Overwhelming (2)
Overwhelming (2)
- Senior, may I leave support to you?
I conveyed my intent through sound transmission, given the urgency.
Though I asked, I didn't wait for an answer. The situation didn't allow that much leisure.
'...Hm?'
Narrowing my Observation, I gasped for breath, bewildered.
Breathing came easier than before.
I took a brief look inside my body and sensed some force supporting me.
'Ha...'
Yang Yi-hwa was closing in from the front.
Clenching my fist, I roused my Innate Talent.
All-Rounder Expansion Ability
Myriad Transformations
'Asura Path.'
Thump! My heart beat roughly.
A murderous aura rose from my form. Crack! The air in my hand compressed.
'What?'
Yang Yi-hwa's expression hardened, chilled by the menace felt in that pulse as he charged with his spear at the fore.
Dangerous. The moment instinct and reason sent the same signal, I flashed into view before his eyes.
"...!"
Yang Yi-hwa thrust his spear without hesitation.
Unique Ability: Six Harmonies Eight Mother Spear
His qualifications aside, his skill was excellent, and his Innate Talent naturally bled into his spearplay.
The spear art he had learned was also known as the Pear Blossom Spear in its original records.
It was said that the endlessly shifting, varied spearplay was as beautiful as pear blossoms in the wind.
In fact, it was said that pear blossoms fluttered from the spears of those who had cultivated the Pear Blossom Spear as their Innate Talent.
- Swish!
No petals emanated from Yang Yi-hwa's spear. It simply advanced, swift and fierce.
He had learned technique instead of history, building skill over pride. He had cultivated his own Innate Talent, breaking away from the Pear Blossom Spear.
Yet he did not consider the root technique of this spear art, nor the Innate Talent he had cultivated, to be inferior.
- Screech!
It was blocked. Before I knew it, the spear in my hand had coiled around Yang Yi-hwa's spear like a serpent.
All-Rounder Expansion Ability
Snake Tail Over the Sharp Wall
Faced with a movement that defied common sense, Yang Yi-hwa's eyes widened as he twisted his wrist.
Crunch! He barely managed to parry the spear tip that sought to bite into his wrist.
One wrong move and he might have lost his wrist from the start. The hairs on his head stood on end from the chill grazing his wrist bone.
It was too early to be relieved. The spear blade, which had been writhing, straightened and unleashed a menacing blue gleam.
Yang Yi-hwa hurriedly raised his spear and deflected it.
- Clang!
The two spears clashed in the air.
'What is this?'
His legs were slowly being pushed back, something he simply couldn't believe.
He was being outskilled.
And not just outskilled.
Rigorously using Body Reinforcement Technique, with Aura drenched over his weapon, he was being pushed back by an opponent under mana suppression.
Every move was blocked, deflected, shot down... pushed back further and further...
'What is that now.'
Spada, who had immediately followed in, was similarly horrified.
The Guinevere he had fought—Lee Ha-yul—possessed outstanding physical ability, and she had controlled and dominated the flow of combat through the Blood Cloud.
So they thought if they could just somehow suppress that attribute.
Even after the figure was identified as Lee Ha-yul, they thought that if they only suppressed his mana, the three of them could jump him and subdue him comfortably—
All-Rounder Expansion Ability
Grain-Rain Seasonal Boundary - Swift White-Wing Severance
—A miscalculation.
He narrowly dodged a white slash that flew right up to his throat.
Slash! A red line was carved into the nape of his neck.
A lethal blow. A strike that would have taken his head off had he been even a moment slower. Pouring with cold sweat, Spada moved his arms as if drawing out a swarm of sword blades.
- Clang!
The same. He was blocked.
Gripping a spear in my right hand, I countered Yang Yi-hwa; gripping a sword in my left, I countered Spada, and pushed them back.
Two against one. Against superhumans who had honed the Technique Category to the extreme, I was overwhelming them in skill.
- Whoosh!
The wind split. It was Est, drawing his bowstring from the rear.
Dozens of arrows, their presence concealed, shot into the sky and rained down upon me like a shower.
- Crackle!
Bolts of lightning surged from the ground. Even the oppression of the Reverse Side could not fully seal Senior Daera's lightning.
Arrows and lightning met mid-flight, tangling and cancelling each other out.
Est's attempt to check me was thwarted.
In the meantime, I roused my Innate Talent once more.
An intangible Aura surged thickly from me.
In an instant, the dreary, ominous space was consumed by a fighting spirit boiling like an active volcano.
The intangible aura formed a translucent shape.
Two pairs of arms sprouted from my shoulders and waist.
The space at each fingertip split open, and from within, weapons emerged to be grasped.
A spear and a sword in both arms,
A mace and a hammer in the arms from my shoulders.
An axe and a greatsword in the arms from my waist.
All-Rounder Expansion Ability
Myriad Transformations
One Face Six Arms
Finally, different Innate Talents flared from the three pairs of hands.
"What the—"
"What the fuck—"
Yang Yi-hwa and Spada, who had been confronting me head-on, recoiled and flung themselves backward.
Too late. The three pairs of arms moved, each with its own principle and Innate Talent.
Sword and spear pried open their defenses.
Mace and hammer shattered Aura and bone.
Axe and greatsword seized the gap and tore flesh.
In an instant, dozens of exchanges took place.
- Boom! Crunch! Slice!
Reduced to rags, Yang Yi-hwa and Spada tumbled across the floor.
In a matter of seconds, the vanguard meant to block my path had collapsed one after another.
The moment Est sensed the crisis and widened the distance, space opened behind my back.
Within the split space, a great bow emerged.
An arrow forged from solid black iron was nocked, and the Sky Wing Feather drew the bowstring.
Naturally, it exuded Innate Talent. Unlike the check Est had thrown, this arrow radiated a murderous aura, as if daring you to take the hit and die.
"Oh my."
The moment a low exclamation of admiration escaped Est, the arrow carrying a measure of Giant Strength was already before his eyes. As a matter of urgency, he swung his bow and smacked the arrow away.
- Boom!
Est flew like a baseball and slammed into the wall. The monster that had been charging along his trajectory burst apart.
- Hooooh...
Having manifested expansion abilities in succession, I exhaled deeply.
My overheated body tingled.
'I can't handle them as proficiently as the 2nd Iteration after all.'
It went without saying since the precision was also far lower to begin with.
Catching my breath for a moment, I straightened my back gracefully.
- Senior, can we keep going like this?
"Huh? Oh, uh, um, yeah! Of course! Leave it to me! Huh? But how are you using sound transmission when your mana is being suppressed..."
Senior Daera was handling the rear. Taking that in, I poured out a vast amount of Heart Power to rouse mana.
- Crunch!
The circuits inside my body twisted. Making mana move was difficult, so the whole process was all the more arduous.
But it wasn't impossible. The mana I dominated and manipulated through Mana Affinity wouldn't be stopped by mere suppression like this.
I gritted my teeth hard.
As if being squeezed out, mana made a circuit through my body. The circuits showed through my skin, and the groaning circuits deliberately changed shape.
<wrapping_element>
- Creak, craaack!
Eventually, azure circuits burst forth from my shoulder blades, tearing through the skin.
- Wooooong!
Space groaned.
Est's face went blank as he pulled himself out of the wall, recovering from his injuries.
"Good heavens, Unique Magic Path..."
Not just any Unique Magic Path, but the very one the special entity displayed at the Birth Festival. That shouldn't have been Lee Ha-yul's Unique Magic Path...
Regardless of the shock around him, the circuits, spread wide like lush tree branches, pushed back the oppression of the Reverse Side.
- Crackle!
"Huh?"
Daera, who had been calmly operating her mana, opened her eyes wide and looked down at her hands.
The lightning gathering in her grasp grew steadily stronger. The crushing pressure that had been blocking her circuits weakened as the branches stretched higher toward the sky.
The barrier crumbled.
- Kyaaaaaaak─!
At the same time, countless presences began surging in from outside the barrier.
They were monsters of the Reverse Side, swarming in ravenously after catching the aftereffects of the battle and the mana.
"Aaaaa...! We're so fucking dead...!"
Even those who had prepared the barrier wore expressions tinged with hopelessness. Daera showed the most violent reaction.
With a face drained deathly pale, she scanned the wave of monsters gradually closing in.
The monsters of the Reverse Side were countless and strong. She hadn't faced them directly yet, but she had witnessed traces of numerous monsters that could easily be 3rd Rank.
If even the monsters from far away were swarming here like this? All of them, those numerous, powerful entities?
This was just as dangerous as fighting the attackers right now—or even more so.
"Junior Disciple! Junior Disciple─! If this keeps up we're in danger! Let's retreat first─"
[It's fine]
- Sssssss...
A hot breath escaped through clenched teeth.
The Reverse Side was overflowing with monsters. He knew that all too well. How could he not, after having crossed the Reverse Side and faced them directly?
He had ignored them and passed through. Finding the core of the Reverse Side had been the priority at the time.
Now, that need had diminished.
Conversely, the need to exterminate them had increased.
Because it would be better to reduce the number of monsters that would spill outward before the Reverse Side went on a rampage.
Feeling a headache as if his skull were being shattered to pieces, Lee Ha-yul formed hand seals with both hands.
Unique Magic Path
Foolish Straight Twin Wheels
The Unique Magic Path of the 5th Iteration. He'd experienced it firsthand, crashing into it with his own body, and he'd been taught the interpreted spell formulas directly.
Above all, this was a path reached by one branch of this very body. There was no reason he couldn't achieve it as well.
Boom! The circuits stretching high into the sky pulsed. They seized dominion over the area, and ownerless mana clung to the circuits like leaves.
The sight might have appeared almost romantic, but to those who knew what it portended, it left only a chill.
- Screeeeech!
The circuits twisted into fixed patterns.
Mana rose and fell, flowing through the countless branches linked in fixed forms.
The spell formulas through which mana flowed manifested.
- Kwagagagagagak─!
An indiscriminate barrage of slashes, impossible to count, blanketed every direction.
Countless lines piled up to form planes, and the planes encroached upon space, grinding it away.
The wave of monsters surging forward as if to engulf the world was itself engulfed by the wave of slashes, and began to be ground down without a trace in return.
They were all ground away without distinction of grade or size.
'The output's lacking.'
There were quite a few entities not fully ground down.
Some were specialized in defense, some were simply of high rank, and the magic gradually spread out, unavoidably losing output in the process.
If those things burrowed through the storm of slashes one by one and accumulated, eventually they'd create a large crack.
So he had to grind them even finer.
'I can do more.'
Purification, drawn from subspace. The spell formulas embedded in the Crystal Orb of Purification were extracted and manifested on the spot.
Authority of Knowledge. The spell formulas stored within the books that appeared, fluttering like butterflies, were also disgorged.
Both hands were already forming hand seals.
He had more arms. Two pairs of arms manifested by illusions wove their own hand seals.
He operated the Sky Wing Feather as well. Shaaaak! He manifested circuits within the three pairs of unfolded wing feathers.
It required tremendous precision control, but it was possible.
He didn't expect to pour out as many spell formulas as Foolish Straight Twin Wheels all at once.
He simply inscribed attacks onto the wing feathers—large ones, specifically meant to cleave in a single stroke those entities that refused to be cut.
- Kwarururururu!
The storm's momentum changed. Different spells, attacks of different outputs, were mixed in here and there, like adding spices.
Even the entities that had been gradually closing in began to crumble in an instant.
The only places where the slashes did not surge were near Lee Ha-yul and the targets he had directly excluded from the spell formulas.
"Wow..."
Daera, pressed close behind Lee Ha-yul, stared blankly with her mouth open.
She gazed at the carnage filling their surroundings, her mouth agape in a daze.
Superhumans who had clearly elevated their skills far beyond imagination lay sprawled about, crushed like dogs by her junior disciple.
And those monsters, those regulars of her nightmares, were being ground up like nothing more than fruit in a blender.
"My junior disciple is strong as hell."
An inexplicable pride, satisfaction, and sense of liberation dominated Daera's chest.
.
.
.
"Haaah..."
Hong Yeon-jun, who had been observing that preposterous spectacle from afar, let out a sigh of lament.
A storm of slashes. What other expression could be needed?
Or perhaps "the end of the world" would be fitting as well. After all, the world was literally being ground away.
He had been watching the battle at first, but the moment he sensed the portents of that absurd magic's manifestation, he had recoiled in horror and hastily retreated.
The others were the same. Everyone who had fled for their lives to put distance between themselves wore similarly stupefied expressions.
"...Haha, so I was a frog in a well."
Yang Yi-hwa, who had barely managed to escape beyond the range, let out a hollow laugh.
An assessment? Regret? These weren't sentiments Yang Yi-hwa had the right to feel.
He had thought this fight would be somewhat anticlimactic—a monster worse than a cadet, suppressed with pressure. The result was completely different.
"...What on earth is that...?"
Est, collapsed nearby, stared at the gradually growing storm of slashes with uncharacteristically trembling eyes.
"There are too many spells. The output is abnormal, and the speed is abnormal. Mana consumption? How in the world, just how... where is he drawing the mana from? No matter how vast one's mana reserves, something like that should drain them dry with just a brief sustain..."
"It's unreasonable to judge something unprecedented by conventional wisdom."
Having given a rough reply, Hong Yeon-jun moved the hand he had slipped into his chest.
"...The operation seems to have failed, though."
The Vessel of Divine Descent in his grasp.
He had made all the other preparations for its use in advance, but what he needed most was still information on Lee Ha-yul.
In this state, it would be difficult to properly collect flesh, blood, mana, or anything of the sort.
- Kuwooong!
『Prepare yourself』
"...You dog."
His heart pounded violently for an instant. Worse, the fierce presence that suddenly pressed close made Hong Yeon-jun's expression twist.
* * *
[Savior Correction System: Pioneering Progress]
[The Savior is carrying out the quest 「Reverse Side」!]
[The system assists the Savior with full power!]
...
[The Tower Master of Harmonization manifests the Authority 「Harmonization」]
[The Authority of Harmonization assists the Savior!]
[Points are consumed]