New Incidents (4)
Wasn’t there a saying that you shouldn’t judge people by appearances alone?
I didn’t know who came up with it, but it sounded awfully hypocritical to me.
Even when I first arrived in this village, I’d had a bad feeling about it, and at a glance it looked exactly like the kind of place where ghosts or zombies would jump out at you.
And, as it turned out, that was exactly what happened.
...If I’m right, this is a ruined village.
For some reason, I felt like I was hearing the name “Georgia Village” for the first time.
I’d never heard of it before, even in Novel Online, but no matter how high-ranking a player you were in a game, it was hard to remember every tiny detail. So I’d just assumed it was some village I’d happened to pass through and walked right in.
That bastard Stran sure picked a nice place for a stopover.
So what exactly was a ruined village?
It meant a village where, for one reason or another, people could no longer live.
For example, a place devastated by a monster invasion, or a village cursed so thoroughly that not a single living soul remained.
In cases like that, undead-type monsters appeared there. Each village had its own level cap, but since the monsters were tailored to the first person who entered, they tended to be fairly high-level.
—Whoosh!
“What the hell happened?!”
“S-Sian-nim...!”
I returned to where Rain’s party was.
“Grrr...”
By then, dozens of undead monsters had already surrounded them. These things came back to life with half-formed existence, then hungered for the flesh and blood of the living in an effort to break the curse that bound them.
Undead Mummy - Lv. 200
—Clang!
“Tch...! These bastards, my sword won’t bite!”
Rain drew his blade and tried to cut down the mummy in front of him, but the sword bounced back with the sensation of striking something harder than steel, and it trembled in his hand.
—Thud!
“Even smashing it with stone doesn’t do a thing...”
Even the earth golem, level 100 and using all its strength, had slammed down on a mummy, only for the stone making up its own body to crumble into powder and drift away.
With me around, the undead have been boosted to their highest level. Those guys won’t last long.
So I focused aura and magic into my legs, intending to wipe them all out in one blow.
What I was about to use was a Heavenly Demon technique: Ghost Kick.
Heavenly Demon Divine Art, Second Form - Ghost Kick
Attribute: Physical / Range: 50m / Max Targets: 1~50
Special Trait: Unavoidable
Can only be used while using Cheokji; unleashes a razor-sharp kick against all enemies within fifty meters in front.
If I messed around and took them out one by one, the others might get the chance to attack. It wasn’t like being bitten by undead would turn you into a zombie like in a movie, but you’d still be cursed, so it was best to deal with them as quickly as possible.
“Get down!”
At my shout, Rain’s party immediately dropped low, slipping out of the skill’s range.
—Tap!
Then I moved at astonishing speed and, in an instant, began carving through the monsters there.
—Swhk!
To me it was only a kick, but when overwhelming physical ability fused with the Heavenly Demon technique, the force became as sharp as a Swordmaster’s sword aura.
Leaving only Rain’s party untouched within a fifty-meter radius, I cut everything else in two—rocks, trees, all of it.
Even though my body had shrunk, the technique itself hadn’t lost any power.
“Hoo. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No... thanks to you, Sian-nim. And Aria cast a holy barrier right away, so we weren’t attacked at all.”
After clearing out the undead monsters, I looked around the area.
Then I walked up to a boulder nearby and pressed my hand to the ground.
This is it.
The dark magic I felt through my outstretched hand.
“Hoo.”
Sensing where that magic was coming from somewhere beneath the earth, I took one breath, then clenched my fist.
Qi gathered in my right hand, and soon red light began to wrap around my knuckles, sparks crackling as it did.
“You lot, make sure you don’t fall over.”
“Huh?”
Then I dropped to one knee.
“...No, make sure you don’t get knocked off your feet.”
“What does that mean?”
Rain asked me, not understanding why I was suddenly telling them to be careful not to fall off the road in the middle of nowhere.
But before he needed to ask any further, he understood why I’d told them not to fall over—or rather, why I’d warned them to watch out for being blown away.
“Hup!”
—Thwack!
I drove my fist into the ground.
Heavenly Demon Divine Art, Fourth Form - Giant Slaughter
Attribute: Physical / Range: 10m / Max Targets: 1
Special Trait: Erases the giant trait from the struck target.
A technique that attacks the opponent with a fist filled with qi, destroying a giant’s body from the inside out.
—Rumble, rumble, rumble...!!!
“W-What is this?!”
The ground began to shake as though an earthquake had struck; a sandstorm rose across the desert, and the earth itself started splitting apart.
If I remember right, undead monsters are created from a core somewhere underground.
That was why I’d smashed the ground with my fist.
Undead monsters never stopped coming, no matter how many you killed.
So no matter how many of the ones that crawled up from the ground you fought, it was just a waste of time. To deal with undead properly, you had to find and destroy their source—the so-called “core.”
—Crack! Crack!
“Kraaaah...!”
“T-The monsters are pouring out of the cracks!”
“Sian-nim?! Is this supposed to happen?! Did you just poke a hornet’s nest or something?!”
But maybe because the shock hadn’t reached the core buried underground, the undead kept coming.
Before long, hundreds of zombies had started to swarm around us, and Aria was so shaken by the sight of undead creatures unlike anything she’d ever seen in her life that she looked ready to lose her soul.
“You’re a priestess, so don’t be afraid of undead monsters. Those things vanish the moment they touch your holy power.”
“E-even so, there are just too many of them!”
But I’d already expected this.
The undead that had surged in around us, the ones that still kept popping up even after I’d smashed their underground core—
All right. Now I just need to find the one with the core.
I scanned the undead monsters that were rushing Rain’s party. They all gave off roughly the same kind of aura, but one of them had a noticeably denser, darker shade of demonic energy.
There you are.
—Whoosh!
“Get lost!”
Heavenly Demon Divine Art, Fifth Form - Severing Fist
Attribute: Physical / Range: 5m / Max Targets: 1
By controlling the qi contained in the fist, this straight punch severs the target’s source. Damage dealt by Severing Fist is difficult to recover from, and it strikes directly at the spirit body.
Then, moving to the undead I’d found, I drove my fist clean through its head.
“Kieeeek!!!”
It was said undead didn’t feel pain.
But the moment the core that allowed them to exist was struck, every undead in the area screamed and started swarming toward me.
—Crack!
“Sian-nim! Be careful! The monsters are coming your way!”
“...Careful about what?”
And yet I didn’t react at all.
If I left it like this, hundreds of undead would surely tear at my clothes and savor the pure white skin beneath, smearing me with their disgusting saliva.
The reason was simple.
—Crash!
A sound rang out around us like shattering glass.
“Kiiik?!”
Then all the undead froze in place, and just before they could touch me, every last one of them collapsed onto the ground.
“They all fell over?”
“You lot, close your mouths and cover your eyes and noses.”
“...Huh? What do you mean?”
“If you want to inhale rotten meat dust, that’s fine. There are humans who like that sort of thing, after all.”
And then I spread a barrier around us.
Rain had just been about to rush over to me with his sword drawn, so he didn’t understand what I meant at first—but then—
—Fsssss...
“Huh?”
He saw the undead lying on the ground dry up and turn to dust, and immediately understood why I’d said it that way.
—Whooooosh!
Not long after, a wind swept across the desert.
It blew toward Rain.
“W-What is that?!”
And then it struck him like a sandstorm made of rotten meat.
He tried to hurry back toward my barrier or Aria’s, but it was already too late.
* * *
“Rain! Where are you?!”
A few minutes later.
Aria wandered around the area, shouting Rain’s name at the top of her lungs.
“Rain! If you’re dead, answer me!”
“Thomas! You can’t answer if you’re dead, you know?!”
“Then answer if you’re alive!”
It wasn’t just Aria—Thomas the dwarf was doing the same, hollering as loudly as she could in order to find Rain, who had vanished somewhere except for me.
—Grip!
“Hiiik?!”
Then suddenly a hand shot out of the sand and grabbed Aria by the ankle.
“Kyaaaah! Sian-nim! Sian-nim! Another undead showed up here! It grabbed my ankle! Save me!”
—Thwack! Thwack!
Startled, Aria stomped on the hand over and over, calling for help, but for some reason I only turned my head toward her once and then gave no reaction at all.
The reason was simple.
“A-Aria... stop...”
“Huh? Rain? Rain, where are you?”
“I-it’s me... me...”
The hand that had been clutching Aria’s ankle weakly flailed about, completely battered.
“Rain turned into an undead?!”
“...Aria, come out here for a second.”
Unable to watch any longer, Thomas walked over and grabbed that hand, then yanked hard.
—Splash!
“Rain! You’re safe! But why is your hand like that...?”
“......”
Thanks to that, Rain was finally able to escape the undead sand pile. He didn’t seem to have any major injuries, but for some reason his right hand alone looked like it had been mercilessly trampled by someone.