Dungeon Clear (5)
Every boy has a memory like this from childhood.
Sentai shows.
Heroes in every color of skintight suit, striking their signature poses as they laid waste to monsters — that was a genuine shock to my younger self. And of all those scenes, the one still burned into my brain is the moment the villains, beaten down, transformed into giant beasts, and the heroes called in their robots to keep the fight going at a whole new scale.
As a kid I just sat there slack-jawed, awed by all that glittering spectacle. Growing up and looking back on it, though, one question always nagged at me.
Why don't they hit them while they're transforming?
That writhing, vulnerable gap when the villains ballooned into giant monsters. If the heroes just hit them one more time in that window, wouldn't they die?
In the end I settled on, I guess they have to wait it out for the sake of the plot.
Only now did I finally understand.
Those spandex heroes had never been waiting out of courtesy. They'd taken down giant beasts more times than they could count. If that gap were actually a weakness, attacking it would have been the obvious move.
They already knew.
That gap — the moment of transformation — was invincible.
"Ah, fuck!"
I spat the curse and used Spirit Step.
A thick, green-scaled arm whipped past my side close enough to kiss the air. Whoom—! For something that enormous, it was obscenely fast. The unfairness of that was infuriating enough on its own, but the real problem was something else.
KWAANG—!
The fish goblin's fist slammed into the earth and burst apart, unable to withstand its own force. Green ichor and swamp mud sprayed through the air.
"That— that fucking—!"
The problem was what I was looking at right now. It had driven that arm in hard enough to blow its own flesh apart — the damage was real — but inside the wound, white worms wriggled and seethed, knitting the meat back together as I watched.
Genuinely disgusting. Genuinely nauseating. Part of me wanted to parry, but that brutish, power-packed blow had a mountain of mana packed into it too. Dodging was the smarter play.
"Hey, you want the stone back?! Should I just give it back?!"
"St… give… back… stone… give…"
Whether it wanted the stone back or just wanted me to give something back, I couldn't tell. Its pronunciation was so wrecked I could barely make out the words.
"Ah, hell. Eat this."
I smashed Flame Spirit Slash into its skull. Charred scraps of flesh pattered to the ground — and were replaced by fresh meat in an instant.
Fuck. I was actually going to lose my mind.
"Grrrk…!"
Its yellow eyes rolled wildly and it huffed out a ragged breath, like it had finally figured out it was being betrayed.
"Gi…ve it…"
The thing lifted one enormous arm into the air. Same pattern. I set myself to fire off Spirit Step —
Then the arm bloated, bulged, and stretched. It came screaming not at me, but at whatever was behind me.
"Oh, you—!"
I hastily packed mana into the flat of my blade and knocked the arm upward. The slightly deflected limb just grazed Alice's red hair as she popped her shooter evasion skill, Dodge — and punched into the ground behind her.
Drrrrrk—!
Alice tumbled, emptying her Uzi's magazine, but the rounds packed into the fish goblin's arm were shoved right back out by regenerating flesh and clattered away. Violet stabbed and burst at it with everything her telekinesis had, and the arm just grew back anyway.
"Hweeeng~! How are we even supposed to deal with that~?"
Maya kept pumping buffs into us with a wobbling pout on her face.
Yeah. How were we supposed to deal with that?
It wasn't enough to throw around those monstrous arms — now it was even pulling out the old rubber-rubber stretch from my childhood cartoons. Think, Jeong Jojun. Find the answer.
And then, in a flash, one came to me.
How had the spandex heroes dealt with those transforming kaijin? I traced the thought backward, and the answer dropped into my lap.
An overwhelming single strike.
They'd trade blows with the beast, then erase it in one shot with the laser cannon. The moment I understood their method, the rest followed on its own.
I dumped the iron sword into my inventory and drew my real beloved blade — Levatein. Sunlight glowed faintly along the body of the sword; crimson flame-patterns licked across the edge.
I tightened my grip. Levatein's absurd bonus stats poured into me. Forty points on every stat, fire damage multiplied by five — a truly broken weapon. This was my laser cannon.
"Buy me five seconds! Just five!"
I triggered Meditation and shouted to the others. In the sentai shows it was an ironclad rule that the monster sat still while you charged the laser cannon, but this bastard, unfortunately, was not that considerate. It was not going to wait on my account. Which meant I had to trust my party, and prepare this strike anyway.
"Got it!"
"On it, Jojun!"
Violet and Alice must have realized I was setting something up. They glued themselves to my flanks and dropped into a defensive stance.
"Hoo…"
I let out a long breath and looked at myself through the third-person eyes Meditation gave me. I scanned everything — the fingers on the hilt, the placement of the feet on the ground — and then I closed my eyes.
I went down, not into the body, but into the mind, and I thought.
What is Swiftness?
A question I had thrown at myself more times than I could count. I asked it again. Was Swiftness nothing more than a strike that happened to be fast? Could a fast strike like that bisect space itself and erase everything in its path?
I still didn't know. No matter how I turned it over, I still didn't understand Swiftness.
But that strike Tialfi had shown me — the one that deserved to be called the very essence of Swiftness, the one that erased everything and then stitched the world back together however it pleased — that strike had fallen slowly. Faster than anything, and yet strangely, impossibly slow. Remembering it, the hand on my sword twitched of its own accord.
Ask it one more time.
What is Swiftness?
There was one thing I could answer with certainty.
Swiftness is selfish.
It ignores every law there is and violates the opponent without mercy. That was the single point I had grasped.
I opened my eyes.
Alice had converted her Uzi into a shotgun and was pouring round after round into the fish-man's arm as it came crashing down on me. Violet was straining with everything she had, sliding the arm aside on a telekinetic shield.
Five seconds. Alice and Violet, covering me while I stood completely exposed — and Maya behind them, grinding out buffs with everything she had. Because of them, I had been able to prepare this strike.
I took one step forward.
And I brought the sword down.
No technique at all. Just a single strike carrying the Swiftness I had conceived.
Fwoosh.
A line of crimson flame bisected the world.
One line, drawn by me. And between the two halves of that line, the fish goblin existed.
That was all.
A strike of selfish Swiftness had been drawn, and the fish goblin had been standing in its path. With that, the conclusion was already written.
"Uhhh~?"
Maya made a dazed little sound, staring at the world that had been, however shallowly, cut in two.
The world came back together. The line I had drawn sealed itself, and the pond water that had hung empty for a single instant rushed in to fill the void.
Only one thing was missing. The fish goblin no longer existed in this world.
"Hh— fuck."
The strength went out of my whole body and I planted my face in the dirt before I even knew I was falling. Had I pushed myself too hard, trusting those temporarily inflated stats? My skin prickled and sang; my joints refused to move.
"No, wait…"
Cough.
Bright red blood spilled between my lips. So it wasn't just the body I'd burned through. I'd pulled on my life force too.
"Ah… fuck…"
The world swayed. Guess we were doing this cliché too — coughing up blood and passing out as the price for drawing on too much power.
That stupid thought was the last thing I had. Then I lost consciousness.
"Haa… well, damn."
Lee Suyeon, homeroom teacher of Class 1-5, clicked her tongue in a hospital ward and looked down at the boy laid out on the bed.
When she'd first heard he'd passed out, she'd thought she'd misheard. That monster of a kid, fainting? Was that even a sentence that made sense?
Then she watched the camcorder footage, and it wasn't that at all. The strange thing would have been if he hadn't passed out.
He drew a line through the world.
She'd rewound it more times than she could count, and there was no other way to put it. A perfectly ordinary slash, delivered with a blazing sword, had split the world open and erased the grotesque goblin standing in front of him.
She'd expected him to cause a stir at the academy from the moment she laid eyes on him that first day. But after watching that footage, the feeling that settled over her was something else.
She was certain now. That kid was going to turn the world upside down.
They said chaotic times called forth heroes. And the single ray of light to come down into this godforsaken world just happened to be her student.
Lee Suyeon chewed on her Monami pen and looked at Jeong Jojun again. He was simply exhausted, sunk in a deep sleep — and clustered around him were several girls. The vice president, the secretary, Maya, and even an employee from the Tree Guild. Their reasons were probably all different, but Lee Suyeon found the whole picture deeply unpleasant.
"Shit… some of us haven't even dated…"
She'd heard somewhere that women flocked to heroes. Looking at this, she had to admit it checked out.
"Aigoo… fuck."
She sighed, lamented her lot in life, and slipped out of Jeong Jojun's hospital room. More work had just landed on her desk. When you had an outstanding student, you also inherited the messes he left behind.
Lee Suyeon yanked her dress shirt open, spat one more curse, and headed back to her workplace.
"Uugghh…"
My entire body was wrecked.
Yesterday I had taken out the fish goblin in a single strike. The blow carrying the principle of Swiftness — the one that bisected the world — had succeeded. And because I still couldn't handle that power, I had passed out on the spot.
When I came to, I was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. I was still trying to piece the situation together when four girls descended on me without giving me a second to breathe.
"P-please! Join our guild! I'm begging you! I'll give you anything! Myself! The whole guild! I'll give you everything!"
Saerom from the Tree Guild had thrown herself at me, sobbing her heart out.
"Jojun! Is your body okay? You're okay, right?"
Alice had raked those glittering red eyes over every inch of me.
"You… haah… I knew it…"
Violet had looked at me with a whole tangle of complicated things in her gaze.
"Hweeeeng~"
Maya had just cried, long and mournful.
Talking all four of them down and actually figuring out what had happened took a serious amount of work. I finally got everyone settled, checked out of the hospital, came home, and passed out the second I hit the bed.
And now.
"Gghhhk!"
I greeted the morning with an unbelievable, full-body agony.
"P-Player! Are you okay?!"
Angel popped into existence beside me and blinked those huge amber eyes at me, looking genuinely worried.
"Do I look okay?"
Even the smallest movement dumped an avalanche of pain through me. Damn it. I should have just used Levatein's Regeneration on myself yesterday. I'd held off to save the cooldown, and now that thriftiness was coming back to poison me.
"Your body's a mess, but… that strike yesterday was amazing! I showed it to Tialfi and even he watched it with this look of genuine admiration, you know?!"
That guy was impressed?
A man who could slice space apart and stitch it back together however he pleased… and he was impressed…
The corner of my mouth twitched up on its own.
"Ah! Right! Player, just so we're clear — I didn't have anything to do with that fish goblin yesterday! You know that, right?!"
"You already told me last time… from the moment that fish-man showed up, you said it wasn't a being of 'this world'— gghhk!"
I forced my screaming body into motion and dragged myself toward the sink. I was going to see Alice soon. I at least needed to wash my face before then.
I was hunched over the basin, groaning through a face-wash, when I heard the front-door passcode being punched in. The door burst open.
"Jojun!"
Alice took one look at me leaning on the sink and nearly jumped out of her skin.
"I told you not to move!"
She scooped a hand under my knees and hoisted me clean off the floor.
"Gwehkk?!"
In a single motion I was locked in a princess carry, and a truly unholy noise tore out of my throat.
"You're staying put today! I'll take care of everything!"
Alice huffed through her nose and carried me toward the couch, still holding me like that.
"Alice, this is wrong! This position is all wrong!"
I thrashed and protested, but between the pain tearing through my body and Alice's grip, I gave up almost immediately.