Chapter 283: Aspiration (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 283: Aspiration (6)
“Hmm…”
Now this is a rather troublesome ability.
Come to think of it, those zombies also appeared without any presence.
I thought he’d erased his form with invisibility and used an artifact or something to hide his presence.
“Now, what will you do?”
A voice came from my right.
I twisted my body hard once more, and a sharp dagger tore through my right arm.
Schwing!
As I winced at the searing pain, like a burn, and the stream of blood soaking my hand and arm…
“D-Do-jin…!”
Ju-yeon’s panicked voice was followed by a ray of light that enveloped the wounds on both my arms.
The pain subsided as the wounds began to heal rapidly.
K, who had been watching, let out a sound of admiration.
“Indeed, the healing ability of an S-rank Healer is quite remarkable. Those were fairly deep wounds, yet you healed them in the blink of an eye…”
I could feel a thick greed in his tone, directed at the S-rank Healer, Han Ju-yeon.
“Mr. Kim Do-jin’s ability to hold out this long is impressive, but personally, I find Hunter Han Ju-yeon’s value to be far greater.”
The clear voice began to move away.
In Ju-yeon’s direction.
“What do you say, Hunter Han Ju-yeon? Won’t you join us?”
K revealed himself in front of Ju-yeon, extending a polite offer to recruit her.
Or maybe not.
Considering he was holding a dagger dripping with blood, I guess you’d have to call it a threat.
“No.”
Ju-yeon refused flatly.
“You’ve made the wrong choice.”
An immense amount of divine power began to flow from her body.
The life force that had filled the pure white aura now revealed its fighting spirit, baring its fangs at K.
“If you truly wanted me, you should have persuaded Do-jin. Not injured him.”
“……”
K was taken aback as Ju-yeon revealed the reason for her anger.
“Uh, umm.”
I was just as surprised.
Wait… if I was persuaded, would you have just followed along?
“I don’t want to talk to someone like you anymore. So…”
Han Ju-yeon’s gaze changed.
It was Han Ju-hee’s trademark: a fighting spirit so intense it was hard to meet her eyes, one that overwhelmed her opponent with pressure.
As if to prove that even with different personalities, their blood was the same, Ju-yeon flustered her opponent with the same eyes her sister once had.
“Get out of my sight.”
Her tone was severe, as if judging a sinner.
Along with it, a torrent of divine power poured out, and K desperately threw himself out of the way.
KRAAANG!
BOOM!
Each blast that struck the floor and walls let out a tremendous roar, shattering the surroundings.
Its destructive power surpassed that of most high-level magic.
“…Was divine power always capable of this much destruction?”
I had no idea.
I’d teamed up with the Saintess of the Vatican once before, but the situation then hadn’t been urgent enough to use divine power for an attack.
K’s body, dodging Ju-yeon’s furious assault, slowly began to fade.
It seemed he was trying to use his invisibility ability to hide again.
“Tch…!”
As if determined not to let him get away, she launched an even more relentless attack toward his fading figure, but…
“Ah…”
As if mocking her efforts, he vanished from sight.
Then, his voice echoed.
“I understand your intentions perfectly, Hunter Han Ju-yeon. In short… it means I just need to find a way to bring Hunter Kim Do-jin over to our side.”
Look at this bastard.
He said it as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
“You think that’ll work?”
“If words don’t work, we’ll have to resolve it with force.”
“Right.”
Man, you’re dense.
“And you think that’s going to work?”
The way he acted like he’d already won was laughable.
“You think you’ve won just because you scratched my arm twice? Huh?”
If you’re going to count your chickens before they hatch in front of me, you should at least manage to cut off a piece of my heart first.
Perhaps my defiant shouting while being cornered got on his nerves.
He warned me in a lower tone.
“It seems that to make good use of you, Mr. Kim Do-jin, we’ll need to break that personality of yours a little.”
“Break what? My personality? The likes of you? Pfft!”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
In my youth, I had a temper like a wildfire.
Maybe it was because of my complex about being an orphan, but whenever someone messed with me, my first thought was, ‘Is this bastard looking down on me because I’m an orphan?’
So if someone got angry at me, I got angrier. If they hit me, I paid them back twice, three times over.
That personality greatly accelerated my growth, but it also heightened the risks.
“Hey, you know, there were a ton of kids who came at me saying they’d break my personality, just like you.”
Back then, all the so-called hotshots came after me.
Because they found me annoying and hated me?
If that was the only reason, they wouldn’t have bothered.
The saying, ‘You don’t avoid shit because you’re scared, you avoid it because it’s dirty,’ exists for a reason.
There were a few who came at me purely out of dislike, but they were a tiny minority.
The vast majority came to make me obedient so they could use me.
A guy with a good nature but a nasty temper.
If they could just kill that temper, they’d gain a sharp sword.
The key question is whether their schemes worked.
“Among them, only one person ever truly succeeded in breaking that personality of mine.”
Out of hundreds, only one person managed to do it.
The star of that honor was none other than Han Ju-hee.
In the process of loving her, my personality changed constantly.
When we became a couple, when I received her parents’ blessing for our marriage, when we lived relying on each other.
And when our daughter, who was the apple of my eye, was born.
The person I engraved in my heart, the one I had to protect, erased my complex and set my twisted personality straight.
And what happened to the rest of them?
“The rest all got their asses beat by me and went home crying.”
I didn’t kill them.
I just stomped them down so thoroughly that they wouldn’t dare mess with me again, even decades later.
Many of them are quite successful now, but they still avoid my gaze whenever they see me.
I told them they’d die if they made eye contact with me, and they still haven’t.
“Then I shall be the second.”
“……”
Ah, shit.
I should have just said there was no one.
I opened my mouth and created a loophole in my own argument.
Well, whatever.
The ending was a bit weird, but thanks to that, I bought more than enough time.
“Let me give you one last piece of advice.”
“……?”
In the tense air.
I offered my final advice to the bastard hiding somewhere.
“You should tap a stone bridge before you cross it.”
Otherwise.
“Hmph… a pathetic trick…?!”
Explode.
KABOOOM!
One of the pillars supporting the ceiling exploded with a deafening roar, steam billowing from the wreckage.
“Tsk tsk, when someone gives you advice, you should know how to take it.”
You can’t just ignore it because it comes from an enemy.
Not far from the exploded pillar, the man reappeared.
His neat appearance from moments ago was gone.
His suit was torn in several places, and a line of blood ran down his face from his forehead.
What I liked most was his expression.
“…What did you do.”
That smug smirk that had been plastered on his face was finally gone.
Looks like taking a solid hit knocked the will to smile right out of him.
“Nothing much.”
While he was distracted by Ju-yeon.
And while he was spouting nonsense about breaking my personality, I was simply turning the area into my domain.
How?
“I just planted a few mines around.”
When I thought about how to easily deal with an enemy who had even erased his presence, the answer was simple.
Just stop him from getting close, and stop him from moving freely, right?
And what’s most effective for that purpose? Mines, of course.
“Mines… you say.”
“That’s right.”
There’s a spell called ‘Fire Mine’.
As the name suggests, it creates a mine that erupts in flames the moment it’s stepped on, but it’s not a very commonly used spell.
You have to set the condition for it to explode upon being stepped on, so the magic circle is complex, and the mana consumption is a bit high compared to other spells.
Furthermore, to use mines effectively, you have to spread them out like a field, which becomes unmanageable for even high-level mages. It’s a spell on the verge of being forgotten.
So I modified it a little.
In a way only I can.
The inefficiency of the mine spell comes from the large amount of mana consumed to set the activation condition. I got rid of that.
So how do I detonate them?
Manually, of course.
Using the overwhelming mana control of this body, I took hold of all the mines I’d laid in the area.
It’s a completely manual system: the moment he touches a mine, I release my control over that specific one, and it explodes.
By reducing the mana consumption that way, I was able to plant a ton of them.
Enough to fill this entire subway station.
“So, what are you going to do now?”
I asked him, a grin spreading across my face.
What can you possibly do on ground that explodes with every step you take?
What can you do besides run around and get blown to bits, you bastard?