Checkmate in Flames
That said, I didn't exactly have a good alternative.
Here I was, having used Shukuchi, forced to abandon the distance I'd worked so hard to carve out. And as it happened, that distance belonged entirely to the rear guard's domain.
A searing heat crashed over me. A blast of hot wind, as if my lungs themselves were smoldering. The flames were so dense that the armor of cold wrapped around my body couldn't simply wave them off.
Seriously, just log this guy as presumed S-rank and be done with it.
I cursed the Association's assessors in my head. No, even if he's left the Association, a criminal should at least have his rank properly updated. Send an A+ rank after this bastard and they wouldn't leave so much as a bone behind.
Wavering flames. Tongues of fire flicked like a serpent's tongue, burning the spot where I'd been standing.
……Dodging the attacks wasn't difficult. But every time I evaded one, the ground available for evading the next attack shrank.
A driven hunt. That was the first thought that came to mind.
Kim Minchul's ability usage, as I'd confirmed through this fight, came in two broad forms. The first was the spatial ignition he was known for — a technique that set the ambient mana in the air alight. That one I could handle, more or less, with my mana sense.
The problem was the second: the flames he wielded through his own mana.
It went without saying that using his own mana was far simpler than seizing control of the mana in the atmosphere and igniting it. He had no need to labor at dominating the mana first, and Kim Minchul's own mana, having awakened a fire-ignition ability, would have transformed to suit it. The power and the construction, accordingly, were simply not comparable.
The flames that took on various shapes to herd me toward a corner were not the kind you could slip through with a flow of cold air, unlike his earlier attacks.
If there was a weakness, it was the directionality his attacks carried. In other words, the unavoidable gap born of the fact that he used his own mana. Simply put, he could only generate fire relative to his own body. Compared to spatial ignition, it was relatively easy to read — there was a delay between the generation of the flame and its impact.
The problem was that Kim Minchul knew that too.
Perhaps because I'd brushed off his first attack a little too easily, he'd been keeping me in check by mixing his first and second techniques together in suitable proportions.
Of course, if that had been all, I could have pried open the gaps between his combinations……
Tch!
The whip of flame Kim Minchul swung inverted its shape. On the bare sand, where not a single blade of grass grew, fire blazed to life — a scorching mass that gobbled up the surrounding mana and swelled in size. Ignition ability, third application. Not lighting a fire with mana, but a technique for controlling existing flame as mana.
That was fire's defining trait, unlike cold or lightning: it left traces of the attack lingering on the battlefield.
A burning building. A flame that could not be easily snuffed out even if the attack missed its mark. Because of this, if you asked hunters under the Association which hunters they hated most, fire-ability users were always among the first named. Why? Because the damage bills were on a completely different scale.
But precisely because of that, no one surpassed them at this kind of application. Unlike lightning that vanished in an instant or ice that lacked mobility, every last ember scattered across the field became a staging ground for the next attack.
It was like Go, in a way. The more he pressed his offensive, the fewer moves I had left to play — the fewer spaces I could place a stone.
In that case?
Then I'll just flip the board.
However much Kim Minchul's attacks resembled Go, combat between hunters was not Go. Flipping the board — playing new moves on top of stones already placed — that was exactly what a fight between hunters was. In that sense, hunters' tactics resembled Othello more than Go. Environment. Comparison. Preparation. Countermeasures. You played the moves you'd prepared and overturned the shape of the battlefield. No need to think about the next exchange. Seize the advantage once, and it ends there.
……How many times had I circled this empty lot since the fight began? I'd memorized the terrain. I'd studied Kim Minchul's personal patterns. In other words, my preparations to crack him were complete.
The next moment, I stepped forward with everything I had. Toward the prison of fire that had coiled itself to eliminate every place I could run — I threw my body straight into it.
What—!
The stunned voice came not from me, but from Kim Minchul. Naturally. The essence of these attacks was, after all, herding. A direct hit was another matter, but if you steeled yourself and took the charge head-on, slipping through was easy.
The cold armor over my entire body was stripped away in an instant. Even through the fireproof-treated suit, I could feel the scorching heat. And yet, the flames — attenuated twice over — couldn't leave a single proper wound on my body.
Blocked by the very flames he'd raised, Kim Minchul's line of sight was cut off instead. Inside the curtains of fire licking at my skin, I steeled my heart once more.
Hesitation lasted only a heartbeat. To Kim Minchul, who could control flame, this much was surely nothing but a parlor trick. But that one parlor trick was exactly what I needed right now.
VWOOM!!
Piercing through that instant of hesitation, I hurled my weapon toward Kim Minchul's position beyond the flames — the position I'd memorized. Of course, he wouldn't fall for a move like this either. He swung the staff in his hand and knocked the flying weapon aside.
What the—?!
But the impact exceeded his expectations, and Kim Minchul's whole body wobbled. A blow absurdly heavy to have cracked through flame that burned even mana. He'd probably assumed it was the greatsword. Nope. As it happened, the heavy thing was the weight.
There were exactly two attack methods I could use in this situation. One was the throwing weapon I'd taken from the warehouse; the other was the chain attached to the greatsword's hilt. And whichever it was, he must have been confident he could deal with it easily.
Well, that's what I lured you into thinking. That was precisely why I hadn't used the chain even once until now — I'd been saving it for this very moment.
The flames guttered out. Beyond them, Kim Minchul's eyes went wide when he confirmed my figure. Because what I was gripping right now wasn't the greatsword's hilt. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was the end of the chain that had been coiled around the hilt until a moment ago.
……I hadn't unwound the chain and thrown it at him. Whatever the case, a giant sword like that. No way it was light enough to swat aside with one hand. Even I had trained harder than most physical-enhancement users just to handle the thing.
I brought the chain down on Kim Minchul, whose stance had collapsed — and charged at the same time. With a whistling spin!
In step with the chain clashing against Kim Minchul's arm, the greatsword's blade pointed down toward the earth. The blade, using the chain as its tail to snake around his body, plunged into the sand with a sharp thunk.
One breath for him to fumble the control of his flames. One breath for him to stagger under the greatsword's weight. Two more breaths for him to pull the sword out and unwind the chain. Four breaths in total — more than enough to close the distance against a rear guard.
The distance that had yawned between us moments ago collapsed in an instant, and I clenched my fists. In the end, my beloved sword was something I could hardly use in combat against people. It had never been designed with that in mind, so it was only natural.
Which meant that the moment this fight turned into a duel, my only way to finish it was these two fists.
Got him!
……And so, the next moment, when victory was within arm's reach, I leapt backward — not as the result of some rational calculation. If I had to call it something, instinct. A body reacting to its sixth sense moved on its own. Honestly, I felt a little cheated. Why, of all moments, did my body decide to react on its own now?
But — as unbelievable as it was for someone who prided himself on a hunter's cold rationality — this time, instinct had the right answer.
VWOOOM!!
A heavy roar sliced through the air where the tip of my nose had been a heartbeat before. If my face had still been there, my jaw wouldn't just have shattered — my head would have gone flying outright. I was certain of it, because that downward swing had carried real weight behind it.
……A chill crawled up the back of my neck. A single bead of cold sweat tickled my chin, dropped, and splattered into a small lump on the ground.
And there he was. Kim Minchul, who had been on the defensive until moments ago, stroked his own chin with an air of utter composure.
Well, that was genuinely unexpected for him. No — better than expected, probably.
"To think you'd dodge this one too."
Saying that, Kim Minchul slowly re-gripped the staff he'd just swung. So that was what had flown at me, aiming for my opening? Ignoring his body bound in chains, he'd spun the staff in his hand, aiming for a counterattack. Easy to say, but that technique was no clumsy last stand from a rear-guard type. And that grip — it looked familiar.
Staff technique. The attack aimed at my head had been genuine staffwork. To be precise, the quarterstaff — the most common staff art and polearm discipline in the Western tradition.
Come to think of it, there had been a foreshadowing after all. That's what it looked like in hindsight. Back at that café, Kim Minchul had dodged my surprise attack. Even accounting for combat readiness, it had been an unnaturally clean evasion. That he had some grounding in martial arts was only to be expected.
The problem was —
I'm screwed.
He's better than me. Sure, he's comparatively weaker in anti-personnel combat, but I'm supposed to have the edge over an A+ rank who's done nothing but carve up monsters. Although — if I'd spent my time practicing martial arts with the intent of killing monsters, then fair enough!! And he'd have abandoned monster-hunting techniques ages ago the moment he joined the cult!! A vicious setup, my friend.
That was my honest assessment. Despite wielding such a powerful ignition ability, that side of him was mere bait. Against an opponent of middling skill, he'd burn them down with his wall of fire; if someone capable enough to find a way through appeared, he'd use it to keep them at bay. But even if someone managed to close the distance, the jaws of hell were waiting for them on the other side.
A shabby pile of rags, and the flamboyant staff in his hand. Thinking back now, it was magician's attire, textbook to the point of parody. So of course anyone who saw Kim Minchul would mistake him for a rear-guard type who'd trained around his ability. He'd calculated all the way to that point — every element intentional. A quarterstaff strike at whoever crashed through the baptism of flames. The layered foreshadowing, the staging. This ambush, aimed at the blind spot of awareness, was not something you could see and dodge. Thanks to my crash-course in hand-to-hand fighting, my body had reacted before my mind — but in pure melee technique, he might genuinely outclass me.
What a headache.
He was a type I'd never faced before. To put it in a simile: Lee Joongoo is a hero. He overturns gaps in ability and circumstance and seizes victory by any means necessary. To put it another way: Choi Seungjun is a genius. With the raw violence of ability and pure talent, he crushes anyone. Kim Minchul was different. The moment he entered combat, he'd be drawing a roadmap in his head — establishing the pattern that led to his own victory. The exact opposite of me, who drafted a plan of attack depending on the opponent. Through techniques he'd honed himself, he lured the opponent's actions, then drove prepared counters into the behavior he'd induced. Opponent. Self. Conditions. Ability. A method of fighting indifferent to all such gaps. If I had to name it — warrior-like, I suppose? A style that proclaimed, as if declaring to the world, that the winning formula he'd refined could never crumble against any opponent. A form that reeked of a mythological goddess's personal taste. Hercules, are you?
Tch. I clicked my tongue inwardly.
The cold aura around my blade had faded considerably through the last exchange, and yet the situation had reset to square one. Having come this far, even I had to admit it frankly: capturing Kim Minchul here and now was beyond me. Honestly, at first I'd only planned to capture him as a side errand~
A monster-fancier, a would-be sex offender, a terrorist and deranged murderer — and yet he had skills to write home about. At least where this guy was concerned, it wasn't the Association's incompetence that had made such a mess. The bastard was just abnormally strong. Honestly, why would the heavens grant power to a lunatic like that? I prayed about it, and it turned out those heavens were none other than Tiamat, that woman. I'll kill her when I get back. Seriously.
So — what do I do?
There were about two options open to me. One: stall for time, trusting that Lee Joongoo would come eventually. Two: learn the guy's abilities by absorbing them with my own body. Well, neither seemed impossible. If I switched to the defensive, I could hold out one way or another. The second was the same. Even if he used his signature technique, an ignition ability was something I could survive once.
Right, shall we call it here?
The very moment I thought that and steeled myself once more — Kim Minchul suddenly spoke.
"Shall we end this here?"
Huh? If he meant to see this through to the end, fine — but we'd only just traded one exchange each, hadn't we? It wasn't wrong, exactly. If we resumed the fight now, nine times out of ten it would devolve into a stalemate. The moment I went on the defensive, Kim Minchul would have to start his game of tag all over again to finish me off. It was undeniably labor-intensive work. But —
Why? That was the last thing Kim Minchul should want. The longer he stalled, the more it benefited him.
Tsk! But he didn't seem to have had any intention of waiting for my answer in the first place. Quietly raising his hand, an explosion erupted right in front of my eyes. Spatial ignition. Even I, distracted at that exact moment, couldn't react instantly — against a monster, maybe, but not here. Naturally, having already spent my cold aura on the breakthrough, I had no choice but to retreat. Covering my face with both arms and backing away a couple of steps, I found Kim Minchul's figure had vanished from before me.
What the hell, that bastard.
Regret at losing him was there, but the question outweighed it. What's with him, vanishing out of nowhere? Was a meteor about to fall on us or something? I scanned the sky in puzzlement, but saw no particular signs of the apocalypse.
Of course, I would learn the answer before long.
"Art thou unharmed?!"
Huh?
"I heard tell that thou didst vanish from the very heart of the street! And that there was one called Minchel beside thee — what in the world is all this?!"
It was thanks to the goddess who came trudging into view at the mouth of the abandoned factory, flapping along with foolish-sounding footsteps. ……Such a refined set of techniques — and an ethical sense decayed far past that. And yet, for all that, there was something oddly like a blushing virgin about Kim Minchul whenever he faced that goddess.