Forest of Demonic Beasts
Neither waited for the other. They charged as one.
The saber-toothed tiger struck first.
Flames roared from its maw. Sunghyun answered in kind—with fire of his own. A plain Fire skill would have been crushed under that onslaught. What he unleashed was thunderfire, and thunderfire was more than enough to shove the beast’s blaze aside.
Crackling. Roaring.
Simple flame against flame that carried lightning inside it. The two powers swelled, each trying to prove it was the greater force. Sunghyun and the saber-toothed tiger did not simply watch the contest. The tiger poured every scrap of fire in its body into the clash; Sunghyun fed still more lightning and flame into his own.
In the end the winner was decided.
Fire-lightning.
The saber-toothed tiger took the full force of the thunderfire sheathed in Sunghyun’s blade and was hurled backward.
“Didn’t feel like a cut. Felt like I hit something.”
He had aimed for the throat, yet something hard had stopped the edge.
“Let’s try that again.”
Sunghyun called on Lightning Flame once more, raised his sword, and swung. The sudden burst of speed did not catch the tiger off guard; it simply turned its entire body into fire.
Whoosh!
Its form blazed past red into blue-white. This was the same contest as before—Sunghyun’s lightning against the tiger’s azure flame—only hotter, denser. Once again Sunghyun won.
This time his blade moved differently. He read every grain of the fur, every seam between the flames, and drove the edge into the gaps.
“I was worried pure fire might just let me pass straight through. Glad that wasn’t the case.”
Perhaps because the mana was shaped by the Taiji, the sword met resistance. It was a blade that could cut even fire itself.
Shhk—
The moment the sword extended, the saber-toothed tiger twisted free.
“Too shallow.”
He had cut it, but only barely. Blood ran from the tiger’s neck as it glared at him. Flight was never an option. So the beast burned the last of its life the way it had always lived—like flame.
Its body began to blaze pure white.
Sunghyun lifted his sword.
“What the hell is with these things? Every last one of them decides to awaken mid-fight?”
He considered how to finish it. Run? Stall for time and he would win eventually. But he refused that path. Cowardice was the one thing he despised. Always head-on. Always fair.
He began to refine the lightning, finer and freer with every breath.
Little Lightning proficiency has increased.
Little Lightning proficiency has increased.
Little Lightning proficiency has increased.
Tiny alerts kept flickering across his vision.
“Shut up. I’m concentrating.”
Sunghyun closed his eyes. The saber-toothed tiger did not rush him; it waited. They shared the same wish—to show everything they had at the end.
What is lightning? Fast. Free. Try to catch it and it slips away; try to memorize it and it vanishes. So what should he do?
Just leave it alone.
He stopped trying to control the lightning and let it run wild. Yes—this was it. The lightning began to thrash. Sunghyun carefully surrendered himself to its current.
Crack. Crackle—
His body blurred. He had become lightning itself.
Only then did the saber-toothed tiger charge. But lightning was everywhere.
Shhk—
KRA-KOOM—
The sound of Sunghyun’s blade splitting the tiger and the crash of destructive lightning arrived together.
Little Lightning has risen in rank.
The moment the alert appeared, the lightning turned crimson. Blood erupted from the saber-toothed tiger like a fountain and crashed down over Sunghyun—only to meet the lightning and evaporate on contact.
Sizzle—
“Haaah—”
When Sunghyun exhaled, scalding steam left his lips. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked at the newly updated status window.
Name:Kim Sunghyun (38) Male
Traits:Investment [EX] (LV. 1, 0%), Red Lightning [B] (LV. 1, 13%)
Body:52 (26%)
Mana:52 (17%)
Skills:Coin Market [EX] (LV. 3, 32%), Fire [D] (LV. 9, 46%)
Account Balance:1,840C
“Easier than yesterday.”
He had taken one down more cleanly than the day before. Anything on the saber-toothed tiger’s level—or weaker—was no longer a real opponent.
Crackle—
Sunghyun shaped the newly transformed lightning. Freer than before. More destructive. He loosed it forward.
KRA-KOOM—
The materialized bolt shattered a tree and set the wreckage ablaze.
“Not bad.”
He turned to the enemies already closing in.
Body has reached Level 55. Account Balance: 1,360C
Mana has reached Level 55. Account Balance: 980C
Mana flooded his dantian, yet he only rolled the Taiji once and made it his own.
“This much I can handle just fine.”
“Some of yesterday’s faces, some new ones.”
Sunghyun settled his grip on the sword. Creatures that called themselves kings of their own territories threw back their heads and roared at him.
“KRAAAAAH!”
Hayato and the knight commander had somehow become friendly enough to talk over meals. Oddly, the team leader and the detective were always at the same table.
“So, Commander—what’s this Forest of Demonic Beasts actually like?”
The detective asked around a mouthful of chicken leg. The team leader wanted to know just as badly; both he and Hayato leaned in.
The knight commander gazed upward as if searching memory.
“I’ve only been twice. The place is too dangerous for casual visits.”
“The first time was when I was still a regular knight.”
He began the story lightly.
“Back then it was pure curiosity—I wanted to see the place I’d only heard about in stories. That curiosity nearly killed me. Haha! I really almost died. See this?”
He pointed to the long scar beside his eye. Hayato, who had recently begun learning the sword, recognized it at once: that was no sword wound.
“Wolves. One I could have handled. There were simply too many. All I could do was run.”
He laughed about the scar as if it were nothing. The team leader pressed him.
“You said you went twice. You went back after the wolves?”
“The second time was to prove myself. This kingdom has a tradition. To become a Royal Knight, you have to do something.”
“What?”
Hayato looked as though he had never heard of it.
“Of course you wouldn’t know. None of you are subjects of the kingdom, and none of you are knights.”
“Anyway, I entered the forest again for the Royal Knight trial.”
The commander rubbed his arm.
“This scar is from that day. Did you know the Forest of Demonic Beasts has a barrier? That barrier is the only reason the beasts never leave.”
Hayato’s eyes lit up.
“Sounds like the perfect training ground.”
The knight commander smiled.
“You’re getting ahead of yourself. At least beat the knights sitting over there before you talk like that.”
“Anyway—the first zone is called the Forest of Beginnings. Beasts a regular knight can handle. After that comes the Forest of Despair.”
The surrounding knights flinched at the name.
“Every member of the knight order takes one beast in the Forest of Despair. The type of beast you kill decides your numbering. I took a tiger that spat fire—and its body was the size of a house. That earned me the number one seat, and the commander’s chair I’m sitting in now.”
Hayato twitched at the mention of a fire-breathing tiger.
A tiger that breathed fire?
“Beyond that is the Forest of Death. I’ve never set foot there. I tried once. The closer I got, the more my body simply refused to move, as if I weren’t qualified. Something was watching me. That feeling was…”
The memory drained the color from his face.
“So I’ve only read the records left by the first emperor of the distant empire. They say beasts we know only from myth live there—dragons, unicorns, phoenixes, things like that.”
“I’ve never seen them myself, so who knows,” he finished with a laugh.
Everyone laughed with him, but two men felt something different. Hayato imagined taming those legendary beasts. The team leader thought, Surely Sunghyun isn’t in there… right?
The team leader’s imagination was reality—yet reality and imagination were not quite the same.
A tiger whose entire body was stone charged Sunghyun first.
He raised his sword to catch the claws. The weight slammed through his whole frame.
Krrrsh—
Blade and stone claw ground together, throwing sparks. The other beasts were not idle. The dark monkey slipped into Sunghyun’s shadow in an instant and struck from behind.
Whoosh—
Jump!
His senses caught it in time. Sunghyun leapt high and wrapped himself in red lightning. The lightning, scaled to his body and mana, roared far more violently than it had against the saber-toothed tiger.
Rumble—
His form blurred and reappeared behind the dark monkey. The monkey fled into another beast’s shadow, but the moment it emerged, a sword filled its vision. It tried to dive back into darkness. Sunghyun’s blade was faster.
Shhk—
The monkey’s black head spun through the air.
“One.”