The Demon Summoning Bracelet

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. What in the world is that Blood White Sword Demon? An Earth-born Player, climbing to the transcendent realm even I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠never reached?

Even as Han Man-ok fled, scouring away his tracks, he could not choke down the fury boiling in his chest. Reaching the transcendent realm, he could have forced himself to accept. Unlike the Museong Dimension, the Tower offered the System's aid. Hunt monsters hard enough, raise your level, and luck into a supreme class-advancement tome and the right skill books, and even a third-rate martial artist could ascend to the transcendent realm. That was the Tower. Enlightenment was unnecessary. Simply killing powerful monsters was enough to vault the walls of a realm with ease.

He knew that. He knew it, and still the injustice would not leave him.

And here I'd thought my own luck was considerable. Set beside the Blood White Sword Demon's great fortune, his own looked wretchedly thin. No. Can this even be dismissed as good luck?

Time flowed the same for everyone. In the Tower especially, the span one could linger on each floor was limited, so there had been, physically, no time to pile up strength of that order.

If he were from Museong, like me, I could at least force myself to understand. He might have been a martial artist who had already reached the transcendent realm before he was dragged into the Tower and made a Player. But the Blood White Sword Demon came from Earth, a world where neither martial arts nor magic existed—a being who could only have grown after climbing the Tower.

Is that what they call talent? And yet there were far too many doubts to lay it all on an inborn gift.

Then what about that refined swordsmanship, and that monstrous store of combat experience? He knew, because he had crossed weapons with the man himself. The Blood White Sword Demon's sword art was not something one could unfold merely by landing a fine class and a handful of skills. Combat experience, above all, was not the sort of knowledge a genius could claim, no matter how talent overflowed in him.

He had the foundation of a grandmaster who had founded a sword art of his own. You could fairly call him that. Richer in battle than the old veterans of the murim, and sharper at improvising on the spot. Is that even physically possible?

No matter how Han Man-ok turned the matter over, and over again, the Blood White Sword Demon remained a being he could not comprehend.

To think he would defeat even that demon. He had seen it with both eyes, and still he could not believe it. That thing is a calamity that lives and walks. A being no human strength can do anything about.

Had he realized it sooner, he never would have laid a hand on him. But it was far too late. Sahyeol Gate had held fourteen peak masters in all, and every last one of them had died by the Blood White Sword Demon's hand. Even the demon—the trump card Han Man-ok had kept in reserve—had been brought down with them.

I have to reach the Final City as fast as I can. He would gather every item Sahyeol Gate possessed, challenge the gatekeeper at once, and flee to Floor 201. Only then could he shake the Blood White Sword Demon.

Surely he wouldn't chase a wretch like me all the way to Floor 201 just to kill me. He wouldn't. He must not. If the Blood White Sword Demon climbed after him—if he ascended floor by floor with murder burning in his eyes, searching only to kill—then someday Han Man-ok would die by that man's hand, and there would be no avoiding it. So it had to not come to that.

Whoooosh!

A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠harsh rush of wind reached his ears as he drove his legs for all they were worth.

What? All this while he had been glancing back, braced for the Blood White Sword Demon's pursuit, and so he had never had the leisure to look at the sky. A demon?

The first thing to fill his eyes when he finally looked up was the demon he himself had called through the Demon Summoning Bracelet.

But that one is dead. He had already confirmed that the summoning contract had been forcibly broken. No. The form is different.

The demon Han Man-ok had summoned possessed a blazing, blood-red hide, and it had been unmistakably alive. The things now in his sight had the look of finely wrought statues. And there was not one of them, but two.

Kuuuung!

The two statue-like demons plunged from the sky and landed, cutting off his front and his rear. From behind them, the Blood White Sword Demon stepped into view.

"Hieeeek!"

Ashen with shock, Han Man-ok wrenched himself sideways.

Shaaaaaak!

Every manner of curse crashed down over him.

Curses of this degree— He triggered the dispel stored in one of his items.

Kra-ji-ji-jik!

A storm of biting cold wrapped his body, and his movements dulled of their own accord.

Did the Blood White Sword Demon use an item? Anxiety swelled in him—and then the arrows came.

Shwook!

Dozens of them, one after another.

Pakang! Puuuung! Kwaaaang!

Han Man-ok poured everything into his protective qi and swung his great saber, batting aside the shafts streaking toward him. But his hands grew heavier by the moment. Curses that kept on stacking gnawed at flesh and mind. The cold was turning his body into a block of ice. Arrows that never ceased punched through his protective qi and buried themselves in him, one by one.

"Huk! Huk! Huk!"

Frozen into the shape of a porcupine, Han Man-ok heaved ragged breaths and stared at the Blood White Sword Demon, bow in hand.

"What are you? Curses? A bow? How in the world did you get items with destructive power like this, even in the hands of another class? Are you blessed by the Tower itself?!"

He hurled it at Jin-soo, voice thick with grievance and envy.

"Items?"

Jin-soo tilted his head.

"Ah. If that's how you want to see it, it makes things easier for me."

A Player could use only the skills of their current class. Change classes, and the old class's skills vanished. That was common sense in the Tower. Jin-soo had openly used a healer's curse skills and an archer-attribute arrow skill, and still Han Man-ok believed, without a shred of doubt, that it was the power of items.

The longer you stay in the Tower, the harder it is to break the frame of common sense. From Jin-soo's side, the misunderstanding was far preferable. The man would not go prying into how he had learned another class's skills. If this happens again, I'll just insist it's the gear.

He had barely settled the thought when Han Man-ok's eyes flew wide.

"It isn't the power of items? Don't tell me you can hold the skills of several classes at once?"

"Why are you the only one so special? Why wasn't luck like that given to me?!"

It would have sat easier on his heart if it were merely the gear. Items had fixed levels, and the higher one climbed the Tower, the sooner their limits arrived. But if it was not that—if the man possessed some secret art that let him take the skills of other classes and stack them in his hands? He envied it. He envied it like a madman. And at the same time it was unbearably unfair, the fact that the master of that fortune was someone else, and not him.

"Give it to me too! Give it to me!"

Han Man-ok screamed like a lunatic.

"Goodbye."

Jin-soo raised the Blood-Sucking Sword.

"Hieek!"

The madness in Han Man-ok's eyes gave way to a raw will to live.

"I—I swear my loyalty to you. So please, spare me."

He begged Jin-soo for his life.

"I am a martial artist of the transcendent realm. Rather than simply killing me, use me as a slave. I will offer you Sahyeol Gate. I will draw up a mana contract. If you wish, I will write a strength contract, or an agility contract as well."

He pleaded with desperate sincerity, just to survive. I have to live. Surviving comes first. There ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠will be chances enough. And if I stay at the Blood White Sword Demon's side, I might even steal his secret. To die for the single mistake of not knowing the man was a monster beyond comprehension—Han Man-ok found it too bitter, too unjust. I am a transcendent martial artist. Bind me tight with a contract and he can use me in safety. So he will let me live.

Wishful thinking caught fire in his head and burned out of control.

Thuk!

"Huh?"

And so he had never, even in a dream, expected the other man to drive a sword into his heart without a moment's hesitation.

"W-why? Why me?"

Even as he died, Han Man-ok could not understand Jin-soo's choice. Had it been him, he would have bound the man airtight with a contract and worked him as a slave. Why? Because keeping someone alive and using them was a far greater gain than simply killing them.

"You madman. There's no way a method like that even exists..."

Han Man-ok died cursing him.

"Why won't you take a person at their word? Army Summons. Army Summons."

Before the dead Han Man-ok's soul could disperse, Jin-soo activated the skill.

Ududuk!

Han Man-ok took form again, his body a statue wrought from pure-white marble and pitch-black obsidian.

Is it because he was a high-level Player who had reached the transcendent realm? He's weaker than he was alive. But that was a problem that would solve itself once Army Summons rose in level. And though he was weaker than in life, there were two of him now, so their combined combat power had actually increased.

You can't trust a vow of loyalty from a man who sees everyone but himself as nothing but a tool. Han Man-ok was the sort who had treated Sahyeol Gate's officers and disciples as expendable. Lay every constraint a contract could impose, and he was still the kind of man who would find a way to slip free.

"You really pushed yourself, Jin-soo. I'm sorry I couldn't be any help again this time."

Shin Sua said it with her head bowed low.

"Couldn't help? If it hadn't been for you, I might have let that demon get away."

Jin-soo smiled and patted her shoulder.

"Um, it's just... maybe because I jumped in back then, I received an Impossible Feat too. I'm sorry."

"You're allowed to receive it. I don't care, so don't worry about it."

He truly did not care. The reward had been generous, and the count of Impossible Feats achieved had registered properly.

First, the items. What Han Man-ok had left behind in death was a skill book. The Blood Saber Art. The saber art he had mastered seemed to have remained in that form. No use to me.

Jin-soo used a sword, not a saber, and this was no ordinary saber art—it was one meant for a great saber. I'll have to sell it. A Museong-born Player who fought with a saber would certainly pay well. The gear the dead man had been wearing was fine work too, but none of it was anything Jin-soo could use.

Except for this.

He picked up the Demon Summoning Bracelet.

Absorbs and stores the souls of the dead? Jin-soo's eyes gleamed. Do the souls in storage have to be used only for a demon contract?

Army Summons, too, used the souls of the dead as its material. Couldn't I activate Army Summons on souls stored in the Demon Summoning Bracelet?

Curiosity surged. But the bracelet currently held nothing. Han Man-ok had offered every soul kept inside it as sacrifice in order to summon the demon.

I'll need to test it. Monsters lay scattered in every direction, so it would not take long.

"Leo."

"Nyaaaaaang!"

At Jin-soo's call, Leo—perched on the shoulder of a demon summon—burst into a wide-area taunt roar.

"Going hunting?"

"Since we're already out, we might as well do it before we head back. We can sort through everything tonight, once we're at the lodgings."

"Right. As if you'd ever just walk past ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a hunting ground. Got it."

Wearing a look that said of course, Shin Sua summoned her stone golem, cycled through her buffs, and finished her preparations for battle with practiced ease.