The Will To Survive, The Will To Dominate

All three of them were Villains.

They posed as low-rank Hunters, entered Gates alongside other Hunters, then murdered them and made off with their gear. Naturally, Seo Yuhyeon, Seo Yura and Seo Yuseon weren’t their real names either, and the three weren’t siblings at all, just complete strangers to one another.

“Looks like this one’ll be harder than last time. What was it — Yun Minjun? That prick can actually fight.”
“Maybe it’s the gear talking, but he was decent for a D-Rank, sure. Doesn’t mean he’s someone we can’t kill, though, does it?”
“Well, no.”

In truth Seo Yuhyeon was a B-Rank, and Seo Yura and Seo Yuseon were both C-Rank, more than enough firepower to roll over a pair of D-Rank Hunters. Barring some other variable, killing Junhwi and Minjun and stripping their gear would give the three of them no trouble whatsoever.

“Same as last time — let’s go with an ambush in the middle of a fight.”
“We jump them when they’re at their most distracted, when they’re worn down the furthest.”

They held the advantage in every respect, and still they never let their guard down.

“Even a tiger gives it everything when it’s catching a rabbit.”

However foul the cause it served, meticulousness ran in all three of them, and that was exactly why their ‘work’ had gone off without a single slip until now.

“If we drag this out any longer, that lot will start thinking it’s strange. Let’s head back for now.”

At Seo Yuhyeon’s word, the three of them left the spot.

“You’re not going to rest, Hyungnim?”
“I feel like I ought to go back over the fight we just had. Don’t mind me.”

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the fight I was going back over but the feel of the sword when I’d used it.

Kim Junhwi watched me keep swinging straight through the break and clicked his tongue in amazement.

“You’re seriously hardcore, Hyungnim.”
“Not at all. It’s just — I’ve had a bit of motivation lately.”

I answered him and went on swinging. A few minutes of this wouldn’t make me any stronger overnight, but don’t they say a mountain is built out of specks of dust?

“This motivation — would it have anything to do with your girlfriend, by any chance?”
“You could say that.”
“Oh, a total romantic. Your girlfriend must feel so secure with you.”
“Thank you.”

Well, the truth ran the other way around. Sia wasn’t the one who felt secure; I was.

A dragon girlfriend who had torn through dimensions to come back for me alone. The security she gave me was greater than anything I could have imagined.

“Anyway — the three of them all seem to be taking a while, don’t they?”
“They do.”

A good ten minutes or more had passed since they’d left, and still no sign of the Seo siblings. That wasn’t long enough to call them late, but people who’d gone off in different directions all staying out of sight at once was a little odd.

But then, speak of the tiger and the tiger comes, as they say.

“Sorry we’re late. You must have been waiting a while.”
“Not at all.”

The words were barely out when Seo Yuhyeon came back wearing a sheepish look. I didn’t ask, in case asking outright embarrassed him, but he must have been off dealing with some serious business. The two sisters rejoined the group after him, one after the other.

Did they all eat something bad yesterday?

Something abashed in their faces struck me as oddly suspicious.

Anyway, once we’d regrouped, we set off through the Gate again.

“Once the clear’s done it’ll be, what, five or six o’clock?”

Kim Junhwi evidently still had plenty to say, because he kept up his cheeky, good-natured chatter the whole way.

“Yes. Probably.”
“How about a drink for everyone afterwards? This area’s a busy district, so there are plenty of decent bars.”

At this rate I couldn’t tell whether I’d come to clear a Gate or turned up at some mixer. The three siblings chimed in with Kim Junhwi, and the chatter stayed cheerful, until Seo Yuhyeon, out in front, stopped mid-sentence and pointed ahead.

“I think we’re in for a bit more of a slog than last time.”

There were easily three or four times as many monsters as before, and some unusually huge ones among them. Just as Seo Yuhyeon said, next to the ones we’d run into earlier, this was clearly going to be hard work.

But…

Even so, nothing about it made the clear impossible. If anything, counting it as real combat experience in the bank, it was a good opportunity for me.

“Uh — Hyungnim. What are you smiling for?”

Kim Junhwi asked from beside me.

“There were far too few monsters last time. This lot looks about right.”
“…You’re a real pervert, Hyungnim.”
“I’m of the same mind as Minjun.”

Seo Yuhyeon cut in from beside us.

“With numbers like this, you really start to get a taste for killing.”

A taste for killing.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but the smile on Seo Yuhyeon’s face as he said it sent a chill through me before I knew it.

“Ugh, goosebumps.”

Kim Junhwi must have felt the same, because he made a show of shuddering all over. Seo Yuhyeon played the innocent at that and laughed, asking whether he’d looked a bit frightening just now, as though it had all been a deliberate joke.

The moment didn’t last. Once the fight proper began, the playfulness vanished from every face, Seo Yuhyeon’s included.

It wasn’t easy with so many Antmen, but thanks to the Dragon Bone Sword and the rest of the gear Sia had given me, stamina was my only real problem. The others weren’t so lucky.

By the time about half of them were down, I’d started worrying about the state of the rest of the party, so I checked first on Kim Junhwi, right beside me.

“Junhwi. You all right?”
“Ugh, it’s getting a bit rough. And I don’t know whether it’s just my imagination, but the heals don’t seem to be coming through much either.”

Kim Junhwi gave me his condition straight. It looked that way to me too: his color was poor, and he’d slowed noticeably since the start.

“I’ll buy us some time, so drop back for a moment and catch your breath.”
“I’ll take you up on that.”

He didn’t refuse; he pulled back to the rear without hesitating. He seemed to be struggling even to get his voice out properly, so I called to Seo Yura on his behalf.

“Hunter Yura, please look after Hunter Junhwi!”
“…”

I’d shouted loud enough that she couldn’t possibly have missed it, but no answer came back.

“…Hunter Yura?”

Cutting down the swarming Antmen, I turned my head toward the rear. Kim Junhwi still hadn’t received a single heal, and there wasn’t so much as a glimpse of Seo Yura or the other two. With nobody in sight at all, an ominous feeling began creeping up on me.

Could Antmen have attacked all three of them back there?

We definitely checked there were no monsters, right up until the fight started.

Still, I couldn’t rule out other monsters having come this way as reinforcements in the meantime.

“Hunter Yuseon! Hunter Yuhyeon!”

I shouted the other two’s names, and sure enough, no answer came from them either. Carrying on the fight like this would be hard, so I had to change the plan.

“Junhwi, I think we need to fall back further for now. Once we’re out—”

Before I could even finish, something came flying from the rear, splitting the air. With no time to make out what it was, I knocked it aside on instinct.

— CLANG!

In the very instant I struck it aside, I saw what it was: an arrow of condensed mana.

Seo Yuseon…!

No Antman could have fired a mana arrow, so this could only be one of Seo Yuseon’s. Had monsters ambushed her, so that she’d shot from cover in a panic and the arrow just happened to fly my way?

Even as I thought it, another came flying. Not at the Antmen, but aimed precisely at my heart.

This could not possibly be chance.

Which meant.

“Those bastards… they were Villains.”
“Sorry?”
“Those three siblings — I’m telling you they’re Villains. And I’d thought surely not.”

I batted the arrow away and turned my head in the direction it had come from. There stood Seo Yuseon, sighting another mana arrow with a wicked light in her eyes.

“Aw, shame.”

No need to look for the other Seo siblings: Seo Yuhyeon and Seo Yura were standing right beside her.

“How do you manage not to hit that in one go?”
“My aim was fine — he flicked it away with his sword, that’s what happened. F***, I didn’t think a D-Rank would block that.”

The other two wore the same mean smile, smacking their lips. Only moments ago these same people had been chattering away with us as warmly as anyone could ask.

“You people… you were Villains?”

Kim Junhwi’s voice was trembling all over.

“And what’ll you do if we say we’re not?”
“Hand over everything you’ve got, even now, and we’ll kill you nice and easy. How’s that — not bad, right?”

Still wearing that mean smile, Seo Yuhyeon gestured for us to hand over our gear, while Seo Yuseon and Seo Yura egged each other on beside him, snickering.

Three of them, and two of us. On top of that, they had most likely lied about their ranks, so anyone could see we were at a disadvantage. Worse still, most of the Antmen were swarming toward us rather than them, because Kim Junhwi and I had held the vanguard from the start, the position that drew the monsters’ aggro.

As that sank in, cold sweat ran down my back.

Dying here was not in my plans. Somehow, I had to find a way out of this.

A way out of this… that’s right.

Faced with a life-or-death crisis, I suddenly remembered Sia’s artifacts piled up in my subspace. Taking them on as I was would be one thing, but if I pulled those out and used them, I’d have a real chance of winning.

But.

“…Huh?”

My subspace wouldn’t open. However many times I reached for it, my hand closed on nothing.

“Pfft — take a look at him.”

As I kept failing, the Villains pointed at me and sneered.

“Curious why your subspace won’t open?”

Seo Yuhyeon taunted me with a smug little smile. Instead of answering, I glared at him.

“Still, dying is easier if you at least know why. It’s simple: this artifact. It can lock other people’s subspaces, or force them open.”

At that, Kim Junhwi reached for his own subspace, and just like me, his hand closed on nothing again and again. Whatever method they’d used, they weren’t lying.

“What the hell…”
“You wouldn’t know it, but the black market has all sorts of things.”
“See? What did I tell you. I said this was worth buying even if we had to stretch for it.”

There was no point listening to any more of this.

“F***. Your tongues really are f***ing long.”

I spat in the Villains’ direction along with the curse.

“Empty carts rattle loudest. In the time you’ve spent flapping your gums, I’d have killed us already.”
“It’s fine. We’ve got time to spare and then some.”

Seo Yuseon folded her arms and cocked her head as she said it.

“Unlike you two.”

Behind us the Antmen were pouring in, and in front of us the Villains were watching for their chance. We were sandwiched between them, and I had exactly one ally. No way forward, no way back.

“Every time I see that flustered look, I feel like this job’s worth doing. I’m really glad I got into this line of work.”

With that taunt, Seo Yuseon nocked another arrow of condensed mana and drew her bowstring.

“Now, who shall I kill first.”

Smiling wickedly, she let the string go.

Again the mana arrow came for me rather than Kim Junhwi, and I twisted my body slightly and slipped past it. Luckily, the stray arrow buried itself in an Antman that had been about to pounce on me.

— KEEEEEE—!

The Antman toppled over the moment it was struck. That was destructive power on a wholly different plane from the covering fire she’d given earlier; clearly, they had been hiding their real ranks all along.

Wait.

As my eyes happened to fall on the arrow-struck Antman, it struck me that I could make that happen on purpose.

Use the barbarians to subdue the barbarians.

For an idea that had come out of nowhere, it wasn’t bad.¹

— WHOOSH!

After dodging another of Seo Yuseon’s arrows, I closed in beside Kim Junhwi and whispered.

“I’ll only say this once, Junhwi. Run for it as much as you can. Keep your path from crossing mine.”
“Sorry?”

I hadn’t given him a reason, so he asked back as though he couldn’t follow. But this was no situation for explaining things point by point.

— KEEEK!

An Antman lunged from behind, and Kim Junhwi and I dodged in opposite directions. Not missing the opening, the Villains unleashed another fierce barrage. I ducked quickly behind a big-bodied Antman, and their attacks landed squarely on it instead of on us.

Good.

A glance over showed Kim Junhwi, exhausted as he was, wringing out strength he’d forgotten he had and nimbly dodging the Villains’ attacks. They weren’t fools either, though; it was only a matter of time before they saw through the plan.

To keep them from noticing for as long as possible, I made a show of fighting the Antmen with my sword while weaving in and out of the pack over and over. Kim Junhwi must have caught on, because he copied me and mixed in among the Antmen too.

How many minutes passed like that, wearing down monsters and Villains alike with barbarian set against barbarian?

“Those bastards — they’re doing that on purpose, aren’t they?”
“They are, f***. I did wonder why they were at it.”

As expected, they saw through the plan, and the moment they did, they started looking for a counter.

“Hey, just do nothing. Let them knock each other about. The aggro’s all been pulled onto them anyway. We go in again once they run out of strength.”
“Okay. Wise call.”

After that I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, but I could roughly guess their strategy. Until we’d thinned the Antman pack down to some degree, they would sit out the fight and wait for us to run dry.

A rational judgment, and rational enough to drive me to despair.

Is this how it ends…?

But.

It ends here? When it’s barely been any time since I met Sia again?

I couldn’t have that.

So that Sia would never grieve over my death, I had to survive, by any means and any method. I had to survive and get back to Sia’s side, without fail.

The moment I thought of Sia, a strong will welled up from deep in my chest: the will not to die but to survive, and beyond that, the will to cut my way through those Villains.

Will?

All at once, something I’d heard the day before came back to me.

Domination isn’t a wrong answer, but what matters more than that is will.

In the end, the core of handling a dragon’s power was my own unyielding will. A desperate will to survive, a will to break my enemy, and further still, a will to dominate the enemy I had broken. That will would awaken the dragon’s power lying dormant in the sword, or perhaps in my own body.

Holding fast to a fierce will to break them and survive no matter what, I gritted my teeth and glared at the Villains.

I was going back to Sia, without fail. So there was no chance whatsoever that I would be broken by the likes of you.

No. I was going to break you, completely.

And in that moment, a brilliant light began to rise from the sword.

A fierce light, unlike anything I had ever seen.