Semifinals (6)
……
Hungyo drew his sword and frowned.
Clint Jones. The scowl was entirely the fault of the words the man before him had just spouted.
"What? Does he really think he's something special?"
How dare he. Toward my Lord, of all people.
Kugugugugu…! A tremendous aura bloomed from Hungyo's body.
He had originally planned to humor his opponent for a bit and finish this quickly, but he had changed his mind. He would tear the man apart as humiliatingly as possible—overwhelmingly so.
Shwaaaaa! One of Jones's summons came lunging at him.
Sword Beast (A-rank). A humanoid summon that wielded a blade much as he did.
It closed the distance in an instant, twisting at the waist as it went for the throat—undeniably fast. But that was only through ordinary eyes.
Slow.
To Hungyo, the entire sequence played out in slow motion.
An attack so predictable it made him yawn.
This didn't even register as a failure of control. It was simply, plainly, a lack of training. If that summon had trained under him, wouldn't it have been rolling nonstop for a solid month, no rest permitted?
Swish!
Hungyo glided back a half step—just far enough to slip past the blade—and in the same breath, predicting where his opponent's foot would land, he set his own down on that exact spot.
"Hmng?"
The Sword Beast faltered. Its ambush had failed, its footwork had tangled, and now its balance was collapsing entirely. It scrambled to evade—but Hungyo's thrust was already unfurling.
The target was the same as its own: the neck. The only differences were that its shattered balance made the trajectory absolutely impossible to dodge—and that Hungyo's speed was on another plane entirely.
Shk!
"Kgh—khek!"
The cold blade punched up through the Sword Beast's throat. He felt its strength drain in an instant—a vital-point strike; its HP must have plummeted. Such was the limit of humanoid summons.
Shwak!
Hungyo wrenched his sword free without a shred of mercy, and the beast toppled in a fountain of blood.
One more, is it?
A sneak attack. Sensing the killing intent of a cloaked enemy, Hungyo instinctively raised his blade.
Kaaang! Steel rang against steel, and the attacker was revealed.
An assassin, then.
For an assassin-type summon, the moment its form was exposed, everything was over.
And its strength is pitiful, too.
This, again, was an obvious neglect of strength training. Assassin or not, an ambush could only succeed when backed by a foundation of raw power.
The assassin, already feeling the gulf in strength, lifted its sword—and just like the Sword Beast before it, its throat lay wide open.
Shk!
"Krrgh…!"
Having allowed the very same strike to its neck, the assassin was forcibly unsummoned.
Total time to dispose of two summons: ten seconds flat.
"…!"
Clint Jones's jaw hung open.
The Sword Beast and the assassin. How much effort had he poured into raising those two to their absolute limits? He'd socketed them full of rare runes and never once skipped their control drills. They were his precious partners—the very ones who had carried him to world rank 10—
In ten seconds?
He hadn't even been able to follow what moves had been exchanged. Jones had simply thrown out his usual opening probes, light as always. And that had been that.
Puk. Puk! Two dull sounds, and his summons lay dead with pierced throats.
"In-sane."
This defied all reason. Even Xenos, captain of his own national team, couldn't be this overwhelmingly dominant—!
"Hungyo."
Of course, whether Jones was stunned or not, Baek Jinwoo couldn't have cared less.
"The rest are just buffers. Clear them out."
—…!
Hungyo dipped his head slightly, then—Tat!—kicked off the ground!
Shwiririk! The blade whistled, then thrust out in three lines at once.
And the result?
Puk! Puk! Puk!
The steel drove straight into the hearts and skulls of the buffers, whose combat ability was negligible at best.
"Ah, aah…."
Thud!
Clint Jones dropped to his knees.
When the whole world had been raving about Hungyo's greatness, and even when he'd beaten Rachel in the Battle Royale, Jones had written him off as just another big name. The Battle Royale especially—Hungyo had never once crossed weapons with the alliance of the Five Great Powers, after all.
But this… this is a different league entirely.
He hadn't understood from a distance. Face to face, he understood now.
Jinugod. That man was a monster.
No—something a full dimension beyond even a monster.
No wonder they called him the One Above Heaven.
At this rate, there was no telling how things would end. Even Xenos, a member of the One Sky Five Emperors, might find this a genuine struggle.
Truly.
Was America actually going to miss the finals and drop into the third-place match? To Korea—the country that had always propped up the bottom of the rankings?
"Ha."
Swish!
Clint Jones, stripped of every summon he had, was bounced from the arena.
It was the beginning of a legend.
— "Ah…"
— "Whoa…!"
South Korea's broadcast booth had been struck dumb.
Insane. They had let themselves hope—just maybe—that he could win. He had stood shoulder to shoulder with Rachel in the Battle Royale, after all. But realistically, against a world rank 10, they'd braced for a long, bloody back-and-forth—
He'd won.
No, "won" didn't cover it. He'd flayed the man alive.
— "Is this a dream, or am I wide awake?"
— "…I genuinely don't know. It just ended, like it was nothing at all?"
— "That scene… doesn't it feel like we've seen it somewhere before?"
— "The preliminaries, right?"
— "Exactly. It mirrors the moment he one-shot Kang Geonho in five seconds during the qualifiers. The difference is… this time, the man on the receiving end isn't Kang Geonho. It's the one and only Clint Jones—world rank 10."
— "Ah—aaah… He's insane. Baek Jinwoo is absolutely insane…!"
The commentators kept piling praise on Baek Jinwoo's greatness, their eyes still glazed with shock, and—
"WAAAAAAAH!"
"WOOOOOOAH!"
"Baek Jinwoo! Baek Jinwoo!"
"Hungyo! Hungyo!"
All of South Korea had descended into absolute pandemonium.
└ Kyaaah!
└ God, that was satisfying lol
└ A domestic unranked player one-shots world rank 10 lmaooo is this even real?
└ That Hungyo thing is genuinely abnormal;; honestly the overseas crowd's gonna be crying bug.
└ And if it is a bug, then what lol? By that logic Rachel's a bug too—pretty sure she's rocking two S-ranks.
└ ^ This. Not like we can patch the system or slap sanctions on anyone. Whoever's stronger wins. Period.
And Jones was hardly some random nobody, either. This was the Clint Jones—held in awe by fans, with a fanbase spanning every crowd. And Hungyo had pulverized that very Jones in an action sequence ripped straight from a movie.
— "N-next up is Kobi Pochettino!"
— "Kobi…! World rank 8! America's number two!"
— "Ah, look at Kobi's face, everyone. The tension is plain as day."
— "Well, of course it is. After Hungyo put on a display like that, anyone would be on high alert!"
The match resumed at once.
Kobi was a different animal from Jones. He kept his guard up and tried to steer the match with caution.
But—
Shk!
"Kyaak!"
The instant the match began, Hungyo's sprinting blade punched through his healer's abdomen.
Kobi's dealer, Iron Fist (A-rank), caught the movement and threw a punch—
Swish! Hungyo was already gone from the spot.
"Krrk?"
He was directly behind it. By the time Iron Fist realized, Hungyo's sword was already falling toward its head.
Kaaang! Its head rang like struck metal—Iron Fist was that hard.
"Our Iron Fist has resistance to metal, you see. Hammer at it for a hundred days straight—it won't do a thing."
Kobi murmured, his expression grave.
The perfect counter to a sword-type character like Hungyo. That was exactly what Iron Fist was.
But—
"Won't do a thing, you say?"
KAAAANG!
Hungyo slammed the flat spine of his blade—not the edge—across Iron Fist's cheek.
Kagagagak! He hooked his sword over the neck being driven back by raw force, swept its leg out from under it, and slammed it down, pinning it in place.
Hard, I'll grant it that. Hungyo's expression stayed easy. Baek Jinwoo, too, stood there without a flicker of concern.
But toughness only counts when the levels are even.
"Hnngh!" Hungyo bore down, pressing the blade ever deeper.
"Krrk! Krrrk!" Iron Fist thrashed, fists flailing wildly, but the blows meant nothing to Hungyo. He simply kept his strength constant and pressed it down, down toward the floor.
Crack! Craaack! Fissures spiderwebbed across the marble—then the floor shattered outright. And still the blade bored deeper into the wreckage.
"Wh-what the…!"
And then, moments later, Kobi went white with horror.
Iron Fist's HP was draining at a terrifying clip.
"You're not even using the sword—you're finishing it with raw strength?"
It was absurd. Since the blade wouldn't cut it, he was simply going to wrench Iron Fist's head from its torso with muscle alone—
Easier said than done. Was that even possible?
"Our Hungyo's stats happen to be a little ridiculous."
Baek Jinwoo chimed in, entirely unprompted.
Between the Unique-grade Trinity Rune set and every refinement grind stacked on top, Hungyo's Strength stat had already blown past 4,000.
Kwadeudeudeuk! At last, Iron Fist's head was torn from its body by nothing but force.
It was, in every sense of the word, overwhelming strength.
The remaining three summons went through much the same. Shk! Puk! Puk!
One by one—deflect whatever came at him, then flow straight into the follow-up and bury steel in a throat. The trajectories were so short, so ruthlessly efficient, that watching them raised gooseflesh.
"…I concede. Korea really was hiding a monster."
Kobi admitted it without a single excuse, and his body vanished—swish!
— "K-Kobi Pochettino, same story!"
— "He wraps it up in thirty seconds flat without even breaking a sweat!"
— "Is this… is this truly the power of Jinugod?"
— "At this level, he's not just Xenos…! No—he's beyond Xenos. He could go toe-to-toe with Rachel herself!"
"So all that's left is Xenos, is it?"
Baek Jinwoo, who had been standing there at his ease, began rolling his wrists with lazy snaps.
Everything up to now had been child's play. From the Five Emperors onward, he had no intention of relaxing. Those men had ruled this game alongside him once—old guard steeped to the bone in it—so there was no telling what tricks they still had buried.
Still.
Xenos, too, ends at Hungyo's blade.
Baek Jinwoo's eyes cooled, sharp and frostlike.
From here on, he intended to show the people of this world—and the Five Emperors—exactly what the pinnacle of control looked like. Just how far a single summon could carry a fight.
"Ha. Unbelievable."
Olivia shot to her feet. Bale too, Rory too—no, every member of the British national team except Rachel had lurched upright in shock.
"Kobi gets handled like that?"
"Jones, fine, I'll give you Jones—but Kobi Pochettino is the real deal…"
"Hungyo… I knew he was strong, but that?"
It was a level of play that left no room for anything but disbelief. Two American monsters, ranked alongside or above their own team, erased in under a minute combined.
"Rachel."
Olivia chewed her lip.
Jones, Kobi—she could have beaten them easily enough herself. But not like that. Not with that kind of crushing, total dominance. Now she had no choice but to admit it.
Jinugod. That man was a monster.
"So that's why you said what you did."
"Yeah."
Rachel gave a small nod.
"I told you before—he's not a human being on any level we're capable of judging."
She closed her eyes and let the past rise.
The Battle of Summoners. The first time she'd spoken with him there—and the first time she'd witnessed his control.
I honestly thought he wasn't human.
Frankly, she'd assumed he was an AI. Didn't a certain shady game company spin up staff accounts to bait players into spending? She'd figured Jinugod was something along those lines. Or else that no amount of control could ever bridge the gap between a free-to-play account and a maxed-out whale.
That's how unreal he was.
And unreal he remained, even now. That summon of his—Hungyo. That one made no sense either.
So far, so good.
Rachel's eyes drifted shut. Just as he had yet to reveal his true strength, she too still had one more card hidden up her sleeve.
"There's exactly one thing you all have to do."
Rachel murmured:
"In the finals, bleed off as much of Baek Jinwoo's strength as you possibly can."
Rachel was already certain of it: Korea was going to the finals.