48. Spider Hunt (5)

While Fafnir kept Choi Hyeongtae pinned down, Yujin worked at Lee Seungyeon’s mana, a potion clamped between his teeth, wearing her reserves down little by little.

“God damn it!”

A shrill cry tore through the acrid smoke. Bracing herself on her staff, Lee Seungyeon reordered her mana.

“Greaaah.”

“Greurgh.”

Corpses ringed her on every side. The plague zombies blinked their whitened eyes and pressed in without pause.

— Sshk-shk-shk!

Tightly compressed blades of wind shredded the undead. Aside from a few droplets of blood thrown up when the flames erupted, nothing had landed a meaningful blow on her.

“Hah, haah.”

Lee Seungyeon dragged in ragged breaths. She’d taken no direct hits, true, but that was all it amounted to: Yujin was steadily herding her toward the edge of the cliff.

Does this even make any sense?!

The Kaesong man-hunters? This bastard was a different breed entirely.

He’s summoning undead nobody’s ever seen — or making them himself.

The man-hunters just kept flinging monsters forward? The smoke and fog had blended until she could barely see, but she wasn’t dull enough to miss something on that scale.

Corpses tucked here and there in the undergrowth, and the bodies of the Red Spider’s own Hunters on top of them.

The one that tried to ram me a moment ago — it died, caught in the explosion.

Lee Seungyeon was certain now that the unknown enemy lurking beyond the fog was a Necromancer. Something had surfaced from memory, of reading texts like this once, back when she’d buried herself in books of magic. The trouble was that she’d reached the conclusion far too late.

If I’d known it would come to this, I’d have used my magic more carefully!

She’d thrown up the inefficient Mana Barrier twice. Early in the fight she’d burned through far too much firepower, trying to put the man-hunters down fast. And that wasn’t the worst of it: ever since the plague zombies appeared, she’d been forced to lean on wind magic.

Those bursting zombies were prepared on purpose too!

Lee Seungyeon swallowed a scream. So many wind spells were built to strike a single target; she was in no position to sweep away a pack of mere 1st-Rank zombies with an area attack.

God damn it. My remaining mana…

Even a 5th-Rank magic-line Hunter didn’t have a bottomless well of mana. Every reordering of it bled away her willpower along with the mana itself, so grueling that without her staff to lean on, her legs would have buckled and dropped her to the ground.

Just as her strength gave out and she swayed.

The tiresome boom registered at the edge of her hearing, and Lee Seungyeon threw up defensive magic at once to fend off the scattering chunks of flesh and bone.

That was a little different.

Her senses were honed to a razor’s edge. With her concentration sharpened by the extremity of the moment, she’d caught the difference in this blast from all the ones before.

The mana wave right before the blast is gone.

This hadn’t been a remote detonation like the others. Standing at the peak of the 5th Rank, Lee Seungyeon had crossed the line between life and death more times than she could count, and she saw through to the truth: her opponent was close.

“I know you’re there, you trash. Come out right now!”

The shout circled and died in the fog. No answer came.

“Right. Of course you don’t want to come out. You spineless piece of shit.”

— Tak!

Lee Seungyeon cracked her staff against the ground and set her lips moving. The hem of her robe snapped in a wind that had risen out of nowhere; a vast volume of mana on the move was stirring the very air. A magic circle took shape above her crystal orb.

“Keep on hiding. I’ll blow you away.”

The plague zombies that had crept close reached for her, but a translucent membrane turned their hands aside, a makeshift mana shield that unfurled whenever she cast on a large scale. Part of the mana still mid-reordering was guarding her body.

The howling wind died away, and Lee Seungyeon finally spat out the trigger word.

“Explosion!”

— KWAAAAAAANG!

The blast that erupted the instant she triggered it left her ears ringing, and a vermilion radiance surged up with her at its heart, swallowing everything within fifty meters.

Brush and trees burned to ash the moment they met that colossal force. The corpses buried here and there in the earth, even the gear and bodies of the Red Spider’s Hunters, vanished without a trace.

“Kh.”

Lee Seungyeon dropped to the ground on a single cry. Explosion was the trump card she’d held in reserve to the very last, a flame spell whose destructive power ranked among the top five of all 5th-Rank attack magic. A crater yawned open in the ground as though a meteor had fallen.

The hell I went through to get this spell.

Not even Kim Jaewoo, the Red Spider’s boss, had known about her trump card. She’d sunk every last coin she’d scraped together at Ground Zero into a grimoire bought through a back channel.

All that backbreaking work was worth it.

The sheer force of the mana wave shoved back even the fog. The acrid smoke that had clawed at her nose, the weeds that had kept snagging her feet and fraying her temper, all of it was swallowed by the light of destruction without a trace.

“That’s a load off!”

“No kidding. Blew it all away real clean.”

A dry voice came from right behind her. At the unfamiliar tone, Lee Seungyeon’s face went rigid.

When she forced her head around to look behind her, a figure came into view, screened by a monster made of blood.

“You—you!”

“Thanks for moving exactly as I expected.”

A black mask wept tears of blood. Behind the Shadow Mask, Yujin snickered.

“My spare corpses were running low, see. I cast my line once, and reeled in a real prize.”

“H-how did you know about Explosion?”

“The Madam told me.”

“You—you damn bitch! After all the trouble I went to to hide it!”

“Is there any such thing as a secret in this world?”

Best not to underestimate the Madam’s intelligence network.

The Red Spider was her rival, so she’d run a thorough background check on its officers as well.

“I figured you’d use that spell if I was close by.”

She was the only one among the Red Spider’s officers against whom he could even calculate a win, a 5th-Rank Hunter. From the moment he’d picked Lee Seungyeon out with Ghost Eye, he’d been sure of this fight.

“Well, if not for this fellow, I might’ve ended up roasted whole too.”

Yujin glanced at the Blood Golem and broke into a satisfied smile. Explosion’s radius widened in proportion to the mana poured into it. He’d baited Lee Seungyeon into spending her trump card and then opened up the distance, but he’d reshaped the Blood Golem too, just in case.

“Guess she had more mana left than I thought. Even with this guy shielding me, it got pretty toasty.”

“D-don’t come near me!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll put your flesh and your soul to good use, every bit of it.”

“Come any closer and I’ll kill you!”

“Your mana’s completely dry now, isn’t it.”

And besides.

There were plenty of ways to kill her without ever closing the distance.

The magical armament ‘Cursed Fang’ punched clean through Lee Seungyeon’s nape and heart.

“Kk, kreurk.”

“It won’t hurt too much.”

Probably, Yujin muttered under his breath as a closing note, and approached the toppled corpse.

Did you get a good look?

How’d it strike you?

That’s a compliment, right?

Kronos laughed heartily. It beat his earlier carrying-on about what it took to become a hero, but Yujin couldn’t fathom why the monarch was roaring like this.

Enough of that. Let me get my work done.

He subdued the soul with Dark Calling, then stowed the empty husk of the corpse away in the Ring of Black Darkness.

A bit much to turn her into undead right away, though.

A 5th-Rank Hunter’s corpse.

Already looking forward to figuring out how to put it to use.

Good thing I dealt with her before it got too late.

I’m fine. It’s the other side that’s the problem.

He’d gathered up what there was to gather. Yujin set off at a brisk pace toward the direction where he could feel Fafnir’s spirit-body.

A pitch-black surge of energy erupted with Fafnir at its center. Holy power dozens of times stronger than anything he’d shown in their sparring match flung Choi Hyeongtae away.

— Master!

“You came at just the right time.”

Yujin laid a hand on Fafnir’s tattered back.

Fafnir’s body knitted back to the way it had been, as if time were running backward. Kronos’s holy magic worked remarkably well even on the undead.

— So you finished off the other side?

“Probably. One or two might’ve survived, but not enough to worry about.”

The Red Spider had already taken catastrophic losses. A handful of the 4th-Rank-ish Hunters might have come away with minor wounds, but finding the nerve to push through fog thick enough to swallow the next step and cut down the ringleader was asking far too much of them.

“When did Choi Hyeongtae use his blessing?”

— Just a moment ago.

“Lucky. If he’d used it from the start, plan or no plan, it would’ve been the end of us.”

— Is holding out that hard?

“Yeah. With your abilities, you’d have lasted, what, a minute?”

— Tch. Stingy with the points.

“His Stellar Rank’s higher, and there’s a gap in gear too.”

— For somebody who says that, didn’t you bring down an enemy three ranks above you, Master?

Yujin chuckled and went on.

“Víðarr’s blessing raises Strength and Agility by 200%. It boosts physical and magic resistance too.”

— Those are terrifying numbers. So why didn’t he use it sooner?

“As you can see, it pretty much wipes out his reason.”

Flung nearly a hundred meters, Choi Hyeongtae staggered to his feet. His pupils still held no focus. He hadn’t forgotten he’d been mid-fight with Fafnir, apparently; he turned and walked straight back the way he’d been thrown.

— Didn’t you say even at full power I could only hold out for a minute?

“That’s right.”

— Then I should’ve run instead of coming here. By that logic.

“Together, we can win.”

The ghost-fire in Fafnir’s eyes curved into a crescent. The pocket watch in Yujin’s pocket trembled, and Kronos made his displeasure plain.

Now that he’s used Víðarr’s blessing, a chance that didn’t exist has opened up.

Víðarr is a Constellation who’s popular now and stays popular later.

A Constellation of the Asgard stellar field. Merciful by nature, he asked little in his patron contracts, and his buff-type blessings performed superbly, so Martial-line Hunters favored him.

Popular means well-known — same thing.

The strengths of Víðarr’s blessing, and its weaknesses too.

A gray current poured down over Choi Hyeongtae’s head.

Putting a debuff on him.

Kronos had a point. Say Unholy Blessing raised all stats by 20% and Giant’s Strength raised Strength by up to 70%; with the ‘Strength’ stat overlapping between the two buffs, and the holy spells sharing the same root, Unholy Blessing’s effect on Strength would be cut in half.

Well, under ordinary circumstances.

A powerful buff that raised Strength, Agility, physical defense, even magic resistance. Its one weakness was the power of another god: holy power.

Drenched in the gray current, Choi Hyeongtae’s movements turned sluggish. Kronos’s holy power was eating into Víðarr’s blessing. Rather than rely on the debuff itself, Yujin had thrown the holy power straight at the blessing to sap its strength.

“What’s the matter? Aren’t you wobbling there?”

“Khraa.”

“Still a long way off from coming back to your senses.”

He laid Unholy Blessing on Choi Hyeongtae again and again. With each holy spell, the movements grew visibly heavier.

The instant he cast the tenth holy spell, the red glow draped over Choi Hyeongtae’s retinas evaporated.

“Ugghh.”

Loosing a feeble groan, Choi Hyeongtae crumpled to the ground and writhed.

A minor penalty that comes with Víðarr’s blessing.

When Avenger wore off, a tremendous muscle ache flooded in and left him unable to move for a full minute. The recoil of cranking Strength and Agility up by 200%.

Considering the effect, it’s minor. As long as you’re not in the middle of a battlefield, that is.

He must have been badly rattled to have Fafnir tangling up his feet. A minute. No, had he triggered it even ten seconds sooner, he might have managed to bring the threadbare Fafnir down.

Lucky.

“What humility?”

There’s no fight without variables.

Yujin dismissed it curtly and stood over Choi Hyeongtae.

“Don’t worry. You won’t be the only one to end up like this.”

“…”

“The more comrades the better, right?”

“…?”

“Ah. I’ve got a knack for turning corpses into my subordinates, you see.”

Your comrade figured it out, by the way.

At Yujin’s closing words, Choi Hyeongtae’s eyes shuddered.

“Fafnir.”

— I’ll send him off without pain.

A tightly clenched fist drove straight down, and Choi Hyeongtae’s body heaved once, hard, then went still.