Cotton Candy Fists
At first, Jisu wasn't even sure what the man was going on about. The claim that he'd figured out the secret of Jisu's strength was interesting enough, he had to admit. So when Woohyeok suddenly asked what he wanted to say before he died, Jisu was, frankly, at a complete loss.
"Jisu, something feels off. I think you should fall back…"
Seyeon sounded worried, but Jisu couldn't see the problem. He was currently stopping that sharp weapon with his bare palm, and it didn't hurt in the slightest. His stamina, at least, was nothing to worry about.
While he was thinking that, the man in front of him suddenly started snickering. Jisu wondered if the guy was having a manic episode, but as a reasonably well-adjusted modern person, he kept that thought to himself.
Then Woohyeok bellowed that Jisu was a pathetic bastard. And that was it.
At least, that was everything that registered in Jisu's eyes. Not just Jisu — everyone watching the duel would have seen the same thing. Because nothing happened.
Huh?
For a fleeting instant, Jisu thought his body itched, just a little. But that, too, lasted only a heartbeat. Beyond it, he felt nothing at all. If he had to put it into words, it was like standing up after sitting in a massage chair for a few seconds.
And so what? Nothing had happened. That much remained unchanged.
How much time passed after that? The face of Woohyeok, who had been maintaining that supremely confident attitude from the start, began to twist, and a trembling voice followed.
"What… what the hell are you?"
"…"
Jisu didn't answer. He studied the other man's expression instead. What he found there was the particular hollowness of someone whose carefully prepared trump card had just bounced off.
"What the hell are you?!"
Okay, why is he suddenly losing his mind?
Jisu was even-tempered by nature, but having someone bark incomprehensible questions at him over and over was starting to get on his nerves. He was wondering what could possibly have gone so wrong when a suspicion clicked into place.
Don't tell me he's talking about that massage-chair feeling?
Had that been an attack?
It was hard to put into words, but there had been a faint, full-body tingle. Of course, it was entirely possible that the attack had been far more serious and effective than it felt, and Jisu's stamina had simply been high enough to shrug it off. That sharp weapon wasn't posing any threat to him right now either, after all.
Woohyeok was backing away without even realizing it. The pride he'd built from his days on the streets turned to dust in the face of the impossible thing unfolding in front of him.
Whether he understood any of that or not, Jisu walked toward the stunned man at a measured pace and carefully opened his mouth.
I don't know what it was, but this bastard just attacked me — and it didn't work?
Perfect.
He'd been a little tense because the guy was an S-rank hunter, but this was all he amounted to. The fight was as good as his.
Woohyeok's face went white.
I knew it!
Jisu's hunch had been right. This bastard really had just used something like a last-resort finishing move.
He was barely holding back a grin when Woohyeok started stumbling backward, one dragging step, then two.
"My attack… didn't work?"
He'd clearly poured everything into whatever ultimate he'd prepared. How hollow must it feel to watch it do absolutely nothing? Under ordinary circumstances, Jisu might have felt sorry for him. These were not ordinary circumstances.
You came in swinging with that attitude, and look at you now. Alright — how should I school this guy?
Woohyeok was in the palm of his hand. The only question that mattered now was how to cook him.
Meanwhile, the hunters watching the match were picking up on the strange shift in the air, one after another. The sudden panic on Woohyeok's face. People who knew him had rarely seen him look that stunned, and they were starting to get unsettled themselves.
"Did something just happen?"
"…"
Chaerin didn't answer Heeyeon. She just kept her eyes on Woohyeok and Jisu.
I still can't feel anything. What on earth is going on?
Woohyeok had definitely attacked — that much seemed clear. The problem was the man she'd never seen before. Hyun Jisu. Not a trace of energy came off him. For Chaerin, that was unusual.
Has he not opened his abilities yet? But he blocked the attack, which means…
While Chaerin sank into thought, someone else was reading the same bizarre current in the air.
Siyun.
That's impossible…!
She brought her thumbnail to her lips — a habit that surfaced whenever things refused to go the way she'd planned.
Judging by Woohyeok's reaction, he definitely used that skill. What? The attack didn't land? He can block electricity? Or what?
That wasn't actually what Siyun had been worrying about. The question occupying her had been: what was she supposed to do if Woohyeok killed Jisu?
Jisu was, without question, too valuable a resource to waste. But there was no guarantee he'd play along, and Woohyeok might well decide that if the man simply ceased to exist, he couldn't become a threat — so why not? That was the kind of calculation she could see him making.
She couldn't allow that. There was no more time to delay. She had to bring Jisu over to her side, no matter what it took. If Woohyeok went too far, she'd been ready to stop the match on the spot and keep Jisu alive.
Except she didn't need to worry about any of that. Jisu was taking the attacks just fine.
Really? A body that electricity itself couldn't touch?
Had she ever seen anything like that?
And the most frightening thing of all was Jisu's attitude. It was a different feeling from the ambiguous tension hanging over the arena — as if he'd known this was exactly how it would go.
Alright. Time to wrap this up.
Now that he knew Woohyeok's last card didn't work on him, there was no reason to drag this out. If his stats hadn't dropped, the smart play was to land a few hits and end it quickly. With that judgment made, Jisu finally threw a punch at the reeling Woohyeok.
Tick.
"…?"
Jisu's fist sank into Woohyeok's face with a soft poof, like a giant puff of cotton candy.
A beat of silence. This time, it was Jisu's face that started to look wrong.
Huh?
He yanked his fist back and retreated a step, then settled into a stance as if something were about to begin.
It's fine. It's okay. Breathe. Think it through again.
He quietly coached himself and started turning the problem over at speed.
Wait.
"J-Jisu?"
Even Seyeon's voice didn't reach him.
What was this? What was happening?
He had put real force into that punch. And it had felt like swinging at empty air. No — more precisely, there had been no impact at all. The squishy sensation, though. He'd felt that clearly enough.
"…What?"
Jisu wasn't the only one who found the situation strange. Woohyeok, who moments ago hadn't been able to hide his shock, was now feeling something equally difficult to describe from that cotton-soft fist. What was that? What was he trying to do? Was this a joke?
A man who could eat an electric attack without flinching had just hit him, and it hadn't hurt at all. Was it not a physical attack?
…What?
Woohyeok carefully reset his stance. He hadn't taken any damage, but the man across from him was an SS-rank hunter who had just chewed through his electricity. Nobody knew what that little tap might turn into. If this was going to come down to hand-to-hand, he needed to focus even harder — no room to let his guard down.
For Jisu, it was a different story. He knew. There had been nothing in that cotton-soft fist. And he knew this was the maximum force he could currently produce.
Of course he did. This was how Jisu had always fought. The situation had simply changed.
What rose in his mind was a chart. A long, ugly downward spike driven deep into the candlesticks. A tall blue bearish candle.
…It dumped.
That was it.
Before entering this fight, Jisu had split his investment across the two coins Salg had recommended. CloseCanvas. And MidnightRainbow. Two coins whose names alone screamed scam. He'd put Mental Strength and Stamina into one, Strength and Agility into the other.
The reason that supposed finishing move had felt like nothing more than an itch was probably because the coin holding his Stamina had gone up. It might have mooned, or it might have just been moving sideways and this level of defense was already enough to stop the attack. Still, watching an S-rank hunter lose his mind over it, it was reasonable to conclude his defense had risen.
The problem was the other coin. The remaining one — the one holding his Strength and Agility.
Jisu had not pulled his punch. He'd hit as hard as he reasonably could. The man was an S-rank hunter, after all. And it hadn't landed at all. After being toyed with by the coin market more times than he could count, Jisu knew exactly why this was happening.
It dumped. It definitely dumped!
He was right. The stat values he had yet to fully grasp were nothing short of catastrophic.
A monster tanker for the ages.
With stamina and mental strength like that, he could be dropped anywhere on earth and walk out alive. No horror would overwhelm him. He could look upon something transcendent and absolute and not so much as flinch. And that was only the beginning. That overwhelming physical durability — that stamina — would stand behind him as a fortress bound together by sheer force of will. Throw him into a pit of fire, sink him to the bottom of the ocean, and he would survive. Even a hundred wyverns attacking at once would have a hard time putting a scratch on him.
That was the truth of it. No matter how lethal the voltage, raw stats this absurd would chew it up and spit it out. What is strong is simple. What is simple is strong. In the face of numbers so overwhelming they bordered on the impossible for a human being, what was a little electricity?
But then there was the Strength, which had crashed through the floor.
If the current Jisu arm-wrestled a thirteen-year-old elementary schooler, who would win? Anyone who could see these stats would put their money on the kid without a second thought. Strength so pathetic it was almost tender. A cotton-candy fist. A ham-fist punch so soft, so squishy, so aggressively helpless that it triggered every protective instinct in the room — the kind of punch that would get instantly overpowered the moment someone pulled out a squeaky carnival mallet.
And the Agility? Come to think of it, Jisu hadn't blocked a single one of Woohyeok's attacks. Part of that was because he'd been curious about what the man was saying and hadn't tried to dodge — but even if he had tried, it wouldn't have mattered. He wouldn't have been able to see those movements, let alone read them.
Behold: the birth of a colossal, enormous, sponge-plump giant elephant (cannot attack).
And having thought that far, Jisu's next conclusion arrived on schedule.
If I don't deal with this properly, I'm fucked.
He started thinking, fast.