The Being That Failed to Ascend 3
Hissssss.
Steam rose in continuous plumes from the White Fang Spear as it radiated cold—far beyond mere mist, thick enough that one could no longer tell front from back.
Shin Gi-woon was tracking Gangcheoli's presence through his internal energy. Having reached First-Class, concealing one's aura was as easy as eating cold porridge. He erased every sound and focused entirely on the creature's movements.
It was looking around. Clearly the type that leaned hard on its eyes.
An opening—but he chose caution. First, the creature's power defied imagination. A single blow from its front paw had shredded the muscles in his left arm. Charge in recklessly, eat one clean hit, and the whole situation could flip against him.
He had fought countless battles without relying on sight. As long as the steam held, Shin Gi-woon owned the high ground.
No time to size him up. Dropping only the White Fang Spear means this is a test.
They had sensed the anomaly from outside. But instead of a rescue, they had thrown him a weapon. What did that say?
Shut up and fight. Prove yourself. That was the only reading—and a thoroughly Demonic Cult one at that.
They told me not to fight until I reached Peak… but this is worth staking my life on.
Was he going to keep fighting nothing but weaklings forever? Was there any harm in learning how to claw free of a life-or-death crisis? The memory of dying to the Heavenly Net was still raw. Thinking of flight the moment things turned against him was the wrong answer.
Then I go all out from the start.
Shin Gi-woon's eyes flooded red. Demonic energy surged through his meridians and coiled around his entire body. At the same moment he deliberately flared his presence—and Gangcheoli hurled flame straight at it.
BOOM!
But Shin Gi-woon had already left that spot far behind. Scaling the wall, he seized the creature's rear, and while its eyes were elsewhere, he drove for the small of its back.
THUNK!
"KYAAAAA!"
"Nice hit!"
Struck without warning, Gangcheoli roared. Shin Gi-woon killed his presence again and melted back into the steam. Fortunately its durability seemed lower than in its Imugi days. Just as he was thinking he would nibble it down piece by piece—
Heat erupted from Gangcheoli's body on a scale that made everything before it look mild.
"Haha. Damn it."
The steam filling the training ground vanished. Gangcheoli's heat had driven every last wisp away. Heat, after all, was also a gas—so the steam that had been forming from the clash of cold and fire simply stopped forming and disappeared without a trace. The only silver lining was that the White Fang Spear itself had not heated up.
If I drop the White Fang Spear, I'm dead.
Thanks to the cold radiating from the spear, he felt no heat. Without it he would already have been unable to breathe, cooked through where he stood.
"Yeah. This is what I wanted."
It had been too peaceful. Talent, past-life memory—even standing at the crossroads of life and death, he had felt nothing. Because it had been easy. But with Gangcheoli in front of him, a chill ran through his whole body.
Was this how a woodcutter felt, climbing a mountain with nothing but an axe, when he met a tiger?
Excitement and exhilaration arrived together. The knowledge that one wrong move meant a one-way ticket to the afterlife shoved the fighting spirit and madness he had been suppressing right to the surface.
"What are you staring at? Come at me, you vermin."
"KYAAAA!!"
CRACK!
Gangcheoli slammed the ground and charged—far faster than when it had taken that first hit. But he had already tasted this once. Would he fall for the same attack twice? As the front paw swept, Shin Gi-woon stamped a true step and flung himself far back.
RUMBLE!
"Wh-what?!"
"What's wrong with the training ground?!"
The other candidates in the sealed training hall flinched, startled by the sudden vibration. Only a few among them could roughly grasp what was happening—and only one remained calmly smiling through it.
"Gi-woon. You can do this, right?"
Two years and six months had left her with a distinctly mature, ladylike air. Se-hwa felt the tremor and twisted the corner of her mouth. Stronger than expected—but that did not matter. Was Shin Gi-woon the man she expected him to be? He would surpass expectations as much as he liked. A trial like this would be nothing more than a stepping stone for him.
"I hope you like the gift I prepared for you."
And beneath Se-hwa, a tiger the size of a house lay dead, eyes rolled back.
Back to Shin Gi-woon.
"HAHAHAHA!!"
He burst into roaring laughter, handling the space as freely as a fish in water. Why the people of his era had called the Ghost Spear the greatest spear under heaven—his dazzling movements made the reason plain.
Gangcheoli rolled its eyes, tracking him as he weaved this way and that, hunting for an opening. Shin Gi-woon took the initiative.
"Hup!"
In an instant he appeared behind the creature and brought the spear down. Gangcheoli's presence-sense lagged by a beat, and he landed a clean blow on its tailbone.
"KYAAAAA!"
"Shit!"
Gangcheoli clenched its teeth and poured out heat. Without shielding his skin with internal energy he would have been cooked on the spot. Landing on the ground, Shin Gi-woon furrowed his brow—the soles of his shoes were starting to melt.
Now I get why you don't close to First-Class range.
Just standing there, his soles were about to be scraped raw. An ordinary First-Class expert would already have had his feet burned away and then some. Past-life know-how kept his internal energy efficient, but if he had to mind his soles as well, consumption would skyrocket. Walls, floor—everything was blisteringly hot beyond reason because of Gangcheoli's heat. And since the creature was the source, it could gather its energy without caring about the heat at all.
Then—
WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH!
Gangcheoli spewed flame. It seemed to have decent control now. He considered blocking with the spear, then discarded the idea—the mass of energy packed into that blast was no joke. The moment he tried to stop it, his whole body would char black.
Nothing but bad news. In a situation where he could not even plant his feet properly on the ground, if one-hit-kill ranged attacks kept coming, he would simply run himself ragged until he dropped.
Think. A way to fight without touching the ground!
If there had been trees or structures to use as footholds nearby, maybe—though even those would not have withstood the heat.
"KYAAAAA!!"
Even so, Gangcheoli was thrashing like mad. Perhaps its pride was wounded that its flames had missed. It radiated even hotter heat than before—now, without properly channeling internal energy, he could not even stand on the ground.
In that moment, Shin Gi-woon hit upon a brilliant idea. Drive a person into a true life-or-death crisis and they sometimes find a breakthrough they never imagined. So it was with him now. There was no hesitation. How miserable would it be to run dry of internal energy and become unable to fight?
CLANG!
He drove the spear blade into the ground and climbed onto the shaft. Cold was already spreading from the White Fang Spear's edge—this way, at least, he would not need to spend internal energy just to stand still.
And further—
CREEEAK.
Using the shaft's elasticity, he stepped on it and leaped hard. Gangcheoli flinched. Until now it had never seen him move so openly—and he was already hurtling toward it at a speed beyond imagination. The creature could not even properly answer his swiftness.
THUNK!
"KYAAAK!"
A deep gash carved into its leg. Shin Gi-woon smiled in satisfaction. Of course he did not stop there. This time he drove the spear blade into the wall, bent the shaft, and jumped.
SLASH!
"KYIIK!"
"Haha. Can't keep up, can you?"
A feat that could fairly be called becoming one with the spear. Facing movements it had never seen, Gangcheoli could not even get a handle on its own attacks. Meanwhile Shin Gi-woon darted this way and that—slowly, steadily, relentlessly accumulating wounds on the creature's body.
SLASH! SWISH! SLASH-SLASH!
"KYAAAAA!"
"Does it hurt enough to scream? You're the one who barged into someone else's house!"
Shin Gi-woon's spear came down like lightning. From the accumulated wounds Gangcheoli's reaction lagged by a beat—and the second form of the Battle Demon Heavenly Spear struck its tail.
Second Form of the Battle Demon Heavenly Spear
SPURT!
"KYAAAAAAAK!!"
Gangcheoli's tail was severed, and a fountain of blood sprayed upward. The creature's heat quickly cauterized the wound—but dealing a critical blow was something. Thinking that, the moment he drove the spear into the wall—
"…?"
An ominous sensation. The feeling that something was going wrong. A martial artist's instinct was sounding the alarm that a change was underway. And before long he grasped the nature of that ominous feeling—the kind that left him speechless with sheer absurdity.
"A third metamorphosis? That's a bit much, don't you think?"
It was this: the creature that had once been an Imugi was already undergoing its third metamorphosis.