novelraw Chapter 155 : Mission 10: The Hunters of Old (28)
Chapter 155 : Mission 10: The Hunters of Old (28)
Outside the Cheongnyangni Gate.
The military cordon. Command post.
“…I see.”
A man in a raincoat stood there, staring toward the Gate.
“So, he ended up opening it.”
It was Rain Man, leader of the New Five Heroes.
He could feel the stirrings of a new Domain from within the Cheongnyangni Gate.
The emergence of a new S-Rank Awakened didn’t faze him.
He simply pulled the hood of his coat lower and murmured, “I just hope you don’t regret this, Boy.”
***
A small stage had appeared.
A blue curtain seemed to hang around the circular platform, enclosing it.
But it wasn’t a curtain.
It was wind—a swirling tempest raging around the stage, forming its walls.
The Boy landed at the storm’s eye, within that tiny arena.
“It doesn’t… have a name yet!”
Standing in the center of the small, incomplete world he had summoned, Jae-hee grinned and gestured around.
“What do you think? It’s not quite a rock fest… but it’s my stage!”
Ghost, who had been invited into this world and was crouched in a corner like an audience member, looked around with an unimpressed expression.
“You call this a stage?”
“Yep. Hehe.”
“Where are the lights? The speakers? There’s nothing here.”
“Uh… I’ll get those sorted out eventually.”
“Most importantly, where’s the mic?”
Jae-hee flailed for a moment before decisively planting his short sword on the floor. He then gripped it in a reverse hold, like a short microphone stand.
“…Will this work as a stand-in for now?”
“Are you Freddie Mercury now?”
Seeing Jae-hee hold the sword aloft, Ghost couldn’t help but snort.
Compared to other S-Rankers who could summon entire worlds or, at the very least, colossal structures, Jae-hee’s “stage” was pitifully small.
It was even shrinking as they spoke. To be precise, the wall of wind encircling the stage was gradually closing in.
“Ah, be careful!” Jae-hee said. “This storm wall… it’s a little dangerous.”
“…?”
Ghost didn’t understand at first. Only after examining the wall closely did she grasp his meaning.
The swirling curtain of wind was a tempest in its own right. A furious storm, powerful enough to shred anything that touched it, even by accident.
If this stage, forcibly confined by a wall of wind, is the battlefield…
Observing the shrinking platform, Ghost began to understand how Jae-hee’s Domain Break worked.
The space to maneuver is shrinking.
No matter the opponent, once summoned to this stage, a showdown with the Boy was inevitable.
The stage was small, and it was only getting smaller.
Just then…
“I have come as invited…”
Deyana Ludens dropped from the sky, landing on the stage.
“…but your home is a bit cramped.”
THOOM!
The ground shook as the Demon Lord’s colossal body touched down.
“Th-this is my first time seeing a Demon Lord up close…”
Jae-hee, who had barely managed to keep his footing, broke into a cold sweat.
“I mean, is that really a ‘dragon’…?”
It looked nothing like the Western dragons of lore. Nor did it resemble the dragons of Eastern mythology.
Its half-melted body was covered in dense scales that shimmered with an oily sheen, like gasoline on water.
Its frame was like that of a giant serpent, with arms, legs, and wings of bare bone—no membrane—jutting out at odd angles.
The two arms were uncannily human-like, each ending in ten long, slender fingers.
The skull was shaped exactly like a horse’s, from which grew horns that seemed to be a cross between a ram’s and a deer’s. These horns sprouted densely down its neck and all the way to its lower back, like a mane of bone.
“It was always ugly, but it got even more hideous after coming back to life,” Ghost said without a shred of mercy.
Jae-hee pointed at himself frantically. “Hey, so on your scale, where do I rank compared to… that?!”
“Compared to that thing, you’re a real looker.”
“Ehehe.”
“What are you grinning about? It’s not easy to be uglier than that thing, you know.”
Though they were trading jokes, the master and disciple were slowly ratcheting up the tension, preparing for battle.
“Hmm…”
Deyana Ludens, too, was assessing its condition.
Being forcibly dragged onto Jae-hee’s narrow stage had caused all the toxic energy it had accumulated to be swept away into the surrounding storm.
“I suppose I have no choice but to release some of my reserves…”
As the Demon Lord raised its upper body…
KR-R-RATTLE…!
From within its decaying torso, hundreds of ribs splayed open to the left and right, like the maw of a serpent lined with long, sharp teeth.
“Gah!”
Jae-hee was momentarily stunned by the grotesque sight. From the Demon Lord’s gaping gut, a viscous, poisonous fog began to pour out in massive quantities.
This was a poison of a purity far beyond the corruption the Demon Lord had spread before.
Ghost gritted her teeth. “Don’t let that mist touch you. A single touch will kill.”
But on this tiny stage… how could they possibly avoid it?
Just as Ghost was trying to figure out a countermeasure…
“Then I just have to blow it away before it touches us, right?”
“What?”
“I’ll show you.” The Boy took a step forward and grinned. “This is my stage, after all.”
Then, Jae-hee assumed his usual running stance—a crouching start.
“Hup!”
He launched himself.
FWOOSH!
Kicking off the stage floor, Jae-hee shot forward like a bolt of light, reaching the Demon Lord in the blink of an eye.
“…?!”
The movement was so fast that even the great Deyana Ludens couldn’t react.
FWOOOOSH!
Shattering his previous top speed, Jae-hee became a living gale.
“Allow me to perform…”
He circled the Demon Lord, his blade a blur.
“…my first number!”
The Boy danced a solo waltz.
His incredible velocity alone generated a fierce wind, which blasted away all the poison and corruption the Demon Lord had just begun to emit, pushing it past the edge of the stage.
Swept into the wall of wind, the toxic energy was instantly shredded by the tempest and sent spiraling into the sky.
Ghost’s eyes widened.
That kid… he’s much faster than before, but his power shows no sign of running out…!
The ability of this yet-unnamed Domain Break.
Confined to this small stage, the Boy could move “freely,” without any shackles or restrictions.
His speed had no limit, and his stamina—the chronic weakness that had always constrained him—was infinite.
Amazed himself by his endlessly increasing speed and bottomless energy, Jae-hee continued to push the gears higher, testing his own limits.
SH-SH-SH-SH-SHINK!
The tip of the Boy’s blade danced.
Countless strikes born of transcendent speed raked across the Demon Lord’s entire body.
“Gak…?!”
Each of the Boy’s strikes was faint, but as he relentlessly chained them together at impossible speeds, the damage accumulated in an instant.
As its scales shattered and flew off, Deyana Ludens finally realized it was a bad matchup.
The Boy was the wind.
He was a force that could sweep away all its corruption and corpse poison.
Deyana Ludens’s strategy was to scatter its poison over a wide area and drag out the fight, slowly killing its opponent.
But the Boy, on a stage that was steadily shrinking, was concentrating all his power into a short, all-out battle.
“A perfect counter in every way…”
But it couldn’t escape. The wall of wind surrounding the stage was a colossal storm that would pulverize anything it touched.
“In that case…!”
The Demon Lord’s maw gaped open.
A black sphere materialized before its mouth, and all the corruption and toxic energy at its command began to coalesce.
No matter how fast the Boy was, the stage was simply too small. It had already shrunk to the point where the Demon Lord, Ghost, and Jae-hee could barely stand together.
Therefore, if it focused the poison it had been scattering into a single point and fired…
As long as they were on this stage, it was a guaranteed hit.
FWOOM!
The black sphere in front of Deyana Ludens’s face erupted into a breath attack.
A ferocious blast, like a beam of black light, shot toward the stage.
SLICE!
Ghost rushed forward to meet it head-on, swinging her sword and cleaving the breath in two.
Her long white hair billowed in the opposite direction of the blast. The sight of a human blade parting a dragon’s breath was the stuff of myth.
“Master!”
“I’m fine!” Ghost yelled. “Go!”
Gritting his teeth, Jae-hee pushed the gears up one more level.
Shunk!
The tip of his sword finally pierced through the broken scales and into the Demon Lord’s skin.
From there, Jae-hee kicked off its body—and sprinted at full power.
FWOOSH…!
An instant later, the Demon Lord’s entire body exploded into pieces.
In the blink of an eye, Jae-hee had run a full circle around the Demon Lord’s massive frame with his sword still embedded in its flesh.
“This is nothing…?!”
Deyana Ludens tried to speak, but Jae-hee’s attack wasn’t over.
FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH…!
Muscle, bone, blood vessels, organs—
Jae-hee had become a living gale. With every revolution he made, another layer of the Demon Lord’s body was flayed away, then swept into nothingness by the wind that followed a beat behind his movements.
He carved and carved, deeper and deeper, until…
The Gate Core, nestled in the very center, was exposed.
“Useless.”
Despite being reduced to dust, Deyana Ludens was unfazed. Though it no longer had a mouth to speak, the Demon Lord’s will screamed.
“No matter how many times I am torn to shreds, I will be reborn. That is the indignity I endured in becoming undead.”
And it was true. The Demon Lord had been torn apart by Ghost’s storm of blades before, only to revive.
It was confident that no matter how much damage it took, as long as it could regenerate, victory would ultimately belong to itself.
However…
“If you can regenerate no matter how much I tear you apart…”
The master of this Domain Break didn’t see it that way.
Now, in the center of the rapidly shrinking stage, like an actor in a one-man show, he basked in the sunlight pouring from above as if it were a spotlight meant only for him.
Jae-hee grinned.
“…then I just have to keep destroying you faster than you can come back, right?”
“…What?”
Instead of answering, Jae-hee rushed the Gate Core.
SHRED!
A gale of strikes flashed past, and the Gate Core was instantly torn to pieces. The next moment, the fragments began to knit back together, starting the regeneration process.
But Jae-hee didn’t care whether it was regenerating or not.
In the Boy’s vision, the world had slowed to a near standstill.
And in that slowed world, Jae-hee swung his sword without rest.
He simply cut.
And cut.
And cut again.
Faster than it could regenerate, he severed it anew.
Endlessly sliced at a speed that defied all logic, the fragments of the Gate Core were swept up one by one into the wall of wind, which was now closing in.
SLICE!
Jae-hee put all his strength into one final swing that cut through empty space.
Nothing remained.
Whoosh…
Only a single gust of wind, belatedly following the Boy’s blade, was left to sweep through the area.