Talk Shit, Get Hit
Baek Shin-hoo swept his gaze across the surroundings, a twisted smile pulling at his mouth.
The stage is set...
The spectators had fallen back behind him, piloting drones and hoisting their phones. All that remained was to put on a proper show on the stage he'd laid out. People ran their mouths about him being a mad dog beyond anyone's control, but he had never once gone berserk without thinking. Stamping those two letters — S-rank — onto your name was not a height you reached through luck or blind frenzy.
Baek Shin-hoo had already gone over the NPC's combat footage with a fine-tooth comb and finished his analysis. He had every reason to be confident. Those wildly sprayed crimson fireballs looked like overwhelming firepower, but they were non-targeted skills — slow, with trajectories so simple that any hunter B-rank or above could dodge them without breaking a sweat. The thread-bound daggers, on the other hand, did carry a homing judgment, but even their speed wasn't anything that broke the limits. By the standards of an assassin whose entire tech tree was built for high-speed combat, she was, if anything, an easy mark.
The problem was that greatsword in the NPC's hands right now. The instant she drew it, crimson energy had erupted from the blade, and an ominous red light gleamed in her eyes. It seemed she'd entered the next phase, the way some monsters did.
A sword that size means the attack speed will be slow. Doesn't really matter, does it?
Advantage of matchup didn't flip that easily. This was the skill tree he'd agonized over and poured every last won he'd ever earned into building. Baek Shin-hoo raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars every hunt, and he had invested his entire fortune into skill development. The Tower's so-called system was, in the end, a system that favored those who already had.
It sounded grandiose at a glance, but the reality was disappointingly straightforward. You acquired skill books that dropped from the Tower at vanishingly rare rates. That was it. If the book you picked up didn't suit you, you sold it and bought one that did. Most hunters filled out their skills to match their disposition. In Baek Shin-hoo's case, the loadout was built from movement skills and damage-amplifying skills — an assassin type who could shut down an opponent for certain in a one-on-one. He had no need to tank anything, which meant the NPC's attacks weren't a threat. Even if a few variables cropped up, he could paper over them with improvisation drawn from years of experience.
And this, he figured, was one of those situations.
Calculations complete, Baek Shin-hoo held his stance and began to ease sideways, inch by inch. Goat-jjang turned with him, slowly matching his line. The air drew taut, stretched to a killing tension, as if they were stepping into a duel to the death. The moment the angle he'd wanted finally opened, a sour smile crept across his face.
The sight of some NPC getting called the G.O.A.T. pissed me off to no end.
The way those miserable small fry praised her like they'd found their savior.
Should I start by sending her straight to hell?
Baek Shin-hoo did not strike first. He waited, calm and still, doing nothing but stare and track her movement. The only reason he bothered yielding the opening attack was that he was hoping for a single specific outcome.
Fireball. Fireball. Please, a fireball.
He chanted it like a spell, over and over. And then Goat-jjang's hand seemed to lift, and a single crimson fireball bloomed in the air. The corner of Baek Shin-hoo's mouth twitched upward at the sight of the wavering sphere.
Just one is a little disappointing. A full spray would've been best.
While he was still smacking his lips over it, the fireball tore through the air and came screaming toward him. A smile spread across his face then — wicked enough to rival a demon's.
NPCs really are stupid.
He shifted his body with almost leisurely ease, slipping a single step to the side. That was all it took. The fireball sailed through the space where he'd been standing and kept going, helpless, on its original path.
Like an NPC would ever think. Doesn't matter who's standing behind me...
The fireball's destination was the cluster of spectators. The same hunters who, moments ago, had been chattering noisily and heaping mindless praise on her. Exactly as Baek Shin-hoo had intended. A way to shake off, in a single stroke, both the risk of killing an NPC and the risk of monopolizing one.
All the NPC had to do was kill a hunter. Public opinion would turn. And after that, even if Blitz locked the NPC down forever, people would live as if they'd already forgotten she existed — there and not there at once.
Right on cue, the fireball closed in on the hunters' faces, and cries of terror burst out.
"Uwaaaaagh—!"
"Wh... what?!"
Dopamine surged at the plan landing. His heart began to hammer.
You're going to die by the hand of the Goat-jjang you love so much you could die.
Baek Shin-hoo drew a dagger at once. The instant their screams threw the atmosphere into chaos, he meant to take the NPC's head in a single stroke. He was about to explode the muscle of his quadriceps, using those screams as his signal, when—
Hm?
The scream that was supposed to be his cue never came. No smell of burning flesh. No blast of heat spreading outward. Puzzled, he turned his head — and a wave of searing heat crashed into him at point-blank range.
You've got to be fucking kidding me!
The fireball was already hurtling back toward him.
That wasn't a non-targeted skill?
Baek Shin-hoo twisted on instinct. But against a surprise attack that sudden, a clean dodge was impossible.
Ssssshhh!
Heat kissed his elbow. A split-second of contact. If it had been ordinary magic, it would have been a level he could defend against. But the flames ignited at a terrifying speed, as if someone had doused him in oil, and swallowed his jacket whole.
"Kh!"
Baek Shin-hoo tore the jacket off in a panic, ripping it from his body. The thing sloughed away like a shed skin and, in less than a second, vanished without leaving so much as a pinch of ash.
Fuck. That was a two-hundred-grand designer piece...
He spat the curse, but a sliver of relief still settled in a corner of his mind. For the first time, fear crept into his eyes.
Even for a system-adjudicated attack, isn't that overkill? Leather burning up like that?
It was a luxury piece made exclusively for hunters. Not the kind of material that caught fire easily. Gear that could stop a bullet, burning up like a scrap of tissue?
But there was no time to get his thoughts in order. While he was still reeling from the sudden turn, a killing intent brushed him, and his body flinched inward. In that instant, a silver flash carved into his vision. A dagger was already at his nose.
"Fuck!"
Baek Shin-hoo snapped his head to the side on instinct. As the blade whispered past his cheek, a cutting wind sang in his ear.
Whoooosh—
A paper-thin evasion. And it wasn't over. There was no room to breathe at all. The dagger that had split the air banked like an aircraft coming about, then cinched toward his throat as if tying a noose.
Are you fucking kidding me? It's a dagger and it's using a string?!
He'd assumed it just flew at a targeted opponent. On instinct he dropped his waist and flattened toward the ground, ducking under the noose.
If I stay like this, I'm done.
In a flash, Baek Shin-hoo snatched at the red thread.
Got it!
Grab the end of the line the way you'd seize a viper by the head, and that dagger wouldn't be flying anywhere. There was no world in which he lost a contest of strength to a runt like that.
In that instant, the knot binding it came undone of its own accord, and the dagger drifted serenely back up into the sky.
"Huh?"
While he was still gaping, the dagger, freed from its restraint, came screaming in faster than before. This was no longer a throw aimed at a single point. It carved into him as if an invisible person were holding the blade, hacking and slashing without pause. Cutting, thrusting, parrying — it felt exactly like fighting a human being.
Clang! Cl-clang! Clang!
Fuck! What kind of skill even is this?
Baek Shin-hoo was out of his mind batting away the dagger as it came at him in a frenzy. A weight so heavy it made the hand doing the blocking go numb. And in the split second when every nerve he had was locked on the dagger's trajectory, the red thread that had fallen to the ground came crawling toward him, writhing like a snake. It slithered all the way to his feet, then lashed around his ankle as if to bind it fast.
"Huh? What the hell is this now?!"
And then it hoisted his entire body into the air and slammed him into the ground like someone swinging a bat.
BOOM!! CRASH!! BOOM!!
"Ghhk!"
The earth split in a spiderweb as if it were being tilled, and plumes of dirt erupted upward. His guts wrenched. His bones groaned like they were screaming. At this rate he was going to lose without landing a single hit of his own. Rotten as he was, he was still an S-rank hunter — and in the instant he was being driven into the dirt, he scraped together every ounce of strength he had and threw a dagger.
Whoooosh!
The blade cut the wind and flew true, aimed squarely at Goat-jjang's heart. A last thrashing refusal to die like this. But Goat-jjang just stood there, vacant. No — she was simply standing behind a greatsword larger than her own body. Not even a hem of her clothes stuck out. There was no angle to hit. The dagger that had been loosed at her heart struck the greatsword and bounced off, pathetic.
CLAAANG!
"Ah..."
All he felt now was despair. The emotion he hated most. The one he never wanted to feel.
BOOM!! CRAAASH!!!
The red thread, as if it knew nothing of human feeling, kept slamming him down. His vision darkened. His mind went distant. It felt as though every bone in his body had shattered. Pain ate through him from the inside.
I'm actually... going to die.
And in the moment he felt the terror of death, the red thread and the dagger stopped moving and returned to Goat-jjang's side, as if answering their master's call.
Meanwhile, the masters watching the battle seemed rather excited.
A heavy air pressed down on the field. A long silence. Before the dust had even settled, Baek Shin-hoo's eyes — which had been closed in unconsciousness — snapped open. He kicked off the ground like an animal and came up already in a guard stance.
"Kh!"
His body was in tatters and the pain was vicious, but he did not drop the stance. It was the instinct of a hunter who had crossed more killing lines than he could count.
I blacked out? In the Tower?
To lose consciousness in the Tower. In a place where a single moment of inattention could cost you your life, he had gone under. That fact was more horrifying than the bone-breaking pain.
He looked at Goat-jjang again. And Baek Shin-hoo's face twisted into something ugly once more.
What the hell is that look?
No rage. No hatred. No hostility. Nothing. Just a hollow gaze. The look you gave a pebble rolling by the roadside. The look you gave a bug crawling underfoot. The look you gave a creature of no value at all.
It made him sick. The humiliation was enough to split his skull. At every hour of every day, the eyes turned on him were supposed to hold fear and awe. The trash who forced smiles they didn't feel and clung to him, begging, with flattery they didn't mean. Mocking those people and crushing them underfoot on his way up was how you got an S-rank hunter.
And some Tower NPC was looking down at him with eyes like that?
"Don't you look at me with those fucking eyes, you bitch!"
The last thread of reason snapped. An explosive will to fight burned the pain away. Baek Shin-hoo poured out everything he had.
Fwoosh!
In an instant his form smeared, going faint at the edges. The highest speed an S-rank assassin could produce. A godspeed even Tower bosses struggled to catch, closing the distance in a heartbeat. And then he began to swing his daggers like a man possessed.
"Die, you fucking bitch! DIE!!!"
He emptied every capability he had ever learned. Cutting, thrusting, throwing. Feinting a stab at the collarbone, then ripping through the opening the fake created. Using a thrown dagger as bait to blot out her vision while he carved into the blind spot. He even kicked a fallen dagger up with the instep of his foot and sent it flying like a bullet. A barrage of successive strikes that transcended human limits closed in around Goat-jjang from every side.
And yet.
CLANG! Clang! Cl-cl-cl-CLANG!
"Fu... ck..."
A groan of disbelief spilled from Baek Shin-hoo's mouth. It was a sight he could not accept. That NPC was taking every one of those attacks and not moving a single step. She simply stood behind a greatsword larger than herself, looking up at him with that same indifferent face.
What drove him even more insane was the fact that the damn NPC wasn't even holding the sword.
Why the fuck is the sword floating on its own and blocking like a shield?
If she'd been gripping the thing, he could have at least taken a wrist or a finger. The greatsword hanging in midair was turning aside every one of his attacks perfectly, as if it were a bodyguard.
"Fu... ck! FUCK!!!!"
In the end, with no clever answer in sight, Baek Shin-hoo poured out a meaningless barrage until his movements slowed. His whole body began to heave, gasping as if starving for oxygen. At last his hands went slack and hung at his sides.
And in that brief halt, the greatsword that had been holding the line in front of her was sucked into Goat-jjang's hands in a single instant. Then it came on, splitting his field of vision at a monstrous speed.
What kind of speed is...
An attack that looked like death given shape. Baek Shin-hoo screamed and twisted his body with everything he had left.
"Uwaaaaaaah!"