He Was Overwhelmingly Stronger Than Me?
…That thing was overwhelmingly stronger than me?
He was faintly thrown. For something supposedly so far above him, it had been markedly slower, and far weaker in raw muscle. Does the System judge strength by level, or by rank?
All the better, then. Luck had been on his side. Because the System had misjudged, he had walked away with an achievement and even a newly generated trait. And it still wasn't over. A sickening number of Hawks remained.
The encouraging part was that Grain Finding let him drop a Hawk without Chaos. He couldn't be sure of it, of course. This was the first time he had found a grain and killed one with it, which was all the more reason to test the thing again. Yujun swung twice at the pair charging his back. His Swordsmanship was an EX-rank trait, no less, stamped with a high-grade Jewel, and the blade passed through their grains without so much as a hair's deviation.
A soft hiss. A whisper of steel. It was over before their fists could reach him, and the two Hawks ceased to exist.
Insane… is this really going to keep happening? The Grain Finding trait. Wasn't this a little too broken? The effect was so good that even he, the one using it, found it unreasonable. Erasing the gap in rank was already a gift, but a mere graze of the sword made them vanish without a trace. From an enemy's point of view, what could possibly be more terrifying?
The effect was undeniable. S-rank Grain Finding let him see grains that had once been faint with far greater clarity. Even so, cutting one was never easy. A grain was so thin that the slightest miss meant failure. Only a cut as exact as a ruler's edge, taking nothing but the grain itself, could produce what he had just seen.
And this only works so well because the Hawks aren't wearing a thing. Against a player in thick armor, Grain Finding was meaningless. Fight one and you'd know it at once. A shallow cut across plate wasn't going to make anyone suddenly cease to exist. The very idea was absurd.
Not something I'll get to use all that often, then… Still, it ought to prove useful against certain monsters whose skin was bare, especially the enormous ones that could hardly wear equipment. I'll have to check whether other monsters have grains too. Not just the Hawks.
The Hawk Captain's face went rigid. They hadn't died from a blow to the neck or the head. A sword had merely brushed them, and their very existence had vanished. It would have been stranger if he had kept his composure.
"How did you do that?"
"Figure it out yourself."
"……."
Yujun flicked the sword. Having already had his temper soured by the captain, he had no intention of explaining grains. The Hawk Captain charged straight in with the ten Hawks that remained. He must have judged that if his forces thinned any further, he would have no chance left.
Not one of them uses magic. That made things rather convenient. There was a reason the pairing of mage and melee was so highly regarded. Even in games, the most efficient fighting came from a mage and a warrior together, and it was common sense that a party of only mages, or only melee specialists, was inefficient. The Hawks, however, knew no magic. All they could do was strike with fists and feet.
Even that alone would have been more than the Empire could stop, because the Hawks were overwhelmingly strong. Yujun, whose stats and attack power surpassed even theirs, was different. There was no easier opponent than an enemy whose attacks were that simple. It was a matter of crushing straightforward strength with greater strength. He swung lightly into the Hawks surging toward him, and with every swing, they disappeared.
"W-what?"
"Is that magic?"
The Empire's players, watching from the side, startled along with them. At first they had assumed the Hawks weren't dying at all, only using a movement skill. They had vanished without leaving so much as a trace. Blink, probably, they had thought, and let it pass without much concern. It wasn't that. Time passed, and the Hawks who should have reappeared somewhere never did.
"…I genuinely can't tell what kind of magic that is."
"Right? Is there something on that sword we don't know about?"
"Ah, the sword did look anything but ordinary. If it's a special option on the blade, that would explain it."
The Empire's players were badly mistaken, but it was true that Yujun's sword was no ordinary weapon.
That was when the Hawk Captain played his hidden card. He shoved the mere seven Hawks still standing back behind him and began tearing into their throats. They moved with such perfect unison that Yujun could only stand and watch. One by one, the Hawks bitten by their captain collapsed. Having ripped open their napes and drunk the blood, he swelled to a tremendous size. Where he had once been about as large as a fairly big orc, he was now as huge as that delicious enhanced yeti. Muscle strained as if it might burst, veins standing out in sharp relief. He looked like a steroid-fed bodybuilder magnified several times over, and the presence pouring off him had changed with the rest.
Vmmm. Vmmmm. He did nothing at all, merely stood there, and still the air trembled and the ground shuddered.
Just how much stronger did he get? Yujun could feel it with perfect clarity. The captain had been a fighter without precedent before, but this was beyond any comparison. Can I win? So much so that even Yujun, grown stronger still through upgraded equipment, felt the tension coil in him. Even his powerful weapon, Grain Finding, meant nothing. He could see no grain on the Hawk Captain.
It was there just a moment ago…? Should he have killed him sooner? Yujun shook his head. The bastard was meticulous. Even as his subordinates died around him, he had never once stepped forward first. Had Yujun taken the initiative, the captain would still have found some way to cling to his life. If anything, it's fortunate he only got around to eating his men this late.
Even so, he did not think he would lose. Defense. Even if the gap in rank rendered his attack power meaningless, he still had formidable defense of his own. There's a fair amount of Chaos left, too. If it comes to it, I can seal him in the Absolute Sealing Orb.
The Hawk Captain's feet left the ground. In that instant he was standing before Yujun's eyes.
Whoosh!
He barely even saw the fist extend. Yujun ducked just in time and used Flash to open the distance, but the Hawk Captain stuck to him like a ghost. Even invisible, he had been found. The captain's sense for presence must have been exceptional. Yujun thrust. The blade aimed at that abdomen cut only empty air. The bastard had leapt high.
Yujun did not rashly load Chaos into the sword. A missed attack didn't make Chaos vanish, but it didn't last forever either. As time passed, it dispersed into the air. He had to be careful upon careful. The Hawk Captain, by contrast, seemed to have no such reservations. He simply chased Yujun and kept attacking.
He seems a little angry. Mouth clamped shut, the captain threw his fists with everything he had. Anyone could have seen that he was furious. Just as Yujun could deal no harm without Chaos, the Hawk Captain's attacks missed again and again. As if he could read every move, Yujun acted and shifted ahead of them. It was closer to foresight than mere prediction.
Whoosh! Hah! The captain's breath came hard through his nose. When things refused to go his way, more strength went into his fists, and an opening appeared. Yujun did not let it pass. The sword flashed like lightning and severed the left arm.
Shhk!
Chaos rode the blade that cut through it.
"Graaah!"
Beyond delaying a wound, Chaos also maximized pain. The Heresy Inquisitor suffered plenty because of that. The Hawk Captain staggered back. The pain would not lessen, and the wound would not heal. For someone who had trusted in his own regeneration, it was no small predicament, and Yujun, knowing that, began to press him.
Boom! Crash! Every time sword met fist, a sound like a detonating explosion rang out. Yujun's attacks, lower in rank, could not so much as scratch the captain's fists. But those fists fell short of the sword's durability as well, and above all, the bastard had lost an arm. He had lost one of his most powerful weapons. The tide tilted sharply. Yujun pressed without pause. The Hawk Captain tried to take the hits and seize the bone anyway, but Yujun's exquisite Swordsmanship turned every attempt into failure.
The blade sheared across the captain's leg. Certain it was a strike without Chaos, he stepped forward and lost his balance. The leg was only half cut through, and Chaos had seeped into the wound, gouging it without mercy.
Reliable. Was this what a parent felt, having raised a capable child? Yujun smiled with quiet satisfaction and decided it was time to end the fight. Twenty Chaos remained. He would have to finish this in two attacks at most, and that would not be easy. The Hawk Captain would be feeling the crisis he was in. No, he would know it better than anyone, and in a situation like that there was no chance he would simply take a blow head-on.
So Yujun went for a strike that caught him off guard. First he thrust from effective range, and the captain, seeing the Chaos loaded in the sword, naturally threw himself aside. By then Yujun had already used Flash. From directly behind the Hawk Captain, he released Chaos, and it fired in the form of a laser. It was a linked technique he had practiced in the Demon God Worshippers' laboratory.
Crunch!
Chaos punched through the captain's head and kept going. It seemed to have gone a little wide, but once Chaos landed, the match was over. Mortally wounded, the Hawk Captain staggered. He still wasn't dead. A truly tenacious vitality, to keep moving with half his head gone. He was hardly in a normal state, of course. He looked ready to collapse at any moment. Yujun kicked his foot out from under him. With one leg already in tatters, the captain went down without resistance, and Yujun drove the Chaos-laden sword down.
Thud!
The blade sank into his head. The Hawk Captain's breath cut off completely.
"……."
"……."
What. Astonishingly, nothing happened. No achievement reward or anything? There was no doubt the Hawk Captain was dead, and yet no System message or notification appeared. What that meant was simple. Yujun was stronger than the Hawk Captain. It would have been stranger for a strong man killing a weaker one to earn some grand achievement for it.
And here the System told me a single Hawk was stronger than me? It seemed to be flip-flopping. There was no other way this made sense. It was a shame, but he hadn't killed the captain expecting an achievement in the first place. Considering the trial's final reward, there was nothing to regret. Having forced the rationalization through, Yujun released Super Concentration.
A touch of dizziness, but it passed in a moment. Is it because my Constitution went up? Even Super Concentration's side effects seem to fade quickly. It probably wasn't just his imagination. The side effects really had lessened, and the rise in the skill's rank likely had something to do with it as well.
"Has the whole of it ended, then?"
The words had barely left Paranet, who had appeared at his side without Yujun noticing, when the System answered.
The second wave has been successfully repelled.
The third wave begins immediately.