Henry hurried to keep up, his boots pounding against the trembling asphalt.

  The street was tearing itself apart with the [Grave Call]. Every few seconds, the ground would bulge like a festering boil before exploding upward into a gray tombstone.

  But Shane’s movements... had an eerie ease that was almost uncanny.

  He was sidestepping through the attacks a split second before the ground cracked open, like he had the pattern memorized.

  Because of this, they were closing the distance to the colossal Heaven’s Executioner at a frightening pace without Henry raising a single [Shield].

  He had noticed a slight delay between when the stone slabs shot out of the ground and when they detonated. Once he realized the rhythm, avoiding them became manageable. Though not as easily as Shane was doing, who avoided the tomstones as if he had a [Battle Precognition] skill, while everyone else was still screaming.

  Were the others okay?

  Henry risked a glance sideways.

  To his relief, Luke and Josh’s parties were adapting fast. He saw a tank from Luke’s team feint a retreat, luring a towering Paladin right into the path of an erupting tombstone.

  The stone slab exploded, engulfing the Paladin in a cloud of shrapnel and dust.

  This would make it easier to get rid of the mobs—

  But as the dust settled, Henry’s hope sank. The Paladin marched out of the crater, its gleaming armor completely unblemished.

  The boss’s area attack decimated the city, but it passed harmlessly through its own minions.

  Henry grit his teeth, turning his focus back to Shane’s back.

  Still, if this was the extent of the boss’s attack, they might actually be able to get close.

  But the street was still crawling with dozens of Paladins and Sacred Roses. And he remembered what Shane had said earlier—the boss’s mechanic involved absorbing the life force of its minions to heal itself.

  Could they really defeat a monster like that?

  Even if they reached the boss, how could Shane out-damage a monster that had an army of living health potions?

  And then there was the mos pressing problem.

  Henry looked at the dark stain spreading across the back of Shane’s jacket. Even if he was moving with efficiency, and was possibly an S-rank, the human body had limits.

  HP in this world was a lethality meter that only measured how close you were to dying. A life-threatening wound could drop a hunter’s HP to one, but a bruise after that might not make it budge at all, since they didn’t bring him any closer to death than he already was.

  And Shane was bleeding. Badly. It meant his regeneration was not fast enough to heal the wound, even with the party buffs.

  They had to reach the boss before Shane ran out of stamina.

  Henry felt the familiar cold grip of anxiety clawing up his throat.

  No.

  Henry shook his head, forcing the rising panic back down. If he let his emotions get the better of him, he would lose focus again.

  But, as if it waiting for Henry to mess up again, he missed a lethal whisper that had hid behind the noise of the battlefield.

  A Paladin drew its greatbow in the shadows of a storefront.

  A heavy iron arrow tore through the air, aimed perfectly at Henry’s temple.

  While he hadn’t even seen it, Shane did.

  Just inches before the metal tip hit Henry’s skull, Shane spun around and thrust his left palm toward it.

  A concentrated burst of flame erupted from his hand.

  The heat was intense enough to almost singe Henry’s eyebrows. The iron arrow vaporized instantly, turning into a cloud of molten slag that fell to the ground.

  Henry stumbled back, avoiding the melted iron, his eyes wide. He subconsciously touched his face, still feeling the hot grit.

  His anxiety, the very thing he was trying to suppress, had actually created a blind spot that almost killed him.

  But the cost of the save was immediate.

  Shane’s breathing, which had been controlled until now, turned ragged. He looked dangerously unstable. Bloody sweat dripped from his chin, staining the pavement.

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  Guilt washed over Henry.

  “I-I’m sorr—”

  “Eyes front,” Shane said, not even looking at him.

  There really was no time for apologies. The brief stop had cost them their momentum.

  The Paladins were pressing in.

  Metallic footsteps echoed from the smoke as their formation shrank around the two hunters. While Shane and Henry were slowed by the tombstones, the minions were unharmed by their master’s skill, and they had closed the gap easily.

  They were surrounded.

  The nearest Paladin raised its massive sword, a towering killer of steel ready to split Shane and Henry in half. There was no room to dodge.

  But just as Shane grabbed Henry’s shoulder to risk a [Blink], the space around the blade began to warp.

  And the massive armored knight was suddenly sucked into a floating, holographic oil painting frame.

  “We’ll hold them here, so go! My [Bind] only lasts for five seconds!”

  It was Luke Hinton.

  Henry’s head whipped around. Through the chaotic gaps in the monster formation, he saw the other parties fighting with a desperate, feral intensity Henry had never seen before.

  “Over here, you ugly bastards!”

  A mage, completely tapped out of mana, was screaming at a Sacred Rose, throwing a glass vial of poison before swinging his staff like a baseball bat at the vines. The others also had so little mana left that they were just hitting the monsters with their weapons or throwing whatever consumable items they had left.

  But was the sheer willpower fueling them?

  They were somehow forcing a path open for them. Throwing their bodies into the fray, they were doing everything possible to draw the aggro of the B-rank monsters.

  The monsters turned their backs on Shane and Henry to engage with the nearest threats.

  They were doing this for them.

  In an A-rank dungeon breach, where even the minions were B-rank elites, to open a path for Shane to reach the boss meant that every single one of them was volunteering to die.

  “Watch out!” Luke yelled.

  Across the street, a ranger had tripped, and two Paladins were bringing their swords down for a killing blow.

  Luke snapped his fingers, casting his [Bind] skill not on the monsters, but on his ally.

  [Canvas Prison]

  A golden fram materialized around the fallen ranger, sucking him into the statis of the picture just as the swords slammed down. CLANG. The blades bounced harmlessly off the holographic frame.

  “What are you waiting for?” Luke screamed at Henry, his eyes bloodshot. “Go!”

  Luke’s [Bind] didn’t last long, but it could work like a shield when used on an ally. He had used his precious cooldown to keep his teammate safe.

  But Henry soon realized, with his stat ranks lowered by the Heaven’s Executioner’s curse, even Luke wouldn’t be able to protect everyone.

  The frame flickered. The five seconds were almost up.

  Before the skill’s effect wore off and the ranger became vulnerable again, Luke lunged forward. He threw a burst of mana-paint into the eyes of the monsters to blind them, knocking them back from the picture frame with his own body.

  The other Paladins, seeing the A-rank Luke as a primary threat, identified him as the primary target. They turned away from the fallen ranger, surrounding Luke in a circle fo steel.

  Shane scowled, a look of genuine annoyance crossing his face, and clenched his jaw.

  Suddenly, all the blood he had spilled on the ground evaporated into a red mist, including Shane’s bleeding shoulder. And at the same time, all the Paladins were engulfed in a massive explosion of crimson fire. The shockwave rattled the windows of the nearby buildings, blowing the smoke away in a violent ring.

  The other hunters froze in shock.

  Even Henry was dumbfounded. His jaw dropped as he looked at Shane’s back.

  “Conserve your mana. Don’t raise your [Shield] until I say so.”

  Shane had told Henry to be stingy with every drop of mana, yet here he was, tearing his own body apart with a reckless stunt…!

  The other party members also recognized the skill that had just attacked the monsters. How could they not? It was the same red flash that had disintegrated the monsters earlier, so the hunters could run away from the battlefield.

  But as the dust settled, the reality of the situation became clear.

  Unlike before, the Paladins didn’t die. Their armor was cracked, capes were burnt, and they stumbled as if wounded, but they were still standing.

  “I knew it…” Luke muttered, his chest heaving as he stared at the scorched Paladin in front of him.

  He took the chance and and jammed his dagger deep into the exposed neck gap of the Paladin, which had been slowed by its injuries. Red blood sprayed over his face.

  Shane’s skill clearly required a heavy price.

  And as they had all seen, Shane was far from his best condition, so of course the effect was weaker than before.

  He should have been saving his mana to pour everything into the boss to end this nightmare. Instead, he was forced to wasted his dwindling strength here, on them, just to keep the decoys from dying.

  Strangely, that fact made Luke furious.

  A hot, acidic anger bubbled up in his chest as he saw his own reflection in the cracked store window.

  He looked around. Other hunters were gritting their teeth as they threw themselves at the slowed Paladins. They were screaming as they struck, but the rage in their eyes was different from before.

  They were angry at themselves.

  “Why did you all become hunters?”

  For some of them, Shane’s previous question lingered in their hearts, reawakening their youthful dreams.

  I became a hunter because I wanted to save people!

  That was the dream. To be the shield, the sword, the hero.

  So why…!

  Why weren’t they enough?

  They unleashed all their frustration, the humiliation of needing help to even be a proper decoy, on the Paladins with all their might.

  “Die! Just die already!”

  Seeing their renewed, desperate determination open up a path, Henry felt an illogical hope spark in his chest.

  Maybe… they could actually win this.

  He tore his eyes away from his party members and focused on Shane.

  There was no time to waste the opening the others had carved out with their blood.

  Together, they weaved through the new gaps in the monster lines, leaving the chaotic skirmish behind. The giant white marble form of the Heaven’s Executioner loomed directly ahead, towering over the destroyed street like a god of judgement.

  They were close.

  A few hundred yards more, and—

  Just as they broke through the last of the Paladins, a mournful, soul-shaking wail filled the air. It felt like a collective scream of every victim buried by the Heaven’s Executioner.

  At the exact same moment, the world seemed to turn gray, and a crimson text popped up aggressively in his vision.

  [You have been afflicted with the Curse: Fear.]

  Ah.

  Henry choked on his own breath, and his legs, which had been pumping with adrenaline, suddenly felt like they were encased in lead.

  Could that be the reason why?

  He saw the ground to his right bulged. He knew the timing. He had successfully dodged a dozen of these already.

  His brain sent the signal to his legs to dive left, just as he had done for the last five minutes.

  But he was a beat too slow.

  BOOM.

  The tombstone exploded, and a white-hot piece of shrapnel tore through his gut.