256. Knights of Charlemagne vs Rin - Star of Genesis (5)
256. Knights of Charlemagne vs Rin - Star of Genesis (5)
***
Mina slammed into the ground and immediately raised her mace high, activating a skill.
—Impartial Judgment.
The massive mace became suffused with a deep blue light.
As it came crashing down with a ferocious tearing sound, Serin's eyes lit up with interest.
'So the rumor was true?'
She'd only poked at a rumor floating around the internet. But the violent reaction made it feel like the rumor was actually true.
The attempt to deal mental damage had landed better than expected. No, the way she looked now, she seemed outright enraged.
Provoking her further would only hurt her feelings more, so Serin kept her mouth shut.
WHOOOOM!
Watching the massive mace come chopping down, she calmly activated a skill.
—Gentle Wave.
Against the mace surging with violent blue light, the blood-red wave clinging to her one-handed sword looked faint.
A precarious situation, as if the sword would be swept away by the fierce blue light and crushed at any moment.
Swish.
Just before meeting the mace, Serin subtly twisted her wrist.
So smoothly that it almost seemed as though the blood-red wave on her sword was gently guiding the blue energy.
She softly redirected that immense force.
The mace wrapped in blue light curved sharply along the sword it met, its trajectory twisting in a bizarre sight.
BOOM!
At the end, the mace struck the innocent ground, producing a massive boom.
As Serin pulled her guiding sword away and tried to create distance, Mina, unflustered, heaved the mace buried in the floor upward.
"Where do you think you're running!"
BOOOOM!
Countless fragments scattered along the mace's upward arc, as if smashing the already ruined Colosseum floor to pieces entirely.
FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
Serin, who had urgently kicked off the ground, was simply dumbfounded amid the countless fragments.
'Her raw strength is seriously absurd.'
She felt a few fragments she couldn't dodge hit her body, but they didn't deal significant damage.
Since they weren't skills, that result was only natural, but it still didn't feel great.
Setting those thoughts aside, she calmly made her judgment.
'One.'
She had said two, so after receiving the opponent's next skill, she had to end it mercilessly in one go.
Since she'd already gotten into her opponent's head, her judgment would be clouded. Ending it by countering even the next move as if to show off seemed perfectly fitting.
While Serin was thinking that, Bradamante's expression hardened even colder.
'How dare she say two?'
And on top of that, a remark that seemed to openly reference someone in the spectator seats. She absolutely could not tolerate it.
She wasn't even curious what intention lay behind suddenly bringing that up.
All the good impressions she'd initially had of her were gone.
Right now, the only thing filling her was a boiling desire to flatten her completely.
"You said two, right? Go ahead and try it if you can."
Her growling voice, as if through clenched teeth, rang fiercely through the space.
BOOM!
Immediately after, Mina stomped the ground and leaped high into the air. Serin watched her while calmly raising her sword.
If she was going to use Great Destruction like before, Serin intended to break it head-on this time.
But contrary to Serin's expectation, the blue-haired female knight floating in the air used a completely different skill.
—Star of Genesis.
The mace holding blue light began to radiate intensely, as if condensing immense power.
Mina, who had watched the first match, had formed some impressions while observing.
Rin, who used a sword, was characterized by deflecting attacks in unusual ways or using counters.
Moreover, the sleek and agile dancer's movements seemed incredibly troublesome to deal with, so she'd thought about how to handle her.
Her conclusion was simple.
'Hit her with greater force.'
If force couldn't solve something, it was because the force was insufficient.
Before absolute might, a dancer's technique was nothing more than cheap tricks.
The parrying she needed to watch out for could be dealt with by smashing her with a wide-area attack that couldn't be parried at all.
WHOOOOM!!
The blue light continuously condensing in her gripped mace began to hold a glow so massive it seemed to swell the mace's original size several times over.
Then, she brought it down with tremendous force, as if to scorch the entire ground.
WHOOSH!
With a bizarre tearing sound as if the very atmosphere was being ripped apart, a mass of light carrying overwhelming power began its descent.
Serin, who had watched all of it, let out a hollow laugh.
"This is ridiculous."
The pressure she felt was on a completely different level from when she'd first faced Great Destruction.
No, it was almost like a small admiration.
'I'll admit it's actually effective.'
The intent of an attack that seemed to destroy the entire area.
That skill, focused solely on power without concern for anything but destruction, had reached a level of destructive force that could practically be considered an Awakening Skill.
So reading the attack's timing itself wasn't particularly difficult.
For wide-area skills, parrying itself was meaningless.
'Two.'
And I had already spoken the words.
She had to end the opponent in one blow after their skill.
But that skill would unleash an even more massive shockwave than the first. Holding a proper stance amid that aftermath would be impossible.
'Intercept.'
As several thoughts connected in what felt like an instant, Serin had already kicked off the ground and flung her body into the air.
An action executed simultaneously with judgment.
Having launched herself into the air, she immediately rotated her body and activated a skill.
—Single Kick.
BOOM!
Her blood-soaked leg struck the space rapidly, and with the sound of space bursting, her body accelerated further upward at the opposite angle.
A bizarre sight, as if throwing herself into the opponent's immense power already at close range.
Within the illusion of being crushed by that colossal force, Serin's blue eyes held an even more brilliant will.
***
"Hey, isn't Sis in danger?"
Seoyun muttered while watching Serin charge at the opponent on screen, and Sua agreed.
"She's in danger."
Sua couldn't understand what she was trying to do.
Serin's one-handed sword style was new to Sua too, so every moment was fresh, and she couldn't predict her actions at all.
There were some skills modified to fit the Dancer Class, and she'd also seen her use knight skills as they were.
But the way she was hurling herself into the air right now looked like throwing herself into a fire pit.
At the end of Serin's self-destructive-looking charge into the massive blue mass of light,
Sua was shocked when Serin kicked off the air once more and accelerated greatly.
'A mistake?'
She wondered if Serin had made a mistake.
By the time she kicked off the air again, she'd already reached the massive blue mass of light, so it was as good as over.
————!
Immediately after, a massive blood-red line flickered once, surging violently before vanishing.
"What just happened?"
Seoyun looked at Sua as if she couldn't understand the situation, and Sua said nothing.
She was speechless because she doubted whether she'd even seen it properly herself.
Afterward, the massive blue descent that should have slammed into the Colosseum never came.
There was only one woman who had turned into light and vanished,
Tap.
And one woman landing lightly on the Colosseum floor.
'Serin's victory.'
The result was clear and confirmed by the screen before them.
But how should she understand this sense of disconnect, as if the process had been erased?
"At the end, it looked like Serin threw her sword."
Even as she spoke, Sua wasn't certain.
She'd clearly seen Serin suddenly kick off the air, rotate her body, and use Single Kick.
Then, propelled by that momentum, she shot forward as if accelerating once more, and the moment she met the descending opponent—
Sua had thought it was a mistake.
But the blood-red light burst out in a massive flicker, and the result was different from what she'd expected.
'Probably...'
Just before meeting the opponent, Serin must have gambled on the Throw skill.
That was the most rational inference I could make.
But more than anything, why had Serin needed to gamble in that situation? She couldn't understand that at all.
There were plenty of ways to respond—escaping the range, launching into the air—so there was no reason to take such a gamble.
It had happened in an instant, obscured by the massive light, so even after replaying the scene several times she couldn't be sure. Then Seoyun looked at her and muttered in disbelief.
"Do you actually know how to watch games? No, look, Sis's holding the sword right now. And you're saying she threw it?"
"Well... it probably got recovered after the match ended. Ugh! I don't know either."
Sua shook her head as if feeling wronged under Seoyun's gaze and looked away.
It was frustrating that she couldn't clearly refute Seoyun's words, which seemed to treat her like an idiot.
She'd definitely watched the match with both eyes open and focused, but how could she explain this hollow feeling of not having seen the process?
The light had flashed so brightly at the end that she couldn't see the details, and that frustrated Sua immensely.
"Just say you're bad at games if you're bad at games."
Seoyun, on the other hand, thought Sua was reacting that way because she'd been caught lying.
***
The match between the two was decided at a completely unexpected moment.
The players in the spectator seats couldn't know what words the two had exchanged, but it was clear that Mina had launched a reckless offensive with a major skill.
The Star of Genesis, a skill with tremendous destructive power, had been activated, and just as everyone wondered how Rin would respond—
In an instant, Mina turned into light and the match was decided.
Only half of the players could accept the result.
"Wow."
Yena, marveling purely as if she'd seen something,
"......"
And Sihyeon, lips pressed firmly shut as if at a loss for words.
On the other hand, Hamin and Seojin couldn't understand it.
"Wait, you actually understood that?"
When Seojin spoke up at Sihyeon's expression, Sihyeon gave a small nod.
"Yeah."
At that answer, Hamin looked at Sihyeon, and Sihyeon clenched his hand and parted his lips.
"......It was probably Throw."
And the word he uttered was Throw, one of the knight skills.
A skill where you hurl your sword at the opponent with all your strength.
Since it left you defenseless afterward, its destructive power was proportionally quite high, but it was a skill with no safety net if it failed, so most people consciously avoided using it.
Getting into the habit of using Throw often actually made your skill level drop.
On top of that, it wasn't even a skill that was hard for opponents to deal with.
But Rin had chosen that skill in a situation where that immense power was bearing down on her.
Mina's descending speed while activating the skill wasn't slow, and the range wasn't narrow either.
Rather, Rin had closed the distance completely and used Throw, and the blood-red trajectory that pierced through Mina's head was hard to comprehend by common sense.
"How could she make such a bold gamble in that situation? If she'd been off by even a little, it wouldn't have been strange at all for Mina to win."
When Yena chimed in as if she'd seen the result too, Sihyeon unconsciously tightened his clenched hand.
'A bold gamble.'
Yena's words sounded perfectly reasonable at first glance.
But looking at Rin, who had landed leisurely in the Colosseum even now, the word "gamble" didn't seem to fit.
Would someone who could make that judgment in an instant and throw their body into it really have done so thinking of it as a gamble?
Afterward, Mina appeared in the spectator seats along with the light.
"..."
Mina flinched as if she couldn't believe the result, still unable to accept reality.
Then, without realizing it, she found herself looking at Hamin.
Because Serin's words—that he would be disappointed—kept circling in her head.
Contrary to her worry, Hamin flashed a grin.
"You did well."
At Hamin's sudden reaction, Mina chewed her lips, unable to say anything.
She quietly sat down near Hamin and just fidgeted with her hands for no reason.