The Blade That Slowed Time
The guandao that had been cutting through the wind suddenly slowed to a child’s clumsy toy-like pace.
“W-what the h—ell—i—s—th—is—”
Even Choi Young-o’s words, spat out through sheer terror, dragged after themselves in a grotesque, tape-stretched drawl.
An uncanny sight, as if only Choi Young-o’s time had been forcibly dragged into the mud.
“So that’s how much sin you’ve committed. Your own body is telling me the truth with admirable honesty.”
It was a skill that forced down a target’s physical ability and magic in proportion to the sins they had committed.
Betrayal, staged murder, and killing one’s own comrades.
Just how many times had he committed those three sins?
For Choi Young-o, who carried such vile and heavy guilt on his back, the weight of those shackles was beyond what he could bear.
“U—uugh…”
With his strength catastrophically reduced, he couldn’t even hold up his beloved guandao properly, and his whole body trembled.
Su-hyuk swiftly raised the scythe of the reaper toward the throat of Choi Young-o, who had frozen helplessly in place, the blade cold with killing intent.
He could see primitive fear flooding the eyes of the man who, only moments ago, had been brandishing his weapon in arrogant desperation, trying to flee.
The situation was on a knife’s edge. Choi Young-o’s head could fall at any moment.
“Like hell you will!!”
With Cha Seon-hu’s thunderous shout that seemed to tear the eardrums apart, a longsword wrapped in blue magic stabbed straight toward Su-hyuk’s heart.
An unwavering point, and murderous intent.
Su-hyuk could only click his tongue.
Reaper’s Steps.
In an instant, his body melted into the air and shot ten meters backward as if being yanked away.
He narrowly avoided the lethal path of sword energy, but a bitter aftertaste lingered in his mouth.
Tch.
Disappointment seeped through him.
If he had just killed Choi Young-o outright, there would have been no reason to keep dragging out this pointless melee.
He would have taken the Hell Points and left. That was the opportunity.
Unfortunately, the battle did not unfold with the ease Su-hyuk had wanted.
Not only Cha Seon-hu, but the other martial Awakeners were rushing at him ferociously, while razor-sharp magic arrows flew in from the rear, leaving him scrambling simply to avoid them.
“Don’t let him escape! Keep the pressure on and cut off his retreat!”
At Cha Seon-hu’s command, the Awakeners’ attacks poured down like a storm.
All I have to do is kill Choi Young-o, but... there’s no opening. Because of Detecting, this won’t work.
Su-hyuk met the incoming magic bullets head-on with a Dead Man’s Slash, batting them away.
Then he read the battlefield with a cold eye.
I just need to buy time.
Unlike Su-hyuk, the Awakeners couldn’t spam skills endlessly.
In particular, the wide-area detection skill Detecting was notorious for its severe magic consumption.
At a glance, the support-type Awakener in the very back of the party, continuously sending out ripples, had gone deathly pale, and her magic seemed to be nearing its limit.
Beads of sweat stood out thickly on her forehead.
If I hold out just a little longer, this will be over soon—huh?!
Su-hyuk’s eyes widened.
“Seong-hui! Take a magic potion! Hurry and drink it!”
From the rear, the one who hurried over to the support-type Awakener on the verge of collapse, Kwon Seong-hui, was the magic dealer Lee Si-hyun.
She had been thrown down like a human shield by Choi Young-o and rolled across the dirt, so she hadn’t been able to keep pace with Su-hyuk and the close-combat Awakeners’ speed, leaving her behind in the rear.
From her arms, she pulled out a top-grade magic recovery potion tinged with blue light and urgently pressed it to Kwon Seong-hui’s lips.
Gulp. The moment Kwon Seong-hui swallowed the potion, color rushed back into her previously ashen face, and the fading magic ripple of Detecting flared up powerfully once more.
Damn it.
While Su-hyuk had been distracted, the close-combat Awakeners led by Cha Seon-hu closed the distance furiously and drove him into a corner.
Dodging the murderous intent and attacks pouring in from all directions, he used Reaper’s Steps again and again to retreat farther and farther back.
But before long, a cold wind brushed against his back.
It was a fork in the road.
A passage not yet breached by the Awakeners, dense with a black web of spider silk, opened its jaws wide.
Inside, hundreds of red eyes flashed as a horde of giant spiders lurked, watching for prey.
Should I slip to the right...?
If he veered into the passage the Awakeners had already pushed deep into and carved open, he could at least buy time to catch his breath.
But that place was also the domain of countless giant spiders.
In the end, he would be trapped in the worst possible pincer movement: eight ferocious A-class Awakeners in front, and a horde of giant spiders spewing corrosive venom behind him.
They’ve got a tight guard up because they know I’m obsessively targeting Choi Young-o. But...
Su-hyuk had no choice but to make his decision in an instant.
To reverse this unfavorable battlefield in a single stroke, he had to close the eye that had been annoying him from the back line and exposing his weakness.
Reaper’s Steps.
Su-hyuk’s figure fully dissolved into the air.
He vaulted cleanly over Cha Seon-hu and the martial Awakeners charging toward him, then shot toward the rear—their perfect blind spot—with consecutive blinks that left no delay between them.
Paht—!
Before anyone knew it, Su-hyuk had descended like a black reaper right in front of Lee Si-hyun and the support Awakener Kwon Seong-hui.
“Damn it! Move!!”
Cha Seon-hu, realizing too late that Su-hyuk was targeting the rear, shouted out.
“Huh...?”
Lee Si-hyun, who had been holding the empty bottle of the magic potion, felt the presence and turned her head just as Su-hyuk’s scythe sliced through the air.
But it was not the cold arc of a blade meant to separate flesh from bone.
With a snap of his wrist, Su-hyuk reversed the scythe’s direction.
Then, with the blunt end of the long, solid shaft, he brought it down on the back of Kwon Seong-hui’s neck with no margin for error.
Thwack—!
“Agh...!”
With a short groan, Kwon Seong-hui’s eyes rolled back.
The instant blood flow to her brain was cut off, her body crumpled weakly to the floor like a marionette with its strings severed.
A perfectly clean neutralization without spilling a single drop of blood.
“Aaaaah! Seong-hui!”
Lee Si-hyun’s scream, sharp enough to rip the cavern apart, echoed through the tunnel.
Cha Seon-hu and the party members could only see Kwon Seong-hui sprawled on the ground and the afterimage of a black robe scattering into the air.
“D-detecting is—!”
Cha Seon-hu’s lips trembled.
The moment Kwon Seong-hui lost consciousness, the transparent magic ripples that had filled the passage receded like a tide going out.
And in the space where the ripple had vanished, only an unnervingly perfect nothing remained.
The Judge’s Robe had once again erased the reaper’s existence from the world entirely.
In the pitch-black darkness, eight A-class Awakeners froze like people who had swallowed their own tongues.
A fear they had never known before crawled up their spines.
“Tighten the formation!! Back to back, form a circle!”
Cha Seon-hu shouted until the veins stood out in his neck.
They raised their weapons toward the unseen darkness, trembling like aspen leaves as they kept watch around them.
“Wake her up. It looks like she only fainted.”
Cha Seon-hu ordered Lee Si-hyun.
But there was no telling how long it would take for her to regain her senses and use Detecting again.
They would be wiped out long before then.
Once again, this place had become a perfect stage for terror.
Su-hyuk moved at an unhurried pace.
His cold gaze fixed on only one thing.
Choi Young-o—the piece of garbage worth 5,000 Hell Points, now trembling inside the shackles of sin.
Su-hyuk drove the reaper’s scythe down without hesitation toward Choi Young-o’s helplessly frozen throat.
There was not a single person here who could block the blow now that he had perfectly reclaimed his stealth.
Thud—!
The horrifying sound of bone and flesh being torn apart.
He had aimed for a perfect decapitation, but the brute muscles and dense frame unique to an A-class martial Awakener stubbornly clung to the scythe’s path.
Even so, though he had not managed to cut clean through, the blue-white blade had already burrowed deep into the man’s neck, enough to inflict a fatal wound.
“Kh—kheh!”
Crushed by Shackles of Sin and stripped of all movement, Choi Young-o began to collapse, coughing up blood in grotesquely slow motion, as if the scene were being played back in slow video.
Deep fear of death slowly spread through his clouding eyes.
“No!! Tighten the formation now!!”
Cha Seon-hu let out a blood-flecked scream and unleashed sword energy, but it was nothing more than futile thrashing through the air.
Su-hyuk slipped through the barrage of interception attacks as lightly as a ghost, and once again drove the reaper’s scythe mercilessly into Choi Young-o’s collapsing throat.
Thunk—!
A gruesome stab wound, piercing the neck for the second time.
No matter how outstanding the healing Awakener waiting outside the Gate exit might be, even if some old grandpa healer came running, there was no bringing this man back now. It was a perfect death sentence.
Right before the last breath was severed, when the Awakener’s horrid resistance to magic had finally hit rock bottom, Su-hyuk muttered coldly,
Judicial punishment.
Whoooosh—
From beneath the feet of the man standing on death’s threshold, the black aura of hell surged upward like a snake.
“Khh... khh...”
The pain of a pierced throat and the horrific punishment of having every trace of life forcibly leeched from his body.
Choi Young-o convulsed in the agony of hell, then soon dissolved into a spray of black glittering ash that scattered into the damp air of the cavern.
The awakened sinner has been judged.
As a reward for judgment, you have gained 5,000 Hell Points.
A sweet line of text appeared clearly across Su-hyuk’s retina, proving that the trash who had lived on betrayal and murder had finally fallen to the bottom of hell.
Watching the glittering ash scatter into the air, Su-hyuk loosened his grip on the scythe.
No need to keep fighting any longer.
In the complete stillness, Su-hyuk slowly looked around.
Seven Awakeners remained, waving their weapons toward the darkness, terrified out of their minds.
Through Su-hyuk’s reaper’s eye, the tops of their heads were utterly empty.
There was no reason to shed useless blood on those who bore no sin.
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