Cleaning Up the Aftermath
"Wh-what did you say?"
So Chanseong asked it with naked shock on his face.
"I'm the one who wiped out the Sahyeol Gate branch in the Starting City."
Jin-soo's flat delivery left So Chanseong, and everyone else with him, staring blankly.
"What tongue is that? Something out of Moosung? Or Arius?"
"Neither. That's one of the languages Earth-born players use."
"An Earth-born player wiped out a Sahyeol Gate branch?"
"If that's true, Sahyeol Gate has finally run into the end of its rope."
"I wouldn't go that far. Even among Earth-born players, there are supreme masters."
"Well. That's fair enough."
The onlookers' murmuring dragged So Chanseong out of his daze, and his face twisted like a vengeful ghost's.
"How dare you spit such bald-faced lies! Did Changseong Gate hire you for this?!"
The roar tore out of him, thick with fury.
"Would any player really stake his life on a lie, no matter how large the payoff?"
Jin-soo answered in a calm, orderly tone, as if he were laying out a simple proof.
"Hah! Who's to say? You might just be a fool who swallowed the honeyed words Changseong Gate cooked up to bury their own crimes."
"You and your friends might be that stupid. I'm not."
The unruffled reply sent a flush of red climbing So Chanseong's face.
"I do owe Changseong Gate an apology. I never imagined what I did would be laid at their feet."
Without a flicker of tension, Jin-soo turned and offered that apology to Ak Chanseo and the other martial artists of Changseong Gate.
"Oh, and for the record—the reason I ended up fighting the Changseong Gate branch in the Starting City is that they attacked me first, out in the hunting grounds. In plain terms, it was self-defense. So why don't you turn around and go?"
The apology finished, he turned back to So Chanseong and flicked his hand the way a man shoos a pack of mangy street curs off the road.
"So Changseong Gate dragged in one madman to wriggle out of a crisis! You think that will hide the truth?! I'll kill every last one of you!"
With the shout, So Chanseong swung, and a sword wrapped in a bundle of blood-red sword aura came screaming down on Jin-soo.
Strange. He keeps sinking his teeth into Changseong Gate.
The man who had actually attacked the Sahyeol Gate branch in the Starting City had shown himself and explained why. Yet Sahyeol Gate went right on trying to drag Changseong Gate into the fight.
This doesn't feel like a search for the real culprit. It feels like they came here to pick a fight with Changseong Gate.
Whether that hunch was true or false hardly mattered. He could find out from here.
Steel whispered free as Jin-soo drew Baekcheonsingeom and the Blood-Sucking Sword.
A clean clang rang out. Baekcheonsingeom, sheathed in a bundle of pure-white sword aura, lightly knocked So Chanseong's blade aside, and in the same breath the Blood-Sucking Sword swept in toward him.
"Hup!"
So Chanseong flinched, threw his protective qi out at full force, and twisted aside. He had never even imagined a counterattack, and the dodge came far too late.
The protective qi sheared away. A long gash opened along his flank.
"Ghk!"
Shock was still frozen on his face when Jin-soo brought both swords around again. Clang after clang, the furious assault drove So Chanseong back in a wretched retreat.
"How can this be?"
He looked drowned in disbelief, as if he could not accept that he was being pushed one-sidedly.
"Attack!"
The instant he barked the order, the Sahyeol Gate players charged Jin-soo as one.
Right. I figured it would come to this.
The odds of them backing down quietly had been close to zero, but if So Chanseong and Sahyeol Gate had withdrawn of their own accord, Jin-soo had been ready to let them go. The fight had begun because their players lunged first—yet if the chain of grievance and vengeance kept spinning, more blood would have to be spilled.
Then I'll sweep them so completely they can't even dream of revenge.
Only a show of force brutal enough to make Sahyeol Gate tuck its tail before it ever thought of striking back would head off a greater disaster.
Bundles of pure-white and blood-red sword aura roared up like torches. They swept through, and Sahyeol Gate players died in heaps, blades condensed with sword energy tearing apart like scraps of paper.
"He's a tremendous master! Deploy the Sahyeol Eight Trigrams Formation!"
At So Chanseong's shout, the Sahyeol Gate players resonated their mana as one.
The Sahyeol Eight Trigrams Formation. A fairly useful array.
Jin-soo had faced it before his regression. A skill-link of considerable completeness, it synced the users' mana so the impact scattered and their offensive power rose.
When mid- and low-level players pooled their strength in it, even a high-level player couldn't avoid a hard fight.
Its greatest effect was the dispersal of shock.
The bundle of sword aura erupting from the Blood-Sucking Sword crashed in, and the Sahyeol Gate players stopped it—barely. On their own they could never have blocked a blow of that level, but the formation scattered the impact and let them endure.
To break a linked formation like this, you either found the point where it was weak and struck there, or you crushed the formation itself with overwhelming force.
But my situation is a little different.
Jin-soo had no need of either method.
A bundle of pure-white sword aura poured from Baekcheonsingeom and flew at the Sahyeol Gate players. Having just stopped the Blood-Sucking Sword's aura, their faces were full of confidence.
It didn't last. The pure-white aura wrapped around Baekcheonsingeom shattered the Sahyeol Eight Trigrams Formation with absurd ease and swept the players away.
"Guhk!"
"How is this possible?"
"The Sahyeol Eight Trigrams Formation broke!"
They looked badly shaken by the collapse. The result, though, was only natural.
In the end, the Sahyeol Eight Trigrams Formation is nothing but a skill.
Turning it into a skill had likely raised the formation's overall completeness a great deal. Looked at the other way, it also meant the array had fallen under the System's influence—and an effect made of a skill could not escape Baekcheonsingeom's Skill Nullification unless its level was considerably higher.
"Aaaagh!"
"Guuuuhk!"
"What kind of monster is this!"
"Sorcery! It's sorcery!"
When Baekcheonsingeom devoured not only the formation but their sword energy and defensive skills as well, the Sahyeol Gate players plunged straight into panic.
Baekcheonsingeom's option is quietly the sort that bullies the weak and folds before the strong.
Against a target Skill Nullification could not touch, the divine sword was merely a keen blade. Against those it nullified completely, it was, quite literally, invincible in its majesty.
Still, it does trigger now and then even against higher-level skills.
Even so, it shone brightest against an enemy of similar skill level. Not every time, but often enough to gnaw through the opponent's skills and seize the advantage without fail.
"What are the shamans and the healers doing! Bind that bastard's feet, now!"
So Chanseong bellowed, voice cracking with rage.
"Th-the curses aren't taking!"
"The shamanic arts aren't either!"
"What kind of nonsense is that!"
He exploded at the report that neither curses nor shamanic arts were working. Of course they weren't.
First, Baekcheonsingeom nullified curses and shamanic arts outright. Even if one slipped through a gap and arrived, the blessings and protections he had already received from Shin Sua stopped it at the first line. The Curse Devourer skill of the Black Dragon's Cursed Armor stopped it at the second, Curse Absorption at the third, and his high Mental stat at the fourth.
And if, despite all of that, a curse or a shamanic art still landed?
Then I use Purification and Dispel, and that is the end of it.
There was another difference. When he had faced Son Sanghyeok, he had not gone all out; he had been working to convert the man into a skill. He could have brought greater strength to bear and still held back. He could have moved faster and had deliberately slowed himself. He had limited his mana output as well.
Not now.
He was fighting at full power, so they would never again even dare to make an enemy of him.
Another slash. A choked cry. "He's too fast!"
With the formation broken, the Sahyeol Gate players could not even react properly to Jin-soo's attacks. The lucky few who somehow got a defense up found the outcome little changed. All he had to do was stamp down with overwhelming force, and their numbers dropped fast beneath the screams.
"Damn it all!"
Then So Chanseong launched himself off the ground and chose to run.
What kind of man does that?
Even in an unorthodox sect, there were basic lines a man was expected to keep. Fleeing alone, without so much as ordering his subordinates to withdraw?
"Ha. Abandoning his own men. How could he?"
"To think Blood Hound Asura So Chanseong was such a petty wretch."
"Not a bloodhound at all. Worse than a turncoat mutt."
He earned the scorn of every player watching, as was only natural. But what mattered to So Chanseong was neither their mockery nor the reputation now lying in the dirt.
I have to live. A moment's delay and I'm dead.
His head held nothing but a ferocious will to survive.
In truth, he had known from the first exchange of blades. His opponent was a master on a level that could not even be compared to his own. He simply had not wanted to admit it, and so he had forced the issue.
The result of that stubbornness was wretched beyond words. Sahyeol Gate's elite warriors had died so meaninglessly. Even the Sahyeol Eight Trigrams Formation, the last thing he had hung his hopes on, had failed to work. On a desperate gamble he had pressed the healers and the shamans, and they had told him the curses and the shamanic arts were useless too.
How in the world am I supposed to beat a man like that?
First he had to live.
"Aaaagh!"
"Guhk!"
Listening to the screams of his dying subordinates, So Chanseong drove his feet even faster. In a flash he was clear of the city, and only then did the screams stop reaching him.
Only then did another thought rise. How was he supposed to clean up what came after?
I didn't abandon my men and run. I didn't.
He had only moved in such haste because telling Sahyeol Gate's main headquarters about that monster was the most urgent task of all.
Yes. I only put a scratch on my honor for the sake of the greater cause.
Granting his own actions a righteous justification, he set his legs to work with great diligence.
Then, without warning, the ground split. Something enormous burst out, its sharp teeth whirling like the teeth of a saw.
A Sand Worm? This isn't even a desert. Why is that thing coming out here?
So Chanseong jolted in shock and swung.
Blade met fang, and sparks flew.
Why now, of all times.
Every second was precious, and his anger exploded. Blood-red sword aura poured from his blade.
Get lost.
He swung at the Sand Worm with all the pent-up rage he had been carrying. A tremendous boom followed. The worm's head was driven back into the earth, and the recoil flung So Chanseong into the air.
In that same moment another Sand Worm erupted and lunged at him.
Two Sand Worms?
He was stunned. He swung and knocked the newcomer's fangs aside—and then the worm he had buried in the soil lifted its head with a roar and charged again.
Damn it. I don't have time for this.
He had to get clear of this place as fast as possible. Instead, two Sand Worms that had appeared out of nowhere were dragging the fight out.
I can't afford to make a scene.
If he did, that monster might come looking. So Chanseong tried to slip away while keeping the clash to a minimum.
The worms shrieked and came on anyway. The pair pursued him relentlessly, striking as if he were a jar of honey they had been hoarding.
Why in the hell are these things acting like this?
It was bad enough they had burst out somewhere that was not even their habitat. Why were they attacking only him like madmen? So Chanseong had operated on the Tower's 200th Floor for quite a long time, and he had never once heard a report of a Sand Worm appearing.
He scattered the emergency drinking water he carried in his inventory, meaning to shake them with a Sand Worm's instinct to chase moisture. The two worms showed no interest in water at all. They kept hammering at him alone.
Boom after boom, he dodged their attacks this way and that and ran for his life.
"You got pretty far in that short a time."
A familiar voice came from behind him. In that instant So Chanseong's body locked rigid, prey face-to-face with its predator.