139. Overwhelming Divine Might
139. Overwhelming Divine Might
***
The results of the continued scrims between G1 and Serin were strange.
Serin, who had never coordinated with anyone before, was shaky in team-based movement, yet her individual skill was clearly overwhelming and dazzling.
However. As if proving that the teamwork of players who had spent years meticulously building synergy could not be ignored.
The match results became so chaotic that predicting the outcome of any given game was utterly impossible.
......
And before anyone knew it, they were in the fourth match.
—Rin, Minha, Jinhyeok.
Rin faced the opponents with a different teammate combination every time.
And now, the players facing them were Kang Hyeok, Minseong, and Hajun.
...
WHOOSH!
As the bloodstained Crescent-Moon Weight shot out swiftly along Serin's right hand, embroidering the air as if cleaving the battle line wide open, Minseong and Hajun simultaneously hurled themselves in from Rin's left and right, beginning to pressure her.
—Shadow Slaying.
A single black line unleashed as it tore through the air.
Following the dagger's trajectory, Minseong's form shot forward as if exploding, swinging his dagger toward Serin.
—Death Fire.
Hajun's form, wielding a shotgun and a massive Desert Eagle, sprayed fire from both hands in rapid crossing patterns as if scorching everything in every direction, restricting Rin's movements to the extreme.
The two players linked their attacks as naturally as breathing, pressing Serin with their coordination.
Serin dropped her body low against their movements, twisted her legs, and spun her body in place.
—Ghost Dance.
Against the path of Minseong's dagger surging in with Shadow Slaying, she immediately whirled the Crescent-Moon Weight like a madwoman, unleashing a massive technique to deny him any opening.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!!
She met the trajectory of Minseong's dagger as he swung it like a madman, while against Hajun's supporting fire she simply hurled bloodstained weights that seemed to burst the very space apart, trading offense and defense with skill bordering on the divine.
Boom-boom-boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The Colosseum floor kept being gouged out and exploding from the shockwaves. As if dancing a brilliant dance of blood against the two players, Serin embroidered the space with her bloodstained weight, but as she was gradually being pushed back, she furrowed her brow and assessed the situation.
An extremely unfavorable battle.
Jinhyeok, her teammate in the fourth match, had been retired by the opponents' ambush-like strategy the moment the match began, and her other teammate Minha was locked in a fierce 1-on-1 against Kang Hyeok, so she couldn't expect any support.
Handling players at 2-to-1 was on an entirely different dimension from fighting 1-on-1.
Serin was feeling, all too keenly, what team synergy truly meant.
If she faced these players 1-on-1, she was confident she could finish them without dragging it out, but at 2-to-1, even with her full power, taking out even one player was nearly impossible.
Swish-swish-swish-swish-swish-swish!!!
When Minseong's form, his entire body now dyed in jet-black shadow, traced countless dagger trajectories through the air, I couldn't bring myself to meet them head-on and chose to evade.
Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. If I could take it with the Dance of Requiem, I could turn it around and finish Minseong.
But.
Pow!
Pow!
With the massive shotgun still spewing fire from its muzzle, if I tried to take the entire Night Parade of a Hundred Demons head-on, I'd end up riddled with holes.
—Bloodstained Step.
As Serin's legs using Bloodstained Step took on a deep crimson hue, she began to weave through space bizarrely, evading their attacks with incomprehensible movements.
In the midst of the relentless exchange that left no room to breathe between Serin and the two players, a major development occurred.
From a distant space, a massive burst of light erupted.
Since that meant either Minha or Kang Hyeok had been taken down, Serin turned her head with a sense of disbelief to look at the space.
'...'
A berserker holding a massive red greatsword, standing with blood streaming down his entire body.
And it was obvious who had turned into light and vanished before him.
Minha had been taken down.
3-to-1.
The match was effectively over.
"Hoo..."
At Serin's resigned sigh, Hajun and Minseong also smiled faintly and paused their hands for a moment to catch their breath as well.
After that, they stopped moving for only about three seconds.
As the Crescent-Moon Weight once again took on blood and emitted an eerie light, Minseong and Hajun each raised their weapons.
During the match, they exchanged not a single word.
Serin took it as a sign of how seriously they were committing to the match, so she didn't open her mouth either.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!!
Trading a frenzied exchange with the two players, Serin's body moved with what could only be called divine skill. The movements of her hands and feet, like light itself, showed no sign of being pushed back even against two players.
Against combinations of offense and defense that seemed systemically impossible for one person to handle against two players, Serin relied on split-second improvisation—parrying, deflecting, and redirecting—along with...
...movements that could only be described as acrobatics.
Within that exchange, Serin gradually... sank into a state of selflessness.
"..."
The saying came to mind: no matter how outstanding one is, a single hand cannot block many hands.
Meaning it was hard to handle many opponents alone.
—But so what,
Even as Serin resigned herself to the situation, she simply accepted reality calmly.
Only standing on battlefields that were always advantageous or evenly matched was possible only in theory.
The reality she had felt while endlessly wandering countless unfavorable battlefields in Black Ark.
No matter what she thought about the current disadvantage, no matter what complaints she voiced, nothing would change.
She simply had to think only of killing the opponent before her eyes.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!!
Pow! Bang! Bang!
Unaware of Minseong and Hajun, whose faces were gradually filling with disbelief and shock, Serin suddenly smiled through her vacant eyes and began to deploy her techniques.
—Jeolyeon.
She embroidered a massive line of blood through the air, separating the two.
—Bloodstained Step.
Immediately surging toward Hajun, Serin spun her body rapidly and struck the space.
That moment.
Pow!!
The blast from the massive shotgun struck nothing but empty air.
—Single Kick.
Serin had already launched her body along a path Hajun couldn't predict using the force of Single Kick, and was once again kicking off the ground to deploy another technique.
—Dark Moon Weight.
The Crescent-Moon Weight shot toward the ground and slithered eerily across the surface like a snake. Hajun's expression hardened as he tried to quickly create distance.
Swish!
But Serin twisted her already-extended arm at a bizarre angle, greatly accelerating the Dark Moon Weight's speed.
It clearly wasn't a technique, yet the strange arm movement made it seem as if she were using an additional skill. As the blood upon the Crescent-Moon Weight surged violently.
Thunk!
Hajun's heart was pierced by the Crescent-Moon Weight that shot up like light, and he began to turn into light and vanish.
—Shadow Slaying.
The distance created when Serin first used Jeolyeon. Minseong deployed Shadow Slaying to quickly close that distance and chase after her, but by the time he threw his dagger again, he was already staring at the sight of Hajun turning into light and disappearing.
'What in the world...?'
Unlike Minseong, who was inwardly reeling at Serin's utterly unpredictable movements and technique combinations.
Serin, whose eyes had long since lost focus, looked at Minseong and, with her weight already extended far out, finished assessing the situation.
Realizing that no matter how quickly she retrieved the Crescent-Moon Weight, she couldn't meet Minseong's dagger in time, Serin immediately let go of the weight.
Despite his inward shock, Minseong deployed a technique to finish off the seemingly defenseless Serin.
—Shadow Harvest.
In an instant, two daggers wreathed in jet-black, like opaque shadows from above and below, began surging toward Serin.
Serin, staring blankly at the sight, instinctively used a technique.
—Blood Flower Kick.
Blood rose vertically along her leg, the crimson line rippling eerily, and she met the jet-black dagger surging from above—its speed minutely different—head-on.
Swish!
The dagger above scattered like a fading shadow, and the blood-tinged energy in Serin's leg also grew noticeably fainter.
But as if unconcerned, Serin immediately brought her vertically raised leg down upon the dagger surging from below.
Clang!
A burst of light erupted with a brilliant effect.
It was the effect of a successful parry.
'...?'
Minseong, who had been driving his dagger upward from below, stared blankly at his own arm as it bounced back in a split second.
Minseong's stance was broken by the parry's recoil. Serin, looking at him with her unfocused eyes, used the leg that had stamped down on the Colosseum as a pivot, lowering her body and spinning rapidly.
Because the consecutive technique usage had drained her stamina gauge to the bottom, Serin's subsequent movements—though clearly movements that used techniques—.
Her legs could no longer take on the deep crimson hue.
Her lowered waist unfurled as she spun her body half a turn, and her leg shot out perfectly straight.
It struck the defenseless assassin directly across the neck.
Thunk!
Unlike the destructive force that had once launched Kang Hyeok high into the Colosseum air.
Now it only managed to lift Minseong's body a certain height off the ground. Since team matches granted additional HP gauge adjustments compared to individual matches, she couldn't finish off Minseong with an attack that didn't use a technique.
"......"
Having instantly finished Hajun and dealt massive damage to Minseong in the same moment, Serin blankly turned her head.
WHOOSH!!
A massive red greatsword wreathed in black light was surging toward Rin with a thunderous sonic boom.
—Hell Burst.
Kang Hyeok had thrown the greatsword by using a technique and releasing it at the end—despite it being a melee skill.
"Ah."
Staring at the red greatsword dyed in black light, Serin's eyes belatedly regained focus as she let out a blank exclamation.
BOOOOM!!!!
The ground exploded violently, and the final scrim match came to an end.
—Victory!
Kang Hyeok stared at the hologram adorning his vision, but his expression was far from bright.
"......Ha."
Kang Hyeok let out a small sigh.
The scrims had been arranged to find a way to deal with the monster called Jeanne d'Arc.
Up until the third match, things had gone relatively smoothly as Kang Hyeok had expected, and during the fourth match, he had even felt like he was grasping at a clue.
But in the end, Kang Hyeok had no choice but to admit that Serin was different.
Compared to Jeanne d'Arc, she was far too different.
The fundamental premise—outstanding individual skill but lacking in team play—was the same.
...But the movement Rin had just displayed had reached something that could hardly be called mere individual skill.
Twitch.
Kang Hyeok, who had thrown his greatsword at the end and now felt his hand twitch slightly from his depleted stamina gauge, blankly recalled Rin's movements from moments ago.
Who in the world could possibly counter those movements...?
The movements Serin had shown in that instant while facing two players at once left Kang Hyeok with a feeling he couldn't put into words.
That final movement had clearly looked like a technique, yet no blood had risen from her legs.
That meant the movement possessed such a level of refinement that a simple motion without any technique deployed could be mistaken for a skill.
Until the very moment the match ended and all the players in the Colosseum turned into light and reappeared in the spectator seats.
Kang Hyeok's expression remained sunken.
Along with the thought, 'Was this scrim really meaningful?'