Treasure Hunting (3)
Lee Chung's assistant, Eliana Andersen, had turned her head absentmindedly and now let out a sigh.
"...Haah."
Lee Chung was always the picture of childlike innocence. Yet today, for some reason, she sat buried in her paperwork with her eyes glaring fiercely wide.
She might fool around more than anyone, but she was also sturdier than anyone — so why was she wearing such a bitter expression?
...What's going on?
Her assistant asked carefully.
"Did something unpleasant happen?"
"..."
But Lee Chung gave no answer whatsoever.
She simply kept signing the documents awaiting her approval without a moment's delay.
Watching her, Eliana concluded that something really must have happened. She tiptoed quietly to Lee Chung's side and studied her from behind.
...She had no idea what was wrong, but what on earth could she say to comfort her? Just as she opened her mouth at last, after a long agonizing debate with herself—
Lee Chung whipped her head around and declared, eyes blazing with twin flames of fury.
"I was a car (I got dumped)."
"...Pardon?"
For a moment Eliana couldn't parse the meaning at all and tilted her head in confusion. Lee Chung, apparently too frustrated to bear it, shouted at the top of her lungs.
"I got DUMPED, I said!"
"..."
Then she timidly slammed her fist down on the desk with a BANG and muttered, seething with humiliation.
"...I wasn't completely dumped, but still — how could anyone subject me to such indignity! Good heavens, who knew such disgrace existed in this world."
Thud, thud, thud—!
The girl drummed on the desk, savoring her own shame over and over.
"...Uh, uuum."
It wasn't quite what Eliana had been worried about, but something had clearly happened.
What in the world had she heard to put her in such a state? She couldn't tell, but it seemed to involve a man somehow.
Eliana stared blankly at Lee Chung's flushed face, then pulled herself together and asked again.
"So what exactly happened?"
"...I thought I made a rather proactive proposal. I mean, of course I can lend it, but..."
"...Lend it? Don't tell me you lent money to someone else?! How much?!"
As the student council's accountant, Eliana's voice shot up in alarm the moment her area of expertise entered the conversation, and she pressed Lee Chung urgently. Lee Chung reluctantly muttered:
"About a billion won."
My master was loaded with money.
Of course, I hadn't borrowed it on that reasoning alone — it was, at all times, a transaction.
It may be difficult now, but I swore I would lend my hand to your grand designs in due course.
That was all I declared. In exchange, I asked, could she perhaps advance me some operating funds right away—
1,000,000,000 won has been deposited into your account.
My master's grace is vast as the heavens—
For some reason she'd been wearing a rather sulky expression, but she was my master all the same — a woman of oceanic generosity and boundless kindness.
As always, but especially right now, I felt I could sing the praises of any and every facet of my master.
"Still, a billion, huh."
A fortune for a mere student to carry. But when it came to the affairs of murim practitioners, it was a rather ambiguous sum.
It would barely cover a mid-grade elixir.
Far from enough to carve out the path from First-rate to the Peak Realm.
So I decided to think big.
After all, if we conquered the mystic realm outside Seondo Academy's campus, money would multiply and elixirs would pour out. My master's resources thus became the war chest for breaching the dungeon.
First, I bought the workshop-made Jet Booster for a straight shot to the Demon King Castle's topmost floor, and Dispel Scrolls to ward off the intercepting magic from above.
The scrolls were obscenely expensive, but it was a choice I couldn't avoid if I didn't want to be shot down and killed.
Even for Cheon Yuha and me, there was no way to swat every spell out of the air mid-flight.
Thanks to those scrolls, though, after suffering every manner of hell with no footing beneath us, we reached the top floor with more than half our internal energy still in reserve.
And that was with us scrapping everything else and charging straight for the final boss's chamber. Had we taken the proper route, we wouldn't have cleared it until tomorrow.
...In the original, it should have taken a party of Super-Peak martial artists and sixth-circle mages everything they had just to scrape by.
Reaching it with just the two of us through a shortcut, then — a fine start by any measure.
Even so, it was too early to let our guard down.
Our opponent was a monster a tier above Cheon Yuha, and our matchup with him wasn't particularly favorable either. Even after all this, we were one step short.
So I bought a bomb.
I pressed the switch down hard.
KWA-GAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA-GAAAANG!!!
The top floor of the Demon King Castle exploded.
...
"Cough! Cough!"
The Barrier Scroll's duration had been shorter than I expected, so I'd inhaled a lungful of smoke.
Ah, my eyes and nose are stinging like crazy.
Right in the middle of this impromptu chemical attack, a massive axe suddenly appeared at my side.
— Yusu, Flowing Water.
Calmly, I enveloped the axe with my hand and deflected its force aside, then hurried to put distance between us.
Then I looked at the vampire in his immaculate tailcoat, not so much as scratched by the explosion.
I'd never expected a bomb to kill a monster of the Super-Peak tier and beyond, but it was still a disappointing sight.
That said, by collapsing the top floor of the Demon King Castle, the bomb had more than paid for itself — it had prevented that wide-area massacre spell meant to slaughter the weaklings by raising a sea of blood.
Well, well. The thing I was most worried about just vanished?
Which meant it was now time to begin the real vampire hunt in earnest.
"I will kill you without fail!"
Somehow in an extremely agitated state, the vampire came charging at me, spewing red light from his eyes.
Zoltrak lived up to his epithet, the Butcher, clearly intending to carve me up for real — drool streaming from his mouth as he whirled his axes around.
I set my stance before I could get sliced apart.
Good grief. With my physical capabilities relatively diminished, lately it's all been about counter-receiving.
My internal energy reserves were lacking too, so I couldn't even drag the fight out long.
Which meant that from the endurance-rich Super-Peak martial artists upward, fighting alone was a losing proposition.
So what's the answer?
Two is enough.
KUUUNG—!
An overwhelming presence pressed down upon the space itself.
Zoltrak staggered for an instant and stopped his charge toward me.
Thud, thud, thud. Each resounding step gradually claimed dominion over the surrounding space, and the vampire narrowed his eyes at the violent aura flooding in.
Something was coming.
The vampire seemed to sense it instinctively, spinning a vortex of blood into his grasp.
"Do you take me for a fool?"
As if I'd just stand there and watch him finish it.
This time, I was the one who charged first.
Even with only a First-rate body, driving internal strength into my legs and sprinting for all I was worth let me close the distance to a stationary opponent in a blink.
Before me stood the vampire, eyes bloodshot as if he might weep tears of blood. Come then, if you dare, his stance seemed to say as he spun the storm of blood in his grip faster still.
But I advanced a step without fear and threw a punch through the subtle principle of the taiji.
To be precise, I threw the holy water in my hand.
CRRRING—!
Zoltrak hastily blocked it with his axe, but a few droplets splashed through regardless.
Sizzle-sizzle — plumes of snowy white smoke bloomed from his shoulder and torso.
"GAAAAAAAARGH!!!"
The vampire shrieked.
"How fragile you are."
To be brought this low by so little.
The sinister human tricks honed through years of war — let me show you where they end.
Behold: the hammer and anvil tactic!
KUUUNG!
— Cheonmagunrimbo, Heavenly Demon Monarch's Step.
Before I knew it, the seventh step.
At last, Cheon Yuha emerged from the mist of dust.
Both hands gripping a massive ganghwan — a compressed mass of gangki.
She took another step.
KWAAANG—!
The eighth step. The tyrannical aura made the air grow heavier still.
If the mere aftershocks could do this, how crushing must the pressure feel to the one at its center?
I stood by at a distance, bottle of holy water in hand, ready for the unexpected.
"Grrrrgh!"
Even while writhing under the pressure and pain, the vampire instinctively grasped how dangerous that mass of gangki in her hand was, and hastily hurled his crimson vortex.
"Windsturm!"
DDDDDDDRRRR—!
The scarlet storm swelled in an instant and swept everything around it.
Even a passing brush with that thing would shred me to ribbons. I poured holy water into my palm and set my stance.
It was frankly absurd that he'd pull this stunt the instant my hand was full — but what could I do.
— Geongondaenayi, Great Shift of Heaven and Earth.
My hand and fingers, drenched in holy water, moved through a strange, uncanny pattern in that instant.
The hand-gestures of a frail human met the raging storm head-on.
I simply flowed it sideways.
KWAGAGANG! The storm smashed through the only remaining wall and blasted out of the castle.
It was closer to a curse-arts technique than a physical attack, and with my meager internal energy, a full reversal was beyond me.
But this would be enough.
"Scheiße! What ARE you, that you deflect everything?!"
The vampire raged as if he'd tear me apart on the spot, but I calmly shrugged my shoulders and pulled another bottle of holy water from my pack.
CRASH-CRRING—!
I threw, and threw again.
"GAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!"
And then, at last, Cheon Yuha arrived.
— KUUUNG!
The ninth step.
The future Heavenly Demon took her throne upon the battlefield.
Simultaneously, crimson light whirled.
"Stay back!"
The vampire swung his axes wildly on pure survival instinct.
He scattered his own blood into the empty air.
But Cheon Yuha evaded every drop of blood with mysterious, unfathomable movements and slipped into the gap between strikes.
What she had failed to do at the very start, she had finally accomplished.
Tuuk—
Her hand touched the vampire's torso.
"Pacheonmu. Sky-Shattering Martial Art."
"...Ah."
Zoltrak stared at the mass of gangki burrowing into his chest.
Blink, blink, blink — points of light flickered on in rapid succession.
It blazed red.
As if it would detonate at any moment.
"...You son of a—!"
KWAAAAAAAAAANG──!!! The shockwave erupting from the ganghwan swept the chamber in a single instant.
It wasn't merely that our hair whipped about — our whole bodies were shoved backward.
And that was only the aftershock.
"Did we get him?"
Indeed, the vampire whose torso had taken the direct hit collapsed to his knees with half his upper body blown away.
Yet even in that state, some remnant of will remained — he glared at me with bloodshot eyes, muttering something.
Ah, could it be some final curse that kills the target remotely?
Unlikely as that seemed, the world was full of things I didn't know, so I simply poured holy water over his head.
HIISSSS...
"GAAAAAAAARGH!!!"
Sizzle! Sizzle! Sizzle!
As I kept pouring, his regeneration finally reached its limit, and Zoltrak the vampire stopped even screaming, letting his head droop.
I stopped pulling bottles from my pack and studied him carefully — was this a act?
...Hmm. No, he really was out cold.
"He's a vampire, so he won't die, right?"
Since nothing required killing him outright, I decided to simply leave him alive.
After all, we'd need to come back and farm him again someday.
A good match, my friend.
Cheon Yuha, meanwhile, offered the vampire a silent prayer and murmured with a complicated expression.
"...Real combat is truly a terrifying thing."
Such has life always been.
CLACK—.
When we stepped out into the 'Hall of Decision' that should have hosted the original battle, the lock on the treasure room set off to one side came undone, as if welcoming the victor.
Like the graveyard lottery outside, it was a demented room that dispensed elixirs and artifacts at random.
And somehow, I had not merely a hunch but a full conviction that if I opened it, we'd get a Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root.
"You open it."
When I said it with all the conviction in my voice, Cheon Yuha nodded — she'd evidently arrived at the same thought.
Reaching the door, she swallowed hard and flung it open with all her might.
CREEEEAK─
The moment the door swung wide and the reward came into view, we both fell briefly speechless.
There should have been one elixir and one artifact. Instead, there was only a single elixir.
But all the better.
We exchanged no words, yet I was certain our hearts beat as one.
For what stood before us was a human-shaped ginseng, dancing merrily in place.
The one and only — Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng.
A peerless elixir rated as the absolute pinnacle even in the twenty-first century.
— Kyuing?
The Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng tilted its head at us, the ones who had abruptly barged into its room.
Unable to hold it in, I let it fly.
"Son of a bitch. There it is."
We lunged forward in unison and seized the limbs of the fleeing ginseng.
And then,
— KYAAAAK!
We ate it.