102. All-Out War (3)

— Vwoom-!

A straight punch shot out in a dead-straight line, trailing a vicious shriek of cleaved air. The woman standing at the end of it vanished without a trace the instant the fist reached her.

— Tch.

Fafnir clicked his tongue and brought his left arm up against his chest. A blue trajectory crashed down a tenth of a second behind it. From the arm, sheathed head to foot in Dragon-Scale Armor and wreathed in Dark Fighting-Aura besides, came a loud ri-i-ip as it tore open left and right.

“Kihi. So you’re tough. There’ll be some fun in tearing you apart.”

As Kim Mijeong cackled, Song Myeongseok closed in from the left, slipped in from the side, and drew his blade.

The crimson-dyed blade came flying in with the ferocity of a beast baring its maw at prey, the Light-Splitting Sword brought to full power now that he’d crossed the ‘wall’ he never reached in life.

— Don’t make the mistake of looking down on me for being 4th Rank.

Blade still sheathed, Song Myeongseok poured spirit-energy into the edge as he ran, shortening the time it took to manifest his aura. For an ordinary Hunter, an imperfectly realized aura would have wrecked the scabbard; it was only possible because he’d been a man of [Heavenly Bone] talent in life. Given enough time to take shape, his Dark Fighting-Aura carried power that even Kim Mijeong couldn’t take lightly.

She’d realized only a thin sliver of aura, less than a fifth the force of the maximum-output Dark Fighting-Aura Song Myeongseok had drawn up from the instant he charged. Kim Mijeong gripped her dagger in a reverse hold and slammed her looping band of aura into the crimson trajectory.

Tng-.

— What sort of trick was that?!

The Red-Light Sword’s path veered badly off and struck somewhere wide of the mark. The Dark Fighting-Aura guttered out fast. As Song Myeongseok ground his jawbone with a crk- and made to press his next attack, Fafnir caught him by the shoulder.

“Kya. What a waste.”

Smacking her lips, Kim Mijeong brought the dagger forward again.

She parried Song Myeongseok’s attack and condensed aura on the opposite blade-edge at the same time. Her gambit of overturning the perception that the dagger was short, of striking Song Myeongseok with the unique trait, came to nothing. After a brief exchange of blows, Kim Mijeong fell back. Her gaze, brimming with regret, wouldn’t leave the gash carved into Fafnir’s left arm.

“Whoa. Damn. You blocked that?”

Surprise laced her rough voice. She’d bewildered his eye with Afterimage and Gale Step, steering Fafnir’s attack to land head-on, then the moment he threw the punch, she’d gone for his heart. It was a strike so keen even a fellow 6th-Rank Hunter would struggle to react to it.

— Calling it a block when I look like this is a bit much.

“I meant to wreck your heart.”

— An undead doesn’t die just because it loses its heart.

“You won’t croak, no. But it’d give you a bit of trouble, wouldn’t it.”

The light in Fafnir’s eyes sharpened. He was an Eldritch Dragon raised on the base of a Draconian corpse, and unlike an ordinary undead his spirit-power clustered around the Dragon Heart; pierce that heart and his combat strength plummeted too. From a single look, she’d seen straight through to the core of how he wielded his power.

— Then I’ll just put more force into it.

“For fuck’s sake. The scrawny one with the twin swords won’t leave me alone.”

— Damn it all, you mean.

Song Myeongseok growled low. That single sword-swing just now had told him for certain: he was no match for this woman who raged about like a moth to a flame. He’d gone for the wide-open gap with a swift strike, only to miss it spectacularly. Had Fafnir not caught him, he’d very nearly have been done in himself.

“Kya. This is fun. Are you a shaman or something? Why are your instincts so good?”

Kim Mijeong grinned.

— Are you mocking me?
— She means it.
— She’s insane.
— Don’t be like that. I’m starting to have a bit of fun myself.

One corner of Fafnir’s lips curled upward as well, the dead man and the living woman alike as if each faced the other in a mirror.

— We go with the original plan?
— …Can’t be helped. I’ll fall in with you.
— Jo Seungcheol. You just keep her in check, nothing more.
— Understood.

Fafnir as main tank and dealer, Song Myeongseok as sub-dealer, and Jo Seungcheol in a support role. They’d settled on these positions in advance, assuming the day would come when they waged all-out war with the Rakshasa Guild. Song Myeongseok and Jo Seungcheol hadn’t cared for it, but having witnessed Kim Mijeong’s overwhelming martial force, they hadn’t argued.

A stance with hand-blade held bolt upright swung in a great arc. The attack range was wide, but the motion was large to match, and it bared a gap. The instant Kim Mijeong stepped to slough off the Falling-Leaf Strike and made to slip inside, a green-dyed blade greeted her.

“Oh, come on. A pincer attack? Isn’t that just too dirty? You’re supposed to fight one-on-one.”

— It’s not as if I want to do this either, so just die for me, please.

“Heh. And if I don’t want to?”

The dagger gripped in her left hand spun round and round, switched to a reverse grip, and scraped down Song Myeongseok’s blade.

Ka-ga-gak-.

Dark Fighting-Aura spent fast. Kim Mijeong’s aura, by contrast, only grew brighter. To conjure aura is to invest mana with intent and then release it: a matter of mana-handling ability and the breathing-in of intent. In both, Kim Mijeong, a Hunter at the pinnacle of the 6th Rank, outstripped Song Myeongseok in every respect.

Vwoo-oom!

A fist grazed past Kim Mijeong’s chest. This one was the real problem.

‘To do this much with just a graze. It’s too much fun.’

Fafnir’s specs, built as he was on a Draconian corpse, outstripped those of a same-Rank Hunter. The Martial-Mage trait gave him double the ability-stat correction, and the Dragon-Scale Armor, a Transcendent-grade artifact, lent a 20% boost across all stats. His realm was only 5th Rank, yet in pure strength alone he edged out Kim Mijeong.

‘And his aura-handling isn’t much worse, either.’

Fafnir’s fighting style was a bad matchup for Kim Mijeong, too. He was an infighter who took the minor blows on the chin and bored in recklessly, forcing damage onto his opponent. Kim Mijeong’s style ran the opposite way: an outfighter’s, leveraging her speed to deal explosive damage in a single instant, or else slowly gnawing the enemy down.

‘If I can’t finish it in one blow, I’ll have to make it a war of attrition.’

One-on-one, she could win. The trouble was the twin-sword-wielding Skeleton Knight, Song Myeongseok. On his first attack he’d charged in blindly, with no thought for his ally’s skill, but after trading a few words with Fafnir, he’d plugged her openings so thoroughly the two might have been one body.

‘Can I get past these two and kill Cheon Yujin?’

Driiip-.

Drool leaked and dribbled from Kim Mijeong’s mouth. Meeting an enemy worth crossing blades with for the first time in ages, she couldn’t hide her excitement.

“Let’s play just a little longer.”

— Try not to be the first to fall.

Fafnir shot back, regenerating the Dragon-Scale Armor that the aura had split open.

‘I can leave Kim Mijeong to Fafnir.’

A short sigh forced its way out between his lips. Kim Mijeong’s breakthrough power was the variable that Yujin, on the defending side, had to watch most carefully. The Rakshasa Guild had one victory condition: to take the life of Yujin, the master who led the dead.

‘Well, that’s true.’

He’d prepared a Plan B as well, in case of some unforeseen situation. The only catch was that his allies’ losses would mount considerably.

‘The low-grade undead, sure.’

The mid-grade undead, strengthened with Unison and craft-work, were another matter; they were the subordinates he needed for the Necropolis’s expansion. Low-grade undead like the Skeleton Warriors or Returners could be restored with some effort even if they were wiped out, but having his named undead destroyed was something he wanted to avoid as far as possible.

‘Then I just have to focus over here.’

He turned his gaze to the main battlefield, where the Rakshasa Guild’s massed force was gathered. Three Bone Towers of the Dead fired freely. The Returners and Skeleton Warriors, too, were spread wide, doing battle with the Rakshasa Guild’s massed force.

The massed force faced the undead army swarming in from every direction without yielding an inch.

Within ten minutes of the battle beginning in earnest, over a hundred undead had been destroyed. These were undead Yujin had reinforced one by one with his own hands, buffed by the Relic and the Black Obelisk, and still the losses were piling up fast.

‘Enjoying yourself, are you?’

‘We’ll see soon enough.’

Yujin transferred the authority over the undead bound to the Black Obelisk back to himself. If this was going to be a war of attrition, then sending in the dead, made stronger by the Relic buff, would tip things at least a little in his favor.

‘A bit over 400 now.’

Since the Rakshasa massed force had arrived later than expected, the extra low-grade undead he’d crafted in the meantime came to about 200.

‘Just sit back and watch.’

Arms folded, Yujin replied in a leisurely tone.

At the same time, Oh Jeongsu, who had taken overall command of the massed force, traced the flow of the battle back over itself and tried to work out what Yujin’s gambit was.

‘Induce a melee and drag it into a war of attrition?’

Undead kept popping up ceaselessly out of the fog. Even when he peeled back some of the whitish currents with his search skill, Eagle’s Eye, the dead kept catching in his sight.

‘Without the Arahan Guild’s intel, it might’ve gone the way he wanted.’

Everything had departed from his predictions. But Oh Jeongsu wasn’t flustered. The time of Yujin’s first awakening, as confirmed by the Arahan Guild, was two months ago; even if he’d spent day and night in the borderlands pouring every hour into leveling up, there was a limit to the Stellar Rank he could have climbed to.

‘His power can’t be limitless either.’

Bone walls to restrict the massed force’s movement. Fog to hamper their vision. And, finally, fixed gun-emplacements dedicated to long-range bombardment. If Yujin’s ability had no limits, he’d have gone for a head-on contest without bothering with such troublesome measures.

‘Hold the formation calmly and we win.’

There was the matter of that structure far in the distance. So long as he dealt with the [Bone Towers of the Dead], that was all.

‘The distance to my forces is about five hundred meters. No means to keep them in check.’

The massed force’s long-range attacks wouldn’t reach that far. To smash the emplacements with Martial-line Hunters, they’d have to break through the undead horde, which meant bracing for a fair amount of damage.

‘If only the action-squad head were here for this. A useless woman, that one.’

There was no use dwelling on someone who wasn’t even present. Oh Jeongsu swallowed his irritation and called out the mercenary team [Black Wolves] separately. Min Sangjin was a 5th-Rank Hunter with a huge axe over his shoulder, and the man and woman following at his back were skilled hands who’d reached the 4th-Rank realm.

“Head in the direction the bones are flying from. About five hundred meters in, there should be fixed emplacements.”
“Breaking through those undead — that’s no small ask.”
“I’ll open the way.”
“Looks dangerous, though.”

At Min Sangjin’s whining, Oh Jeongsu sighed and reluctantly parted his lips.

“I’ll give you two billion in special hazard pay.”
“This old man. He’s generous.”
“Give us the signal and we’ll go.”
“How are you going to make the way?”
“I’ll concentrate the magic-line Hunters’ firepower.”

He’d kept the magic-line Hunters back mainly for checking and fire support, rationing their mana for precisely this moment.

“Fire as one.”

…

The realigned mana twisted the rules of the world, and as flame, lightning, and wind whirled up, several dozen undead massed on the formation’s left flank all winked out of existence at once.

“Now’s the time.”
“The special pay! Don’t forget it!”

The [Black Wolves] team vanished fast, as if swallowed by the whitish currents. In under a minute, one of the gun-towers tormenting the massed force stopped sending out bones.

‘Good. Now we focus on defense.’

Oh Jeongsu packed the massed force tighter still, building the defensive formation more solidly than before. A line that tankers and melee dealers alone could never break through. The bone shells the [Bone Towers of the Dead] sent flying were a threat, but the Priest-line Hunters could block them by deploying wards.

‘Thanks to the mercenaries serving as cannon fodder, I read his strategy quickly.’

Smash all the Bone Towers of the Dead, and the undead army’s firepower would drop by more than half. The Martial-line Hunters had punched through the encirclement and bored into the enemy lines. Time was on the Rakshasa massed force’s side.

’…What?’

Something was off. Five minutes had passed since the first fixed emplacement went down, but nothing had changed. Bone shells still came flying in, hammering the massed force, and there’d been no word from the Martial-line Hunters who’d gone into the fog.

‘Does he still have hidden strength up his sleeve?’

Now that he thought about it, where had Kim Mijeong, who’d run on ahead, gotten to?

“Hey, commander!”
“I’m thinking. Be quiet.”
“This is no time to be standing around dazed! Look at that!”

At the scream of a Rakshasa-affiliated Hunter, Oh Jeongsu’s head turned to the side. In that instant, pitch-black shadows fell across the massed force here and there.

“We’re fucked.”

Oh Jeongsu finally stopped thinking altogether.