Beyond a Thousand Spells
Honestly speaking, Park Woochan couldn't quite wrap his head around the fact that he was still alive.
His brain understood it, of course.
The near-miraculous recovery from moments ago must have caught the dragon off guard too. Revival didn't exactly grant anyone exemption from the laws of physics, after all. Which meant that even a dragon in free fall would have struggled to put force into its tail.
Having reasoned that far, Park Woochan let out a weak laugh.
He understood it in his head. He simply couldn't *feel* it.
In other words: it hurt like hell.
He'd managed to keep his life, sure, but fighting any further? The thought didn't even come. Because it had been an absolute nightmare.
No, seriously.
I'm not joking. This is real.
Nobody knew Park Woochan's true capabilities better than the man himself. On the premise that his opponent was a monster, he operated at a level capable of cutting down even an S-rank monster that had seized a gate head-on. In other words, he carried the conviction that under virtually any conditions, if the enemy was a monster, he would win.
It wasn't a matter of specs. It was a matter of tactics and technique.
And yet.
The magic he had witnessed moments ago was on an entirely different plane.
Extra-standard. Calamity rank.
Literally a realm beyond reach — even for Park Woochan, the very pinnacle of the high-end specs a modern hunter could wield.
As he'd said, there was no theory behind it, no evidence. Just a stinging certainty — an intuition bordering on instinct — telling him that the intervention from moments ago had been the work of an extra-standard monster.
He supposed he'd have to revise his assumptions.
Honestly, Park Woochan had assumed their summoning had failed.
And why wouldn't he?
Certainly, the great dragon before him was an overwhelmingly powerful existence. In terms of raw mana alone, the greatest in history — a monster holding the maximum mana theoretically possible. It lacked minions and had none of a gate's environmental support, but in pure combat power it ranked at the very top of S-rank. Add the gate's mana now available to it, and its pure combat capability approached the high-end ceiling of what a monster could achieve.
Just like Park Woochan himself.
Only — and this was the flip side — that was the extent of it. It was undeniably a monster rare even in his active days, but not one capable of annihilating humanity single-handedly. That was Park Woochan's judgment.
Well — left to rampage, it might vaporize a continent or so. And if that dragon breath fired at full output scored a direct hit, half the Korean peninsula would be gone. Probably.
But.
It can be measured. Quantified. Compared.
Therefore it could be felled.
That was the estimate he'd arrived at. It was not, literally speaking, an existence beyond the standard scale.
Which was, of course, obvious.
Conditions had been rotten from the start. The whole plan rested on Dr. Pyeong Sowoon's theory, launched without a shred of verification. And the enemy hadn't conveniently processed Lee Yeeun into a proper sacrifice either. Even substituting her as the catalyst — could they really have reflected her growth in real time? Honestly doubtful. Hell, could a substitute actually replace a catalyst in the first place?
Either way, it was all conjecture without a single certainty. So Park Woochan had no choice but to assume their summoning had failed.
Granted, dismissing an S-rank monster connected to the gate with one careless word was a stretch……
Anyway.
That assumption had been the mistake.
The summoning had certainly failed. But.
A path had opened.
What happened right before his eyes was the proof. In other words — their plan to summon an extra-standard monster and trigger the Third Great Cataclysm had failed, yes. But the ritual may have been merely incomplete. The first half might have actually succeeded.
An avatar.
The great dragon standing before Park Woochan now was, nine times out of ten, the avatar of that extra-standard monster. That was his judgment.
And it fit perfectly with the fact that something had been able to intervene in the earlier exchange.
At any rate, the summoning ritual they'd staged was a dedicated summoning circle for an extra-standard monster, arranged for the Third Great Cataclysm. It was far more plausible than the notion that some unrelated monster had simply dropped out of the sky.
The problem was what it implied: that this extra-standard monster was commanding an S-rank monster as its *avatar*.
Son of a—
That is genuinely off the scale.
With a hollow laugh, Park Woochan chewed the pill he'd kept tucked in his mouth. Only then did sensation begin to return, bit by bit — because his gas mask had been blown apart by that last strike, and he'd inhaled the toxins scattered through the surrounding air directly into his lungs, leaving his whole body stinging.
Such was the dragon's breath. Even a miss scattered enough poison to do this?
Ah, I could cry. It hurts so much I'm starting to say stupid things out loud.
Chuckling weakly, he worked his barely responsive hand to operate his pouch, then slowly raised a recovery potion to his lips.
……Recovery potions were no cure-all, either. For a simple injury, maybe; the graver the wound, the longer the treatment took. Otherwise hunters wouldn't die off so easily. In Park Woochan's current state, he'd need a good several dozen minutes of bed rest. If a top-grade potion demanded this much, a cheap one would mean hospitalization plus a week minimum.
That was the kind of wound he'd taken.
And yet.
Park Woochan swallowed the potion without hesitation.
Because he had a conviction.
I can't win like this.
Staying down meant losing. Alive or dead, his only gamble was on the potion's recovery power. Dying now, potionless — or buying time to attempt one more reversal of the tide.
Park Woochan chose the latter.
The question was whether he could stall long enough…… and judging by how the potion had extorted even the minimal mana he needed for Shukuchi, things looked grim.
A snort of laughter escaped him. What the earlier magic had restored was only his second signature. The first — the one that had stolen the dragon's wings — remained unrecovered.
Which meant the dragon was likewise still reeling from its crash to earth. Ten minutes, roughly, before it could rise again. He figured he could stall five of them like this.
The remaining five──
Well. What to do.
Fortunately, he had an option.
Let's see. Choi Seungjun, you there?
[Found you.]
Ice-formed letters appeared before his eyes as he spoke into the empty air.
Monster of a man. Even now, he still had mana to spare?
Park Woochan grumbled without meaning to, then opened his mouth.
Can you tie that bastard's legs down once it comes to?
[To a degree.]
Good enough.
[……How about sending in Lee Joongoo now?]
No.
His judgment hadn't changed. And there was one more reason besides.
It wouldn't kill it.
The great dragon before him and Joongoo's signature were catastrophically mismatched. Like Park Woochan, Joongoo's signature was all but invincible in theory — and there were broadly two ways to counter it. One was to see the straight bolt tearing through the sound barrier and react. The other was to take the bolt head-on, endure it, and counterattack.
And the dragon before him was, without question, the latter. Factor in its One-Hit Faith protection, and it was doubly true.
Thinking back now, splitting their forces like this had probably been a stroke of luck.
Where's Yeeun?
[Nearby. I'll send her your way.]
Hm.
Would she really tip the odds? The thought crossed his mind — but Seungjun must have had his reasons.
Before long, Lee Yeeun emerged through the undergrowth. What struck him most was how stubbornly thorough she'd been — not only carrying the weapons he'd handed out before the fall, but even collecting the shed dragon scales.
Teacher……
What a state you're in.
Park Woochan burst out laughing despite himself. It was far too easy to picture the expression Lee Yeeun was making behind her gas mask.
You should retreat, sir.
Not happening.
……Why not? Sir, do you even realize what condition you're in right now?!
Hey — hey. Keep your voice down. It'll hear you.
Only then did Lee Yeeun lower her voice. He didn't know about anything else, but the fact that she was still wearing her gas mask even in this situation struck him as faintly comical.
Either way — no.
Why? Why would you say that?
You know why. It's obvious.
We have to take that thing down. Now.
If they let it go, the damage would grow far too great…… He stole a glance at its back. The great dragon's wingstumps — the gruesome ruin laid bare there.
Let that bastard go, and it comes back with new wings.
It went without saying that Park Woochan's signature wasn't permanent either. It wasn't so flimsy that it faded within a single battle — but neither did it last an eternity. Which meant that with the dragon's overwhelming mana, regenerating those wings wouldn't be difficult.
That was Park Woochan's call, and it was an eminently rational one — rational enough that even Lee Yeeun, a hunter with eyes freshly opened, could have nodded along.
Even if I beg you… can't I do it instead?
Which was exactly why — that plea hadn't come from her as a hunter.
Park Woochan's face went wide-eyed, flustered, hopelessly awkward. With his gas mask shattered, every inch of that expression was burned vividly into her sight.
Yep.
But.
How could his tone of voice be *that* infuriating? An unexpected swell of emotion rose in her chest, and Lee Yeeun clutched the hem of her uniform.
You're so mean.
That was my first time, you know. If I beg you this hard, shouldn't you at least think about it a little?
Of course, she knew in her head. That Park Woochan's judgment was perfectly sound. That, if anything, the choice he'd made was the result of weighing her — and countless others — in the balance.
And yet.
Go to hell. Seriously.
……Okay, that was way too harsh──
……Retracted.
That was all the grumbling Lee Yeeun could manage.
To tell the truth, Park Woochan didn't think anything worth her worry would come to pass. This was, in the end, an extension round — merely an extra bout tacked onto a fight that had already been decided. Therefore:
It'll be settled in a single instant.
After the dragon shook off the impact, stirred that colossal body, and detected Park Woochan — then Seungjun would bind its legs, and Park Woochan would do *something*. The only question was how much of his body he could recover by then.
And so.
At the moment time itself seemed to congeal — the showdown began, quiet as a chokehold.
BOOOM!!
The great dragon, still reeling from the crash, turned its gaze — and it landed on Park Woochan and Lee Yeeun. In the very next instant, before the dragon could unleash its roar, its entire body froze solid.
Needless to say, it was Choi Seungjun's power. And by no means an easy feat — the dragon's monstrous mana counted, in effect, as anti-magic resistance. The iceberg that had erupted from the ground began to shudder, because the great dragon trapped inside was thrashing in fury.
But.
Choi Seungjun did not stop. He drove his ability to maximum output. Above the frozen dragon's head, a wedge of ice took shape in a blink — its point aimed straight down.
Accounting for the One-Hit Faith protection, it was a complete waste. It would do nothing but heal the dragon's wounds.
Which was why—
[Aim true, Cadet Lee Yeeun!]
Yes, sir!
Choi Seungjun handed the reins of the ice over to Lee Yeeun.
It went without saying that the mass was far beyond what a single cadet's ability could manipulate — and that was precisely the point of this arrangement. Choi Seungjun only needed to form the ice. Place it properly, and gravity itself would drop the iceberg onto the dragon of its own accord. Layering telekinesis over it for fine control was Lee Yeeun's role.
She had hurled thrown weapons before — but she had never attacked an enemy *directly* with her telekinesis. Lee Yeeun's power fell outside the scope of the One-Hit Faith's protection.
He prepared something like this?!
It was a combination that would have drawn admiration even from Park Woochan.
At the same time — the exact moment the swollen iceberg reached its limit and began to fall — the great dragon shattered the ice.
───────!!!!
Timing of unbearable precision. And in that razor-thin instant, Park Woochan moved.
Three dragon-slaying daggers remained. His wrist, wreathed in lightning mana, snapped in a vicious arc. And then—
THUNK-THUNK-THUNK!!
Three daggers buried themselves in the great dragon's flesh. Bare hide, stripped of every scale — the very spots where three scales had been torn away.
……The dragon's roar echoed across the field.
Even accounting for the kin-slaying property lodged in the daggers, they couldn't deal serious damage to a dragon of this size. They cut better than ordinary knives, sure, but that was sheer matter of scale. As before, the effect was a momentary flinch.
And.
Right now, even a flinch was enough.
CRUUUUNCH!!
The iceberg, wreathed in telekinesis as it fell, slammed down onto the dragon's neck, pinning it to the earth like a nail through a board. Hard on its heels, thrown weapons trailing arcs of lightning flew into the gaps of stripped scale and buried themselves.
Under normal circumstances, a gap that glaring would never have existed. But the sequence they'd just executed was, effectively, Choi Seungjun's full power — a two-strike combination born of the world's finest talent, more than even this great dragon could shrug off.
He'd bought enough time. With damage like that dealt, even a signature scraped together from mana he didn't have would suffice.
Gritting his teeth, Park Woochan pushed himself upright. His signature — Cut Prettily. How many minutes had he burned just to buy the single sword-stroke through empty air needed to activate this technique?
He stilled his breathing. Focused his mind. Brought the flow of his mana into alignment──
Son of a bitch.
The next moment, Park Woochan cursed out loud. He had no choice.
The dragon's mana pattern, steady right up until the crash, was now raging with outright madness. A full thousand-odd defensive spells — layers of protection, each keyed to a different wavelength of mana, shielding the great dragon entirely.
What on earth was this? Ironically, the answer came to him far too easily.
You rotten bastard.
Extra-standard rank. Is that what you're trying to teach me it means?
And in that moment, Park Woochan found himself remembering a tale he'd once heard — the stage of the First Great Cataclysm.
Martial arts and all cultivated skill were, ultimately, the privilege of humankind — so he had said. But as with all things in this world, there were exceptions to every rule.
Take, for instance, the conqueror of that Greek labyrinth. One of the legendary founders said to have united the god-given martial arts of boxing (pygmachia) and wrestling (pale) into the first ancient mixed martial art — the great King of Athens was said to have founded his art mid-labyrinth, fighting his fated rival. More precisely: the desperate exchange with the half-bull, half-man monster he met within the maze. The most perilous battle the King of Athens ever fought became the origin of the Greek all-fighting art — the pankration.
Which meant, naturally, that if the world's most famous bull-headed, human-bodied monster were ever summoned, its technique would tower immeasurably above any ordinary practitioner's.
The spectacle unfolding before him now was no different.
Magic. The command of mana. That extra-standard monster unquestionably possessed arcane knowledge surpassing the vast majority of mages. Well — without it, there'd be no way to break through a signature like his. Even now, at this very moment.
Can you pierce all thousand-plus spells and cut the dragon down all over again? — the scene seemed to taunt him with exactly that question.
Impossible. That was Park Woochan's conclusion. A technique to slip past a thousand defensive spells and cut only the dragon — that was excessive even by any measure. Even the Butcher had never bothered honing craft that useless.
Therefore.
What this moment demanded was not a contest of finesse.
It was a contest of force.
That, too, was why Park Woochan had cursed.
You son of a bitch.
You are dying by my hand. For real.
Vowing it with every fiber of his body, Park Woochan stretched his hand to the side — to the dragon scales Lee Yeeun had gathered and brought back with her. And beside them, he pinched up the shavings and powder that had flaked from the scales.
Even through his gauntlet, the texture sent alarms screaming through his whole body.
Frankly — the last thing he wanted to do.
But.
Choi Seungjun, you absolute bastard!! You should've just grabbed Yeeun and run!!
With a curse, Park Woochan swept the powder from his palm into his mouth. And then—
──SEROOK!
The next instant, it was decided.
An act the Park Woochan of any ordinary day would never have committed. But its effect was certain.
True — he could not pierce all thousand-odd spells and sever the dragon. Instead:
The dragon's flesh. The countless protective spells. The scattered wavelengths of mana. In the single instant every thread of mana before him aligned—
the great dragon's body, together with its thousand spells, was split clean in two.
D-Did we do it?! Sir, we did it! We actually did it! Sir?
The only problem, of course, was that the man at the center of it all never got to see it.
With a soft, heavy slump, his body gave way. And in the last flicker before consciousness left him entirely—
BLUUUARGH!!
Amid a magnificent eruption of vomit, Park Woochan's mind went dark.