Diversion (3)
Diversion (3)
- Kraaahh─!
The Giant writhed in agony.
The ramparts trembled under a roar that swept in all directions. The ground churned where massive footfalls slammed down.
Through it all, the spear embedded in its chest stayed lodged—boring deeper.
Compared to the Giant's bulk the spear was barely a toothpick, yet the damage it dealt was not to be dismissed.
A searing light scattered the darkness. Shadow unraveled wherever the beam touched.
And that was not all. The pure white spearhead hidden beneath the golden radiance was the horn of a unicorn, possessing the properties of purification and purity.
Each was a force that fundamentally denied the Giant's shadow-born existence.
The two forces intertwined in harmony and tore hungrily at the darkness. It was dangerous. Fire and ice were dangerous, too, but in terms of elemental affinity this spear was a direct threat.
Crash! Darkness welled from its chest like a flood. An instant of obscured light. Within that gap the Giant twisted its body and reached for its own chest, where the radiance was digging in.
Even if it meant tearing out a whole chunk of its chest, it had to rip out that light.
- Kwahk!
Its intent was realized. Except the act wasn't the Giant's doing.
The spear that had been boring into its chest slipped out in a flash before any hand could snatch it, streaking through the air like a ray of light as it returned to its owner's grip.
- Kuooooo...!
Enraged, the Giant raised its fist and brought it crashing down.
It would shatter the barrier and crush every human inside, all at once.
"Huu..."
As if she would simply stand by and watch, Baek A-rin, who had drawn back to evade the darkness, raised her hand.
Frost, eerily white against her already pale skin, crept over it.
What a shitty feeling. Even the revulsion that flickered through her mind gradually froze over and solidified.
- Hwareureuk!
The numbing thoughts resurfaced.
The ring on her finger. The spear she was holding. Without disturbing the cold energy, warmth climbed through her, wrapping around her freezing body and mind.
A faint smile touched Baek A-rin's lips as she clenched her open hand into a fist.
The darkness that made contact with the cold energy spreading through the air froze solid. It couldn't freeze all of it, but the Giant's descending fist halted for a single moment.
Crunch! Cracks ran through the ice. Darkness seeped between them. The corroded ice was swallowed whole by the shadow.
A sliver of bought time. No problem. A sliver had always been the plan.
In that brief window a rock golem that had risen from the ground slammed into the Giant, and from the opposite side Hong Yeon-hwa charged in, unleashing a massive torrent of Calamity Flame.
The ferocious attack forced the Giant back a step.
"Tsk."
Hong Yeon-hwa's expression crumpled in displeasure.
This time she couldn't manage to burn away all of the darkness churning out from the Giant's body.
'I have to burn all of that before any real attack can get through.'
An attribute ability. And a viscous, cloying one at that—it was playing the role of a defensive layer extremely well.
"We have to strip all of that off."
Baek A-rin had reached the same conclusion. Nimbly sidling up next to Hong Yeon-hwa, Baek A-rin tapped her lightly on the shoulder with the spear.
"Should I peel off its defense? While I do, you prepare a big one."
"Mm... Let's do that. I'll prep—"
[I'll clear the darkness.]
A voice rang out clearly inside their heads. Both blinked, and the voice continued.
[I have a way. Please wait just a moment.]
"Okay. Got it. I'll buy some time up front, then."
Hong Yeon-hwa nodded without a moment's hesitation. She raised her sword, the corner of her mouth curling upward.
"Azure Sea does excel at buying time, after all."
Baek A-rin extended her spear further and stepped forward. She leveled its point toward the encroaching darkness, intending to unleash a wide-area technique.
- Wooooong!
At that instant her vision was bathed in light. Baek A-rin blinked. Before she knew it, a golden sphere had enveloped her.
Turning her head slightly, she saw Hong Yeon-hwa wearing an equally startled expression while wrapped in a golden sphere of her own.
"This is..."
Inside the barrier, warmth and a profound sense of security settled over her. Thin and semi-transparent as it was, Baek A-rin knew exactly how sturdy this barrier could be.
'I thought he couldn't use it after regenerating his arm. Can it manifest separately now?'
Whatever the case, it was exceptionally welcome support in this situation.
- Kwahng!
The support didn't end there. Spirits, with Terramor at the fore, joined her side and drove back the darkness.
And abruptly, armed figures that had flown in like a swarm carved through the darkness encroaching on Hong Yeon-hwa.
Before long, they were even slashing and stabbing freely in every direction as if each possessed a will of its own.
'What sort of trick is that?'
Telekinesis? Or a function of the weapons themselves? Whichever it was, it was nothing short of astonishing.
With a slight shrug, Baek A-rin unleashed a surge of Azure Sea power. Hong Yeon-hwa, wearing an odd expression, unfurled her Calamity Flame while taking care not to overlap with the Azure Sea.
- Huu...
Out in front, Hong Yeon-hwa and Baek A-rin, alongside the spirits and undead, were driving back the darkness.
The darkness gushing from the Giant was an attribute ability.
Its nature was close to corrosion. Anything that touched the darkness was corroded. Anything that was swallowed was annihilated.
'Mm.'
Lee Ha-yul let out a long breath and raised his hand. Tak! The Purification that had scoured through the darkness in a wave flew back and settled into his grip.
The first doppelganger he had ever created with the Incarnation spell was little more than a decorative ceramic figurine.
The skin was dull. The bones snapped like drinking straws. The muscles tore far too easily. Its core and mana were frustratingly feeble.
Its performance was utterly useless for combat. As of now, it was difficult to fix.
'For now.'
Everything was difficult to fix. So he had abandoned the thought of fixing it all at once. He narrowed his scope and focused.
The mana circuits.
The circuits meticulously threaded throughout the doppelganger groaned. The circuits unfurling from his shoulder blade twisted. Mana backflowed. He controlled it meticulously.
Gently, Lee Ha-yul pushed mana into the Purification as it whirled in his hand.
The blue crystal orb spat out light. His consciousness linked with the orb.
He perceived what was accumulated within it. Spell formulas, magic itself. The unique abilities he had stored there beforehand—Calamity Flame, Azure Sea, Taesan...
He went deeper. The things he had kept stored since the first time he received Purification. The things he had been taught with utmost effort at the Tower of Knowledge and transformed in his own way.
He thrust Purification forward.
Ariel was not a mage of scholarly or research-oriented temperament.
The reason she had first begun to learn magic was not for the comfort of living. It was not in pursuit of truth.
It was to kill monsters.
The reason she had taken up a staff instead of a sword was partly a matter of aptitude, but also because magic allowed her to kill more and stronger monsters efficiently.
'Unique Magic Path.'
Imbuing magic with the innate talent accumulated throughout a mage's life.
Ariel had become a mage to kill monsters, and her Unique Magic Path had been shaped by that same experience.
She had desired it to be so. Ariel devised a Unique Magic Path that excelled at killing monsters.
'Final Snow Blossom.'
Wooooong! The crystal orb gradually stained itself pure white.
As if resonating with it, the circuits surging from his shoulder blade groaned and re-calibrated. Spell formulas were etched across the three pairs of wings spread wide.
Vast spell formulas unraveled like threads from a spool. Countless books manifested in the air and parted their pages, supplementing the formulas.
The densely packed formulas dissolved into the world and exerted their influence.
"Huh?"
Baek A-rin, who had been locked in the struggle against the darkness and the Giant, blinked. A white snowflake settled abruptly on her spearhead, which had been in constant motion without a moment's rest.
There was nothing strange about it. The barrage of Azure Sea power often created snow.
'No.'
Baek A-rin narrowed her eyes. This was mana that merely resembled snow.
Not even ordinary mana. Mana composed of impossibly dense spell formulas—mana that bled with innate talent.
It wasn't only Baek A-rin. Hong Yeon-hwa too. The superhumans and monsters tangled together across the front line too. The spirits and undead too. Even the Giant, churning out its darkness.
In that moment, everything came to an instinctive halt.
Snow drifted down from the sky. Snow bloomed up from the earth. Snow formed abruptly in the empty air. Snow blossomed from the traces of mana Lee Ha-yul had left behind in advance.
The snow blooming across the battlefield was almost beautiful.
- Grrrr...?
The Giant did not share that opinion. It had no room for such sentiment, and more importantly, it was being torn to shreds by pure white snow.
Every flake drifting in the air had become a weapon.
- CRUNCH!
A horrific noise erupted belatedly. Countless snowflakes—impossible to tally, still blossoming even now—had sharpened into blades, blending the darkness like a mixer.
The colossal darkness was ripped apart in an instant.
"Aha."
No signal was needed; anyone with functioning eyes could tell this was the moment.
With bright grins, Hong Yeon-hwa and Baek A-rin unleashed every drop of mana they had gathered.
Azure Sea and Calamity Flame struck the Giant's true form head-on, splitting it cleanly in half.
.
.
.
Even through the pain stabbing at my skull, the question refused to fade.
A doppelganger's field of vision.
Every time white light flared, a doppelganger was mercilessly torn apart, bursting into nothing, engulfed in flames, frozen solid and shattered to pieces.
The one who had roused it—was a beautiful, pure white human.
That pure white human had appeared above the original body's head, opened a shadow, and driven attacks straight through.
It made no sense. The thing attacking the doppelgangers right now was...
'A doppelganger.'
A doppelganger, not the original. That skill was the Giant's own unique ability, but it was not exclusive to it. The Giant had seen abilities similar to its own countless times.
But it had never anticipated that a human, that pure white human of all beings, would wield doppelgangers.
- GUOOOOOOOH!
The Giant let out a roar from its gaping maw. The will riding that cry made the darkness tremble.
Hostility seeped into what had been mere black, murky gloom. The roiling darkness locked onto a definite target.
A sense of crisis scraped down my spine. Lee Ha-yul kicked off empty air and shot out of the shadow.
CRASSSH! Darkness poured down a half-step too late. As if an oil reservoir had burst, black gloom surged high into the sky.
"......"
The darkness flooding the ground heaved like a midnight sea. The Giant's true body was deliberately dumping every scrap of gloom it had ever gathered.
From within that darkness, the Giant rose. A murky black, indistinguishable from the gloom surrounding it. Over a dozen blood-red eyes opened within that mass and fixed their glare this way.
At a slight distance, Sierra tightened her grip on her sword as she watched the scene.
"How shall we proceed?"
- I'll stick to the plan.
Lee Ha-yul landed lightly beside Sierra. His Winged Garment was no longer behind him. Purification was absent as well.
All artifacts had been handed over to the doppelganger.
But there was no problem with the plan. I had no intention of using them right now anyway.
"Are you sure this is the method you must choose?"
- I think this approach is more efficient.
Lee Ha-yul answered calmly. Sierra pressed her lips together. She wanted to stop him even now, but saying anything further would be overstepping.
The very reason she was aiding this madness was precisely to prevent Lee Ha-yul from pursuing even more extreme overexertion, greater self-harm, and more reckless human experimentation.
"...Then, I'll be going."
Swallowing a sigh, Sierra stepped forward. She swung her sword toward the darkness that had already closed in.
There was no great strength behind it. She merely drew the strangely undulating blade downward, almost languidly.
- Slice!
The darkness split left and right. Spatial Slash, carried within the sword. The split gaped open; the darkness could not easily reattach, only churning restlessly instead.
Ignoring it completely, Sierra threw herself into the parted darkness. Lee Ha-yul followed behind.
The Giant's eyes twitched. It could accept that its darkness had been cut, but it had parted far too easily. And the severed darkness refused to properly reconnect.
It wrenched dominance to its limit. The fiercely churning darkness clumped back together.
Not an Authority, but an immature unique ability. A body that had yet to reach its prime. A mind incapable of supporting the skill of its prime.
Right now, Sierra lacked the capacity to cleave all of this darkness.
But opening a path was more than possible.
- Slice!
The darkness split once more. Larger and wider than the path that had opened just before.
- I'm heading in.
BOOM! Lee Ha-yul kicked off the ground and shot out ahead of Sierra. A rocky carapace was already winding around his body.
- GUOOOO...!
The Giant raised its fist at the sight of Lee Ha-yul rushing straight toward it. Wrapping his frame in rock meant little at this size, but it felt no complacency.
A massive fist slanted down from the sky. Against the pressure bearing down on my body, Lee Ha-yul thrust his own fist to meet it.
- CRAAASH!
A violent shockwave spread across the world. In an instant, the earth where the darkness had been stripped away flipped over and was flung upward.
The Giant's hand bounced upward. Some of the darkness wrapped around its arm blew off, and its hand stung from the impact.
SPLAT! Blood sprayed from Lee Ha-yul's hand. Every piece of rock was stripped off, bones snapping with a sickening crack.
This was the result of stubbornly insisting on a brute-force frontal clash.
- GUOOOOOH!
The fist that had bounced upward fell again. Darkness instantly rewrapped it, and the giant's strength bearing down on him was undiminished.
'So it is a little stronger than the doppelganger, isn't it?'
Vitality energy accelerated regeneration. Broken bones re-knit; torn muscle and skin stitched themselves back together.
I clenched my aching fist and burned vitality energy. Calamity Flame was not used.
- CRAAASH!
Unsurprisingly, the fist was thrown back again. CRUNCH! My arm twisted slightly around. While the arm, twisted like a pretzel, was resetting, another fist was already dropping.
I threw my other fist.
- CRAAASH!
My body was pushed backward. Blood pattered onto the ground. The shock that traveled past my arm and into my torso squeezed my internal organs.
- GUOOOOOH...!
This time it was both hands. Clasped together, the two fists came hammering down, compressing the air.
Authority of Protection. I had handed it to the doppelganger, but the original could still use it. I didn't.
Evasion. I didn't dodge. I crossed both arms and pulled in the earth, constructing a defense.
- CRAAASH!
The ground collapsed in an instant. The overturned topsoil surged upward. The defense I had built to block the attack crumbled. A dizzying sensation hit, as if both arms were being torn off.
They weren't torn off. The shattered defense had acted as a buffer.
- BOOM! CRASH! BOOM!
Fists hammered down in succession. Unwilling to let the opening slip, the Giant drove attack after attack without pause.
Against them I blocked, threw fists back, pulled in earth to attack, and carved ravines to bury the darkness.
Vitality energy drawn from the earth seeped relentlessly into my body. The excessive build-up, with no chance to leak away, burned itself up in accelerating physical recovery and reinforcement.
I had plenty of other means, but I used only Taesan. BOOM! Attack and defense continued, my body breaking and regenerating itself over and over.
A method that would have shaved years off my lifespan if done outside. But here, within Siyoram, it was possible.
My body crumbled. I repeated injury and recovery. Darkness encroached. I roused Taesan to resist.
Vitality energy plunged toward rock bottom, then frantically surged back up.
Gradually my body was buried within the earth, mindlessly shuttling between life and death.
- THUMP!
At some moment. A great reverberation rang through my chest.
- THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
The thunderous roar of building-sized fists pounding down grew distant.
Instead, a sound ringing from within drew closer. Among countless innate talents, one particularly strange and vast innate talent swelled in size.
- RUUUMBLE...!
That bulging innate talent gradually surged upward.
Conversely, Lee Ha-yul's consciousness sank downward.
* * *
[Unique Ability «Mana Affinity» manifested]
[Expansion Ability «Homogenization: Taesan» manifested]
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[Player Correction System: Measurement]
▶ Mental State
«Taesan's Trial(?)»