“Are you alright? Hwa-eun?”
“It’s just a slight graze. Don’t worry. Once it stops bleeding, we can apply some hemostatic powder.”
Hwa-eun, who had been holding her hand wrapped in cloth, responded in an effort to reassure me.
However, I wasn't sure if she was just trying to avoid worrying me, so I gently grabbed her wrist to check the wound.
“Let me take a quick look.”
“S-So-ryong...”
Hwa-eun, who had been sleeping next to me for several days because of Seol, seemed a little embarrassed when I held her wrist. I carefully removed the cloth and inspected the injury. As she said, it was just a small wound where her hand had been grazed.
“Hmm. That’s a relief.”
“I told you it wasn’t serious...”
As she said, the bleeding had almost stopped, and after giving her a reassuring smile, I checked on the others to see if anyone else was hurt.
“Is anyone else hurt?”
The little ones responded loudly to my question.
Among our group, Hwa-eun was the only one injured, but there were quite a few injuries among the others. Grandfather, Mandok Shingun, was tending to the wounded.
“Ugh...”
“We’ve set the broken arm and fixed it with wood.”
“I’m sorry, Patriarch. I’ve caused trouble.”
“There’s no need to apologize. It wasn’t your fault. Who could have predicted that stone would bounce like that? Just focus on your recovery.”
“Thank you.”
One of the Tang Clan warriors had broken his arm after being hit by a large stone, and a Beast Palace warrior had received a deep wound in his leg, completely disabling him from combat.
Turning to look at Grandfather’s voice, I saw wounded warriors helping each other tend to their injuries.
Seol, noticing the situation with the Beast Palace warriors, approached us with an expression of disbelief.
“I can’t believe it... They really are that strong. The head of the Twenty-Four Poisons, huh? Is this why?”
“Yeah, Seol. It was just a graze, nothing serious.”
Our first attempt to capture the Bicheon Snake had been when it dove into the water to catch a Hwa-ri.
The valley was long, but there were only three points where the water was deep enough for Hwa-ri to live.
We positioned ourselves at one of those spots, waiting for the snake to appear.
The plan was to trap it with vines and the net made from Yo-hwa’s silk, preventing it from coming out of the water, then weaken it to capture it.
We knew the vines might tear, so they were just meant to delay it, while the real trap was Yo-hwa’s silk net.
But we never expected the snake to fly off with the net, even weighted down by the stones.
I had thought that creatures caught in nets couldn’t fly, but this one’s flying mechanism was different—it felt almost like a supernatural power.
“This... it can fly like this?”
“It’s flying!?”
I thought the snake would escape, but instead, it flew up into the sky and dove down into the ground with tremendous force.
Its dive was fast enough for me to dodge, but the rocks scattered everywhere were another story.
Even the experienced warriors of the Tang Clan, accustomed to quick movements, hadn’t dealt with rocks flying at such a speed.
After three impacts, Grandfather quickly ordered a retreat.
“Everyone fall back!”
By the third impact, the warriors were skilled enough to avoid the flying rocks, but the formation had already been broken, and there were many injuries. It seemed impossible to capture the snake in this state.
If we were to kill it, well, Grandfather might have been able to do it despite the damage, but capturing it at the cost of more casualties seemed like a waste.
While Grandfather tended to the wounded, he spoke in a reflective voice.
“After seeing the snake’s behavior these past few days, it seems we were too careless. When I think back to the Cheongban snake, even a low-level one was that strong. A top-tier one should’ve been approached with more caution.”
I nodded in agreement.
Grandfather’s words made sense. I understood what he meant and gave him a thoughtful look.
He then turned to me with a question.
“Well, then what should we do now? Do you have any ideas, So-ryong?”
It seemed that after the failure of the first attempt, he wanted my professional opinion.
But what was needed right now wasn’t a venom expert’s perspective.
This snake was unlike any creature I had dealt with before.
The expert knowledge I had didn’t seem to apply to it.
We needed a new approach.
“Let me think for a moment.”
‘We need to think outside of what we already know, right?’
Flying, crashing like a missile, scattering debris—this wasn’t something any of the creatures I knew from my past life could do. This situation was beyond the scope of the creatures I had studied.
“This is... unusual.”
As I continued pondering, my thoughts suddenly clicked.
‘Wait, I’ve never caught a creature like this before... The pattern so far is that it flies up and crashes down... Wait, a pattern? Oh! That’s it! This feels like a boss raid from a game!’
After thinking for a moment, I realized that what we were doing felt like a raid against a newly introduced boss. If this was a boss raid, there was only one thing to do.
I snapped out of my thoughts and quickly spoke to Grandfather.
“It seems we need to analyze it more closely.”
“Analyze? Break it down? What do you mean?”
It seemed like the term I was using was unfamiliar in this time.
“By studying its behavior during combat—how it moves, how it attacks, things like that. Once we understand its methods, we’ll know how to counter it.”
“Hm, so you’re saying ‘know your enemy and know yourself,’ right?”
“Yes, but more specifically, today when it flew up and got tangled in the net, don’t you think we should figure out how that happened?”
“That’s right?”
“How did it fly up while wrapped in the net? What are its habits when it attacks? We need to figure out the order of its actions and how we can avoid them.”
“Sounds like the kind of thinking needed in a life-or-death battle.”
“Yes, exactly. We need to learn everything we can about this creature.”
What we needed now was to analyze its attack patterns.
Grandfather, after hearing my thoughts, nodded knowingly and continued.
“Ah, if it’s about how it flew up... I have a suspicion.”
“A suspicion? What do you mean, Grandfather?”
When Hwa-eun asked, Grandfather spoke with a thoughtful expression.
“I believe it could be using Ogi Chungso...”
“Ogi Chungso?”
“Ogi Chungso?”
Grandfather’s mention of Ogi Chungso surprised everyone.
Seeing their reactions, Grandfather nodded and explained.
“When it flew up, I could feel the flow of energy around it. And it rose without moving its body. There’s no other explanation for it.”
I turned to Hwa-eun, wondering what Ogi Chungso was.
Hwa-eun nodded and explained to me.
“Ogi Chungso is a technique in the realm of lightness kung fu, or... well, it’s not exactly lightness kung fu. Usually, when you use lightness techniques, you channel energy through your legs and muscles, making you jump higher or farther. Right?”
“That’s right?”
Certainly, as Hwa-eun said, the lightness kung fu I had learned worked like that.
It was like playing a rhythm game, hitting the beats with my internal energy.
"But Ogi Chungso uses the entire body's internal energy to lift the body using only internal power. To explain it simply, it’s like grabbing your own collar and lifting yourself with your internal energy."
"What kind of nonsense is that...?"
"That's why you need enormous internal energy to perform it."
Hwa-eun’s explanation was about using your internal energy to elevate yourself without any physical movement—lifting yourself by grabbing your own collar with your energy. Even as someone new to martial arts like me, I understood how incredible that was, so I asked with a stunned voice:
"So, does that mean the snake has tremendous internal energy?"
At my question, Grandfather Mandok Shingun, Seol, and Hwa-eun all shook their heads and answered simultaneously:
"No, it’s not internal energy, it’s Neidan, So-ryong."
"It must be Neidan."
"It’s Neidan for sure, Ryong."
"Neidan?"
If it’s Neidan, then it's an essence stored within the body of the Cheongban O-gong mother, which Hwa-eun ate to rapidly improve her martial arts skills.
‘Hwa-eun broke through her limits by eating a lower-level Neidan, so if this creature’s Neidan is higher-grade...’
At the mention of Neidan, everyone's eyes shifted toward the valley where the creature had retreated earlier, their eyes gleaming, and the voices around me continued.
"Hmm... It seems there’s now one more reason why we must catch it."
"So-ryong, we must definitely catch it."
I could understand why everyone was excited about the mention of Neidan, but internal energy can be cultivated over time, so why cut open a rare creature’s belly for it?
‘That’s not something that can be done carelessly.’
However, if I flatly rejected the idea, it would be hard to convince everyone.
In a situation where it seemed like they were going to say we should kill it immediately, I cautiously spoke up.
"Still, we should capture it alive."
"Why, So-ryong?"
"Why? So-ryong?"
"Don’t we know little about spiritual creatures? If we want to learn how it creates Neidan and other such things, we must capture it alive. Who knows? Maybe there’s a way to extract Neidan from it, or we can gather it as it forms."
The mention of it possibly being a goose that lays golden eggs.
Hearing my words, Grandfather nodded thoughtfully.
"Ah, So-ryong, so what should we do now?"
The conversation had veered off with the mention of Neidan, but what we needed to do to analyze its pattern was still clear.
‘When raiding a new boss, the strategy is always the same: headbutt it until the pattern is figured out.’
"We need to keep attempting to capture it while observing all its habits and attack patterns."
There was nothing too complicated about it.
When a new boss appears, the typical approach is to keep attacking until the pattern is understood.
***
Our 21st attempt on the Bicheon Snake.
‘Collision pattern analysis.’
"Avoid it!"
The creature issued a warning sound and crashed into the stone ground, causing rocks to scatter in all directions.
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Everyone quickly distanced themselves before the collision, dodging the flying debris, as the creature shook its head and tried to rise into the air again.
We couldn’t allow it to take off, so I immediately shouted toward Gu Pae Daju.
"Gu Pae Daju!"
Shouting towards the rocks, Gu Pae Daju immediately rushed toward the creature, as promised.
When Gu Pae Daju got into range, the creature halted its flight and dove straight at him.
‘Now the squeeze pattern should start.’
"Get out of there!"
I managed to hold onto the creature to prevent it from rising again, but this was a critical moment. If we didn’t act quickly, the creature would turn and coil around anyone it passed.
What we learned from the 20 previous tries was that the creature wasn’t a venomous snake but a constrictor.
It wasn’t a snake that killed by biting; it strangled with its massive body instead.
So, the moment it brushed past us was the most dangerous.
I hadn’t realized that at first, and almost lost Gu Pae Daju because of it.
"Dok-hyeol Daju!"
"Yes!"
Gu Pae Daju quickly darted away, and I signaled to Dok-hyeol Daju.
As the creature’s head turned toward Gu Pae Daju, Dok-hyeol Daju swiftly approached from behind and kicked at it.
The creature immediately turned its body toward Dok-hyeol Daju, its focus now shifted.
Next, the aggro ping-pong would rotate between Grandfather, Hwa-eun, and Seol.
As the raid leader, I climbed onto a high rock to oversee and coordinate the raid.
I might look like a cheat for doing this, but there was a reason I had to.
Our raid party had no tank, no healer, no buffer, no debuffer.
We only had damage dealers.
‘Who the hell formed this party?’
In a situation where I might want to curse at the party leader, it turned out that I was the one who gathered everyone, so I had to take responsibility.
‘My party luck is terrible.’
Grandfather Mandok Shingun, Hwa-eun, Gu Pae Daju, and the rest of the Dok-hyeol Daju were damage-dealer types specializing in poison damage, while Seol and the other high-level warriors from Beast Palace were hunter-type damage dealers.
It was like a party full of thieves and close-range hunters.
An 8-person party, but we were walking on a knife’s edge, relying solely on our fragile dealers, exchanging extreme aggro ping-pongs, walking on the edge of death.
That was the Bicheon Snake raid, and the analysis of its attack patterns.