Dragon Leaving the Cradle (3)
Dragon Leaving the Cradle (3)
A blood-red mist seeped and spread through the air as if blooming from a pool of blood.
The mist that sank down clung to the frozen ground; the mist caught by the wind stained the open air.
At the sight of a world drenched in crimson, Spada let out a dry laugh.
"For someone so refined, isn't that ability a little too violent?"
And that wasn't all. Spada clenched his fists, a tingling racing through his fingertips.
Though invisible, the killing intent slicing through the air toward him was just as chilling as the Blood Cloud.
His body hadn't stiffened one bit from the cold aura that filled the area, yet that killing intent sent danger crawling up his spine all on its own.
[Don't pin your own misunderstandings on someone else, you brat.]
The wind closed in. Amid the chilling cold, the acrid tang of blood that didn't bother to hide itself struck his nose.
Lee Ha-yul's body wasn't clearly visible, shrouded as it was in the Blood Cloud, but he could plainly see the Blood Cloud take long strides toward him.
The Blood Cloud that had been walking with heavy steps accelerated.
The red stretched long. The short distance closed in an instant.
Spada frowned and raised his arm.
Shrrrk! Snowflakes caught in the trajectory were sliced clean through, their cross-sections perfectly smooth.
The edge of the massively swollen Blood Cloud was cut away as well.
He hadn't hit the target. From the Blood Cloud that had slipped beneath the trajectory, something abruptly thrust forward. A fist wrapped in crimson smoke.
Spada drew his knife-hand straight downward.
— Boom!
'Ngh...!'
He'd made contact, but he hadn't cut through.
The repulsion jolting through his arm was far fiercer than he'd expected. The fist cloaked in the Blood Cloud pushed his knife-hand back.
Spada's eyes flew wide with alarm.
He could accept the dodge. Not every attack was guaranteed to land.
But to be repelled outright without so much as a scratch?
His leg slid one step back. Spada pulled his mana up.
An intangible force honed itself along both his arms. His Unique Ability entwined with them, layered with razor-sharp weapon aura.
Those two arms were no different from swords. They could dice solid iron like tofu, carve straight through the tough hide of monsters.
— Boom!
Again, he failed to cut. The two fists wrapped in the Blood Cloud deftly deflected the attacks, swinging to meet him blow for blow.
'Not an assassin. A hand-to-hand fighter?'
He'd assumed an assassin after seeing the skill at concealing presence, but after trading a few exchanges, that clearly wasn't the case.
The strain building in his arms was one thing, but the glimpses of expertise that kept flashing through were far from ordinary.
He revised his judgment and pulled his mana up even harder. The force coiled around his arms bulged and knotted.
He violently shook his arms out. Kwa-ga-ga-gak! Hundreds of tiny slashing waves ripped across the space ahead.
Having read the signs well in advance, Lee Ha-yul didn't bother to meet the attack head-on. He simply withdrew out of range with a light step.
"Huuu..."
With a sliver of distance opened between them once more, Spada let out a ragged breath and shook his arms loose.
"Hey, do we really have to go this far? I've been living real quiet lately, you know."
No answer came back. The Blood Cloud strode forward. Evidently, it had no interest in further conversation.
Spada glanced around in every direction.
"You really think you can pull this shit in the middle of a city?"
Vologda was a fairly prosperous independent city. Thanks to the dungeons and monsters scattered all around, those industries had flourished and the population had grown.
"I'm a pretty big deal, you know. If I cut loose for real, I can cause more than a little chaos. And aren't you an attribute-type? Think you can keep it under control?"
Attribute-types were abilities that influenced and were influenced by the surrounding environment. By their nature, attacks fully committed to power tended to be wide-ranging.
Not the kind of ability you could go blasting around freely inside a city.
But then, when you had people at the level of Spada or that Enforcement Department agent over there, the environment getting reduced to rubble if they seriously fought was a foregone conclusion, regardless of type.
Property damage could at least be repaired. The same couldn't be said for casualties.
Spada latched onto that point.
"Fight here and tons of people are gonna die."
[People?]
The advancing Blood Cloud rippled slightly, almost as if tilting its head.
[There are barely any people around here. And they're all getting farther away as we speak.]
"What?"
Spada reflexively shot back, but without lowering his guard, he swept his eyes across their surroundings.
The devastation was his own doing. Amid the ruins ground even finer, there was no blood or flesh in sight.
[The only collateral damage I need to worry about around here is you and that subordinate of yours.]
When he'd entered through the gate, he'd secretly planted a suggestion — not just on the guards, but on the passersby as well.
They were probably contacting each other here and there right now, gripped by a vague, nameless unease.
[And besides,]
Whooosh! The Blood Cloud wrapping Lee Ha-yul expanded outward in a violent bloom.
[You piece of shit, do you look like you're in any position to worry about that?]
The mist surged forward. Spada swallowed a sigh and raised both arms again.
'Fuck. This is bad.'
Outwardly composed, Spada spat curses internally.
Get into a brawl with the Association Enforcement Department here? That was no good.
Even before the question of victory or defeat, the clash itself would drag on and on, and if reinforcements arrived, that would be even worse.
No matter how he slipped away, being dogged by attention and pursuit was the last thing he wanted.
The situation had twisted on him.
'First, based on how this goes... I might have to cut off a limb and subdue him—'
Before he could finish the thought, the mist closed the distance just like before. An arm thrust out from within it, wreathed in the Blood Cloud, and—
The two forces tangled together violently. Twisting and coiling around each other, they swelled into something massive.
Spada felt danger scrape down his spine. This was bad. He crossed both arms in front of him on reflex.
A fist wrapped in a blood-colored whirlpool shot forward.
— BAAANG!
The fist slammed home, dragging the whirlpool with it.
Kwa-ru-ru-ru! Even the remnants of the Blood Cloud around them were swept into the current and surged forth.
'This lunatic...!'
Swallowing a scream, Spada drove his legs into the ground—but he was still dragged backward, body bent against the force.
A whirlpool crashing down from dead ahead. If he got swept up in it? He wouldn't come out intact.
"Ngh, ngggghhh...!"
Gritting his teeth, Spada pulled up his strength.
'Manifest.'
Sword Transformation.
Chijijik! A flurry of blades burst from around his elbows. The weapon aura coiled around the blades jutting forth as if to guard his arms.
— Kka-ga-ga-ga-gak!
The whirlpool from the front and the slashing waves erupting from the blades entangled together. They cut, sliced, and pushed at one another, wearing each other down.
At the end of the attrition, the whirlpool's momentum lessened.
But he couldn't afford to relax.
Because he could see Lee Ha-yul behind the fading whirlpool, his other arm already wound with a new one and ready to strike.
A consecutive strike. A fresh whirlpool came crashing forward, claiming the fading remnants of the first as its own.
Spada ground his teeth and shook his arms out in a violent snap.
Once again, the whirlpool and the slashing waves entangled countless times. The ground sank concave under the force of the aftershock.
'Above.'
Even as he held off the whirlpool at his front, Spada jerked his head up at the horrible prickle crawling down the nape of his neck.
The blue sky and the blood-red clouds. And between them, Lee Ha-yul was dropping, both arms wreathed in a whirlpool.
Aghast, Spada kicked off the ground. The whirlpool's trajectory skewed on a diagonal, gouging through the earth as it twisted aside.
Lee Ha-yul slammed both arms into the ground. The surface heaved. He hadn't discharged the whirlpool coiled around them.
Landing on the ground, Lee Ha-yul drove forward with both arms still charged with the whirlpool.
Having widened the distance, Spada reinforced the blades on his arms and met him head-on.
In the narrowed gap, blades and fists intertwined. Slashing waves erupted from the blades, and the Blood Cloud followed the fists.
— Boom! Boom! BAAANG!
Repeated concussions rang out across the area.
Concussions. The sword-blades hadn't sliced through the fists, hadn't cut them at all.
'What in the...'
Every single swing of his blade was blocked.
It was an uncanny sensation. As if every direction he swung his blade, every attempt to force it through, every intention he held was being pierced through in detail from the heavens.
In vulgar terms, he was being read completely. He could even feel the suffocating frustration of being toyed with in the palm of someone's hand.
Boom! A punch shattered the blade and slammed into his forearm. Skin split open, blood sprayed.
— Shhhhhhh...!
The Blood Cloud seeped into the wound. Pain radiated from the site, and before long, the wound began to tear itself wider.
Clicking his tongue, Spada circulated his mana to suppress the foreign innate talent that had invaded his body.
'Wound aggravation? I ran into a real piece-of-shit attribute.'
And that wasn't the end of it.
In a sudden contraction, the red mist that had at some point completely saturated the area pressed down on Spada as if stamping him out.
Spada, who hadn't let his guard down for a moment, hurriedly swept the mist aside with a flurry of slashes—and Lee Ha-yul, missing none of that opening, closed the distance and slammed a palm strike mixed with the whirlpool straight into him.
— Boom!
He grimaced sharply at the attack that shuddered straight through to his organs.
In the brief pause before the slashes could resume, the mist he'd swept aside contracted again, and from the front, Lee Ha-yul pressed in.
'I misjudged.'
Spada recognized his own mistake.
Cut off his limbs and subdue him? That had been a completely wrong assessment.
His opponent wasn't just "competent."
This was someone of a higher grade than himself. He should have been thinking not of subduing, but of fleeing unconditionally.
— Ta-dak!
That was the moment Keusaseu, Spada's subordinate who had been lurking outside the fray for an opening, kicked off the ground.
'Strutting around like you're hot shit, but you're getting your ass kicked.'
It wasn't out of loyalty or duty.
His reasoning was purely pragmatic: even if he ran now, his boss would be finished, and he himself would get caught eventually anyway.
And conveniently, Lee Ha-yul had his back turned while locked in a power struggle with Spada.
Keusaseu wasn't strong enough to insert himself between those two, but he was more than capable of being a persistent nuisance, like a mosquito you can't swat.
Kicking off the ground, Keusaseu fixed his glare on the crimson mist rapidly encroaching on the surroundings.
He'd already confirmed that the mist possessed an attribute. He'd seen it transform into attacks through attribute manipulation, too.
He'd wear it down gradually from the outskirts and draw their attention.
'Summon.'
That was the moment.
A pair of gleaming eyes flared from within the blood-red mist.
The instant Keusaseu felt a stab of unease, a gaping monster maw tore through the mist and lunged.
"What—!"
In a flash, the monster's gullet filled his vision.
Keusaseu, horrified, swung his sword on reflex. The monster simply clamped its jaws down on the incoming blade.
- Crunch!
The teeth seized the sword and held it fast.
Blue aura rippled, trying to slice through tooth and flesh alike, but the Blood Cloud packed tight inside its mouth bore down on the aura instead and gnawed into the blade.
[Handle him yourself, you bastard.]
"Grrrrr...!"
The bastard let out a deep-chested growl. Aerus, now an undead, clenched his jaw.
Crrrrack! Having crushed the trapped blade between his teeth, Aerus swung his forepaw without pause.
- Boom!
Keusaseu, aura flaring, took the blow square and went flying backward.
"Graaaaaagh!"
Aerus loosed a thunderous roar, stirred the Blood Cloud, and gave chase.
[Your one and only subordinate won't be much help anymore.]
'Useless bastard.'
Spada's expression curdled as he watched the scene from the corner of his eye.
- Wham!
"Guhk!"
An instant later, a blow slammed into his abdomen, and the twisted look on his face drained stark white.
The blades that had sprouted from his stomach to absorb the impact snapped and clattered down in shards.
The moment he lifted his head, a fist crashed into his face and rattled his consciousness.
'Ah... when was that?'
A memory from the past surfaced unbidden.
He'd been scouring the Gray Area with Hong Yeon-jun for artifacts when they ran into some yellow maniac.
And they'd gotten beaten within an inch of their lives, together.
A flash of light at the limbs, and the next thing he knew he was ragdolling across the ground with something broken somewhere.
Right now felt exactly like that.
Which meant he had to get away the same way he had back then.
[?]
- CRAAASSSH!
A ferocious slash exploded from Spada all at once. Even Lee Ha-yul, who had been relentlessly pressing him, momentarily widened the distance.
That momentary gap was all he needed.
Spada ground his teeth hard enough to shatter them.
Shrrrick! Blades jutted from all over his body. Featureless, lusterless silver blades.
It didn't end there. Like branches spreading from a limb, smaller blades sprouted from each blade.
A grotesque spectacle: countless sword blades bristling from a human body. Formless, keen-edged killing intent wreathed every one of those branch-like blades.
"Shit... fuck... try blocking this if you can."
[!]
Sensing the warning signs, Lee Ha-yul urgently raised both arms. Rumble! The Blood Cloud blanketing the area surged inward, converging on Spada.
Sword Transformation Expansion Ability
Arrogant Chaotic Thrust
An indiscriminate barrage of slashes, unleashed with not a shred of restraint.
Channeled with deadly intent, the overwhelming force of the slashes stretched their reach exponentially.
Enough, at minimum, to clear the city's outer wall and easily reach the evacuating civilians.
That was why the Blood Cloud filling every direction was desperately intercepting the slashes.
Those who valued human life had no choice but to answer the slashes first, and that would inevitably open a crack, however small.
'Now.'
His body battered and broken, Spada frantically rummaged inside his coat.
A small insurance policy he always carried: a magic tool imbued with spatial magic.
Activate it, and it would Spatial Leap the user a considerable distance away.
The spell formula was so complex that it was single-use only, and the price was obscenely high, but right at this moment it was exactly what he needed.
- Whirrrr!
The moment he poured mana into it, the formula erupted all at once. But he'd managed to trigger the magic.
By then, the deluge of slashes pouring in all directions had already begun to taper off—and not a single one of those slashes had escaped the Blood Cloud.
"You... crazy... fucking monster."
Back then, too. Why the hell did he have to run into a freak like this?
Spatial resonance swallowed Spada's body whole.
* * *
The bastard who'd been vomiting slashes like a madman melted into thin air and vanished.
Hastily triggered spatial magic.
'Carrying around something that expensive, huh.'
Spatial magic was incredibly difficult to engrave into a magic tool. The only thing on the market was really just subspace pockets.
For a fugitive to be packing something like that, I was honestly impressed.
Not that I was underselling his skill, of course.
'He was strong.'
Spada Whatever's combat prowess was genuinely formidable.
I'd stuck mostly to close-quarters fighting using the Blood Cloud and physical enhancement, but I'd pushed those abilities to their practical limits.
Even so, he'd kept things evenly matched right up to the end.
But the part that struck me as strange was how foreign his skill felt.
'A deteriorated unique ability?'
It wasn't simply a unique ability that generated blades from the body. Throughout the fight, I'd sensed an odd dissonance from his innate talent.
Especially those slashes he'd sprayed in every direction at the end—those were uniquely dangerous.
If I hadn't spread the Blood Cloud thickly beforehand, blocking them with the Blood Cloud alone would have been a struggle.
'Absolute lunatic.'
I wasn't the problem. The problem was that thousands upon thousands of slashes had nearly scattered in every direction.
If the Blood Cloud hadn't been ready, I would have been forced to reveal other options.
Shaking my head, I gathered the remnants of the Blood Cloud and wrapped them around myself.
[Hmm.]
My body cloaked in the Blood Cloud. Honestly, it didn't feel great.
And why would it? Wasn't this the same ability that nearly killed me for real? Those events still showed up as a recurring nightmare.
- Grrrrr...
The star of those nightmares trudged over. Dangling from its jaws was Spada's subordinate's... arm, which it was dragging along by the teeth.
'Why is this bastard always biting people's arms off and making a scene?'
Was it doing it on purpose?
I felt my trauma being poked at for no good reason and wanted to smack it one, but the bastard had earned some credit today, so I held back.
[You did all right, you bastard.]
- Grrr...
[Cut the crap and get back in.]
I stored the bastard away again.
I guess this really was the body of a potential 3rd-Rank Alpha monster. Even without Taesan's support, it fought surprisingly well.
Of course, considering I'd painstakingly crafted it as a special undead and it could manifest its unique ability, this level of performance was only to be expected.
And when I used the Blood Cloud alongside it, its combat power rose significantly.
The ground around us sat noticeably lower than the surroundings, carved out by the fierce fighting. I prodded the figure slumped limp on the dirt nearby with my foot.
A superhuman who'd introduced himself as Foible but appeared on the wanted list under the name Keusaseu.
'He's probably just a grunt. Cracking his head open wouldn't yield much.'
I'd captured him alive, but I wasn't getting my hopes up. With that level of skill, he wasn't likely to be carrying valuable intel. I'd just hand him over to the Association.
- Murmur... murmur...
As the signs of battle died down, the people who'd evacuated began cautiously drifting back.
I ran a detailed sweep with Observation. No casualties—exactly as intended.
Planting suggestions in advance and releasing undead and spirits to assist with the evacuation had paid off.
Property damage... well, that could be repaired.
'...Time to move.'
The Association had said they'd handle the cleanup. I contacted the Association, dusted off my robe, and quietly slipped away from the scene.
'Wonder when he'll get there.'
A set of coordinates floated in my mind.
Spada's real-time location, being transmitted to me.
'I've got Observation locked onto you, and I beat the hell out of you on top of that. Like you could ever actually get away.'
If I'd fought at full strength, I could have subdued him much more easily. I could have blocked his escape with the Authority of Space, too.
But I didn't.
Because I wanted him to run straight to the group's base.
'He might wander around in circles, worried about being tracked... but he'll make contact eventually.'
There was always the option of prying his skull open and pulling the information out directly, but that method had a failure rate, and if it went wrong, the target just dropped dead.
'For now, let's stick with him.'
As it happened, the direction Spada had flown off in roughly matched the estimated location of the Reverse Side.
If I sensed him starting to circle aimlessly, I could shift focus to searching for the Reverse Side entrance from that point onward.
.
.
.
A little over a day had passed since I'd started tailing Spada Whatever.
'What's this?'
I was still shadowing Spada.
I touched the mask that concealed my awkwardly stiff expression and discreetly extended my spatial perception.
We were gradually drawing closer to the Reverse Side entrance.
* * *
