Chapter 33: Vol.2 – Episode 8
Sungjin ran ahead with a shout.
He was a swordsman on a one-on-one duel.
If he could approach her and make it close combat, he could calculate all the possibilities to overcome all his physical disadvantages against her with his swordsmanship.
It was obvious that he was planning to not give her a chance to use her skills.
To answer his attack, Eustasia, who was a famous general with her great combat skills, dropped her sword.
But starting with a fist fight was not her intention.
The next moment, her sword cut the air.
“The Sword of Heaven’s Will!”
That was the name of the greatest sword of the four kingdoms.
Her sword flew to cancel the distance between them and started to attack Sungjin.
The sword made a sound as it tore the air and flew to Sungjin’s heart.
Sungjin twisted his body to escape it, but the sword turned horizontally to follow him.
He barely made it out, but Eustasia’s sword raised up to drop back down like a drill.
Sungjin’s movement was reaching the limit of the human body while her sword was beyond the limit of the human body.
The distance was the best barrier. Her class was an archer, she kept a safe distance while attacking her opponent.
But she was not just an archer.
An archer alone couldn’t do what she was doing. Her arrow changed direction freely, and when Sungjin stopped one, it still came back to hit him even stronger.
That was why the people called her the greatest general of the four kingdoms.
Sungjin’s swordsmanship was strong only if he could approach his opponent, and her power was making that useless.
That was her famous ultimate skill—the Sword of Heaven’s Will.
The passive skill that she could use without a cooldown time made her an archer-classed swordsman.
Sungjin’s position became more dire.
He leaned back to avoid the sword raising up, but in the next moment, the sword cut horizontally and cut off his hair.
He survived by a distance of one centimeter.
He was barely making it. He had no chance to approach Eustasia; stopping and avoiding her sword was getting overwhelming.
“Ha. Next time, I will cut your throat.”
Eustasia declared her victory.
No one was able to say that she was wrong... apart from Ereka.
“It is clear that now is the time Sungjin would use his plan that he kept hidden.”
“Do you... really think so? I don’t think there is one...” said Rittier next to her, but Ereka put her hands together.
“Didn’t he do the same for his other fights?”
“Hmm. Hmm. That is true.”
“And when we had to attack the Blood Ruler, I knew that it was challenging for him when he said I would make us win. But this time, he was confident just like that time when he fought the three knights. So I’m sure that he has a secret plan that we don’t know.”
“Do you see the difference?”
“Of course, I’m always keeping my eyes on him... oops.”
Ereka covered her blushing cheeks with her palms.
As she expected, Sungjin was not standing there to let Eustasia hit him. He pushed a little button on a column.
“The real fight starts now.”
Heavy smoke filled up the temple after the sounds of explosions.
In a second, Eustasia lost her sight. Well, Sungjin lost his sight as well.
A smoke bomb.
He activated a device called a smoke bomb.
If fair to both sides, the owner of the battlefield could place any device in. That was the right of the owner of the battlefield. So Sungjin decided to plant a smoke bomb that would cover the sight of all on the battlefield.
It was not difficult for him as the owner of the kingdom to order such simple construction.
Eustasia quickly moved her sword again, but Sungjin wasn’t there.
Ha. This is a good one.
Eustasia wasn’t angry that her fierce attack had been interrupted. She was laughing it away.
Yeah. I expected a fight like this.
She expected Sungjin to know about her ultimate skill. He was too brilliant be to someone who didn’t do his homework.
Disrupt sight to approach the opponent—this was a plan she had never seen from the other heroes.
It was a refreshing countermeasure that heroes could not think of because they were busy thinking of their skills and magical items.
Was it possible for him to think of this because he is a level 0?
But he had never seen this kind of thing from any other extra. She thought maybe Sungjin was just special.
But that is not enough.
Her sword had the heaven’s will; his trick couldn’t stop such a great sword.
She activated her Heroic Power to maximize her senses.
“Heaven’s Net.”
There was nothing that could escape Heaven’s Net.
Her visual and auditory senses fortified to let her detect all the movement in the smoke and the quietest sounds in the temple.
Two privileges were given to the archer class: one was sight over a long distance; the other one was an overwhelming sensory power.
When she activated her first skill, the smoke bomb was not a problem.
There!
Her sword attacked where Sungjin was without mercy.
Bam!
But her sword couldn’t reach Sungjin.
Eustasia realized what was stopping her sword.
The columns!
The numerous columns in the temple were not for decoration.
He is not bad. He really thought of a lot of ways to approach me.
An ultimate skill that wouldn’t allow for close contact also meant if he could approach her. He could fight her with one less ultimate skill.
But...
That didn’t make Eustasia panic. She was rather enjoying the situation, and more Heroic Power blasted off from her.
You don’t know one thing.
“Judgement.”
Her sword roared and shook the air.
The columns started to vibrate, and the columns that were blocking her sword were sliced in half to cut off Sungjin hiding behind them.
That was another one of her skills.
She could maximize the slicing power of her sword, and with her ultimate skill, the power increased dramatically.
After slicing Sungjin behind a column, she flipped her hair.
He lost because he didn’t know that her attack was strong enough to cut the columns.
Well, even if he made it out, she still hasn’t used her last skill yet.
Zunk.
In the next moment, blood spurted from her arm.
Something sharp had struck her.
She was surprised by an unexpected cut but only for a very short time. On her next breath, she found her calmness back. She got rid of the sharp object and circulated her Heroic Power to heal her wound.
Is this an ... arrow? No, it is not just an arrow.
It was a bolt from a crossbow, but it was a different kind of bolt from what she had seen.
Unlike a bow, a crossbow was a weapon launched by mechanical power. It was a revolutionary weapon on Earth, which was easy to handle for the inexperienced but also capable of better precision and stronger destructive power.
It allowed for a newly-recruited, untrained person to destroy an experienced knight’s armor, shaking up the class order in the middle age. Due to its power and characteristics, one of the popes prevented its use among Christians.
Here, it was just a meaningless object in this world where only archers with Heroic Power existed.
But a person who could find a proper use for it was holding it at the moment.
Sungjin ordered a blacksmith to make a crossbow and was using it at the temple with the help of crystals.
Sungjin ran among the columns while re-loading it again.
Unlike a sword, he never learned how to use a bow.
Although he was a brilliant person who knew how to make his movements under his calculation, it was impossible to master archery overnight. But a crossbow was different. By using a crossbow that relied on mechanical power in the temple where there was no wind, he could hit his mark.
I know you have skills, but my knowledge is my skill.
Eustasia also recognized that Sungjin couldn’t do much unless he approached her.
Whatever it is, if he can attack me efficiently from this distance, I’m sure he is using some kind of a bow.
Just like her sword that was not a “bow” but could still attack from a distance.
The archer class had lower defense compared to a knight, and they couldn’t avoid attacks with reflexes like that of a warrior.
The damage from a magical bolt using crystals was not something she could ignore.
But one thing was still not clear to her: she definitely cut him into two pieces, but he was still attacking her.
She dialed up her senses to the max.
Wait... the sound of his movements and his silhouette, are there... no, there... what?
Then she finally realized that the “pipes” on the columns that looked like decoration were letting out sounds that made it tricky to find the origin of the sound.
That was not the only trick.
There were dim silhouettes behind the smoke, but they were illusions that only “looked” like decorations.
This temple was architected for such purposes.
Ha. Now I see. Those are devices that can be used by both of us, so it is fair. But he filled the temple up with them.
It was a symmetrical structure, but Sungjin was the one who was using the temple freely to confuse the archer with her augmented sensory abilities.
This was a bold counterattack that was tearing up the net that was impossible to escape from.
So that is your skill, huh?
If he was fighting against other heroes, they would have been foaming at the mouth in rage. But she was not like the other heroes.
She accepted that intelligence was a power equivalent to skill.
So she didn’t get caught off-guard or became angry.
She was thinking about how to defeat Sungjin calmly and serenely. And she didn’t take much time to come up with her answer.
I will destroy you.
With her dominant power, a trick was unnecessary.
Her opponent already studied everything to prepare for this fight. If she tried to use a trick, that would be what he wanted. Using her dominant power of a level 7 to slay him, that was the most definite way to defeat him.
Her sword flew without a moment’s rest.
Her sword sliced through every movement of Sungjin no matter if it was real or an illusion. At the same time, she destroyed the obstacles that were protecting Sungjin.
To cut the columns, she consumed a considerable amount of her Heroic Power activated her skill “Judgement,” but she wasn’t worried.
She had already figured that she could catch Sungjin before she ran out of Heroic Power.
But Sungjin wasn’t waiting for her to catch him. He kept throwing her into confusion while moving and aiming at her with his crossbow.
But that was not a threat to Eustasia anymore.
No use.
Her sensory ability was at its highest.
She could hear the vibrations of the air around her when a bolt was coming to her.
Once she heard the sound, she used her tremendous reflexed of level 7 to avoid it.
This needed a lot of focus.
She didn’t just have high physical abilities; she was a general trained for battles, but she was worried about something else.
You are losing your protection devices one-by-one. I’m sure you will not keep depending on your crossbow that is not even working.
She knew he would approach her suddenly.
She was convinced that he was waiting for the moment when she lost her focus because that would be the only moment he had of defeating her.
But you won’t get that moment.
She was sure she wouldn’t lose her focus. She would keep her guard up until the end of this fight.
As soon as he came near, she would kill him even before he could use his sword with her third and her secret skill.
More columns disappeared.
She was cornering Sungjin and his illusions.
It was clear that he didn’t have much time left.
This was the moment he had to finish this fight.
Bolts flew toward Eustasia from three different directions.
It had to be simultaneous launch by machines since Sungjin didn’t have the skill to replicate that himself.
Now!
He tried to finish this fight by distracting her with three bolts to approach her. She raised her Heroic Power even higher to fight back.
She cleared the bolt facing her and avoided the bolt from her back by stepping to the side while making a turn.
She jumped to avoid the bolt coming toward her leg.
The moment she was jumping seemed to open up a weak point, but that was the moment she was waiting for.
She was about to use her ace to finish him, and as she expected, Sungjin didn’t miss that moment.
“Game over,” he declared with confidence, but he didn’t approach her.
Instead, the temple collapsed.
“What?”
The columns were falling down.
The walls collapsed.
With the sound of an explosion, the roof of a few thousand tons of weight fell down to crush everything underneath.
Gravity was a simple phenomenon due to natural power, but the power and range of its destruction were as huge as an ultimate spell of a wizard.
Eustasia quickly tried to fight back the falling pieces of the roof, but it was not enough to stop anything.
In the middle of a glorious demolition, the smoke cleared.
Sungjin was looking at her, standing in the exact position where he started.