Unity
Sunghyun moved his fingers and prayed.
Please.
Please, let me live.
I am not doing this shit a second time.
He thought back to what he had just pulled off — buying a dimension while dodging a mad cascade of magic. He had actually done it. Even now, the sheer insanity of it sent a chill down his spine.
Fortunately, his senses were screaming that what he needed was somewhere in this list.
"Found it."
From Armin's point of view, Sunghyun looked unhinged. Pointing at empty air and praying one moment, chewing his nails the next, then suddenly beaming with joy.
She couldn't not ask.
"Sunghyun… are you high?"
Normally he would have swung a fist at that. Instead, he just kept ruffling her hair.
"No? Nothing like that. I found it. Our way out. And as a bonus, we can take those bastards down too."
Sunghyun grinned from ear to ear.
Ah. We can live.
He checked the trait floating before his eyes. With the Titan planet now added to the catalog, it sat there in plain sight, flaunting itself.
He hadn't realized it from the first description, but looking at the types of goods on offer, Titan was almost certainly Olympus. It made sense — the owner of the trait he had just found was Ares, one of the Olympian gods.
A trait created by downgrading the authority of Ares. Designate a desired opponent and force them into a one-on-one duel. After the duel ends, by the terms of the Victor's Inviolability Pact, nothing may affect the victor for ten minutes. Cooldown: 10 minutes.
[85,000C]
Of course, performance like that came with a filthy price tag. Eighty-five thousand coins. More expensive than anything he had seen so far — but it would be worth every last one.
The only real drawback was the penalty, but since the ten-minute inviolability and the ten-minute cooldown overlapped, it might as well not exist.
The problem was—
"Ah, not enough coins. What do I do?"
Sunghyun eyed Armin with a suspicious look. She flinched under his gaze.
"Wh… why?"
Nah. That would be a little too inhumane, wouldn't it?
"Just messing with you. Even I wouldn't use you like a piggy bank."
No choice, then.
Operation name: I Only Beat One Guy.
Might as well go for it while the blade was out. He only needed to succeed once.
Hoooo—.
A tense moment. Sunghyun activated Lightning Transformation.
Crackle—.
Leave the Temporary Rest Space?
Remaining uses: 1
"Let's go."
Face tight with tension, Sunghyun headed back into that place.
Whoooooom—.
Once more, a tiny cluster of light bloomed among dozens of dragons. Having seen the phenomenon once already, every last dragon unleashed its magic.
Light, water, ice, fire, stone. Countless spells spun before the newly summoned Sunghyun's eyes, dizzying him.
Ignore the fire. Dodge the stone. Dodge the water too. Use the ice against the ice.
To Sunghyun, finished with his Lightning Transformation, every spell seemed to drift in slow motion. Even so, sheer numbers made perfect evasion impossible. He slipped free with only minor wounds.
Sssssss—.
Where he had been standing, the dragons' assault reduced everything to black ash.
He had to choose. Sprint off and hunt some other magical beast — or take down one of these things right now.
His heart was already decided.
I'm landing one hit on those bastards.
It wasn't pure emotion talking. He already knew where the magical beasts were, and he had a secret weapon.
The joke he had tossed at Armin earlier.
Hey, Armin. Lightning work well on blue dragons?
Ugh! Of course. Even we dragons have elemental affinities, you know.
Is that so? Heh heh.
"Good. Target is that one. The smug bastard casting magic from way over there."
Kill that one, buy the trait, then pour the leftover coins into body and mana specs. After that… well. No need to spell it out.
Good. Decision made.
At last…
Crackle-crackle-crackle—.
"The curtain rises."
Sunghyun's form stretched long as a single bolt of lightning. The dragons had seen this several times. They assumed he would flee again and blanketed his escape routes in magic — but not even an afterimage remained.
…! Nothing?
Then where—?
"KRAAAAAAH!"
A scream from a nearby kin. Dragons were arrogant, solitary creatures by nature. A fellow's fate usually meant nothing — but this was different. Chasing a suspected Demon King, then suddenly hearing one of their own scream?
This was a hundred percent certain.
Whoosh!
Every dragon's gaze snapped toward the one that had cried out. A single thought was burned into their minds.
How?
How did he break through our mana net? No matter how fast he is, that should be impossible.
The answer lay in Sunghyun's new realization.
Before the transfer, he had thought: Hold on. Using Cloud Thunder takes time, doesn't it? And after I use it, my mana is basically drained. If magic comes flying in that state? Emergency escape? That might not even work.
Isn't there a way around that?
One question had started it all.
Do I really have to dump all my mana every time I use Cloud Thunder? That's why it takes so long. That's why there's no follow-up. What if I break it into smaller pieces and use it in stages?
And is that all? At the end of the day I'm just handling energy. Why stop at killing intent? Couldn't other things work too?
Something I'll have to achieve eventually. Why not now?
How? Why? What's stopping me? Just do it.
An iron certainty that he could pull it off if he tried. Sunghyun had that conviction — because his senses were telling him so.
You can do it. Do it.
And so, looking out over the swarm of dragons, Sunghyun thought:
Let's go.
Cloud Thunder was, in the end, the extreme manipulation of energy until it took on the nature of lightning. Sunghyun poured serenity into the bolt.
A calm, pure heart. A heart that ran free, one with nature.
I am nature, and nature is me.
Unity.
Silent Thunder
Ssssss—.
The instant Sunghyun looked at the blue dragon—
Fwit—.
—he was already standing quietly behind it.
And then: the will to kill. Murderous intent.
Cloud Thunder — Mana Control Ver.
KRA-BOOOOOOM—!
You have grasped a clue to trait evolution.
Trait experience has increased dramatically.
A perfectly controlled bolt of lightning — nothing like before — crashed down onto the blue dragon's head. A textbook black thunderbolt. Exclamation marks practically appeared over every dragon present.
This could not be. The human-shaped thing had grown again. Was such abnormal growth even possible?
Even for dragons, whose mana and circles increased just by breathing, Sunghyun's rate of growth was grotesque. Like a god out of myth — an infant at dawn, a boy by noon, a young man by dusk. That kind of legendary speed.
The dragons were furious. And terrified.
They had to kill him. If they let this kin die now, they would be next.
—KILL HIM!!!!!!
Every dragon abandoned magic and opened fire with breath attacks. It was a declaration: interrogation was over. From this moment, they sought only annihilation.
"Ah, this is rough. What now?"
Sunghyun eyed the incoming breaths. The blue dragon before him was on the brink of death — but the second he attacked it, the breaths would hit him.
A flash of inspiration.
Water beats fire. Sometimes water beats stone, too. Use their breaths against them.
Crack—.
A quiet energy, different from before — like a sea that embraced all things — poured out of him.
A heart that accepted everything.
Crackle-crackle—.
Lightning like an all-embracing ocean cascaded around him.
Embrace.
Embracing Thunder
But even that wasn't enough to stop a carpet-bombing of dragon breath. So Sunghyun grabbed the blue dragon's tail at his feet.
Grin—.
"Ever heard of a Friends Shield?"
The unconscious blue dragon couldn't hear him — but somewhere deep in its soul, something flinched with fear.
Whoooooom—.
Sunghyun spun the blue dragon by the tail, and a blue whirlwind took shape. Even so, the breaths still reached him. He scowled.
"Kh! Gonna have to use it one more time. This is the last one."
Embracing Thunder
Bababababam—!
Sunghyun's blue lightning swallowed every force bearing down on him and smothered it.
"Now I can actually hold out. Ah, why won't this thing just die already."
The dragon's absurdly durable body was keeping him alive — but he needed it dead if he wanted to survive himself.
Hurry. Hurry. Just die already!
Just as he felt his mana and stamina about to give out—
—Ding.
"Ah. Payday."
An alert chimed in his ear. Sunghyun's face became that of an office worker checking his account on salary day. A quick glance ahead: the blue dragon's body was already almost nothing but bone. Even the bones were melting away.
The dragons' assault paused for a beat. Then, without fail, mana gathered in their maws again, and a tyrannical force swept toward him.
Sunghyun roared.
"I'll see you all when I get back — you're all dead!"
His fingers flew. Not just his fingers — his eyes spun wildly, eliminating any lag between purchases.
◈ Account Balance: 133,096C
"Khhhhh—!"
The surging mana flooded his eyes bloodshot red.
Transferring to Temporary Rest Space.
Uses remaining today: 0
Swaaaaaah!
Light began to wrap around Sunghyun's body. The dragons felt it too — his flesh growing stronger by the second.
If they didn't kill him now, every dragon in this forest would be wiped out.
That could not be allowed!
So they poured their breath even harder, dumping every last grain of mana they had. A situation that would have had the Demon King himself slamming his head on the ground and begging for his life.
In the middle of it, Sunghyun clung to the blue dragon's skeletal remains and took the full force of the breaths with his entire body. With his newly generated mana, he pushed Embracing Thunder to its absolute limit.
Crackle-crackle-crackle!
Blue lightning coiled around him — and still, he felt like he was going to die. The power of breaths unleashed with everything the dragons had was beyond imagination. A body that had reached level 100 bought him a few precious moments, but he couldn't hold much longer.
"Ghhhhh!"
Transfer already!
Ssssss!
The light cluster intensified, and Sunghyun was whisked away to the rest space.
—No!
In that instant, the dragons cut off their breath. They stared blankly at the spot where he had been.
A single thought crossed every mind.
We're fucked.