novelraw Chapter 96 : Hong In-hyeon (2)
Chapter 96 : Hong In-hyeon (2)
"I've wanted to face you again."
Hong In-hyeon, who had lost consecutive matches in boxing training and the previous 2:2 team match.
"With your personality, there's no way you wouldn't have prepared tactics for a rematch with me."
At Su-hyeon's words, he raised the corner of his mouth.
"You know well."
"Yes, don't hold back, bring out everything."
Su-hyeon said.
"That's your bad habit, after all."
"Damn it, don't talk in a commanding tone!"
Hong In-hyeon fired a wind blade without warning.
Chaeng!
Su-hyeon drew his sword and cut through the wind.
"Hmm!"
'Quite substantial!'
Su-hyeon smiled, feeling as if he'd received a strike from a skilled swordsman.
Chaeng chaeng chaeng!
Su-hyeon deflected all five or six slashes that flew at him again.
"Eat this!"
In that gap, a wide-ranging whirlwind attack blocked all of Su-hyeon's escape routes and engulfed him.
'It's big.'
Su-hyeon created a Mana Shield and stepped on the air to escape the range.
'His plan is to get me airborne first.'
Even with a Mana Shield, free movement in the air isn't as possible as on the ground.
Hong In-hyeon was trying to force an unfavorable battlefield on Su-hyeon by targeting this point.
'Indeed tactical.'
Pung pung pung pung!
Compressed air bullets were fired like a machine gun at Su-hyeon, who was floating in the air.
"Hup!"
Su-hyeon swung his sword and left hand to deflect all those attacks.
'What a crazy bastard.'
Hong In-hyeon clicked his tongue.
Those reflexes were absurd no matter when you saw them.
'But that much is within expected range.'
Hong In-hyeon continued his moves without pause.
Float.
Hong In-hyeon's body rose into the air.
'Simply bombarding from a distance is not Hong In-hyeon's style of fighting!'
Bwaaang!
He flew in like a nimble stealth fighter, performing acrobatics.
Pu pu pu pung!
He fired air bullets as he approached, then after a sudden stop, he increased his altitude and maneuvered behind Su-hyeon with a flying style so graceful that even the most skilled pilot couldn't imitate.
'Hmm.'
While responding to the air bullets, Su-hyeon's eyes gleamed as his back was taken.
'A blade!'
Chaeng!
Hong In-hyeon smiled confidently as Su-hyeon once again deflected the wind blade.
'Hmm? This is...'
Su-hyeon frowned as he saw Hong In-hyeon bringing his hands together in front.
The wind gathered within was being compressed more and more until it resembled a crystal containing a storm.
'Compression!'
Su-hyeon grinned.
'Cunning guy. You've been diligently thinking of such techniques.'
His sense was always admirable.
"Eat this!"
Kwaaaaa!
A sphere containing alarming energy flew toward Su-hyeon.
'Too burdensome to receive head-on. Not bad.'
Su-hyeon sheathed his sword and brought his hands together to create a large Mana Shield.
Kwaaaaang!
Though he avoided a direct hit through the shield, Su-hyeon's body was thrown far away by the overwhelming output.
"Kuk!"
Despite deflecting it, Su-hyeon let out a low groan as he had to absorb considerable impact with his body.
"Hah! You talked about attack power but aren't you just running away? Don't escape!"
Hong In-hyeon, who flew after him, jeered.
"Haha."
But Su-hyeon's reaction of just smirking instead made his emotions boil even more.
'It's not over yet, bastard!'
His sensitive senses detected the disturbed airflow from the continued collisions.
'This is my chance!'
He deliberately twisted the turbulent airflow and surrounded Su-hyeon with storms that stretched out randomly.
With this level of output, even a large cow or wild boar would be torn to pieces.
'Good attack!'
But while admiring it, Su-hyeon methodically executed the method to break through.
Specifically, he keenly captured the patterns of the wind carrying dirt and dust with his Eye Power, then used his sense for energy to move his body to where the wind's force was weakest.
"!?"
'How did he escape?'
While Hong In-hyeon was dumbfounded, unable to believe the evasion he had just witnessed, Su-hyeon dashed toward him at tremendous speed.
'Damn!'
There was no time to dodge, nor did he want to.
Whoooong!
Hong In-hyeon wrapped wind around his right fist.
'What wraps around the fist is just a fierce storm.'
The stronger the image that appeared in his mind, the stronger the wind that wrapped around and surged around his arm.
'Here I go!'
However, he had no intention of straightforwardly extending his fist which had gathered so much power.
'Take this!'
Whoong!
He swung his left hand as if throwing a lead hook, momentarily sending a wind strong enough to make Su-hyeon's body sway.
'Hmm!'
Su-hyeon's balance was momentarily disturbed by the check that cut into his timing.
'Now!'
"Huaaaaap!"
Hong In-hyeon clenched his molars and threw a properly weighted straight at Su-hyeon.
Su-hyeon's response was:
'I'll hit him head-on!'
Not evasion or defense, but a frontal breakthrough.
"Hup!"
The momentum created by kicking off the ground passed through his knees, pelvis, waist, and shoulders, creating a straight punch like a flash of light.
Kwaaaaaaang!
With a thunderous sound that was hard to believe came from fists colliding, both their bodies were sent flying simultaneously.
"Kruk!"
Hong In-hyeon staggered to his feet after flying a dozen meters and falling to the ground.
"Ah, damn it."
His expression distorted as he looked down at his broken right hand.
'Brute bastard.'
Su-hyeon's fist, which had penetrated the oppressive wind, had destroyed his fist.
'Crazy bastard. How can he have such monstrous strength?'
It was unbelievable that this was the power created in a state where his balance was disrupted.
'...Hmm.'
Meanwhile, Su-hyeon, who had succeeded in breaking Hong In-hyeon's fist, also cracked his collarbone from the intense wind he was hit with in the process.
'I should have wrapped the shield around my body too.'
A moment of complacency had caused this injury.
'Though minor compared to Hong In-hyeon's injury, he has various means of attack besides his fist.'
At this point, Su-hyeon:
Acknowledged that Hong In-hyeon's combat power, when drawing out his true ability, exceeded his expectations.
"Good. Let's end the warm-up here."
"Ha!"
Hong In-hyeon laughed incredulously.
"If we warm up twice, my limbs would be crushed."
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Lee Yu-jin and Kim A-yun.
The two were watching the fight between Su-hyeon and Hong In-hyeon through the screen.
"Su-hyeon is amazing as always."
Yu-jin agreed with A-yun's admiration.
"Yes. But In-hyeon is also showing a very different side from before."
During the team match, Hong In-hyeon couldn't inflict much damage against Su-hyeon's solid defense and ghostly evasion skills.
He fell for Su-hyeon's aerial maneuver followed by close combat induction and was defeated pathetically.
'In-hyeon certainly came prepared with countermeasures.'
Yu-jin thought.
'And they're working on Su-hyeon too.'
It sounds easy when you say it.
But not just anyone could do such things.
'But Su-hyeon is handling all of that well and even surpassing it.'
It was always a scene that made her chuckle.
'So that's how you do it there.'
Through Su-hyeon, Yu-jin was mentally reinterpreting the knack of how a close combat specialized awakened one could withstand the elemental system's diverse and wide-area attacks.
Of course, she had done well in her fight with Hwang Ji-su too.
'Su-hyeon's method is much more flexible and ingenious than mine. Where does that difference come from?'
Mana shield? Or superior mobility?
There seemed to be something more fundamental than that.
"......"
Yu-jin's eyes followed Su-hyeon's every move, becoming deeply immersed in her own world.
Meanwhile.
'Such techniques there!'
Kim A-yun kept exclaiming in admiration while focusing on Hong In-hyeon instead of Su-hyeon.
'In-hyeon's characteristic usage is indeed much higher level than mine.'
First, his method of binding the opponent from a distance without drawing them into close combat was ingenious.
'His knack when the opponent does manage to get within close combat range is also remarkable.'
Her surprise discharge is good for catching the opponent off guard, but it's not a technique that can be used multiple times.
'In the end, I need to become proficient in handling the opponent's attacks in close combat.'
For some reason.
Just by watching consciously, she felt like she could see things she couldn't see before.
'It feels like a shell is breaking.'
Just as she herself was feeling.
Kim A-yun was inevitably the one who felt more while watching the two fight.
[You lack experience above all. For now, just watching a lot will be a great help. Try to think from Hong In-hyeon's perspective rather than mine and figure out why he made certain moves.]
'Just as Su-hyeon said.'
Kim A-yun was undoubtedly the mentee who best followed Su-hyeon's words.
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"Hoo! Hoo!"
Hong In-hyeon, who had sustained several injuries, checked the HP points visible below his field of vision.
'Almost nothing left. Damn it.'
When he heard the warm-up was over, he thought it was just obvious bravado.
But it wasn't.
'Neither big attacks nor small attacks worked at all.'
While lightly avoiding or deflecting small attacks.
And not giving chances for big attacks by pressuring, or slipping away like a loach while steadily feeding counters to build up damage—Hong In-hyeon couldn't show his pace at all against Su-hyeon's fighting style.
'Annoying bastard.'
Perhaps the incident where his right hand was broken when they clashed power against power had lowered his confidence.
"I wouldn't mind if you concede now."
Hong In-hyeon twisted the corner of his mouth as he looked at Su-hyeon's clean face with hardly any wounds except for the collarbone.
"You've been provoking me hard since earlier. You're telling me to come at you more, right?"
"You understand well."
"Fine, I get it."
Bwuduk.
Hong In-hyeon clenched his fist with his intact left hand.
'Whether I succeed or fail, I have no choice but to aim for a reversal at the end in this situation.'
Whiiiiiiing!
All the remaining mana in Hong In-hyeon's body exploded at once, creating four spheres containing intense storms.
'Dodge or deflect, do as you please!'
The maximum firepower attack that Hong In-hyeon pulled out at the last moment, forgetting tactics and calculations.
It was enough to bring a smile to Su-hyeon's dry lips.
'See, you can do it!'
Even Su-hyeon couldn't calmly handle an attack of this magnitude.
'Liberation.'
Kiiiiing!
Su-hyeon used the [Liberation] he had been saving, raising all his physical limits to the maximum as he strongly kicked the ground.
Kwaaaang!
As if a huge bomb had fallen, the place where Su-hyeon had been exploded, evading one of the storm spheres.
'I thought he'd come straight on!'
Three spheres left, and the safe time from Jeong Su-hyeon's dash was just over 1 second.
Hong In-hyeon placed one sphere behind himself and threw the other two side by side in Su-hyeon's path.
Kwang! Kwagwagwang!
Two massive explosions occurred, but they weren't enough to catch Su-hyeon's speed.
'So he's breaking through!'
Hong In-hyeon smiled as he held the last sphere in his left hand.
"Let's see you take this!"
'As you wish.'
Su-hyeon had no intention of avoiding his last attack.
Kuguguk.
Su-hyeon's fist, wrapped in a Mana Shield like a glove, became a single mace.
Kwaaaaaaang!
The two men's fists clashed in mid-air once more.
"Kuluk!"
Hong In-hyeon's body spat blood as it was thrown backward.
Chwarururuk!
Su-hyeon too was pushed back nearly 2 meters before he could barely come to a stop.
'To think I'd feel this much recoil even when punching with full power. Impressive.'
Su-hyeon, having released [Liberation], gasped for breath.
'Impressive. With your current self, breaking through the B- realm will only be a matter of time.'
His gaze turned to Hong In-hyeon who had flown far away.
"Damn it."
Hong In-hyeon's avatar, unable to withstand the massive damage created by the collision, turned transparent and disappeared from the map.
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Clunk.
Hong In-hyeon, coming out of the capsule, staggered slightly as if feeling a small dizziness.
"Su-hyeon!"
Yu-jin and A-yun came running.
"Damn. I'm completely ignored, huh."
"I-In-hyeon, you did well too."
"Whatever."
Hong In-hyeon snorted at A-yun's awkward encouragement and approached me to offer a handshake.
"It was a good fight. Thanks."
"How was it, don't you feel better?"
Hong In-hyeon nodded at my question.
"Yeah, I felt something like catharsis."
"Like trying out all sorts of movements to maximize power and get the highest score on a punch machine."
I said.
"By extracting the mana inside you to the maximum and figuring out how to make the wind stronger, your attack techniques have evolved to the next level."
Hong In-hyeon knew this fact best.
"Yeah. The answer was surprisingly simple."
"But sometimes those things aren't visible."
I smirked.
"But that method was indeed like you. Compression, and utilizing the instability of turbulent airflow. Even here, you find answers through your sense."
"Tch!"
Hong In-hyeon chuckled grumpily.
"I still have a long way to go. I'll practice properly starting tomorrow."
"Yes."
I nodded and said.
"Ah, and one more thing."
"?"
"You know this? When you get scratched, you scratch back."
"What are you saying all of a sudden?"
"It's good to have a power contest when your blood rises, but be more careful about being led by the opponent's intentions next time."
"...!"
At those words.
Hong In-hyeon's face, which had been briefly heated, soon showed a smile mixed with admiration.
"Damn. I can't beat you."