Lv.? Swordmaster Ban Ji-sung
Baekdu Guild was one of the largest guilds in Korea. Relative to its size, however, its equipment was pitiful — a consequence of too few sponsors and a chronically thin war chest. Their coastal defenses were so lacking that the Japanese, despite being far fewer in number, outclassed them completely.
"Shoot those Japs! Open fire!"
Japan's territory was a single tiny island, but the firepower coming off it was terrifying. Bombers lifted into the sky. A thunderous rain of bombs sent plumes of spray geysering up around the ghost ships. The Japanese even had several times more coastal guns than Baekdu Guild possessed. The sea itself was being turned inside out under the weight of their barrage.
"Fire! Fiiire!"
Baekdu Guild, for its part, was just as desperate. They threw every last coastal gun they had — few as they were — into holding the ghost ships back. Fortunately, the ships' defenses were absurdly frail. Any hit that landed didn't merely deal heavy damage: hulls split clean in two and went under. Ghost ships vanished into the sea one after another. The fleet that had filled the horizon only moments before was thinning before their eyes.
A groan slipped from the Rankers' mouths.
"What the hell is that?"
Four divisions or not, a landing itself looked outright impossible. Facing a Swordmaster seemed a distant prospect indeed.
And of all times, that Swordmaster chose now to appear. On that Japanese island far across the water.
"It's Ban Ji-sung!"
Even from that distance, the Swordmaster's presence was unmistakable. To the naked eye, Ban Ji-sung's form was nothing but a speck. But the Sword Qi riding his blade — that luminous energy — stood out sharp and clear to every watching eye. One could hardly miss a sixteen-meter mass of light.
Size was destruction. When that mass of light swept sideways in a great arc, a line of radiance thirty-five meters long was carved into the world, visible even from here. A coastal battery kissed by that colossal stroke of light was annihilated. Guns, emplacements, the very cliff they sat upon — all of it split apart as if detonated, and collapsed.
Everyone was briefly struck speechless by a scene that looked like an artillery strike. Gaon asked, deadpan:
"Sniper. Can you hit him at that range?"
The sniper thought it over a moment, then shook his head.
"No. It's too far to begin with, and he's moving too fast."
"Yeah, figured."
The sniper could barely believe that monster would die from a single bullet in the first place. A superhuman who carved wounds into the landscape itself was something bordering on the supernatural.
All the while, cannon fire rolled like thunder. With every blast that made their ears ring, ghost ships went down by the handful. Before long the sea fell quiet. Every last ghost ship had been sunk.
When the bombers that had finished their run came circling back, Ban Ji-sung hurriedly hid himself. With that, the whole affair seemed to be over.
"Shit. They all sank after all. How the hell do we report this to the employer?"
Gaon answered Lee Hyun-woo with a question of his own.
"It's not even your fault, so why?"
"Fault or not, we just burned through a fortune. He's going to be sick about it."
Gaon shook his head.
"From where I'm sitting, you didn't lose a dime."
Someone agreed with that. Someone who was not a person.
A psychic wave ringing directly inside the skull. The communication method of liches — or dragons. What had appeared here was no dragon.
"A lich!"
The Rankers recoiled in horror at the undead that had materialized among them, but Gaon had been through this before. He regarded the lich steadily. A strangely familiar skull. It didn't feel like a trick of the memory.
The lich spoke.
Gaon raised an eyebrow.
"Ah. That lich. You remember that?"
The lich laughed, mentally, as it said this. And Gaon noted that the lich had attempted a sense of humor. Strange.
Even that dragon I caught last time didn't seem to have any intelligence at all. Why is the NPC AI so inconsistent?
Not that this was the time to dwell on it. Lee Hyun-woo gathered his courage and asked:
"You the one commanding those ghost ships?"
"But you said the money we paid wasn't wasted... The ships all sank."
The meaning of those words became clear about ten minutes later.
A horde was coming through the waves. Zombies with water-bloated skin, looking all the more grotesque for it, and among them skeletons walking up out of the sea.
As the lich elaborated, the Rankers' eyes went wide at a scene straight out of a horror film. Those who should have been holding the coast weren't taking it easy either. The fighters that had been scouting for Ban Ji-sung wheeled hard toward the shoreline.
The undead that reached the beach were far too many. The bombs tumblinging from the fighters were nowhere near enough to kill them all. Swarming dead surrounded the island. Skeletons and zombies tore the waterproof tarps from their guns and charged.
Now the screams were louder than the cannon fire. On the Japanese island and in the Korean players' territory alike.
"What the FUUUUUCK!"
Everyone was firing like mad, pouring machine-gun fire, but it was nowhere near enough to stop the undead host rolling in like a tide. Enemies outnumbering the bullets themselves were wading through the surf. A tidal wave of half-corpses was bearing down.
The first defensive line was breached in an instant. Position after position fell as the undead kept coming.
From an ordinary player's standpoint, the skeletons — already hard to drop with rifle rounds — were a nightmare, and even the zombies were little better. Zombies at least went down if you took a leg joint or the head, which made them preferable to skeletons, but picking off vital points one by one was nearly impossible. Enemies that wouldn't die easily were pushing in on a scale that outmatched them completely.
Meanwhile Baekdu Guild had dissolved into utter chaos. No matter who tried what, nothing could hold.
"What the hell is this even..."
This was the situation the employer had intended — but it was not a pleasant thing to watch. The undead host was overwhelmingly superior. At this rate, one had to wonder whether Baekdu Guild would be wiped out entirely.
All this just to take down one Ji-sung? That's going too far...
Gaon looked toward the Japanese island. Ban Ji-sung, who had hidden from the bombers earlier, revealed himself again. Swinging that distinctive colossal sword, he was cutting down the undead that tried to overwhelm him as if they were straw. Given the size of the blade, the oncoming dead were being sliced apart by the dozens per second — Ban Ji-sung alone was better than a decent autocannon.
If I go after Ban Ji-sung in this situation, I'll get absolutely roasted...
Even if he wouldn't get cursed out, it came to the same thing. Gaon didn't like this situation to begin with. He'd talked about killing Ban Ji-sung and so on, but in truth he had little desire to take the man out. Fighting someone he'd already beaten multiple times wouldn't do anything for his skill. Even a victory wouldn't be anything worth being praised for. Especially not now.
In the end, Gaon made up his mind. He stood and declared:
Lee Hyun-woo picked it up.
"Those guys? The Baekdu people?"
"Yeah. If they get overrun like that, they lose everything and go broke. How pitiful would that be?"
"That's true, but... will our employer allow it?"
"In my case, there's nothing to allow or not allow. I was never hired in the first place."
"Oh — you weren't hired? Then do as you like."
Lee Hyun-woo nodded. He had no intention of stopping him. The Rankers themselves were skeptical about going after Ban Ji-sung in this situation. Make a move on him now and they'd be marked by Korea's largest guild, which was on the verge of losing a huge chunk of territory. Even with a sponsor, they wanted to avoid openly tanking their image.
Jijonmussang, however, did not care about lofty things like image.
"Ah, come on, Gaon — you're really gonna do that?"
Jijonmussang pleaded, apparently worried that if Gaon did as he pleased, the employer would feel that hiring Jijonmussang had been a waste. Gaon didn't want to be interrupted, and he didn't want to argue.
"I'll hand over all the loot I get, so zip it!"
After that brief remark, he ignored Jijonmussang — who had been about to say something — and ran.
He looked out over the stinking battlefield. Fortunately, even though the zombies and skeletons were armed, not many bullets were actually flying. However carefully the guns had been wrapped in tarps, everything had flooded when the ships went down. So Gaon could charge them head-on.
He gripped his sword in his left hand. Guns weren't much use against the undead, so the pistol he usually held in his right was holstered at his waist. That didn't mean his right hand was idle.
Gaon could use attack spells. Very fast, and very precise. Ordinarily he preferred other magic over attack spells, so he almost never used them. But his total mana had increased dramatically of late, making fairly powerful workings possible. He didn't even need to chant.
Gaon swept his hand. The flames rising across the battlefield answered that gesture.
Flame Control
Low mana cost. Large-scale flame manipulation.
People's gazes gathered.
"What's that over there..."
A surprisingly vast and spectacular play of fire. When Gaon swept his hand left, the flames surged left; when he swept right, they rushed right. A flame-control spell that didn't consume much mana, and so could be deployed on a massive scale.
He swept his hand toward the approaching enemies. A wave of flame rolled through a wave of flesh. A squad of zombies that had been charging with howls was engulfed in fire. Intense flame was plenty effective even on half-dead corpses. The zombies' fingers fused together, unable to pull a trigger. The nerves throughout bodies that were already nearly dead were destroyed completely.
Past the instantly disabled zombie horde, the flames swept through another group of undead. The bone-pile skeletons. On them, it was even more effective. Fire has a purifying power. The vengeful spirits that had been binding their bones together like glue melted away without fail whenever the flames touched them. Their whole-body connections severed, they collapsed in pathetic heaps.
He kept sweeping his hands, stirring the battlefield with fire. Where the flames passed became a path people could walk. When Gaon swept his hand in a wide arc, a passage opened through the middle of the undead tide. Faster than that space could fill, Gaon ran through it.
He could see the command building ahead. A group was still resisting, surrounded on all sides by zombie hordes. Two people were firing machine guns from the rooftop. Zombies dropped in droves every time the guns spat fire, but it wouldn't last — the barrels were starting to overheat.
Gaon finished what he'd been doing around them. Flames swept the surroundings once more, and dozens of zombies were disabled in an instant. That bought a moment's rest.
The rooftop gunner figured out who had helped him. Wiping sweat, he muttered:
"You're even more extra than in the videos. Total protagonist energy all by yourself. Magic-swordsman drip is insane..."
The man beside him snapped:
"Drip? Don't use Jap words."
"Ah — yes, Guildmaster."
Beside the gunner, Baekdu Guildmaster Kang Joo-seok looked at Gaon. He chewed his lip, then asked:
"I told you to leave. You still haven't gone?"
"I saw the situation and jumped in. Looked like you needed the help. But why haven't you bailed yourself? You've got a lot of assets here — shouldn't you be moving them out? Why are you fighting in person instead?"
"The head of an anti-Japanese guild can hardly run off to protect his own property. The Japs would laugh themselves sick."
In that moment, Gaon understood why the Goddess had so insisted he distinguish reality from the game.
Is this guy insane?
Did he really think beating Japanese players in a game was some noble anti-Japanese struggle? Even to Gaon, it was abnormal. Fortunately, he seemed otherwise relatively normal. Kang Joo-seok was acting appropriately for the current situation — and he'd even witnessed that As-native's fantasy-like exploits firsthand.
Kang Joo-seok bowed his head deeply and offered his thanks.
"You didn't actually need to help us... I said some terrible things. And yet you still came. I'm truly grateful."
"Skip the thanks and just focus on fighting, yeah?"
"My repeated thanks..."
Gaon couldn't in good conscience show off in this situation, but he didn't give up on playing it cool. He turned without a word and leaped — leaped, crushing a zombie's head underfoot. In the midst of the enemy he swung sword and fire.
A swordsman rampaging in the heart of the flames was visually spectacular, too. Fire swept and swept the battlefield. Even people trying to flee the city to safeguard their assets stopped to stare. He had the spotlight all to himself, but it wasn't satisfying.
Gaon felt, anew, how the times had changed. Had he taken out close to a thousand? And yet the enemies didn't seem to have thinned at all. A mere hundred years ago, the mere existence of a mage who could cut down hundreds of enemies alone would have won the battle. Not anymore. The battlefield had grown far too vast, and the forces consumed on it far too many.
Eventually the limit came. After his MP was completely depleted, Gaon swung sword and gun. He fired wildly and cut them down. A single swordsman's presence on a vast battlefield couldn't help much — but he still fought with everything he had. He knew his presence helped boost other people's morale. It had been that way in the old days, too.
He paid no mind to the sweat pouring down, nor to his gradually stiffening limbs. He simply, in a trance, kept tearing off zombie heads and smashing skeleton joints.
After quite a while of that, reinforcements arrived. A group of Baekdu Guild members approached Gaon and delivered a message.
"You've worked hard. You've been a tremendous help."
Gaon answered without showing how tired he was.
"I said save the thanks for later."
"We didn't come just to thank you. We have a request... You said you came to take down Ban Ji-sung, didn't you?"
"And?"
"Could you perhaps take him down now..."