Overwhelming

A brilliant aurora light came spilling out of Minjun’s sword. Before long it was climbing the blade, and then it wrapped itself around his whole body.

The sensation was like nothing he had ever known. For a moment Minjun simply stood there, blank, his eyes going from his hand to his sword and back again.

His first thought was a sword aura, but everyone knew a sword aura glowed blue, not with an aurora light like this. Besides, his grasp of the sword came nowhere near deep enough to manifest sword energy. This light, then, had nothing to do with an aura. It had to be the dragon’s power sleeping inside the sword.

He couldn’t say for certain whether he had drawn out all of that power. The state was new even to him, and he couldn’t vouch for it.

But one thing, at least, was certain.

If he turned the fierce power surging through his body loose through the sword, then whatever the situation and whoever the opponent, he would overwhelm them.

“Hyungnim, wh-what on earth is—”

Junhwi stammered, thrown by the aurora light rising off every inch of Minjun.

“Junhwi. Just follow me.”
“Sorry? But that—”

Minjun didn’t wait to hear the rest. Without a moment’s hesitation, he launched himself toward the Seo siblings.

It all happened in an instant, so fast that Junhwi was left at a loss as he set off after him.

“Th-that crazy bastard, is he for real?”

The Villains were no exception. They, too, were badly thrown by a turn they had never expected. As they saw it, Minjun and Junhwi had two options: fight the Antmen or run the other way. Instead, the man was charging straight at them. Wasn’t that exactly like a mouse gritting its teeth and rushing the cat?

“What are those two even thinking?”
“Putting up a last struggle before they die, I suppose.”
“Works for us, but… hold on, what’s that thing wrapped around his blade? Don’t tell me that’s an aura?”
“A mere D-Rank with an aura, my ass. Talk sense. Does that look like a sword aura to you?”

They had been thrown for a moment, but the Villains soon grinned as Minjun ran at them. The pair had Antmen on their heels either way, so the three figured they had time to spare. They took his sudden move for nothing more than a reckless gamble, his life staked on one last throw before he died, and put the aurora light around him down to an item or a piece of gear.

But…

“Wh-what is that!”

Minjun defied their expectations once again. They had been sure this was nothing but a last desperate struggle before his strength gave out, yet here he came at the three of them, the air whistling as he split it, as terrifying as a runaway locomotive. What D-Rank Hunter could move at that speed?

“What the hell is—”
“Th-that’s a D-Rank…?”

Faced with physical ability that defied common sense, now they too could only tense up. Junhwi and the Antmen could wait. Minjun was the one they had to deal with now.

All three were ranged damage dealers, so they began backing off and pouring concentrated fire onto him. An ordinary D-Rank Hunter would struggle to block an attack like this cleanly. He was faster than they had thought, which made him hard to aim at, but that was all right. They could settle it by sheer volume.

The arrows and spells the three let fly came down as fiercely as a rainstorm. However fast he was, dodging or blocking all of that would be hard.

But.

“…What?”

Even as they sprayed spells, part of them had wondered whether this was overkill. Minjun proved them wrong again. With a single sword and nothing else, he deflected every one of their attacks and kept coming with fierce momentum. Where a spell knocked aside by his blade grazed the ground, it gouged a hollow in the earth.

“N-no way!”

Blocking an offensive like this perfectly, without taking damage, took at least an A-Rank Hunter. Yet Minjun looked perfectly fine. Which meant…

Just what is he?

Whatever Minjun really was, this was no time to puzzle over it. The moment that unknown aura settled into his sword, the tide of the fight had turned completely. Before they knew it, they had gone from happily picturing how they would eat him alive to agonizing over how not to be eaten themselves.

They wrung out what strength they had left and launched an all-out offensive. Magic Missiles thick with mana split the air, and debuff after debuff followed to stop his fierce charge.

But even this was useless. Minjun simply cut down or deflected the incoming Magic Missiles with his sword and kept charging, untouched. Most of the debuffs were nullified, and the few that did take hold he ignored completely, running on through them.

On will alone.

Following behind, Junhwi watched with his mouth hanging open.

That man is a D-Rank Hunter like me?

No D-Rank Hunter could put on a performance like that. How on earth could one deflect, block and cut down every spell raining down like that, and with a sword? Then there was his speed on top of it. Junhwi was chasing with everything he had, yet even at a glance the gap between him and Minjun had grown considerably.

I’m going to live.

When the three had first shown their true colors, Junhwi had taken himself for a dead man with nowhere to run. But watching the fearsome display Minjun was putting on, he could be sure of one thing: he, at least, wasn’t going to die today.

While Junhwi was still caught up in the spectacle, Minjun steadily closed the distance to the three.

“Wh-what is this.”

The Villains floundered to put as much ground between themselves and Minjun as they could, but the gap would hardly widen. Movement-speed buffs made no difference, and neither did scattering in different directions. As that sank in, the color drained from all three faces.

By now Minjun had closed to within reach of his sword.

“G-get back, you bastard!”

Seo Yuhyeon, the closest of them, fought back with a spray of magic. Minjun lightly dodged a few spells, struck the ones that followed aside with his sword, and drove the blade into Seo Yuhyeon’s shoulder with all his strength.

“Gaaaaaaah!”

Seo Yuhyeon writhed in pain, clutching his shoulder, but Minjun didn’t spare him a glance and ran straight on toward Seo Yura and Seo Yuseon. Having watched Seo Yuhyeon go down so easily, the two of them gave up resisting and tried to flee. The gap in strength was so overwhelming that fighting back meant nothing. In the end, though, they were rolling gracelessly in the dirt before they could even make a run for it.

Once he had confirmed that none of the three could fight anymore, Minjun searched them and found the artifact that locked subspaces. The moment he had it, he shut it down and opened his own subspace.

Among the artifacts Sia gave me…

There was one, he remembered, that was just right for a situation like this. He rummaged quickly through his subspace and drew it out with a satisfied smile.

“Found it.”

To keep the Villains from running off, Minjun quickly fitted the artifact onto all three of the Seo siblings, then surveyed the state of the battle.

The last time he had checked, the Antmen had been well behind, but in the time he spent dealing with the Seo siblings and tidying up, they had closed to barely a dozen-odd meters. Worse, they now numbered more than double what he had first seen, sprung from who knew where. And in the middle of that doubled swarm, he could see Junhwi. He seemed to have fled well so far, giving it everything he had, but he looked to be slowly reaching his limit.

As I am now.

He could deal with that many monsters with ease. He couldn’t put a finger on the grounds for it, but Minjun felt a strange certainty.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he threw himself at the oncoming monsters, and the Dragon Bone Sword in his grip began to shine more brilliantly than before.

“Get out of the way!”

At the urgent shout, Junhwi squeezed out the last of his strength and veered aside. The moment Minjun saw him turn, he gave his body over to instinct.

Was my swordsmanship always this beautiful?

A strange sensation came over Minjun. He wasn’t the one swinging the sword; it felt more as though the sword were leading him. The aurora light in the blade scattered wide, tracing a beautiful arc.

— KEEEEEEAK—!

None of them had been cut by the blade itself, only touched by the light, yet every one of the Antmen chasing Junhwi was flung down where it stood. All of it took a matter of seconds.

Antman corpses lay underfoot, and the three Villains, bound, were shrieking at the top of their lungs in rage. The sight was so dizzying that Junhwi half wondered whether he was seeing things; none of it felt real to him.

What am I even looking at right now.

How had this miracle even come about? There was so much he wanted to ask Minjun.

But.

“…”
“Hyungnim?”

One look at Minjun said he was in no shape to exchange even a single word. Had he poured out too much power at once? The aurora light that had flaunted itself so brightly moments before had died down too. He was propping himself up on the sword like a staff, but he looked precarious, ready to pitch over at any second.

“Hyungnim, are you all right? Hyungnim! Pull yourself together!”

Junhwi was on the verge of collapse himself, but the moment he saw Minjun’s state he caught him and laid him down on flat ground.

Nothing’s gone wrong with him, has it?

He checked Minjun over in a hurry. Fortunately, his life didn’t seem to be in any danger. His pulse was beating, and his fingers were moving, however faintly, so he hadn’t lost consciousness either. Junhwi didn’t know the details, but it looked like exhaustion, the aftermath of using power beyond his limits. He hurriedly pulled out a potion and fed it to Minjun.

Some time passed like that.

“Hoo.”

Minjun opened his eyes and met Junhwi’s gaze. He was far from fully recovered, but he could move.

“Are you all right?”
“Feels like I came back from the dead. Thank you.”
“Don’t say that. If it weren’t for you, Hyungnim, I’d have died long ago.”

Junhwi thanked him again and again for saving his life.

“By the way, Hyungnim, what are you going to do now?”

The Gate exit announcing the clear had appeared and the Villains were all subdued, but exactly one problem remained: what to do with them. All three had been stabbed and badly hurt, but thanks to the measures Minjun had taken while binding them, none of them were dead. They simply couldn’t move, held fast by the binding artifact.

“F***, kill us! Just kill us already!”

Far from crying or begging, Seo Yuseon screamed and spat curses as though she would never tire of it.

“Hey. Shut up. If you’re going to die, die on your own.”

Seo Yura growled at her to keep her mouth shut.

“Please spare me. Please, just let me live. Yes? We’ve got a lot of expensive artifacts, really. Anything, just say the word and I’ll give you anything…”

Seo Yuhyeon tried to buy his life with the artifacts he had taken from the Hunters he’d killed.

“Don’t you have any pride, calling yourself a man? Hey, Yun Minjun. Don’t listen to these bastards, just kill us. Better to croak here than rot away in the clink.”

As if she had watched one noir film too many, Seo Yuseon just kept harping on the word kill.

Minjun ignored everything they said and drew from inside his coat one of the artifacts he had taken from them.

“Junhwi. Do you know why I went out of my way to keep this trash alive instead of killing them?”
“…Because killing people sits badly with you, Villains or not?”
“Hardly.”

The absurd thing could lock another Hunter’s subspace and, conversely, force one open. Minjun had meant from the start to clean out their subspaces with it, which was exactly why he had kept them alive. A subspace vanished along with its Hunter the instant he died.

“You can give me anything, can you?”
“Y-yes! Anything!”

Not knowing what Minjun had in mind, Seo Yuhyeon nodded over and over.

“When I’ve got this, why would I bother?”

The moment he made out the artifact in Minjun’s hand, Seo Yuhyeon understood, too late. He had been so excited, so sure the plan would succeed, that he had blabbed about what the artifact did, and with that he had thrown away even the sliver of room he had to bargain for his life.

“Th-that s***head, seriously!”
“Showing off like that, all smug. F***ing great job, genius. Eh?”

Seo Yuhyeon’s face went stiff, while Seo Yura and Seo Yuseon showered curses on the idiot colleague who knew nothing but how to posture. The cursing and squabbling went on among the three after that, but Minjun paid none of it any attention and used the artifact to force their three subspaces open. Each time one opened in turn, both men let out a gasp.

“They really stuffed their pockets, didn’t they. Just how many did they kill to have this much.”
“Right? These trash bastards.”

Junhwi, watching from beside him, chimed in too.

However many he pulled out, the artifacts kept coming. Thanks to the fortune the three had piled up through every sort of crime, from robbery-murder to drugs and smuggling, their subspaces were packed with pure gold and jewels on top of artifacts of every kind. There was so much that it filled Minjun’s own subspace to capacity.

A little while passed.

“Right, the artifacts are all collected, so let’s wrap this up.”

Now it was time to send the Villains to hell. Some might ask whether killing them was right, Villains or not, but under International Hunter Law it counted as self-defense, so the question made no difference.

“Any last words?”

His expression cold, Minjun raised his sword and glared at the three. Seo Yuseon kept up an imposing front to the end, saying it was just as well, and Seo Yura spat curses too foul to repeat.

But in that moment, perhaps deciding it was all over anyway, Seo Yuhyeon opened his mouth.

“You gigolo bastard.”

His expression was uglier than it had ever been.

“Reckon you seduced some clueless madam with that pretty face and bled her for gear? Hah, I should’ve had my face redone and hooked some clueless bitch and lived easy too. Just like you.”

Did he think he had nothing left to lose now? Right up to the last, Seo Yuhyeon kept his mouth flapping and dragged Minjun and Sia through the dirt.

“I’m curious, so let me just ask this one thing. Hey, how much do you get a month off the sponsor deal?”
“How old is this madam? She’s not a married woman, is she?”

Once Seo Yuhyeon fired the first volley, Seo Yuseon and Seo Yura followed, sniggering, and poured out insults too obscene to put into words. Nothing more of it was worth hearing.

His face hard, Minjun took their heads off.

Ever since Minjun had first learned to wield sword energy, the sword energy he gave off had always shone a brilliant aurora.

But in this moment, it was shining a deep blood red.