Encountering A Strange Phenomenon

Proy’s blood boiled watching Kim Han fight the strange fellow. Moreover, when asked if he was Manus, he answered as if to say, “How did you know?”

Who is Manus? He was a god revered as War God across his dimension and beyond. There’s no way someone like him would look like that.

Strictly speaking, a being called a god—even as a representative—wouldn’t show up wearing a corpse or something like that.

“Where does that bullshit come from…!”

Less than an hour after that rising rage in his chest, that sense of injustice had completely vanished.

The reason was Kim Han.

Watching him beat that bizarre creature so thoroughly that it felt one-sided began to ease his anger.

A moment ago he grabbed its collar and slammed it into the ground. At the crash’s roar, Proy couldn’t help but utter an exclamation as if he’d just taken a refreshing swig of beer and gave a thumbs-up.

Seeing Kim Han flash here and there, Proy realized that the man who had claimed his loyalty hadn’t even shown half his power when sparring with him.

And that single strike that shattered the wall of such tremendous force.

The moment he saw that blow, a shiver ran through Proy; he was so stunned he didn’t even notice fragments of force clipping his arm as they flew by.

“You… are really amazing. Amazing…”

The creature’s words were meant as praise, but the tone carried none of it.

Hostility toward an outstanding foe. Jealousy at being slightly outmatched. And an inexplicable sadness.

It felt like someone smirking at a rival’s brilliance.

The corpse-like creature drew a large circle with its hand.

It wasn’t the reckless flurry of punches from before.

A ki wave rose with it.

It wasn’t a wall of force like just now. It was a wave of blinding light sweeping over Kim Han like a tidal wave.

The moment he saw the gesture, Proy reflexively lunged in front of the party to see with his own eyes whether what he saw was real.

The technique that came from that corpse’s hand. Even seeing it with his own eyes, he couldn’t believe it.

“Th-that… that… why is that…?”

In Proy’s dimension—more precisely, in the world of martial artists—it was a description of a legendary fighter’s unique martial art.

“Sura… Blood Sea? Sura King?”

“Ho? There’s still a child who remembers me. Hey you dazed kid over there, what’s your name… gulp!”

The creature asking Proy for his name let out a cracking ‘ugh!’ as Kim Han’s attack shattered a tree and sent it crashing into the edge of the forest.

Watching that, Kim Han clicked his tongue.

“Crazy bastard. What is this, a freshman welcome party? Suddenly introducing yourself. Were you gonna buy me a drink or something?”

“…Puh, haha, hahahaha!”

Proy burst into laughter at Kim Han’s scathing words—Kim Han was the legion’s leader, a man he wanted to emulate, and a mentor of sorts.

Sure—what kind of composure is that in a duel when he’s not even winning? There’s no way that thing is the Sura King who supposedly turned the world into a sea of blood when he acted.

Just in case,

“Still, it doesn’t matter. Puhahaha!”

Even if he were the Sura King, it didn’t matter—Kim Han was currently overwhelming that supposed Sura King.

With a pleased smile, he watched Kim Han’s attacks closely; as Kim Han always said, he had to steal and learn on his own.

He’d spoken boldly, but his breath was getting short. The bastard was damn tenacious.

Was it because he was inhabiting a body that was basically a walking corpse, as the status window said? The creature showed no sign of fatigue—fighting it felt like a battle of endurance with an undead.

“…You laughed at me for only this much?”

As it pushed through the splintered remains of a tree, arrogant words continued to spill from its mouth.

Of course, the creature had every right to be that way.

But with its clothes ragged and its face, neck, and body covered in wounds, saying that made him want to laugh—a deep, scornful laugh.

“Mirror. Look at yourself. You spouted that nonsense looking like that. How about it? Aren’t you ashamed enough to bury your head in the ground?”

While the creature stupidly watched itself in the mirror, he approached from behind with magic and struck the spine with the intent to pull it out with a knife-hand.

Crack—!

A faint pain ran through his fingers. Sure enough, the nails on his middle three fingers shattered and bled.

Clenching his bleeding right hand tight, he pummeled the back of the creature’s head with a punch imbued with a breaker.

The creature’s technique, its use of divine power, and the enormous amount of divine power it had.

It was definitely impressive.

But perhaps because it wore someone else’s skin, there was a slight disconnect in its movements.

It was a split-second, but to someone like me whose specialty in a past life was extreme close-quarters combat, it was more than enough time.

That was precisely why he transformed the “Pyosik” into a dagger to circle his body for automatic defense and collided with the creature using both fists.

“Eek!”

It howled and thrashed as if it too felt discomfort.

A wild barrage of punches—though they looked like flailing, they contained such tremendous force that any being attempting to block or grab could have their arm or hand torn off.

“…Phew.”

“…?”

It suddenly took a deep breath and flung itself far backward. Not satisfied, it stepped back once more before stopping.

“I admit I was reckless.”

“You… surely not!”

“Hm?”

“Did I get stupid from the blow to the head just now? Like, went crazy?”

The creature, about to get riled up again, took a deep breath and let its shoulders sag.

It lowered its head, breathed twice more, then looked at me. There was no trace of excitement in its eyes.

“I admit it—you’re strong. I hate to admit that this body is being bested by someone who probably won’t live long anyway, but I admit this trash isn’t my body. As for the technique you showed—that’s surely a breaker, isn’t it? Excellent. Worthy of pride. And finally, that stratagem of yours, that craving for victory. Truly fitting of the representative we took note of. I’ll ask again: won’t you join us?”

“…Sorry.”

I apologized to the creature for the time being.

“Hm? No, think of it as a spar. Besides, this body isn’t my true body, so it’s fine.”

“You have middle-school edgy syndrome—well, you probably don’t know that word. I treated you like an ordinary person despite being more pathetic than adolescence. Apologies. From now on I’ll just think of you as a monster. Come to think of it, there are plenty of talking monsters… ah!”

Shouting “Ah!” like a kiai, it abruptly broke off speaking, moved, and swung the “Posik-a” transformed into a continuous-sword form. But there was no sense of it connecting.

Then a voice came from behind—very close.

“Yeah, I figured as much.”

Kwahng—!

The moment the voice sounded, it spewed divine power to guard its back, but like throwing a rock into a sheet of thin ice, that barrier was shattered to pieces.

A jaw-grinding shock washed over his whole body.

But the creature’s assault wasn’t over; he could see it tearing through the divine-power barrier that guarded his back and pressing on.

“Master, you must evade.”

Even without Guardian saying it, he would have done so.

He pushed off the ground and thrust his body forward. Not stopping there, he used a blink spell while moving.

“Ho? Magic swordsman? Magic warrior?”

The creature’s voice still came from behind. Goosebumps rose all over his body.

Simply dodging wasn’t the answer.

He reversed his body and drove a punch imbued with a breaker.

The wave of light from earlier—each razor-sharp beam of it was stronger than most force attacks.

Kwahng!!

“Ugh!”

The force generated by their collision drove both their bodies apart.

Though moved by external force rather than will, his eyes never left the creature.

“Guardian, simplify as much as possible!”

The dizzying lines in his vision vanished, leaving only the creature’s body and the paths where divine power poured out.

Even during the earlier attack, if he hadn’t been wearing Suho, he would have bled from that hit.

He pushed off the ground so lightly it felt as if his feet barely touched it, and approached the creature.

The brisk movement let him land the next step right in front of the creature.

He twisted his ankle and used the footwork he learned from Bioss. Two short steps. In just those two steps, the creature’s back was before his eyes.

Like a well-laid table, he seized the creature’s nape with a hand brimming with concentrated breaker force.

He tried to twist its wrist, but it wouldn’t break. As a substitute, he channeled Deicide through the grabbed scruff and stepped back.

“Huh?”

When he made a chin gesture asking the surprised creature why, it looked at him with a baffled expression.

“You’re hiding something else? You concealed footwork while facing me? Heh heh.”

It chuckled hollowly, then its momentum completely shifted. As if the previous part had been a joke, a surging flow of divine power lifted its body.

“So you had composure? Even while fighting me. Heh, hehehe.”

The creature began laughing like a madman, then suddenly used its hands.

Black divine power blossomed from both hands.

Chaos? No. It was like corrupted divine power—the kind a fiend would use.

From the hands of the creature laughing madly in the air sprang forth a terror-flame.

It became a pillar of fire and descended upon him.

Perhaps techniques for parrying and dodging were never my style.

Although he always sparred with Bioss and Talis as if in real combat, the times he suffered serious injuries were mostly when he didn’t parry their attacks but met them head-on.

A pillar of flame reminiscent of the terror-fire fell from the sky.

He was using magic for the first time in a very long while.

“Consume it.”

An unnamed spell shot from his hand.

A demon-consuming spell. Talis called it that.

Following the demon-consumption spell, he pushed off the ground and flew up. He imbued his breaker with a fatal intent—one step before becoming Deicide.

That sublime technique cleaved the terror-flame’s fierce force that could even evaporate moisture in the air.

Shriiing!

A sound like hot metal plunged into water rippled through the air, and the terror-flame split exactly in two, scorching the ground around it.

The creature he faced in midair had a flicker in its eyes once more.

“You know that saying?”

It was a talkative one. What did it want to say so badly… The creature hovered in the air and kept its mouth moving.

“They say the talented should hide even beneath fallen leaves. The leaves that covered you scattered, and at that moment you caught my eye… disappear from here!”

A one-sided decree from a speck in the sky. But to dismiss the madman’s rambling would be to ignore the massive results he produced.

An attack that simply fell from above to below. A diagonal swing. Not technique or skillful art.

Perhaps it poured so much divine power into it that its own arm cracked—the divine power it spouted became a massive club as thick as a mythic rod, vibrating relentlessly as it approached.

It looked large and thick when hovering in the sky, and as it drew closer it only increased in size and girth.

It seemed to obscure his entire field of vision—indeed, it felt as if it had blanketed the whole sky.

“Damn!”

Given the attack’s scope, it’s only natural that those who dodged backward felt its aftereffects.

He spat between his teeth and employed Deicide. Both hands darkened with an ominous blackness.

The “Posik-a” imbued with Deicide stiffened into a straight length—over ten meters long.

As the length of the “Pyosik” deployed, it became like a rising dragon—a streak of lightning that cleaved the black staff.

Chakajak—!

With a sound like bamboo splitting, the teeth of the “Pyosik” that had cut through the mass of divine power pierced the creature’s throat.

Instead of merely shattering as before, it cleanly and satisfyingly sliced the creature’s neck.

“Grr… You… that just now….”

“You don’t need to know. More than that, before you die there’s something I’m curious about….”

His eyes asked what it was.

The interior battered by dozens or hundreds of clashes of divine power. A fatigued body. A divine-power core emptied by the hastily released Deicide. And a ringing head on top of it all.

Feigning composure in the worst of situations, he took a deep breath and asked the creature.

“Do the things you see and hear here—do those ‘we’ entities hear them too?”

“…Grr. Ku, kuhahaha. Who knows?”

With those words, the creature’s body collapsed to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.

Both I and the creature.