The Knight King Who Returned with God-Chapter 20 The Hunting Spider (3)

The sandstorm that swept across the city outskirts didn't just obscure visibility.

The fierce winds battered the ground and buildings alike, swallowing up most sounds as well.

Which made it the perfect cover for an ambush. The Yakht Spinner moved out to the perimeter.

"Yafi. This is as far as I go."

A 'Last Order' delivered from the topmost authority.

As the one entrusted with that final will, Yakht Spinner Unit No. 10,253 had only one mission: eliminate all uncertain elements that had invaded the city.

No supplies could be expected.

No repairs were coming.

No reinforcements existed.

Therefore, the only option was victory with maximum efficiency and minimal loss.

Using the sandstorm as camouflage, the Yakht Spinner slowly and cautiously approached the hunters' camp.

The hunters remained on alert with their honed senses, but ultimately, they were still biological beings—they couldn't surpass their physical limits. The Yakht Spinner, on the other hand, was backed by the city itself.

Despite the hunters' clumsy response, the Yakht Spinner meticulously analyzed the camp. A machine knew no carelessness.

It initiated real-time mapping by scanning the perimeter and identifying every single target from afar.

Easily fooling their makeshift vigilance, it surrendered itself to the blowing sand. A multi-legged war machine dissolved into the darkness and the noise of the storm.

"Ugh... Damn. I can't see a thing."

One of the hunters had wandered from the camp to a secluded spot.

The Yakht Spinner immediately scanned the figure.

The recent intruders, though lightly armored, had all worn metal gear. Strangely enough, they wielded melee weapons instead of guns or cannons.

Threat Level: 1.

However, there was the risk of this one alerting others.

The Yakht Spinner had determined that when facing a large group, the optimal strategy was to isolate and eliminate them in small units—lower risk, greater stability.

"Huuuh~~"

The hunter, taking cover behind a building wall to relieve himself, hadn't noticed the Yakht Spinner's presence.

The enormous steel body moved with eerily silent precision—until...

"Hey! What are you doing taking a piss over there?"

"Huh? Jackson?"

The crustacean-like body lowered again. The person who'd approached the hunter—called Jackson—threw an overly friendly arm over his shoulder.

"Wh-What's with you? Why are you acting like this?"

They were both part of the Black Mamba mercenary group, but not close enough for this kind of gesture. Just as the confused hunter began to speak, Jackson whispered:

"Shhh! Keep your mouth shut. Quiet. We need to get out of here. If you don't want to die..."

His voice was nearly inaudible, carried away by the sandstorm—but he was warning his comrade of the enemy's presence.

The other hunter seemed to pick up on the seriousness, because he casually began to walk away without even glancing around—but──

「Kee...p...yo...ur...voi...ce...dow──esca─pe...quietly─don...'t...di──e──」

—Voice file noise filter applied. Sentence reconstruction complete. Playback:

「Shut up. Quiet. We need to get out of here. If you don't want to die...」

—Click!

A secondary joint shifted. The sound of a whip cracking was swallowed by the storm.

The hunters only realized the Yakht Spinner was attacking after the twelfth casualty.

It took a hunter who didn't die instantly—his death throes piercing through the storm—for them to even realize something was wrong.

"KYAAAAAHHHHH!!"

—KWAHHHH!

Even after losing his lower body to a wire cutter, the hunter swung a mana-infused sword in desperation. But his courage was meaningless in the face of the massive shadow that loomed over him.

"N-No..."

A single leg—each weighing over five tons—smashed the Black Mamba mercenary into paste.

—CRUNCH!

The other hunters, rushing to the source of the noise, arrived only to find their comrade crushed beyond recognition... and a Yakht Spinner looming above him, its eyes glowing with malice.

Its joints, smeared with chunks of flesh, creaked and groaned—worn down from years without maintenance or replacement.

The sound was spine-chilling, like the tormented souls of its victims crying out from beyond.

"It's the Yakht Spinner!!"

But the warning, shouted into the sandstorm, was lost before it reached the rest of the group. The Yakht Spinner's brutal firepower had already begun its rampage.

—BOOM! BOOMBOOMBOOM!

Its 60mm autocannons unleashed a merciless barrage. Heavily armored hunters were blown back but survived. The lightly armored ones were torn apart.

It was pure overkill. Excessive force meant to destroy armored vehicles, not people—yet it shredded the hunters without mercy.

Even as the storm pelted concrete with sand and dust, the sound of exploding shells carved itself into their minds like the sickening crunch of meat being minced.

"Take cover! Find cover!"

Although the warning never fully reached them, not a single fool stood idly in the open field.

The hunters quickly dashed toward the buildings, taking shelter from the relentless machine gun fire that pierced through the sandstorm.

Yakt Spinner's wide-angle lens calculated the hunters' escape routes.

It analyzed which building the majority ran into, how aged the structure was, how many rebar reinforcements supported the concrete... all to determine which collapse would cause the greatest casualties.

A railgun slug was loaded into Yakt Spinner's chamber, and electromagnetic forces surged to accelerate the projectile.

-KWAANG!

The slug fired from the 240mm railgun instantly broke through Mach 3, bursting through the air with a sonic boom as it penetrated the building.

-Kujijik!

Exactly five pillars. Yakt Spinner precisely destroyed the structural weak points, and the building where the hunters hid began to crumble with a roar.

"Damn it...!"

Their screams were buried beneath the falling concrete.

The hunters, though superhuman in physical ability, wouldn't die from being buried alone—but taking more than a dozen out of the fight so quickly was still a massive blow.

"Sh-shit! What kind of monster is that?!"

No one dared to leave the building. If they did, they'd be turned to swiss cheese by the machine gun fire.

Yakt Spinner, seeing the cowering hunters, prepared a second volley.

Just as the railgun powered up for another pinpoint collapse—

"Die."

A sound like an artillery shell rang out as something slammed into Yakt Spinner.

-KWAANG!

With a thunderous impact, one of its joints buckled.

For the first time since the ambush began, Yakt Spinner had taken damage. Its wide-angle lens scanned for the attacker—and found him: a towering figure clad in gleaming golden armor, wielding a massive hammer.

-GIIING!

The crushed joint squealed as the internal springs strained and a maintenance warning appeared, but it was ignored.

-KU-KWAKAKAKAKAKANG!

Yakt Spinner retaliated with machine gun fire. The golden warrior raised a shield to block the 60mm shells raining down.

-KIRIK?

But the shield held firm. Despite the brutal barrage, it didn't even crack.

"This is a Legendary-grade shield! You think a few shells are gonna break it? Goldie!"

"I told you not to call me that!!"

Hwang Yeonha's weapon was her fists—her gauntlets, shaped like a lion's mane and glowing with unique-grade magic, consumed mana and activated like rocket thrusters.

-KOOM!

A punch infused with golden energy struck Yakt Spinner's joint, shaking it and pinning it down momentarily.

At that exact moment, a magic circle bloomed in the sky.

"Thanks for holding it still."

Combat Mage Gil Taeseong. He struck down a lightning spell on the immobilized Yakt Spinner.

-KWA-RUNG!

The lightning coursed through its armored shell, unleashing devastating electric shocks. A critical blow for any machine. Within 0.8 seconds, Yakt Spinner ran a self-diagnostic and made a decision:

"Overload detected. Emergency purge initiated. Radar systems offline."

Its hard-earned targeting systems went dark, and now it had to rely solely on its visual sensors. In a surrounded situation, that was a huge disadvantage.

"Authorization granted to use limited resources. Activating RWR devices within the city. Target tracking rerouted."

Hidden observation equipment scattered throughout the ruined city powered on, becoming Yakt Spinner's new eyes.

"Threat level: 3. Priority elimination target identified."

"Oho? Look at this guy."

"It's running! After it!"

Staggering from the sibling duo's assault, Yakt Spinner clambered up nearby buildings to evade their pursuit.

This multi-legged tank, optimized for urban warfare, hopped between rooftops and aimed its 60mm autocannon squarely at a new target:

Gil Taeseong, the mage under heavy protection from the Black Mamba mercenaries.

"Tch."

As shells rained toward him, Gil crushed a marble-shaped magic tool in his hand, triggering a transparent barrier to expand.

-KU-KWA-KWAKANG!

The cannon shells twisted unnaturally, diverted by the field, and exploded harmlessly elsewhere.

"What the hell..."

The mercenaries stared in awe at the strange forcefield as Gil smugly explained:

"This is a distortion-field spell tool designed specifically to counter Yakt Spinner. No firearm can penetrate it."

The strength of firearms lies in their rapid fire and accuracy. But if the impact points are warped, even thousands of bullets become useless.

It was an expensive one-time-use artifact—but necessary when facing a red-difficulty target like Yakt Spinner.

"Anomalous phenomena detected. Beginning maintenance computation."

But this was a killer machine with advanced AI. It had already faced three waves of attackers. Even physics-defying phenomena became solvable data.

"Analysis complete. Strike points: D15, S37, F11."

-TUNG! TUNG! TUNG!

As it continued to dodge through buildings, Yakt Spinner fired single, calculated shots into the distortion field.

Unlike the previous ghostly-accurate impacts, these seemed completely off-target—until the warped bullets suddenly curved like magic and slammed into the sides of the mercenaries' heads.

"Gah?!"

"What the—?!"

No one could have expected such trajectories. The warped shells flew in impossible arcs and hit the hunters dead-on.

"This... this makes no sense!"

Had it really analyzed all that in such a short time? Was that even possible?

"Ma-Mage Gil Taeseong! Turn off the distortion field! We can't defend ourselves like this!"

Shell after shell poured in. Not brute firepower, but sniper-precise shots, calculated by a city-level supercomputer—far beyond human computation.

If only they had gone with a traditional physical barrier instead.

"Damn it! What are you all doing?! Take that thing down!"

As Gil Taeseong shouted urgently, the Hwang siblings and the Golden Lion Guild moved swiftly to eliminate Yakt Spinner. But at that very moment, something caught Hwang Geumcheol's eye, and he yelled out desperately:

"Stop!"

"...?"

At his sudden shout, Hwang Yeonha and the rest of the Golden Lion Hunters froze mid-action. And then, they saw what made him cry out.

'Wires?'

'It wasn't just running away.'

'When did it even set up all this...?'

Wires.

While evading the siblings by hopping between buildings, Yakt Spinner had been embedding wires in every direction.

The entire area was now like a massive spider's web.

A perfect sky trap, locking down the hunters' movements in just a few seconds. And in that crucial moment, Yakt Spinner aimed its railgun at Gil Taeseong.

"N-No...!"

As the slug began to accelerate inside the railgun—suddenly, something strange appeared on Yakt Spinner's rear camera.

-DAGADAK DAGADAK!

"Huh?"

Everyone's expressions twisted in confusion.

Four long, pure-white legs.

A flowing mane like strands of cotton candy swaying gently atop its soft, snowy fur.

But the sheer muscle mass rippling beneath its coat made it clear—this creature was anything but gentle. Its presence was overpowering.

Its identity was—

"A..."

"A..."

"...A?"

"A horse??"

Everyone watched in stunned disbelief as a divine steed, shining with armor and majesty, revealed itself—a Stallion of Light, a mythical beast of noble blood.

"It's been a long time, my old comrade."

Leon threw his arms around the stallion's thick neck, embracing it with all his might. The proud divine beast gladly lowered itself so that its old friend could mount its back.

Gently stroking its radiant mane, Leon pointed his sacred spear at Yakt Spinner and shouted:

"Hear me, warrior!"

In the context of a modern battlefield, the scene looked utterly ridiculous. Yet, the sheer divine aura radiating from the spear and the celestial beast silenced every onlooker.

It wasn't something you rejected with logic—it was something your instincts recognized. This was a being of a different order.

"To charge into many foes alone with such bravery—this Lionheart King commends your valor!"

First, he praised the valiant warrior.

"I bestow upon you the honor of witnessing my royal visage—and the glory of dueling with the Lionheart King himself! I grant you leave to face me in combat, warrior!"

He granted the right to challenge him to a duel.

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Watching this grand, generous display, Hwang Yeonha muttered the honest truth from deep within her heart.

"...Is this guy f*ing insane?"**

In that moment, there wasn't a single soul who could deny they all shared the same thought.