“As you wish... I’ll cook you slowly, with care.”
Murmuring so,
the man stared at him.
The moment Junggu saw those eyes,
he suddenly thought,
‘Should I run?’
He had to get away from that one.
The thought swallowed him whole.
And then he panicked.
‘Why am I... suddenly?’
Fighting that man was surely what he himself had wanted—
yet the thought that flashed through his head,
he couldn’t rationally explain why it had appeared.
But it was
a kind of instinct all life is born with.
For humans living in modern society,
who repeat days that are so ordinary and safe,
that instinct had grown unnecessary and half-fallen asleep—
ancient and old.
However,
Junggu was a warrior who had fought for many years.
Through countless battles against countless enemies,
he’d naturally
observed an opponent’s muscular shifts and body language,
each vector of movement and the eyes,
and the intent housed within.
‘Ah. I see.’
Those many experiences
stirred awake the instinct that had lain dormant for being “useless.”
‘He... isn’t seeing me as human.’
To flee from a predator—
that very instinct one must be born with as prey
was now screaming like this:
‘He’s seeing me... as prey!’
The fear that ought to seize any quarry before a hunter
gripped his whole body.
That hunter—
the man with the cold, hollow eyes—murmured in a small voice:
“Shop screen.”
At that,
Junggu flinched back to himself.
‘Is he going to buy a weapon?’
Stop him!
The dagger he used looked like a standard shop-bought piece.
Dull enough that it couldn’t withstand Park Junggu’s attacks, it had already had its edge chewed up by two exchanges.
He couldn’t rationally explain why those eyes had cowed him so,
but objectively,
the fight favored him overwhelmingly right now.
His feet had paused for a moment under the fear in those eyes,
but his reason—judging he had to keep the favorable flow—went straight to action.
“...For the sake of glorious struggle!!!”
[Skill - Barbaric Roar resounds.]
[During combat, Trait - Intermediate Valor applies.]
[During combat, combat power greatly increases, and the status ailment ‘Fear’ is removed.]
With a great shout,
he used the [Barbarian] skill to overcome fear, sprang to his feet,
and charged the man before him.
PWAT!
Then,
with the same indifferent eyes, the man flicked a dagger at him.
KAANG!
It wasn’t hard to bat that dagger aside.
He only had to stick out the hand not holding the axe and pop it away with his gauntlet.
‘A small dagger’s throwing force can’t be strong to begin with.’
The dagger itself didn’t have any skill attached.
Unless it targeted a defenseless vital, it was hard-pressed to pierce his armor.
Normally,
if he swung the great axe in his other hand from here, he could shut the man down.
But—
‘The dagger I deflected earlier... went for my back.’
That inexplicable attack
had kept him from being able to swing at the enemy.
In the end—
“Damn it!”
At the very moment he should’ve been swinging,
he shot out his hand and grabbed the dagger he’d just deflected.
With that,
the dagger he’d popped away wouldn’t be circling back for his back again.
“Shop kitchen knife. Purchase.”
In the man’s hand—
there was a fresh, intact dagger.
‘Kitchen knife? Did he just say kitchen knife?’
The fact that the “dagger” he’d assumed was a dagger was actually a kitchen knife was absurd,
but the fight was still ongoing.
“...Still just a shop-bought weapon!”
So even if the advantage of having stolen his weapon was gone,
at best, this only made them even again.
“Hrrmp!”
Junggu swung the axe again.
The man, same as before,
flipped his blade into a reverse grip and blocked.
‘I don’t know how, but... that dagger throw is dangerous.’
A dagger that, even when parried, curved back as if it had a will.
A moment ago he’d poured power into the axe and shoved the man back,
but this time—the opposite.
‘Don’t give him space.’
This time he didn’t let the enemy drift away.
He recovered the axe the instant it was blocked and swept it in again.
And at the same time—
[Skill - Flurry]
He triggered the skill.
[The speed of chained strikes increases greatly.]
[As the chain continues, the power and speed of attacks rise.]
A skill that accelerates the longer you sustain a close-range pummeling.
If the opponent only defends, his attacks grow ever stronger and faster.
In one-on-one close combat,
it has unmatched, tremendous bite.
It was also Park Junggu’s most favored combat skill,
because to begin with—
as a ‘Barbarian,’ his specialty was close-quarters brawling.
He’d shoved him away earlier to see how he’d respond,
but once they were glued together like this,
an assassin wouldn’t be able to beat a warrior.
“Let’s see how long you can keep blocking!”
KAANG!
One hit.
KAANG!
Two hits.
The instant the opponent blocked his attack twice,
he felt the dagger in that hand about to snap.
“...You seem very excited.”
One more swing and he could snap that blade
and carve straight through the man’s body.
“You might want to look behind you.”
“What!?”
Snapping to the words,
he felt the cold presence of metal from behind.
PAK!
He whipped a hand back on reflex,
and saw something ping off his gauntlet—
a weapon, dagger or kitchen knife,
one of the pieces the man had purchased from the shop.
‘Where did that come from?’
The first dagger was in his own arms,
and the dagger in the man’s hand was on the verge of breaking.
‘No question—he had no window to throw!’
Then where had that dagger come from?
He was still puzzling when—
doong-shil...
Objects floated up
behind the man’s back.
“Ha. Ha-ha...”
They were clearly ordinary-looking daggers—no, kitchen knives.
But when more than ten kitchen knives were spinning through the air,
the sight
felt anything but ordinary.
‘What is that.’
What rose in his mind was
something you only occasionally saw in fiction—
no, even among countless works of fiction, an ability treated as legendary.
At the unreal spectacle of weapons moving on their own,
even the competitiveness stoked by ‘Barbaric Roar’ was starting to get shaved away.
Grit.
He ground his teeth,
steadied his shrinking self, and barked:
“Why didn’t you just stab me?”
“Mm?”
“If you’d just stuck me as-is, you would’ve won, wouldn’t you.”
Ddaggers flying through the air?
Junggu had never imagined a skill like that.
‘If I’d known, I might have guarded against it.’
With that skill outside his assumptions,
the fight just now had been his loss, clean.
And yet,
the man had instead warned him of the danger.
“Are you looking down on me?”
“Junggu, enough now...!”
The other two leaders tried to break up the fight between Junggu and Youngjun—
“Wait.”
—but the one who stopped them was none other than Shin Youngjun himself.
“Looking down? That’s a strange thing to say.”
“What?”
Despite his displeasure,
the man answered with the same indifferent face.
“What’s the point of this spar to begin with?”
“What do you mean, point....”
Point?
There had never been such a thing.
He’d only wanted to clash with the man once,
and he’d slapped together a “reason” just to make it happen.
In the heat of battle,
he could barely remember his own pretext now.
“Come on—don’t tell me you forgot what you said yourself. You said you wanted to check my skill.”
“...Right. That’s what I said. So? What about it.”
“What about it? If the spar is to verify my skill, then with that exchange just now...”
Arms folded,
Youngjun looked down at Junggu, who was on one knee.
“...you can’t verify my skill, can you?”
“......”
It wasn’t hard
to catch what he meant.
“Mm. This is a bit rude to say, but—”
The man sighed and continued.
“—with someone at your level, it’s hard to show enough of my ability.”
“You little...!”
“Still, since you’ve been so insistent about me showing it, I do need to show you somehow... and with one go it’s hard to show even a fraction. So—”
He seized the fallen Junggu and hauled him up by force,
then blandly took distance and said:
“Let’s agree to fight several times, as a stopgap. That way I can at least show you a part of it.”
“......”
“Hm? No? Would that still be hard?”
He picked up the hand axe lying in the corner,
then casually tossed it back to Junggu.
“Anyway, take this. Let’s continue.”
“Y... you.”
“Hrm. Up to now, that’s one death.”
Grit.
At first, he had felt fear.
“But, keeping up a totally meaningless spar isn’t it either. Hrm.”
“Yo... you bastard.”
“Fine, I’ll kill you about ten times and call it. That should be about right.”
At the blatantly down-looking,
unbearably arrogant attitude,
“Come now, buck up and come again!”
“...Fine.”
“There’s still a lot I need to show you. Long way to go!”
“If that’s what you want...”
Junggu
truly
“I’ll kill you, just like you want!”
“Ha! I may be no good at fighting, but I’m good at comedy, huh?”
—with the thought of killing his enemy,
decided to go all out.
****
CLANG!
The quiet Northern Branch base—
a sudden crash rang out from deep within.
“W-what was that!?”
“That shout earlier too... what’s going on!?”
At the sound of what seemed like shattering glass,
the many survivors working at the Northern Branch grabbed their weapons and rushed toward the noise.
The source was the center of the base—
the place where the group’s leaders usually operated.
And there—
“Is that....”
“It’s Captain Junggu!”
The man who oversaw the group’s combat classes—
Lee Junggu—was collapsed on the floor, bleeding all over.
Judging by the shards of the broken window,
it was likely Lee Junggu himself who had smashed the pane.
The group’s greatest warrior,
lying there bleeding as if he’d fought someone.
In other words—
“We’re under attack!”
“Everyone, grab weapons and form up—!”
A battle inside.
Not only the combat classes,
but even non-combat Awakened hastily grabbed their respective weapons to face the enemy—
“Everyone, shut it!”
“C-captain?”
Their combat captain—somewhat boisterous by nature,
but gentle with group members—
spewed rough words, stopping the Awakened as they moved to arm.
“It’s my fight... Anyone who butts in is dead...!”
“...What is this?”
While the members were still bewildered,
the other two leaders burst out of the building and shouted to them:
“P-put those weapons away!”
“It’s an agreed spar!”
“An agreed spar...?”
At that,
everyone’s eyes shifted.
“Like this?”
Junggu was bleeding buckets,
breath ragged.
The strongest man at the Northern base—
it had been so long since anyone had seen him in such a state they couldn’t even remember when.
But—
on closer look—
‘No fatal wounds...’
The copious blood came from shallow nicks all over.
There wasn’t a single mortal injury.
If it was a spar, and they’d held back from lethal strikes,
that was understandable, but...
“What kind of ‘spar’ makes the captain go all-out!?”
The combat classes, seeing the aura rippling around Junggu’s body,
shouted as if it made no sense.
That strange aura
shuddering around him in the shape of a massive warrior—
‘A skill he only uses when he’s going all out... There’s no ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) way he’d pop that in a spar.’
And just as they thought—
right now, Lee Junggu was
[Skill - Power of the Ancestral Spirit]
[Skill - Barbaric Roar]
[Skill - Surging Rage]
throwing everything he could use
at his opponent.
And yet—
“With that one, nine.”
“I know!”
—his apparent opponent
was unscathed, stepping lightly over the broken window frame to the ground.
“Hrrmp!”
Junggu, seeing him, charged with weapon raised,
and just before the axe fell—
as if the axe posture had been a feint—
he lifted his foot and stamped hard on the ground at the man’s feet.
[War Stomping]
A powerful skill available to warrior lines that topples anyone standing within a wide area.
Because the tell was so blatant,
it had the downside of being hard to use openly in a heads-up duel,
but Junggu had built experience through long battle.
He knew how to braid in just enough feint to land the skill.
KWOAAAAAAAAAM!!!
“U-uwagh!”
As the Awakened gathered nearby
lost their balance to the violent quake—
shwk.
One of the daggers orbiting near the man’s feet moved,
and the man stepped onto it as a foothold in midair.
‘What the...!?’
No matter how strong a quake that could topple even Awakened,
if your feet weren’t on the ground, it meant nothing.
Precisely because the power was great,
the caster’s opening also yawned wide.
Exploiting that gap—
suk—
the man slid in
and traced a shallow line across Junggu’s neck.
“Nine.”
“What a damned... trick...!”
“Up you get. We’ve a long way to go.”
At that sight,
Junggu ground his teeth and thought:
‘What the hell is he.’
He’d expected the opponent to be strong.
He’d acknowledged the man as a formidable foe to begin with.
He’d intentionally provoked a fight because he wanted to clash with such a foe.
Even so—
‘This isn’t fun at all.’
Despite being the fight he’d wanted,
his head brimmed only with rage.
There was no enjoyment.
‘So that’s it.’
Only then
could he recognize one thing.
‘I didn’t want a fight with a powerhouse.’
In this fight right now,
he couldn’t find even a sliver of fun.
Right.
What he’d wanted wasn’t a fight with a powerhouse.
‘Someone similar to me... or a little stronger.’
With such an opponent,
to trade at least some back-and-forth—
that was what he wanted.
The thing he’d called his “fighting spirit”—
its pitifully weak essence.
And he thought:
what was happening now
was the exact opposite of what he truly wanted.
‘Mockery.’
A one-sided game
by someone with overwhelming skill.
