Editors: Spade, Roki
Proofreader: Sapphire
The path to the temple was easier to traverse than the forest.
Monsters could be heard screeching and growling on either side of them, but strangely enough, they didn’t charge straight at them all at once. A couple of them would approach, only to quickly retreat when the Hunters attacked.
Ki Joohyuk, annoyed by the monsters’ behavior, brandished his rod and grumbled, “Come on! Come here, I said, you scaredy bastards!”
It was then that the monsters attacked. The most grotesque-looking of them came soaring through the air, prompting Ki Joohyuk to scream and hide in terror. While Han Arin smacked him on the back and urged him to get a grip, Shin Jian grabbed the monster by the throat and threw it aside. Ki Joohyuk whimpered, and when Sa Hyeon called his name, he looked up at their leader with pleading eyes.
“Keep your mouth shut,” Sa Hyeon warned sternly, and Joohyuk promptly obeyed. Seeing Sa Hyeon’s smile in the darkness, the other Hunters straightened up stiffly. After that, the way into the temple was fairly quiet, and took no time as Na Gunwoo provided constant buffs. However, as soon as they entered the temple, the light emanating from the end of his rod suddenly disappeared.
“Ah, the buff disappeared…”
Whoosh.
Like a candle being extinguished, the invading black smoke snuffed the light out. In an instant, a chilly breeze blew in, causing Ki Joohyuk to yelp before immediately covering his mouth with both hands. He remembered Sa Hyeon’s warning and looked around discreetly, his breath escaping through his fingers; luckily, Sa Hyeon’s gaze was fixed elsewhere.
Yisun started reconstructing his surroundings the moment they entered, but even before that, eerie sounds had been echoing within the building. Scratching noises on the walls and distant wails filled the area. Eventually, as Yisun restored the collapsed walls and pillars, the sounds became less pronounced, yet could still be heard.
Moreover, with no torches or proper lighting inside the temple, it was just as dark as outside.
“It’s still not working…”
“Save your mana.”
Na Gunwoo tried to cast a buff once more, but the light simply flickered out. When he used the skill, a haunting sound echoed through the space. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. The more they advanced, the louder the sound grew, causing Han Arin to mutter dazedly, “Okay, now…Someone tell me, we didn’t sign up for a haunted house experience, did we…”
At that, the Hunters laughed out loud for a moment. Just as someone retorted, “How can there be such a grand haunted house,” a sudden breeze rushed in, silencing the crowd. The wind violently whipped through the pillars, and the sound accompanying it was sharp and deafening, not unlike a scream or the piercing scratching of a wall.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Above.” Sa Hyeon’s voice sharply cut through the space. The Hunters immediately looked up, and at the same time, monsters began crawling down the walls. Ki Joohyuk nearly fainted at the scene.
Shadows on the floor darkened, then surged upwards like a wave, crashing into the monsters. The quickly descending monsters were caught in the shadow wave, screaming as they were helplessly slammed into the floor. The dark surroundings only served to enhance Sa Hyeon’s power, and so, not only did the shadow waves knock them down, but they also completely crushed them.
Without him needing to say any words, the Hunters immediately grasped his intentions and attacked the monsters. It seemed that the space didn’t completely nullify magic, as their magical attacks were cast successfully. The monsters’ screams echoed fiercely through the space.
And so, they moved forward. Even in the darkness, Sa Hyeon could see all the approaching monsters. One by one, he struck them down and swept them into one place with waves and whirlwinds of shadows. Nothing stood in Sa Hyeon’s path as he led the way forward. The Hunters behind him breathed a sigh of relief and calmly dealt with the monsters.
“There are too many, they just keep coming out…” Han Arin grumbled, extending her staff and striking a monster that was descending from the pillar. Shin Jian nodded as she gripped the head of the fallen monster and slammed it into the wall. Despite the powerful action, she didn’t even break a sweat.
“It’s also strange that they keep coming down from above. They’re descending from pillars and walls, but there should be a source somewhere above.”
“Right. At this rate, this’ll never end…” As they talked, Sa Hyeon slowly scanned the vast ceiling. His black eyes scanned upward in silence, and then he smiled. “Above the altar.”
In the center of the temple stood a large altar, with a statue of Artemis floating above it. Monsters were pouring down from her lower body as she stared into space with her hands outstretched in front of her. The lower body of the Ephesian Artemis was a narrow cylindrical shape carved with the shapes of dozens of beasts. Small monsters fell down from it and grew larger once they landed.
The sight of them descending from the ceiling, scaling the walls, or crawling down the columns like “sassafras was quite bizarre. What’s more, the further down they went, the more legs they had, and the larger they grew.
“Th, the monster spawning method is a scam…” Ki Joohyuk muttered to himself as he watched the scene, then suddenly gasped and took a deep breath. “Ey–ey–eyes…! Our eyes met!!”
“You be quiet!”
“It’s really looking this way,” Sa Hyeon confirmed while Han Arin grew agitated from Ki Joohyuk’s outburst. His voice was exceptionally calm, but the Hunters still couldn’t help feeling uneasy. The statue’s dark eyes were directed straight at them.
[May all of you become Sacrifices…]
The grim voice echoed through the space. It wasn’t a mere cry, but it echoed through the temple like a forewarning of some impending beginning, and monsters fell from above like raindrops. The corners of Sa Hyeon’s mouth curved up.
Suddenly, the surroundings grew darker, and a massive wave of shadows surged up. Shadows as tall as pillars swept the approaching monsters all at once. They struck again and again, knocking them to the ground. Black hands emerged from between the waves, grabbing the legs of the monsters clinging to the walls and pillars and throwing them to the ground.
Sa Hyeon, who bought time by tossing all the nearby monsters far into the distance, spoke briefly, “You guys deal with the ones down here.”
With those words, Sa Hyeon disappeared from sight and reappeared on a pillar right next to the boss monster before charging at it, his attacks as swift as lightning. Han Arin also leapt forward, using her Earthquake ability to raise the earth and attack the statue; but then, something strange happened.
As the statue stepped back to avoid Sa Hyeon’s attack, Han Arin’s staff immediately pierced through the monster’s body, yet did no damage. It wasn’t that the attack didn’t work, but it only passed through the boss monster’s body as it turned translucent. Han Arin twisted her mouth in confusion. The boss monster flickered out and reappeared elsewhere. It was still floating by the ceiling, so Shin Jian stomped on the pillars and walls to rise up and kick it, but once again, the statue’s body turned translucent and disappeared.
However, whenever the statue turned translucent, it would no longer summon monsters. Sa Hyeon noticed this and immediately followed the statue’s movements to attack, with Han Arin and Shin Jian exchanging glances and quickly following up. Gradually, the number of monsters summoned by the statue decreased, but there were still many monsters on the ground.
“Hah, hah… Restorer-nim, it feels like, like I’m dying….”
While the battle raged above, chaos equally reigned on the ground below. Sa Hyeon created some distance by throwing the monsters off, but soon enough, they recovered and started scaling the walls again. The way they crawled up the walls and pillars to attack instead of charging at them on the floor made for an extremely eerie sight.
As they approached, dripping with blood, Ki Joohyuk clung to Yisun, tears streaming down his face. Amid the Hunters being taken aback by the situation, he found comfort in the still-composed Yisun.
“Calm down. Um, you can think of them as…. bugs?”
“That’s even more terrifying!”
“Eh, or treat it like an arcade game?”
“That’s on a screen, and this is real life!”
Yisun wasn’t particularly good at comforting people, and Ki Joohyuk ended up sobbing and gasping for air. Yisun patted him on the back with a concerned face, but his gaze naturally drifted upwards.
Something was off. Although Sa Hyeon, Han Arin, and Shin Jian were attacking the statue to hinder its summoning of subordinate monsters, their combined attacks hadn’t made a single scratch on the boss monster. One moment the attack seemed to pierce its body, the next it turned translucent and disappeared into the distance. This only seemed to drain their strength. They weren’t showing any signs of exhaustion so far, but if this went on for a few hours…
The fact that it wasn’t casting targeted attacks like Zeus did in the third dungeon was even more unusual. Was it stalling for time to cast some powerful attack…?
But the time for such contemplation was running out. As the boss monster moved, it dropped its minions at intervals, and they crawled down pillars and walls, slowly closing in on them. The Hunters had split into three teams with Yisun in the center, but the threat of the monsters was great. Suddenly, a six-legged monster crawled like a spider and flew in Ki Joohyuk’s direction.
“Uaaagh!” Ki Joohyuk screamed and swung his rod.
With the darkness fueling his unease, he instinctively cast a magic attack. The fire elemental magic, which Sa Hyeon had warned him to use with caution until he checked his condition, lit up the space in an instant.
A pillar of fire crashed into the creature, slamming it to the ground. It didn’t take long for the monster to die. He even managed to kill a half-dozen nearby monsters on the way as well; they seemed to have low fire resistance.
“Haah, haah…” As the Hunters watched Ki Joohyuk breathing heavily, they noticed the silence that reigned in the area.
The entire temple was deathly quiet.
“……?”
The monsters that had been crawling all over the ceiling and walls stopped moving. In this strange silence, Yisun blinked slowly before casting his gaze forward. A faint glimmer of light remained in the space where Ki Joohyuk had cast his magic a moment ago. The embers were slowly sizzling out of life.
All of a sudden, the embers flared up dramatically and spread like wildfire. Even though Ki Joohyuk hadn’t cast any more magic, the fire grew larger, and in that now well-lit space, the Hunters could see their surroundings clearly.
Every single monster was staring at Ki Joohyuk. From every single direction, their eyes fixated on him.
The moment he sucked in a breath, they rushed towards where he was standing. Their movements were much faster and far more violent than before. On top of that, the boss monster’s menacing aura from above seemed to chill even the air.
[You dare…]
“Oh, uh-oh, my bad!! I was wrong!!!”
The Hunters, including Ki Joohyuk, frantically stepped back, widening the gap between them and the monsters. However, an even stranger situation unfolded: the large flaring fire was chasing him as well. Stretching thin and long, it seemed to follow his every step.
Chaos ensued as the Hunters dodged both the raging flames and the monsters scaling the walls. Ki Joohyuk hurriedly summoned water to extinguish the flames, but they refused to go out. And although the monsters had weak resistance to fire damage, they compensated for it with a stronger “recoil”.
Yisun was momentarily at a loss amidst the retreating Hunters, but quickly regained his composure. He mentally visualized the space, then took a scant breath and stepped forward. The Hunters, taken aback at his sudden action, tried to stop him, but he was faster.
They were now in a separate area within the temple, surrounded by walls. Yisun recalled the space he had restored earlier. More precisely, he recalled the state of the collapsed temple. There were too many monsters, and water did nothing to extinguish the flames in front of them. In that case…
“Re, Restorer-nim!!”
The moment Yisun stepped forward, tiny gold particles appeared in space. The gold dust fragments fell from the wall and rushed towards Yisun.
With a loud crash, the wall crumbled as the hidden power holding everything together was withdrawn. The burning flames were quickly extinguished by the rubble, and the approaching monsters were crushed to death by the collapsing wall. The incredible sight left the Hunters in awe, their mouths agape.
As Yisun breathed a sigh of relief, a long arm stretched out from the rubble.
“Ah.”
The monster, still breathing, grabbed his arm and pulled him down.
Min: … Poor Ki Joohyuk, he wasn’t made for horror dungeons, can’t blame him… he did get clowned a lot tho(affectionately) 
One more chapter and we wrap up the 4th volume! I’ll be adding the volume extras(netizen comments) once I have the time and energy to translate those adsdfsf, happy reading !
Thanks for the update 🤣❤️🤣❤️🤣
Thanks for the chapter, but we are unable to view the exhibits.
Someone will have punishment after this dungeon
Thank you for your translation ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️