An Infuriating Combination
The ones who smashed through the door numbered four in total. Counting Owen, that made a party of five.
"These bastards are trying to kill us all!!! That guy's a demon worshipper!!"
Owen screamed himself hoarse, his face the very picture of a terrified, innocent victim.
Wow... this guy's something else. I hadn't so much as laid a finger on him. Hell, I hadn't even spoken a single word to him this whole time. And now I was a demon worshipper? Lies came out of this guy the way other people breathed.
"Don't worry, Owen! I'll get you out of there!"
One of Owen's companions stretched a hand toward the floor.
And then—
Squelch—
"Huh...?"
With a wet, sucking sound, the solid warehouse floor transformed in an instant into a stretch of black quagmire.
And then—
"Attraction!!!"
Another one gestured, and the ropes binding Owen came undone as his body was yanked straight toward them.
"Owen, I will never forgive you!"
Lin snatched up her bow and tried to take aim at him. But—
"Arrow!!! Incoming on Owen!!!"
The scrawny guy at the back shouted, and the one who'd just pulled Owen in thrust his palm toward Lin.
"Repulsion!!!"
WHOOMPH—!
"Ugh!"
An inexplicable blast of wind pressure slammed into her. Her body was shoved backward, her balance gone, and the arrow she'd loosed flew off in the wrong direction.
Lin nocked another, this time aiming for the warehouse ceiling — trying to fire a line and climb out of the swamp the same way she had before.
"Don't let the witch shoot at the ceiling!!"
"Got it!"
BOOM—!
Another blast of wind came flying, and Lin's arrow went wide again.
Push and pull. What a goddamn circus.
This was getting more annoying than I'd expected. Our feet were stuck in the swamp, our movement locked down, and Owen had already rejoined his buddies.
First things first — get out of this swamp.
I'd seen a Shorts video once about how to escape a quagmire. Spread your surface area and crawl out, that was the advice. I really didn't want to, but I didn't have a choice. I started leaning forward, about to drop onto my stomach in the muck — when Owen, who'd already ducked behind his party members, picked up a rusty door hinge that had fallen on the floor.
"Die! Just die already, you demon bastards!!!"
At Owen's cry, the rusted hinge began to glow red-hot. Then he hurled it toward me and Lin.
I've got a bad feeling about this...
I didn't know what it was, but it sure as hell wasn't a simple throwing weapon. Lin and I both had our feet stuck. Dodging wasn't going to be easy.
HUMMMM—
I drew up my Primordial Power and deployed a barrier, spreading it as wide as I could — wide enough to cover Lin too.
KABOOM—!
An explosion roared, and smoke billowed up. Luckily the blast itself wasn't that powerful; my thin barrier was enough to tank it.
"Look at that! Yellow mana!! That's demon power for sure!!!"
Owen saw my barrier and started screaming again. Then he pointed at Lin and kept going.
"That witch bitch said she was going to offer all our souls to the Demonkin!!! We have to kill them now!!!"
"Owen... you really..."
Lin stared at him, looking utterly speechless.
"How... how can you lie like that without even blinking?"
"YOU'RE the ones lying!!! Everything I say is the truth!!!"
Owen shouted back like he was the one being wronged. His party members — whether they actually trusted him or not — were glaring at us with murder in their eyes.
This is seriously pissing me off...
None of them were particularly strong on their own. But together, their skill combo was the kind that just wore you down. How the hell a bunch of guys with abilities like that even found each other was a mystery in itself.
I can't just sit here.
I dropped onto my stomach and started crawling. Whenever it felt like I was sinking deeper, I even rolled. Lin caught on and kept loosing arrows at them so I wouldn't take a hit. But—
"Right! Duck! Left shoulder! Jump!!!"
The skinny guy in the back wouldn't shut up. His calls were infuriatingly precise. They dodged every arrow at the last possible instant.
There's no way he's calling those out by sight.
Lin's arrows weren't something you could dodge on reaction speed alone. When an archer of her caliber loosed a shot, even reading the arrowhead and predicting the trajectory wasn't easy. Which meant that scrawny bastard shouting nonstop—
He's seeing it in advance with a skill.
I knew exactly who the biggest pain in the ass was. The moment most of my body was free of the swamp, I concentrated Primordial Power through my entire body and launched myself.
CRACK! CRACK!!
I tore through the clinging muck with sheer force and shot into the air.
THUD—!
I hit solid ground and immediately kicked off, charging straight at them. My target was the skinny prophet muttering in the back. But—
"Not a chance!"
The swordsman who'd been hanging back until now swung at my neck.
WHOOSH—
The trajectory of his sword was painfully simple. I deflected it with ease and stepped right inside his guard.
"Huh...? That's weird..."
The skinny guy muttered from behind, his voice confused. I was about to swing at the swordsman's neck when a glass bottle Owen had thrown hit the floor.
CRASH—!
Hissssssss—
Purple smoke began to billow up. My gut screamed danger. I aborted the attack and scrambled backward.
"Cough! Cough!"
Some kind of poison gas spread, clouding my vision. A skill combo so goddamn annoying it made you want to scream.
"Hey! Nilo! Why didn't you warn me?! I almost died!!"
The swordsman whirled around and shouted. Nilo — the skinny guy who apparently had some kind of foresight — was dripping with cold sweat, stammering.
"Uh... th-this is weird... I didn't see it... why...?"
"What? You didn't see it?"
They were thrown into confusion, for some reason. Not that I was in a great position either. When a bunch of guys with all these ridiculous abilities were bunched up together, it was hard to just charge in. If they were brute-force types like Karante, I'd just pump Primordial Power and go toe-to-toe. But cheap tricks like these were a lot harder to deal with than they looked.
This is driving me insane...
And then—
"DODGE!!! Scatter, all of you!!!! Something's coming!!!!"
Nilo suddenly screamed, and they scattered in every direction without a second's hesitation.
And then—
CRACKLECRACKLECRACKLE!!!!!!
A bolt of blue lightning slammed down right where they'd been standing.
"Minwoo! Lin! What's going on?!"
"Kerek!!!!"
Kiki came charging in, tower shield first.
CRASH—!!!
"Guh!"
The swordsman and Kiki collided. He managed to hold his ground, locking up with her.
Now!
I sprinted at the swamp-skill guy, the closest one.
"Look out!!! Repulsion!!!"
The push-and-pull guy fired a blast of wind pressure at me, but—
"Hup!!"
I concentrated all my strength into my lower body in an instant. The fierce wind slammed into my entire body, but my two planted legs didn't so much as twitch. I was a monster of a lifter now — thanks to nothing but consistent grinding, my big three had long since blown past seven hundred kilos. And a body reinforced with Primordial Power was far stronger still.
"Th-this bastard...!"
The swamp guy panicked and reached a hand toward the ground beneath my feet. But my sword was faster.
SLICE—
His head rolled across the floor. The entire swamp dried up and vanished in an instant.
The moment their comrade died, their faces went slack with horror. Nilo, in particular, screamed with a face full of terror.
"I-I can't see anything on that guy!! My foresight doesn't work on him at all!!!!"
The instant those words left his mouth, I charged at Nilo.
Of course he can't see me...
His foresight was probably the ability to observe an opponent's skills ahead of time. The thing is, I don't fight with skills — so there's nothing for him to see coming.
"D-don't come any closer!! Stay back!!!"
With one of them dead, the cracks in Owen's cheap-trick party started spreading fast — and then the whole thing came apart. And now their foresight guy, Nilo, couldn't even help them.
"Damn it, Nilo!!!"
The swordsman abandoned Kiki and ran to protect him, but—
THUNK!
Kiki didn't miss the opening. His spear punched straight through the guy's throat.
And the one who'd been using Attraction and Repulsion—
TWANG—
Lin put a hole through his skull.
"AAAAHHHH!!! You bastards!!! You demons!!!!"
Owen, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, started hurling alchemy bombs wildly in every direction. But—
CRACKLECRACKLECRACKLE!!!
"AAAAAAARGHHHHH!!!"
Aria's lightning magic hit him, and he just convulsed on the floor, electrocuted.
"I'm not letting a single one of them get away. Not this time."
Lin's eyes gleamed with a cold light.
TWANG—
She loosed an arrow that punched through the back of Nilo's skull as he fled.
And just like that, Owen's entire party was wiped out. A strategy of throwing the enemy into chaos with every weird trick in the book. It might've worked against a small number of opponents. But the moment the numbers ticked up even a little, it fell apart like nothing.
Now there was only one left. Still twitching on the floor from Aria's lightning.
"Owen, you pathetic piece of shit..."
He still hadn't come to, still fried from the shock. So I walked over to him.
Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. I just kept smacking him across the face.
"Hah, hah!!!"
"You with us, Owen?"
"Y-you...? M-my teammates...?"
"Dead. Obviously."
"Y-you demon bastards!!! You get off on picking on the weak?!"
"Hah... come on, Owen. You already know."
"K-know what...?"
"That your lying time is over."
I said it with a slight smile.
Owen's eyes started to shake.
"You're fucked. You piece of shit."