Soaring Falcon "Eunpyeong Talhap"
"Eunpyeong Talhap."
Clack! Seo Jeon-jeom opened the go stone container in his hand and scattered its contents into the air. Mixed in with the normal black and white stones were mostly transparent glass beads shaped like go stones. They were sucked into the bodies of the illusory palace ladies surrounding him.
"Pathetic. Throwing a tantrum, are we?"
"Target Seo Jeon-jeom."
The go stone container in Seo Jeon-jeom's hand. Even I, who's cleared Ancestors, Grant Us Your Protection dozens of times, don't know what medium that is. Without knowing what Spirit Lord Transformation he'll activate with it, our only option is a quick, decisive strike.
Shin Sua and I charged at Seo Jeon-jeom without hesitation. A swordstick enhanced by Tongryeong, and two sharp blades drawn from the twin sword dance sheaths.
Clang!
Slash!
Three blades sliced through the illusory palace lady blocking our path between us and Seo Jeon-jeom.
"2 o'clock, one guy's turning red!"
"Right side! Suicide bomber! Hurry!"
Stab! As Shin Sua's sword, adorned with a tassel, pierced its chest, the palace lady illusion that had been reddening around the heart shattered into powder.
We kept watch on each other's blind spots, prioritizing and taking down the ones attempting to self-destruct first.
"Just five more to go, and we can hit the Shangju!"
Even as we advanced, slicing through the palace ladies like a blender, Seo Jeon-jeom made no aggressive moves to counter.
"That guy's acting weird..."
Only then did I realize something was off.
Seo Jeon-jeom's Spirit Lord Transformation 'Love You 3000: Harem Master' relies on positional energy for charging attacks, but its suicide explosions are the real threat. It's a double-edged sword—overuse drains power faster than King Uija's spirit body can recover, causing major damage.
So why had he drawn the illusions in close enough that he might get caught in their blasts?
"Hurry up!"
I urged Shin Sua on, but it was already too late.
"Spirit Descent—Fragmentation."
Muttering as he eyed our approach, one of the fragmented Three Thousand Palace Ladies illusions was sucked into Seo Jeon-jeom's body.
The next instant, his face blurred, and in a flash, his entire body transformed into the exact same form as the other illusions.
Shatter-shatter-shatter! Like a dealer shuffling and dealing cards, the palace lady illusions instantly clumped together then scattered.
Blended in among the hundreds of illusions, Seo Jeon-jeom began rising into the sky.
"So that's why he pulled in the illusions..."
"I've never heard of anything like that being possible!"
There's no way to pick out Seo Jeon-jeom now that he's disguised himself as one of the illusions and is swimming through the air. Only a successor whose soul form perfectly matches his ancestor's spirit could pull off such an absurd application of Spirit Descent.
"Coward! Stalling for time?!"
Shin Sua shouted in fury, but only a hollow echo answered.
Shatter-shatter-shatter! Dozens of illusions immediately rained down on us.
"Keep flailing like that, and it's already 2-on-1—when the time limit hits, it's a judgment loss for you!"
Boom!
Thud!
Burst!!
Shin Sua yelled, but Seo Jeon-jeom showed no sign of giving up. Instead of focusing firepower, he dispersed the illusions for effective suicide bombing runs.
"Tch."
Without the basilica cannon, dodging wasn't hard, but their power still forced us to burn spirit power staying in Spirit Descent to evade.
"We can't just keep taking it on the chin."
"What're you gonna do? He's flying."
"Nothing for it but a big move to end it in one shot..."
Before I could stop her, Shin Sua halted in place and swiftly painted on the arena floor with her brush.
"Cover me!"
Without knowing what those go stones do, rash moves are a bad idea. Especially after he tanked the enhanced Tonnerre earlier.
But I couldn't bring myself to stop Shin Sua. I feared we'd get dragged into an attrition war without clearing the illusions first. Even with our numbers advantage, mass bombing runs would be the end of us.
"This is insane...!"
Manipulating the Flag of Courage—only half-regenerated—I barely blocked the illusions diving at Shin Sua. Meanwhile, her divinely inspired brush strokes etched a painting into the arena floor.
An orange sun. Below it, green mountains and bamboo leaves. Finally, a blue lake took shape.
Not a proper painting—just crude scribbles. But the spirit power and ancestor power infused in them was immense, impossible to ignore.
"Open, Gate of Juknokwon Bamboo Grove!"
Boom! Standing atop the completed symbol of Damyang County in Jeollanam-do, Shin Sua inverted her brush and slammed it into the ground.
"Gate of Damyang Bamboo Park!!"
Kaboom-kaboom-kaboom-boom!!!! The logo and surrounding floor lit up brilliantly, and hundreds of thousands of ink spears shot skyward in unison.
Bamboo grove, clear ecological city. Thousand-year Damyang. Each massive bamboo spear bore Damyang County's slogans etched on them, mercilessly impaling the flying illusions.
The growth speed, number of spears, and the spirit and ancestor power packed into them dwarfed what she'd used against that mid-tier vengeful spirit last time.
"Huff... huff..."
Shin Sua panted raggedly, having expended a massive burst of power at once.
No—her burden was still mounting. The Gate of Juknokwon, once opened, kept spewing bamboo nonstop.
"That's odd..."
But something even more troubling caught my eye. Unlike when we'd sliced them with blades, the illusions pierced by the bamboo spears weren't destroyed.
Some were skewered by multiple spears yet floated in the air, completely intact.
"No way..."
"What the hell. What's that."
A nagging sense of déjà vu pierced my mind. A scene I'd forgotten amid the bombing dodges.
'Turn the enemy's power against them... You think you're the only one who can do that?'
Earlier, Seo Jeon-jeom had said that while tanking Tonnerre. I'd assumed it was just absorbing spirit or ancestor power.
So I'd figured direct hits from the bamboo spears would wipe the illusions no problem.
"Come to think of it, he fed those go stones to the illusions."
If my hunch was right, we couldn't let Shin Sua keep attacking.
No time to hesitate. I activated Passepartout right away.
Tschk!
No time to explain and wait for her buy-in. Act first, talk later.
"Move!"
I leaped into the center of the symbol, shoved Shin Sua aside, and slammed the key into the floor.
Click! Twisting my wrist rightward cut off the spirit power flow to the Damyang logo, halting the new bamboo growth.
Calling it the 'Gate' of Juknokwon had been a hunch, but it worked—thank god.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Ignoring Shin Sua's furious snap, I pointed my now-deactivated staff at the sky instead of answering.
Screeech... The skewered illusions let out eerie sounds like spits on a roast.
"Recall the ink."
Shin Sua hesitated, then swung her brush lightly as I said.
The bamboo spears—fused spirit and ancestor power—should've reverted to black ink and returned to her brush—
"Huh?"
Rumble-rumble-rumble... Instead, the bamboo was rapidly sucked into the illusions' bodies. No matter how hard Shin Sua tried to control the ink, it was futile.
"The go stones, huh."
Only then did I grasp the power of the stones Seo Jeon-jeom had scattered.
Just like the Flag of Courage absorbs enemy attacks to empower weapons, his Spirit Lord Transformation—
"Return Strike."
Seo Jeon-jeom, back to his original form before I knew it, declared from atop an illusion in midair.
Tszzt... The go stones inside the palace ladies' bodies burst out and shot into the sky.
Return Strike. A go term meaning to counterattack by inducing an opponent's self-destructive move. Imagining what those two characters would do here wasn't hard.
The once-transparent glass stones were now pitch black. They'd absorbed Shin Sua's uncontrolled spirit and ancestor power, converting it to his own—I could tell even without seeing the sweat beading on the young lady's shocked face.
"How... Impossible..."
As Shin Sua reeled from losing control of her spirit power—even with her new blessing—a white-and-black go stone constellation began moving in the sky.
Centered on that distinct pattern, countless illusions merged into the form of a massive falcon.
Rooooar... The symbol of the Baekje royal family, the fastest flying predator among all winged creatures on Earth. Seo Jeon-jeom sat arrogantly on a jade throne woven from tangled illusion bodies atop it, looking down at us.
"Looks like you juniors were recycling spirit power to hang on, but what now?"
He was right. The spirit power I'd absorbed protecting Shin Sua was negligible, and without the Flag of Courage regenerating, I couldn't recycle it into firepower.
Shin Sua was spent too—after spawning all those spears and failing to recover her power.
"Dirty trick. Who leaves something like that in reserve..."
The massive falcon Seo Jeon-jeom rode emanated off-the-charts spirit power. No surprise—it had absorbed my enhanced Tonnerre shot and Shin Sua's bamboo barrage via the go stones.
Neither Shin Sua nor I had the power left to destroy it. Even Seol Romi, the strongest first-year in raw single-strike power, couldn't pull it off.
"Just to be polite, I'll ask: Surrender?"
We were circling overhead like prey as he spoke. Not courtesy—he was throwing my earlier question right back at me.
Pure humiliation.
"Afraid that's a no. Too much at stake."
"Same here. My apologies, then—"
Before Seo Jeon-jeom finished, the massive eagle banked and began its dive.
"Let's wrap this up!"
A shrill cry like the trumpets of Jericho rang out as the ultra-heavy flyer plummeted vertically at us, spirit power blazing across its body. A lens in the corner of my vision clocked the falcon at 400 km/h. An unstoppable, unblockable hunter dropping like a meteor straight at my head!
Thud!
I tried shoving Shin Sua down to safety before I could react, but she swung her brush and smacked my legs instead.
"What the—?!"
Wobble. As I lost balance and fell, Shin Sua's haughty smile filled my view.
Crunch! The falcon's talons snatched her shoulder and dragged her across the arena floor like grinding metal on steel, riding its dive momentum.
Kaboom-kaboom-kaboom-kaboom-kaboom!!!!!
The falcon released Shin Sua and soared back into the sky. Only after the dust cloud from its wings dispersed could I make out her crushed form on the ground.
"Shin Sua..."
A pool of red blood spread around her battered body. Yet somehow clinging to consciousness, she looked up at me with trembling eyes and a smile.
"Told you to tuck tail and play dead like a good dog if shit got real. I said support, not butt into your master's fight..."
Her voice, coughing blood, sounded on the verge of death. Her wrist mirror was intact—proof she'd endured the near-fatal blow with a half-assed Spirit Descent to avoid disqualification.
"......"
If she hadn't tripped me, I'd be the one who'd taken it.
"Vicious one. Never cared for bullying girls."
Seo Jeon-jeom muttered coldly, gazing down at the fallen Shin Sua.
If we hadn't lost that spirit power... if I'd stopped his final move...
Shin Sua wouldn't be in this state. My overconfidence—this world's know-it-all orphan mindset—had hit a wall.
If I'd foreseen his hidden ace somehow, the outcome would've been different.
My arrogance did this to her. My poor prep had us on the brink of defeat in this crucial match.
I'd thought his canon abilities with Almira were manageable. This was the result.
Shrinking pathetically before the enemy overlooking us with overwhelming power disparity.
Was there any path to reversal left? Flag of Courage, Tonnerre, Passepartout—all useless. Spirit power down to a tenth of max.
No way to beat Seo Jeon-jeom. Shin Sua couldn't even stand.
"It's not over yet, delinquent. Snap out of it!"
Even Gemma's shout couldn't pierce my numb mind for answers.
If I'd figured out the go stones sooner, Shin Sua's power wouldn't have been stolen. Brain resources wasted replaying mistakes.
"With an important guest watching, cooperate till the end."
His confident victory tone only fueled empty rage.
Whoosh!
"If only we hadn't lost that spirit power...!"
But as I glared at the incoming falcon, abandoning all hope—
[Keyword Confirmed: Deprivation]
[Deprivation target discovered]
[Target: Spirit Power Control Rights]
—my trembling hands began to glow faintly.