A Failed Reversal of Fortune
"Kyaaaaah!! Intruder!!!"
"Keruk!"
A deafening crash split the air as Kiki smashed through the cage on the heels of the secretary's scream and slammed her with his tower shield.
But she dissolved like smoke, fading into nothing.
"Keruk?"
What the hell is this...?
Come to think of it, I'd killed Karvan — and the mission-complete message still hadn't shown up.
"So it is you Participant bastards after all."
A voice drifted from the corner. Like smoke knitting itself back together, a man slowly took shape.
It was Karvan.
"Don't you ever get tired of this? How long do you people intend to keep coming here to kill me?"
I swept my gaze across the floor. The head I had definitely just carved off. But what lay there was the secretary's head — the same woman who'd been screaming moments ago.
Deception...
So that was his skill. Had the one I'd cut down earlier been the secretary?
"Oh, fuck."
I kicked off the floor and charged Karvan again. Yellow lightning cracked and spat as I drove my sword straight into his heart.
There was no sensation of the blade going in.
Once more he scattered into smoke, only to reappear a moment later — sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed, perfectly at ease.
"This entire room is my Deception domain. You will never kill me in here."
Boom. Boom. Boom.
"They're in there! Move in!"
"Boss! We'll be right there!"
To make matters worse, the office door exploded inward and syndicate members began pouring through.
"Keruk!!"
"Minwoo! We'll hold them off!!"
Kiki and Aria planted themselves in the doorway and started holding the line against a tide of enemies. Fortunately the entrance wasn't particularly wide, so they couldn't all rush in at once — but even so, there were far too many of them. They weren't going to last long.
I have to kill this bastard. Fast.
I locked my eyes on Karvan again, impatience clawing at my gut. He was swirling a wine glass with theatrical leisure. Whether even that wine was real, of course, was anyone's guess.
"Do you believe in the System?"
Karvan opened his mouth. I answered with my sword.
The table split apart, and a pouch burst open with it, spilling what looked like a fortune in gold coins across the floor.
"You're nothing but discarded pawns. No different from meat shields. Why can't you see that?!"
"Shut up, Karvan."
I cut him in half at the waist.
"You people know nothing!"
"I don't even want to know, you piece of shit!"
I took his head off again.
"Open your eyes, even now! Join me! All I want is to live in peace."
"You crazy bastard! A slave trader preaching peace? Give me a fucking break."
There was no reason to listen to a word he said. His skill was Deception to begin with. Falling for whispers like that was a one-way ticket to getting completely screwed.
The door shuddered under another wave of blows.
"Keruk! Keruk!"
"Minwoo! There are too many of them!!"
Aria kept firing lightning magic, picking enemies off as they came, but they weren't pushovers — a single hit wasn't enough to put them down. And the numbers just kept coming. Kiki's barrier was beginning to shudder.
Fuck. What do I do...
As long as this entire room was his domain, my attacks would never land. And with the syndicate flooding in, it wouldn't have been strange for the doorway to collapse at any second.
If I can't kill him from the inside...
I had to change tactics. I had to shatter this Deception space itself. If I couldn't kill him from within, I'd kill him from without.
Break the wall.
But this stone building had already been fortified — meaning it was ridiculously sturdy. If I packed my blade with Primordial Power and just kept hacking, I could probably chew through it eventually. Whether Kiki could hold that long was another question, and Karvan sure as hell wasn't going to sit still while I played demolition.
One hit. I needed a single, devastating attack that would blow the wall apart in one shot.
Can I even pull this off...?
Exactly one method had come to mind, and I had no idea if I could actually do it. If I couldn't, I'd just have to keep carving at the wall somehow and hope.
Ah, fuck it.
Working or not, trying it was the only option I had left.
Karvan was still ranting like a man possessed, talking to himself.
"And I saw it!! How Demonkin are bor—"
He was distracted. Now.
"Die, Karvan!!!"
Instead of swinging, I hurled the sword at him with everything I had. He turned to smoke, and the blade passed straight through — then buried itself deep in the wall.
"You should know by now that this is pointless. How long are you going to keep repeating this?"
Karvan sneered as he began to solidify again. That was the opening. I thrust my right hand forward and roared.
Elemental Burst
A colossal blast tore through the room.
Yes! It worked!
The sword buried in the wall detonated with a roar that shook the bones in my chest. I felt most of my mana rip out of me in a single, violent rush. A massive hole tore through what had been a solid stone wall — and through that hole came a sharp, splitting whistle.
A wet, final thunk.
"Ghk..."
Rin's arrow punched dead-center through Karvan's forehead. He toppled backward with an expression of pure disbelief, and hit the floor.
This time there was no smoke. No illusion. A single, perfect shot from outside the domain. A real death that even Deception couldn't fake.
Time remaining until return... 20 seconds
Yes! Just twenty seconds. That was all we had to last. But I had almost no mana left.
A sharp crack split the air as Kiki's barrier shattered and he was driven back. The entrance broke open, and Red Chain members came flooding in.
"It's those bastards! Kill them all!!"
Fuck. We had to run. We needed to jump through that hole in the wall, now.
And then something snagged my eye.
The gold coins that had scattered when I'd been beating Karvan to pieces. Those, at least, seemed to have been real — a staggering amount of them, glittering across the floor.
Those... those look like actual gold...?
I'd heard gold prices had gone through the roof lately. If I took those with me...
Doesn't that mean I'd never have to go to work again? I just have to dump them in the Subspace Bag, right?
A chance to turn my whole life around had finally appeared.
My feet were already moving toward the gold.
Scoop it all up. A golden opportunity that will never come twice.
But then—
"Minwoo! Look out!!!"
"Keruk!!"
Aria and Kiki seized my arms and yanked me back. Blades and magic slammed into the spot where I'd been standing.
"No! My gold!! My money!!! My life!!!!"
"You're going to die!!!"
Covering fire came through the hole from outside — Rin's arrows pinning the enemy's feet for a heartbeat, and a heartbeat only. They were already right on top of us.
"Aaaaaagh!!! Fuck!!!!"
Swallowing tears of blood, I turned my back on the gold scattered across the floor. I snatched Aria around the waist, grabbed Kiki's hand, and together we leapt through the hole.
The weightless lurch of falling through open air. Above us, enemies raining curses down on our heads.
A burst of light swallowed everything.
That really was strange, though...
Lee Yuna turned the memory of that dinner with Minwoo over in her mind. The inexplicable thrill she'd felt the instant their bodies touched. And a rush of heat so intense it was almost unnatural. She'd never experienced anything like it — had never even heard of anything similar.
A week of worrying, and she still had no answers. Minwoo had blamed stress, or not getting enough exercise, or whatever else — but Yuna knew perfectly well that was complete nonsense.
"I can't take this anymore! I have to check again!"
Today happened to be Wednesday. She would ask Minwoo to dinner again, she decided, and find an excuse to make contact — a bold little plan that made her pulse jump. Even if he refused, she figured that if she pushed hard enough she could make the meeting happen anyway.
Wait a second... no way...
That was when it hit her. The fact that she'd been agonizing over this for a week. The fact that she was this desperate to set up another date.
Do I... like the Section Chief?
Because every last bit of it was exactly how a woman with a crush would behave. She thought she'd heard somewhere that when you met a fated love, you felt a thrill.
The Section Chief is a decent guy, but...
Yuna rummaged through her closet, chewing on the thought — and then last time's glance came back to her.
He was definitely sneaking looks at my armpits, wasn't he...?
She remembered how Minwoo had kept trying to peek through the gaps in her clothes. And now that she thought about it, she had heard there were men with that kind of preference.
What the... that's so perverted... that's actually weird.
After a long, conflicted moment, Yuna put on a sleeveless dress and went out.
Back in the real world, I was dragging myself through the days with absolutely no will to live.
God fucking dammit...
What if I'd thought of Elemental Burst a little sooner? Or what if I'd attacked him after I'd already collected the payment? The same thoughts kept looping, and all they left behind was regret. I knew perfectly well you couldn't undo the past. That wasn't how a person's heart worked, though. The aftershock of watching a once-in-a-lifetime fortune slip through my fingers was genuinely something else.
"Hah..."
I was sighing my way through code, barely managing to type, when a message popped up on the company messenger.
I was already a mess, and now this. If I said no, she was definitely going to start throwing a fit again.
Wait... she's offering to treat me, so maybe I should just go?
I had no motivation as it was, and the stress was brutal. Maybe this was exactly the change of pace I needed. Besides, Assistant Manager Yuna was ridiculously pretty, and talking with her was actually fun — it would probably be fine. Today was a rest day from working out anyway.
When the workday ended, I met up with Assistant Manager Yuna and we headed out for dinner.
"Section Chief, let's go to an izakaya today!"
"Sure, whatever."
She'd already made a reservation. It wasn't quite private rooms, but each table could be closed off with a sliding door, which gave the place a somewhat tucked-away feel.
Why does she sit next to me again today?
Assistant Manager Yuna dropped into the seat beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world. We talked, we laughed, we worked our way through a drink, then another.
"Section Chief, you've gotten really handsome lately."
"Assistant Manager, are you drunk?"
"I am not!"
And as she said it, she kept finding excuses to brush my arm. Every time she did, the scent of her shampoo hit me, and I nearly lost my mind trying to keep my Primordial Power from erupting.
It definitely wasn't this hard to hold back last time...
Was all the desire I'd built up groping Aria during the last mission trying to tear its way out of me now?
Fuck... today's actually looking dangerous...
I clenched my teeth and somehow kept the conversation going.
"Ahahaha! That's so funny!"
Then, at some point, Assistant Manager Yuna's hand found my thigh.
A crackle of power jumped between us.
"Nh... hnnn..."
Fuck. For real.
"S-Section Chief..."
She looked up at me with dazed, unfocused eyes.
And then, without warning, she kissed me.
The gold I'd left behind. The bone-deep exhaustion of a fight I'd staked my life on. The moment her lips met mine, none of it mattered at all.
I couldn't hold back any longer.
My Primordial Power erupted completely.
"Aahngh... aaahn... Section Chief Minwoo..."
"Assistant Manager Yuna... want to take a break somewhere?"
She hesitated for a beat, then gave a small nod.
And so, as if something had taken hold of us both, we started walking toward a motel.