47. Spider Hunt (4)

Blue ghost-fire and a glare thick with killing intent met in midair. Choi Hyeongtae stroked his forearm, thinking.

So our raw strength was about even.

He’d forced the issue at the instant of the clash and shoved Fafnir back, but he knew that if Fafnir had truly resisted, he wouldn’t have given way so easily. His advantage lay somewhere other than raw strength.

Aura output.

In sheer destructive force, Dark Fighting-Aura fell a step behind aura. That came down to the nature of spirit-power, the negative-dimension mana. It inflicted a debuff that drained the stamina of whatever it cut, yet in a straight contest of strength, aura, which fused pure mana with intent, won out.

— Hmm.

As it happened, Fafnir’s thoughts were running the same course. Trade blows at equal force and he came out the loser; worse, his tier sat a full step below his opponent’s.

— He’s not the kind of opponent I can beat on technique alone.

Only the experience from his living days let him squeeze an output above his tier. Go toe-to-toe with Choi Hyeongtae, who stood at the very top of the 5th Rank, and the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

— I’d better make aggressive use of my long reach.

Lodged in the Draconian corpse, Fafnir was a three-meter giant, his arms far longer than any human’s. Had he been gripping a sword or a spear, that reach wouldn’t have stood out so much, but Choi Hyeongtae was himself a Martial-line fighter built for close combat, and against him the long arms told.

Then, time to.

— Get moving.

The feeling-out had lasted all of two seconds. Long to recount, but in the moment only an instant passed before the distance between them vanished.

He led with a head-on strike that traded on his superior reach, a fist clenched tight dropping straight toward Choi Hyeongtae’s head.

“Normally you’d have to fall back or counter, but.”

A sinister smile curled Choi Hyeongtae’s lips. The instant Fafnir let the punch fly, he was certain of one thing: their strength might be even, but in speed he was the faster.

He thrust his right foot forward to close the gap.

He snapped out a fist packed with mana-reinforced force.

— A late strike landing first?

Later to attack, first to land. He’d taken dead aim at the weak point of the sluggish, low-Agility Draconian corpse.

Rattled, Fafnir still managed to pull back the straight mid-throw and bring his left arm across his chest.

— Khh.

Forced to guard before he could fully raise his Dark Fighting-Aura, a crack tore through the muscle of his forearm. Groaning, he stepped in on his left foot, bent the right arm he’d been pulling back, and drove it around toward Choi Hyeongtae’s back.

Iron Body, the aura defense art that had blocked Corpse Explosion without a scratch. Fafnir poured Dark Fighting-Aura into his fingertips too, and though he punched through the blue light, the strength drain robbed the blow of its bite; he managed no more than to scratch the armor.

“So that’s the limit of your output, huh?”

Choi Hyeongtae had ended up inside Fafnir’s guard. The range was too cramped to even extend an arm, but he didn’t bother fighting his way clear; he simply rerouted the aura he’d gathered for defense into his hands.

Both arms pistoning like machinery, he hammered punch after punch into Fafnir’s chest.

— Tukok! Tukok!

“I won’t give you any distance.”

If his reach fell short, he’d simply crowd in close. At this range he had no room to load his weight behind the blows, but he made up the shortfall in raw power with aura. He rattled off more than ten punches in a single second, then shouldered Fafnir back and opened the gap once more.

“That should’ve turned you to pulp—?”

— A vicious fist. And you know how to turn my own attack against me.

Dents pocked Fafnir’s torso here and there, yet the ghost-fire guttering at the corners of his eyes only burned brighter.

“That armor. So it wasn’t ordinary after all.”

— Armor bestowed by my master. A thing too good for the likes of me.

Whenever Choi Hyeongtae laid into him, channeling Dark Fighting-Aura set the Dragon-Scale Armor moving at Fafnir’s will too. It massed its defense wherever a blow was about to land, soaking up as much of the damage as it could and easing the load on Fafnir.

— Hudeuk, hududuk.

Fragments of the armor, shattered by the impacts, sloughed away.

It was a Transcendent-grade artifact, but as a growth-type its real performance ran a notch under Unique-grade. Even so, with Fafnir’s will and his Dark Fighting-Aura layered over it, the armor weathered the point-blank aura combo without its Durability bottoming out.

“Tough hide on you.”

— This body is indeed sturdy.

“That’s not a compliment, you son of a bitch!”

— Hmm? If the flesh is sturdy, you can enjoy the fight that much longer, can’t you.

Hunter and undead closed once more. Pressed chest to chest, the brawl churned on without a breath, and as the Dragon-Scale Armor’s Durability bled away, Choi Hyeongtae’s aura punched through its defense and crushed the scales beneath.

“You can’t move anymore now, can you?”

— Nope. I’m perfectly fine.

“If you were a man, you’d have died long ago.”

— I’m undead, you know. There’s got to be at least one upside to dying and coming back.

Fafnir was worn to rags. Choi Hyeongtae, by contrast, had taken nothing worse than the scratches on his armor. He was plainly the one driving the other into a corner. So why was Fafnir carrying himself with such ease?

I’ll crush that head of his.

The undead’s universal weak point was the head. This grotesque Draconian-shaped corpse would be no exception to the rule.

Seized by a nameless unease, Choi Hyeongtae sprang and fired off a straight.

— So this is how it feels.

In that instant, the blue ghost-fire read Choi Hyeongtae’s movement to the inch.

— Whoom.

His first attack to go wide. It was off by no more than a hair, but the blue current sheathing his fist only skimmed past Fafnir’s belly.

“Lucky. Dodging just fine with that sluggish body of yours.”

— Do you really think it was luck?

“Dead thing. You can say that after looking at the state of your own body?”

Choi Hyeongtae burst into laughter, puheuheu.

The match had already tipped his way. By chance both of them were Martial-line fighters who fought with their fists, but Choi Hyeongtae had given Fafnir no opening to bring his own strengths to bear, pressing the attack and battering him one-sidedly, right to the verge of putting him down.

— Then go ahead and check whether it really was luck.

“That’s exactly what I was about to do.”

Choi Hyeongtae eased in slowly, his sinister eyes glinting. By now he had the distance between them committed to memory. Long-armed Fafnir held the right of the first strike, but reacting on sight would still leave him time enough.

And yet, even with Choi Hyeongtae well inside his range, Fafnir made no move to strike first.

Is he even thinking of countering my attack?

The fool. Wind his aura output up to its ceiling and Fafnir’s Dark Fighting-Aura wouldn’t come close. Did he not grasp who held the advantage in a head-on clash?

“Now go back to being a corpse.”

He gathered aura into his feet and bored in with a single bound. Into it he wove the earth’s elemental power to lend it solidity, then loaded the aura, manifested to its absolute peak, into his fist and drove it out with everything he had.

— I told you I’d gotten a read on it, didn’t I?

Fafnir’s great frame slid backward as though gliding. Had Choi Hyeongtae waited until the attack was in sight to react, it was fast enough that he could never have dodged. He’d thrown it with total conviction.

— Whoom!

Once again his fist tore through empty air, and with everything committed to the blow, Choi Hyeongtae lurched badly off balance.

“H-how!”

— My eyes are pretty good, you see.

Fafnir lightly grazed the blue ghost-fire with a fingertip.

A unique trait that let him master any martial art in moments and read an opponent’s movements besides. Choi Hyeongtae fought as an in-fighter, the very style Fafnir himself was striving toward.

— Your style. Turns out there’s a lot to learn from it.

They say real combat is the finest teacher. Even as he was being pummeled, Fafnir had been studying the way Choi Hyeongtae’s muscles and mana moved.

— Thanks to you, I’ve worked out how to fight up close efficiently.

“You read my movements?!”

— If you doubt it, go ahead and check for yourself.

Fafnir crooked a finger.

— Come at me.

Blue light and black current clashed again and again. Choi Hyeongtae’s pupils trembled harder than they had when the Red Spider’s Hunters were wiped out.

Does this make any sense?

A later strike that landed first. He’d used his superior speed to bait out the enemy’s attack, then bored in and struck. His opponent’s combat level sat somewhere between the bottom and the middle of the 5th Rank; their strength ran nearly even, but in every remaining stat Choi Hyeongtae came out ahead.

So why are my moves being read?!

He attacked at the greater speed, and every time, Fafnir’s counter was already lying in wait at the end of it, as though a ghost had latched onto him.

— Hu hu hu. This fight. It’s a real joy. There’s so much to learn.

Fafnir spilled out his thoughts, brimming with laughter.

In his living days, back when he was still Park Haneul, he’d fought as an out-fighter, holding his distance and piling damage onto his opponent from range.

— It was at the Arahan Guild that I first realized my mistake.

A duel against a swift-blade user. Forgetting the strengths of his new body, he’d moved by the memories of his living days and ended up slashed to ribbons head to foot. That was when it dawned on him that the style suited to his new flesh was the in-fighter’s.

— I was in the middle of building up my own fighting style, mind you.

And then a teaching aid named Choi Hyeongtae had fallen into his lap. A Hunter who’d climbed to the pinnacle of the 5th Rank. And, luckily (?) enough, a close-combat specialist in the very in-fighting style Fafnir was chasing, skilled enough to hold the Red Spider’s number-two seat.

— Thanks to you, I’ve been able to shore up my weak points.

Choi Hyeongtae had forged the essence of in-fighting over countless battles. Read through the Eye of the War God and applied in live combat, its effect was beyond doubt.

— Making it fully my own will take time. But for now, isn’t this enough?

The balance of the fight had evened out once more. Wounds began to surface one by one on Choi Hyeongtae, his every move now an open book. The tally of damage still fell heavier on Fafnir’s side, but stripped of the initiative, Choi Hyeongtae was badly shaken.

“Fuck! Does this make any sense?!!”

He gets battered a few times and now he’s reading my movements? Making them his own style on top of it? How can a half-dead corpse pull something like that off!

“Cut the bullshit!”

Driven by an instinctive fear, Choi Hyeongtae loosed a sound caught between a scream and a roar and stamped down hard.

Aura burst up from the print of his foot and swept out across several meters. Catching the surge of mana, Fafnir pulled back rather than press in deeper, and came away with no more than a few scales broken.

A brief lull.

— Hmm. This isn’t easy.

Fafnir muttered to himself.

Even with Choi Hyeongtae’s fighting style learned through the Eye of the War God, the gulf in raw spec between the two of them remained. Without the Wedge of Retribution and the Unholy Blessing, he’d have been driven back with ease.

— And if I hadn’t been wearing the Dragon-Scale Armor on top of that, I’d never have held out this long.

A twenty-percent boost to every stat. And beyond that, the more impact piled up, the higher the Wedge of Retribution’s buff climbed along with it, giving him the staying power for a drawn-out fight.

— Either way, my goal is to pin that man down.

He was Yujin’s sword. He’d been handed an order, and all that remained was to carry it out.

— Kadeudeuk.

Across from him, Choi Hyeongtae ground his teeth and forced his rattled heart to steady.

Damn it. I let this drag on far too long.

He’d dealt the Red Spider staggering losses; now he needed to get clear of Ground Zero. He’d meant to at least cut down the ringleader behind this whole mess and work off some of his grudge, but instead Fafnir had snared him by the feet.

Hold anything back any longer and it gets dangerous.

Give up on his revenge, or wring out every last thing he had and crush Fafnir.

I’m giving up after coming this far?

Choi Hyeongtae let loose all of the rage that had been threatening to blaze up in his heart.

— Drip. Drip.

Blood streamed from his eyes, scattered across his body, and traced out a strange emblem.

A ridiculous name for a Constellation, but the one who bore it was Víðarr, known as the god of vengeance. The blessing took hold, feeding on his boiling rage to drive up his Strength and Agility and to blot out even pain.

— Hmm. This might get rough.

Fafnir murmured, his voice gone uneasy.

Even after seizing the upper hand in the war of nerves, the most he could manage was to hold on. And now he had to face an enemy whose eyes had rolled white, grown stronger still on a Constellation’s blessing.

“Kraaaaah!!!!”

A voice torn loose as if wrung from the pit of his lungs. The moment he invoked Víðarr’s blessing, Choi Hyeongtae, swallowed whole by his thirst for vengeance, let out a savage cry and kicked off the ground.

— So fast—

— KWAANG!

Knocked back more than ten meters, Fafnir dug in his feet. The order was to keep Choi Hyeongtae pinned; he couldn’t go down yet. He gouged a long furrow into the ground as he held, and still he was shoved back several meters more.

“Kraaah! Kraaaah!”

Choi Hyeongtae devoured the distance in a single rush. Saliva spilled from his gaping mouth, and his reddened pupils could no longer even fix on a point. He’d half-left the human realm now, drunk on the power the Constellation had handed him.

— Even the Eye of the War God can’t see this one.

He’d spent the last of his spirit-power just weathering that final blow, and now both legs hung limp under him, leaving him barely able to stand.

— I gave it my best, but I don’t know if my master will be satisfied.

“Well done. You held out better than I expected.”

A familiar voice answered Fafnir’s muttering. And at the same time.

Bubbles rose across his skin, and as a warped holy power seeped in, it sapped the strength of Víðarr’s blessing.

A holy spell and a curse, two powers that should never coexist, struck a strange harmony and pared Choi Hyeongtae’s stats away.

— Ttak!

The Wedge of Retribution’s stacks, packed to their ceiling, detonated in a savage burst of force. Choi Hyeongtae, hurled off his feet by the impact, tumbled across the ground.

“Kh, kraaah.”

From the mouth that had seemed to forget fear, a shrill scream tore loose.