Lv.? Swordmaster Hyungtun

The blade of that sword was unnaturally long and thin. Two and a half meters in length, a mere 2.4 centimeters across. Both edges were honed, as though its maker had slashing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as much in mind as thrusting.

And yet cutting anyone with such a weapon seemed impossible. A blade needs weight. Without mass behind the steel, shearing through anything is difficult.

But the master of this sword had no need of the blade's weight.

Its owner was Lord Hyungtun, and he was a Swordmaster.

A Swordmaster possesses a weapon beyond the steel itself: Sword Qi. A transcendental cutting force — the exclusive privilege of superhumans — that imbues a blade with power beyond the physical.

The edge sank into brick.

It drew a line as smoothly as a kitchen knife through tofu. The Sword Qi-wreathed blade silently sliced a section from the wall.

The severed piece had not yet toppled.

He withdrew the sword, then drove it into the center of the cut section. The instant the blade punched through the brick, he dismissed the Sword Qi. The cutting force vanished from the steel. The blade, now piercing the severed slab, locked it in place.

He pushed, gently, and it toppled in silence.

A passage large enough for a man had opened in the wall.

He stepped through into a barracks.

Sixty-four men slept soundly within.

He had no time to stab or slash them one by one. There was a more efficient method.

Hyungtun wreathed the blade in Sword Qi once more and let the sword hang, tip pointed at the floor. The Qi-coated point sank smoothly into the ground.

With the tip still buried, Hyungtun walked in silence. From one end of the barracks to the other.

Dip a giant brush in ink, let it hang, and walk — you draw a single elongated line. An unbroken stroke. The line Hyungtun was making was no different.

From one end of the barracks to the other, wherever the sword touched, a single cutting line was drawn. Floor and human bodies were sheared through as one.

One line complete, he drew another on the opposite side.

In roughly forty seconds, two lines had appeared in the barracks. Sixty-four corpses with heads separated from bodies — or one hundred and twenty-eight pieces — began to give off the stench of blood.

Before the smell grew any stronger, he needed to repeat the work in the other rooms.

A sentry would be in the corridor. So he would not use the corridor.

There was no need to travel by designated passages.

In the wall separating this room from the next, where more soldiers slept, he made a door the same way as before. A flick of the sword sliced the wall open, and he stepped through. He divided all sixty-four sleepers in two.

He made another door, and repeated the process.

It took no more than eight minutes for a barracks of five hundred and forty sleeping men to be annihilated.

He moved on to his next target: an ammunition depot disguised as an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ordinary building. How Hyungtun, who had only just entered the city, knew its location was of no importance.

He cut through the powder magazine's wall and stepped inside.

Every manner of flammable material was stacked to the ceiling.

If only he knew how to cast a Fireball. A lifetime spent swinging a sword had left him no time to learn magic.

It didn't matter.

Hyungtun drew a sheet of parchment from his coat and tore it. A magic scroll containing a Fireball spell.

A fireball streaked in a crimson line and struck its target dead-on.

The moment Hyungtun took cover, the powder magazine exploded.

He was already moving toward his next target, the flames at his back, when something came charging toward him.

Had they heard the explosion and scrambled to respond? Something was racing this way.

Vibrations transmitted through the ground. A massive something, crushing obstacles as it came — a Tiger tank.

Their response was astonishingly fast. They must have trained from the start with a Swordmaster's intrusion in mind.

Hyungtun did not marvel.

The Tiger's main gun spat fire. A shell in flight.

Hyungtun had been fighting Earthlings for decades. He recognized a high-explosive round at a glance and estimated its blast radius instantly.

About six meters. Too wide to simply leap clear. He knew this from experience — he'd once tried to dodge and nearly died in the blast.

Thought ended in an instant, and action followed.

Hyungtun sprang diagonally, avoiding a direct hit. But the explosion and the shockwave?

From past experience, he had brought a shield. He slammed it into the ground and ducked behind it.

A thunderous blast.

The shock reached him even behind the shield. That the shield neither ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠crumpled nor shattered was thanks to its adamantium chain.

Defense successful. Now it was time to counterattack.

Hyungtun wrenched the shield free and charged. He thrust his sword at the tank's armor. The thick plating failed in its purpose. The Sword Qi-wreathed blade punched through into the interior without the slightest resistance.

He withdrew the sword. Blood came with it. The tank stopped.

But it wasn't over.

The driver must have gotten a radio call out before he died. Heavy footsteps — a body of troops was approaching.

"Emergency! Swordmaster! Swordmaster! Maintain a fire net! Spread out! Shoot from as many directions as you can! Don't fire from one position — you have to hit him from the widest possible angles—"

Now that he'd been spotted, there was no need to maintain stealth.

A flick of the sword sliced the adjacent wall. Hyungtun shoved the severed section aside with his body and stepped through.

"Where'd he—"

He hid only for a moment. Then he cut through another wall, burst out, and charged the assembled troops.

The instant he closed the distance, he swung his Sword Qi-wreathed blade.

Long. Very long.

Hyungtun's sword was already two and a half meters of blade — long enough. But a simple mechanism could make it far longer still.

Press a button, and a thinner blade concealed within the sword extended, stretching to a maximum of eleven meters.

It was a mechanical device the dwarves had built for him, based on a simple observation: once Sword Qi was applied, even the frailest blade could shear through anything it touched.

Arm and sword connected, sweeping a vast arc. That twelve-meter radius was a killing field.

A single stroke reached every body within twelve meters.

A cascade of game-over logouts. In reality, the contents would have spilled in a messy spray, but this was a game. Twenty corpses appeared in an instant, cleanly bisected.

That didn't mean he could afford to be casual.

"What the hell!"

"Gah!"

"Fuck—"

Screams erupted from every direction. The commanding officer, half in a panic, bellowed wildly.

"Just shoot! I don't care if you hit friendlies, just open fire—"

The sword swept another vast arc. The shouting officer's head flew through the air along with four others.

Only now could they attempt something resembling a counterattack.

"Shoot! Don't save ammo, just spray it!"

As terrified players hosed the area with gunfire, Hyungtun slipped into a passage he'd already cut through the wall.

He wasn't running.

Ten seconds later, he burst from a different wall and swung his sword.

Lee Bok-dong and Jijonmussang had volunteered for night watch. Lee Bok-dong because he was self-conscious around the other pro gamers; Jijonmussang because he wanted to get in the other players' good graces.

Jijonmussang was in high spirits, rambling away.

"Ah, this takes me back! Back in the service we'd stand watch just like this, shooting the shit all night. This is your first time on sentry duty, huh, Bok-dong? Look at you, a proper veteran now."

"Ah, yeah..."

Lee Bok-dong answered absently, though not because he couldn't be bothered.

His heart was hammering in his chest.

He thought about the money he'd made today.

They'd been killing poor As NPCs, so they hadn't looted any expensive gear, but the sheer volume of the haul had been enormous. Enough to fill a truck.

Even at forty thousand won a rifle, that's a good 1.6 million per person...

And that was just one day's work. The kind of money you'd make working a convenience-store job for three straight months.

They'd sleep, wake up, and fight again, so they could expect similar earnings tomorrow. It was so astonishing he couldn't quite believe it was real.

"We picked the right side, huh?"

"Yeah, we really did..."

And even the night watch was with Jijonmussang, someone he already knew. If he'd been posted with a stranger, the awkwardness would have killed him.

Everything really did seem to be going his way. Was this it? Had spring finally come to his life? He was murmuring the thought to himself when—

A piercing electronic whine. Loudspeakers installed throughout the city vibrated. Lee Bok-dong's blood ran cold as the broadcast rang out.

Murmurs rose from every direction.

"A Swordmaster?"

"Wait, what the hell..."

They didn't yet feel the danger, but they followed orders anyway. The sentries, Lee Bok-dong among them, grabbed their rifles and headed for the assembly point.

And along the way, they saw the battlefield.

More precisely, they saw a massacre. They watched an entire platoon get disassembled by a single man who had suddenly burst from a wall.

"Swordmaster, over there!"

On a rooftop, four shooters who'd been providing covering fire stopped mid-burst. The enemy had vanished. Where did he go?

Lee Bok-dong, watching from a distance, could see it. A man running up a wall as if defying gravity. He couldn't tell that the man was driving a Sword Qi-wreathed blade into the building, dismissing the Qi to lock the sword in place as a foothold, then kicking off the wall and repeating the process. All he could see was something horrifically, impossibly wrong.

"Gah—"

Hyungtun reached the rooftop in an instant, swung his sword, and four shooters' heads flew through the air.

His work done, Hyungtun vanished somewhere.

From a distance, it looked like he was teleporting in rapid succession. Every time Hyungtun flickered into view, screams rang out.

It was nothing like the presence of a single person. He was nothing like them.

He was a superhuman. A man who could kill hundreds, thousands, by himself. A being that did not exist on Earth, of a clearly different order. In his presence, words like equality became so much bullshit.

Then again, in urban combat a Swordmaster was all but invincible. Every building was cover for him, and that severely limited fields of fire. Just as in trench warfare, under these constrained conditions, a Swordmaster could not be killed.

Lee Bok-dong forgot all about providing covering fire. He flattened himself to the ground, not wanting to be noticed, and trembled.

His teeth began to chatter.

Call it over-immersion in a game if you like — he was terrified. The way a ghost in a horror game is frightening, he simply could not stay calm.

He glanced over. Jijonmussang was shaking too.

Jijonmussang muttered.

"My money..."

The words snapped Lee Bok-dong back to himself.

Right. If they died now, it was over. Today's loot hadn't even been listed on the auction house, let alone cashed out. Die now and they'd lose the whole truck.

"I-I-I'm gonna, I'm going to the truck... we gotta bounce..."

Lee Bok-dong mumbled in response.

"But they said to assemble and fight... that's an order..."

"Order, schmorder... we gotta salvage what we earned..."

Jijonmussang took off running. Lee Bok-dong couldn't even bring himself to stop him.

But as he headed toward the assembly point, he regretted not stopping him. Jijonmussang wasn't the only one who'd decided to save his own property.

Players were fleeing in every direction.

The other players had also hauled in a considerable amount of loot from the day's fighting. Now, facing the loss of all of it, the people gathered here were no army.

Just like a real war, they were nothing more than terrified, wretched people about to lose everything.

Players fleeing to secure their spoils. Some had even started stealing items in the chaos.

"If it's all loaded, go, go! They're gonna shut the gates, hurry, hurry!"

In the confusion, the commander sprayed gunfire in every direction, screaming.

"Stop fucking around and assemble to fight, you bastards!"

It was no use.

Vehicles loaded with cargo tore through the streets. Screams here, gunfire there — pandemonium.

"The gates are shut! We're not opening them! You want to keep your shit, you fight and you win, you bastards! You have to fight—"

He broke off. The commander sank to the ground, the fight gone out of him. Looking at his face, he seemed ready to cry at any moment.

Lee Bok-dong felt like crying too. Then the commander looked at him.

And spoke.

"You... that... that scary-as-hell As guy. You know where he sleeps, right?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah..."

"Then go wake him up. Bring him here."

"What? Why..."

"I don't know what the hell that guy is, but he's scary as hell! His name's Gaon, for starters..."

It was an order with no logic behind it, but Lee Bok-dong found himself nodding. The only person who seemed like he might actually help in a situation like this was that fantasy native.

Lee Bok-dong ran with everything he had.

He barely made it to the barracks. But there was no relief.

The stench of blood hit him from the entrance.

He went inside. The barracks was already a sea of blood. Lee Bok-dong collapsed, stunned.

There was no hope now. Today's money would all vanish, and tomorrow's too.

What the hell is my life.

In despair, he entered the room where Gaon had been sleeping. And his eyes went wide.

Corpses lay everywhere, but Gaon's spot was empty. Could it be?

Lee Bok-dong hurriedly gathered Gaon's gear and burst out of the barracks.

He had no idea where Gaon was, but he ran anyway.

And astonishingly, at the place he kept running toward, Gaon was waiting. Coincidence? Or...?

"So what happened was..."

Gaon cut him off.

"I know. I heard all the shouting about a Swordmaster."

This wasn't a location where those sounds should have carried.

He couldn't spare a thought for that now. Gaon smiled.

"Anyway, you came to bring me my gear, right? Thanks."

"You knew I was coming?"

"Heard your footsteps. Calculated they were heavier than usual — figured you'd packed not just the sword but the potions too. Good work."

Lee Bok-dong felt like he was going to cry.

Gaon drank the Ogre Potion packed among the gear Lee Bok-dong had brought.

It was an expensive item, but he'd bought several in preparation for today's battle.

He drew his adamantium sword and headed for the fighting.

Screams guided him to his destination.

He walked on, and there — at last — was the Swordmaster.

He prepared an ambush.

By common knowledge, it was impossible. A surprise attack on a Swordmaster who could sense a bullet fired from a distance and dodge it? How?

Gaon knew how a Swordmaster's combat sense worked. That ability, which at times even appeared to be precognition, was not true foresight. It was instinctive deduction and judgment — a sense honed by long years of combat, reading the surrounding environment and acting on it.

Which meant that if there was not even the smallest clue that danger was coming, the combat sense would not trigger.

Invisibility. Perfectly silent footsteps. With those, you could land a surprise attack even on a Swordmaster.

That was what Gaon did.

"I said fire all at once, you fucks!"

Hyungtun swung his sword, and as the screaming officer's head flew skyward, Gaon drove his blade into the man's back.

He felt it sink in.