224. Just Once
224. Just Once
***
"Fourteen."
Serin spoke as if calmly announcing the remaining count, and immediately moved toward the Death Knight.
SWISH!
Her body pivoted from the leg she slid across the ground, and her right hand, swinging with the motion, traced a massive arc of light.
The moment the moonlight-laden Crescent-Moon Weight carved a great circle and embroidered the space with light.
Serin unfolded a new hidden class skill.
—Full Moon Dance.
Daji had unfolded Full Moon Dance as if to counter the Dance of the Heaven-Filling Slaughtering Ghosts. Her skill had deflected an onslaught thick with killing intent while fluttering like a dance.
In Serin's hands now, it unfolded in a completely different form.
Not a countering form but an attacking form, and even the preparatory motion—a full-body rotation drawing a great circle—was utterly distinctive.
"..."
The Death Knight, too, as if having grasped her level from the first exchange, should have followed with the Second Form, then the Third, but instead skipped over numerous forms and unfolded the Sixth Form swordsmanship in a single stroke.
—Randel Imperial Swordsmanship, Sixth Form: Wave of Death.
The Death Knight's sword, wreathed in pitch-black energy, briefly tore through space with an eerie motion before a black storm began surging forth like countless waves.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Serin, firing the moonlight-laden Crescent-Moon Weight in rapid succession as if dancing, and the Death Knight, which had instantly raised its form to the Sixth, appeared evenly matched on the surface.
Neither yielded an inch as they exchanged blows, fierce enough to seem evenly contested.
When the pitch-black wave split the space in a single stroke, the moonlight-laden Crescent-Moon Weight interlocked with it again and again as if embroidering the space, and at their meeting point, bursts of light erupted continuously.
Amid this, Serin faintly furrowed her brow.
'Not an advantage.'
She didn't like this situation.
After perfectly parrying the Death Knight's first exchange and succeeding with a counterattack, she had immediately shifted to the offensive, so she had effectively seized the initiative.
That meant she had taken control of the momentum.
And with that, she should naturally have seized the flow of victory as well—but right now, that wasn't happening.
No matter how much the buffed Death Knight was no ordinary monster to be taken lightly...
Even so.
It was absolutely not a monster on a level that could match her current self.
'In the end, it's a difference in skill proficiency.'
She thought that if she had fought using her original dancer skills, she might have gained the upper hand here.
But right now, her goal was to showcase hidden class skills. She felt a kind of frustration.
There was nothing wrong with how to unfold the skills, or how to swing the Crescent-Moon Weight as if dancing—but that didn't mean she could wield them perfectly.
WHOOSH!
Once more, the ferocious pitch-black energy split the air, and Serin twisted her foot.
With her upper body sharply lowered, the trajectory of the Crescent-Moon Weight she had launched drew an eerie change as well.
A sudden shift from the elegant dance that had been embroidering the air with moonlight.
SWISH!
The moment the Death Knight's pitch-black sword shaved a few strands of Serin's pure-white hair, Serin yanked hard on her right hand.
CRACK!
The moonlight Crescent-Moon Weight, which had drawn an eerie trajectory, changed direction and struck the Death Knight's neck, snapping it. Confirming this, Serin immediately widened the distance.
Even this was ultimately nothing more than succeeding with an attack through improvisation.
"Thirteen. From now on, you all need to keep count of the remaining number, okay?"
But contrary to such thoughts, she spoke with a small smile and checked the chat window to attend to the stream.
[Why is every single skill so pretty;]
[Is there someone practicing skills against a Death Knight?]
[Rin is seriously so pretty]
[And she even landed every attack in the middle of it, insane]
[Got it!]
[What's with Rin's composure lololol]
[If the first mob you meet in a temple is a Death Knight, your luck is absolute garbage, but wow what is this]
[13 left now]
Serin curled the corners of her lips at the chat window showing various reactions. In her vision, she could now see the Death Knight gradually gathering its energy.
She could even predict what skill it was preparing to unleash.
The Death Knight was a monster she had encountered quite often in Black Ark.
And the Death Knight she was facing now appeared to be the same type as the Death Knights she had faced in Another World as well.
'Probably the Randel Empire.'
From the Death Knight's first attack, she had been able to tell which empire or kingdom the skill belonged to. And now, the way it was gathering energy was clearly a preparatory stance for unleashing a massive skill.
Wondering which skill to counter with, Serin suddenly thought of one, and the corners of her lips slowly rose.
For adapting to a new skill, the Death Knight was actually close to real combat, so it felt quite suitable.
"Since it's a Death Knight, it might actually not be bad."
She spoke as if enjoying herself.
***
FSSSSSS!
The Death Knight, now completely engulfed in black energy, was radiating an aura chilling enough to be sinister.
The ferocious, massive energy coiling around the Death Knight's entire body soon gathered into its sword, beginning to display immense power.
The air trembled faintly, and around the sword, space itself was distorting as if a strange force was surging through the atmosphere.
Then the Death Knight raised the sword, now concentrated with enormous energy, high into the air.
Centered on the sword, a massive wave of fighting spirit began to expand its range as if exploding outward.
......
"What is Serin thinking?"
Eunha, watching the stream, felt puzzled at the sight of the Death Knight that seemed to have fully charged its skill.
She too had faced Death Knights countless times, so she had enough knowledge to infer the type of skill just from the stance.
The Death Knight she was seeing now was clearly preparing a wide-area attack that would unleash massive force sweeping the entire front.
A wide-area attack was also a skill that couldn't be parried—Serin's specialty—and the range was so broad that dodging wasn't easy either.
So one had to either meet it head-on with force, or attack to prevent the Death Knight from having time to prepare the skill.
But the Serin on screen right now was standing in place without taking any action.
"What skill is she trying to use..."
Serin's stance showed composure, so Eunha thought she must have a countermeasure, but she couldn't guess what it was.
The Moon Dancer hidden class was first revealed when Serin class-changed, so even among known skills, only a few that Daji had used were known.
A hidden class almost entirely shrouded in mystery.
Daji had certainly demonstrated its terrifying destructive power, but Serin couldn't be considered to have mastered those skills to Daji's level in a single day.
Immediately after, the black energy dominating the surrounding air burst outward as if exploding, and the Death Knight could be seen unfolding its skill.
—Randel Imperial Swordsmanship, Seventh Form: Flooding Death.
WHOOOOOSH!
A black wave surging across the entire space like a colossal tsunami.
"At this level, it's basically an Awakening Skill."
Even Eunha, who muttered blankly, had never seen a Death Knight charge all its power and use a skill like this. The destructive power of a fully charged skill she was seeing for the first time through this stream.
Normally, it made no sense for a user to leisurely wait while a monster charged a skill. Serin's display of that very absurdity felt arrogant even to Eunha.
From Serin's perspective on screen, the Death Knight's skill looked like a spectacle that could overwhelm in an instant.
A colossal tsunami of black-tinged energy.
The moment the tsunami, which had swept away pillars, decorations, and obstacles in its path and ground them to powder, bore down upon her.
Serin on screen slowly recalled a scene.
The time when a beautiful dancer beneath the full moon had demonstrated a skill worthy of admiration.
Having steeled her resolve, Serin immediately moved into action.
As if recreating Daji's movements, she planted herself elegantly and launched the Crescent-Moon Weight high into the air of the temple's vast cavern.
——!
The white Crescent-Moon Weight, laden with moonlight, rose like a flash of light beneath the darkness-filled cavern of the temple.
Then, focusing on the Crescent-Moon Weight suspended in the air, Serin unfolded her skill.
—Moonlit Mirror of All Under Heaven.
From the white Crescent-Moon Weight suspended in the air, a radiance burst forth as if to illuminate the entire temple, and began to dye the space with light.
Below it, Serin stood with dignified poise, bathed in moonlight, gazing at the oncoming black tsunami.
Just as the energy of the black tsunami, surging forward as if to swallow her, was about to crash down—the great light emitted from the Crescent-Moon Weight illuminated the entire tsunami.
And began to strip away the color it held.
As if returning it to nothingness.
The black tsunami was robbed of its deep, bewitching blackness, and even its ferociously churning energy soon began to crumble like a small flame dying out.
Fsssshh...
The energy, completely drained of color, scattered as transparent fragments of light and drifted down upon Serin. She simply stood there elegantly, a smile on her lips.
"...How."
Eunha, watching the stream, let the word slip out without realizing.
It wasn't admiration for the counter that had erased the black wave, massive as a tsunami, in a single stroke.
It was more like an immense question about Serin—who had reproduced with her own hands a skill seen on a stream not even a day ago.
Normally, pro players use a skill thousands, even tens of thousands of times to fully master it.
But now, she had done it just once.
Merely by facing the skill while fighting Daji, she had unfolded it nearly perfectly, in the same form as Daji.
For a moment, Daji seemed to overlap with her—even the small gestures and movements were identical, and even the force control in launching the Crescent-Moon Weight into the air was, upon reflection, perfectly identical to Daji's.
Whirr.
As Serin lightly caught the falling Crescent-Moon Weight and spoke, Eunha couldn't help but let out a hollow laugh.
"Still, I think I'm getting a feel for this skill."