It Was Only Natural
It was only natural.
It was only natural.
What would he gain by bringing the Ledordang Tribe a pony? Turn it over as he might, there wasn't a single thing.
Yujun was not the philanthropic sort who went around doing favors he already knew would profit him nothing.
From the feel of it, I should be able to take the things here back to my original world.
If that was true, there was even less reason to do the Ledordang any kindness.
The moment I clear the trial, I might be thrown out of the event dungeon.
Nothing was certain. What he had to do, however, was. Win the duel by an overwhelming margin, and take first place while he was at it. Whatever the trial turned out to be, he meant to give it everything he had, so the reward would come out as large as it possibly could.
After eating the food the Golden Lion Tribe had prepared, Yujun waited for morning with his eyes open. Sleep felt like a waste, so he ran a deep visualization drill on his swordsmanship, and for the sake of a precise form he swung the sword itself several hundred times. Strictly speaking, the work might have been unnecessary. Still, there was a saying that what you don't use rusts, and lately the number of times he had actually swung a blade was vanishingly small. His attack power and his Swordsmanship rank sat so far above everyone else's that it could hardly have been otherwise, yet if he didn't keep the motions drilled into his body, he had the nagging sense the edge would go dull.
Moving like this before dawn made the time pass quickly, too, and his mind felt clearer for it. Once he knew that training did him more good than sleep, falling asleep was simply out of the question.
Boromian watched, through sleepy eyes and with a look of pure disbelief, as Yujun stayed up the whole night studying the sword.
Janiz stepped out of the tent and raised his voice.
"Everybody sleep all right?"
"Yes."
"Slept fine."
They were all in decent shape. Janiz laughed.
"You'd better have. Today might turn out to be the day of your funeral rites."
No one answered.
He'd said something vicious with a smile on his face, but he wasn't wrong. The Ledordang barbarians in particular—everyone except Yujun—stood a good chance of becoming prey for the Raccoon Tribe.
"I hear they're not exactly the merciful sort."
"The Raccoon Tribe's been infamous for generations."
For all that, their faces weren't especially dark.
"Shin Yujun. I'm counting on you alone."
Boromian said it, and Yujun's brow creased.
"What? You planning to just stick a spoon in and leech? ADC— no. I don't hand that role out unless you're a ranged dealer."
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Can't follow a word of it. Shin Yujun. Strange talk, just like the name."
"If you don't get it, forget it."
Yujun was looking at them as if disappointed they didn't understand, and for no good reason Boromian felt oddly unsettled.
"Try not to die, if you can help it. Let's see each other alive."
"Yeah."
"We came all this way—we can't die for nothing! Let's raise the tribe's honor and get home so we can brag!"
Yujun headed for the arena with the Ledordang barbarians. A great many others had already taken their seats, which said plenty about how much was riding on the third event of the tribal tournament: the group melee. Set beside the first and second events, which amounted to little more than measurements, a group fight was extremely dangerous. Scrambling for a better score and a better impression made hands cruel, and the crowd wanted exactly that. In more ways than one, the spectacle was on a level the earlier events couldn't touch.
"It's starting."
"Honestly, I'm a little disappointed nobody died in the second event."
"It doesn't have to be a death to be fun. I had plenty of fun yesterday. Even more so this year, I think, with so many prodigies showing up at once."
"Who would've thought two barbarians like that would come out of the Dokdaego Tribe? They've never produced supreme-grade Potential. Not once. All they've ever turned out is a lot of high-grade barbarians."
"That's what makes it strange. Not a single one until now, and this year two of them at the same time."
"It isn't only the Dokdaego, either. Supreme-grade is hard to find even if you search every tribe put together."
"And who doesn't know that?"
"Still... doesn't it seem like a Potential above supreme-grade showed up?"
"Come off it. It's just the same supreme-grade. I've never heard of anything higher. And even supreme-grade isn't all the same supreme-grade, is it? Saying he's got the makings of a king—isn't that going a bit far?"
"He's the one who knocked the great Rotok down with a stone. Supreme-grade or not, you really think that's possible? A barbarian who hasn't even had his coming-of-age?"
"...Well, I'm not confident of either side. We'll know soon enough."
Opinions on Yujun were divided. He had produced an incredible result, and the impact was without precedent, but he had been on display for only a very short time.
"Shin Yujun is a god! Born with a god's talent!"
"Don't cage him with a word like talent. It's an insult to him."
There were, of course, barbarians who praised him to that extreme. Even with opinions split, it was undeniable that more people had come to acknowledge him.
The arena was boiling before the match had even begun, because the very first pairing set the Raccoon Tribe against the Ledordang, where Yujun stood. Barbarians in the stands began roaring the names of the tribes they favored. The contestants were entering the arena.
"Waaaaah—!"
"Kill them all! Kill as many as you can!"
"My money's on Ledordang! Shin Yujun! I'm counting on you alone!"
"Eh. It's still the Raccoon Tribe. Take Shin Yujun out of Ledordang and the rest might as well not be there. He'll be facing five Raccoons by himself. You call that a fight?"
There were no brilliant lights of the kind that lit Earth's great stadiums, but the grandeur and the heat were beyond any comparison. The barbarians' voices in particular were louder than anyone could imagine. Sit among that crowd, and it felt as if your ears would go deaf.
This is more exciting than I thought.
A faint smile touched Yujun's mouth as he stepped into the arena.
Normally this isn't the moment or the vibe for messing around... but the way I am now, isn't tearing the place up perfectly legal?
In truth, there was no one who got to decide that. It was entirely up to him. He had no intention of hiding his strength inside the event dungeon. He was leaving this place anyway, and he meant to show the whole world, without holding anything back, exactly what kind of barbarian he was.
A thin breath escaped him, and he shuddered once. Ever since he had entered the event dungeon it had felt like playing a virtual-reality game, and he couldn't hide how keyed up he was. He had always loved games, after all.
This world doesn't seem like something that was made up. It feels like I'm dreaming.
Maybe it was because the sight of thunderous cheers in an arena like a coliseum was unreal in itself. Either way, it didn't matter. He only hoped that after he left this event dungeon, the next scene wouldn't open with his organs being harvested.
Yujun looked over the Raccoon Tribe as they came up onto the stage. None of them could hide the tension on their faces—except one, who looked entirely at ease. It was the massive barbarian who had struck the Retein ore first. If anything, a sneer sat at the corner of his mouth. He seemed thoroughly sure of himself. That smile, as if victory were already certain, was not something a man could fake.
The two tribes stood facing each other. Kam, the barbarian presiding over the match, thrust both arms forward.
"You may call a forfeit midway. A group forfeit requires a majority to call it. If things get so dire you can't call it yourselves, the rest can make it a group forfeit."
"The duel also ends if the opposing tribe is entirely incapacitated, or dead. Everyone understand?"
The barbarians nodded.
"Take your positions."
Where each tribe stood had been fixed in advance, so the match wouldn't end in a blink the moment someone charged.
"...Begin!"
At Kam's shout the Raccoon barbarians surged forward. The Ledordang, by contrast, started two beats late. Yujun was the exception. He alone burst ahead and met the Raccoons in the shortest time possible.
He hadn't been their first target, it seemed; a flicker of surprise crossed their faces. It lasted only a moment. Three of them locked onto Yujun, while two—the giant among them—slipped past him. It was a movement agreed upon beforehand, for exactly this situation.
Yujun shut the ones who had passed him out of his mind and focused solely on the enemies in front of him. The Raccoon barbarians came in swinging, each from an angle he couldn't slip all at once. Rather than dodge or parry, he drove in deeper. A sharp spearhead grazed his arm and slid past.
The barbarian holding that spear was about to learn what it felt like to have the world turn completely upside down. The trouble was that the rare experience and the end of his life arrived together. His head left his shoulders and tumbled across the ground. The blade was thick and uneven, yet the cut across the neck was perfectly clean.
Beside him, another Raccoon barbarian stiffened. Yujun didn't miss the opening. The sword flashed like lightning, pierced the space between the man's brows, and pulled free. Crimson blood sprayed out, soaked the stone, and ran. All of it had happened in less than two seconds.
It wasn't that Yujun's speed utterly outstripped theirs. The motions flowed as naturally as water. As if he had foreseen what was coming, he moved like a man surrendering his body to a path already laid out. However promising they were, barbarians who had not yet come of age had no answer for movements like those.
Now only one enemy stood before him. In a last desperate flail, the man brought a heavy greatsword down from overhead.
Does he not know what learning is?
Yujun slipped the all-too-easy attack without effort and drove his sword into the side where the heart lay. The blade sank deep. Three barbarians had left the world in an instant.
He could have subdued them. He simply chose not to. From the start, he had no intention of showing the Raccoon barbarians any mercy. He had heard what evils that tribe committed, and he was not afraid of what might follow. Not because he happened to be inside an event dungeon—because he was confident he would survive handily even if every last one of them came at him at once.
Yujun turned. The two remaining Raccoon barbarians had only just engaged the Ledordang. Seen that way, it almost seemed as if time moved differently for him alone, but it only meant he had finished the three of them that quickly. He had no intention of leaving his tribesmen to fend for themselves, and he kicked off the ground at once.
The giant was a better barbarian than Yujun had expected. By the time he reached them, one of the Ledordang was already dead at the man's hands—a barbarian Boromian had often talked with. Yujun's brow furrowed. The corpse on the cold stone had been hacked to pieces, and the giant was still swinging his sword in a vicious, irritable frenzy, as if taking his anger out on the dead.
Yujun gripped his sword hard and ran.