“What kind of punk weaker than me thinks he gets to talk down like that.”
“Ha ha!”
The two of them were, at their core, warriors who fought with their bodies.
Neither of them had any particular taste for exchanging long speeches.
Park Sanghyun’s longsword came crashing down toward Junggu’s head.
In response, Park Junggu’s massive axe swung up toward Park Sanghyun’s jaw.
KAANG!
The two weapons collided in the middle and bounced apart.
And then,
as Park Junggu continued to swing his axe,
he thought to himself.
‘......Sure, I do think you only know what’s longer or shorter once you measure it against each other.’
Even so,
Junggu was admitting something inwardly.
‘Just eyeballing it, I did look a little shorter.’
KAANG!
Park Junggu was undeniably strong.
It was something he hadn’t had the slightest idea of before Doomsday,
but he was a man born with an exceptionally rare talent for violence.
However.
‘Whereas the people who were with the Chair......’
The Chair had ridden that strength to sweep across countless battlefields.
The group members who had fought alongside him had shared those same battlefields,
and under the protection of that powerful Chair, they’d been able to grow at tremendous speed while remaining relatively safe.
‘While I, on the other hand, was busy just trying to survive.’
As the man leading a group of his own,
Junggu had spent each day just barely scraping by to see the next.
The elites who’d achieved rapid growth thanks to the Chair’s help—
the difference between them and him was quite stark.
In fact,
back before Park Sanghyun went missing,
[Knight Lv.28]
[Barbarian Lv.26]
there had been a two-level gap between them.
The higher an Awakener’s level rose, the more overwhelming even a difference of 1 became.
Back then, Park Junggu might have been able to fight Park Sanghyun,
but actually winning would have been difficult.
‘I’ve had the thought before...... that if I’d been with the Chair from the very beginning......’
He wasn’t lacking in raw talent for violence.
If he too had been promised smooth growth at the side of a clear, undeniable powerhouse like the Chair,
he might have reached an even better realm than he stood in now.
But he quickly discarded that thought.
‘That’s all in the past anyway.’
All he needed to do was give his best in the position he had.
Besides......
‘Having a lot of people stronger than me is actually a good thing!’
By becoming ever stronger himself,
then stepping on those who had once been stronger than him one by one, slowly and steadily—
wasn’t that the most fun way to live?
KAANG!
Even as he entertained those thoughts,
axe and longsword kept clashing.
‘Oops, getting distracted like this in a fight this important.’
And then,
once that line of thought was cut short—
‘......Hm?’
Junggu
finally noticed something strange.
The more they traded blows,
the more that odd sense kept building.
‘I was spacing out in the middle of a fight this important, and yet......’
Only,
it wasn’t a bad thing.
In fact......
‘Why...... is this actually manageable?’
if anything,
you could call it positive.
*****
There was no doubt.
He’d started this fight under the assumption that his opponent would be stronger than him.
“......Grrk!”
It was supposed to be a very hard......
no, a fight in which the odds of his losing ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) were far higher than winning.
That was what Junggu had expected.
“You’ve improved quite a bit since I last saw you!”
“Me?”
But now,
Park Junggu didn’t feel like he was being pushed back at all.
‘......Ah. Right.’
Only then did he realize.
It was now almost two full months since the Chair and his group members had gone missing.
And during that time,
Junggu had not spent his days lazing around.
Two months might not sound like much,
but less than a year after the end of the world, a gap of two months was huge.
On top of that......
‘A lot happened during those two months.’
Even in this very campaign,
he’d fought through battles more intense than any he’d ever experienced before.
In the fight just before this one,
he’d carried out a massacre against the enemies who had assaulted the Wall.
Because he had cut down so many enemies at that time, his level had risen from 26 to 27.
[Park Junggu]
[Barbarian Lv.27]
[Park Sanghyun]
[Knight Lv.28]
For Awakeners in the high-twenties,
a one-level difference was undeniably big.
On top of that, Park Sanghyun’s body housed the souls of those monsters with extraordinary abilities.
However.
[Joint Course Meal Filled with the Radiant Courage of an Intermediate Chef and War Cook]
The difference of a single level and those ghostly powers
was being completely covered by the overwhelming buff that had settled into Park Junggu’s body.
‘In terms of physical specs...... we’re probably equal.’
It seemed that Park Sanghyun, too, had received the buffs sprinkled by the disappeared Expedition buffers.
The strength Junggu felt whenever their weapons met didn’t seem all that different from his own.
In the end,
the factor that would decide the flow of this battle
was not physical ability,
but ‘combat ability’—independent of raw stats.
And in that respect,
Park Junggu was certain there was no way he would lose.
‘Because I’ve been taught by that guy...... by dying ten times over.’
Maybe it was because he’d experienced death ten times.
But Park Junggu
didn’t find those incredibly fast sword strikes Sanghyun was throwing at him frightening at all.
In the end,
the tight stand-off continued,
and as a result......
—SCRRRAAPE!
the sound of armor shattering
and flesh being cleaved rang out across the battlefield.
“Junggu...... Was it you who said you only know who’s stronger once you actually fight?”
Park Sanghyun spoke in a calm voice.
“......I figured you were just talking.”
His gaze
dropped to his own shoulder.
“Didn’t think it would turn out to be true.”
Park Sanghyun had fought many battles,
but always relatively safe ones under a powerful figure named the Chair.
Park Junggu, by contrast, had led his own group,
growing stronger by surviving grueling fights where he had to risk his life every single time.
“From now on, you better call me big brother.”
Once their specs had been brought to parity,
it was obvious which side would come out the winner.
CRACK......
Shattering armor, the massive axe buried in his shoulder.
And then, in the eyes of Park Sanghyun......
No.
In the eyes of the monster that had taken Park Sanghyun’s body,
the [Belsnickel] could see it.
‘It’s my soul......’
What that massive axe had cut wasn’t Park Sanghyun’s body,
but its own soul.
......THUD.
As the Belsnickel’s soul was sliced away,
Park Sanghyun’s body, now unconscious, slumped forward with its head hanging, still skewered on the axe.
CLINK.
“Take him away.”
“......Yes, sir!”
Junggu swung the axe, with Sanghyun still stuck on it, toward his own soldiers.
Once he confirmed that his allies had caught the unconscious Sanghyun,
“......Heh heh.”
he once more started moving back toward the battlefield.
To search for
enemies of a similar level
who could give him that same joy.
*****
And......
while fights like that were raging at full tilt,
SLIDE......
a certain presence hid itself in the shadows
and moved toward the rear of the formation,
where the ones who commanded and supported the Awakeners were gathered.
[Jin Sahyeok]
[Intermediate Assassin Lv.28]
The Association’s greatest assassin.
Especially in an environment like this, shrouded by blizzard and snow,
he was convinced that no one could possibly detect him.
That’s what he thought......
‘......?’
But he failed to realize.
That while he hid his body in the shadows and moved—
—Master’s master said so. That there’d be an enemy aiming for the rear, remember?
—Turns out it was true.
the shadow he had hidden himself in,
that pair of small shadows,
—you know, right? We’re not allowed to kill him!
—I know...... but.
—Mm.
SLASH—
—a little snack...... was allowed, they said.
were already
swinging a massive blade down at him.
*****
SLASH—
The moment I felt the mana of the two vampires, and the mana approaching the rear vanish at the same time,
I looked around the battlefield and thought,
‘......I didn’t expect it to go this smoothly.’
I had given them some fairly strong buffs,
but to be honest, I’d still been on the fence.
With that ridiculous number of monsters plus the Association’s elites—
even with the Expedition Force’s strength inflated as much as I’d made it, I figured the best we could hope for was a fight where we weren’t losing too badly, maybe something like 4:6.
“Press the attack!!!”
“Behold the Association’s might!”
Instead, the reality was the exact opposite.
The Expedition Force was pushing back the monsters and elites,
while
“Th-these bastards...... Are they really the same guys I remember......!?”
“When did they get this strong!?”
the monsters that had stolen the Assault Team bodies
were visibly flustered even as they fought.
And
as I listened to what they were saying, I nodded.
“Yeah...... the Expedition Force has gotten stronger.”
The humans here in Gyeonggi Province had been heavily cowed by the so-called [elites] and the status and authority they held.
Considering what those elites had shown them, it was understandable,
but still—
“It’s been almost two months since then, you know.”
That was a fairly long time.
And during that long stretch,
even though they’d gone to all the trouble of obtaining the powerful Assault Team’s bodies,
it looked like those monsters were still in the exact same state they’d been in when they went missing.
‘This side is different.’
The ones who hadn’t disappeared—
even if slowly, they’d been growing steadily over that time,
and
‘Especially on this Expedition, they’ve fought some insane battles.’
When they defended against the last assault,
each portion of the Expedition had personally cut down a staggering number of monsters.
Because they’d overturned a battle that should have ended in crushing defeat and turned it into a victory,
[You gain a large amount of experience!]
they’d been flooded with an enormous amount of experience.
‘To the point that every single one of them went up at least one level.’
On top of that,
through that fight they’d managed to get used to battles on a scale this large.
“Ka-ha-ha, behold our courage!”
“Courage my ass......!”
“Sure, we got stronger, but your personalities got weird too!”
That was how we’d ended up with this absurd result,
where the Expedition Force was actually overwhelming the enemy instead.
Of course......
‘Being ahead for the moment doesn’t automatically equal winning the battle.’
Judging by the momentum alone, it wouldn’t have been strange at all if the fight just ended in victory as-is,
but expecting it to go that far was still too much.
More than anything......
‘The enemy numbers are just way too high.’
If our side’s strength stayed where it was,
we might eventually be able to butcher every last one of those countless monsters.
‘But unfortunately, human stamina has its limits.’
As time went on, the Expedition Force’s stamina would keep dropping,
and the fighting power boosted by buffs would gradually diminish.
If the battle continued like this,
the side with the higher chance of winning at the very end
would be them.
‘I have to find a way to end this battle before it drags on too long.’
By a chain of circumstances, I’d ended up leading an army here,
but the reason we’d come to this place wasn’t actually to wipe them all out.
‘It’s to somehow stop this cold.’
Those monsters’ souls lowered the nearby temperature just by existing.
In fact, I could already feel the surrounding temperature slowly rising as their souls were cut away.
However.
If their souls really lowered the temperature simply by existing,
then the place where they were lowering it the most was not this battlefield.
There was the large-scale battle raging in the city.
And then,
there was the place where they were doing everything they could to hold a defensive line and block our advance into the city.
“They said it was the Gate, right?”
The mountain behind the city.
The place where that massive black wall had formed.
We had to head for the Gate.
Even if we couldn’t win this battle here,
the way to win this war
would be there.
*****
[Environmental Assimilation]
SLIDE......
I cloaked my body with the power of Environmental Assimilation,
cut straight across the middle of the battlefield, and headed deep into the city.
As I moved, I thought,
‘The enemy is probably throwing almost all their available forces into that battlefield.’
To suppress the Expedition Force at its current momentum,
they wouldn’t have the luxury of holding back troops.
Chances were high that there wouldn’t be many spare forces inside that Gate.
‘The way to win this war is definitely inside that Gate. But......’
They weren’t idiots either.
‘They can easily imagine someone like me going straight for the Gate, right?’
In that case,
even if they poured most of their strength into that battlefield,
there was a good chance there would be sentries guarding the Gate, blocking the way against intruders like me.
And,
‘I’ve got a decent idea who that might be......’
Since I’d already put together some countermeasures,
I raced toward that place without hesitation.
However.
When I finally reached a spot where I could see the Gate like that—
“......What’s that?”
in front of the black, swirling hole,
someone had arrived ahead of me.
Not just one person.
There were two.
‘Ha Yunseong?’
One of them
was the acting leader of the Central Branch,
Ha Yunseong.
And standing in front of him......
“Been a while, Yunseong.”
“......Yes, sir.”
was an old man whose face I’d never seen before.
