Photosphere
To put it simply, a signature is a technique that pushes an individual's abilities and disposition to their absolute limit.
Even among powers of the same lineage, differences arise depending on one's aptitude.
Down to the smallest preferences — whether you're more comfortable spitting fire to the left, or expelling wind to the right.
A signature takes the differences that inevitably emerge between users, even when the underlying ability is identical, and amplifies them to the extreme.
The word signature means exactly that: a technique so inseparable from one individual that it becomes their emblem — a secret art that no one else can use.
Which is why a completed signature, whether its wielder likes it or not, tends to reflect that person's psyche with unerring accuracy.
Take Lee Joongoo's signature, for instance.
The so-called Pikachu — the Thunder God — laid bare Joongoo's heart: his desperate, never-ending wish to save someone before it was too late.
Take Choi Seungjun's signature, for instance.
The so-called freeze tag — Absolute Zero — had been developed for one reason alone: to stop the monster lunging at his childhood friend.
Park Woochan's signature was no different.
Known commonly as Cut Prettily.
The refined distillation of one simple emotion: Park Woochan just wants monsters dead.
That is the nature of a signature — an projection of the vision a hunter carries within.
It's so self-evident you wouldn't even need to dust off some musty old thesis about the correlation between emotion and ability.
Hunters are people too, after all. Their powers inevitably develop in the direction of their own desires.
And.
In that sense, Kim Minchul's signature was ever so thoroughly Kim Minchul.
Photosphere.
Kim Minchul's signature — secretly nicknamed Charizard by Park Woochan — began with a single, tiny spark.
...Whether it was a ember smaller than a knuckle, or a blaze hot enough to swallow a building whole.
Honestly, the distinction hardly mattered.
Because the essence of Kim Minchul's signature was never the flame itself.
To be precise, the core lay in the flame's composition.
He had reached in and meddled with the very architecture of the ability — the structure that detonated fire through mana.
Fire grows by consuming oxygen.
A flame born of ability goes one step further, feeding on mana as well.
And Photosphere took it further still.
To a fire that already burned its own mana and oxygen to produce light, he added yet another layer of refinement.
The result: Photosphere no longer depended on Kim Minchul's mana at all.
It devoured the mana of the host it had latched onto, burning brighter and larger with every mouthful.
Kim Minchul named the entirety of this reworked ability — or rather, this method of reworking — Photosphere.
It was, quite literally, the most ferocious and vile single strike among all the techniques Kim Minchul could wield.
In theory, it was both impossible to defend against and impossible to evade — unless an S-rank pyrokinetic could counter every single spark the ability scattered, one by one.
Try to block it, and it devours the mana spent on the defense.
Direct applications of ability, and defensive barriers alike — no exception.
The spells inscribed into protective gear, or the latent mana inherent in special materials — equally not exempt.
Evasion fared no better.
Once something had touched Photosphere even once, no means of escape existed.
Even amputating the burning flesh wouldn't save you.
What Photosphere burns is, after all, never the body — only mana.
The flesh catching fire is merely a byproduct of the mana being consumed.
Cut away the wound all you like; the mana carried over through the severed edge simply ignites again.
And so it burns — until your mana runs dry.
Or until you halt the circulation of your own mana and die by Kim Minchul's hand.
A worst-case dilemma, with no third door.
Worst of all, against an ability like Photosphere that devours even the mana used to attack it, interception isn't even an option.
...Vile performance, truly befitting the name signature.
A secret art born of an S-rank pyrokinetic's exquisite craft.
And yet.
At the same time, Park Woochan understood.
Obsession.
The word that came to mind first whenever Kim Minchul's name arose — it was dissolved into this flame.
That clinging, suffocating quality of a man who would chase you down no matter how many times you refused him or dodged the question.
It was as if his dense, syrupy obsession with the goddess had been sculpted into the form of fire.
Then again — maybe, in his own twisted mind, he'd been perfectly sincere.
Maybe he'd built this signature as an eternal flame, an undying declaration of love for his goddess.
And so.
While Park Woochan was philosophizing like some disinterested bystander, his vision filled with that thick, tenacious fire.
Kim Minchul was looking down at him.
"Whew, what a bother. Doesn't he know persistent men are unattractive?"
Kim Minchul sneered at Park Woochan — the man who, mere moments ago, had been carving into him with his blade.
A spacesuit, writhing on the ground, wreathed head to toe in flame.
Unfortunately, the helmet and gas mask smothered any screams — but as far as Kim Minchul was concerned, the fight was over.
Photosphere.
His signature was not something you overcame by thrashing around like that.
It held true even with a mana manipulation ability.
Activating such an ability required mana, after all.
Against Photosphere, a mere manipulation technique would be swallowed whole in an instant.
It was finished.
With that certainty, Kim Minchul lifted his head.
The abandoned factory, fourth floor.
Beyond the third-floor slab that had literally evaporated, atop the hollowed-out shell of the building —
Tiamat was there.
No doubt she'd gotten advance warning from Park Woochan.
She had whisked Ja Hayeon upstairs in a hurry, and now their eyes met.
Tiamat flinched, shoulders jerking.
Kim Minchul offered her a quiet smile.
Then he produced the recovery potion he'd stashed away and sprinkled it over his wounds.
His injuries were serious enough that they wouldn't close on the spot, but he felt measurably better than before he'd used it.
The pain receded. He could feel flesh knitting back together, bit by bit.
"Hah."
Exhaling another plume of hot breath, Kim Minchul turned his gaze upward.
And leapt.
A single bound carried him to the fourth floor in an instant — to where the goddess waited.
Tap. A light footfall.
Kim Minchul's shoes, as giddy as his heart, struck the fourth-floor concrete with a bright, ringing sound.
"Forgive me for keeping you waiting, my goddess."
There was no answer.
Which was only natural.
Kim Minchul had expected as much, too.
Though for precisely the opposite reason.
Tiamat was a woman before she was a goddess.
And a woman must ever wait, chaste and composed, for her lord husband.
Tiamat herself might have agreed — but Kim Minchul's views on the relations between men and women, schooled as he'd been by ancient standards from an age before he knew the modern world, were more than a little out of date.
...
Tiamat cradled the fallen Ja Hayeon, folding the girl protectively into her arms.
Kim Minchul tilted his head for a moment at the goddess's wary posture — and only then registered Ja Hayeon's presence at all.
He moved as though he'd had no idea, until this very second, that she'd been standing there.
'Ah, right. There was a girl like that, wasn't there?'
He'd brought her along believing she'd be necessary; looking back, she'd been a complete waste of time.
Or no — seeing as it led him to this audience with the goddess, perhaps he should call it a blessing in disguise?
Either way, within moments Ja Hayeon had vanished entirely from Kim Minchul's consciousness.
Nothing so trivial as that girl mattered now.
"I had intended to present myself to you properly, in due course. But it seems circumstances have brought me here ahead of schedule."
"...In due course?"
"Yes. In that sense, one might even call this a mercy."
"A mercy. A mercy, he says."
The goddess murmured it as though her spirit had drifted somewhere far away.
Her amethyst eyes, deep as purple crystal, narrowed ever so slightly.
At the sight of it, Kim Minchul was struck speechless with shock.
Who?
An unbearable fury surged up from somewhere deep in his gut.
Who on earth dared put such an expression on my goddess's face?!
"Is that truly all? Is that the whole of your conscience?"
"...Pardon?"
"You laid hands on a child with no part in this affair. And when her guardian raged at it, you struck him down in turn. And still — you feel nothing?"
"My goddess, what words are these? Of course I grieve it too. Had they simply refrained from standing between you and me, none of this would have been necessary!"
"...Standing between..."
With a long sigh, the goddess pressed a hand to her forehead.
Kim Minchul, for his part, could not comprehend it in the slightest.
Why would his goddess wear such an expression?
It was Park Woochan's fault. Kim Minchul settled on that conclusion without hesitation.
Grrk. He ground his teeth without meaning to.
No — weren't they the ones in the wrong, plain and simple?
Everything he'd said just now had been, to the letter, his honest truth.
If only those people hadn't sabotaged his courtship enterprise, none of this would have happened — regrettably!
"If that is truly what you say... then I, too, can do nothing more."
At those words, Kim Minchul's face lit up.
At last!
At last, is the goddess going to accept my heart?!
His heart was hammering so violently he could feel it pounding in his chest — utterly unbecoming of him.
'Heart. Mind your manners.'
Before he knew it, Kim Minchul was gazing at the goddess again.
He worried his own pounding heartbeat might startle her.
Truth be told, he found it a little embarrassing, too.
But.
At that moment, the person Tiamat was speaking to was not Kim Minchul.
"...Cut him down."
The goddess shut her eyes tightly.
As if she could not bear to watch what was about to unfold before them.
And she had every reason.
Because in the very next instant, a blade of cold swept through Kim Minchul on a diagonal — from the ridge of his shoulder down through his flank — splitting him open.
"...Huh?"
It was all he could manage.
Splatter. The falling arc of blood made a sickening sound as it hit the floor.
A ambush launched from a state of total, perfect carelessness.
The frigid edge that carved straight through even his automatic defenses took its toll of flesh without mercy.
A mortal wound.
Two staggering steps.
Kim Minchul swayed forward, body tilting — then barely managed to twist himself around.
And there, he saw.
"Hey there, you piece of shit."
The spacesuit that had been burning outside the abandoned factory only moments ago was standing upright.
*
Honestly? It performed better than I'd expected.
Kim Minchul's signature. Photosphere.
I hadn't imagined it would burn literally anything made of mana.
Still.
It wasn't beyond all prediction, either.
If anything, it hewed remarkably close to what I'd anticipated.
Can't be helped — its wielder, Kim Minchul, was a strange bird from top to bottom.
And once you factored in the inherent traits of pyrokinesis, it became blindingly obvious.
The flame manipulation he'd used in our previous fight.
His ability had been specialized for controlling the fire itself, rather than simply producing it.
So it stood to reason his signature would be a technique for commanding flame — I couldn't be sure, but the odds favored it.
At that point, only one question remained:
Just how polished was Photosphere, actually?
I'd expected it to be formidable. It was several times more vicious than my worst-case estimate.
After all, it was a technique I had no answer for whatsoever.
If it had been something like Joongoo's or Seungjun's — a brute-force eruption of absurd mana output — I could have wrung out my own signature and countered somehow.
But Photosphere wasn't that kind of technique.
Less a feat of raw power than a feat of craft.
That word suited it far better.
A signature that began from a single spark.
There was no way in hell to intercept every ember, one by one.
And yet.
I held an advantage so overwhelming that none of it mattered.
In a word: my edge.
The difference in equipment.
As I've said time and again, everything in this world ultimately comes down to risk and return.
Just as Kim Minchul gained an edge over me by being born human — his cowardly ace up the sleeve — being born human carried its own risk as well.
Namely this:
No matter that Kim Minchul was an S-rank pyrokinetic, a devotee of the goddess, and a monster-worshipping terrorist — one thing would never change.
So long as he remained human, he could never surpass Choi Seungjun's power. That was a law as fixed as gravity.
The maximum volume of mana permitted to humanity in theory.
And output and range beyond even that.
Even for a hunter who'd chewed down the heart of a dragon — so long as he couldn't step outside the species called humanity, he could never wield power greater than Choi Seungjun's.
Which made the rest of the story simple.
At this point in time, the mana crystals I held from Choi Seungjun totaled three.
In other words, I possessed three trump cards that would bury Kim Minchul unconditionally.
'Like I could lose.'
These weren't things meant to be flung around so freely, but my patience had finally hit its limit, and frankly, I couldn't have cared less.
A fire that devours any and all mana, meeting a cold that freezes any and all mana in an instant.
Past that point, what remained was a simple contest of raw output.
And.
As I said — no human being alive can out-output Choi Seungjun.
Never mind grit and determination. This is biology.
Well, if Kim Minchul's signature had been the type to discharge a colossal volume of mana in one go, things might've gotten a bit dicey~
But since it took a form my own signature couldn't counter, Choi Seungjun's mana crystals happened to be the perfect answer.
The upshot: Kim Minchul's signature never dealt me a single scratch.
He didn't even notice — thanks to the spacesuit, and thanks to Kim Minchul himself being the one burning.
To put it more precisely, I'd worn the spacesuit into this fight for exactly that reason in the first place.
So anyway, until a few seconds ago, I'd been rolling around in Oscar-worthy agony on top of the flames clinging to my suit's surface.
Even I have to admit — the performance was goddamn magnificent.
I couldn't scream, though. Too embarrassing.
Seriously, man. The last shred of my human conscience had to go and trip me at the finish line...?
Pathetic. Genuinely pathetic.
But once I graciously explained the situation, there he was, spouting all that garbage about conscience.
Is this guy a genius? The kind of genius that pisses me off.
Zero remorse right up to the end. On brand, at least.
...And there was another reason I hadn't touched Choi Seungjun's mana crystals from the very start.
Lure out his signature. Wait until he was drunk on the certainty of victory. Then strike from behind.
That was the plan.
But.
If I'm honest, it would be a lie to say I felt nothing about cutting a man down in front of Tiamat — the woman who was, for all intents and purposes, his mother.
I talked a grim game, but there was also the simple fact that human blood on my hands sat sour in my stomach.
Maybe it would've been cleaner to have kept him from following us at all.
Whatever. Water under the bridge.
Besides, flushing Kim Minchul out owed more to Tiamat's efforts than mine in the first place.
So.
Partly to settle that debt, I dangled a small piece of bait.
Him, standing over his defeated enemy. The goddess waiting just ahead.
With all his blind hostility spent — what would Kim Minchul say next?
I wanted to hear it.
Maybe he'd show remorse. Maybe he'd apologize...
Maybe some faint, foolish hope like that had been lurking in me all along.
And then.
Only after sitting through that rambling, interminable stream of garbage from his mouth did I know for certain.
'Yep. This is a man who needs killing, alright~'
The goddess Tiamat still hadn't lifted her head.
Perhaps it was too painful to watch the man who'd been all but her son die before her eyes.
Or perhaps she couldn't bear to look squarely at the ugliness Kim Minchul was spilling out right in front of her.
Who knows.
Maybe both. Or maybe neither.
I didn't offer any unnecessary words, either.
There was nothing left to say to him, nothing I wanted to say.
Talking would only sour my mood further.
And I had zero intention of standing around for any last words, however trite.
All I wanted was to finish the job, go home, and crack open an ice-cold can of beer. You know the feeling?
Alright then — time to die, Minchul!
I'll put up a gravestone you can be proud of!!
Well. I'm carving "he was a dumbass" on it, though.
And I brought the greatsword down.