I Became an Apocalyptic "Physical" Therapist (148)
Dark Eye dove sideways, rolling hard to dodge Protico. But Protico curved its path and came after him again. Dark Eye scrambled to evade, and at that moment Won-goo roared out the signal.
"Old-timer! Now!"
"Understood, the part is understood!"
It was the signal they had rehearsed with Mu Beob-sa in advance — the plan to use his magical familiar, the Wisp. Aside from flaring intensely bright, the Wisp had no other function, which was a bit of a letdown for Mu Beob-sa after all the fuss he'd gone through cutting open his own wrist to acquire it. Even so, that didn't make it entirely useless.
And when Won-goo had said that even a Wisp like that was a different beast in Mu Beob-sa's hands, he hadn't been flattering him. Mu Beob-sa's mana was that gifted by nature.
Mu Beob-sa sent the Wisp skimming low across the ground toward Dark Eye. A Wisp's performance scaled with the amount of mana its owner poured into it — and sure enough, it shot toward Dark Eye almost faster than light itself.
Flash!
An intensely powerful burst of light — so blinding that even the crew positioned far away had to squeeze their eyes shut.
"Dammit! Old-timer, learn to ease up, will ya?"
"The apology is given. The control, I have not yet adapted to, that is the part."
Won-goo grumbled, but the result was excellent — because Dark Eye, having failed to dodge Protico properly, was now screaming.
His left arm had already been sucked into Protico, and Dark Eye was resisting. Even that was genuinely impressive. Ordinarily, anything Protico touched became nutrients the instant it made contact.
"AAAAAGH!"
Dark Eye shrieked. At that moment All-Tattoo rushed in and sliced Dark Eye's arm clean off with a knife.
Shrrk!
But Protico wasn't finished. It kept pressing in toward All-Tattoo and Dark Eye. It was the kind of moment that made it obvious why the dwarf elves had fled in terror at the sight of it. Protico was simple — and simply terrifying. It marched forward without caring in the slightest about the resistance from Dark Eye and All-Tattoo.
FWOOOM!
Then something interesting happened. A ferocious gale erupted from All-Tattoo's hand, shoving the massive Protico back a good ten meters.
It bought the Seal Collectors a turn — but Won-goo's crew didn't waver. They had just confirmed the ability All-Tattoo had been hiding.
Is that magic? An ability? Something wind-related?
Some seals granted the ability to cast spells, so a single demonstration wasn't enough to render a full verdict. Seals and Coin enhancement traveled down different paths. Most survivors built up Coins and used seals merely as support — but those who primarily cultivated their seals carried a main seal and supplemented it with a range of auxiliary ones.
FWOOOSH!
Having revealed his ability, All-Tattoo unleashed the wind again without hesitation. Space warped, and a compressed blast of powerful air crashed down toward Won-goo — but Won-goo had already dropped back behind the Trailer.
It was a considerable impact. Powerful enough to lift the Trailer's wheels momentarily off the ground before they settled back down, but nothing beyond expectation. The Trailer could still take it. Honestly, the impact from when the giant hyena had pounced had hit harder.
That didn't mean All-Tattoo's ability was useless, though. If he could spam it, or shape it into some other form, it could become an entirely different kind of threat. And Won-goo in particular — a man who had already lived through the future — knew better than anyone how dangerous elemental-type abilities and magic could be.
He's not yet at the level of shaping the wind.
Wind- and air-manipulating abilities were sometimes classified a tier below other elements like fire or lightning. Compared to the two with intuitive destructive power, they did look somewhat weaker on the surface. But past a certain threshold, wind-related abilities acquired tremendous lethality — and once an wielder could shape the wind into forms, it could become an absolute catastrophe. Right now it was slow enough that you could see the air warping as it approached, but later it would speed up until it couldn't even be tracked by the eye. A massive shockwave coming at the speed of a bullet. Terrifying in its own right — and if the wind could then be reshaped into something razor-sharp, it verged on an outright disaster. A head could be severed in the blink of an eye.
That was why Won-goo considered watching All-Tattoo's ability in action a huge harvest.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
All-Tattoo was spamming weaker shockwaves than his first. Seeing it, Won-goo cracked a small smile — because he had found the crack in the Seal Collector Gang's armor. No matter how desperate the fight, losing your cool was taboo. Rage and excitement were two very different things. Combat was won by the one who released their weapons at the right moments — which was why battles between survivors of this caliber invariably demanded proper setup.
Setup: the preparation needed to land your strongest weapon precisely where it mattered. In the exchange just now, Protico had been the main weapon — and Mu Beob-sa's Wisp was the weapon laid down during the setup phase. Won-goo's crew excelled at attacks that chained these pieces together. And their coordination was superb: people with different abilities meshing in exquisite harmony to bring down a powerful foe. It was only possible because of deep experience and hard-earned mutual trust.
The Seal Collectors had none of that. It wasn't that they lacked combat experience — you could tell just from watching them move. These men had fought a great deal. But their teamwork couldn't be called good. Individually, their abilities were outstanding; they simply failed to use them together.
If people with abilities like this had been under Won-goo's command, the battle might already have been over. Darkness manipulation, clones, wind control, teleportation — and on top of that, a powerful pet. Each one was an ability worthy of top-tier classification, and all of them were running on separate tracks. After a few exchanges of offense and defense had confirmed it, Won-goo decided he didn't need to spend any more of the cards he'd prepared. Fools who relied purely on individual power and barreled ahead like this could be handled just by reusing patterns that had already worked before.
Bang! Bang!
All-Tattoo fired his ability at anyone poking out from behind the Trailer. The clones of Horned Glasses and several crew members were still locked in combat — and in the meantime, Horned Glasses's clones had multiplied. There had been three. Now there were five.
"The clones have increased in number, the part is true. Captain."
"Doesn't matter. We just end it before there are more."
"Is that a possible part?"
"Those bastards are amateurs."
"They do not seem amateur, that is the part."
"They are. Having powers like that and only being this good? Amateur."
Taang! Tang! Tang!
As they spoke, Won-goo hopped up onto the Trailer to lay down supporting fire, then dropped back down. The battle held in a tense equilibrium. Horned Glasses and All-Tattoo were struggling hard. The rest of the Seal Collectors tried to join the attack, but couldn't easily do so — for one reason: Protico, which kept circling around them. Piercing was herding past it like a cattle driver, dodging the sphere by the narrowest of margins.
Won-goo ducked back behind the Trailer and activated the radio-magic function again.
「W15. Close your eyes and get down. And Rafael — when that happens, use it.」
W15 meant: close your eyes fifteen seconds from now.
"Mr. Mage. Time for another flash, let's go."
"The part is understood."
The order he gave Rafael was this: Protico's simple power was to swell into a giant ball and swallow everything around it — but it had one other ability hidden inside. Detonation. The power for Protico, a mass made of countless living things, to explode and deal devastating damage to everything nearby.
In the Dwarf Elf Forest, Rafael had been too weakened to use it. Now, she could. The only downside was that Protico would no longer hold together after detonating. But its power was already running dry anyway, and the Seal Collectors were adapting to Protico's movements. So if there was a technique that could create a variable, using it was what mattered.
Beep!
The alarm sounded. Mu Beob-sa's Wisp flared to life once more — but this time, he deliberately detonated the light from a spot far from the Trailer.
KRA-BOOOM!
With a sound like some colossal drum tearing apart, chunks of flesh exploded in every direction. A horrifying power — a technique as grotesque as the horror that was Protico. And it wasn't merely horrifying. That force. The chunks of meat spraying outward packed enough power to make even the sturdy Trailer lift slightly off its wheels. It was nearly as devastating as Cremoa — the only differences were that it erupted in all directions, and that chunks of flesh took the place of marbles. Because grotesque fragments burst outward instead of neat spheres, the lethality was somewhat reduced. But the raw force was real.
Dark Eye, who had failed to react to the unexpected blast, was blown apart into scattered pieces. Protico had exploded right beside him, and he'd taken the full brunt.
The other Seal Collectors weren't in good shape either. All-Tattoo's limbs were intact, but he had absorbed a serious shock and was vomiting blood without pause. Horned Glasses had collapsed flat on his back — one of his legs was gone below the knee, and blood kept flowing from the stump. The only one relatively unscathed was Piercing, though he'd suffered a major wound to his shoulder that left one arm hanging limp.
Ironically, the one with not a scratch on him was Neverland. He had already been running the moment things turned sour. Neverland's nature and his specialty alike — abandoning a sinking ship fast. But in this situation, that decision was closer to a blunder. Won-goo's Services versus the Seal Collectors — no matter which side won, a beast-tamer with Neverland's equipment would obviously be caught before long. For a man who had risen to an executive of Black Shelter, he couldn't even run this much arithmetic coldly — a telling glimpse of just how shallow his judgment was. If not for the quality of his Gift, it would have been no surprise if he'd already met his death.
Won-goo poked his head out low along the floor of the Trailer, watching the aftermath of the blast. And when it subsided, he gave the crew hand signals. In a situation where they didn't need to wait for the perfect moment, hand signals were enough to communicate.
The first signal meant: spread wide and block every escape route. The second: pass it on to the person next to you. The signals rippled rapidly through the crew. A brief lull had settled in, so receiving the orders was no trouble at all. Following Won-goo's command, they fanned out swiftly and sealed off the Seal Collectors' retreat.
Fwoong!
In that window, Piercing — who had been far away — suddenly appeared in front of the unconscious Horned Glasses and immediately extended a hand toward All-Tattoo.
Tang!
A gunshot rang out at precisely the right moment. It struck the outstretched hand — and Piercing endured even that. A chakram followed, hurtling toward All-Tattoo.
Fwoong-fwoong!
The chakram grazed All-Tattoo's flank and the back of his neck, and blood spurted up. Then All-Tattoo collapsed to the ground.
Piercing frowned, lowered his outstretched hand, and — still with a foot planted on the fallen Horned Glasses — ripped the piercing out of his own left ear. He tore it out so violently that it nearly took flesh with it, and in that instant there came a sensation of space warping. Just like that, Piercing and Horned Glasses relocated, posture intact.
Where Piercing had stood when he tore out the piercing, another gunshot and another strike landed. And Won-goo was already charging at them like a madman. The fastest among the crew was Pacific, hurling chakrams as he ran.
Fwoong!
Piercing pressed his body against All-Tattoo's — and then ripped out the piercing in his right ear as well. In the next instant, All-Tattoo, Piercing, and Horned Glasses vanished. Without leaving a single trace behind.