Arcane Deflection
When the dwarf finished preparing for battle, three hunters who had been hiding outside the building rushed forward at high speed and surrounded her. To anyone watching, it looked like Kang Yeonsu was in a dire situation, but she casually manifested her mana and unfolded a protective barrier that enveloped the entire area. It was to prevent the fight from damaging the other buildings, yet the fact that she could still face them after expending such a massive amount of mana finally brought a flicker of tension to the dwarf's face.
'Two S-ranks and one A-rank... But that A-rank hunter seems a bit off.'
Why was her attention drawn more to the A-rank hunter than the S-ranks? Was it because he was a foreigner, which was rare for her to see? It probably wasn't just that.
'That hunter... there's something about him.'
I spread fireballs across the empty space where Kang Yeonsu's gaze had settled and traced out the letter 'A'. She glanced at me, smiled faintly, and gave a small nod.
Of course there was no way Yeonsu wouldn't feel what I was feeling. Thinking it was unnecessary worry, I scratched my chin. That's when Yeonhee muttered anxiously.
"What should we do...? Is, is there really nothing we can do to help?"
But Kang Yeonsu looked utterly relaxed, as if she had already moved past the fight and into the stage of enjoying it. To Yeonhee it might have seemed like Yeonsu had fallen into a trap, but interfering now would only get in the way.
"Ugh... Should I summon the Black Dragon in advance?"
'......'
I wanted to tell Yeonhee to just watch comfortably, but there was no need to kill the tension. I simply held her from behind so she couldn't rush out.
'Even a Drake would melt the moment it went over there. What difference would it make?'
I patted Yeonhee's head, signaling her to just observe. Seeing my calm demeanor, she tilted her head and shifted her gaze back to Kang Yeonsu.
'If there's anyone among our country's hunters with even a 0.1% chance of taking down Jo Giman single-handedly, it would be Kang Yeonsu. Just watch.'
"......"
"Hehe— She's quite the big shot. Even surrounded like this, she shows no sign of panic at all."
"Huff─ Huff─"
"Hmm?!"
Once all the hidden comrades had gathered and the dwarf had lightly tested Kang Yeonsu, he realized something about her condition had changed.
'Her face?'
Kang Yeonsu's face was completely swallowed by a red glow. At some point her eyes vanished, replaced by long, torn mouth corners that soared toward the sky.
"Uh...? S-Sis?"
Yeonhee, watching from the side, trembled in fear. The dwarf pointed at Kang Yeonsu and shouted the attack order.
"Get her!!"
'Get... her?'
Capturing someone through combat wasn't easy even with a rank difference of one or more, so the command struck me as odd.
Right after the dwarf's signal, darkness descended as if the sky itself had been covered by a giant hand. Immediately afterward, a mountain-like hammer dropped from above and slammed toward Kang Yeonsu.
A 'Dream' type hunter who materializes mana in various forms to fight. Among those usually lost in fantasy, he was a rare genius who had reached S-rank. He chased Kang Yeonsu as she dodged the hammer, even demonstrating the flexibility to change his mana forms, which surprised us as we watched.
BOOOOM──!!
Yet Kang Yeonsu performed a miraculous feat, lightly catching the homing hammer with one hand. Pretending to be hit, pretending to be pushed back, drawing in the enemy before delivering a fatal blow—that was her specialty, and she executed it flawlessly.
"......?!"
The Dream-type hunter spat out a cry of astonishment but continued with a second and third strike. At the same time, hundreds of high-density magic missiles flew toward Kang Yeonsu from every direction.
Even a mage with no talent could use Magic Missile, the lowest-grade spell. But judging its sharpness to be far from ordinary, Kang Yeonsu dodged again, deflecting the trajectories one by one.
'I can't even see her hands...'
Her movements were invisible. I could only vaguely guess them through sensation. She already seemed to have stepped out of the human realm and taken one foot into the domain of the gods.
The magic missiles persistently pursued Kang Yeonsu as she evaded with graceful, dance-like movements. The moment any gap appeared, materialized mana attacks in the forms of swords, spears, and arrows flew in.
'Did he do something?!'
Moreover, the alien mana from the A-rank hunter—who had felt suspicious from the start—exploded.
CRACKLE─!
At the same time, sharp-toothed plants burst from Kang Yeonsu's body, wrapping around her and binding her tightly.
"......?!"
Kang Yeonsu, who hadn't flinched at the mountain-like hammer or the pinnacle of magic missiles, showed panic for the first time.
'Plant Binding! When the hell did he plant that?'
In the end, Kang Yeonsu was rooted to the spot. The dwarf, finally revealing his full power, delivered a piercing strike that slammed into her abdomen.
BOOOOM────!!
"Cough—!"
Kang Yeonsu's waist bent like a bow as she shot high into the sky. The dwarf's ferocious follow-up blows hammered her face and abdomen without pause.
'Same body reinforcement type as Yeonsu. Incredible. As expected, is it all about the gear?'
The four of them had linked their combo in the blink of an eye. Yeonhee had only looked away for a moment, so when she saw Kang Yeonsu getting pummeled she couldn't help but cry out.
"No!!"
Yeonhee's body, still held in my arms, shook violently. She was already concentrating mana in her hand as if ready to summon the Black Dragon at any second.
'Yeonhee. Watch carefully. That is the pinnacle of body reinforcement hunters.'
"...... Kihihihic, kihihic─"
After taking hundreds of punches, Kang Yeonsu spat out the blood filling her mouth and let out a spine-chilling laugh.
"Stop laughing! You monstrous bitch!!"
The dwarf shuddered at her sneer and tried to continue the barrage, but her body swelled once more and a huge horn sprouted from her forehead. Her human appearance had completely vanished, leaving only a ferocious beast.
"Uh... So this is your true form?"
The dwarf froze with a dazed expression for a moment, then steadied himself and struck the jaw of Kang Yeonsu, who now resembled the gatekeeper of hell. Just looking at the blow, an enormous amount of mana had been concentrated into a single point.
But.
PUUK—
"Hmm?!"
His fist left only a small dent on the face of Kang Yeonsu in her Divine Beast Transformation state and inflicted no actual damage.
"GRRRROOOOOOAAAAAAR───!!"
With a roar that seemed to tear eardrums apart, Kang Yeonsu struck the dwarf's face. At the same time, she delivered one blow each to the S-rank hunter who had created the hammer from the sky, the mage who had shown the completed form of magic missiles, and the A-rank hunter with the astonishing binding ability.
It looked like she was simply standing in place and twitching her arms, but each strike carried transcendent speed and destructive power packed with fierce intent.
BANG─! BANG─! BOOM!! BOOOOM──!
The hunters who each took a single hit from Kang Yeonsu were slammed into the building roof and driven straight down into the floor. Their limbs bent at unnatural angles and their bones shattered from the fatal impact.
"......"
It had truly been one hit each. With that, as if she had completed her mission, Kang Yeonsu began reverting her transformed appearance back to normal.
"Whoa......"
Yeonhee rubbed her eyes, unable to comprehend how the battlefield had been cleaned up in an instant.
'Haha... She's insane. One-shotting S-rank hunters? And four of them simultaneously? What kind of monster is that?'
It even made me wonder whether Kang Yeonsu might not have lost to Jo Giman when she came to save me last time.
They were both S-rank hunters. But the ranking system had been created to manage hunters efficiently, not to accurately measure combat power. Looking at Kang Yeonsu, that truth was obvious. The level gap was simply too vast to place them in the same rank.
We had just witnessed the monstrous strength that even the earliest awakeners had acknowledged, and for a moment we were left speechless.
"......"
"......"
The truly surprising part was that none of the hunters—including the dwarf—who had been driven into the basement floor by Kang Yeonsu had died. They had suffered serious injuries, of course, but receiving a 'baptism' from a powerhouse like her might have given them the chance to awaken new potential.
In other words, Kang Yeonsu had shown mercy.
Capturing them alive for interrogation would have been ideal, but now didn't seem like the time.
'Maybe I should secretly drop a bomb on them.'
I would feel better if they were dead, but it felt awkward to mess with people she had deliberately spared. While I was pondering how to kill them without her noticing, Kang Yeonsu's body—which had been boiling like lava—rapidly cooled and released massive clouds of steam. She slowly turned her head and met our eyes from the opposite building.
"As expected, Sis! You're amazing!! Wow—!!"
"Clack clack clack!"
I responded to Yeonhee's cheers, but I couldn't shake off a lingering uneasy feeling.
'Is this really the end?'
No matter how thoroughly I swept the area with my sensory waves, I couldn't detect any other threats.
'No, there's definitely something—'
RUMBLE—
"Kuhehehek— Pukyahahahahak— This is really something."
'He recovered already?'
The dwarf, who had been embedded deep in the floor, broke through the half-collapsed building debris and revealed his upper body. His condition was so bad it was hard to understand how he could even move.
"Huff— Huff— As expected. It's not easy. Kang Yeonsu. Your reputation is well-deserved."
Even though his armor was half-destroyed and his eyeballs were half-popped out from the pressure of Kang Yeonsu's blows, the dwarf spoke casually. At that sight, Yeonhee froze mid-cheer and clung even tighter to me.
"Pick up your eyeballs first, senior."
"Kuhuhuhuk... Damn it. The power I've built over my entire life, crushed so pathetically by a rookie who hasn't even reached her thirties yet. How mortifying... I should have accepted that person's proposal after all..."
The dwarf muttered incomprehensible words in a somber tone, then suddenly spat blood and burst into loud laughter.
"Puhyahahak— However, you probably didn't know that this was also part of our plan."
"What? What the hell are you—"
SHIVER──
'What the?!'
The moment the dwarf spouted those incomprehensible words, the most unpleasant and sticky sensation I had ever felt pierced straight through my body. Thanks to the multiple scenarios I had reviewed before coming here, I reacted faster than anyone.
'Yeonsu?!'
Instinctively sensing a dark hand reaching for her, I activated every skill I could at once and burst forward. I had far surpassed my own limits.
'Yeonsu can't die here! After Yeonhee has finally started to brighten up, I can't let her watch someone die right in front of her!'
It was incomprehensible how I could move at such speed, but it was driven by the desperate will to protect Yeonhee's mental state and the need to repay a past connection that only I remembered.
With my concentration soaring to the extreme in an instant, the world turned completely white. All unnecessary things vanished, leaving only Yeonhee, myself, and Kang Yeonsu floating in a space of pure nothingness.
Inside that space I made exact eye contact with Kang Yeonsu. For some reason, the flow of time seemed different only around her.
'Did those guys set something up? Yeonsu's reaction is too slow!'
"......?!"
The moment a light finally flickered in her eyes and our gazes met, an extremely sharp and thin line flew toward her back.
'Magic?!'
It wasn't a sword attack. It was a magic blade forged to an extreme thinness. The spell my senses had detected carried a principle that seemed capable of slicing through even Kang Yeonsu's body—which wouldn't break no matter how much it was struck.
Arcane Deflection
BAAAAANG─!
'Ugh!!'
Fortunately I had arrived just in time. I barely managed to nudge the blade's trajectory as it closed in on Kang Yeonsu's neck. Both my arms were bent backward and exploded from the effort, but blocking it at all felt like a miracle, so I considered it a cheap price.
The problem was that even in a crisis where her neck could have been taken, Kang Yeonsu's movements remained utterly calm.
'What are you doing!!'