Tower of Growth (3)
Tower of Growth (3)
The sensation traveled through the sword buried in her skull.
It was revolting. Even though the pain was drastically muted, the vile feeling of killing a person ran plainly through the hilt.
'One.'
Loreine's form scattered into a cluster of light.
I didn't even have time to register it before I swung the sword again.
Clang! A harsh recoil shoved my body backward.
"Tch!"
Raven clicked his tongue and came charging in with his spear, while Kim Hyun recovered from the slash's aftermath and closed the distance.
I'd cleaned up the small fry. The two real threats still remained.
I steadied my breathing. I met their thrusting spear and slashing sword with my own blade.
— Krrrzzzzt!
The clearing was already a wreck. Weapons wreathed in aura and slashing force carved long gouges into the ground. Everything was bursting apart in every direction.
The surrounding trees had been hacked down and lay strewn across the ground. With this much commotion, it wouldn't be long before other cadets started gathering.
I had to finish this quickly.
Kim Hyun couldn't even entertain that thought.
This is absurd. That was the only thought he could manage.
Raven Est. They went to different academies, but they'd been tangled up together for years. Their families were on good terms, so they frequently sparred, and they'd practiced joint assaults while subjugating monsters inside dungeons.
Lee Ha-yul was taking that coordinated assault head-on.
Not perfectly, of course. Shhhk! Red particles burst from his shoulder where the blade grazed him. His whole body was riddled with wounds like that.
His movements were impressive, but they were awkward in places—all over.
Supposedly he'd been blind even before he awakened.
Kim Hyun had assumed the so-called 'blind man' had weaknesses he was struggling to overcome. No matter how well a detection ability replaced vision, it could never match real eyes capturing an ever-changing world.
Just one month. It was astonishing he'd reached this level.
Slash! Red particles burst from a shoulder.
"Kh—!"
That was Kim Hyun's shoulder. Inside the Tower of Growth, pain was drastically dampened. But the psychological impact Kim Hyun felt was far worse than the pain.
Raven wore a grimace as he pulled back as well. A vivid slash mark stretched across one of his arms.
Lee Ha-yul, on the other hand, strode forward. His body was a mess of wounds. Slash marks covered him everywhere, and bloody particles seeped from puncture wounds in several places.
At the start of the combined assault, he'd been scrambling just to hold on. He'd met them head-on, but gaps kept opening in his defense, and the wounds kept piling up.
Now...
'We're getting pushed back.'
Against Raven's spear thrusts and Kim Hyun's sword swings—he was gradually adapting. Their attacks were getting blocked one after another, and the ones that landed were dwindling.
Right in this moment, his skill was improving exponentially. Awkward movements were refining into proficiency.
In this short, short moment.
— KRRAAASH!
His leg came down and slammed the earth. A thunderous impact twice as loud as before split the ground with spiderweb cracks.
Rrrumble— the ground heaved violently as thick spikes of soil and stone erupted upward, stabbing at them.
Kim Hyun swung his sword wreathed in aura. The spikes surging along a straight trajectory were sliced clean through mid-ascent.
Amid the debris scattering through the air, a flash of light flared at the edge of Kim Hyun's vision.
'Shit—!'
A streak of blue lightning shot through, weaving past the stumps of the uncut spikes. Kim Hyun's eyes flew wide.
— Bzzzzzt!
"Ngh—!"
The lightning struck his ankle and spread through his entire body. Kim Hyun clenched his jaw.
The damage wasn't severe. He'd been cloaked in aura, and the spell itself was low in destructive power.
Raven hurriedly swept aside the spikes and lunged toward Kim Hyun. A gap had opened up on his side, and he moved to cover him.
That expectation was wrong.
Lee Ha-yul didn't go for the stunned Kim Hyun. He went for Raven.
An unexpected move. But Raven's body thrust the spear forward on reflex. It was a lunge born from experience ingrained deep in his muscles.
Lee Ha-yul thrust his sword in return. Blade and spear grazed past each other, and the sword flew into the air. His form vanished in an instant.
Crunch! He'd slipped in low and seized the spear shaft in a crushing grip.
'Ah.'
Fu—
Before the thought could finish, aura coiled around her abdomen and detonated with brutal force. Her body folded at a right angle.
"Gurgh—!"
Oxygen was violently ripped from his lungs. The distance he'd opened—Raven didn't give up. He reached out, hand wreathed in aura.
The countermeasure for when a spear-user gave the opponent an opening. She'd learned it until she was sick of it.
— Wham!
"...!"
But Lee Ha-yul was simply faster.
The aura detonated. Before his hand could even fully extend, Lee Ha-yul planted his feet and drove his fist into Raven's abdomen again.
This time no sound escaped. Instead, a sickening noise of flesh being pulverized and bursting rang inside her body.
Even at this point, Lee Ha-yul's arms didn't stop.
His fist, saturated with aura, hammered into her gut, her solar plexus, her philtrum—blow after blow. Her already fading consciousness was kicked further toward oblivion.
'What a goddamn mess.'
As Raven watched the clumps of bloody light he coughed up, he spat a curse inwardly. Shit, he'd joined up just to score a few points, and now look at him.
Finally, a fist filled her vision, right in front of her nose.
— Crunch!
The nauseating sensation of bone shattering and flesh pulping traveled up the fist. Raven's body went slack, his face caved in.
'Two.'
Rapid footsteps from behind. Lee Ha-yul released the spear shaft, grabbed Raven's collapsing wrist, and swung.
"...!"
Kim Hyun's eyes shot wide.
Shhk— the sword sliced halfway through Raven's body before it could even finish scattering into light.
It was perfectly presented for a grab. Kim Hyun swiftly reached out with an aura-clad hand and seized the sword.
Cruunch. The aura wrapped around his hand was scraped away. No matter how solid Lee Ha-yul's aura was, if he kept holding on like this, his hand would get cut off.
Before that could happen, Lee Ha-yul thrust out his free palm. The mana held inside surged rapidly, assembling a magic formula.
Mana Strike. A spell formula so simple it was almost laughable.
To that, I added a few tweaks and modifications. The original formula and the added components interlocked—more or less.
Since the foundation was such a simple spell, even a beginner like me could modify it without much trouble.
Lowest-Grade Magic
【Mana Strike: Volley】
The formula in my palm detonated. A volley of slashes tore through the corpse dissolving into light and surged toward Kim Hyun, standing right in front of me.
'Can't dodge.'
Too late to evade. Even if he dropped his sword and threw himself aside, it wouldn't matter.
Kim Hyun's judgment was swift. He drew up every last drop of mana and coated his entire body in aura. He pulled his sword up to block.
'Haaah...'
He felt it instinctively. He couldn't block this.
He moved despite that instinct, but the ominous feeling didn't go away.
The world slowed down. At least, that was how Kim Hyun felt, but unfortunately his body couldn't keep pace with his thoughts.
He hadn't let his guard down. He'd told himself that going in. But even that had been arrogance.
He'd arbitrarily measured Lee Ha-yul by his own standards.
And the price for that was bearing down on him now.
'He really was right.'
Kim Hyun remembered what his father had said.
The world is wide. Go to Siyoram, where talent from all across that wide world gathers, and see the geniuses for yourself.
'The world really is wide.'
His thoughts had broadened—but in contrast, his field of vision narrowed as the slashes closed in.
* * *
Mana Strike.
The simplest spell imaginable, sitting at the very bottom of the magic hierarchy.
I'd tweaked it a little.
Just a simple adjustment—making four or five projectiles go out instead of one.
The dissonance between formulas that cropped up in the process? I'd barely bothered to hold it together. Honestly, as long as the destructive power was guaranteed, I could just let the rest sort itself out through Harmonization.
— Rrrriiiip!
The multiple slashes shoved against each other as they chewed through the entire clearing. It wasn't clean in the slightest—the ground was ripped apart like someone had taken a chainsaw to it without a care.
Kim Hyun's presence vanished in an instant. Beyond the lingering remnants of the scattered spell, I could feel mana dispersing. Looked like the same light clusters that had appeared when I eliminated Loreine and Raven.
Soon enough, the disturbed mana settled.
I took in the ruined clearing through the sounds of the wind and my sense of touch. I stood there and steadied my breathing.
— Ding!
The test watch on my left wrist abruptly chimed.
...There was no function to read the contents aloud. No hologram either. I couldn't even tell how many points I'd earned for taking down cadets.
Anyway.
'...I won?'
I won. Me. Three on one? And two of them seemed like the kind who were pretty decent in combat-focused majors?
I muttered to myself, dazed.
Honestly, even when I'd released Spatial Perception and opened up my senses, I hadn't thought much of it. Even when I was focused on my mana affinity, I hadn't thought much of it.
I'd just figured—I had nothing else to do anyway. I'd tried it out with the casual thought of, 'Maybe this could work.'
When they'd been chasing me? Honestly, I'd thought it was all over. But I'd also thought—I might as well ram into them and take something with me before I went down.
I'd fought with every intention of winning if possible, but I'd never actually thought I would.
'Why did I win.'
I sank into thought. I'd taken quite a lot of damage during the fight. I prodded at my wounds with clumsy healing magic while I mulled it over.
Me winning. Something was off.
When I first came to this world and began worrying about growth, I'd given up on matching the original work—the game's—pace of growth from the very start.
A game and reality are different. Anyone who isn't insane enough to be unable to distinguish imagination from reality knows that perfectly well.
In a game, you don't die. When your HP hits zero, the character disappears, and you just make a new character and play again.
Here, when you die, it's over. There's no next time. Well, in the original world, dying just means it's over.
In a game, there's no reason to be afraid. You just ram into things, see if they work or not, and if they don't, you just make a new one.
In reality, you can't do that. I can't stuff myself with hidden pieces like in the original story. I can't go poking around everywhere and anywhere.
That's obvious. So I'd given up on freakish growth too.
The first Tower Entry Event. In the 1st Iteration, I'd been eliminated in a flash without putting up any real resistance. After that, up until the 8th Iteration, I'd performed decently well, though there were times I'd gotten eliminated early thanks to bad luck.
Starting from the 9th Iteration, when I'd tossed aside virtuous conduct, I'd started getting results. The 11th Iteration especially had produced monstrous scores.
This performance now, though—it seemed way too fast.
That spar with Aiden. That had been a win earned by catching him off guard, before my own skill even factored in. I could accept that.
This time.
Sure, I'd taken a lot of damage and burned through a massive amount of mana, but I'd beaten down three cadets—who'd been seriously trying to take me out, with no lapses in focus—all by myself, with Spatial Perception sealed.
'Why?'
I hadn't gotten a single hidden piece. I hadn't yet reaped a single benefit from my game knowledge.
But there were factors I could accept.
I'd been given a precious elixir from Hong Yeon-hwa, one whose value was hard to put a price on.
I also had three unique abilities. Three curses attached to them, sure, and Spatial Perception had been useless in this fight—but it existed nonetheless.
Besides that. My physical abilities were a little strange. They were too good for just having taken one elixir.
'...The Blessing of Growth.'
The basic Blessing of Growth placed on Siyoram cadets. And the additional Blessing of Growth granted to Special Admission Cadets.
I'd only just entered, but the Blessing of Growth applied inside the Tower—it helped with sensory activation and the growth of mana affinity.
There was more. I thought of it on instinct.
Beyond those three factors, there was definitely something else accelerating my growth.
'Something...'
Something else—
The sound of air being torn apart, closing in fast. A sensation that pierced straight through my ruminations. I wrenched my head aside.
— Shhhwing!
A clump of mana in the shape of an arrow grazed my cheek and slammed through the thick tree on the other side. If it had hit my head square, it would've been near-instant death.
'Ambush.'
I reinforced my body with aura and readied myself for the next attack.
Beyond where the mana had flown from—my spread senses picked up several presences approaching at speed.
'...Right.'
The bewilderment from the unexpected victory washed away. My earlier calm settled back into its place.
'It's not over yet.'
I'd won a three-on-one. But there were still cadets everywhere, overflowing.
Ones like Kim Hyun, drawn in by curiosity. Ones like Raven and Loreine, aiming for points.
There were well over five hundred of them.
I steadied my breathing and kicked off the ground. Thwip-thwip-thwip! Mana arrows peppered the spot where I'd been standing.
As I sprinted in the opposite direction, the pursuers' speed picked up as well.
I'd only been running for a moment, but the presences chasing me multiplied one by one. The commotion from earlier had clearly exposed my position.
Out of five days, not even one had passed yet.
I had no intention of getting eliminated quietly.
* * *
A single spark flickered to life. A tiny, tiny spark. A small ember that a faint gust could scatter into nothing.
— Fwoosh!
It suddenly blazed up. The spark erupted outward, surging violently, and became Calamity Flame—devouring everything in every direction.
A wave of flame howled like a storm, sweeping away all in its path. The unrelenting inferno then collapsed back into a single point, as if time were rewinding, and became a small spark once more.
"Hoooh..."
The spark became a sword. Hong Yeon-hwa gripped the blade and let out a soft breath.
Inside the Tower of Growth. The amplifying Blessing of Growth.
Some people stayed here to pursue growth rather than simply chasing points.
Hong Yeon-hwa, if she had to pick a side, was here for that purpose too.
Though she did have one other reason.
"Ha-yul... where the heck is he..."
Hong Yeon-hwa's shoulders sagged.
Day 2 of Tower Entry.
She still hadn't so much as glimpsed the hem of the person she was looking for.