He was currently clearing out a stinghawk nest.
Seo-yul was right in the middle of his extermination quest, where he had to eliminate the queen of the swarm, and he only had three days left to pull it off. He hung up the phone, thinking that he had thought he moved fast — but the queen had managed to mass-produce soldier stinghawks at an insane speed.
Then again, that didn't really matter as long as he could still move. In the end, he just needed to kill the queen.
Except that as he charged forward, he was abruptly stopped by a barrage of steel bullets.
It was a specific type of stinghawk that fires its stingers like actual bullets. Since this creature burns a massive amount of energy to create them, the queen usually avoided this type of attack, which meant they must have been prepared well in advance.
If he wasted any more time, he was going to end up completely surrounded.
So Seo-yul hurled his portal. He could deal with these creatures by utilizing the dungeon's traps, and the portal would force them to lose their balance.
Seo-yul seized the opening to blitz through the entire forest. Various types of stinghawks lunged straight at him, and he noticed that the enemy's behavior pattern had shifted. Some of them were purposefully clinging to the ground to keep from getting sucked into the portal.
But then she emerged. The creature that had been watching Seo-yul from the very beginning. The Stinghawk Queen.
He felt a bit flattered. The queen was throwing absolutely everything she had at him to kill him — but fortunately for her, he had a plan too.
Since he couldn't just have monsters respawning for no reason, this was his one and only move. He opened a portal and dove right in to evade the monsters. Determined to be as fast as humanly possible, he blitzed through a huge portion of the forest using the portal, constantly leaping and skipping sections until he finally tracked down the queen.
The air was heavily polluted, and the queen's pheromones were growing suffocatingly intense, summoning the entire rest of the nest to protect her. That right there was also a trap.
Even so, relying on his sixth sense, Seo-yul dodged the first strike from this evolved insect, which was vastly more powerful than the others. Running from the beast, Seo-yul realized he hadn't been expecting a creature of this caliber. She must be truly desperate to kill him.
Even with that size, this gargantuan creature ended up creating a bit of a disadvantage for herself. It meant that when he struck, the queen would be totally exposed.
So Seo-yul threw the soldier insect inside the portal and attempted to push forward against the queen. However, the creature escaped the portal by severing its own arm and threw itself right on top of Seo-yul.
Right in front of the queen, Seo-yul snapped back that they were being a massive pain, and that no matter how hard they tried, the outcome wasn't going to change. And since he couldn't manage to send just one, he sent everyone into the portal together — the soldier and the queen.
This hadn't been part of his original plan, but it would have to do, because now they were inside Seo-yul's domain.
He had already given them the best advice he possibly could, warning them that if he were them, he wouldn't move an inch.
The soldier charged straight at him, of course, and Seo-yul muttered that he was losing his mind for trying to have a conversation with a monster.
First he activated the iron rain. The projectiles flew straight toward the queen and the soldier, but they shielded themselves by flapping their wings. However, the arrows weren't coming from just one direction, so the soldier took a direct hit, and immediately after ended up completely carbonized by another trap.
Seo-yul spoke to the queen. "Now that your greatest weapon is gone, we're finally all alone."
He lunged forward, thinking that the queen's armor was durable enough to deflect the arrows, meaning he desperately needed to find a weak spot. Even with his spear attacks, he tried to force an opening, but he was repelled yet again.
It was never going to be that easy.
There were only three days left before the quest expired. He had plenty of time, but he wanted to wrap this up immediately. If he abandoned the dungeon just because he had time to spare, it would be exactly like running away from a bug.
So he deployed the explosive block trap. The impact was devastating, flipping the queen completely onto her backside and tearing away several of her legs.
That drastically reduced his weapon's durability — but it was a martial art of pure destructive power that he unleashed immediately after. He said that if he was going to use this technique for the very first time, it was only fitting to use it on the Stinghawk Queen.
It was the Crimson Lotus, a blazing fiery strike that tore right through and slaughtered the queen, instantly completing his quest.
The dominant hand he used to wield the spear was badly injured due to the sheer force of that strike.
He thought to himself about how he had saved countless people up until now. Yet in the end he was still just a weakling, completely defenseless when facing truly powerful monsters. But now he knew for a fact that he didn't need to run away anymore.
The quest reward was sent directly to his inventory, and the first thing he needed to do was check it.
He managed to snag a venomous stinger, a rare weapon with far more durability than his spear, featuring a unique effect that granted a ninety-five percent chance to paralyze monsters ranked two stars or below upon attacking. For three stars or above, that probability plummeted to thirty percent. He could easily adapt this depending on the situation, and honestly, it could turn out to be incredibly useful.
However, the true jackpot was the Stinghawk Queen's royal jelly.
Long story short, it permanently and massively boosted his mana sensitivity — but it came with a catch. Over time he had realized that whenever a labyrinth trap is triggered, mana is automatically consumed. Therefore, to scale up his traps, he desperately needed a larger mana pool.
He gulped down the royal jelly without a single hitch and instantly felt a violent storm of mana surging deep within his body, aggressively trying to force its way out.
After everything Seo-yul had been through, he wasn't about to let this raw energy break him. He completely suppressed the mana, entirely reshaping his constitution, and his senses became incredibly sharp — all thanks to a tiny piece of royal jelly.
Then again, maybe that was to be expected. His stats, especially his total mana, skyrocketed. It wasn't for nothing that he had put his life on the line to complete that quest.
Still, he couldn't help but wonder what the side effects might be. Sure, aside from having to forcefully tame the mana to avoid any complications, he was completely in the dark, so he figured he'd cross that bridge when he got to it.
The real main event was finally starting now. He was going to incorporate all of these monsters into his dungeon.
Up until this point the only creatures he had were ghouls and goblins. No matter how powerful he personally was, there was a strict limit to what he could accomplish entirely on his own, so he badly needed a backup stock.
The system chimed in, stating that a hive is treated as a single entity, and highly recommended installing a decomposition pool for it. This was the brand-new trap unlocked by slaughtering the queen. If he submerged a monster's corpse into the decomposition pool, the spectral essence of that carcass would be seamlessly transferred to a designated monster — which meant that if he applied the pool's effect to this hive, every single egg would hatch significantly more powerful.