#46 The Cult's Prodigal Sons
#46 The Cult's Prodigal Sons
"...The man's a monster. Plain and simple."
Kim Joo-seop, the Lord of Okyeon and an archer, murmured under his breath. He had tracked the violent surge of mana to this spot, where two monsters were locked in combat. One was a headless Armored Monstrous Figure—ten to one, the very mage he had been chasing.
The other was the Wolf. At first, he'd assumed it was a native creature of this zone, Zone 2 Monstopia. It wasn't.
'...The Wolf that brought down Crimson.'
No doubt about it. Kim Joo-seop briefly sifted through what he knew of the Wolf, then shook his head. It didn't kill Crimson? It hunts turncoats? Irrelevant. A monster was still a monster. Nothing changed. He flattened himself against the ground and blended into the terrain, waiting. ...Before long, a chance to eliminate both at once would open up. He was certain of it.
***
By now, my jaw had finished regenerating from where it had been blown off.
[Regeneration (D) Lv.6 proficiency has reached its maximum. Regeneration (D) Lv.6 → Regeneration (D) Lv.7]
I'd healed a wound that might have taken my brain if the blast had landed just a little stronger, and the Wolf scattered red glare across the battlefield. The situation was still bad. Whether the bastard had no head or no arms meant nothing so long as I couldn't find where the real medium was hidden.
'...The medium?'
The density of his mana was too high for even the Wolf's Clairvoyance and Insight to pierce. Tier upon tier of mana wrapped him inside and out, insulating his interior from the world like layers of plate armor.
'Which means I have to finish him for good...'
Even with his Grand Magic thwarted, the man had regained his composure in an instant. The truth was, a five-section incantation was nothing to him. It was merely magic he could wield again whenever he pleased, given enough time—I had bought myself a few seconds at best. Already, the sinister black mana spreading from him was calling the Bam back into being. The cliff beneath us was stained black once more.
I couldn't afford to give him another moment. The Wolf lunged, and Chimmuk-haneun Ip raised a hand. A single flick of his fingers completed a spell—countless lightning spears flashed into existence and streaked toward the Wolf. They struck in droves, and every last one of them dissolved into the mist and vanished, as if that was only to be expected.
'...So that's it.'
Watching it unfold, Chimmuk-haneun Ip grasped it in an instant: the mist was devouring his magic.
The gap between us closed fast. My fangs would find him soon. Every spell he threw out through hand seals simply got swallowed by the mist. When I opened my jaws on him at point-blank range, he lashed out with one arm—
"...?!"
My vision blanked for a split second. I wrenched my eyes wide and pierced through it with Clairvoyance, then hurled myself aside with Elasticity. He was no longer standing there. A hand thrust from the darkness swept through the space I had occupied a heartbeat earlier.
The dense black mana coating that hand alone carried force exceeding most ordinary spells. I already knew the answer to how he had vanished.
'...Blink.'
The same as Perry's teleportation. The difference was that he used pure mana, not a skill. Spatial magic was notoriously tricky to begin with, and using it mid-combat was another thing entirely. There was a reason people put it on scrolls.
'But.'
The story was different for a man who had once been a Square Master. I'd known that. I had been waiting with my spiritual field, and the moment he reappeared—it crashed down on him.
"...?!"
—The shadow didn't move.
[Tch...]
Chimmuk-haneun Ip flicked his hand as if shooing away a nuisance, and the shadow dispersed like a mirage.
Shadow Domination was a first-rate skill that deserved its B-rank. But the rank came from its versatility, not from raw power. While the area was saturated with his mana, using shadows was impossible. Chimmuk-haneun Ip smirked at me and began to chant.
[Flăcările acoperă totul]
[Fulger în formă de balaur]
[Robia rădăcinii copacilor—!]
Three voices at once—multi-casting. When sound was generated not by vocal cords but by the vibration of mana, the number of throats meant nothing. A roaring fire-demon set the jungle ablaze. Colossal tree roots erupted through the earth. And worst of all, a dragon-shaped mass of lightning thundered down faster than sound, the shockwave pounding at the ears.
'The lightning—!'
The dragon was on me in a breath, jaws gaping right at my snout. I hurled myself away with Elasticity. The lightning dragon did not stop. It wheeled, and Chimmuk-haneun Ip's hand steered it like a living thing.
'Then...!'
I whipped up a gust and drove straight at him. The wild winds tore through the jungle and reached him in an instant—and he vanished again. When the lightning dragon looped back to strike, I slammed it straight into the ground.
[......!]
Chimmuk-haneun Ip's eyes flew wide.
'He didn't just charge in.'
He had anticipated that I would dodge. I'd only needed a moment. In that brief window of closing the distance, I had wreathed the gust in black mist—and the black mist had finally succeeded in swallowing the lightning dragon whole. The fire-demon crawling along the tree roots was devoured too, vanishing into the fog as if it had never been there.
No matter what form it manifested in, magic's essence was mana. Just as the black mist had consumed the storm clouds earlier, it possessed the power to consume mana itself.
[......]
Chimmuk-haneun Ip had to acknowledge it. He had no way to erase that mist. No—more precisely, he didn't have the luxury to try.
It was only a matter of time before the mist consumed every wisp of scattered mana in the area. Before that could happen, he pulled his black mana back.
I gave a small, inward nod. With his mana no longer smothering the field, I could use my shadows again.
When the mist pushed the Bam back, the Wolf kindled a black flame.
—And the blaze spread, crawling across the cliff face.
***
"Add! Two at five o'clock!"
"Archers! Draw!"
The archers nocked their arrows at Gu Jin-ha's command. They had come out on an expedition as far as Zone 2, so the arrows on hand were few. They needed resupply and maintenance. When the order to fire came, the hunters' arrows flew as one. The charging mammoth became a pincushion, but its enormous bulk refused to fall.
"Scatter!"
The hunters split flawlessly to both sides, opening a lane. The mammoth's charge slammed into empty air.
"Front line, harass! Archers, reload!"
Fingers reached into quivers and drew fresh shafts. The front-line hunters circled the mammoth that had driven deep into the formation, penning it in and denying it escape. They kept the distance razor-thin, feinting and provoking, threatening an attack at any moment without committing. It slowed the beasts just enough.
"Loose!"
The second volley punched across the mammoth's entire frame. Arrows punched through thick hide and fur and lodged deep. One mammoth toppled sideways.
But one still stood. Gu Jin-ha swept his gaze over the battlefield, confirmed no more monsters were closing in, and reset his grip on his rapier. Before he could move, an ice lance drilled through the mammoth's brow. The massive body crashed to the ground.
"...?"
Ha-yeon, the cool-faced vice-captain of Dawn Team 1, gave a small shake of her head.
'...I'm really not used to this.'
Her meaning was plain: the raid commander shouldn't be so quick to break formation. Gu Jin-ha nodded and turned his eyes toward the direction the rear unit was approaching from—they were nearly here now—when someone—no, the rear unit themselves—came running into view.
"Add! Three o'clock, seven—no, eight!"
They were dragging monsters behind them. Gu Jin-ha scowled. Still, if they could just push through this wave...
'We'll reach the rear unit's position.'
It wasn't far now. That thought steadied him, and he raised his voice again.
"Archers, reload!"
Lee Eun-ha, who had called out the approaching monsters, was chewing at her nails. It was impossible. It should be impossible. And yet...
'It can't be...'
The mana signature, the pattern—so uncannily similar to her own—wouldn't let go of her. Every time she felt it, her heart hammered. She drew a deep breath and tried to steady herself. Think rationally. It's impossible. He couldn't be here in Neverland. And he was dead. No matter how she turned it over, he couldn't be here.
'There's no way...!'
When she looked toward the cliff where black fire blazed, she was biting her lip before she knew it.
It's impossible. He's dead. He can't be here. Her head understood it. And yet. And yet.
And yet... this stirring in her chest simply wouldn't settle.
***
Every clash of sword against sword sent a jarring numbness through both fighters. Baek Gun-tae furrowed his brow as he watched the pair battle with their full strength on display.
"...There really isn't another monster like him."
The instant the two disengaged, Ju-gyo swung her flail—a hideously massive thing—as if she'd been waiting for the opening. It was hard to believe this was a woman past seventy, pushing eighty.
The iron flail, weighing dozens of kilograms, smashed into Gapju's Armored Monstrous Figure and bounced off as naturally as a thrown pebble. Ju-gyo reeled the chain in and spun the flail overhead, hunting for the next opening.
"Hey, something's off..."
"What do you mean, 'off'?"
"Mm."
Kang Tae-ho scratched the side of his head. A strange sense of wrongness had been nagging at him for a while now. Not outright, but it felt like fighting a mirror—an eerie similarity in the fundamentals. The way the man handled his sword was the same. Kang Tae-ho's eyes dropped to his own blade without thinking.
"...The hell?"
He spat the curse in genuine disbelief. The Conqueror's Great Sword had a crack in it. He maintained it regularly—the blade had stayed flawless across decades of battle. Which meant one thing: the Armored Monstrous Figure's strength matched his own. Kang Tae-ho wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"Just where was a monster like this hiding...?"
If Gu Jin-ha's report was accurate, this man had defeated Changseon and killed Muno. That took skill. Real skill.
The bigger problem was that the bastard still hadn't shown everything he had. And that blue flame crawling over Gapju's armor gnawed at him. Kang Tae-ho decided he had to move faster than he could think, and he charged. The two crashed together again.
"Geoam Lord!"
At Ju-gyo's call, Baek Gun-tae hurled a spear that swelled in size as it flew. Ju-gyo swung her flail. The Armored Monstrous Figure swept his sword to meet the attacks from both sides. The flail split and the spear shattered—attacks stopped almost anticlimactically. But that was enough. Kang Tae-ho exploited the exposed opening and drove in.
"———!"
Kang Tae-ho had no sure-kill technique, no special finishing move. He didn't need one. Every one of his strikes was a finishing move. A monstrous two-handed blade, the Conqueror's Great Sword stretching several meters, swung with strength honed beyond human limits into something far, far beyond.
The Armored Monstrous Figure snapped his sword back, but his stance wasn't set. When the two blades collided, the shockwave that erupted was of an entirely different order from everything before.
"......!"
Even for an Armored Monstrous Figure, tanking Kang Tae-ho's power head-on was no easy feat. He was forced backward a single step—and in that instant, caught in the epicenter of that violent clash of forces, Gapju's helmet cracked. A portion of it shattered away. Azure flame flared, and the helm regenerated in a heartbeat, but Kang Tae-ho had seen what lay inside, and his face went rigid.
A brief, profound silence. Then Kang Tae-ho's expression twisted. The grip crushing down on his sword hilt told the story of what he was feeling. He wanted to believe he'd seen wrong... but there was no mistaking it. It wasn't something you could mistake.
"Goddamn it all..."
—Hard as it was to accept, once that thought settled in, most of the questions that had been plaguing him snapped into place.
—That strange sense of déjà vu. The familiarity. The identical swordsmanship.
—The organization called the Prodigal Sons. The reason Changseon and Gwanghwi had aided them.
—And above all else, what Alpha the Jirisan Warg had told him back in the Forest Dungeon.
"...What kind of dog-shit is this."
Kang Tae-ho ground his teeth, eyes blazing.
***
Breaking the silence, the Sword Saint spoke.
"...So that's why. You helped the Prodigal Sons. You hid the turncoats."
"...."
"You're going to have to tell me. Former Sword Saint. No—"
Kang Tae-jun steadied his breathing for a beat and met Changseon's eyes directly.
"My father, Kang Hoon. Why you've joined hands with those goddamned turncoats."
"...."
"And how the hell you're still alive."