The Third Tutorial (3): Smoke and Sorcery
The unidentified smoke rising from the castle began spreading rapidly, soon cloaking the entire area in darkness. Anyone could tell this wasn’t ordinary fire smoke. The color was wrong, and the texture visible to the eye felt nothing like normal fumes. If I had to describe it… it was thick, almost viscous. I pinched my nose shut, wondering if breathing it in would cause problems.
“Chwik! Kroaaaaaaaah!!”
The Kucharak charged with its eyes dyed blood-red, forcing us to drop the hands we’d been using to cover our mouths and noses.
“Urgh. Careful—the bastard’s gotten stronger!”
Kailen, who had blocked the Kucharak’s rush, was shoved backward as he shouted. It was obvious the creature had powered up. The weight behind the axe it swung to keep us in check felt completely different from before. Even blocking it once earlier had made my hands throb. Now it felt like they might shatter on impact. Still, it remained within what we could endure, so we kept pressuring the Kucharak.
With a wet slash, I sidestepped its ferocious axe strike and carved straight into its massive thigh. Blood sprayed wildly, but the Kucharak swung again as if it would split my skull open. I hurled myself aside to dodge while the others swung their swords, blocking the blow and landing fresh wounds.
We four repeated the process in rotation, once again turning the creature into a mass of bleeding cuts.
“Just a little more and we’ve got it!”
No matter how strong it was, it couldn’t handle four people at once. But the variable was that tattoo. Without Kailen, it was nearly impossible for us to inflict serious damage on the Kucharak’s hide. It had already recovered once, and the aura glowing from everyone’s blades had grown noticeably dimmer than at the start. We couldn’t claim any decisive advantage in this battle of attrition.
To make matters worse, the suspicious smoke floating in the sky began descending until it hovered directly above our heads. At least it had thinned considerably on the way down and wasn’t obstructing our vision. Still, fighting while inhaling this unidentified haze felt deeply unsettling. As I tried to decide what to do, disaster struck.
“Alik, snap out of it!”
“Kraaaaagh!”
Suddenly Alik’s eyes rolled back and he lost his mind, charging straight at Logan. In an instant the fight had become three against two. The Kucharak didn’t miss the opening and barreled toward us.
“Shit!”
Doing the work of four with only two people completely ruined our coordination. Kailen was steadily pushed back by the Kucharak’s savage attacks. I tried to time my own strikes, but every attempt was blocked by its axe. All I managed was buying Kailen a few seconds of breathing room.
Fuck. Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy.
I’d thought things were progressing far too smoothly. The Kucharak was strong, but it fought like a pig-like tank. With a little focus it shouldn’t have been that difficult. The variable was the smoke. I still didn’t know what it was, but judging by how Alik had lost his mind, it seemed to induce some kind of mental derangement.
Logan was holding on for now, but unlike Alik—who attacked with lethal intent—Logan was trying not to injure him. That hesitation left him constantly on the defensive. To subdue an opponent you needed to be overwhelmingly stronger, and Alik wasn’t at that level. At this rate we would be the first to fall. Kailen made the call.
“Yoon! Knock Alik out first and find whoever’s spreading the smoke inside the castle! I’ll hold here somehow! Urgh!”
“Understood!”
Kailen amplified his aura even further and stood his ground against the Kucharak. I didn’t miss the opening. I shoved Logan aside, dashed behind the defenseless Alik, and seized him. He was so far gone that even with me grabbing him from the rear, he paid me no attention at all—his entire focus locked on Logan in front of him.
“Now!”
Logan knocked Alik’s sword upward hard, creating a brief window. I didn’t waste it. I kicked Alik’s ankle to destroy his balance and pinned him down. Then I aimed a strike at the back of his neck to knock him unconscious, but—
“Kraaaaaah!”
Instead of passing out, Alik thrashed like a madman. As I faltered in confusion—
“Forgive me, Alik.”
Thud!
Logan twisted Alik’s jaw with a brutal strike, ending the situation. For a split second I wondered if the blow had been too hard to heal, but the thought that this was only a tutorial let me shake it off quickly. I stood.
“Logan, Kailen—I’ll leave this side to you.”
“Don’t worry about us. Just solve the problem and get back here!”
At Kailen’s reliable words I nodded, then hurried into the castle. No monsters were visible inside, but the place had been completely ransacked. Every decoration was destroyed, turning the already dark interior even more sinister. Baron Recount would probably have a seizure if he saw this, but right now there were more important things. I took the visible staircase and headed up.
The higher I climbed, the thicker the smoke that couldn’t escape outside became. Even if I’d been fine outside, breathing the concentrated haze indoors might be another story, so I kept my mouth and nose covered as I ascended. The castle wasn’t large. After only a few floors I reached the top level.
The question now was where to go. It wasn’t much of a dilemma—I spotted where the smoke flowed from and ran over, but when I tried the door—
Clunk.
It was locked. I flooded my leg with aura and kicked with the intent of shattering it completely.
Crash.
The moment the door broke apart, another staircase appeared. I climbed it and emerged beneath a darkly stained sky to find a suspicious gathering.
“Goblin shamans?”
“Human! Krek!”
The goblin shamans panicked at my sudden appearance. I quickly scanned the surroundings, ignoring them for the moment. Beneath their feet was an unidentifiable red pattern. In its center, ominous blue flames burned, producing the same smoke I had seen from outside.
And then—
“You… sons of bitches?”
When I saw the corpses carelessly piled and abandoned in the corner, the entire situation clicked. Sorcery. I finally understood why they were called shamans. I had assumed they only strengthened goblins. I never imagined they could do something like this using human corpses.
“Die, human! Krek!”
While I pieced together what was happening, the apparent leader gave an order. All of them pointed their wooden staves at me and began chanting a suspicious incantation.
Some guttural, incomprehensible chant.
I had no reason to wait for them to finish casting. Intent on killing them before the spell completed, I raised my red-glowing sword and charged.
The distance wasn’t far. In the blink of an eye I was right in their faces. I swung the sword in my right hand in a wide diagonal arc. It was a simple cut, but the motion was flawless, as if I had practiced it thousands of times. The head of the foremost goblin fell cleanly to the ground.
I moved to kill the next one when—
“Fire!”
At the leader’s metallic-sounding command, every shaman swung their staves toward me at once.
Vrrrrrr.
A loud hum rose from the staves as black magical energy gathered. I focused everything I had on dodging, squeezing my eyes shut and raising my concentration to the limit.
Highest-grade focus engaged. Time perception slowed to a crawl.
The instant the magic power finished gathering, a short laser shot toward me. In that fleeting moment where my heightened concentration held, I read the trajectory and threw my body aside.
Boom!
The laser grazed past me, effortlessly shattering the stone wall beside it before vanishing. Seeing the damage, a chill ran down my spine at the thought of what would have happened if I hadn’t dodged.
Highest-grade really was highest-grade. I hadn’t expected much from Threading the Needle, but its effect was better than I’d imagined. I gave myself a mental round of applause for the choice as my body moved, slicing through the nearest goblin shaman.
Slash.
“What are you fools doing, krek! If you don’t want to die, attack him, krek!”
With another one down, the leader came to its senses and issued commands, but now that I had closed the distance these creatures were no longer a threat.
Thump.
Each swing of my sword ended another goblin shaman’s life. Soon only the leader remained. I chased the desperately fleeing creature and severed its Achilles tendon to stop its escape.
“Kieeeeeek! It hurts! Krek!”
After kicking its stomach to flip the writhing goblin over, I cut the tendons in its wrists and ankles so it could do nothing but speak.
Letting out a tired sigh, I asked.
“Fuck. How do I get rid of this smoke?”
“The sorcery… krrk… won’t end until the power of the offering is exhausted… krek…”
“Stop bullshitting. There’s a way to cancel it, isn’t there?”
“Kekek. Human, do you know how to reclaim a sacrifice offered to the gods?”
I knew absolutely nothing about sorcery, so I hesitated on what judgment to make. Was it right to keep this thing alive to learn how to dispel the ritual, or simply kill it? I couldn’t decide. Killing it seemed correct. From the way it spoke, it didn’t seem inclined to tell me the method anyway. Even with its arms and legs tendons severed, it was still glaring and running its mouth. The creature clearly wasn’t sane.
“Ah, whatever.”
“Kek!”
Having decided, I drove my sword into its throat. After confirming it had become a cold corpse with only a final shriek, I looked at the blue flames. Even after the goblin’s death the fire continued burning, so it seemed the creature hadn’t been lying.
I prodded the flames with my sword to see if disturbing them would extinguish the ritual, but nothing changed.
“If it’s like this…”
Rather than waste any more time, I decided to deal with the Kucharak first. I quickly descended and ran out of the castle. This wasn’t reality anyway. Once I killed everything, the tutorial would end and those affected by the sorcery would probably return to normal.
With that thought I left the castle, but—
“Kailen! Are you alright?”
Kailen was slumped against the castle gate. Logan looked badly injured, and Alik lay motionless after losing a massive amount of blood.
Fortunately the Kucharak also looked terrible. Its tattoos had already vanished, and it was barely breathing—its chest rising and falling weakly.
“Cough! First… finish that thing off.”
“Got it. So stop talking and rest there.”
I didn’t know what had happened, but this was perfect timing. Leaving the heavily injured Kailen—who started bleeding the moment he opened his mouth—behind, I moved to finish the Kucharak.
I don’t know how they managed it, but the creature was in critical condition. A long diagonal gash ran across its massive pectorals and protruding belly, exposing its innards. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.
“Inga… grrk… chwi…”
Seeing the Kucharak unable to speak properly, I quietly raised my sword and plunged it into its neck. Not content with simply stabbing it in case it somehow survived, I completely severed its head from its body.
I turned to head back to Kailen when—
“Ah, fuck. Don’t do this to me.”
The guy who couldn’t even move properly a moment ago was now standing. Both of his eyes were dyed red.