An Engagement of Void and Vainglory (1)
“……”
Seo Yoon glared at the firewall in front of her.
But glaring at it solved nothing. She had spent several minutes trying to reach the other side, and every attempt had been for nothing. No matter how many times she tried, it seemed impossible for now.
“Damn it…”
She had considered smashing through the wall, but whatever had been done to the building, even striking it with her dagger left not so much as a scratch. Then again, even that explosion earlier had only caved in part of the wall. Breaking through this iron bulwark… looked beyond Seo Yoon's power.
'…I have no choice but to go back around.'
What was happening beyond this wall? However intently she listened, she couldn't hear a thing. Was the Boss safe? Such thoughts filled her head, but all she could do was turn back.
“……”
She stroked the firewall once… then turned and ran.
Her mind was a tangled mess. The Boss had stressed, time and again, that as long as both the Bernadottes and Jeff Kaufman were in Korea, a terror attack could happen at any moment. She'd wondered if that was really necessary when they had an S-Class hunter—except those people were no ordinary criminal organization. That was why she had suggested skipping today's auction entirely. Let's stay out of it until Chuseok, like you predicted, she'd said.
But he had insisted he absolutely had to attend today's auction.
Seo Yoon knew why. Among the lots listed today… there was an artifact capable of treating her mana overload.
“Foolishly… kind… as ever.”
She always felt like dead weight. With this much care lavished on her… could she ever become a proper hunter? Could she ever live up to his expectations?
“……”
She didn't know. Whether she could become S-Class. Whether she could one day… leave the management.
Only one thing could she answer clearly right now: that the opportunity had come. He hadn't told her exactly what kind of opportunity it was, but she had… finally reached the end of a long, long wait. All thanks to that one hand he had extended to her.
'I cannot lose this person.'
Or the chance she had found again. I'm a opportunist, after all. He had believed her, even through her clumsy stonewalling. A useless hunter, and still he had believed her. A flighty human, brimming with nothing but instability—and even so, he had believed her.
She had to repay that trust. No—she wanted to repay it.
“Boss…”
Somehow. No matter what it took.
Lee Jun faced off against Kaufman.
The gap between them was about five meters. For hunters, that was a distance they could cross in a heartbeat.
“Your face has gotten awfully stiff. Were you nervous?”
“……”
Even at Lee Jun's provocation, Kaufman didn't budge. He seemed to be turning over what Lee Jun had said, chewing on it. Then he spat out a single remark.
“Something's off here.”
“About what? The things I know?”
“Yeah. All of it. The whole thing's wrong.”
Lee Jun had spouted words that should have been utterly unknowable at this point in time. Liberation. Liberator. To Kaufman, these were extremely sensitive matters—at the very least, for a man who sat among Liberation's executives.
“Did you plant a mole inside? No—no, that can't be it. There's no way.”
“If you're so curious, why don't you ask me directly?”
“Ha. Now that's a joke that goes too far.”
He ran through the possibilities. A spy. Or a traitor. Or, failing that… had the man simply dug it out himself? But almost all of those assumptions were impossible—because Liberation… hadn't existed all that long. There had been no time for anyone to sow spies or traitors or any such groundwork within it. Physically impossible, plain and simple.
“Strange. It's genuinely strange.”
Its first operation had been… in Russia. Had they linked up with Yelena Zaichik? No—even if they had, there was no way to learn this much this fast. Or… had there been a gap during the job in France? If not even that, then—
“Hm. Looks like you're thinking hard.”
“Yeah, so shut up for a minute.”
Lee Jun gave Kaufman all the time he needed to think. Because the longer he thought, the more cracks and openings he would create. And no matter how hard that man racked his brain, he could never arrive at the truth of regression.
Honestly, anyone who even proposed such a hypothesis would have to be a lunatic.
Regression? Yeah, right.
{…It's true, though.}
It was. Which was exactly why he'd never guess it.
{Fair enough. Though assuming regression out of thin air with zero evidence would be the strange thing.}
Honestly, even if Lee Jun came out and admitted he'd regressed, the man wouldn't believe it. He'd take it for a taunt, and Lee Jun should count himself lucky if that didn't actually make him angry. That was how implausible the hypothesis was—and at the same time, it was a truth that handed Lee Jun a mountain of advantages.
And then—perhaps he had finally finished sorting his thoughts—Kaufman let out a short breath.
“Ha.”
After that, he readjusted his grip on the dagger in his hand. So it was a fight, then.
“Nothing left to think about?”
“Nope. All I have to do is capture you and torture it out of you, or whatever. You should count yourself lucky—no need to kill you on the spot anymore.”
Oh, how touchingly grateful I am.
{Can you beat him?}
No idea. I've never actually crossed blades with him. And I don't even know if that thing in the last cycle was really him.
{Hm. I see.}
Silhouette gave an intrigued little hum. Probably because Lee Jun was always groaning and moaning, this hadn't been landing with him—but this time it was real. Granted, without Silhouette he'd be weaker than in the last cycle. But one thing was certain: Lee Jun was worse off than even a mid-tier A-Class hunter.
'In a head-on fight, I lose, plain and simple. A war of attrition is mandatory.'
Which meant… he had to lean on his specialty: psychological warfare. That was why he'd laid the groundwork in advance. The moment Kaufman decided to capture him alive to extract information rather than kill him, the man would be forced to hold back his strength. Well… he was such an impulsive bastard that if things soured, he might just kill him anyway—but having even a first line of defense was a gain.
And then, Kaufman reached out his hand. So it begins.
“Now then.”
FWAAAM―
A shockwave erupted from Kaufman's hand. And where that skill aimed was… not at Lee Jun, but upward.
“Ngh…!”
CRACKLE-CRASH―
In an instant, the corridor's lights burst and shattered. He wasn't a mage, so it had to be a skill. Judging by the casting time and the range of lights destroyed, that was the mid-tier universal skill—Shock Wave.
But something far more important than that existed: the absence of light. Those who could reinforce their vision with mana wouldn't care—but for Lee Jun, who couldn't, it was lethal. A simple, yet absolute stage-setting. It seemed Kaufman had prepared a countermeasure for Lee Jun as well, not just for Jeanne.
'My vision…'
Which was why, the instant his sight clouded over, Lee Jun instinctively fell back to open up distance. But soon—
THUD―
The firewall he'd descended earlier. Behind Lee Jun, that unyielding iron bulwark stood firm.
“You damn piece of—”
Lee Jun swiftly pulled a flare from his Pocket and hurled it forward. The light it cast bathed the space ahead in a bright glow. And what he saw was—
SHK―
“Kgh…!”
A dagger driving into his shoulder. He'd avoided the deep thrust, but he couldn't do anything about the cut.
CLANG―
The blade that had carved through Lee Jun's shoulder struck the firewall with a metallic ring. But thanks to that last exchange, their positions had swapped: Kaufman now stood toward the firewall, Lee Jun toward the outside. Beyond Shock Wave's radius, the lights still lived. Using that faint glow as a beacon, he needed to get back to the light—
Shock Wave
FWAAAM―
Again. Kaufman, chasing him across the distance he'd opened up, fired the skill at the ceiling once more.
“…Tsk.”
This approach wasn't working. Shock Wave's range was simply too wide. What's more, Kaufman could use an aura as well—he was faster than Lee Jun. Running wouldn't do. He'd have to fight.
{Got a plan?}
Terrain advantage. The place where the two of them stood was a corridor. By ordinary standards it might feel spacious, but for two hunters to fight in, it was definitively cramped. In a space like this, it was hard for an aura user to leverage the mobility that was one of their core strengths. The most helpful thing left was raw strength enhancement. And that… he'd cover with experience and technique.
“Where do you think you're scurrying off to, you slippery little rat?”
CLANG!
He blocked the blade driving for his throat. In Lee Jun's left hand was Pablo's tonfa; in his right, a dagger forged of shadow.
“Oho.”
CLANG― CLANG-CLANG―
Kaufman pressed in fast. Clean, economical movements. With Lee Jun's vision blurred, he carved out minor wounds and kept up the pressure. But Lee Jun's eyes, too, were steadily dark-adapting. What had been nothing but vague shapes was beginning, little by little, to sharpen into definition.
'…There.'
Still not what it was under proper light. But enough to respond. The cuts that had been accumulating on both his arms dwindled, at some point, to a markedly smaller number.
“I'll admit it—you're better than I expected.”
Even in the thick of the fight, Kaufman spoke with perfect ease. Appraising his opponent mid-combat—this alone showed how wide the gulf between them was. But soon, Kaufman felt something was off. Yes, he was overwhelming the situation right now. And yet… not a single telling blow was landing. The small cuts kept piling up, but he couldn't land anything of real consequence.
“…That's an infuriating way to fight.”
His opponent wasn't trying to take him down at all—he was focusing purely on defense. To Kaufman's eye… there had to be some intent behind it.
“Waiting for that S-Class of yours to come save you?”
“No comment.”
“Ha. Shame to say it, but that's not happening. I sent a few people over that way too.”
Lee Jun knew that already. He could feel Jeanne unfurling Valhalla. This wasn't a matter of sensing mana or anything so conceptual—it was an instinct branded into his very nerves. That sensation of something ice-cold sweeping down the back of his neck—he would never forget it as long as he lived. Which was why he was certain: that side had no problems. If anything, considering the backlash of having deployed Valhalla, his only worry was that the fight over there might end too anticlimactically.
That would throw off the exchange rate, after all.
“I'm a little disappointed too—I'm honestly not sure the auction house can hold out another ten minutes.”
“What?”
“By now, even I'm getting curious. Just how terrifying a monster did you send over there, to be so confident? Your opponent is S-Class, you know.”
Kaufman was baffled by this dissonance. How could the man speak with such total lack of worry? He'd considered that it might be a bluff, but this was, without a shred of doubt, genuine. And that was the problem. Where on earth did this absolute faith come from?
“Aren't you S-Class yourself?”
“Don't go assuming I think the way you do. It's obvious, isn't it? You think the same thing about yourself.”
“Kikik. Can't argue with that.”
“Being good at self-objectification is one of my strengths.”
Lee Jun spoke with apparent composure. No—he spoke with the appearance of composure. Speaking about Jeanne, he threaded true conviction into every word. Then this man would take the bait, guaranteed. The two topics had nothing to do with each other, really—but by smearing over the boundary and linking them anyway… if that wasn't the basics of psychological warfare, nothing was.
'Of course… as for this side of things, I have no composure whatsoever.'
Even in this very moment, the blades kept surging in.
CLANG―
A sweeping dagger caught against the tonfa. But the mana packed inside it tore past and carved into his shoulder.
CLANG-CLACK―
Right side this time.
SCREEE―
Left again.
“…Ugh.”
Even this act of composure had its limits. He'd hoped the man would chase thought after thought and show him an opening, but there was no such sloppiness to be found. Apparently he had plenty of real combat experience. Well, naturally—he'd been active as a criminal for a good long while even before Liberation was founded.
'I need a way out of this…'
And then.
Shock Wave
FWAAAM―
Perhaps because they'd kept repeating the cycle of closing and widening the distance—no sooner had Lee Jun tried once more to make for the light than Kaufman unleashed Shock Wave yet again. The ceiling lights burst and died. And at the same instant, an idea flashed through Lee Jun's mind.