Huh? I'm Not Dead!
"Huh? Huh? I'm not dead!"
The simple fact of his survival sent Paranet into raptures, and before long he had gone so far as to break into a dance.
"Master! You are watching from somewhere, are you not? This is the sort of man I am... no, the sort of undead. Behold this tenacious life force, enduring even a fall from above the clouds. Honestly, not just any undead could manage such a thing, now could they? Ah, but this is no time for that. I must call for him. Kah! Innkeep! A round of—"
"Who are you."
The one who cut him off was none other than the bandit chief, Durek.
"...Hm? And who might you be?"
"I am the master of this land. Do you have any idea what you've done? You had better be prepared to die."
"What's this pint-sized runt babbling about."
"..."
In the Jhorhen Mountain Stronghold, any mention of height, stature, or build was utterly forbidden. Paranet had just stomped on the one nerve Durek could not bear to have touched, and the few bandits who had barely survived went white as sheets.
"A Death Knight?"
"Already died once, so nothing scares him? That it?"
"Saying that in front of the boss..."
"He's lost it. No idea why he dropped out of the sky, but this is about to get ugly."
They found themselves pitying the Paranet who had appeared out of nowhere. He had done them real damage—a player had actually died—and still they felt sorry for the other side. That was what came of knowing exactly how cruel a dwarf Durek was.
Paranet failed to read the mood. No—he had never intended to read it in the first place.
"I wonder when Master means to arrive..."
The stares around him didn't register at all. What mattered far more was where his master, Yujun, might be.
"You bastard!"
Durek closed the distance in an instant. His double-bladed axe, not particularly long, came swinging for Paranet, and survival instinct did the rest. Paranet ducked hard, and the blade hissed through the air just above his head.
Swung with everything he had, Durek left himself open. Paranet was on the verge of throwing a Body Slam when the dwarf's body vanished without a trace.
"Eh?"
He was still glancing wildly about when a tremendous impact crashed over him.
"Gack!"
The blow was enough to reel his senses. Paranet tumbled across the dirt, and only after dozens of rotations did he finally stop and jerk his head up. Durek was already there, double-bladed axe raised as if to split his skull.
Paranet heaved himself up and kicked at the dwarf's legs. Short in the lower body, Durek kept his center of gravity planted firm; the kick didn't topple him, and he struck back. He missed where he had meant to hit. Even so, the blow sheared Paranet's shoulder blade clean off.
Paranet answered with Space Movement, opening the distance in a blink. Durek did not let him go. He stuck to the undead at the speed of a flash, pouring out one threatening blow after another, and each time Paranet endured on the strength of his formidable defense.
"Thousand... Pound Drop!"
The double-bladed axe rang off him and rebounded. Paranet, however, was far from unharmed. His bones were being ground down little by little. Undead regeneration was excellent, but the damage was outpacing the recovery.
At this rate, I'm in danger.
His opponent was simply too strong. Paranet had claimed easy victories against any number of Demon God Worshippers, yet meeting a true powerhouse forced him to think again.
Next to Master, I was nothing at all. Master could send a stubby little thing like this off in a single blow.
Why was he so weak? Paranet turned the blame on himself.
"Body Slam... Thousand-Pound Drop!"
He timed it properly and succeeded in linking the skills, but Durek slipped aside with ease. However great the power, it meant nothing if it failed to connect. The double-bladed axe came down hard across Paranet's back.
"Krgh!"
Paranet ground his teeth as fury surged up from within.
The armor Master gave me...!
The equipment carried an option to restore itself when damaged, but even that required time. Left open to an assault this indiscriminate, the items could be destroyed past any hope of repair. Paranet feared his gear being ruined more than he feared being unsummoned, and so he moved in desperation, thrusting the already bared bone into the path of the blows so the armor would suffer as little harm as possible.
Durek, faced with that, looked utterly baffled.
What kind of madman is this?
A style of fighting that deliberately pressed one's own vitals against the weapon, as if eager to die. Durek could hardly make sense of it. The end came all the same. His axe-work split Paranet's upper body from his lower, and once that was done, not even an undead could move.
Paranet made no effort to hide his indignation.
"To a dwarf like this... The humiliation!"
Durek snorted.
"Humiliation? You save talk like that for someone weaker than yourself."
"It galls me, but I have no choice but to concede... My brilliant life ends here. Yet Master will arrive before long and visit stern punishment upon you. You would do well to steel yourself."
"Master? You have a master?"
"I do."
"Who?"
"A being a dwarfish scrap like you has no right to know... Eh? Master?"
Paranet had spotted Yujun, appeared at some point unnoticed, and tipped his skull in a little nod. He wanted to dash over at once. Unfortunately, all he had left was his upper half.
"What are you doing here?"
"Th-that is..."
Paranet let the words trail off. There was a considerable difference in size between them, and admitting he had lost to the dwarf in front of him was simply too shameful.
"Earlier I used Thousand-Pound Drop and fell, and the impact was simply tremendous, you see? That is why my body ended up broken in half like—"
"Hey. Why are you lying? You ended up like that because you lost to me."
Durek cut him off.
"Wh-what are you saying? I am clearly in this state because of the fall. Do not slander me!"
"...Hm?"
Durek tilted his head. Yujun huffed a short laugh.
"Whatever. Long as you're alive. Anyway, Thousand-Pound Drop raises your defense too, huh?"
"Yes! So it would seem! Thanks to it, I lived!"
"And if you lost, just say you lost. I'm not going to scold you for something like that."
"...Yes, sir."
Durek turned his head toward Yujun.
"You're this wretch's master?"
"That's right."
"A human? It's been a long time since I last saw one."
"Not many humans around here, then?"
"Saw one. Exactly once. And that was the last."
Yujun gave a small hum and nodded. It stood to reason. Aside from the Irregular known as Sim Sanghoon, human players had appeared a mere five years ago, and the greater share of people didn't even know Sourtul Forest existed. How likely was it, then, that a human would find his way into the Underground Kingdom beneath the tunnels?
The human that dwarf says he saw was probably one of the players trying to escape Sourtul Forest.
Could it have been Sim Sanghoon? And if not him, then maybe Ji Gyutae.
Sim Sanghoon had claimed, in his own words, that he had reached the Tower of Infinity years ahead of anyone else, and Ji Gyutae gave every impression of standing far ahead of the other players as well.
Yujun lifted his head. He looked to the sky, but the entrance to the tunnels of Sourtul Forest was nowhere in sight.
I'll be able to get back, won't I?
If he couldn't, it would be a genuine disaster—but Sirius came and went through the Sourtul Forest tunnels as he pleased. On that score, at least, Yujun wasn't particularly worried.
"Paranet. Enough with the theatrics. Get up."
"If you would only fetch me my legs... I believe I could be up in no time."
Yujun kicked the lower half lying abandoned on the dirt, and what followed was astonishing. The half he had sent flying joined Paranet's upper body as if measured with a ruler, fusing perfectly, without a hair of misalignment or error.
"..."
"What in the...?"
Everyone present was stunned. It had looked like a careless kick—were they meant to believe it hadn't been? Even allowing for some high-order spell, the sight was difficult to credit.
"M-Master! Magnificent, as expected!"
"No... that was luck."
Yujun looked just as dazed. He hadn't calculated a thing, and he hadn't meant to. All he'd intended was to drop the lower half somewhere near Paranet. Coincidence—nothing more, and nothing less. Tell him to do it again and he never could. It had been something close to a miracle.
"Master, that humility of yours really is too much. Haha."
Paranet said it as he sprang upright. Durek regarded Yujun with a faintly wary eye.
"Why did you attack our stronghold?"
"Attack? What are you talking about?"
"Look around you. This is the work of that undead who calls you master. If this isn't an attack, what would you call it?"
"Oh. So that's what happened?"
Paranet's fall under Thousand-Pound Drop must have sent its shock through the surroundings. Then that boom from earlier had been the sound of him hitting the ground as well. Sweeping his gaze around, Yujun found people in rags collapsed in a heap, and their state, together with the iron bars enclosing them, made it plain they were slaves dragged here by force.
"Turning decent players into slaves, and killing them on top of it. You people are seriously awful, aren't you?"
At that, Durek looked dumbfounded.
"I didn't kill th—"
"Enough excuses! You cowardly, vicious bandit! Our Master, executor of justice, shall cut you down!"
Paranet bellowed it.
"No—I didn't kill them, you d—"
"Wretch! How dare you flap your mouth! If you trust in your strength, then show it with deeds!"
The sly tone set Durek's anger blazing.
"I won't be granting either of you a clean death."
He charged not at Paranet, but at Yujun. Yujun drew his sword. In the blink of an eye Durek was in front of him, swinging the double-bladed axe lightly in one hand—a probing stroke, nothing more. Yujun called on no ability at all and focused purely on evasion.
Then Durek thrust out his right hand. Not the weapon. A bare fist, sheathed in a deep purple aura. Yujun met it with his sword.
"Graaah!"
A single collision. Durek's fist caved in deep enough that the bone showed clear, and the fierce-faced dwarf clutched his right hand and staggered back.
"Wh-what..."
He hadn't used a skill. He hadn't used mana. Simply meeting the blow with the edge of the blade had opened a wound like that, and Durek, immensely confident in the durability of his body, was shaken to the core.
"That sword. What is it?"
"What else? An item."
"..."
"And that's why you don't start swinging your fists when you've got a weapon. You're not some back-alley thug."
In truth, the efficient way to fight was to use the whole body—hands, feet, elbows, knees—and not the weapon alone. Durek believed that, and plenty of players had in fact lost their lives to his unorthodox attacks. He wanted to argue. He couldn't. Throwing the punch in haste had, this time, been a move against himself.
He popped the stopper on a high-grade potion and poured the entire thing over his fist. Lord of the largest stronghold in the Underground Kingdom, he was a magnate besides; mid-grade potions and higher, too precious for others even to obtain, he possessed in overflowing plenty. The hand that had looked smashed beyond any hope of regeneration began, by the potion's power, to knit itself back together at once.
"You done?"
Yujun asked it as if bored, and the sight, conversely, cooled Durek's excitement. This was not an opponent to take lightly. For the first time in a long while, he had met a rival worth staking his life against. Faced with the real possibility that he might die, Durek resolved—for the first time in ages—to fight with everything he had.
From every inch of his body, a purple aura of staggering density began to erupt.