Simple, but Unstoppable
I gave Kim Ara a blank, hollow-eyed stare.
Click.
Something switched on within the mental world, and the light of everything around me began to bleed and run like watercolors.
Running wouldn't even be an option.
I was the natural enemy of mages. Every spell a mage could throw at me could be denied outright by the energy of Yeokcheon.
And that formula applied between Kim Ara and me as well. Whatever I tried, she could invalidate my power with the force known as physics.
Black Scale, the supreme defensive ability. Even it wasn't worth much against her, because its foundation lay in Yeokcheon energy. Strong against the physical, yes — but since its root was Yeokcheon, it fared far better against abilities than against her brand of raw force.
I really don't want to fight her.
But Kim Ara clearly wanted a bout with me. There was fighting spirit in her eyes — or rather, not quite fighting spirit. Something closer to grievance.
...Had I been neglecting her?
"It is karma."
"I believe it is your karma, Master Seoha."
Heukcheon and Yeongcheon murmured quietly.
I felt wronged. What on earth had I ever done to deserve—
Quite a lot, actually.
I had, admittedly, more or less left Kim Ara to her own devices. The other girls needed looking after in a dozen different ways; Kim Ara simply didn't.
She carried talent capable of surpassing the Transcendent himself, Paewang — and she was the one he had poured the most of himself into teaching.
"We're fighting, right?"
"...Couldn't we just call it a draw?"
"We're fighting, right?"
The giant's blade in Kim Ara's hands grew even larger.
Responding to her Primordial Force, the greatsword — already a good two meters — now exceeded five. At that sheer bulk, lifting it alone should have been a struggle. Absurdly, her Primordial Force reached in and interfered with its weight, so it cost her nothing at all.
And then there was her talent: Pacheon, the Heaven-Sundering. It tore apart things that existed and things that did not. Unleashed to its fullest, it denied her enemies any advantage the terrain might offer.
Troublesome.
I rested my hand on Baekhong's hilt and settled into my stance for the draw.
Kim Ara lightly raised the giant's blade.
BOOM!
Her front foot drove forward. The bedrock-hard floor shattered outright, and she swung.
Shwaaak—!
Faster than the blow could land. The Sword Spirit's senses seized the opening, and I drew Heukcheon from its sheath like a ray of light.
The draw cut is usually classed as an assassin's technique — the act of clearing a blade from its sheath is hard enough on its own. Some swordsmen go so far as to dismiss it as a style kept for show. In truth, most who ever trained it came from assassin lineages.
But this world was different.
Here there existed mad swordsmen who reached the ranks of their superiors through the draw alone, striking first no matter the opponent — and artifacts existed that could overcome the limit entirely.
Heukcheon, freed from Baekhong, met the giant's blade head-on.
CLAAAANG!
The collision unleashed a monstrous shockwave.
Damn it—
I clenched my teeth. Heukcheon's power driven through Baekhong at maximum output surpassed even a superior rank's full strike. The reason I'd claimed Baekhong from the Evil Tower Lord in the first place was precisely to steal the initiative. If I triggered my talent — the explosive burst unique to the Sword Spirit — I was confident I could take first move against a superior rank, so long as they weren't a specialist in the opening strike.
And yet: a stalemate. No — I was being pushed back, if only slightly. Kim Ara's overwhelming physical force denied me the advantage even in a single exchange.
I moved fast. With my free hand, I pulled the Winter Sword from subspace and slotted it into Baekhong.
"An artifact?"
Kim Ara asked it flatly, then threw her whole frame into another sweeping motion.
The movement was riddled with openings.
But I couldn't punish them — the reach advantage saw to that. Feeding on her Primordial Force, the giant's blade had grown another full meter. Her striking range now spanned six.
"Hup!"
Kim Ara swung. The giant's blade slammed into the labyrinth wall.
Shhhk.
Her talent, Pacheon, activated. The greatsword tore through space itself and passed clean through the wall of the labyrinth.
Black Flash Step.
I closed the distance on Kim Ara, drew the black sword from the black bracelet at my wrist, and flung it out as a feint steeped in the subtleties of the Black Flash Sword Art.
Shwaaak!
Kim Ara evaded with the barest movement — one turn of the head, a shift of the arm. But a hairline gap opened.
I triggered Heukcheon's built-in skill.
A formless pressure bore down on everything around us. Kim Ara's brow creased. In response, I activated the Ring of Sun and Moon.
FWOOOSH!
Crrrack—!
Ferocious heat and biting cold condensed into a single point, taking the shape of a sphere — and then the whole of it collapsed inward to its extreme, and—
KWAAAAABOOM!
—it tore loose as a beam. Kim Ara's eyes went wide, and she swung the giant's blade. And in the instant the freezing, burning laser was caught on that blade, I swung Heukcheon.
Soul-Seizing Sword Art.
Flight Secret: Soul-Snatching Strike.
CLAAANG!
Kim Ara pulled a dagger from inside her coat and bit her lip.
"...You really are strong."
"I have my moments."
I clicked my tongue inwardly and fell back. With Extreme Flame and Extreme Frost spent, they'd be off the table for a while — I'd been hoping to walk away with at least something to show for it.
"So? Want to keep going?" I asked, letting an easy expression settle over my face.
"...I'm done."
Kim Ara lowered the giant's blade. It was a clear declaration that the fight was over. I let out a breath and, with a thought, dismissed Heukcheon. Now that the conceptual stat Yeokcheon had reached 30, a retrieval function had been unlocked, so it cost me nothing.
"So — shall we team up this time, then?"
"You mean together? On one team?"
Smiling, I held out my hand.
Kim Ara seemed to weigh it for a moment, then nodded and took it.
"Okay. Let's team up."
"...This is straight-up cheating."
Hong Yuhwa's Minion B laughed hollowly. Around fifteen students had gathered here, all of them locked in a quiet standoff over the artifacts — until two people barged in without warning.
Lee Seoha and Kim Ara. Both of them stood at the very top of the first year. Kim Ara's official ranking sat in the two hundreds, but nearly everyone present knew she simply hadn't bothered to climb. The word going around was that if she ever tried in earnest, she'd land somewhere inside the top five.
And now those two had joined hands.
"Ara!"
"Got it!"
Kim Ara slammed her foot down with everything she had. The labyrinth floor, untouched by any ordinary impact, caved inward. The greatsword condensed with her power swelled to a full ten meters, and she swung it.
"Block it!"
"Mages, what are you waiting for?! Cast, now!"
The students panicked as the warriors hurled themselves forward. With the mages standing well inside that ten-meter reach, the front-liners threw up a makeshift wall by force, and the mages unloaded behind them — a dozen-odd spells in a single volley, everything from low-grade to mid-tier.
Truthfully, without Lee Seoha there, Kim Ara might well have been eliminated on the spot.
"Oh dear."
Lee Seoha smiled, unhurried.
Hummm.
Heukcheon's Yeokcheon energy came crashing down like a tide. The power that denied all things gathered visibly into the black blade — plain enough for the naked eye to see.
Shff.
It began to carve through every spell.
"That lunatic... he's a complete lunatic..."
Cutting magic. A simple phrase — but the warrior classes knew exactly how much weight it carried. Why did armies protect their mages at all? Because they held the power to overturn a battlefield. Put another way: no ordinary warrior, as a rule, could stop a mage's firepower.
Yet the first-year valedictorian parried it all with room to spare, as if it were nothing at all.
"Again, Ara."
"Okay."
At Lee Seoha's word, Kim Ara switched to offense. Some of the warriors scrambled back in open alarm; the other half gritted their teeth and stepped up to take the hit. But an attack that had required every one of them together could hardly be stopped by half their number.
KWAAABOOM!
The ten-meter greatsword came crashing down on the warriors.
"Easy. Way too easy."
Humming a little tune, I collected the artifact. That made three already.
Kim Ara attacked, I defended. When the enemy line ran too deep, I stepped in to carve out an opening and she struck through it. The combo was laughably simple — and beyond anything a first-year could hope to stop.
Same would go for the second-years, wouldn't it.
Our class was called the golden generation. Measured against the second-years, the first-years came out ahead more often than not; even averaging it all together, we were the stronger class. But the third-years had earned the name golden as well, so crossing paths with them would be a genuine fight.
The second-years, huh.
We'd probably get our shot come second semester anyway. Joint training — classes run with the seniors a year above us. On paper, it existed so the second-years could show the first-years what they'd become in a year's time, guide them along, while the first-years learned how real fighting was done.
I was genuinely looking forward to it.
My second-favorite character was, without question, Seo Gayeon. Third place went to Kim Seohyun.
And in first place — a second-year who, even now, was serving as student council president—
"Found you at last."
A faintly giddy voice rang out, and with it came the unmistakable presence of a crowd.
"Villains who would sully our scores. Justice shall judge you."
Saint emerged, dragging a whole horde of students behind her. Thirty-odd of them, no less.
This one might actually take some doing.
I let a smile play across my face and loosened my shoulders. Not that winning the whole thing was impossible.
"And be careful. Now that word's out the bounty on your head has gone up, plenty of Villain organizations are looking to bag you. There's the Nazi Empire made up purely of demonkin, the Blackshirt Corps... and on top of those, the Wings of Dark Flame and the Eye of Phantoms have you in their sights."
"...What?"
None of them were on the level of the Retribution Brigade — so why were the ones a rung below circling me?
"If you ever need help, contact me anytime."
With those parting words, the young heiress dissolved into black smoke and was gone.