blood from the strain of trapping so many enemies within his domain. Han Geon-joo worried that he might collapse, but despite his feeble appearance, Han Gyeongjin had more stamina than the early version of Geon-joo Sa-yoon had first captured. His baseline stamina was high, and Chan-hee was right beside him, shoving potion bottles into his mouth. He would last another ten minutes, grumbling about how he was going to die the whole time. Sa-yoon turned his gaze away and looked up at the sky, which was now stained black. It was supposed to be broad daylight, but the legion of locusts had blotted out the sun, creating a landscape that looked as if night were falling.

And there was one who looked down upon this false night from above. The angel, risen like a sun. As Sa-yoon fixed his gaze on it, Lee Jaehee, who had been standing guard beside him and Geon-joo, summoned his Gryphon and spoke.

“Abaddon is the king of the locusts from the Book of Revelation. He is said to appear when the fifth trumpet is blown. If this swarm of locusts is the ‘Hwangchung’ and the angel’s trumpet was the fifth, where do you suppose Abaddon is?”

At his words, Sa-yoon scanned the Gate’s landscape again. It was a barren plain with nothing to be seen but the guild members fighting the locust swarm and the angel in the sky.

After a moment of thought, Sa-yoon understood what he was implying.

“…He hasn’t appeared yet?”

“Correct. It seems a specific condition must be met for him to emerge.”

“So this is just a dogfight, then.”

“Not entirely. To summon Abaddon, we’ll likely have to inflict damage on the Hwangchung army.”

The man, encouraging him that their efforts were not in vain, mounted his Gryphon. Sa-yoon looked at him, sensing he knew a fair amount about this Gate, and waved a hand.

“Since you seem to know what you’re doing, go help the others.”

“Understood.”

The man accepted immediately, as if that had been his intention all along, and flew on his Gryphon toward the guild members.

“Watch out for the tails! Their tails likely contain a paralyzing poison! Cut them off first!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. The guild members, who had been fighting recklessly and accumulating minor wounds, yelled back, “Why are you telling us that now? No wonder my body felt heavy!” Slice, slice! The sound of meat being cut echoed from all directions as dozens of tails fell to the ground. Sa-yoon watched the minor wounds appearing all over his guild members’ bodies and took a deep breath.

He drew the dry air deep into his lungs and felt it cool and condense inside him. As it flowed out as breath, the ground froze, and a massive frost zone formed, large enough to encompass Gyeongjin’s entire domain.

As the notification for Pale Day’s activation appeared, all the guild members stopped fighting and exited Gyeongjin’s domain. They passed through the barrier that the locusts couldn’t break even by shattering their own bodies, and stood by Sa-yoon’s side.

“How is it?”

“There are a lot of them, but individually, they’re not that strong. In terms of rank, they seem to be about B+,” Jongsik reported, wiping blood from his face. Yen spun the knife in his hand.

“The ones at the front are B+, but not the ones in the back. They get stronger the further back you go. The last one I fought was close to A-Rank.”

“And where was that one?”

“About halfway through? The ones at the very back are probably on par with S-Ranks.”

He was starting to get the picture. It was a sadistically designed structure: wear them down with weaker enemies at the front, give them a glimmer of hope that it’s a manageable fight, then crush them with stronger ones.

Thanking Yen for the intel, Sa-yoon briefly checked on Gyeongjin, who was still maintaining his domain, and then made his decision.

“Tell Han Gyeongjin that I’ll handle the B-Ranks, and to let the ones in the back through. And you all, split into teams and take on the A, A+, and S-Ranks. You can at least coordinate that much, right?”

He wasn’t asking for a joint attack, just for designated people to attack designated targets. The guild members laughed, saying of course they could. Sa-yoon assigned three elite members to both Jongsik and Yen and told them to handle the S-Ranks, then turned to Geon-joo, who was waiting for his orders.

His eyes met Sa-yoon’s, asking what he should do.

“Han Geon-joo, you stay here, cover me, and conserve your strength.”

“I can fight with them.”

“Who said you couldn’t? Didn’t you hear what Jaehee said? He hasn’t appeared yet.”

“…Ah.”

He let out a small gasp of understanding. Sa-yoon watched him, his expression hardening for a moment before he clenched his fists a few times, and then smiled.

That’s right.

“You’re going to be the one to kill Abaddon, pretty boy.”

They were inside a Gate with only Night Rat members. If necessary, he was more than willing to hand over his own Demigod Body.

They called Abaddon the destroyer, the arbiter who descended from the heavens, was it?

In that case, he would put forth his own card: the one destined to defy the heavens.

“Back to your positions.”

The preliminary skirmish, meant to gauge the enemy’s strength, was over. It was time to clash for real. At his smile, the guild members moved as one, re-entering Gyeongjin’s domain. The frost zone formed along with them, and the chilled air within the domain, far from hindering them, gave them strength.

It was the buff effect of Pale Day.

The Hwangchung, on the other hand, shivered, their movements becoming even more sluggish. Properly caught in the domain that buffed allies and debuffed enemies, one of the guild members took a cannon out of his inventory. He lit the fuse, and BOOM!, a ball of fire shot out like a cannonball and exploded in mid-air. Dozens of Hwangchung were sent flying.

That was the signal. A fierce battle began. Unlike before, the guild members’ swordsmanship became more savage and inhuman, carving through the Hwangchung’s flesh. A poisonous mist billowed out, pressing down on the air and controlling their movements. The mist didn’t distinguish between friend and foe, but the guild members, most of whom had poison resistance, simply took deep breaths, claiming it was refreshing.

Whenever a gunshot rang out, at least three Hwangchung would collapse to the ground. Another member would let out a scream, a sonic wave that burst the enemies’ eardrums.

The battlefield, a chaotic mix of dozens of brutal abilities, was nothing short of pandemonium, but one thing was clear.

“It’s a mess, but they’re strong,” Geon-joo observed.

It might look like a sloppy brawl, but they weren’t being pushed back. As the leader of a guild where chaos was the system, Sa-yoon’s lips curled in satisfaction.

“That’s why we’re Night Rat.”

The rats of the dark were never bound by convention.

At his proud murmur, Han Geon-joo’s expression was astringent.

“Bluff!”

One of the guild members let out a cackle and then simultaneously launched dozens of fire bombs. Geon-joo’s face grew even more troubled.