54. Arahan Gives Fortuitous Encounters For Free (3)

With the S-grade trait Eye of the War God, finding the Living Armors’ cores was no trouble.

— Crash.

The Living Armors that had swarmed in by the dozen collapsed in a cascade at a few flicks of his hand.

— Aw. I had pretty high hopes, but this is dull.

Fafnir’s grumbling lanced into the minds of the Arahan strike force.

Song Myeongseok’s face twisted with rage. Not since he’d gained the Heavenly Bone trait had he been humiliated to his face like this.

Damn it!!

The hand resting on his sword hilt trembled. The sound was faint, buried under the clatter of collapsing Living Armors, but Yujin didn’t miss it.

Heheheh. He must be seething.

The hell’s this nonsense, all of a sudden.

It’s not like we agreed to match levels before the contest.

Spoken like a true backwater goblin. He’d shoved his foot into a stage Arahan had set, and now he came looking for fair play?

All right. Then shall I make him a little more miserable?

“Minyeong. Use Sync on Fafnir.”

Sync let him share senses with a designated target.

An admiring “ahh” slipped from Kang Minyeong’s lips.

“Bro. I can feel it.”
“Spit it out without lopping off the front and back, would you.”
“Ah. Sorry.”

Kang Minyeong giggled, then steered her crossbow with Telekinesis.

“You sure it’s all right to add Sync targets?”
“I practiced, so I can hold up to three just fine.”

— Fwip!

The instant she pulled the trigger, the taut string loosed the bolt with full force. Its honed tip bored between the scraps and pierced the heart of the magic.

“Yahoo! Bro. I did it.”

The Arahan strike force’s eyes went wide with shock.

“Did you see that? Even the team leader couldn’t take it down…”
“You can do it in one shot? With that?”
“Keep your voice down. The team leader will hear you.”

Song Myeongseok no longer had the strength even to school his expression; the rage showed plain on his face.

Yeah, wasn’t it better to let it out honestly? Grinning, Yujin gave his next order.

“Minho. Spread the energy wide across your shield.”
“Like this?”
“Picture pulping the Living Armor’s whole body.”

Kang Minho braced the back of his shield tight against his shoulder and slammed the two forces together. The shockwave radiating out from the impact rattled the Living Armor’s insides without mercy.

“Ki, i. i.”

The Living Armor flopped down where it stood. Smoke leaked from every seam, and the iron fragments that had composed it sprawled apart.

“Boss! I did it too!”
“Manage your stamina and mana. And quit making a fuss.”

Every iron fragment heaped in the mound was a Living Armor. Imperfect ones, to be precise: the lingering obsessions of guttered-out souls clinging to scrap iron. But their core traits, Super-Regeneration and the Mana Core, came through intact, which made them tricky opponents.

“What do I gotta do?”
“Bring some popcorn. There’s nothing for us to do.”
“Yes…”

Where did he think he was sticking his nose, with fire as his main element? Lightning, maybe. But a fire user simply didn’t match up against something that kept its core buried in a solid lump of metal. The Space ability was no use here either.

Fafnir’s working hard, isn’t he.

Yujin made his glib excuse.

He couldn’t use Corpse Explosion, and he couldn’t craft undead either. Bone Spear? You’d have to know where the core was to stab it.

No need to waste strength on a pointless effort.

I’m being realistic.

And besides, it’s not like I’m just sitting on my hands.

He cast Wedge of Retribution over the whole party. Giant’s Strength, which ran on consuming life force, he laid on his teammates, and Unholy Blessing, a buff that took hold only on the dead, he placed on Fafnir.

“The strength…!”
“Tell me if your stamina drops too far. I’ll top it up.”

The Strength stat soared tremendously, but at the cost of draining stamina. With Life Drain, he could cover that as much as he needed.

Yujin drew out the bones he’d stockpiled in advance and stretched them long. He’d compressed them outside beforehand, so even drawn past two meters they lost little durability.

Can’t exactly just goof off either.

A Living Armor reared up at his feet. Yujin flicked away the scraps swarming and clinging to him, weaving in the artistry of Verdian-style spearmanship, skill enough that even if he couldn’t destroy them, he could buy time.

Fafnir jabbed clean through the core of a Living Armor mid-assembly.

— You’re pretty good.

“I’ve practiced steadily, in my own way.”

Setting aside the idling Lee Seongmin, Yujin’s group was holding the line well.

“What in the world did he do?”
“There’s no way the core’s location is visible to the eye.”

The Arahan strike force, by contrast, couldn’t escape a wretched showing against the endlessly reviving Living Armors.

Three Martial-line, two Magic-line, one Priest. A well-balanced team, but on a chaotic battlefield it was hard to bring its full strength to bear.

“H-help me!”

The scream came from the Priest-line Hunter, who had neither the physique nor the knack to swat the Living Armors aside the way Yujin did. Enemies spawned with no regard for front line or rear, and as an unwanted melee broke out around him, he backpedaled in a fluster.

The Magic-line Hunters were in much the same straits.

They kept the Living Armors in check mostly with simple, quick-to-recast spells, but with no idea where the cores were, they only burned mana for nothing.

“We’re having a hard time over here too!”
“Then run a little, or hold out.”

The Martial-line Hunters drove the Living Armors back, teeth clenched. They had no way to pinpoint the cores the way Fafnir could, nor any means to copy Kang Minho’s trick of landing an even blow across a Living Armor’s whole body. All they could do was endure the things as they regenerated without end.

Song Myeongseok alone fought desperately.

“Uwaaaaah!!!”

The two swords gripped in his hands traced countless arcs of light through the air. The more recklessly he moved, the closer he came to his limit, and the more the Heavenly Bone drew the body’s buried potential to the surface.

That I should suffer a humiliation like this!

Consumed by rage, Song Myeongseok swung without even feeling his muscles tear. A Living Armor came apart into dozens of pieces; it tried to reassemble at once, but the storm of blade strikes that followed shattered its core.

Kill it. Kill it!

The display lived up to his alias, Arahan’s Supernova. And more than that, his senses honed to a razor edge, he began little by little to feel the mana coursing through the Living Armors’ plating.

This… sensation?

He was a man destined, years from now, to reach the eighth Stellar Rank. By driving himself on with rage, he had begun to crack that future open ahead of time.

In the instant he felt it, the elation, the rapture of standing at the threshold of a new realm with one more swing of his sword…

— What. You’re still fighting?

— Krrk-crack!

Fafnir tore a Living Armor apart, and Song Myeongseok’s possessed sword-dance ended with it. The blade he’d swung on reflex was caught fast in a huge hand, unable to travel another inch, and the realization that had glimmered in his mind vanished without a trace.

“Ah.”

— No need to thank me. The weak ought to be helped.

“You… &*%#$@!!!”

A monstrous stream of curses poured out. For the first time in front of Yujin’s group, Song Myeongseok’s true feelings broke loose.

— Why throw a fit even when I help you?

At Fafnir’s baffled look, Yujin too snickered.

The Living Armors had risen without end, but after he’d destroyed a few hundred, no more came out.

“Hweagh.”
“Bleh. Urgh.”

Gasping for breath, throwing up half-digested food, the Arahan strike force had plainly reached its limit. Song Myeongseok was no exception. His brief glimpse of realization was gone, and now that the battle was over too, he paid in full for how recklessly he’d pushed himself.

“Kuh, kggh. Kuh.”
“Arahan’s future. I got a good look at that skill of yours.”

One corner of Yujin’s lips curled upward, drawing a grotesque arc.

“It was so dull I want to die.”
“You, son of a—”
“Catch your breath. Keep that up and your airway might close and kill you.”

Killing Song Myeongseok here and now would be simple. One twitch of a finger and his magical armament would move, punching a hole through the heart or throat of the wretch slumped in exhaustion.

There’s still a lot left to wring out of the Arahan Guild.

There were still two gates left to clear together. If the Arahan Guild’s Hunters were wiped out, he might lose the Toy Factory and the Pit.

And even setting that aside, there’ll be plenty of chances.

Would they sit still once they realized their show of force had come to nothing? The moment the Arahan Guild decided it couldn’t recruit Yujin, it would try to ruin him by every means available.

The vice-president’s head works well in that direction.

Their next ace was humiliated too, so they’ll react one way or another.

Heheheh. However the Arahan Guild schemed, it all sat in the palm of Yujin’s hand. For dirt on the underworld he had an expert called the Madam, and for the currents moving on the surface he could keep watch through the tie he’d forged with Seongcheon Enterprise.

Whatever method they use, in the end it’ll turn to my profit.
I ought to write them a thank-you letter.

Yujin gathered his thoughts, then had his group withdraw from the hill of scrap metal.

“You lot pull back too, unless you want to croak.”
“Heugh, heuagh. Don’t… give me orders.”
“If the gate clear were already over, wouldn’t an exit have appeared?”

The skin around Song Myeongseok’s eyes trembled.

— Rrrumble!

The ground shook the moment the words left his mouth. The Arahan strike force drove their spent bodies into desperate motion.

Once all six had scrambled clear, the shuddering iron fragments drew together into a single mass and rose as a six-meter giant.

Blue ghost-fire blazed among the iron scraps. The arch-fiend that had laid waste to Chungju’s northern district before the regression revealed itself.

An ability that meddles with iron and multiplies its underlings.

Rebar in the buildings, vehicles in the streets, and beyond those, the modern city overflowed with everything else that held steel.

For now it ranked as a 2nd-Rank gate boss, but in the wake of the Break, the Scrap Wraith had gorged on rebar from the surrounding structures, gained power beyond the Stellar Ranks, and dealt enormous damage.

“Khe, khek.”
“Quit making that strained noise and rest quietly.”

After flinging that warning at Song Myeongseok, he turned to face the Scrap Wraith, a monster huge enough to close ten meters in an instant.

Of course.
It’s not as though profiting off knowledge of the future is anything new to me.

A red sphere came out of his pocket. When he tossed the egg-shaped thing into the air, blood compressed to its limit burst outward in every direction.

Synthesis did more than craft golems. It could also bend physical law to stow a golem away, or revert it to its original form.

“Give me your command.”
“Bulk up a bit. And take down that lump of scrap.”
“Order. Confirmed.”

The blood making up its torso spread out wider, and the Blood Golem’s height grew to five and a half meters.

— Hoho. It got bigger, so does it get stronger too?

“I forced the output up, so it’s basically balloon muscle.”

Good for nothing but drawing attention, the way it was right now. Its Strength and Endurance had actually dropped below what they’d been before he bulked the body up.

— In a word, it’s for show.

“There’s a need for that, isn’t there.”

Yujin shot a sidelong glance at the Arahan strike force, who had just finished evacuating. Their eyes were flung wide; they couldn’t tear their gaze from the grotesquely swollen Blood Golem.

“They’re friends I’ll be working with for a while. Got to leave a good impression.”

— In one sense or another, I think they’ve received a meaningful impression.

“Right?”

The Scrap Wraith might wield powers absurd for a 2nd-Rank boss, but the Blood Golem had drunk down a Troll’s blood to climb into the entry of the 4th Rank. Even with the penalty for bulking up too far.

“It’s more than enough.”

— Thud. Thud!

The iron giant and the blood-red monster locked into a contest of strength, smoke curling up between them. The blood that made up the Blood Golem carried toxins mixed in, and they ate away at the Scrap Wraith’s iron little by little.

Without gaps for the blood to seep through, perhaps it wouldn’t have worked, but the Scrap Wraith was no better than a heap of rags, and it thrashed to throw off the gripping hand.

— Want me to help?

“Nah. The Blood Golem’s enough.”

— Bang! Bang!

The two monsters, each the size of a two-story building, threw down in a crude grappling match.

An hour later, the Blood Golem stomped the toppled Scrap Wraith underfoot and beat its chest, thump, thump.

“Worthless trash.”

The fallen Scrap Wraith didn’t drop so much as a single common mana stone. All that remained was a grotesquely slumped heap of scrap.

“You put us through all that hardship, and the reward is this kind of crap?!”

When Song Myeongseok flared up, Yujin’s head swung side to side.

“Spoils divided by contribution. Remember?”
“This scrap. I wouldn’t take it if you handed it to me, so you take it all.”
“It’s a whole twenty-three tons. The least you can do is help haul it.”

Yujin drove the wedge in deeper. The skin around Song Myeongseok’s eyes flushed with humiliation.

I actually need it, that’s why.

With grudge-steeped metal, there’s an enormous amount I can do.

To a Necromancer, it was a material worth more than gold. Just how useful that metal could be, the dimwit in front of him would never grasp in all his life.

In my past life too, you’ve no idea how hard it was to get hold of obsession-steeped iron by the ton.

Metal piled up like a mountain. Put to use, just how far could it let him reinforce his undead army!

This fortuitous encounter in the Iron Tomb was a greater reward than two Unique-grade artifacts combined. Feeling his blood boil up, Yujin clenched his fist tight.