Chapter 29
After entering Zigritria’s domain, they had not once spent a peaceful night. Zigritria’s minions seemed determined to deny Yoon Sang-hyuk’s group any rest, attacking whenever they tried to sleep or even settle down for a moment.
Just like now.
“Zephyr!”
“Yes, I know.”
They had arranged the wagons in a circle to form a crude barricade, and the Arian clan had gathered inside it. Swords, axes, and other weapons were in their hands, but none of them looked especially useful in a fight like this.
Each of the Zephyr brothers stood atop a wagon, keeping watch over the surrounding darkness. Arin was there too, standing beside Zeronia. After a number of battles, the brothers had come to understand all too well how essential Arin was; several times already, her predictions had pulled them back from the brink of disaster.
As the Zephyr brothers took their positions atop the wagons, Yoon Sang-hyuk watched the things advancing out of the darkness.
Puppets.
They were made of some unknown material, impossible to tell whether it was wood or metal. Life had been breathed into them by black magic, and they were the same sort of monster he had fought countless times before, both in Eternal World and after returning to reality.
“Valender and I will handle the fighting. Ibrahmut, keep those toys from getting near the wagons.”
The longest-ranged weapon in the group was Ibrahmut’s whip. Once he manifested in his true form and stretched that whip out fully, he could sweep out an area with a radius of a good hundred meters.
“Hyung-nim, do you even know what those things are before you say that?”
“Are they such impressive bastards that I need to know?”
“They’re called the Army of Despair.”
“That’s a pretty cool name for puppets.”
Zeronia, standing on the nearest wagon, answered in Ibrahmut’s place.
“The Army of Despair is strong. Even the demon armies led by the demon lords can’t hold a candle to them. It isn’t exact, but they say Zigritria made them from his own scales and bones. Since Zarhan is following Zigritria, it’s likely he’s the one who made them.”
“So they’re puppets made from the best materials by the best black magician.”
“There’s also a chance Zigritria blessed them personally.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk smiled faintly.
“Still just puppets.”
No matter how strong puppets were, they were still puppets. However simple the comparison, there was a clear difference between something with intelligence and something without it. A creature with no mind could only draw on the knowledge that had been planted in it.
That was why, when dealing with puppets and anything else without intelligence, the first thing he had to do was figure out what knowledge had been implanted in them.
Once he understood that knowledge, that pattern, he could find a way to crush them no matter how absurd their specs might be.
So they had been made from the scale and bone of a magic dragon?
That meant nothing. In the end, they would be destroyed all the same.
“That’s not really something you can think about so simplistically...”
Zeronia began to speak, then let out a soft sigh and shook her head. Yoon Sang-hyuk was already kicking off the ground and charging forward. Valender von Graus, refusing to be outdone, was racing toward the Army of Despair at a tremendous speed of his own.
“Honestly, these hyung-nims do whatever they want.”
Ibrahmut chuckled and manifested his true form. Flames poured up around him. With the whip coiled in both hands, he shouted loudly, “Hyung-nim! I’m getting bored waiting, so if a few of them get away, that should be fine!”
As if he had been waiting for that, Yoon Sang-hyuk’s voice rang back from afar.
“Then I’ll let half of them get away!”
“Hah, hahaha. This hyung-nim really is something else. Jokes are supposed to be taken as jokes.”
* * *
Clang.
Song of Doom struck the puppet’s body. Or rather, it tried to. The blade failed to cleave through and was driven back instead. It had dug in as far as two finger joints’ depth, but it still hadn’t managed to cut all the way through.
“Not bad.”
The moment Yoon Sang-hyuk’s attack failed, the puppets surrounding him launched their counteroffensive. More than ten of them pressed in on him from all sides, weapons in hand, threatening him from front, back, left, and right.
Normally, the ideal number of enemies to surround a single target was four. Any more than that, and the attackers themselves would get in one another’s way, unable to bring their full strength to bear.
But that was only under normal circumstances. The puppets surrounding Yoon Sang-hyuk casually ignored common sense. Ten weapons struck at fatal weak points all at once, yet none of their arcs interfered with one another.
There was hardly any room to escape. Yoon Sang-hyuk’s eyes were fixed straight ahead. Or so it seemed. In truth, his gaze was moving at a speed too fast to see, gathering and analyzing everything around him.
And then he found it.
The one and only opening, the sliver of space he could use to break through. But even that gap wasn’t perfectly safe. He would have to let three attacks land on his body. Of course, by twisting himself just enough, he would avoid anything fatal.
There was no hesitation. The instant the decision was made, he moved.
Screech- screeching shrieks-
The puppets’ weapons scraped against Yoon Sang-hyuk’s armor as they slid past. Just as Song of Doom had failed to cut them down at once, their weapons failed to pierce Yoon Sang-hyuk’s armor, the sacred Yorgheim Set.
The impact traveling through the armor was severe. The struck areas throbbed. The smile lingering at the corners of Yoon Sang-hyuk’s mouth deepened. Allowing himself to be grazed by the light attacks as he slipped free, he quickly leapt back.
“Hoo— you’re not half bad.”
He pulled an item from his subspace.
After unexpectedly arriving in the Demon Realm and leaving the Demon King’s Castle, which belonged to Baal, he had never once used it until now: the Mask of the Chaos Lord. He put it on.
Whoosh...
He had only donned a mask, yet Yoon Sang-hyuk’s entire presence changed completely.
“Let’s write a novel today.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk gave Song of Doom a light shake.
“Title is, The Return of the Masked Lord!”
His body vanished. When he reappeared, he was right beside the puppets that had surrounded him.
Clang- cracklecracklecrackle-
Song of Doom bit into a puppet’s arm. The resistance was tremendous. He drove more force into the blade, which was struggling to advance.
“Break!”
Power surged along the blade of Song of Doom, and at last it severed the puppet’s arm.
“Hup!”
He rotated his body and hacked off the puppet’s head. Before the head came away, red light erupted from the puppet’s round face. He hastily pulled back.
The explosion he had expected never came. The puppet simply spewed red light, collapsed, and went completely still.
“Phew.”
He steadied his breathing. It had taken a fair amount of strength to put down just one puppet.
After firing Blade Cannon to break their formation, he plunged in among them.
“You idiots know what a pay-to-win build is?”
He bit down on a potion he had already pulled out, threw his head back, and took another puppet’s neck in a single sweep of his blade. A top-grade potion instantly replenished the magic he had spent.
“Do you know the dignity of a whale, huh?”
He was the kind of man who could chug the kind of absurdly expensive potions that made other people’s hands shake just from using one.
There were still thousands of potions left in his subspace.
The puppets’ weapons scraped across his armor again and again. If not for the self-repair option built into the Yorgheim Set, he would not have been able to keep fighting.
White light burst from Yoon Sang-hyuk’s sword. At last, he began using holy power. He had simply been holding back until now because everyone in his party was incompatible with it.
Wrapped in holy power, Song of Doom cut through the puppets’ bodies a little more easily than before.
There were still too many puppets. To land a single successful attack, he had to endure at least two in return. He twisted to avoid the direct blows and keep them from becoming fatal, but each time, the shock accumulated little by little.
Whenever a gap appeared, he immediately pulled out another potion and bit down on it.
“When I get back, I’m going to tell them to develop auto-use potions.”
And with that, he added another assignment to the basement family’s workload.
Yoon Sang-hyuk tore through the battlefield like a madman. At last, he brought down all ten or so of the puppets around him. He let out a rough breath. But the battlefield was still packed with more of them.
After catching his breath for a moment, Yoon Sang-hyuk widened his eyes in apparent surprise.
“Oops!”
Then he let out a light exclamation.
“Valender!”
At the shout, Valender von Graus, who was fighting at some distance while surrounded by puppets, glanced toward Yoon Sang-hyuk.
“Could you let me have these ones?”
Valender von Graus gave a slight nod and shifted into a defensive stance, restraining his attacks as much as possible. Yet even while blocking the puppets’ relentless assaults, he did not forget to leave marks on their bodies. Wielding a massive black greatsword, he parried every attack aimed his way and, whenever he found even the smallest opening, inflicted wounds on the puppets.
After his awakening, Valender von Graus had become an entirely different existence. In terms of swordsmanship alone, Yoon Sang-hyuk no longer reached even his ankles.
“Thanks.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk smiled brightly and charged at his next prey, muttering, “I love you a lot, you chunks of EXP.”
The amount of experience left behind by each dying puppet was overwhelmingly greater than that of any monster he had defeated so far.
* * *
The fight against the puppets, which had begun while they were preparing to sleep, still had not ended even after day broke.
“Why is that hyung-nim like that? If we all fought together, this would be over in no time.”
“He’s doing it because he knows it helps him.”
“Then what exactly is the help?”
Valender von Graus looked at Yoon Sang-hyuk as he fought fiercely against more than ten puppets. As always, Yoon Sang-hyuk’s battles were beyond intense; they were desperate. He fought as if the struggle before him were the last fight of his life, staking everything he had on it.
He had a vague idea why Yoon Sang-hyuk insisted on taking on the puppets alone. He still didn’t fully understand it, but it probably had something to do with something called levels. Even when they had been on Earth, Yoon Sang-hyuk had been desperately trying to raise that thing called a level in preparation for the final battle.
Since he himself had no precise knowledge of levels, he could not explain it to Ibrahmut.
“Still, it really is remarkable. To be fighting the Army of Despair like that... It seems the story that he once fought the Demon King wasn’t a lie after all.”
Valender von Graus looked to Ibrahmut. At the gaze flowing from within the helmet, Ibrahmut gave a start.
“W-why are you looking at me like that all of a sudden?”
“One who wields a sword...”
Valender von Graus raised his massive black blade and pointed it at Yoon Sang-hyuk.
“Does not lie about the history forged by that sword. That is the honor of one who bears a sword.”