The Most Dangerous Creature in the World... (2)
Even in the sudden standoff, Lee Han was not rattled in the slightest.
Hadn't he expected this before he ever set foot inside?
I knew they'd crawl out. No question.
Half-fiends dressed up as holy knights inside the Grand Temple had already been beyond absurd. A pack of suspicious bastards showing themselves now hardly counted as a real variable.
If anything still nagged at him, it was this.
"Hey, Owl. One question."
"You told me you were the Gatekeeper, didn't you? Things like that aren't supposed to be let through the Gate."
The question asked itself. He was genuinely baffled that creatures like those could be admitted here at all, and he was just starting to suspect the owl might be spectacularly incompetent when the answer came.
"……."
"…This is enough to drive a man insane."
"No, I'm not blaming you…. Haah. Forget it."
What made him want to tear his hair out was that they had come in holding the authority—the key—to meddle with the Sacred Vault under the Grand Temple's care.
Which meant one thing.
The temple bastards threw in with them in the open, didn't they?
It would have been stranger if the curses hadn't risen to his tongue.
"…Once I'm out of here, there's going to be a long line of people who need hitting."
Lee Han muttered it thick with displeasure, and someone answered him.
"That's assuming you leave here alive."
"……."
"What? Do we look that easy to you?"
"……."
"Arrogant. Then again, I suppose you've earned the right."
A woman smiled with her eyes. Hair and brows bleached stark white made her striking at a glance. She was beautiful enough, and yet the muscles of her face seemed locked, so the smile sat strangely wrong—a face that wanted to laugh and could not.
Lee Han knew a woman who smiled like that.
…She had been his senior, back at his old workplace.
"Number Seven…."
"So you do know me. Jackpot, hehe! Oh, but I should correct you. I'm not Number Seven anymore. I'm the Seventh Apostle. Call me that. Understood?"
"……."
"And tell me. How's that one doing?"
"…?"
"Don't play dumb. …Number Eight. That traitor is with you, isn't he? Hehe. I'd love to see his face. He was a cute kid back then. I'm curious how he grew up."
"……."
"Call that darling little thing over, won't you? Oh, and you'd better not lie. The Prophet already told me everything. That he's here."
"Mmm…."
"You won't sell out a comrade, will you? That child found himself a good companion. Ohoho."
"No, that's…."
"No need for talk. —Kill them."
Whoosh!
The order had barely left Number Seven—no, the Seventh Apostle—before the half-fiends were charging, and Lee Han, still unable to get a word out, felt a deep and personal sense of injustice.
No, what the—
Why?
He was standing right in front of her, and she didn't recognize him. The unfairness of it was almost exquisite, but the half-fiends left him no time to savor the grievance. He had to swing.
Even so, the question stuck.
Have I really changed that much?
The Number Four he'd met before had been the same. Why couldn't any of them tell?
…He hadn't changed so very much from when he was a kid.
He hadn't even bothered to hide who he was, which only made it worse.
"—Strong. That knight."
Watching a strength that was nothing ordinary, the Seventh Apostle trembled.
He was strong. Fiercely so.
Crunch!
…Could a person's head really break that easily?
And not just any person. A half-fiend.
An ordinary half-fiend was already stronger than thirty grown men put together, and these had learned the Fighting Art on top of that, honing every kind of swordsmanship and martial art. To call them knights worth a hundred men apiece would not have been too much. Yet half-fiends of that caliber were being pulverized without an answer. Fifty of them—no, even a hundred—could not have handled that knight.
Overwhelming martial might. Overwhelming force.
The Seventh Apostle, Dina, could only nod.
"No wonder the Fourth Apostle fell. This isn't an opponent we can handle."
She already knew that in the Tunnels this knight had subdued the Fourth Apostle, and had furthermore killed the half-fiends the Black Moon had raised with such care, along with a massive Mother Worm. She knew, too, that he had annihilated the Magic Tower.
In the end, Dina passed judgment.
That knight—
"…is a monster."
Short of an Aura User, no one could possibly stand against him.
And yet.
"Getting scared before you've even closed with him?"
"Eleventh Apostle…."
"It's about time you called me Yan, Dina."
"Sorry. My mouth's still used to the numbers."
"So is mine. No need to apologize."
The Eleventh Apostle, Yan, came up with a snort, and the others behind him spoke in turn.
"Sister, don't worry so much. I'll at least see you back safely."
"And our goal isn't even to kill that knight, is it? We stick to the plan. The plan."
The Sixth Apostle, then the Fifth.
Listening, Dina laughed before she knew it.
"…Right. That's true."
Their purpose had never been to win. She had ordered the fifty half-fiends to kill, but if one unpacked the hidden meaning of that order, it came to this.
Hold him with your lives.
It wasn't that she felt nothing for the resources and the years poured into raising them.
"A necessary expense, I suppose?"
She smiled, and the smile was cruel.
Crunch!
Ah. This?
Thud!
…Hmm.
Crack!
Am I the one being worked right now?
Lee Han did not hesitate to strike, pummel, and cut down the ones swarming him, but his brow drew tight. He did not like this.
I'm being led around.
To a third party it would have looked as if Lee Han were crushing the fight. To the man actually in it, the whole thing was intolerable. Two things, chiefly.
The first—
Crack!
Speed.
His fist wasn't landing clean. By rights it should have punched through a flank, and instead it stopped at a grave wound. A kill in one blow had become a kill in two.
…The air around me is heavy.
The fierce energy pouring off the sacred relics was still crushing him, and the small errors came from that. He could bear the pressure. He could not keep it from getting in the way. A half-second lag kept opening, and having to beat a man two times and three when once should have finished him sent his stress spiking. Stamina was one thing. Mental stress stole stamina and focus alike, and that was no good sign.
"……."
Slash!
You're telling me that now?
Lee Han was dumbfounded. No wonder the bastards had been moving a little too fast.
"Huu!"
He didn't turn his anger on the owl. Yelling wouldn't change a thing, and pressure and stress like this were things he had swallowed hundreds of times on battlefields.
What that meant was simple.
Thud!
"Gyaaaaaah!"
"…Yeah. That's it."
Given a little time, adapting didn't take much of it. A half-fiend that had rushed him burst open along the back, and with a pressure he finally liked under his hand, Lee Han measured how much force he ought to give.
…And the moment he adapted—
"For our god…!"
Whoosh!
Without hesitation—no, throwing his life away outright—a half-fiend came at him weeping blood. Lee Han drove the blade straight in, and the man—
Thuk!
??
…offered up his own chest, and with the sword buried in him—
Clamp!
"Heh, ehehehe!"
"……."
He seized blade and hilt together and began to laugh like a man whose mind had gone, as if there would be no letting go.
…Yes. That was the second thing he didn't like.
These bastards.
They're not afraid to die?
Whether they had been brainwashed or simply had no humanity left, they acted like it. They knew they couldn't win by the book, so they didn't hesitate to spend one of their own as an offering—any means at all, so long as they could beat him.
Flash!
The moment the sacrifice locked onto his sword, the pack of half-fiends rushed Lee Han, determined not to miss the opening for a blow.
But—
"—Why are you splitting yourselves up?"
He had not the slightest intention of moving the way they wanted, and he had decided to vent this displeasure, if only for a moment.
Whoosh!
"—?!"
"You want to hold me? You should've at least thrown a Thousand-Catty Drop."
Crunch!
Still gripping the sword the delighted bastard clung to, Lee Han seized wrist and hilt in a brutal hold and swung with everything he had. Everything—and then something more.
Hummm!
The blade shuddered hard, poured out power, and flooded red.
Sword-force swelled inside a plum-blossom bud and burst into full bloom. Petals exploded like fireworks, scattering a power greater than any he had shown before.
Fwoooosh!
Not merely the Plum-Blossom Sword. Set beside the day before, his had grown past all comparison. To call the difference heaven and earth would not have been too much.
And so—
Slash!
The petals pierced the throats and chests of the half-fiends bearing down on him.
Snick. Snick. Snick!
They sheared the weapons apart as if they were paper.
Shhk—!
And in the next instant they carved the bodies to pieces.
People probably never knew a human body and a weapon could be cut like colored paper. Anyone who saw this would have learned it. A body can be sliced clean enough.
…There was a drawback.
Drip. Drip….
The only color that paper came in was red. A rather large problem.
Thud.
The sword, its force spent, turned to dust and vanished. When even the hilt became sand, a single human hand tumbled across the floor.
"Lucky."
He'd left them one hand, hadn't he?
Crunch!
Lee Han ground the colored paper—nothing left of it but that hand—under his heel and walked on.
There was still a great deal of paper left to shred.