The Wave Reaches the Heavenly Race
The instant the wave reached the heavenly race—
Crack! Crunch!
Colossal blocks of ice burst into being and stopped the wave cold. More precisely, they froze it solid.
Yujun had been wondering who would dare something so bold. It was Utria.
No one could have answered that unless they already knew it was coming.
She seemed to have judged long ago that the heavenly race could not simply catch the danger and fly clear of it.
Still, that level of magic is absurd.
Atradeon had not called her the vanguard commander for nothing. To shut down his attack alone, without the aid of a single item—and a wave the eye could not even see, at that.
The Moderate Faction, who had just had ten years frightened off their lives, let out a collective sigh of relief. From the results of their earlier investigations, they knew all too well what end awaited anyone who took that wave head-on.
Yujun drove his sword into the ground once more.
Let's see how long you can keep blocking it.
Absolute Earthbind had already restricted the heavenly race's movement, and the wave of Weapon Earthquake could still reach them.
But—
Crack! Crunch!
Once again, a vast ice spell rose without fail to bar the way.
"Shin Yujun. I can seal your technique at the source. How does it feel, having your trump card blocked?"
Utria spoke with a face swollen with pride.
"Trump card?"
It was a little ridiculous, but if the enemy wanted to misunderstand, he was happy to let her.
"You look worn out, though."
Yujun said it while looking straight at her.
"As if."
Utria shook her head, forcing a show of composure, but in truth she had burned through every drop of her mana. His attack power was so high that she had been forced to pour in far more than she had anticipated.
"Think you can block one more?"
The moment Yujun made as if to slam his sword down, the heavenly race reacted first. They tore their feet from the ground and shot into the sky. However effective his Absolute Earthbind might be, holding hundreds of them in place for long was impossible.
Not that he had ever intended to use Earthquake again.
It's been a while. Might as well polish the swordsmanship.
Until now he had stood comfortably still and killed with skills and magic. It was time to move his body.
Bam!
Yujun kicked off the earth. The ground caved in deep, and his figure vanished.
Slash! Slice!
Two of the heavenly race lost their lives. The one who had taken their heads was still nowhere to be seen.
"Use detection magic first!"
At Utria's shout, Yujun's position was exposed almost at once. It didn't matter. The invisibility granted by Flash ended within five seconds anyway, and he had barely counted on that advantage. Three more of the heavenly race died. Against nearly two hundred of the Moderate Faction, the losses could hardly be called devastating—but one could not ignore that barely five seconds had passed.
Utria chased Yujun with fire in her eyes. The Moderate Faction scattered through the field kept serving as obstacles, and she could not stick to him properly. Yujun, irritatingly, started with the dull-sensed ones. Even when they raised shields, he shattered them in a single blow and took their lives. Fear took root across the entire Moderate camp.
Yujun's companions were not idle either. Manuela poured curses and magic on the heavenly race without pause, inflicting heavy damage, while Paranet—who had popped out on his own at some point—guarded her and met the enemy head-on.
Atradeon was startlingly skilled as well, enough that Yujun found it odd the man had ever complained to him about magic. True to the title of Sage, he toyed with the other spellcasting heavenly race. The blessing helped a great deal, but even without it his skill was far from ordinary. Of course, he could not finish an enemy in one stroke the way Yujun could. Grievous wounds were his limit, and between the Moderate Faction's endless healing and shields, actually taking a life was impossible.
Utria, however, could not afford optimism.
This can't go on.
They were holding, somehow, but their numbers kept falling. All because of a single human named Shin Yujun.
I didn't think he was this strong.
She had no choice but to admit she had underestimated him. Whether he was a player who could fight a hundred or a thousand, she had assumed Shin Yujun would sit somewhere around her own level. She herself was one of the few players in Heaven recognized on martial strength alone. Most of the heavenly race praised her for wielding such power at so young an age, and even with a face that was, for their kind, rather plain, her popularity soared to the heavens. She had even been spoken of as a candidate for the next Archangel.
And yet she had been nursing a complacent thought—that a human could only grow so strong.
Shin Yujun's martial power was beyond imagination. Worse still, those ghostlike movements were impossible to answer.
If only my subordinates weren't here...
She burned to face him in a true one-on-one. But that only worked if he agreed to it. The real problem was that even if she could fight him alone, there was no guarantee she would win. The odds of defeat were high.
No. Don't decide that yet. I won't know until I actually clash with him.
Right now Shin Yujun was keeping his distance and killing only her subordinates. A duel between players could not be judged by eye alone. At least, that was what she believed.
How much time had passed? Not very much. Then, unexpectedly, the situation she wanted arrived. Before the damage could grow any worse, the heavenly race fled Yujun and climbed high into the sky.
"This just got annoying."
The sky was wide. Even with Fly, picking them off one by one was anything but easy, and there were still plenty of them. Count the reinforcements that had arrived, and their numbers had climbed back past two hundred.
"Why are only they getting reinforcements? When do ours show up?"
When Yujun paused his assault and asked, Atradeon gave a bitter smile.
"We are carrying out an infiltration. Reinforcements were never going to come."
"And where, exactly, is the infiltration in this? Isn't this striking a rock with an egg? Six of us, against an enemy that never stops pouring in."
"Do not play at suffering. Having seen your skill, I am quite certain you are no egg. We amount to at least a cannon. A rock, we can shatter in a single stroke."
Atradeon denied it while sweating buckets from the massive drain on his mana.
"Atradeon. If you're tired, rest."
"W-would that truly be acceptable?"
"Yes. Then the rest of us all die. Rest comfortably. Without a thought for anyone else."
"......"
"I'm joking."
"It did not sound like a joke. There was a barb in those words."
"And whose fault is it that things turned out like this?"
"Are you saying the fault is mine?"
"Isn't it?"
"......I cannot claim there is none, but the greatest fault lies with Sertiphs. These were not the personnel I selected."
"Now that you mention it, that's true."
"When we meet him later, what say we crush him together?"
"Sertiphs?"
"Yes."
"I heard he's the child of the Second Archangel. Won't touching him cause serious trouble?"
"I will bear the responsibility."
"All right, for n—"
Yujun's words cut off.
The moment he stopped killing and the fight settled into a lull, Utria seemed to decide it was her chance and launched a surprise attack. Calling it a surprise was generous. She came at him across an empty plain with not a single obstacle in the way. He saw all of it.
Yujun raised his sword and turned the strike aside with ease. The halberd that met his blade was flung far away. The impact on her hands was so tremendous she could not hold on, and the weapon left her grip.
"Whoa. That weapon looks incredible."
A halberd that stayed perfectly intact after colliding with his own. Not even a hairline crack. He had wondered whether any weapon could withstand the Planet Destroyer's Sword. How had this one held?
Yujun was genuinely impressed.
"It has an Indestructible option. I also knew you use a technique that destroys your opponent's weapon."
Utria answered even as she grimaced through the tingling pain.
"Ah. An Indestructible option."
Right. That existed. Every enemy he met had their weapon shattered, and he had forgotten such an option was even a thing. He himself owned dozens of them. They simply could not compare to the Planet Destroyer's Sword in attack power or options.
"You did your homework."
"Of course. I respect the strong regardless of race, and I never stop preparing to defeat my opponent. I've reviewed footage of every technique you've used so far."
"Have you? I didn't know."
More precisely, he had not cared. He was already famous. Go anywhere but the Continent, and there was hardly anyone who did not know the name Shin Yujun. Which meant no small number of players were watching him—every kind of recording orb, and people using items and techniques he did not even know, checking on his daily life. He lived with the constant risk of an ambush.
He could not stop the ones spying on him, either. The moment he tried to catch what ability or item they were using, they noticed with uncanny instinct. The best he could do was keep a barrier raised at all times, which was why, lately, his knowledge of barriers had grown rather deep. Even so, there were still those who pierced the barrier and observed him. Fret over people like that, and he would worry himself sick, so he had simply given up.
Hah. Is this what a celebrity's life is like? Not even Dispatch—or Discord, whatever they call it—would hound someone this relentlessly.
"If you know me that well, try blocking this."
Yujun used Flash.
As if she had expected that too, Utria's figure vanished at the same moment. The halberd that had fallen to the ground was gone as well. But Yujun's senses far exceeded ordinary understanding. He pinpointed her at once and thrust his sword.
That was when her body scattered into smoke, and a halberd swung for his flank. A strike from a blind spot. The timing was far too perfect to answer by moving himself. It was an attack possible only because she knew him well.
And yet a sword materialized out of nowhere and barred the halberd.
Clang!
He had created a new blade through Sword Unity.
Utria, who had swung the halberd with everything she had, took a tremendous impact and was thrown back. Last time she had let the shock bleed off by releasing the weapon. This time she had no such chance, and the full force concentrated on her.
"Cough!"
Utria hacked and clutched her chest, gasping for breath. The impact had been so great that, for an instant, her breath had stopped dead—and this with good armor already absorbing a fair share of the blow.
That sword. What in the world is it? I thought it was just a weapon-breaking technique, or a sword with that kind of option...
A thought struck her that it might be something else entirely.
Simply because the attack power is that high? Really?
Her own halberd boasted an attack power so high that comparable weapons were hard to find. And yet this was not even a contest.
I never thought I'd lose on equipment.
Her talent and skill had been recognized, and the Archangel had backed her with every kind of support. Wearing high-tier items rarely seen even in Heaven, she had never once imagined she would feel a gap in gear.
This won't do. I'll have to use that.
She could keep her weapon from being destroyed. What she could not survive was the shock traveling up the weapon and killing her first. Utria had no choice. She resolved to bring out her hidden measure.