Chapter 89
Chapter 89
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 89
Chapter Title: ACT.16 Virus (7)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Not bad. You didn't seem like the type to use your head.”
Kang Dong-woon observed me, as if appraising me.
“But if you passed through that area earlier, you couldn't have come out unscathed.”
I chuckled and took out a cylinder.
It was slowly losing its light, its effect wearing off, but it was enough to prove I hadn't been affected by the virus when I jumped through the window.
“...Tsk. So that's how it is. You broke through the organization from the bottom up? And still no reports came in? Slackers.”
Kang Dong-woon sighed and cracked his neck.
His neatly tied necktie was pulled loose.
Reports had come in, but I silenced everyone before they could be relayed to Kang Dong-woon, so there was no way he would have heard.
“Where are your allies?”
“Allies?”
I narrowed my eyes slightly.
Is he talking about the twins?
No. Kang Dong-woon doesn't know my identity.
There's no way he'd know about the twins.
“This place is the largest of the 'main bodies.' You wouldn't have come to attack it, taken everyone down by yourself, and reached me all alone, would you?”
So that's what he was getting at.
I felt the tension drain out of me.
Kang Dong-woon wasn't wrong.
To single-handedly take care of everyone in a building with a double-digit number of B-Ranks, not to mention all the C and D-Ranks?
That would be difficult even for an A-Rank.
At least an S-Rank.
But S-Ranks are all well-known, and he clearly doesn't think I'm one of them.
Just like the ones who tried to stop me earlier.
Seeing my silence, Kang Dong-woon snorted and changed the subject.
“I thought that even if you managed to block both me and the glass tube, you'd soon self-destruct from the virus. I never imagined you'd break through all three.”
“Did you think I'd attempt a frontal assault without any countermeasures?”
“Is that so? Then keep blocking.”
*Fwoosh!*
The moment he let out a chilling laugh, the virus was sprayed, so fast I didn't even see him raise his hand.
It was so fast there was almost no preliminary motion.
[Character Information]
Name: Kang Dong-woon
Gender: Male (28)
Strength: 50, Agility: 69(+11), Stamina: 50, Mana: 48
Unique Ability: Tailwind (A)
Traits: Gale (A), Swift (B), Efficient Movement (B), Fastest (A)
Skill: Blade of Wind (C)
His stats are agility-focused, and many of his traits boost his agility stat.
His total agility stat is a whopping 80.
Overall, his stats are low for an A-Rank, but his speed is exceptionally high.
You'd normally only see an agility stat that high on an S-Rank.
I thought his initial movement was extremely fast; so he had the Fastest trait.
With that, the speed of his first action more than doubles, so it's no wonder it was hard for me to react.
I clicked my tongue and trapped the virus with darkness.
Having experienced it once before, trapping it before it could spread wasn't difficult.
“Good block! Let's see how long you can keep it up!”
Kang Dong-woon used his wind trait to move swiftly.
When I tried to bind him, he'd agilely slip away. When I created spikes, he'd evade the area before they could even rise.
He used the wind solely to evade my attacks.
He repeatedly left the offense entirely to the virus.
This was because no matter how high your mana or agility stats, the pre-delay in using a skill can't be reduced beyond a certain point.
What an annoying method.
If I don't eliminate the virus immediately, Kang Dong-woon's ability will spread it into the city and cause a pandemic. But if I keep focusing on that, the power of my own attacks diminishes.
Kang Dong-woon was acting cleverly.
Using Army of Darkness is a bit iffy, as I've already consumed a lot of mana.
Tsk. I'll have to force this into a close-quarters fight somehow.
“Are you planning to stop me here, even if it means using up all your virus samples?”
“We can always collect more of the virus!”
Laughing like a madman, he held an MV gun in his left hand and sprayed the virus whenever I tried to do something.
The spray itself was weak, but combined with his ability to control the wind, it was like a surging wave of disease.
Damn it. Just how much of this virus is he carrying?
At this point, I'm starting to suspect he has a trait that creates the virus.
‘He can't be immune to the virus either.’
I don't know the principle behind it yet, but I know the cylinders keep the virus at bay for a short time.
Maybe he has a high-grade cylinder with a long duration.
Or perhaps, regardless of that, he's chosen a mutually destructive path, intending to take me down with him.
He must have noticed I have a few more cylinders.
‘Even considering that, is he confident that what he has will last much longer?’
He must have seen me using darkness to eliminate the virus.
He would have predicted that I could manage to some extent even without the cylinders.
In that case, Kang Dong-woon is aiming for something else.
*Swoosh.*
I surrounded the newly sprayed virus with darkness and eliminated it.
In that moment, I realized what Kang Dong-woon was aiming for and clicked my tongue.
“What a sly snake.”
Kang Dong-woon's goal was to continuously drain my power.
After all, Kang Dong-woon himself wasn't using much of his own power.
He was convinced that by stalling for time like this, a moment would come when he'd have a decisive advantage.
And indeed, I'm using my abilities more than usual right now, so my mana is draining faster.
‘However.’
Using Army of Darkness consumes too much mana, but my base mana stat isn't so low that I'd be exhausted by just this.
If the opponent wants a war of attrition, I just have to force the situation.
*Fwoom.*
The surroundings were enveloped in darkness.
Kang Dong-woon, who had sensed something was wrong and tried to flee, could no longer retreat and let out a grunt, “Kuh.”
Until I release it, no one can get out of here.
I had enveloped a certain area in darkness, isolating it from the outside.
“There's a gaming term called a 'forced initiation.' Ever heard of it?”
Kang Dong-woon's expression soured.
A circular space, about 10 meters in diameter.
His primary tactic of hit-and-run had just become virtually unusable.
“I see. A clever move. You think you've won just by trapping me? But in such a confined space, you'll have less room to dodge as well, won't you?”
“I have no reason to dodge.”
The virus Kang Dong-woon had just released was caught by the darkness extending from the outer wall and vanished.
It was a technique I'd acquired recently, so I wanted to avoid using it if possible, but...
I couldn't afford to let this drag on any longer.
“...So the virus-based approach won't work anymore.”
Kang Dong-woon unhesitatingly dropped all the small glass vials containing the virus to the floor.
He's fired more than ten shots so far; I was wondering where they were all coming from. They must have been attached to the inside of his jacket.
So he was taking advantage of the MV gun's detachable structure to continuously swap out the glass vials and fire.
“But by now, all the cylinders you had must have lost their effect.”
“...”
“Only an A-Rank Player can become the Master of a main body. If you thought I was weak because I was only using the virus, you're gravely mistaken!”
The space distorted slightly as something rushed forward.
Blade of Wind.
The skill Kang Dong-woon possessed.
Even a C-Rank skill can become an 'invisible attack,' which makes it tricky for the opponent.
It was, in fact, Kang Dong-woon's only means of attack.
“So what?”
When I swung my sword, the Blade of Wind scattered.
Kang Dong-woon, who had been so confident in his invisible attack, was left speechless with a bewildered expression.
“You blocked it that easily...?”
“It's not my first time dealing with that skill.”
If his skill had been A-Rank like his unique ability, I wouldn't have been able to block it so simply.
After all, wind-type abilities get an additional boost based on the agility stat.
But Kang Dong-woon's skill was merely C-Rank.
Besides, Blade of Wind is a skill I've faced from countless enemies.
It was that common of a skill.
Even if he had brought an S-Rank version, not an A-Rank one, while it would have been more difficult, I was confident I could overcome it.
“Besides, this is my domain.”
*Shhh,* I vanished into the darkness.
As I disappeared, Kang Dong-woon's eyes darted around, desperately trying to find my location.
“There!”
He swung his arm, and a Blade of Wind flew toward one spot.
Then, at some point, it vanished into thin air.
He had used his skill on an empty spot.
“Damn it, there's no one like this among the famous figures in the guilds I know...!”
Impatience began to show on Kang Dong-woon's face.
Then, he bit his lip and shattered all the glass vials he had dropped on the floor.
*FWOOSH!*
A massive amount of the virus spread out.
Since Kang Dong-woon has a high-performance cylinder, the virus would spread in a sphere, leaving only the center empty like the eye of a storm.
He had essentially created a barrier that couldn't be easily entered.
The darkness forming the outer wall reached out like arms, grabbing and steadily eliminating the virus, but the sheer volume was too much to destroy all at once.
So he plans to use that as a wall to buy time.
He must have calculated that I wouldn't be able to maintain such a large-scale technique for long.
I smirked and made my move.
“A technique like this is something no B or C-Rank riffraff could ever use. At least an A-Rank... no... Come to think of it, I think I heard something about one of the newly awakened showing remarkable talent...?”
Kang Dong-woon's incessant mumbling came to a halt.
Blood poured from his pierced stomach.
The darkness receded, and as I pulled out my sword, Kang Dong-woon's body collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
“You... Weren't all your cylinders used up...?”
The assumption that I wouldn't attack through the wall of virus without a cylinder.
And that it would take time to eliminate such a large quantity of the virus.
Kang Dong-woon must have been counting on those two things, but there was a variable he didn't know about.
“Because I have something incomparable to a mere cylinder. A virus like this has no effect on me.”
“Ha, haha...”
Kang Dong-woon let out a hollow laugh and struggled to turn his body over.
His clothes, soaked in enough blood to form a puddle on the floor, were stained red.
“...You said there was something you wanted to know.”
He said one sentence, then coughed up blood.
Though there was no reason for him to speak, he struggled to open his mouth and dutifully kept his promise.
“The now-closed Gabriel Hospital... If you go to the basement there, you'll be able to face the truth. Of course, you'd be better off abandoning any thought that you can win just by going.”
“That's not for you to decide.”
I wondered why he was telling me so readily. Did he think that even with the information, there was nothing I could do?
In fact, I know more about the Geumeumdal Guild's headquarters than I do about this place.
From here on out, things would actually be much smoother.
I smiled lightly and said something I used to say often, like a habit.
“Strategy, complete.”
Kang Dong-woon's eyes widened.
Then, he let out a short laugh.
“That catchphrase... I felt something was off about you from the start. Now I'm sure.”
Again, blood gushed from Kang Dong-woon's mouth.
“...Keuk, you really never know what life has in store for you.”
The corners of Kang Dong-woon's mouth lifted faintly.
Kang Dong-woon, who must have been on the verge of death, his eyes unable to even focus properly, murmured calmly as if reciting his thoughts.
“To think I'd end up in a fight to the death with a streamer I used to be a fan of.”
“What?”
“Do your best, Strategy King.”
With those last words, Kang Dong-woon's eyes closed.
The sound of breathing no longer came from his nose and mouth.
Kang Dong-woon was dead, but I remained rooted to the spot, bound by a chilling sensation.
It was because of his last words.
“...What are you.”
How did Kang Dong-woon know about the existence of the Strategy King?