Bottomless Pit
"O God of Light! Bestow Your blessing upon me!"
"O God of War! Grant me Your arms!"
"O God of Struggle! Lend me Your favor!"
As the battle began, Saint threw his head back and roared the prayer at the heavens. And above him, from the labyrinth's ceiling, something was falling.
—Master.
Heukcheon's warning rang in my mind, a note of caution in her voice. A moment later, light burst through the labyrinth's ceiling and poured down, forming a golden halo above Saint's head. Radiant armor began to be woven out of pure light around his body.
The blessing of the God of Light, the armor of the God of War — and the favor of the God of Struggle, which reacted to its bearer's will and boosted his physical abilities the moment he committed himself to the fight.
'Troublesome.'
I slid one foot forward and settled into a draw stance. The Winter Sword had been sitting inside Baekhong for quite a while now. With my Talent, Perusal, I checked its charge rate.
Charge Rate: [158%]
'Not bad.'
I wrapped Yeokcheon around my body — but kept it out of the blade. The energy was lethal to most artifacts, after all. A metallic screech rang out as the Winter Sword slid free, scattering a cold azure radiance that seemed ready to freeze the world itself. I stepped forward.
The essence was extreme speed. I wove in the principles of the Black Flash Sword Art — a blade that was simply, unequivocally faster than anyone else, becoming a flash of blue light.
Crack. Crack-crack-crack!
Black Flash Sword Art
Black Light Lightning
Those who failed to react were carved apart by the blue flash. Barrier shields sprang from their uniforms, and every trap, ward, and enchanted safeguard laid into the labyrinth's walls, floor, and ceiling activated at once to shield the students. Ten of them, all told.
'Good enough.'
A single strike had swept away a third of them. Fear was beginning to bloom across most of the survivors' faces.
"Haha......" Saint laughed, his voice thick with disbelief — but his expression hardened as he leveled his light-wreathed greatsword at me. "This is truly absurd, Lee Seoha."
Then he turned to the other students. "If all of you rush him together, we can stop Lee Seoha. Right?"
"N-no way. You can't be serious—"
"I'll buy the time myself," Saint declared, his face set with grim resolve. "I'll hold back Kim Ara however I can. Haram, you go round up the students nearby who are ranked in the top ten. Everyone else — strike at Lee Seoha."
The moment Saint finished speaking, the students' expressions transformed. A fraction of the blessing of Struggle he had received settled onto the rest of them.
"Kim Ara. Even you won't bring me down easily once I've resolved to simply endure." And he wasn't wrong. If it were anyone else, things might have gone differently, but Saint was a holy knight who had received the blessings of five gods from the White Temple. Worse, he specialized in defense — even Kim Ara would need time to take him down.
I counted. Nineteen. 'And he's even called for backup from one of the others.' Time wasn't on our side either. I understood, clearly, that I had to do this properly.
I slid the Winter Sword back into Baekhong and gripped Heukcheon's hilt. "Whew." I honed the sword demon's senses to a razor's edge.
Click.
Something switched on deep within my mental image, and the colors of the world bled outward like watercolor on wet paper. I burst forward. Nineteen. No stalling, no games — I'd end this in a single breath!
"He's m-mad! He's coming straight at us?!" A sword came hurtling at me; I batted it aside on instinct through the sword demon's senses. Arrows and spells streaked in from the other flank. I dodged them not with Yeokcheon but with Black Flash Step.
The swordsmen and warriors all trained their blades on me, so I launched myself upward on the essence of Black Flash Step.
"He's gone into the sky!"
"Aim fast! Up in the air he can't dodge easily—"
Arrows flew at me. I conjured a foothold in empty air — and leapt. Not a leap of evasion. A leap of attack. The dead center of the gathered students. That was my target.
'Heukcheon.' Internal skill activation — Dominant Spirit.
A low vuum rolled through the chamber as a supremely domineering force spread outward, formless qi coiling around the students' limbs and wrenching at their movements.
Thud.
Heukcheon bit into the ground, and I poured every last thread of Yeokcheon I had into the blade.
From the tip of Heukcheon's blade, the energy of Yeokcheon began to spiral. The tiny vortex swelled into something monstrous in the span of a heartbeat.
"D-dodge it! Get away!"
"That thing is anything but ordinary!"
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE!
The black energy birthed a storm — a vortex that swallowed everything in its path and denied mana itself. Through my Divine Eye, I could see mana screaming.
"Are you insane?! Magic won't manifest!"
"Warriors! All of you, concentrate! I don't know what that thing is, but it's devouring our mana!"
"Everyone, hold your positions! Mages, fall back — all of you!"
The students' faces drained of color. Saint, visibly shaken, knocked Kim Ara away with a burst of light and rushed toward me. He and the surviving students pooled their strength; mana churned violently around them — and then the denying storm swallowed everything whole.
"Ugh." I dragged myself upright with considerable effort.
The Bottomless Pit was not an efficient technique. It was an anti-cavalry art — a martial skill built to drag a single foe stronger than yourself down into death alongside you. On the surface it looked like something designed for mowing down crowds, but in truth it was made to kill one person. Still, I'd earned a decent recovery rate when my concept stat Yeokcheon hit 30, so I'd trusted the numbers and given it a shot.
'The efficiency is terrible, though.'
For the first time, I understood why the Heavenly Demon had created Black Wings. I surveyed my surroundings — students sprawled everywhere, each one cocooned in layers of machinery and protective magic. 'It's hard to end things without the kids getting hurt.' My head was still spinning. Clearly, the Bottomless Pit was a technique I'd need to save until my concept stat Yeokcheon climbed a good deal higher.
—...That was remarkable, Master.
'Oh?'
—It was! You may not realize it, Master, but this... even the previous Heavenly Demons had to reach Supreme Peak before they could properly wield the Bottomless Pit. Yeongcheon was fussing around me in a flurry of tails and flustered praise.
Of course, there would be a colossal gulf between the Bottomless Pit the previous Heavenly Demon had used at Supreme Peak and the one I'd just thrown out. Maybe not the difference between heaven and earth, but certainly the difference between a mountain summit and the sky above it. The two of them fussing like this, I figured, was less about the power itself and more about my control over it.
I walked over to Kim Ara, who was blinking up at me with wide, round eyes.
"...You're insanely strong."
"I got a bit carried away." I sank down onto the ground, strength spent, and looked up at her. Kim Ara's violet eyes met mine and held them.
'I feel like I haven't looked after her nearly enough.'
Excuses aside, I'd been busy. Building affinity with the kids while focusing my cultivation on Seo Gayeon had simply been the priority. And thinking about it now, she'd quietly helped me out more than a few times, too. The best fix would be to take her along into a dungeon.
—And be careful. Now that your bounty's gone up, there are plenty of villain organizations out there hoping to bag you. The Nazi Empire made up entirely of demons, the Black Shirts... and the Wings of Dark Flame and the Eyes of Apparition have their sights set on you.
Magongnyeo's warning surfaced in my mind — the news that my bounty had climbed, and that demon collectives and villain syndicates alike were watching me. The Retribution Brigade seemed to have washed its hands of the affair, but every single organization Magongnyeo had named was not one to be taken lightly.
'...Maybe I should just bring Seo Gayeon along, after all.' For a moment, the temptation flickered through me. But call it a gut feeling — something told me that would only end up pushing us further apart. 'I'll have to spend it, then.' Looked like I'd be buying that Talent after all.
In a desolate, derelict factory in Ulsan, a masked figure sat in a chair.
"Krehk!" Across from him, a man in his late forties coughed up blood — a thick, blackish-red gore, courtesy of the curse the beings before him had laid upon him.
"Wh-what did I ever do to you? Why—why are you doing this to me?!"
"Hmm, there's really no particular reason," the masked figure said mildly. "It's just that you happen to be holding something we want? Yeah. Something like that."
The mask hid his expression completely, and yet the middle-aged man couldn't shake the feeling that behind it, the man was grinning.
"That mask... Don't tell me — the Retribution Brigade?"
"Oh? Am I famous around here? How flattering — my name's even spread all the way to the Yin Nation." The masked man nodded, sounding genuinely pleased.
The Yin Nation. Long ago, it had been one of the ancient kingdoms of China. But when the dimensions shattered and collapsed into one another, China was the country that took that catastrophe head-on. There was a time when it was the nation where monsters and demons ran the wildest; a nation the Seven Evils had assaulted in force, driving it to the very brink of destruction — and then, above even that, an entity called the Apostle had appeared and torn the country of China into five.
China, sundered into five, had fractured into independent states each named for an ancient kingdom — and the middle-aged man was one of the core powers within the Yin Nation. Despite Korea sitting right next door, it was the most chaotic city on the continent. That was China's current address.
"S-spare me! Spare me and I'll give you my hidden vault—"
"Ah, the one in Anhui Province?"
The man flinched, panic flashing across his face. "Pfft. Did you really think we'd go through all this trouble without knowing that much?" The masked figure rose to his feet. Slow, unhurried footsteps crossed the concrete. Then he pressed the muzzle of a gun against the middle-aged man's head.
"Well then — adios~" Playing it up with theatrical cheer, the masked being — the commander of the Retribution Brigade — pulled the trigger.
BANG!
The man's body slumped to the floor. The commander removed his mask. "Gangcheon. What's the word on the vice-commander?"
"We've pinned down her location. But of all places, she's being held where Paewang is."
"......" The commander's expression drained slowly into blankness — and Gangcheon could feel it, the killing intent boiling beneath that impassive mask of a face.
"Commander. I hate saying this as much as you'd hate hearing it, but Paewang is dangerous. The man is a gorge-force god. A monster capable of toppling an entire nation single-handedly."
"Gangcheon. Our principle never changes. We do not abandon our comrades. And if a comrade has been wronged — we repay that grudge a hundred times over."
Rules forged by a man born as trash who was determined to live like a human being. The commander smiled, cold and quiet, and began to prepare for his reckoning with Paewang.