Vanguard and Latecomers (2)

Cheonwangsan, Guro-gu, Seoul

A well-maintained hiking trail wound between thick clusters of scrub trees. Seo Joowon and I were powering our way up a mountain path that had once glittered with summer foliage.

Cheonwangsan ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was exactly 144 meters tall. A low hill that ordinary people would mistake for the park behind their neighborhood — to awakened, it was barely a bump in the road.

Seo Joowon, whose stats were presumably quite high, was bulldozing up the trail without a glance back at me, climbing on pure autopilot.

But having already seen through the man's blackened depths, I was noticing something else entirely.

'This bastard is deliberately pacing himself.'

His speed on the road and his speed on the trail were subtly, tellingly different. I let out a few exaggerated gasps — heugh, heugh — to check my theory, and sure enough, his pace slowed, ever so gently, until I could have walked it.

You could take it as consideration. But what I saw was the will of a man determined to wring out every last drop of whatever reserves I might still be hiding.

'Ha. Unbelievable.'

His play was so transparent I couldn't suppress a hollow laugh. Ever since I'd started living my days in benevolent-cult-leader mode, Seo Joowon had been needling me, testing the soft spots, one poke at a time.

Scum like this needed a hammer of justice swung upside their head.

'Right. Take a dog like that in as a follower and he'd be a dissident within the week. Kill him.'

No matter what useful skills he might have. But first, I'd squeeze whatever information I could out of him.

Mind made up, I stopped in place, heaving for breath, and called out to him.

"J-Joowon! Hold up a second!"

At my exhausted-sounding call, the man turned back toward me with a radiant smile, as if just hearing my voice were a treat.

"Oh! Sorry about that, Guwon. Was I going too fast for you?"

Heugh — heugh. "Joowon. What in the world is going on?"

"I was in such a rush I never explained the situation, did I."

Scratching his chin with an amiable grin, Seo Joowon pointed toward the summit of Cheonwangsan — the mountaintop where a brilliant pillar of light was descending.

"We have to guard the jewel that spawns there for five minutes."

"Guard a jewel? Out of nowhere?"

"That's just how the system works. Think of it as a sudden mission and you'll be fine."

Kreeeeeeeagh—!

A howl of zombies shook the little mountain to its roots. Seo Joowon smiled at the roar that had arrived right on cue and added, "To sum it up: all we need to do is hold that jewel against the zombie wave for five minutes. That's it."

"With no reward at all?"

"Ah, no, no! That jewel itself raises your control rate over Guro-gu. And by a margin that puts every other mission to shame."

Gathering the scattered clues from his enthusiastic answer, the picture assembled itself.

The special mission's jewel boosted the control rate by a huge amount. And Seo Joowon had experience completing missions that weren't special missions at all.

You little bastard. If you've done other missions, that makes you a veteran within Guro-gu, doesn't it? So why is a veteran playing devoted volunteer, dragging me up a mountain — with that pitch-black heart of his hidden the whole time?

It didn't take a genius. He intended to use me somewhere. And I'd have bet a nut that somewhere was a trap.

"The zombies will be climbing up from below any minute now. We need to seize the high ground first. A night in Guro-gu without a safe zone is a terrifying thing!"

"...The night?"

"Yes! The sun will set soon enough and you'll see! That's why I was running so hard — I wanted to secure a safe zone just for you before then..." His voice shrank, wilting with exaggerated apology. "I suppose I got ahead of myself, didn't I..."

Listening to that deflating tone, I fought for my life to keep my expression fixed. This is a textbook naive protagonist act. Textbook. One more look like that and I kill him on the spot — intel be damned.

Composing myself, I blinked as if startled, and turned his own words back on him.

"You're giving that jewel to me?"

"Of course. We're comrades who share our lives now! Splitting the rewards is only natural."

"...I'm so grateful I don't know what to say."

"Hahaha — please, it's nothing. Although..."

Seo Joowon let the words hang, and his gaze swept over me — a furtive reconnaissance laced with unmistakable glee, his smile widening as he looked.

"Why aren't you using a skill? Flying ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would be so much easier for you."

"I'd like to, but I've burned through all my mana..."

"Ahh~ so you've used up your mana."

KroooaaaAAAA—!

A familiar roar thundered from somewhere behind us. The trademark thudding footfalls of a steroid-laced monster shook the mountainside.

Seo Joowon smiled faintly at the way I flinched on cue and opened his mouth. "Don't be alarmed. It's a mutant called a Sound Stalker. All roar, not much bite."

"...I see."

You can hear the rippling muscles in that thing's voice from a hundred meters away, and this bastard is lying straight to my face?

Wearing the frightened face of a man who knew nothing, I flexed my right hand — slow, slow, slow as a serpent uncoiling.

"That thing is the alpha and omega of the zombie wave. Without it, the wave would be trivial to hold off. And so, you..."

Before he could finish the sentence, I thrust out my right hand.

White light flared, and my telekinesis erupted at its absolute peak — a flood of pale mana that would have wrapped around his throat and torn it out — then scattered, slowly, deliberately, like morning mist.

"You're going to be that mutant's plaything."

The man's right hand came down on me without the slightest resistance. A razor-sharp dagger materialized out of nothing in his grip.

"—!"

Swallowing my shock, I kicked off the ground and flung myself sideways, dodging the thrust. I'd prepared for exactly this — the possibility that, as at Star Light Church, my telekinesis simply wouldn't touch him. That caution had paid for itself.

Gauging the distance I'd opened in a heartbeat, the man paused for a beat, then bared his disgustingly white teeth and giggled.

"What's this? I thought your mana was all used up?"

Untouched by my telekinesis in the slightest, he showed his true colors and asked, "How long have you known?"

From the very first moment I laid eyes on him, obviously. But I had no intention of playing games with his questions. He shrugged at my silence and began weaving through the trees, using the terrain to shred my line of sight.

Loud, restless movement side to side — and with every shift, the distance between us shrank. Sunlight flashed off the blade in his right hand.

...I nearly had it done to me.

The real point wasn't what his skill was — it was that I'd almost bled for falling into his rhythm. And that, too, while I was on maximum guard.

My frozen face tracked his movements frantically. My arm wavered as it aimed through the gaps in the trees at the man slinking this way and that.

"Not today!"

I leapt up for a wider view, and a sliver of light came screaming at me. I poured telekinesis onto the dagger — mana-dense, humming with his power — and it didn't so much as waver. I twisted my shoulder, barely slipping past, and the blade buried itself in a tree behind me.

Anything carrying that bastard's mana was immune to my telekinesis.

Nullification type, then.

My mind raced as I scrambled to widen the gap — and then, abruptly, Seo Joowon broke off his advance and started running uphill.

KroooaaaAAAA—!

The steroid monster's belated roar flashed like lightning through my skull.

'You son of a—!'

Killing me was never the goal. The goal was to drive me backwards.

As I whipped my head around, something enormous slammed into me.

"Kreeeeeagh—!"

"You motherf—!"

Primitive profanity burst out of me for the first time in ages as I seized the zombie's gaping maw mid-collision, jamming its jaws shut an inch from my face. Teeth clacked and ground against each other point-blank, and my molars ground down so hard I thought they'd crack.

"...You're not dying pretty, you know that?"

Seo Joowon, you son of a bitch.

Krrrch—

I tore the thing's head clean off and launched back ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into the air. Below, a horde was swarming up Cheonwangsan — and from within it, another black flash came shrieking toward me. The steroid monster was hurling the zombies beside it at me in fistfuls, grinning its cruelty wide.

Kiiiiing—!

Mana accelerated along both my outstretched arms. Following the deepening white blaze, the power racing through my whole body burst out through my nerve endings and leapt from my fingertips.

My telekinesis crushed down over the mountainside.

Everything that had been shaking the mountain froze. The zombies mid-flight, the zombies mid-sprint — even the steroid monster itself.

In a scene that looked like time itself had stopped, I could feel my mana draining away fast — and instead of hoarding it, I stopped being stingy altogether. My whole body bloomed deep white, brighter and more radiant than before.

Crack — crack — crack — crack—

Branches snapped across the tangle of trees covering the mountain. Snapping, splintering, transforming into longer and longer thorns, the shards spread in an instant over every side of the frozen zombies.

My pupils darted left and right, dizzyingly, taking in every single thorn at once. The moment I slashed my hand downward, every one of them began to fly.

Shwaaaaaaaaak—!

The branches fired downward and pulped the skulls of the telekinesis-bound zombies. The horde that had surged forward like a wave collapsed like a wave, and at its center the steroid monster groaned and creaked, straining against my hold.

Grrrrk—

With a horrid grinding sound, its trembling arms wrapped around its own head, shielding its one and only weakness. The thorns, which had been methodically thinning out the horde under my direction, swung back around to take aim at the monster.

Grrrrk—

As my arms spread slowly apart, its own arms — mirrored as if reflected in a glass — shivered and pried themselves open.

"K-KroooaaaAAA—!"

Its rage-filled scream was worthless. No matter how it thrashed, its head emerged, inch by inch — and reflected in its eyes, the sap-soaked branches heavy with rotting zombie blood came rushing closer.

Pschuk—

And that was the end of it.

As I stared down at the enormous body collapsing slowly to the ground, size and all, a system message bloomed in my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠vision.

Whum—!

The earth shuddered faintly. Leaving the steroid monster's corpse sprawled behind me, I took off toward the summit. The mountain, steeped in a silence where no more howls echoed, glinted — and another system message appeared.

What caught my eye more than anything else was that ownership of the jewel extended to Seo Joowon as well.

He'd told me we only needed to survive the wave for five minutes. Instead, I had annihilated the wave outright — racking up an absurd 99% contribution — but the jewel was what mattered.

If that bastard got his hands on it first and sealed himself back into his own territory, the whole situation turned nightmarish for me.

And he knew it. That was why the man who'd botched his ambush had abandoned it without a flicker of regret, played me straight into his trap, and bolted uphill.

'This son of a bitch has been toying with me the entire time.'

Still — I hadn't lost yet. All I had to do was kill him. The process was irrelevant; if he died, I won.

The wind split around me, and the mountaintop came into view — the pillar of light fully descended. And there, reaching toward the jewel that glittered within it, was Seo Joowon.

"SEO JOOWON—!"

The man, who'd been smiling at the jewel, faltered for just an instant at the sound of my voice.

'My telekinesis doesn't work on him. Then—'

Grrrrrrrumb—

The mountain itself responded to my telekinesis, shaking as if an earthquake had torn through it. A churning mass of soil sharpened itself into a blade and shot toward Seo Joowon's back.

He withdrew the hand that had nearly touched the jewel and fell back — then reached out and laid his palm against the mass of earth hurtling toward him with the intent to punch straight through his stomach.

As the clumps of dirt crumbled apart under his touch, Seo Joowon lifted his head and looked up at me.

"You're not a flight-type awakened, are you?"

"And you're not some comrades-forever saint — you're a goddamn con artist."

"How did you get past that thing and fly all the way here?"

The answer came the moment I noticed he kept calling the steroid monster "that thing" — never by name.

This bastard never killed it. That's why he never got the mutant knowledge.

"I killed it. All of it. And you're about to die too."

"Sorry to disappoint, but an awakened like me never loses."

A dagger materialized in the grip of the man backing away, wariness in every line of his body. I studied the sinister black mana seeping into the blade, tracking his every move.

His skill neutralized mine. Which meant my own body — sustained and reinforced by Mimic Holy Body — couldn't be fully trusted either. A single clean hit would be a fatal one.

Grrrrk—

The mountain shuddered again, and countless thorns and shields bloomed into being. The shields walled off my blind spots while the trembling thorns all swung to aim at Seo Joowon at once.

In the teeth of that murderous standoff, the man gave himself a light shake, rolled his shoulders, and grinned at me.

"Scared, are we?"

I answered that insolence with a blinding smile — and flicked my wrist.

The thorns that filled the sky bombed the ground in an instant.