132. Counterattack (4)
132. Counterattack (4)
Waaaaaaaaahhhh—!!
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill them all!!"
"What're the Healers doing?! Pump more heals into the Chieftain!"
"···I, I used up all my Mana fighting earlier, okay?"
"Then squeeze out what you don't have and cast anyway! Can't you see she's holding them off by herself?!"
Amid the pitched battle between the Demonized Humans and the cadets.
Shunk—!
A blade burst through a cadet's chest.
Stabbed suddenly from behind, the cadet barely managed to turn his head and saw the face of the traitor who had run him through.
Then his eyes flew wide.
"Grrk—!? Ch-Chonhwa?! W-why would you···."
"You'll find out later. No hard feelings."
Shin Se-hee answered in a composed voice.
She had slipped in among the cadets during the chaos and was taking out the exhausted ones one by one.
The thing Jin Yu-ha had asked of her.
To make sure the cadets didn't end up dead at the hands of the Demonized Humans—she was carrying out that request.
With Lee Yu-ri fighting on the front line, Shin Se-hee couldn't use magic.
And deploying Kang Do-hee to the field would also be an excessive use of force.
So she moved on her own two feet and picked off the cadets who couldn't continue fighting and were at high risk of dying to the Demonized Humans, eliminating them with her own hands.
"Huhk!?"
One male cadet who had just witnessed Shin Se-hee's actions clapped a hand over his mouth.
At that, Shin Se-hee turned her head and said, as if it were nothing.
"Just now, this cadet tried to use the chaos to stab another comrade in the back. So I had no choice but to step in."
"···Ah."
"But this is a secret, okay? It could damage morale."
Shh.
Shin Se-hee pressed her forefinger gently to her lips and smiled softly.
"Y-yes!"
The male cadet's face blazed bright red at that angelic smile, and he nodded his head up and down furiously.
Having smoothed things over, Shin Se-hee's beautiful face soon hardened into a stiff mask.
'This isn't good···.'
Shin Se-hee scanned the battlefield, her eyes moving rapidly.
The weasel-like Demonized Human who had looked stronger than all the others combined had gone off because Kang Do-hee broke away to handle her alone, so in that sense they had indeed bought some breathing room.
But the current situation was highly precarious.
The number of Demonized Humans remaining here was fifteen in total.
And Lee Yu-ri was holding off all fifteen of them by herself.
At first the Demonized Humans had been helpless against the cadets' massed attacks,
but as if to prove their years of experience weren't for nothing, they were gradually beginning to handle the incoming attacks with greater skill.
On top of that, the effect of Lee Yu-ri's Taunt was slowly fading,
and the cadets' healing skills, which had been focused on her, were cutting out intermittently—their Mana likely exhausted.
BOOM!
BOOM!
Explosive roars burst out.
The attacks were a tier above what cadets were capable of.
So far, Lee Yu-ri had been dodging the attacks with good judgment and keeping the Demonized Humans pinned down.
But there was no telling how long that would last.
'At this rate, it's only a matter of time before we have casualties···.'
Shin Se-hee assessed the situation with deeply sunken eyes.
That was when it happened.
"AAAAAAH!"
One Demonized Human exploited the moment Lee Yu-ri's skill weakened and loosed a Sword Qi.
A deep sword wound carved across a cadet's stomach, blood pouring out freely.
Shin Se-hee's expression hardened rigidly.
She couldn't step in and handle this herself right now.
Telling the other cadets that the injured one had tried to attack a comrade would look too forced.
'Should I just have the cadets who seem likely to die ask the nearby cadets to kill them? Since they're going to die anyway, I could frame it as an opportunity to at least earn some Coin···.'
If she did that, the ones struck down by their fellow cadets could be summoned by the Flying Ship and receive treatment.
But Shin Se-hee could only shake her head.
That was a bad move.
True, it would serve as an immediate stopgap, but it would also sow chaos among the cadets.
If they started secretly attacking each other to earn Coins, the cohesion they were barely maintaining would crumble in an instant.
'What do I do? Some good idea···.'
Shin Se-hee was biting her lip in worry when it happened.
"···Sacrificial Shield!!!"
Breathing in ragged exhaustion, Lee Yu-ri raised her shield and shouted.
Above her head, a giant blue cross unfolded its wings.
'What···?'
Did Lee Yu-ri have another skill besides Taunt?
'No, now that I think about it···. Definitely, during the group sparring back in the entrance exam.'
What cut off her chain of thought was the voice of the dying cadet.
"Huh? Wh-what's this? M-my body?"
The cadet who had been dying from the Sword Qi righted himself and stood up, looking dazed.
The deep wound carved into his stomach had vanished without a trace!
* * *
Zzt—
A burning, fiery pain spread through her abdomen as if she had been branded.
"Ngh!"
Lee Yu-ri clamped her teeth shut.
The skill she had just used was "Sacrificial Shield."
A skill that transferred the damage of others onto herself.
It was a skill she had forgotten about, having had no occasion to use it since the group sparring with Jin Yu-ha.
After all, no one in the Utopia Party was particularly lacking in skill,
and as long as they moved according to Jin Yu-ha's orders, they could clear a dungeon without anyone suffering deep wounds.
But now, thanks to that skill, one cadet's life had been spared.
"Hooo—."
Letting out a long breath, Lee Yu-ri planted her feet solidly into the ground and raised her shield.
BOOM!
Rrrrrr—
Her shield trembled under the heavy impact.
"Oh? Hey there, shield girl, haven't you gotten a little weaker just now?"
"Ah-ha! Hey, she's bleeding from her stomach."
"What? What do you mean?"
"No, you were just trying to gank the kid in the back."
"Yeah, 'cause it was pissing me the hell off that she kept throwing rocks only at me."
"But she looks totally fine? And this one's bleeding from her stomach."
"Huh? Really? If that's the case, don't tell me···."
The Demonized Humans quickly caught on to the correlation and grinned nastily.
Lee Yu-ri's expression, on the other hand, went rigid.
After that, the Demonized Humans
ignored Lee Yu-ri, who stood right before them, and began attacking the cadets behind her.
"AAAAAAH!"
"AAGH!"
"GRAAAGH!!"
"Leave them alone and fight me, you sons of bitches!"
CLANG—!
Lee Yu-ri struck her shield, veins bulging in her throat.
"Why should we? Do we have to? Seems to me we can just grab the kids in the back and call it a day."
Even when caught by the Taunt skill again, the Demonized Humans lowered their weapons and shrugged their shoulders, as if content to wait out the skill's duration.
'Damn it!'
"Sacrificial Shield!"
Even knowing she was playing right into the Demonized Humans' scheme, Lee Yu-ri had no choice but to shout it again.
"Sacrificial Shield!"
"Sacrificial Shield···!"
"Sacrificial Shield······!"
.
.
.
.
The situation did not improve.
As many times as Lee Yu-ri used the skill, no cadets died.
But in return, the strain on Lee Yu-ri's body kept mounting.
Lee Yu-ri, who had transferred all the cadets' damage onto herself.
Bearing the wounds of others carved across her entire body, it was a sight of the utmost wretchedness.
Now, even the cadets who hadn't grasped the situation could no longer deny that something was very wrong.
"Chieftain Lee Yu-ri······!!"
"Stop, stop it!"
"Chieftain! Why—why are you going this far?! We don't really die either way!"
"We're fine! We really don't care if we don't earn any more Coins!"
The cadets cried out the ridiculous title of "Chieftain" to try to stop Lee Yu-ri.
"···Sacrificial···Shield."
With a quavering voice, she once more transferred the cadets' wounds onto herself.
"Ghk!"
A hole gaped open in her back as if she had been stabbed through, blood streaming out.
Her arm no longer moved, but it still thrust the shield forward.
Her ankle, its ligaments severed, was still rooted deep in the earth.
Her body, trembling fiercely, would not have looked out of place collapsing then and there.
Perhaps from losing too much blood, her ears were ringing and her vision was hazy.
'But I can't give up here.'
Lee Yu-ri glared at the Demonized Humans with unshaken eyes.
"Whoa~ You're really something, aren't you?"
As the battle turned one-sided, ease crept onto the Demonized Humans' faces.
"So this is the great hero's so-called sacrifice?"
"Wow— truly noble, so noble."
"They don't even seem to understand what's going on. Is doing all this even meaningful?"
"Your shield's wobbling, and you're looking weak in the hands now. You okay, shorty?"
The Demonized Humans mocked Lee Yu-ri to her face.
Heh—
But Lee Yu-ri forced the corners of her mouth upward and let out a scoff.
"···You Demonized Human bastards···haven't even···been able to get past one cadet's shield···and yet your mouths···run just fine···."
A voice that trailed off as if about to break.
But the meaning inside it was fully delivered.
The Demonized Humans' faces changed drastically, as if sickened.
"Ha, you really wanna make it worse?"
"Shorty, I think you're mistaken. We've been going easy on you all this time. Just curious to see how far you could go."
"And it looks like there isn't much left in you anyway?"
"Bul···shit···."
Lee Yu-ri spat the curse out, then gripped her shield tight with trembling hands and hoisted it up once more.
"I can do this···all···damn day!"
The Demonized Human who had looked sickened raised his whip, as if he had decided to stop holding back.
"Ha, fine. Let's see how far you can go···."
Fwish—
The whip rose toward the sky.
"Let's see what you've got!!!!"
WHOOOOSH—!
The whip tore through the air and hurtled toward Lee Yu-ri's head.
She had to dodge.
But her feet wouldn't move.
Lee Yu-ri bit down hard on her lip.
'Jin Yu-ha···.'
That was when it happened.
SWISH!
Thunk───── thud.
A single sword flew in from somewhere, slashed through the whip, and embedded itself at Lee Yu-ri's feet.
"······Who's there."
And then, a clear voice pierced through Lee Yu-ri's dimmed hearing.
Lee Yu-ri lifted her barely-open eyes and slowly looked upward.
There stood Jin Yu-ha, glaring down at this place with an expression more furious than she had ever seen before.
"Who the hell touched my Gukbap!!!!!!!!"
Lee Yu-ri absolutely couldn't stop the corners of her own mouth from curling up.
"You idiot. Seriously, you're way too late···."