Chapter 43
Chapter 43
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 43
Chapter Title: Switching
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Seeing and reacting were two entirely different things.
The distance between the newly appeared player—Dark Angel—and Choi Yu-ra was barely five meters. For Dark Angel, whose acceleration rivaled a cheetah's, such a distance was as good as none.
Choi Yu-ra's reflexive action was to pull back.
She couldn't pull the crossbow trigger. The fact that her opponent was human, a Player at that, stayed her finger.
Her opponent, however, had no such reservations. The moment he kicked off the ground and charged, he thrust his right shoulder forward, assuming a shoulder tackle stance.
Impact was imminent.
Choi Yu-ra gritted her teeth. But she didn't close her eyes. And because of that, she was able to see Kang-seok inserting himself between her and Dark Angel.
Thud!
A dull impact sounded as Kang-seok and Dark Angel collided. Even for someone like Kang-seok, there was no way to cleanly deflect Dark Angel, who had already begun his charge toward Choi Yu-ra. Therefore, what Kang-seok did was simply jump in the way.
But he hadn't thrown himself in without a plan. As proof, though Kang-seok was sent flying back from Dark Angel's shoulder tackle, he didn't seem to have sustained any significant injuries.
He hadn't needed to use a skill. What Kang-seok had done was, quite literally, assume a defensive stance. But it was a special kind of guard.
'Mid guard!'
For a sudden intervention, his defensive posture was too perfect. While it was impossible to mitigate all the damage, ending Dark Angel's fortress-shattering shoulder tackle with nothing more than being pushed back was a remarkable achievement.
The high, mid, and low attack classifications of fighting games.
Kang-seok not only succeeded in a mid guard but also lifted his body into the air to dissipate as much of the force from Dark Angel's attack as possible.
“Ugh!”
It was Choi Yu-ra who cried out in surprise. As Kang-seok's back came flying at her instead of Dark Angel's shoulder tackle, she quickly spread her arms. Still holding her crossbow, she hugged Kang-seok with just her arms, struggling to keep from falling over.
And then, Seong Yu-jin moved.
“Hah!”
With a short cry, she struck at Dark Angel's flank as his attack was nullified. It was a Shield Charge, with her shield leading the way.
Compared to Kang-seok or Dark Angel, it was a sluggish attack, but that was only a relative assessment. Having just used a skill, Dark Angel could do nothing but throw his body aside like Kang-seok had to minimize the impact.
“Kuh!”
Knocked aside, Dark Angel let out a strange groan. It was less from the impact itself and more from the strange sensation that followed. For some reason, it was hard to move his body.
The Knight, one of Exa Online's classes, existed almost exclusively for tanking, from beginning to end. Shield Charge, too, was a skill meant to induce status effects like stun, rather than deal damage—though, as it involved striking the enemy with a shield, it wasn't entirely without power.
“Kang-seok!”
Seong Yu-jin shouted, her eyes still fixed on Dark Angel.
Having ended up toppling over and crushing Choi Yu-ra, Kang-seok quickly got up, and Choi Yu-ra also scrambled to her feet, cursing.
The opponent was a Player.
But he had attacked Choi Yu-ra.
That alone was enough to settle the matter. They didn't intend to take his life, but a fight was unavoidable.
“Uooooh!”
Kang-seok stomped the ground. Conversation or anything else would have to wait until after they'd incapacitated the Player before them.
“Come on!”
Freed from the stun, Dark Angel spread his arms wide and growled. The distance between Dark Angel and Kang-seok was at most five to six meters.
But Kang-seok didn't choose to charge straight ahead as Dark Angel had. He suddenly kicked off the ground and shot up diagonally.
“Foolish!”
Dark Angel shouted. No matter how fast someone was, they were powerless in the air with nothing to step on. Leaping into the air, where even changing direction was difficult, was like begging his opponent to dodge.
'Or asking for a counterattack!'
Watching Kang-seok, who had leaped more than two meters, Dark Angel clenched his fists. His plan was to swiftly dodge whatever attack came and then unleash a skill of his own.
Kang-seok saw him, too. He gave a fierce smile at the transparent move.
↓↙←+K
High-Speed Descent
One of the Dark Destiny Lord's command skills, reproducible now that he had advanced to Superior Fighter!
Kang-seok's body, suspended in the air, moved diagonally downward. It was a maneuver akin to teleportation, as if the 'process of falling' had been skipped entirely.
Moreover, his landing point was right behind Dark Angel!
The moment his feet touched the ground, Kang-seok immediately spun around. Pivoting on his left foot, he swung his right foot low and fast, kicking Dark Angel's exposed legs from behind.
'Cross-up!'
A type of back attack that gets behind an opponent preparing to block from the front, nullifying their guard!
For Dark Angel, who had expected Kang-seok to come from the front and was even preparing to counter, it was a completely unexpected blow.
Struck in the legs, Dark Angel's stance crumbled. Kang-seok didn't wait for him. He slammed his fist into the back of the staggering Dark Angel, whose lower body had given way.
“Kuaargh!”
Dark Angel groaned and fell to the floor. But Kang-seok, the one who had delivered the attack, knew best. If it were a sword strike, it would have been a shallow one. Dark Angel was still fine. He needed to land a more powerful blow.
In fighting games, options for attacking a downed opponent were extremely limited, but this was reality!
Kang-seok steeled himself and raised his right foot high. He unleashed a powerful stomp kick at Dark Angel, who was trying to get up.
CRASH!
The deck splintered with a terrifying sound. But Dark Angel wasn't hit. He had used a shoulder tackle into empty air to escape Kang-seok's attack range.
'A non-targeting skill?'
A charge into empty space. It was like using an offensive skill as an evasion.
Having thrown himself in a direction away from Kang-seok, Seong Yu-jin, and Choi Yu-ra, Dark Angel quickly turned around. He spat out a curse.
“If that cooldown had been 0.1 seconds later, I'd have been dead...”
“Then just die!”
Choi Yu-ra shouted without hesitation and pulled the crossbow trigger repeatedly. Swift as an arrow, just as the saying goes, two bolts embedded themselves in Dark Angel's thigh and arm.
“Keok?!”
But that wasn't all. Choi Yu-ra's crossbow was capable of rapid fire.
His eyes widening at the shower of bolts, Dark Angel quickly swung his arms wide.
“Savage Counterattack!”
Though they were clearly human words, a roar like hundreds of beasts bellowing at once echoed out.
Seong Yu-jin reflexively threw herself toward Choi Yu-ra, and Kang-seok also took a defensive stance.
But contrary to their expectations, Dark Angel lunged not toward Choi Yu-ra or Kang-seok, but in the opposite direction.
For a moment, it seemed as if Dark Angel's body had grown several times larger. Judging by the shockwave and burst of light that erupted when he moved, it seemed to be an offensive skill, but once again, he had used it for evasion.
Now, the distance between the group and Dark Angel was so great it was no exaggeration to say they were at opposite ends of the deck. Dark Angel said, breathing heavily.
“Damn, I can't believe I had to use my 'ultimate' like this.”
Kang-seok narrowed his eyes. It had been a short time, but he pieced together the information he'd gathered from fighting Dark Angel.
Cooldown.
Non-targeting skill.
Ultimate.
Of course, there were many games in the world. But games that were online, popular these days, and used all three of those terms were naturally rare.
“AOS (Aeon of Strife)?”
The one who shouted was Choi Yu-ra, who had reached the same conclusion as Kang-seok.
AOS. A term for games where multiple players, divided into two teams, clash to destroy the opposing team's symbolic structure.
Dark Angel gave a bitter smile.
“Yeah, I came from an AOS game. What about you guys?”
“Are we stupid? Why would we tell you that?”
Not backing down an inch, Choi Yu-ra raised her crossbow again and aimed it at Dark Angel.
This time, perhaps because of the distance, Dark Angel wasn't flustered. He snorted once and squared his shoulders.
“A headstrong wench. Anyway, you three are no ordinary folk.”
“What did you call me?”
Choi Yu-ra looked ready to pull the trigger at any moment. Seong Yu-jin quickly stopped her and said.
“Mr. Dark Angel, it's three against one. There's no need for Players to fight... Mr. Dark Angel?”
Seong Yu-jin trailed off, tilting her head. Dark Angel's reaction was unusual.
Dark Angel's face turned bright red, and he trembled, his lips moving for a long while before he finally managed to speak.
“H-H-How did you know?!”
“Huh?”
“My nickname!”
Kang-seok's party was second to none when it came to being quick-witted.
Choi Yu-ra burst into an excessive fit of laughter, then asked teasingly at Dark Angel, who looked as ashamed as someone standing naked in the street.
“Are you, by any chance, a middle schooler? An eighth grader?”
“No way! My cousin changed it without my permission!”
Dark Angel writhed. Seong Yu-jin struggled to hold back her laughter, and Choi Yu-ra burst out laughing again. Kang-seok gritted his teeth, feeling a strange sense of shared suffering.
“Grr! And what's wrong with Dark Angel! It's way better than something like Dark Flame Master or Destiny Lord... or whatever!”
“Pfft!”
In the end, even Seong Yu-jin couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out laughing. Having held it in for so long, she even teared up a little as she sputtered, while Choi Yu-ra just laughed openly at Kang-seok.
'Shared suffering my ass. I'm gonna kill them. I'm definitely gonna kill them.'
Forcing his anger away from Seong Yu-jin and Choi Yu-ra and toward Dark Angel, Kang-seok clenched his fists.
Pinching her thigh to suppress her laughter, Seong Yu-jin quickly glanced at Kang-seok. She fanned her red face, flushed from laughing so hard, before she could finally stand up straight again.
Seong Yu-jin called out.
“A-Anyway! What should we call you, then? Mr. Da... rk Angel.”
“Kuh, you're doing that on purpose, aren't you?”
“N-No!”
Seong Yu-jin quickly waved her hands. Since she was holding Almas and her shield, her awkward posture was quite a pitiful sight.
Seeing her, Dark Angel's anger seemed to subside a little. He cleared his throat a few times and then revealed his identity.
“The name's Park Gwang-sik. Like I said, I came from an AOS game.”
“Alright, Gwang-sik. Like our pretty and kind Yu-jin said, it's three against one. Plus, we haven't even shown a quarter of our real strength yet. You still want to fight? If we keep this up, we're not holding back anymore.”
Her words were less a peace offering and more a provocation.
Seong Yu-jin quickly glared at Choi Yu-ra for pouring cold water on the peaceful atmosphere they had just managed to create, but Choi Yu-ra didn't flinch.
Dark Angel—Park Gwang-sik—scoffed.
“I have to fight. My quest is to protect this ship. Besides, there's someone on board I have to protect.”
After speaking, Park Gwang-sik roughly pulled the arrows from his arm and thigh. He glared at Kang-seok's group, who were reluctantly assuming combat stances again, and clenched his fists.
“Cooldown's up. Enough talk! Bestialize!”
A dark blue aura erupted from Park Gwang-sik's entire body. It was like a flame.
“Uooooh!”
Park Gwang-sik kicked off the ground. Once again, it was a lightning-fast charge.
Seong Yu-jin raised her shield to protect Choi Yu-ra. Kang-seok stomped forward to meet Park Gwang-sik, thinking.
Park Gwang-sik had used four skills so far.
The shoulder tackle and the ultimate, which seemed to be a charge.
Bestialize and the boomerang he threw at the beginning.
Kang-seok had only played a few rounds of an AOS game because of his friends, but even from those few games, he knew something.
'He has few skills.'
He didn't know which AOS game Park Gwang-sik had come from, but AOS games were originally derived from RTS (Real-time strategy) games. The fact that the genre name itself was the name of a specific game modification was proof.
Due to its origins, characters in AOS games had a limited number of skills.
Four or five at most.
If Park Gwang-sik had, as Kang-seok suspected, come from the most popular AOS game of late, then the four skills he'd shown so far were likely all he had.
'All non-targeting frontal charges.'
The thought process was brief. Deciding to aim for a thorough cross-up, Kang-seok stepped forward to bait out Park Gwang-sik's shoulder tackle.
“Ambush!”
As if walking into a trap, Park Gwang-sik unleashed his shoulder tackle. Kang-seok focused his mind. His plan was to move sideways, evade the shoulder tackle, and strike from behind.
One second.
A moment of consciousness so brief it would normally be hard to perceive.
Kang-seok kicked off the ground and threw himself to the side. Park Gwang-sik's shoulder tackle passed through the empty space where Kang-seok had just been.
Everything was going according to plan.
Or so he thought.
“Switching!”
Park Gwang-sik suddenly shouted. The change that subsequently occurred in Park Gwang-sik captured everyone's attention, including Kang-seok's.
His skin and hair color changed.
Not only that, but his clothes transformed as well.
Black hair. A pure white hood pulled down low, obscuring his face. A pointed cape reminiscent of a bird's wings.
“Stealth Assault.”
Park Gwang-sik vanished. Choi Yu-ra and Seong Yu-jin shouted at the same time.
“Behind you!”
A cross-up.
Park Gwang-sik's blow exploded behind Kang-seok's back.